• Filipino man guilty of selling UAV on eBay

    Last week a Filipino man pleaded guilty to violating arms export and smuggling laws by selling parts from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on eBay; in February, DHS officials arrested Henson Chua of Manila, Philippines after he shipped undercover agents a three-foot long, hand-launched, computer-controlled RQ-11A/B Raven surveillance drone

  • Where have Libya's antiaircraft missiles gone?

    U.S. government officials fear that more portable anti-aircraft missiles may have slipped into the wrong hands or been sold in the black market after rebels in Libya raided one of Colonel Muammer el Qaddafi’s munitions depots; late last month rebels captured the city of Ga’a which contained an ammunition depot that housed Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems, lightweight surface to air missiles known as Manpads; in the ensuing chaos, the depot was raided and crates of weapons disappeared with no record of where they went

  • Expanding Yuma flight testing schedule for Argus UAV

    The World Surveillance Group (WSGI) revealed its plans of extending the flight testing schedule for its strange-looking Argus One UAV at the Yuma facilities at the U.S Army grounds in Arizona

  • Students develop landmine detection robot

    A team of Texas A&M University at Qatar students and faculty has developed a state—of-the-art landmine detection robot as part of the NI Mine Detection Robot Design Contest; The competition challenged engineering students in the Middle East to work toward solutions to the real-life landmine problem that the Arab region and other areas face in the aftermath of conflict

  • Old fashioned methods best for detecting IEDs

    U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq have resorted to an old method to detect improvised explosive devices (IEDs); using long poles with hooks on the end, troops feel around in the dirt to detect any IEDs

  • Too much armor hampered French

    The French may have had a better chance at the Battle of Agincourt had they not been weighed down by heavy body armor; during warfare in the fifteenth century, soldiers wore steel plate armor, typically weighing 30-50 kg; this may have been a contributing factor in whether an army won or lost a battle

  • WWII bombs still plague Germany

    For one bomb squad in Germany the Second World War never ended; members of Germany’s War Ordnance Disposal Service are racing against time to locate and safely defuse the hundreds of thousands of unexploded bombs dropped by Allied war planes that still litter the country

  • U.S. troops deploy biometrics in the field

    Biometric databases in Iraq and Afghanistan are helping U.S. troops combat violent insurgents; in an ambitious move, troops have sought to capture iris scans, facial photographs, and fingerprints from men of fighting age especially those who have been detained for insurgent or terrorist ties.

  • Qaddafi's Tripoli suicide plan

    Libya’s prime minister confided in Russia’s envoy to Africa that Col. Qaddafi has a suicide plan for Tripoli if the rebels took over the city; the regime plans to shower the city with missiles and destroy it rather see the rebels control it; Libya has plenty of surface-to-surface missiles, and so far it has not used any of them against the rebels

  • Five years on: Israel-Hezbollah 2006 war

    Five years ago today, a war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah after Hezbollah fighters made a foray into Israel, killing several soldiers and carrying the bodies of two of them back into Lebanon; despite the uneven scale of death and damage — Israel has inflicted much more damage on Hezbollah and Lebanon — the war was initially perceived as an Israeli defeat because Israel was unable to stop Hezbollah from firing rockets into Israel during the entire conflict; more recently, though, this initial conclusion has been revised somewhat, with some analysts pointing out that the Israel-Lebanese border has been quiet during the past five years — the longest period it has been so quiet; a respected Israeli military analyst says that the 2006 war was an Israeli failure — and unless Israel changes its definition regarding who the real enemy is, the next Israel-Hezbollah war will be and Israeli failure as well

  • Sensors printed on wetsuits detect explosives, other hazards

    UC Sand Diego researcher has successfully printed thick-film electrochemical sensors directly on flexible wetsuit material, paving the way for nano devices to detect underwater explosives or ocean contamination; UCSD has a full U.S. patent pending on the technology, and has begun talks on licensing the system to a Fortune 500 company

  • New technology increase potency of beam weapons

    Laser scientists and engineers have long recognized that direct-diode lasers can offer significant advantages over other laser technologies due to their efficiency, reliability, compactness, and relatively low cost; applications for direct-diode lasers have been limited, however, owing to their low brightness — a combination of lower power and poorer beam quality relative to alternative laser technologies; a Massachusetts-based company, using wavelength beam combining (WBC) technology, is offering a way to solve this problem — allowing direct-diode lasers to be used in demanding industrial applications — and in effective beam weapons

  • Key milestone for compact high-power laser

    Enemy surface-to-air threats to U.S. manned and unmanned aircraft have become increasingly sophisticated, creating a need for rapid and effective response; one solution for countering these threats is high-powered lasers, which harness the speed and power of light to counter multiple — and rapidly approaching — threats; to be useful in combat, however, these lasers need to be lighter and require less space than current state-of-the-art for use on many of today’s air assets; DARPA is working to develop this compact laser

  • More borders, cheaper conflict steadily increase number of wars

    New research shows that the frequency of wars between states increased steadily from 1870 to 2001 by 2 percent a year on average; the research argues that conflict is being fed by economic growth and the proliferation of new borders

  • House introduces new biological weapons legislation

    Last Thursday lawmakers from the House Homeland Security Committee unveiled new legislation designed to help bolster federal efforts to prevent bioterror attacks and the use of other weapons of mass destruction.; under the proposed bill, a new special assistant to the president for biodefense would be created; the bill is called the “WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2011” and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) says he plans to introduce a similar piece of legislation in the Senate soon