Camouflage And The Quest For Invisibility
The Atlantic traces the history of military disguise in the twentieth century, the breakthrough realization that pixelated, “digital”-looking camouflage patterns work better than the traditional swirly ones, and the future of making people undetectable to the human eye:
Modern military camouflage traces its origins to World War I, when the French army gathered a cadre of artists in three top-secret workshops near the western front. The blotchy smocks they created sparked the popular imagination. Camouflage was not issued widely, though, because of the high cost and low production capacity: every yard of camouflage was a hand-painted work of art.
U.S. marines in the Pacific wore industrially manufactured camouflage during World War II, but its use was limited in Europe because German paratroopers were known for their camouflage uniforms, and American officials didn’t want confusion to cause fratricide. Camo uniforms were more widely issued to U.S. troops in the early 1970s, when jungle prints…
HRW: All Sides In Somalia War Guilty Of Crimes
Mass burial for those killed during Mogadishu infighting. Photo: Abdurrahman Warsameh/International Relations and Security Network (CC)
Where there is conflict there is someone to point the finger. Human Rights Watch have decided that everyone is ‘guilty’. Via AFP:
All the parties to Somalia’s conflict have violated the rules of war and are guilty of causing civilian casualties in the fight for territorial control, Human Rights Watch said Monday.
Somali government forces backed by troops of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have fought bloody battles in the capital Mogadishu with the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab rebels who want to topple the administration.
“All sides have used artillery in the capital Mogadishu in an unlawful manner that has caused civilian casualties,” the rights group said in a report.
“Al-Shebab has fired mortars indiscriminately from densely populated areas and the TFG (government) and AMISOM forces have often responded in kind with indiscriminate counterattacks.
“As a result, civilians have…
In U.S., Muslims And Atheists Most Opposed To Violence
Is violence targeting civilians ever justified in the name of a worthy cause? U.S. Christians say yes, atheists and Muslims say no. Raw Story writes:
New data from polling firm Gallup shows that out of all the religious groups in the U.S., Muslims are most likely to reject violence, followed by the non-religious atheists and agnostics.
Through interviews with 2,482 Americans, Gallup found that 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified, whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with that sentiment. Fifty-six percent of atheists answered similarly.
The survey was designed to measure religious and non-religious attitudes toward violence 10 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Perhaps most tellingly, 92 percent of Muslims surveyed said they did not believe any Muslim in their community had sympathy toward al Qaeda terrorists.
When Gallup put the question a bit more pointedly, asking if it would…
Austerity For Everyone, Except The Defense Industry
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
While Congress and the President fight it out over the debt ceiling and all of America quietly shudders over whether our economy will completely default on itself, at least one industry still hums along without a care in the world.
Amidst a fiscal crisis of apparently apocalyptic proportions, where the GOP demands dollar for dollar spending cuts from the budget in order to raise our debt limit, the Pentagon asked Congress for $264 million to cover part of a $771 million overrun on the F-35 program. The Hill reports Republican Senator John McCain let the news slip via Twitter, saying “Congress notified that first F-35 jets have cost overruns of $771M. Outrageous! Pentagon asking for $264M down payment now. Disgraceful.”
Leaders of the program Lockheed Martin spat back on Twitter, contending “The F-35 team is focused on reducing costs of the jets and is showing significant improvement in…
The Use Of U.S. Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2010
Presented by the Federation of American Scientists, the Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2010 chronologically lists the cases in which the United States has used its armed forces overseas in military conflict over the course of our nation’s history.
It’s fascinating, and a quick skim highlights both that the majority of military action is overlooked, forgotten or unknown by the much of the public, and that with each passing decade, we seem to engage in warfare with increasing frequency. A mid-eighties retro snippet:
Military’s Best Secret Weapon: Dolphins
Assassinating enemy divers with CO2-filled syringes? Parachuting from the sky and blowing up enemy ships kamikaze-style? Acoustically detecting a 3-inch ball 200 meters away in complete darkness? All this and more as Skeptoid covers the James Bond’s of the sea, deployed first by the USSR and today by the Indian Navy and U.S. Navy Marine Mammal System:
Dolphins and sea lions have advantages that are hard for navies to ignore. They swim far faster than divers, and are much easier and cheaper to deploy than remote underwater vehicles. They can dive hundreds of meters and return, with no concern about decompression, quicker than a human diver could even get suited up. Dolphins’ underwater acuity is such that they can acoustically detect a 3-inch ball 200 meters away in complete darkness, and even discriminate between different kinds of metal. A dolphin’s brain is famously larger than a human’s, in part because so much of…
Obama: Attacking Libya Is Not War, Because Americans Are Not Dying
How did the Obama administration authorize military action in Libya without congressional approval? Via a novel redefining of “war”, the Nation reports:
American planes are entering Libyan air space, they are dropping bombs, and the bombs are killing and injuring people and destroying things. It is war. Some say it is a good war and some say it is a bad war, but surely it is a war.
Nonetheless, the Obama administration insists it is not a war. Why? Because the balance of forces is so lopsided in favor of the United States. War is only war, it seems, when Americans are dying, when we die. When only they, the Libyans, die, it is something else for which there is as yet apparently no name. When they attack, it is war. When we attack, it is not.
According to “United States Activities in Libya,” a thirty-two-page report that the administration released last week, “U.S.…
Pentagon To Consider Cyberattacks As Act Of War
David E. Sanger and Elisabeth Bumiller write in the New York Times reports:
The Pentagon, trying to create a formal strategy to deter cyberattacks on the United States, plans to issue a new strategy soon declaring that a computer attack from a foreign nation can be considered an act of war that may result in a military response.
Several administration officials, in comments over the past two years, have suggested publicly that any American president could consider a variety of responses — economic sanctions, retaliatory cyberattacks or a military strike — if critical American computer systems were ever attacked.
The new military strategy, which emerged from several years of debate modeled on the 1950s effort in Washington to come up with a plan for deterring nuclear attacks, makes explicit that a cyberattack could be considered equivalent to a more traditional act of war. The Pentagon is declaring that any computer attack that threatens widespread civilian…
Navy Turns To Online Gamers In Fight Against Somali Pirates
If you have spent the past fifteen years in a dank basement playing video games while immersed in a thin layer of Dorito crumbs, the U.S. military needs you to sort out the geopolitical mess around the Horn of Africa for them, please. AFP reports:
The Office of Naval Research plans this month to launch the US military’s first online war game to draw on the ideas of thousands of people instead of the traditional strategy session held inside the Pentagon’s offices.
“Piracy off the Horn of Africa has been an enduring problem that has many stakeholders. We selected this topic for the pilot scenario,” Schuette said.
The game will have three rounds over three weeks, with players in the first stage faced with a piracy scenario and asked to propose brief, Twitter-length solutions. Players will be presented with boxes labeled, “Innovate” and “Defend,” with questions such as: “What new resources could turn the…
Casualties of War: The Most Depressive Toy Soldiers Ever
Created by Dorothy via Sad And Useless:
Says Dorothy:
The hell of war comes home. In July 2009 Colorado Springs Gazettea published a two-part series entitled “Casualties of War”. The articles focused on a single battalion based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, who since returning from duty in Iraq had been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, drunk driving, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides. Returning soldiers were committing murder at a rate 20 times greater than other young American males. A separate investigation into the high suicide rate among veterans published in the New York Times in October 2010 revealed that three times as many California veterans and active service members were dying soon after returning home than those being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We hear little about the personal hell soldiers live through after returning home.
Iran Says Israeli Jets Preparing To Strike
UPI reports:
Israeli fighter jets are conducting drills at a military base in Iraq in preparation for a strike on Iran, the Islamic Republic’s Press TV reported.
The report said the Israeli planes participating in the drills include F-15, F-16, F-18 and F-22 fighter jets. It said they have conducted weeklong exercises, flying mainly at night.
Press TV said its report was based on information received from a source close to Moqtada al-Sadr’s group in Iraq.
Sadr is considered to be one of the most influential religious political figures in Iraq but holds no official title. He has repeatedly called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition troops and U.N. forces deployed in Iraq.
The air drills are being conducted in collaboration with the U.S. military, the report said. It said Iraq was not informed of the exercises.
The U.S. maintains a number of military bases in Iraq and the government in Baghdad is not involved in…
Why The Ron Paul Presidential Run Will Be A MUCH Bigger Deal This Time Around
Will Ron Paul be a serious presidential contender for the 2012 election? Joe Weisenthal writes for Business Insider:
It’s just obvious that in the last four years, since the last time Ron Paul ran for President, the ideological center of gravity in the GOP — and the whole country for that matter — has shifted a lot closer to Ron Paul’s position.
In 2008, Paul ran a cult campaign as a libertarian, anti-Fed, anti-war Republican.
At the time, nobody in the GOP really cared about the Fed, and for the most part, Bush’s wars enjoyed broad support.
Today they’re Obama’s wars, and the Fed is one of the most disliked institutions around, taking daily abuse even from mainstream outlets like CNBC.
It’s inconceivable to think that in the GOP primary, candidates won’t be asked for their position on Bernanke, quantitative easing, the role of the dollar, and of all the candidates, only Ron Paul has made…
The Peace Movement Didn’t Just Disappear
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
Earlier this week, Fox News reporter John Stossel asked a question that often pops up from the right wing media on a slow news day: “where did all the anti-war protestors go?” Stossel suggested anti-war protestors were really just “anti-President Bush,” citing a study by “two college professors,” with no reference to where the study came from. He called the drop off in attendance at rallies from this mysterious study “amazing” (the mystery study he quotes says after Obama was elected president, attendance went from thousands to hundreds) and said that “protestors have remained silent over Libya.”
The study Stossel references was authored by two social scientists, Michael Heaney of the University of Michigan and Fabio Rojas of the University of Indiana. Research was conducted at various anti-war rallies in the U.S. from 2007 to 2009. Heaney and Rojas have been following the anti-war movement since the…
U.S. Predator Drones To Carry Out Missions In Libya
Via BBC News:
Armed US Predator drones are set to carry out missions in Libya, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said.
Mr Gates said their use had been authorised by President Barack Obama and would give “precision capability” to the military operation.
US drones are already used to target militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Libyan rebels have been battling Col Gaddafi’s troops since February but have recently made little headway. “President Obama has said that where we have some unique capabilities, he is willing to use those,” Mr Gates told a news conference.
He said two armed, unmanned Predators were being made available to Nato as needed.
Mr Gates denied that the drone deployment was evidence of “mission creep” in Libya and said there was no plan to put US “boots on the ground” in Libya.
The Ethics Of Unleashing Killer Robots
The UK Ministry of Defense experiences a moment of self-reflection that one can’t imagine happening at, say, the Pentagon. Richard Norton-Taylor and Rob Evans report for the Guardian:
The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence.
The report warns of the dangers of an “incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality”, referring to James Cameron’s 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute “acceptable machine behaviour”.
“It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) … we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or…
Media Roots Radio: Two Active Duty Soldiers Speak Out
Via Media Roots:
This is a special Media Roots Radio interview conducted by Abby and Robbie Martin with two active duty soldiers in the army: Malcolm and Yossarian. Malcolm is a soldier enlisted in the US Army and serves as an aviation mechanic. Yossarian is an Apache helicopter pilot and military aviator in the US Army. They are both stationed abroad right now but were gracious enough to take some time out of their schedule to sit down on Skype for an interview with Media Roots. They talk about why they enlisted, how they woke up and give their perspectives on Bradley Manning, US foreign policy and 9/11 while expressing grave concerns for the future of this country.
They are also both contributing writers for Media Roots. Check out their op-ed writings in the Soldier’s Corner of the site. If you would like to directly download the podcast click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display. To hide the comments to enable easier rewind and fast forward, click on the icon on the very bottom right.
63% Of People Killed In Iraq War Were Civilians
Xinhua reports:
U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been causing huge civilian casualties with 63 percent of some 109,000 people killed in the Iraq war being civilians, according to a report on the U.S. human rights record released on Sunday.
The figures were quoted from a WikiLeaks trove by the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010, which was released by the Information Office of China’s State Council in response to the country reports on Human Rights Practices for 2010 issued by the U.S. Department of State.
Figures from the WikiLeaks website also revealed up to 285,000 war casualties in Iraq from March 2003 through the end of 2009, according to the report.
“The U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and other regions have also brought tremendous casualties to local people,” said the report.
The report cited the notorious case on a “kill team” formed by five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade,…
Colin Powell on U.S. Involvement in Libya: ‘There May Not Be Boots on the Ground’
WASHINGTON – Bender Arena at American University was generously packed for former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s remarks Wednesday. The 74-year-old retired four-star general gave a one-hour talk at the behest of the Kennedy Political Union, and at its culmination, responded to inquiry regarding the pre-no-fly zone presence of Special Forces and CIA agents in the civil war-torn North African nation of Libya. Powell couched Barack Obama’s metonymous statement that there would not be “boots on the ground” by suggesting that the group of elite American soldiers “on the ground” would only be indirectly involved in enabling insurrection against Gadhafi’s regime.
A presidential finding leaked by various news outlets a few days after the enforcement of a United Nations no-fly zone over Libya evidences Obama’s willingness to deploy America soldiers into Libya weeks before he would tell the American people on television that they would not have to count on “boots on…
Insane Military Uses Of Animals (That Actually Worked)
Tactics of note include the Soviet Union’s secret squad of harpoon-wielding killer dolphins, the mass-parachuting of live turkeys during the Spanish Civil War, and stampedes of flaming camels which defeated India. War is truly insane. Via Cracked:
The Mongolian chieftain Timur invaded India in 1398, and was met by the army of Sultan Mahmud Khan, who had 120 war elephants at his command, covered in armor and with giant scimitars attached to their tusks.
Confident of victory, Khan ordered his army to advance. Timur needed to do something, and fast. He had heard elephants were easily startled, and figuring he had nothing to lose, ordered all his camels to the front lines, then covered them in straw and oil and set them on fire.
The flaming camels charged forward, probably as a result of being set on fire, and scared the shit out of the elephants. Desperate to get away from the camels,…
DARPA Creates Interactive 3-D Holographic Map Table
A 2D Representation of UPSD's 3D Image. Source: DARPA
Popular Science reports via DARPA:
Long gone are the days of pushing plastic armies around hand-drawn maps. Today’s military planners deserve technology of the future, and that means nothing less than 3-D holograms will do. Luckily, we have DARPA, ever-ready to step in with a solution. The Urban Photonic Sandtable Display (UPSD) allows up to 20 participants to simultaneously view and manipulate the 360-degree, 3-D image on the table, without having to wear 3-D glasses.
The display can be expanded to as large as six feet, and has a visual depth of up to 12 inches. UPSD is also interactive – battle planners can freeze, rotate and zoom in on the images. They can also print out two-dimensional representations of the 3-D data (seen above) that troops can carry with them on their missions.
Zebra Imaging won the contract to create the technology for UPSD, and…
