Some of the top robots in the world competed last week in a competition that tested their ability to respond to disasters. There were some contenders that succeeded and will be remembered as trailblazers in disaster response. These other robots performed … well, Skynet will need to keep looking before it builds its army.
Have you ever wondered how the toughest competitors in the Ultimate Fighting Championship would stack up against the military?
Well, you can stop wondering. A YouTube video called “UFC Fighters Experience Marine Corps Martial Arts” gives a look at what happened when five fighters — Marcus Davis, Rashad Evans, Forrest Griffin, (former Marine) Brian Stann, and UFC President Dana White — made the trek to Quantico, Virginia’s Marine Corps Martial Arts Center of Excellence, better known as MACE.
After seeing a morning demonstration of tactics and techniques, the fighters attempted a training lane used to test Marines for their ability to train with knives, bayonets, and fighting sticks. The fighters lost to the Marines. Badly.
Although to be fair, even former Marine Brian Stann had some trouble standing up to his fellow Marines who were experts in the Corps’ Martial Arts program.
Watch below (if you want to skip to the fighting lanes, go to 3:50):
In a 1989 incident, the Air Force crew of a B1-B bomber found itself unable to lower the front landing gear during a training flight and was forced to execute an emergency landing in the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base, California.
Investigators later blamed a hydraulic failure, but the crew in the air just knew that they had to reach the ground safely. The Air Force routed the plane to a dry lakebed in California that was often used for landing the space shuttle.
The dust of the Rogers Dry Lake bed is more likely than most surfaces to allow for a safe skid, reducing the risk to the crew and plane. The full landing is visible from a few angles in this video from airailimages:
The U.S. military has a lot of great options when it wants to kill the enemy. Some of the world’s best planes, artillery, and helicopters work with ground pounders to dominate lethal operations.
But when it comes to dealing with crowds, the military wants more options. One of its most promising candidates is the Active Denial Technology system, which focuses a beam of energy to heat the target’s skin 1/64 of an inch deep. It creates a sensation of sudden heat and pain, convincing the target to run.
The maximum punishment for desertion during a time of war is death. But it’s highly unlikely Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who allegedly left his Afghanistan post in 2009, or any troop today would receive that sentence. The last service member executed for desertion was Pvt. Eddie Slovik in 1945 (by a twelve-man firing squad).
There were over 20,000 American military deserters between 2006 and 2015. Of those, about 2,000 have been prosecuted.
This short TestTube News video explains the severity of desertion and its place in military history.
Joy Lofthouse was one of the women who pushed the envelope of what women did in World War II. She was a pilot for the British Air Transport Auxiliary, shuttling fighters between air bases, factories, and maintenance facilities.
Now, 70 years after she last flew a Spitfire, she’s back in the cockpit. Check out the video below:
The crisis in Ukraine, centered on Russia’s annexation of Crimea and their backing of separatists in Ukraine’s east, is a complicated mess. The U.S. and NATO tell one story while Russia tells another. Numerous international incidents have already occurred including the downing of a civilian jetliner, confrontations between Navy ships and Russian jets, and a surge in military exercises by both NATO and Russia, usually near shared borders.
On the season finale of Vice, co-founder Shane Smith and correspondent Simon Ostrovsky lay out the growing crisis in a clear and organized manner, making it easier to get a handle on what’s going on. They talk to experts on both sides of the conflict and in a range of positions, from a separatist commander in Eastern Ukraine to President Obama to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the Russian military and its current expansion.
The documentary covers all the arenas where the conflict is playing out including economic sanctions, active fighting in Eastern Ukraine, information wars across the internet, and military build-ups. Most importantly, it makes these developments and the follow-on consequences easy to understand.
The episode premiers tonight on HBO at 11 p.m. A sneak peek is below, and a preview is on Vice’s website.
In early 1918, American troops were reaching France and beginning to make an impact on the ebb and flow of the war. While the previous combatants had been largely deadlocked for years, fresh American troops could turn the tide of otherwise evenly matched fights.
Germany was on the losing side of this power shift and needed to win the war before more American troops and equipment could arrive. A grand offensive was planned that would come to be known as the Fourth Battle of Ypres or the Battle of Lys.
If successful, it would have forced the British back to the channel ports and possibly caused an evacuation like that in nearby Dunkirk 22 years later.
A British artillery crew maneuvers its 18-pounder field gun at Saint Floris during the Battle of the Lys, also known as the Fourth Battle of Ypres. (Photo: Imperial War Museum)
A two-day artillery bombardment preceded an attack on April 9, 1918, that drove the Portuguese defenders in the Ypres Salient back five miles and cost 7,000 Portuguese lives.
British troops in the area were forced to pull back and cover the gaps of the withdrawing Portuguese soldiers and nightfall on April 9 found them in a precarious position. They held the high ground that the Germans desperately needed and they were outnumbered. The British 19th Division was attempting to hold off a concerted attack by the entire German Fourth Army.
In this brickfilm, a stop-animation movie made almost entirely with Legos, YouTube user Snooperking recreates that disastrous morning for the allies in April 1918 as the British attempt to hold the line and prevent the Germans taking the high ground.
Snooperking, YouTubeSnooperking does a pretty impressive job with the Legos, representing dead bodies from previous fighting with small skeletons and using different Lego heads to capture the fear of the attackers, the resolve of the defenders, and the utter panic when any soldier finds himself on the wrong end of the bayonet.
Luckily, while the middle weeks of April 1918 were disastrous for the British in terms of lost territory, they did bleed the Germans heavily for every yard of territory lost. The German offensive stalled and was called off at the end of April. German losses during the attack allowed for their stunning defeats a few months later as Allied forces, bolstered by American reinforcements, went on the offensive.
Most people will never get to experience a flight in an F-16 fighter but this awesome GoPro video gives a little taste.
Produced with footage from the 35th Fighter Squadron out of Kunsan Air Force Base in South Korea, the video shows pilots as they trained in Alaska last year. It has everything: barrel rolls, air-to-air combat, low-level flight, and live fire at a range.
The squadron was in Alaska to take part in Red Flag Alaska 15-1, a training exercise that allows pilots to sharpen their skills in the air.
“The greatest takeaway from this exercise is being able to fly with other air frames that I don’t normally get to fly with at Kunsan,” 1st Lt. Jared Tew told Air Force public affairs. “And the challenges that RF-A brings are what makes me a better pilot.”
The battle against explosives and stemming civilian casualties in Afghanistan remains a top priority for U.S. forces there.
“For more than 40 years, Afghanistan has been bombed, shelled and mined,” according to the Alun Hill video below. “Old Soviet mines and shells still litter the countryside.”
Insurgents use these dangerous relics, innocuous household items and other explosive materials smuggled in from Pakistan to make improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which they use against American forces. Explosives that are undetonated can remain dormant for years before being uncovered by unsuspecting civilians. Most of the casualties now in Afghanistan come from these items, said Conventional Weapons Destruction (CWD) Manager Hukum Khan Rasooly.
Watch how these dangerous weapons are made and destroyed:
Russia is drastically stepping up its airborne exercises this summer, but its paratrooper training units have one battalion that stands out. The all-female battalion trains Russian women to take leadership positions in Russia’s elite blue berets. RT, a Russian news outlet, created this documentary following a group of the women through their combat training.
Never-before-seen photos reveal the Bush administration’s shocked reactions to the September 11th attacks, moments after the towers were struck.
Each image depicts the crushing gravity of that fateful day, as reflected in the eyes of President George W. Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet and many other White House staffers.
The photos were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from journalist Neirouz Hanna of PBS Frontline. The photos were taken by the vice president’s staff photographer.
You can see more of the recently-released photos on Flickr, and our selection of photographs below:
Vice President Cheney watches television Photo: The U.S. National Archives
CIA Director George Tenet listens to President Bush’s address in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
President Bush with Vice President Cheney and Senior Staff in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
Vice President Cheney in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
President Bush with Vice President Cheney and Senior Staff in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
Secretary of State Colin Powell in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
The lessons in Sun Tzu’s book “The Art of War” still ring true, despite it being written in 513 B.C. Case in point comes from the tactics used during the Vietnam War. As the following video points out, you have American Gen. William Westmoreland, who sees the battlefield like a chessboard. Then you have Gen. Võ Nguyên Giáp — who sees it like Sun Tzu would — as a go board. In go, you acquire territory with the fewest resources instead of eliminating the enemy troops like in Chess.
“It’s a classic case of a general fighting the last war,” says Richard A. Gabriel, a professor at the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, in the video. “The lessons he learned there [Gen. Westmoreland during World War II] only apply partially to Vietnam. There were no fixed objectives to be taken, there were no fixed units to be destroyed.”
This video shows how Sun Tzu’s lessons were applied during the Vietnam War:
