All was quiet in the world of military memes until a Blue Star mom chimed in on Twitter about her yeoman son and the internet went freakin’ nuts. All political undertones aside, the most hilarious part of the meme was her bragging about her son being “#1 in boot camp and A school” and how he was awarded the coveted “USO Award” — pretty much every vet laughed because none of those are a thing.
The Navy vet took it all in stride. He and his brother verified themselves on Twitter and he set the record straight after his mom’s rant that turned into the latest and greatest copypasta. He’s down to Earth, loves his cat, and doesn’t seem like the kinda guy who’d brag about nonsense to his mother.
And, to be completely honest, it was kind of bound to happen. She had the best of intentions and military mommas embarrassing their baby warfighters is nothing new. Personally, I’m just glad my mom doesn’t know how to use her Twitter or else I’d be in the exact same situation.
Dennis Rodman, the former basketball star and citizen diplomat wants to meet with President Donald Trump to discuss ways to de-escalate tensions between North Korea and the US.
In an interview with The Guardian, Rodman said he believes that he can be the mediator between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and that he is willing to go to North Korea to negotiate.
“I’ve been trying to tell Donald since day one: ‘Come talk to me, man … I’ll tell you what the Marshal wants more than anything … It’s not even that much,'” Rodman said. “If I can go back over there … you’ll see me talking to him, and sitting down and having dinner, a glass of wine, laughing and doing my thing.”
Courtesy of Vice
“I guess things will settle down a bit and everybody can rest at ease,” Rodman said.
Rodman posted a photo on his twitter account on Sunday talking about humanitarian work he was doing in Guam and Tokyo. The photo was captioned “Great week of humanitarian work in Guam and Tokyo, Japan now just got to Beijing..Guess what’s next?”
In the photo, Rodman is wearing a shirt that shows him in between Trump and Kim, along with US and North Korean flags and the word “Unite” written under them.
Rodman told The Guardian that he tried to make his sixth trip to North Korea, but US officials told him not to go. “Basically they said it’s not a good time right now,” he said.
The State Department has issued a travel ban against Americans visiting North Korea in September, after Otto Warmbier’s death.
When asked about what Kim wanted, Rodman replied “I ain’t telling you … I will tell [Trump] when I see him.”
The Guardian notes that while the White House has not responded to Rodman’s request, Trump did praise the athlete’s visit to North Korea, calling it “smart.”
“The world is blowing up around us. Maybe Dennis is a lot better than what we have,” he said.
A third Russian intelligence agent went to England to plan the nerve agent poisoning of a former Russian spy in early 2018, The Telegraph has reported, casting further doubt on the Kremlin’s claims that it had no knowledge of the attack.
The UK in early September 2018 accused two Russian men, who traveled under the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, of the attempted assassination.
UK counter terrorism police and the security services identified the third agent, and say the person visited Salisbury to prepare for the attack on Sergei Skripal before two of his colleagues arrived, The Telegraph reported on Sept. 27, 2018.
Authorities believe the third agent visited Salisbury ahead of the attack, and reported the layout of Skripal’s neighborhood and property to the two agents who later carried out the attack, the newspaper said.
Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed in March 2018 after being exposed to novichok, a military-grade nerve agent, which was smeared on his front door.
A British couple who lived nearby were also exposed to the same batch of nerve agent in July 2018, which led to the death of one woman.
Surveillance camera footage of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, the two suspects in the Skripal attack, at Salisbury train station the day before Skripal’s collapse.
Bellingcat’s findings suggest that Putin was in fact aware of the suspect’s legal identity, which would seem to disprove the Russian president’s claim that he didn’t know who Boshirov and Petrov were, that they were civilians, and that the Kremlin had no knowledge of the Skripal attack.
The findings are also in line with the British government’s claim, citing security and intelligence agencies’ investigations, that Boshirov and Petrov were officers from Russia’s intelligence services.
Prime Minister Theresa May in early September 2018 also said that authorization for the attack “almost certainly” came from senior members of the Russian government.
The Skripal poisoning caused a large diplomatic rift between the UK and Russia. London accused Moscow of being behind the attack, which the Kremlin repeatedly denied. More than 20 countries also joined the UK in expelling Russian diplomats as punishment.
The British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on Sept. 27, 2018, suggested that Russia was not expecting such a large international response to the attempted assassination.
“They can’t have been expecting Theresa May to put together a coalition that saw 153 Russian spies expelled from capitals in 28 countries across the world.
“So they paid a very high diplomatic price — but they need to understand that it will not be a comfortable place for Russia in the world if this is the way they behave.”
Business Insider has contacted the Russian Embassy in the UK for comment.
The London Metropolitan Police, who is leading the investigation into the attack, declined to comment on The Telegraph’s report.
The force told Business Insider in a statement on Sept. 27, 2018, that international arrest warrants for Petrov and Boshirov remain active. However, Russia does not extradite its own citizens.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider. Follow @BusinessInsider on Twitter.
While most of the world was watching Trident Juncture, the massive NATO war games where 31 countries sent 50,000 participants and Russia responded with missiles and other provocations, the U.S. was participating in more war games on the other side of the world.
The U.S. and Japan sent a record number of troops to Keen Sword, Pacific war games to which Canada also sent ships and sailors.
The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, center left, and the Japanese helicopter destroyer JS Hyuga, center right, sail in formation with 16 other ships from the U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force as aircraft from the U.S. Air Force and Japan Air Self-Defense Force fly overhead in formation during Keen Sword 2019 in the Philippine Sea, November 8, 2018.
(U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kaila V. Peters)
Keen Sword is focused on ensuring that Japan can defend its territory, and the U.S. and other allies take part to improve their ability to operate with the Japanese Self-Defense Force. Over the past few years, China’s aggression in the region has increasingly shaped the narrative — but China is far from the only threat Japan faces.
An E-2D Hawkeye lands on the flight deck of the Navy’s forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan during exercise Keen Sword 19, November 7, 2018.
(U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class MacAdam Kane Weissman)
Japan is deeply within range of North Korea’s missiles and has an ongoing dispute with Russia over islands dating back to World War II.
Therefore, its annual hosting of Keen Sword is crucial. Japan sent 47,000 troops, about a fifth of its active military, and America sent 9,500 more. Canada sent two ships to the exercise.
U.S. Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit 5 fast rope from an MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter onto the USS Ronald Reagan during Keen Sword 19 in the Philippine Sea, November 1, 2018.
(U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Erwin Jacob V. Miciano)
The Japanese forces carry a lot of American hardware, everything from F-35s to Apache helicopters to Aegis missile defense systems. But Japan has still felt the need to further expand their military capabilities, standing up amphibious assault forces and increasing their ability to rapidly deploy with forces such as paratroopers.
The forces practiced these marine and airborne operations as well as submarine hunting, combat search and rescue, and other operations. See more photos from the exercise below:
A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force soldier assigned to the 1st Airborne Brigade jumps from a U.S. Air Force C-130J Super Hercules assigned to the 36th Airlift Squadron over Hiju-dai drop zone, Oita prefecture, Japan, November 4, 2018, during Keen Sword 19.
(U.S. Air Force Yasuo Osakabe)
A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force solider assigned to the 1st Airborne Brigade performs personnel accountability on a U.S. Air Force C-130J Super Hercules at Japan Air Self-Defense Force Tsuiki Air Base, Japan, November 4, 2018, during Keen Sword 19.
(U.S. Air Force Yasuo Osakabe)
A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force soldier assigned to the 1st Airborne Brigade waits to jump from a U.S. Air Force C-130J Super Hercules over Hiju-dai drop zone, Oita prefecture, Japan, November 4, 2018, during Keen Sword 19.
(U.S. Air Force Yasuo Osakabe)
Rear Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of Task Force 70, departs an E-2D Hawkeye on the flight deck of the Navy’s forward deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan during exercise Keen Sword 19, November 7, 2018.
(U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class MacAdam Kane Weissman)
U.S. Air Force pararescue specialists assigned to the 31st Rescue Squadron from Kadena Air Base, Japan, charge land during a combat search and rescue training near Misawa Air Base, Japan, October 31, 2018.
(U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Melanie A. Hutto)
Sailors perform preflight checks on an E/A-18G Growler on the flight deck of the forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan during exercise Keen Sword 19, November 1, 2018.
(U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class MacAdam Kane Weissman)
Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit 5 ready themselves for training during Keen Sword 19.
(U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Erwin Jacob V. Miciano)
U.S. Airmen stand in front of an E-3 Sentry during Exercise Keen Sword 2019, at Kadena Air Base, Japan, October 29, 2018.
(U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Matthew Seefeldt)
A Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine participates in Exercise Keen Sword with Submarine Group 7 and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force sailors and staff. For the submarine force, the exercise was an opportunity to demonstrate how both countries’ submariners would detect, locate, track and engage enemy assets.
(U.S. Navy Chief Electronics Technician Robert Gulini)
U.S. and Japanese ships maneuver during a photo event at the end of Keen Sword 19 on November 8, 2018.
(U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kaila V. Peters)
It may look like R2-D2 from Star Wars slapped on top of a dune buggy, but Raytheon says its new laser weapon holds the promise of providing maneuver formations with portable air defenses against drones.
“This can identify a quadcopter out to five clicks,” or 5,000 meters, and then fry it with a laser, said Evan Hunt, business development lead for high-energy lasers at Raytheon.
Hunt spoke as he stood in the Pentagon’s courtyard March 19, 2018 in front of a Mad Max-style Polaris off-road vehicle mounted with a Raytheon Multi-Spectral Targeting System, a combination of electro-optical and infrared sensors with a high-energy laser.
The system can operate remotely or as part of an integrated air defense network, he said.
“You can park it at the end of a runway or at a [forward operating base],” Hunt said.
But one of its main advantages, he said, is that the laser can be carried by an off-road vehicle with maneuver formations to provide defense against unmanned aerial systems, or drones.
“Basically, we’re putting a laser on a dune buggy to knock drones out of the sky,” Dr. Ben Allison, director of Raytheon’s high-energy laser product line, said in a company release.
The company says the concept grew out of a meeting between Allison and Raytheon Chairman and CEO Tom Kennedy on adversaries’ increased use of small drones for surveillance and as weapons when fitted with small explosives.
In the siege of Mosul in 2017, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria used small drones extensively to target the Iraqi Security Forces.
Kennedy told Allison he had heard that a Patriot missile had been used to shoot down a cheap drone fitted with a grenade-type munition, and they both began thinking there had to be a better cost-to-kill ratio, Raytheon said.
The quadcopters used by ISIS are worth a few hundred dollars, while Patriot missiles cost about $2 million apiece.
ISIS is increasingly incorporating drones into warfighting tactics.
“So, the question became, ‘What can we do for a counter-UAS system using a high-energy laser, and do it quickly.’ We wanted to take the assets and capabilities Raytheon has today and use them to really affect this asymmetrical threat. We settled on a small system that’s hugely capable,” Allison said.
Art Morrish, vice president of Advanced Concepts and Technology at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, said of the system, “Right now, it’s a shoot-on-the-halt capability. You drive the vehicle wherever you’re going to drive it. You stop, and then you fire up the laser.
“That makes it great for protecting forward operating bases and places where convoys have to stop. The next step is to set it up so you can actually shoot on the move,” he said.
Raytheon is expected to demonstrate the system at the Army’s Maneuver Fires Experiment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, December 2018.
The Polaris mounted with the laser was part of a number of corporate displays in the Pentagon’s courtyard in a sign of the military’s growing interest and investment in directed energy weapons to defend against an array of threats.
February 2018, at an Association of the U.S. Army forum on missile defense, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said the nation needs directed energy weapons — lasers, particle beams, microwaves — to take out enemy ballistic missiles in the launch stage.
“The day you can actually shoot a missile down over somebody’s head and have that thing drop back on their heads — that’ll be a good day, because as soon as you drop it back on their heads, that’s the last one they’re going to launch, especially if there’s something nasty on top of it,” he said.
“I think directed energy brings that to bear,” Hyten said, although such weapons do not yet exist in the U.S. arsenal.
“Directed energy is an interesting challenge,” he said, but “I think directed energy has a huge potential on the missile defense side.”
(Photo by DOD)
At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the budget March 20, 2018, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said her service has $280 million allocated for directed energy research in 2018.
One of the military’s priorities is to develop countermeasures, including lasers, to cope with the proliferation of small drone attacks against U.S. forces, according to a report last month by a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee commissioned by the Army.
“Hobby drones are easy to buy, their performance is improving dramatically, and their cost has dropped significantly,” said Albert Sciarretta, president of CNS Technologies and committee chairman.
“Now, with millions of them around the world, they pose a growing threat to the U.S. warfighting forces if used for nefarious intents,” he said.
The Defense Department has invested in technologies that can jam drones’ radio frequencies and make them inoperable.
However, the academy’s report states that a new generation of small drones can increasingly operate without radio frequency command-and-control links by using automated target recognition and tracking, obstacle avoidance, and other capabilities enabled by software.
Sun Tzu once said that he who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.
To be honest, in a way, that is exactly what camouflage is all about. It is not about colors, shapes, or ninja stuff. It is about knowledge, patience, and the manipulation of anything anywhere.
All to achieve one goal: to become the environment. In this article, I am going to give you a small, bitter taste of the art of camouflage.
When I was in the Israeli Airborne SF, I served with one of the SR groups. My secondary specialty in my team was what we call in the IDF, a ‘builder.’ Basically, someone who is capable of concealing anything, from one man to an entire team or vehicles in any environment.
Eliran Feildboy. Photo courtesy of Breach Bang Clear.
What is camouflage?
Back in the days, when I used to assist as an instructor for the next generation of builders, one of the first questions I asked the young soldiers in every introduction lesson was, ”What does the word ‘camouflage’ mean to you?”
The majority of the answers were split into two: hiding or disappearing.
While both might sound correct, those two words describe a long-living misconception that one experiences when he gets involved with task-oriented concealment work.
Long story short, the majority of the time camouflage begins with understanding the nature of observation.
Applying standard camo. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod.
The purpose of it is not only to hide, but to make you part of the environment, allowing you to safely observe, document, and, when necessary, respond.
Being a master of camouflage means being able to live off nature’s hand for 72 hours (or more), being just hundreds of meters away from the objective, and being able to observe the point of interest all the while.
Let’s say camouflage is the art of manipulation–the controlling of reality.
Fundamentals of Camouflage
There are three fundamental camouflage actions. These are the main principles that are found in any concealing construction.
Hiding: The action of hiding is setting a barrier that separates you physically, and often visually, from the surrounding environment and its unfolding reality.
Blending: Resembling your surroundings by combining different, like elements into a single entity. The main difference between success to failure lays in properly blending subtle details.
Disguising: In short, disguising is an action we perform to alter an existing shape or form. We do that to eliminate or create intentional target indicators, such as smell, shape, or shine. Disguising, for example, is adding vegetation to a Ghillie suit or collecting branches to conceal my hide side.
Photo courtesy of Breach Bang Clear.
Target Indicators
Knowledge is power. One of the keys to perfect camouflage at the tactical level is the ability to understand what kind of X or Y signatures my presence creates that will lead to my exposure.
TI, or target indicators, are about understanding what signatures my enemy creates in a specific environment. Those target indicators suggest presence, location, and distance in some cases.
There are two dimensions to consider when detecting and indicated presence. The first–and oldest–dimension is basic human sense. The other is technological.
Human Sense
While smelling, hearing, and touching are obvious senses, but those senses normally only come into play in short distance.
Let’s focus on ‘seeing.’
Snipers with 1st Sapper Company, Burundi National Defense Force, observe enemy movement, donning field-made ghillie suits. USMC Photo by 1st Lt. Dominic Pitrone
The visual sense is, by far, the most reliable sense for humans. We use it up to 80% of the time to collect information and orient ourselves. So, what kind of visual signatures could I leave that may lead to my exposure? In short:
Shape – The perfectly symmetrical shapes of tents or cars, for example, don’t exist in nature. Those, and the familiar shape of a human being, are immediate eye candy.
Silhouette – Similar to ‘shape,’ but with more focus on the background. A soldier walking on top of the hill or someone sneaking in the darkness with dark clothes against a white wall–the distinction of a foreground element from its background makes a target indicator sharp and clear.
Shine – Surface related. Radiance or brightness caused by emitted or reflected light. Anything that my skin, equipment, or fabrics may reflect. Popular examples would be the reflection of sunlight on hand watches, skin, or optics for example.
Shadow – Shadows are very attractive and easy to distinguish for human eyes, depending on a shadow’s intensity. For example, caves in open fields stand out for miles and are very easy to recognize. As a result, we never use caves for hiding, as they’re a natural draw to the eye.
Color – Let’s make it sure and simple–wearing a pink hoody to a funeral is a good way to stand out. Match your environment.
Oh boy, this is where the real challenge begins! I’m actually going to risk it and say that ghillie suits are becoming less and less relevant today due to increases in technology.
Before we will dive into all that Einstein stuff, these are the main wavelengths used by different devices to find your ass:
Infra-Red / NIR – Used in NVGs, SWIR cameras, etc. Night-vision devices, for example, use active near-infrared illumination to observe people or animals without the observer being detected.
UV – UV radiation is present in sunlight. UV-capable devices are excellent, for example, in snowy environments for picking up differences undetectable by the naked eye.
Thermal – Your body generates a temperature different from any immediate background, such as the ground in the morning or a tree in the evening. Devices tend to set clear separations between the heat or cold of different objects, resulting in pretty nice shapes that are easy to distinguish for the observer.
Radar (radio)– A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves, an emitting antenna, and a receiving antenna to capture any waves that return from objects in the path of the emitted signal. A receiver and processor then determine the properties of the object. While often used to detect weather formations, ships, structures, etc., there are numerous devices that can give you an accurate position of vehicles and even humans. It’s a long story, hard to manipulate. Such devices exist already in the tactical level.
It is nearly impossible to eliminate your signature against devices who work within the wave length. The only solution is to understand what the human being sees through advanced optics and manipulate the final result.
Army photo by Andrew Zimmer
Buckle up and get your aspirin – we’re moving into the science stuff.
The human and its environment emits different signatures that can be picked up by different technological devices that make use of different types of waves.
Cones in our eyes are the receivers for tiny visible light waves. The sun is a natural source for visible light waves and our eyes see the reflection of this sunlight off the objects around us.
The color of an object that we see is the color of light reflected. All other colors are absorbed.
Technically, we are blind to many wavelengths of light. This makes it important to use instruments that can detect different wavelengths of light to help us study the earth and the universe.
Army photo by Sgt. Jeffrey Alexander
However, since visible light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can see, our whole world is oriented around it.
Until recently.
With the advancement of technology, humanity slowly cracked and understood the existence of other light waves.
We began to see those dimensions through different devices.
Since the visual camouflage has foiled many plans throughout a history of wars and conflicts, militaries around the world began researching the possibilities of using non-visible wavelengths in detecting the signature of specific objects in specific environments.
Summary
Camouflage is not about hiding and it’s definitely not only about wearing a ghillie suit or digging deeps foxholes.
Soldiers with the Estonian Defense Force defend their position May 12, during Operation Siil in Oandu, Estonia. Army photo by Sgt. Juana Nesbitt.
It’s an involved, looping process that starts with understanding how humans detect and continues with manipulating this detection.
The old standards, such as ghillie suits, are becoming less and less relevant to the modern battle space as detection technologies advance.
New predators such as SWIR or advance thermal cameras are hard to beat unless you know the device, the interface, and the humans who use it.
As Albert Einstein once said, technology has exceeded our humanity–so get creative.
The Nintendo Switch is a delight, but it will never replace the Nintendo 64 in our hearts. Released in 1996, the N64 as it was lovingly known was Nintendo’s first true 3D console. Its roster featured absolute classics like Super Mario 64 (the bestselling game of its generation), Super Smash Bros., and, of course, Goldeneye 007.
Nostalgia for the late ’90s and the undeniable quality of the N64 mean it’s still a treasured console and one that’s popular online. Jason Brody, a video game streamer and commentator better known as Darkhorse, is a part of this with his effort to beat all 296 Nintendo 64 games on Twitch. (He’s at 85 so far.)
But Brody recently earned viral fame not for his ambitious project but for his clever use of the infamous N64 controller to open a beer. He posted a video to Twitter that shows how the expansion port on the bottom of the controller, when it isn’t holding a rumble pack or Gameshark unit, is the perfect size to fit on a bottle of beer and, with minimal effort, pry off the bottle cap.
Next to going from second to first in Mario Kart 64 thanks to a well-placed shell, this is one of the most satisfying things you can do with an N64 controller, and people are noticing. Brody’s tweet has garnered over 85,000 likes and almost 22,000 retweets.
In the comments section, people are loving Brody’s innovation. And if you’re psyched to try this trick but afraid of damaging your valuable vintage equipment, Brody says there’s nothing to worry about.
So while we continue to wait—hopefully not in vain—for an updated version of the N64, it’s nice to know that people are still finding new ways to have fun with the console that’s old enough to buy (and well-equipped to open) its own beer at this point.
This article originally appeared on Fatherly. Follow @FatherlyHQ on Twitter.
Too often does a company rate their product as military-grade as a way of marketing it to the public. The term screams, “this product is so tough, it could be used by the military!” But, as anyone who has served more than five seconds can tell you, in reality, “military grade” is often used as a joke to describe something made by the lowest bidder.
If a truck commercial has the words “military grade” all over it, that doesn’t mean the truck is rolling onto the battlefield. It could mean simply that it uses 6000 series aluminum — the same aluminum used in military equipment, like radio mounts.
This one goes out to all of the real military-grade products. The ones the military seems content to fill every supply room with.
Every NCO will have at least four of these scattered about and, yet, they’ll rarely fill out all 192-pages. Sometimes, you’ll find them with nice, elaborate covers that also hold pens and cue-cards, but most are just labeled with the date on the spine.
You can also tell if it belongs to Staff Duty by the amount of drawings in it. (Image via Marine Corps Memes)
4. Skilcraft “U.S. Government” pens
On Amazon, you can pick up a box of 96 cheapo pens for $13.10. Or, for $9.90, you can get a box of your very own Skilcraft pens, labeled “U.S. Government.”
But seriously, these pens will work anywhere.* On anything.* Forever.* Chances are, the pen you “tactically acquired” from your battle buddy probably has more time in service than both of you.
*Probably. Or at least that’s what it seems like.
3. Pine-Sol
No matter how many times it happens, people will always screw up and pour more than a cap full of Pine-Sol into the mop bucket. When it’s used as intended, it’s kind of pleasant actually. When it’s used by a Private who was told to mop the halls, they’re sure to pour enough to trigger some sort of alarm.
Pine-Sol: The official scent of Sand Hill at Fort Benning. (Image via Flickr)
2. Duct tape
Fun fact: Duct tape was created by an ordance-factory worker and mother of two Navy sailors, Vesta Stoudt, as a sealant for ammo boxes. As it turns out, it could be used for damn near everything.
If it can’t be fixed with duct tape (and maybe with a spray of WD-40), it’s beyond repair.
So there’s no need to side-eye the doc for using it, crybaby. (Image via Flickr)
1. Cotton Swabs
The unit just got back from the range and everyone is feeling great from a solid day shooting. The last thing to worry about is cleaning your rifle.
Thirty minutes later, every troop has a mountain-sized pile of carbon-filled, bent-up cotton swabs. Even if you use an entire box of cotton swabs, the rifle isn’t clean enough. Even after you’ve used all of the cotton swabs that supply has, the rifle isn’t clean enough. Even if you send one person to the PX to buy out their entire stock of cotton swabs, the rifle isn’t clean enough.
Whoever holds the government contract on providing cotton swabs has got to be rolling on dough. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Jeff Walston)
The B-1B Lancer is perhaps America’s most underrated heavy bomber.
For some perspective, let’s look at the specs. The Lancer can carry 84 Mk 82 500-pound bombs internally — that’s more than the B-52 or the B-2. It can carry a bunch of other weapons as well – from the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile to the CBU-97 cluster bomb.
And the B-1 may be the one thing holding back Russia from an all-out invasion of the Baltics.
But did you know that a B-1 even foiled a plan to bring over 1,000 pounds of cocaine into the country? Here’s how that happened:
A B-1B Lancer takes off from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., March 27, 2011, on a mission in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Marc I. Lane)
According to an Air Force Times report from last year, the B-1 had been on a routine training mission off the Florida coast in March when the crew noticed something suspicious. When they went to check it out they saw a speed boat with drug smugglers and a fresh load of cocaine.
The smugglers had no idea that they were followed until they looked up and saw the humongous bomber coming right at them. They did what just about anyone would do in that situation: They panicked.
The B-1 crew caught them on tape dumping an estimated 500 kilos of cocaine overboard. According to an Oct. 2016 report by Business Insider, each kilo was worth up to $150,000 on the street – meaning that some drug lord took a $75 million hit to his bottom line.
Now that’s a good thing.
Photo: Courtesy US Coast Guard
You might think the crew of that B-1B got into trouble for violating the Posse Comitatus Act. Guess again – in fact, this incident inspired then-Secretary of the Air Force Deborah James to see if other training missions could be used to help in the War on Drugs. This past September, DodBuzz.com reported that a five-day training exercise last August was used to assist in a counter-drug operation that seized over 6,000 kilos of cocaine.
A top authority on North Korea has jokingly suggested the U.S. launch an unorthodox attack on the country’s leader.
Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk and the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterrey, California, has outlined a plan for the U.S. to strike Kim Jong Un’s personal toilet.
Writing at The Daily Beast over the weekend, Lewis was responding to increased chatter of a U.S. strike on North Korea. Though Lewis was approaching the issue in a tongue-in-cheek way, his writing nonetheless illustrates the dangers of and motivations behind using military force to send a message.
Basically, reports have come forth that the U.S. is tired of North Korea’s constant defiance and wants to carry out a limited strike in response. In theory, the use of force against a weaker opponent can serve as a reminder of who is in charge.
But while North Korea couldn’t really defend against a small U.S. strike, it doesn’t intend to defend. North Korea’s military posture is entirely offensive. While the country could do little to stop an incoming cruise missile or airstrike, it has long had artillery aimed at Seoul, South Korea’s capital of 25 million.
Lewis seems to think that the idea has some merit but that the difficulty lies in finding a target that’s important enough to matter but not big enough to provoke war. From The Daily Beast:
The central challenge, as we contemplate a ‘bloody nose’ option for a limited military strike, is finding a suitable target that represents Kim Jong Un’s nose — a target that will allow our strike to be intimidating and humiliating to Kim, but not the sort of broad assault that might prompt him to retaliate with his growing stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Lewis settles on a target of little strategic importance but great personal relevance to Kim: his port-a-potty.
Kim almost always observes North Korean missile launches from a private trailer. The launches normally happen in the middle of nowhere, so comforts like a port-a-potty suited for a supreme party leader need to be shipped in.
“Destroying the port-a-potty will deny Kim Jong Un a highly valued creature comfort, while also demonstrating the incredible accuracy of U.S. precision munitions to hold Kim and his minions at risk,” Lewis wrote. “It will send an unmistakable message: We can kill you while you are dropping a deuce.”
Lewis refers to his idea as hilarious, “a comedy and an action movie — both at the same time.” The U.S. military, however, may not be laughing.
Lewis’ playful idea represents a rather circumspect approach to selecting the right target to use military force to send a message. While the verbal, diplomatic, and economic messages the world has tried time and time again have failed to get through to North Korea, President Donald Trump’s administration has floated the idea of military action more than any before it.
There is no doubt that the most well-known and infamous pirate of all time is Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. He terrorized the Caribbean for years before his eventual death in 1718. Three hundred years later, his massive, hidden fortune is still lost to history.
Despite how they’re portrayed in pop culture, pirates did not leave maps laying around with an “x” marking the spot — probably because that’s a terrible plan. If anything, they would know a general location and remember where it was buried. When it comes to massively successful pirates like Blackbeard, however, a single treasure chest buried six feet deep wouldn’t be nearly enough.
Sorry to any Robert Louis Stevenson fans… but, no.
In fact, as far as we know, only one pirate, Thomas Tew, used an actual treasure chest to stow his prize. That particular cache of wealth was valued at around $102 million in today’s money. According to Blackbeard’s ledger, his wealth was evaluated at a (comparatively) paltry $12.5 million. If you think that’s suspiciously low for a pirate of his stature, you’d be correct. His ledger also notes that his real treasure “lay in a location known only to him and the devil.”
In terms of a suitable hiding spot, it’s more than likely stowed in a cave similar to Dungeon Rock in Massachusetts, where pirate Tom Veal hid his treasure. Knowing that Edward Teach often docked in the Carolinas, that’d be a logical start for treasure hunters. Ocracoke Island, North Carolina was his most common hang-out spot, but if it hasn’t been found there over the last three hundred years, you can be sure it’s not there.
And believe me: Every tourist who goes to this island thinks they’ll be the one to finally find it.
Weeks before his death, Blackbeard knew his time was coming to an end. The Spanish and British were hot on his tail and, if he hadn’t already, he wouldn’t have had the time to consolidate all of his Caribbean treasures. He went down with his ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, off the coast of Ocracoke Island.
Many ships have been discovered off the shore, but none have identified as Queen Anne’s Revenge. Although Blackbeard’s ship was boarded, no Englishman was recorded as becoming extremely wealthy after the raid there’s little reason to believe that there was a large sum of money on his ship.
As far as anyone knows, it’s still out there somewhere…
Operation Resolute Support has released a video from September 9, 2018, when Afghan National Security Forces reported finding a massive weapons cache in Helmand Province, where security forces and Taliban fighters have been clashing as the government gains ground in the area.
The U.S. forces supporting the Afghans agreed to help “reduce” the stockpile, but they didn’t risk droves of explosive ordnance disposal specialists by sending them in to drag out all the explosives and destroy them one by one.
Nope, instead, they turned to rocket artillerymen, and had a high-mobility, artillery rocket system shoot at the cache. Then, they released the video with just the text:
HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan (Sept. 9, 2018) – Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) conducted operations in Nad ‘Ali District and discovered a compound containing a large weapons and explosives cache. In support of ANDSF maneuver, Task Force Southwest conducted a strike on the compound with HIMARS to safely and completely eliminate the hazardous material from the battlespace, degrading the Taliban’s ability to conduct combat operations in central Helmand.
Soliders from Bravo Battery, 1-121st Field Artillery Regiment with the Wisconsin National Guard, fire M142 HIMARS Ripper rounds while training at Fort McCoy, WI.
(Fort McCoy Visual Information Branch Jamal Wilson)
And, judging by the massive explosion in the video, the round found its mark. The shockwave radiates out for hundreds of meters, so the weapon cache must’ve been massive.
The Afghan National Security Forces have pressed hard against the Taliban in recent months, and some of their victories have been dramatic. In one case, government forces defended the Farah district center with their bare hands and blades after a siege went on so long that they ran out of ammo and other supplies.
But many Afghan citizens remain angry and worried about the performance of their security forces, especially the logisticians, intelligence officers, and other support forces crucial for modern combat. In Farah, they yelled at Afghan officials about the long and obvious Taliban buildup before the battle and asked why the government forces weren’t better supplied, reinforced, and prepared for the fight.
All of this comes amid new peace talks between the Taliban, the Afghan government, and the U.S. The war turns 17-years-old today if you count it from the 9/11 attacks that precipitated the U.S. invasion. The youngest Afghan voters can’t remember a time without war between the U.S. and the Afghan national government and the Taliban and its allies.
