The Sniper’s Nest At Super Bowl XLVI
I suppose this makes sense, so why is it so morbid and shocking? Perhaps because every aspect of the Super Bowl is supposed to symbolize some element of the broader culture? Deadspin stumbled upon some photos of the armed-and-ready-to-shoot man who watches while you watch the big game:
According to Business Insider, the photos were taken by a ranking member of the Indianpolis SWAT team, and obtained by Alamo Four Star, maker of the tripod.
The Self-Guided Bullet
Presumably the marketing pitch will be that you literally can’t miss. From KRQE:
Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have invented a bullet that guides itself to the target. Sandia has wide expertise at miniature technology, and the bullet works like a tiny guided missile.
The patented design doesn’t shoot straight. Instead of a spiral rotation, the bullet twists and turns to guide itself towards a laser directed point. It can make up to thirty corrections per second while in the air…
Obama Administration Selling Arms to Bahrain
Via Common Dreams:
As the Arab Spring unfolded last year, protesters in the streets saw something startling about the tools of repression being used on them. The Humvees, tanks, helicopters were from the US government; the canisters of chemical agents used to attack them said, “Made in the USA.”
Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet and close ally of Saudi Arabia, brutally suppressed the uprising among their citizens. More than 40 pro-democracy protesters were killed and thousands more were arrested and tortured. While speaking out loudly on Libya’s brutality, the Obama administration remained largely silent on Bahrain.
Last fall the Obama administration announced plans to sell Bahrain $53 million worth of military weapons including bunker buster missiles, armored vehicles and wire-guided missiles. The Pentagon said at the time the sale “will improve Bahrain’s capability to meet current and future armored threats. Bahrain will use the enhanced capability as a deterrent to regional…
Sneaking Into A Russian Military Rocket Factory
When you walk by a topnotch military rocket factory and notice that there are no guards on duty, it’s an opportunity for fun. A set of unbelievable photos, via Gizmodo:
Her name is Lana Sator and she snuck into one of NPO Energomash factories outside of Moscow. Her photos are amazing, like sets straight out of Star Wars or Alien. Now the Russian government is harassing her.
It was easy to get in. She just went there, jumped over the fence and got right into the heart of the complex through a series of tunnels and pipes, which was very surprising. After all, this is an active industrial installation that belongs to one of the top manufacturers of liquid-fuel rockets in the world.
And yet, she found nobody. No guards, no security. Nothing. Just a few CCTV cameras here and there in rooms packed with huge machinery.
While some of these zones look decrepit…
Turn Deceased Loved Ones’ Ashes Into Bullets
The 
Alabama-based company Holy Smoke will do just this, loading cremated remains into live shotgun rounds — allowing for numerous possibilities of sweetly perfect, Tarantino-esque posthumous vengeance:
My friend smiled and said “You know I’ve thought about this for some time and I want to be cremated. Then I want my ashes put into some turkey load shotgun shells and have someone that knows how to turkey hunt use the shotgun shells with my ashes to shoot a turkey. That way I will rest in peace knowing that the last thing that one turkey will see is me, screaming at him at about 900 feet per second.”
I realized that my friend was describing almost exactly how I wanted my ashes to be spread. How perfect to have my family and friends honor me by using shotgun shells with a little bit of my ash in each one. Whether my shells get shot at…
Making Everyday Objects Deadly: The Art of the Shiv
I’ve also heard them called shanks, the word itself, “shiv” or “shank,” intuitively sounds like their intended use, further relayed with these photos from this article by William Drenttel in Design Observer:
A shiv is a weapon crafted from the limited resources of a prisoner’s closed world. Crudely constructed from such things as spoons, shoelaces and upholstery tacks, shivs lie somewhere between the graceful and the grotesque. They’re primitive, too — like outsider art, but produced deep on the inside.
The individual parts that make up a shiv tend to be everyday objects, innocent things furtively reconstituted as lethal weapons. Each design choice is essential, but what’s particularly notable is that shivs, at their core, are not so much evocations of minimalism as they are symbols of survivalism. A shiv is all about masked utility: it’s an innocuous object with improbably toxic intent (whether used to attack others or to protect oneself…)
Pentagon’s Lightning Gun Sold On eBay
Photo: Cody Oliver, USMC
The Burning Man may be incinerated faster than usual this year … Noah Schachtman reports for Wired:
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the Pentagon sank tens of millions of dollars into remote-controlled lightning guns that it hoped would fry insurgent bombs before they killed any more troops. Now, disassembled parts from the one-time wonder-weapons are being sold on eBay. At least one buyer snatched up the gear, hoping to use it in his latest art project for Burning Man.
All of which would make for a funny little story, if that buyer didn’t discover that the multimillion dollar “Joint Improvised Explosive Device Neutralizers,” or JINs, were kluged together from third-rate commercial electronics, and controlled by open Wi-Fi signals. In other words, the Pentagon didn’t just overpay for a flawed weapon. On the off-chance the JIN ever worked, the insurgents could control it, too.
“This is…
Meet An Open Source Weapon in Stuxnet: The Anatomy of a Computer Virus (Video)
An infographic dissecting the nature and ramifications of Stuxnet, the first weapon made entirely out of code. This was produced for Australian TV program HungryBeast on Australia’s ABC1:
US Navy’s High Energy Laser Gun Smokes Boat (Video)
Given the U.S. Government’s propensity for starting wars in the 21st century it probably won’t be long before we see these high-energy lasers in battle.
Here’s what the Office of Naval Research had to say about the test:
Marking a milestone for the Navy, the Office of Naval Research and its industry partner on April 6 successfully tested a solid-state, high-energy laser (HEL) from a surface ship, which disabled a small target vessel…
How Two Bumbling Stoner Kids Became The Pentagon’s Favorite Arms Dealers
It sounds like the plot of a John Hughes ’80s teen comedy. Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz were a pair of underachieving kids from Miami (interests: football, “whisky”, and “chilling with the boyz”) until, as part of the privatization effort, they somehow landed a $300 million contract from the Bush administration to provide ammunition for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Then things soured: greed pitted the friends against one another, all they could give the military were defective, Chinese-made munitions from Albania, and now Diveroli is in jail. Rolling Stone has the barely-believable saga:
Reassured by the e-mail, Packouz got into his brand-new blue Audi A4 and headed home for the evening, windows open, the stereo blasting. At 25, he wasn’t exactly used to the pressures of being an international arms dealer. Only months earlier, he had been making his living as a massage therapist; his studies at the Educating Hands School of Massage…
ATF Purposely Allowed Drug Cartels To Buy And Smuggle Thousands Of Assault Weapons
In a secret program called “Fast and Furious”, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms knowingly let thousands of assault rifles (such as AK-47s) “walk” across the border into the hands of drug cartels in Mexico — ATF planned to track the guns for intelligence purposes and “see where they ended up.” The weaponry in question has been used in a spree of deadly crimes, including the murders of U.S. government agents Jaime Zapata and Brian Terry. A whistleblower at ATF brought the matter to light, CBS News reports:
Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is asking the U.S. government for details about ATF’s “Fast and Furious” operations.
As our CBS News Investigation has revealed, “Fast and Furious” was a secret program under which, sources say, ATF purposely allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons from the U.S. into the hands of drug cartels in Mexico. Insiders call it letting the guns “walk.”
Documents…
Robotic Cheetah And Other Advanced ‘Terror Bots’ In Development
BigDog robot. Photo: Boston Dynamics
Discovery News reports on more nightmare-fuel for believers in the robopocalypse:
A headless metal warrior stomps towards you, shooting. Fortunately, you’ve been training for a marathon and easily jet off to safety down an alleyway. But wait -– now a metal cheeta-bot is after you, racing faster than your puny legs can go. As the space between you and the galloping beast closes, you round a corner, see a door and dive through. It slams behind you. As you freeze, holding your breath, the robotic cat passes by outside with a wake of metallic echoes.
Relieved, you exhale into the dark. A fatal mistake -– outside, another robot has detected your breath and alerted the enemy to your location …
Waking up from this nightmare is a way to save yourself, for now, but in fact all three ‘terror’ bots it featured are based on actual prototypes being developed in…
Florida Truck Dealership Gives Out Free AK-47s With Vehicle Purchases
Ah, America, where machine guns are dispensed like party favors. Via Aol News:
A truck dealership in Florida is firing up sales with the promise of a rapid-fire machine gun.
Customers have been streaming into Nations Trucks in Sanford, near Orlando, purchasing two dozen vehicles since the sale campaign began on Veterans Day last week. Each new truck owner also walks out with a free AK-47. “We’ve tripled our business,” general sales manager Nick Ginetta told AOL News. “We knew it would be controversial, but it’s been a phenomenal response.”
An image of the semiautomatic rifle is taped to the showroom’s window to lure shoppers. Buyers receive a $400 voucher good for one Kalashnikov at Shoot Straight, a weapons dealer with several locations in the Sunshine State.
All prospective gun owners must meet state and federal gun-control laws, but Ginetta has still drawn fire from anti-gun activists and alarmed neighbors. “I’ve had calls from…
Mysterious Missile Launched Off California Coast
On Monday in Los Angeles, an unexplained missile shot through the sky over the Pacific Ocean. A CBS News traffic helicopter caught it on tape. Thus far the Navy and Pentagon have not claimed the missile as theirs or been able to provide any explanation.
U.S. Navy Uses Laser To Shoot Down Drones (Video)
OK, this is pretty cool – at least if you were the kind of kid who loved Flash Gordon, Star Trek or any other sci fi movies or TV series with laser weapons … report from CBS News:
The U.S. Navy has used a a laser weapon to shoot down four unmanned aerial vehicles in a test that rings up memories of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense shield in the 1980s.
The successful test of the Laser Weapon System off the coast of California was announced…
Japanese Artist Maps History of the World’s Nuclear Explosions (1945–1998)
Over 2,000 detonations! Really informative. Duncan Geere writes on Wired.com (UK):
A Japanese artist named Isao Hashimoto has created a series of works about nuclear weapons. One is titled “1945—1998″ and shows a history of the world’s nuclear explosions.
Over the course of fourteen and a half minutes, every single one of the 2,053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are is plotted on a map.
After a couple of minutes or so, however, once the USSR and Britain entered the nuclear club, the tests really start to build up, reaching a peak of nearly 140 in 1962, and remaining well over 40 each year until the mid-80s.
It’s a compelling insight into the history of humanity’s greatest destructive force, especially when you remember that only two nuclear explosions have ever been detonated offensively, both in 1945. Since then, despite more than 2,000 other tests and billions of dollars having been spent on their development, no nuclear warheads have been used in anger.
Mystery Military Space Plane
An Air Force plane prompts concerns about space-based military operations. CNN’s Barbara Starr reports.
Breast Implants As A Terrorist Weapon?
The Detroit Free Press reports:
British intelligence agencies have reportedly monitored terrorist communications bragging that women suicide bombers have already undergone surgery to hide explosive bombs in their breast implants.
“You could certainly put a liquid of any kind in a saline device, and a gel implant theoretically could be opened and replaced with a different type of gel,” said Maryland plastic surgeon Dr. Craig Person.
“I believe that any liquid in a breast implant, or any gel with a silicone-type of implant would be hard to detect with a body scanner,” Person told 9NewsNow.
A Sonic Blaster So Loud, It Could Be Deadly
David Hambling writes for Wired:
All kinds of of devices have been dubbed “sonic blasters” — from the Long Range Acoustic Device super loudhailer to the piercing Banshee to the Inferno (”most unbearable, gut-wrenching noise I’ve ever heard in my life” according to Danger Room’s own Sharon Weinberger). But a new device, developed in Israel, merits the “sonic blaster” label more than most: the Thunder Generator really is a blaster, producing a series of ear-splitting explosions. Some are so loud, they could be deadly.
Israeli firm PDT Agro developed the Thunder Generator, based on a gadget to scare away birds. The design is very simple: gas from a cylinder of domestic liquid petroleum (LPG) is mixed with air and then detonated, producing a series of high-intensity blasts. Patented “pulse detonation” technology ensures high-decibel blasts. According to Defense News, the Israeli Ministry of Defense has now licensed a firm called ArmyTec to market the Thunder Generator for military…
