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"Bulletproof custard" liquid armor better than a Kevlar vest
Materials scientists combined a shear-thickening liquid with traditional Kevlar to make a bulletproof material that absorbs the force of a bullet strike by becoming thicker and stickier; its molecules lock together more tightly when it is struck, the scientists explained — they described it as “bulletproof custard”
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A First: full-sized aircraft takes off, flies, lands with no human help
Last month, in Mesa, Arizona, a helicopter took off, avoided obstacles during flight, scoped out a landing site, and landed safely — and did all that on its own; no humans were involved, and there was no pre-programmed flight path
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Georgia will be base for WMD homeland security response force
DHS is setting up ten regional Homeland Response Forces tasked with handling weapons of mass destruction incidents; each will be assigned 570 personnel; the force will be trained to respond within six to twelve hours to regional disasters like chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high yield explosive incidents
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Sector Report for July 13, 2010: Emergency / Police / Mil.
This report contains the following stories.
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Second drug submersible seized
Colombia’s drug cartels frequently use semi-submersible vessels to smuggle large amounts of cocaine past American and Colombian patrol boats to Central America en route to the United States; law enforcement discovers and seizes second submersible in as many weeks: the first was seized in Ecuador, the second in Guatemala
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Recent stun-gun use by police in U.S., U.K. raise questions anew about the device's safety
Three cases of taser gun use by law enforcement last week bring the issue of taser back to the fore; human rights organizations have raised concerns about the safety of Tasers and consider them to be potentially lethal as well as open to abuse
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Ambulance radios in London do not work in the rain
Ambulances in London have a problem: ambulance crews often working without radios especially in heavy rain when their radios seem to have reception problems; ambulance panic buttons either did not work, or did not elicit any response when set off by staff; Airwave, the Airwave system is getting a £39 million upgrade in time for the 2012 London Olympics
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New counter-IED approach: flying car
California based company offers a solution to the vexing IED problem: a car flying car; if soldiers find themselves in a tactical situation requiring a quick escape, they can flip a switch and the car just shoots up in the air; in April DARPA invited engineers to dream up a flying car — for the initial design of which it allocated $54 million — to give the military an “unprecedented capability to avoid traditional and asymmetrical threats while avoiding road obstructions” through vertical takeoff and landing
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U.K. government scraps stop-and-search anti-terror police power
The U.K. Home Office announced it would limit Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which allowed the police to stop and search anyone for no reason; from now on, members of public can only be stopped if officers “reasonably suspect” they are terrorists; the policy change comes after the January ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Section 44 violated the right to respect for private life
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The number of incidents of lasers being flashed into aircraft rises sharply; federal, state prosecutors respond
The number of incidents of lasers being flashed into aircraft has risen steadily in the past five years — from 283 cases reported to the FAA nationwide in 2005 to 1,476 incidents last year; studies have supported pilots’ reports that bright external lights can cause a flare in the goggles pilots wear, temporarily impairing sight; a laser beam hitting the eyes of a pilot who does not wear goggles may cause temporarily blindness and disorientation; as ever-cheaper lasers have made their way into ever-more hands, federal and local prosecutors have picked up the pace of criminal cases; in many cases, the prosecution uses the Patriot Act, which include a provision about deliberately interfering with the pilot of an airplane or “mass transportation vehicle” with reckless disregard for human safety
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7/7 London bombings: "The rules of the game have changed"
Two weeks after the 7 July attacks, the then prime minister, Tony Blair, called a press conference at which he warned: “Let no one be in doubt. The rules of the game have changed”; he outlined twelve new measures that aimed to transform the landscape of British counterterrorism; together, they were intended to offer a greater degree of collective security; each came at considerable cost to the liberties of both individuals and groups of people; the controversial Terrorism Act 2006 passed after the 7 July bombings has led to increased arrests and convictions
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Report: Terrorism in Britain "mostly home grown"
New study finds that that 69 percent of terrorist offenses in the United Kingdom were perpetrated by individuals holding British nationality; 46 percent of offenders had their origins in south Asia including 28 percent who had Pakistani heritage; 31 percent had attended university and 10 percent were still students when they were arrested; 35 percent were unemployed and living on benefits
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Keeping water clean by using sound to filter bacterial spores
Acoustic trapping can remove bacterial spores from water, according to a new set of experiments funded by the U.S. Army; the idea is to allow the water to flow through a cavity in which a transducer sets up an acoustic standing wave
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U.K. will regulate license number plate recognition cameras more tightly
There are 4,000 automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras in the United Kingdom, logging more than 10 million vehicles every day; since the launch of the ANPR network in 2006, the government has accumulated 7.6 billion images; these images include details of number plates and the date, time, and place of capture — and, often, the picture of the driver and passengers; the Home Secretary has called for tighter regulation of the ANPRs, and also for limiting access to the image database; ministers will consider how long these records can be held (the current limit is two years); seventy-two ANPR cameras in Birmingham will soon be removed after it emerged that their installation, in areas with large Muslim populations, had been funded through a Home Office counter-terrorism fund
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Hand-held scanner checks 100 databases -- in one second
Army guards at Fort Sam Houston are using a hand-held identity detector that taps information from more than 100 databases — in one second; the manufacturer says that the use of the device has resulted in 60,000 arrests since the start of 2004; Senator Schumer wants TSA to use the device at airports
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More headlines
The long view
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Using Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires
Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.