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Pentagon wants to create space vehicle to fire missiles anywhere on Earth
via: Raw Story
Buried in the 621-page House-Senate conference report on the Defense Department appropriations bill — and page A19 of Monday’s Washington Post, is a $100 million request to enhance space warfare.rawstory.com...
This is absolutely surreal. This doesn’t seem like a policy that conveys an image of the US as wanting to ‘get along’ with the rest of the world that we all live. It seems a lot more like they are trying to control it; sort of looks like empire-building… And, it seems like as they request larger and larger chunks of money appropriated for the military, they are just slipping this stuff through.
The Advanced Tactical Laser, Boeing's Flying Laser Cannon
We've been waiting for a good freaking death ray for, oh, about 70 years. So when Boeing says, " ... directed energy weapons are relevant to today's battlefield and are ready to be fielded," we pay attention.
Now, Boeing's already doing a few interesting things with laser technology on a smaller scale (like mounting devices to Humvees and using them to detonate bombs from a safe distance. They can also put a bigger one in a jumbo jet and use it to destroy incoming ICBMs from hundreds of miles away. But those are hardly death rays, right? They're reassuring defensive measures designed to protect our brave men and women!
That's where the Advanced Tactical Laser comes in.
Designed to engage (that is, utterly destroy) ground targets, the ATL is a weapon fitted to an aircraft like a C-130 transport plane. From 10,000 feet up and five miles away, this 40,000-pound, megawatt-class, chemical laser will melt a hole through a tank.
Or should we say, tanks. The ATL is intended to strike up to 100 targets in rapid succession. Oh, and the beam's silent. And invisible. One moment you're having a nice cup of coffee atop your troop transport, the next you're a smoking hole in the ground.
This space age, science fiction gadget is scheduled for live fire demonstrations later this year.
Where They Got the Idea:
Independence Day.
Or, quite possibly from the 1985 Val Kilmer comedy Real Genius.
Railguns, the Navy's Fleet-Destroying Doom Cannons
If you're into sci-fi or first-person shooters, chances are we had you at "railgun." For everyone else, there's the above picture. If you can't make out the writing there, it says "Velocitas Eradico." Speed destroys. That's from a recent railgun demonstration by the US Navy.
Railguns work by electrically generated magnetic repulsion, no toxic chemicals or propellants involved--so yay, finally a gun that kills people and not the environment! In the test pictured above, the projectile was fired with an electric charge of 10.6 megajoules, that's a one second pulse of 10.6 million watts, or enough electricity to power the average American household for a year. When applied in a single split second to an aluminum slug that's much, much smaller than your house, it's enough to make the slug do Mach 7. For those of you who just imagined a seven blade razor, first pretend you're not an idiot, and then try to conceive of something moving fast enough to ignite the air around it and to # up anything it strikes in ways science barely understands.
How far away are these things? Well, the Navy intends to put 64 megajoule railguns in their new, all-electric DD(X) battleships, which should be ready in 10 years.
The iRobot Warrior, brought to you by Roomba! The Robotic Floorvac
he world has already gone from bomb disposal bots (which seemingly half the police departments have now) to patrol robots fitted with assault rifles. So what's next? Fully-armed droid soldiers?
Well, they decided to skip that step and went right to droid soldiers that can fire a million #ing bullets a second. The company iRobot (yes, the Roomba guys) are teaming up with Australian weapons company, Metal Storm, to create Warrior. iRobot will provide the robot part, and Metal Storm provides the Firestorm weapons system, and revolutionary guns that work by stacking the ammo in the barrel and cooking it off via electrical impulses.
The result is a robot that can shoot little 40 mm grenades at you at a rate of 4,000 a second.
Having the rounds triggered electronically meshes well with a computer targeting system. And the guns are designed not to jam, so don't count on that once these bastards start rolling down your street.
Or maybe we should just relax. After all, iRobot says Warriors are "being engineered with advanced software, giving them the ability to perform some battlefield functions autonomously."
See? Perfectly harmless.
Where They Got the Idea:
It reminds us of the unmanned Hunter-Killers that roamed the landscape of the future in the Terminator series.
"Rods from God," Space-Launched Kinetic Megabombs
There's an urban legend about a woman killed by a shaft of frozen urine fallen from a plane's leaking toilet. Then there's the one about pennies dropped from the top of the Empire State Building, passing through pedestrians' skulls like bullets. Then there's the one about telephone pole-sized tungsten rods dropping from an orbital weapons platform at 36,000 feet per second to impact the earth below with the force of a meteor strike.
Guess which one you won't find on Snopes under "stupid bull#?"
Yes, enormous Swords of Damocles hanging in space are one more reason to lie awake at night, thinking about how much safer we feel thanks to science.
The so-called Rods From God system would have two satellites placed in orbit, one to control communication and targeting, the other containing the rods. When released, nothing but gravity and a little remote guidance is needed to bring them down on target like the wrath of Zeus.
The brute force of hundred-kilogram rods traveling over 7,000 MPH makes them ideal for penetrating underground bunkers, your mother, and hardened nuclear missile silos. You know, things you might find in a rogue state, in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Such treaties don't apply to hypervelocity rods, though they strike with the force of a tactical nuke, they produce no radioactive (and far less political) fallout. The US Space Command (where we always claimed our Dad worked even before we knew it existed) says they plan to have this capability by 2025.
Where They Got the Idea:
These apparent James Bond fans seem to have combined the orbital death laser from Diamonds Are Forever with the wicked-awesome spear gun Bond used in Thunderball.
Modular Disc-Wing Urban Cruise Munitions (i.e. Exploding Flying Saucers)
We know what you're thinking. "C'mon, Cracked, that's Photoshopped! You don't really expect me to believe the military has flying saucers?" Well ... they might. One thing they definitely have are Lethal Frisbee UAVs, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
These are robotic drones being developed for the Air Force by Triton Systems, who believe they're well-suited to urban combat environments. Fired from a device like a skeet-launcher, the discs then fly via remote or internal guidance into hostile, heavily-defended areas.
High maneuverability would allow them to, say, access an upper story apartment or flank and close on an entrenched enemy position. When near the enemy, the drone detonates. Its MEFP warhead will spray the area with armor-piercing shrapnel to shred infantry or, alternately, form a single-targeted explosion to destroy heavy vehicles or perform demolition work.
Basically just imagine this thing ...
www.youtube.com... l&feature=player_embedded#t=14
The Soviets have placed more emphasis than the United Stales on development of space systems directly responsive lo military requirements. Both countries have developed satellite systems for photoreconnaissance, ELINT reconnaissance, communications,of ballistic missile launches, navigation, geodesy, and meteorology. In addition, the Soviets have developed military space systems for which there are no comparable US systems. They have radar and ELINT ocean reconnaissance systems thai can provide targeting data in real lime lo selected naval combatants carrying antiship weapons. They have developed manned space stations for the purposes ofand military-related research They also have an operational orbital interceptor for destruction of satellites in near-Earth orbits.
n September 2005, the Indian defense minister announced that a military space-based reconnaissance system is "in advanced stage of development.” Although the minister projected that this system would be operational by 2007,[5] it has not been publicly announced whether the system has become operational in the meantime.
The UK has just sent up a new communications satellite that's completed their Skynet, the highly-advanced network that's going to give them the ability to allow robotic military units at long range. You know, like in the apocalyptic vision of the future from the Terminator movies. The network's name in those movies? Skynet. Have you learned nothing, England?!
The system allows for communication both in the voice and data variety between basically any unit of the British Armed Forces, including computers talking to computers, probably about how best to murder their makers. For example, a base computer in cheery old London can communicate with the "Reaper," a robotic spy drone in Afghanistan, retrieving data and telling it where to go, and transmitting live video over the connection from the UAV. The sat also has solar sails which extend its life to 15 years, a special anti-jamming antenna is set on the receive side, while 4 steerable antennas can be aimed in a single spot to concentrate broadcasting ability.
Even worse is the fact that the whole thing is privately owned, with the British Armed Forces only promised a portion of the bandwidth rather than having control over the whole thing.
Strategic Air Command - NORth American Aerospace Defense
STRATEGIC INITIATIVE ARTIFINT
____________________________________________
USTACCC- United States Tactical Aerospace
Command Communication and Control
SKYNET
Recent breakthroughs in advanced microchip design and computer processing power were the impetus that led to America’s first military grade neural net based artificial intelligence, SKYNET. Almost overnight, American computer and electronics technology had taken a leap four generations into the future and the world wondered how that could be possible. The West wasn't telling and the concern grew among its enemies and to a much lesser degree its own allies. In the space of three years, from early 1985 to late 1988, America had started developing and deploying cutting edge electronics which were far smaller and far more powerful than anything its allies (or enemies) had at their disposal. Intelligence forces around the world were at a loss as to where the Americans had made the breakthrough that gave them an edge several generations ahead of the rest of the world. Rumors and speculations abounded, some of which even hinted at America having access to salvaged XT technology. Whatever it was that the Americans had discovered, it had the rest of the world surprised, perplexed and ... above all, wary.
The key focus of the accelerated American research and development was on compact nuclear power sources, new physical materials, stronger alloys, a thorough knowledge of electromagnetic field theory (with practical applications) and super advanced control systems based around a heretofore unknown architecture of microprocessor. Original Opposing Forces (OPFOR) intelligence estimates gave the Americans an almost overnight lead in microprocessor technology equivalent to at least three, possibly four generations and an equal number of decades ahead of the rest of the world. New weapon systems appeared in the American arsenal ... drones, robots, and other automated systems which functioned at levels previously undreamed of. Smart weapon systems evolved into brilliant weapon systems. Genius class weapon systems followed soon after that. Stealth engineering advanced as well both in aerospace applications as well as wet navy and traditional ground forces, right down to the individual soldier level. Active as well as passive thermoptic camouflage was introduced in 1990 to a variety of force deployments with great effect.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of the new microprocessor architecture was its inherent ability to network, on instant demand, with any other similar microprocessor family based system. The code that ran the microprocessor was modular, with different program modules able to be written for different hardware and the seamless integration of all parts under one operating system was a technological breakthrough which clearly gave the Americans a decisive advantage in their order of battle. During the years from 1989 to 1995, America would both re-evaluate its military forces as well as reorder them. Older hardware would be scrapped and recycled in order to partially pay for unit upgrades. The high efficiency of the new military hardware allowed greater effects to be achieved with less personnel. Combat groups became heavily mechanized and computerized, integrated and networked. Early combat trials of the newly augmented units indicated that while multiple units could coexist and operate in mutual support of one another, it was clear that a centralized controlling system was required in order to gain optimum performance from American armed forces.
America needed a combat nexus, a focal point that would search for, detect, evaluate, and respond to any threat to national security or national territories. The new combat systems proved that they could be networked together but what was needed was a centralized node that could coordinate and direct all combat assets. The project was researched under the codename of Quiet Song. Project Quiet Song was officially classified as "40 levels above Top Secret" by those who even knew it existed. Quiet Song was perhaps the most ambitious project yet based on the new technology, true artificial intelligence. Quiet Song would involve the research and development of the world's first truly artificial intelligence, a digital form of life which would be networked to all of America's automated weapon systems and which would have command over the equipping, deployment and usage of both tactical and strategic assets. Quiet Song was the nexus that would unite all of the networked weapon systems in one cohesive element.
The lessons learned during the R&D of Project Quiet Song eventually led to the production of the end product of Quiet Song; Project SKYNET.
The SKYNET project was constructed in the mid 1990’s and would interface and coordinate all of America’s strategic arsenal into one cohesive command structure. The SKYNET project was located well below the surface of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado; the original home of the North American Defense (NORAD) Command. Built upon existing structures, SKYNET itself would take up more space than all the previous generations of defense hardware, requiring new tunneling and excavating of the mountain complex; a task which began in secret in 1989, a predecessor task to the SKYNET project which was even then coming to light under careful scrutiny by certain sources. SKYNET. A buzzword in senate appropriations meetings, an ugly word full of high costs and long contracts with more contractors than any other project in American government history. SKYNET, a project that would make the Apollo moon landing look like a lemonade stand in comparison to total expenditures and manpower committed.
SKYNET was also another word that made senators and politicians cringe: SKYNET was necessary.
Cyberdyne Systems has supplied services to the following corporations:
British Aerospace Plc
www.baesystems.com...
Cap Gemini Plc
www.capgemini.com...
Cearns and Brown Ltd
(No Info found)
Frazer Nash NDT Ltd
www.thefreelibrary.com...
Hagger Electronics Ltd
www.patient.co.uk...
Learning Tree International Ltd
www.fundinguniverse.com...
New Media In Business Ltd
www.nmib.com...
(Seems to be affilated with Microsoft)
Thomson Financial Services Plc
ARC Property Relocation Ltd
www.arcpropertygroup.co.uk...
Sun Microsystems Inc
Javasoft
Sun Educational Services
www.sun.com...
HM Treasury
www.hm-treasury.gov.uk...
Zergo Ltd
www.itsecurity.com...
(All I could find on Zergo)
Originally posted by autowrench
The result is a robot that can shoot little 40 mm grenades at you at a rate of 4,000 a second.
Originally posted by autowrench
The Real SKYNET
Skynet (satellites)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Skynet is a family of military satellites, now operated by Paradigm Secure Communications on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence