• U.S. military challenged by other nations’ improved abilities to deny access to territory

    A U.S. military strategy based primarily on an ability to deploy troops anywhere it feels necessary will face heightened costs and risks in critical regions by 2025, owing to other nations’ improved abilities to deny the U.S. access, according to a new study. Anti-access and area denial are the two biggest threats to the U.S. ability to project its military forces.

  • Special forces should be at the heart of Britain’s military planning

    What sort of military does the United Kingdom need to deal with a rapidly changing set of potential threats? As Western countries increasingly move away from the conventional foe — one that is easily identified, armed in a similar way and which, most critically, thinks in a similar way, and therefore in a conventional and predictable manner – it’s time to reappraise the sort of armed forces required for the future. It is no longer the size of your arsenal of firepower but how well it is employed that matters. Organizations such as Islamic State understand that well: their actions are carefully targeted to achieve maximum effect with limited resources. With technology on the Western side, the best counter to this present – and likely future – threat, will be to adopt in turn Voltaire’s maxim and concentrate increasingly on special, and specialized, forces.

  • 170,000 hate crimes go unreported in the U.K. each year

    Hate crimes are massively under reported, making it all the more difficult for police and other authorities to make an impact on the issue. Now, researchers have devised techniques that could result in much more accurate estimates.

  • Half of American adults are in a little regulated police face recognition database

    Half of American adults — more than 117 million people — are in a law enforcement face recognition network, according to a report. Of the fifty-two government agencies that acknowledged using face recognition, only one obtained legislative approval for its use and only one agency provided evidence that it audited officers’ face recognition searches for misuse. Not one agency required warrants, and many agencies did not even require an officer to suspect someone of committing a crime before using face recognition to identify her.

  • Fire and explosion investigation guideline approved for OSAC Registry

    The Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) for Forensic Science has approved the National Fire Protection Association Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations for inclusion on the OSAC Registry, which serves as a trusted repository of high-quality, science-based standards and guidelines for forensic practice. This is the first guideline to be included on the OSAC Registry, where it joins the first standard, which was listed earlier this year.

  • Thousands of people didn’t evacuate before Hurricane Matthew. Why not?

    As Hurricane Matthew approached the Atlantic coast earlier this month, many residents followed orders to evaqcuate, but others stayed in place. Hurricane Matthew illustrates the challenges of managing disaster evacuations effectively. By understanding who is likely to obey or ignore evacuation orders, authorities can use data to reduce the number of false alarms and concentrate limited resources on groups who are most likely to choose to shelter in place. It is critical to grapple with these issues so we can do a better job responding to the next storm, which likely won’t be ten years away.

  • “Drop, Cover, and Hold On”: Worldwide ShakeOut drill to be held 20 October

    USGS scientists recently determined that nearly half of Americans are exposed to potentially damaging earthquakes based on where they work and live. Still others will be at risk when traveling. USGS asks Americans to be prepared to join millions of people from around the world participating in Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills worldwide on 20 October. During the drill, participants practice “Drop, Cover, and Hold On.” This is the recommended safety action to take during an earthquake.

  • 3 Kansas men arrested for plotting massive attack on a complex housing Somali refugees

    The Garden City, Kansas police on Friday arrested three members of a far-right militia group for plotting to bomb an apartment complex in Garden City, in which about 120 Somali refugees live. The complex also houses a mosque. Supporters of far-right nationalist ideology – sometime referred to as “alt-right” – have been using an apocalyptic language, which has been adopted by Donald Trump, describing the refugee program as an “invasion” of the country which amounts to “national suicide” for the United States.

  • Defining – and monitoring -- domestic terrorism in the U.S.

    Domestic terrorism in the United States “is not just a function of a couple of militia related guys taking over something out West. It’s not just a bunch of white supremacist in white hoods,” says Thomas Brzozowski was appointed to lead the Justice Department’s new domestic terrorism office a year ago. In the past, a host of groups such as anarchists and the Ku Klux Klan have been under surveillance by the federal government. When the FBI was formed in the early twentieth century, communists and later anti-war activists, women’s rights organizations, and civil rights groups came to be viewed as domestic threats. Brzozowski says that today’s Justice Department is more sensitive to the free exercise of civil liberties.

  • U.S. could safely reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal: Critics

    Over the last twenty-five years, Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles have decreased dramatically. Today the U.S. arsenal stands at around 4,500 warheads, including both deployed and stored weapons. Critics of the U.S. current posture say that the United States could safely reduce its arsenal of deployed strategic nuclear weapons by an additional third from New START levels. They also say that the U.S. strategic and tactical “hedge” — weapons kept in reserve as technical and strategic backups – could be reduced as well.

  • Report finds strong link between strength of states’ gun laws and rates of gun violence

    A new report has found a strong correlation between the strength of state gun laws and levels of gun violence. The report, which analyzes ten specific indicators of gun violence in all fifty states, found that the ten states with the weakest gun laws collectively have levels of gun violence that are more than three times higher than the ten states with the strongest gun laws. The ten states with the weakest gun laws collectively have three times more gun violence than the ten states with the strongest gun laws.

  • Climate change has doubled Western U.S. forest fire area

    Human-induced climate change has doubled the area affected by forest fires in the U.S. West over the last thirty years. Scientists say that since 1984, heightened temperatures and resulting aridity have caused fires to spread across an additional 16,000 square miles than they otherwise would have — an area larger than the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. The scientists warn that further warming will increase fire exponentially in coming decades.

  • Sled track simulates high-speed accident in B61-12 nuclear weapon test

    Sandia National Laboratories has sent a mock B61-12 nuclear weapon speeding down the labs’ 10,000-foot rocket sled track to slam nose-first into a steel and concrete wall in a spectacular test that mimicked a high-speed accident. It allowed engineers to examine safety features inside the weapon that prevent inadvertent nuclear detonation. Data analysis from the test continues, and the information will help engineers better understand how systems respond in abnormal environments — accidents or other unexpected events.

  • Sled track simulates high-speed accident in B61-12 nuclear weapon test

    Sandia National Laboratories has sent a mock B61-12 nuclear weapon speeding down the labs’ 10,000-foot rocket sled track to slam nose-first into a steel and concrete wall in a spectacular test that mimicked a high-speed accident. It allowed engineers to examine safety features inside the weapon that prevent inadvertent nuclear detonation. Data analysis from the test continues, and the information will help engineers better understand how systems respond in abnormal environments — accidents or other unexpected events.

  • U.S.: UN should investigate war crimes committed by Russia, Syria in Aleppo

    U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the military campaign by Russia and Syria against civilians in Aleppo amounts to a war crime, and that the UN must launch a war crime investigation into the two countries’ actions. Military analysts noted that the Russian and Syrian campaign aims not only to kill civilians directly by dropping barrel bombs on Sunni neighborhood. Assad and his Russian allies deliberately increase the death toll by using bunker-busting munitions systematically to destroy the city’s civilian infrastructure — hospitals, clinics, water treatment facilities, and power stations. The analysts say that Assad’s ultimate goal is to make life in the city impossible, thus forcing hundreds of thousands of Sunnis to flee, making it easier for his Alawite and Shi’a forces to control the city once they recapture it from the rebels.