Prepare for “swarms” of unmanned drones able to choose their own targets
Weapons
Deadliest Tech: X-47B
The Navy’s unmanned X-47B fighter can remain aloft for up to 50 hours and carry out long distance surveillance and strike missions.
Deadliest Tech: Air Sniper
Literally taking sniping to new heights, the MH-6M helicopter, or Killer Egg, serves as a platform for Special Ops marksmen.
Deadliest Tech: AC-130 Whiskey
The latest variant of the C-130 cargo plane provides close ground support for U.S. Special Forces through the addition of its 30-millimeter Mark 44 Bushmaster chain gun and 10 launching tubes each containing Griffin missiles.
Check out more military-video action on the Military Channel.
A New Way of War
For more than a decade, we’ve been getting somber Pentagon emails telling us the name, hometown and age of every U.S. troop killed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Noticed something new, at least to us, in …
“Ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon--so long as there is no answer to it--gives claws to the weak.”
— George Orwell, 1945
Coming Up Empty-Handed from Davy Jones’ Locker
Last month we noted the efforts of the Navy to come to the Air Force’s aid by diving 18,558 feet deep into the Pacific, off the Japanese coast, for bits of wreckage from a doomed F-16 (the pilot parachuted to safety).
Alas, …
The Loren Ranger
Loren B. Thompson of the Lexington Institute didn’t much care for our F-35 story last week. On his Early Warning blog, he calls it a “misleading” and “sloppy” story that left out all the positive news about the $396 …
Kinder, Gentler War
In the Pentagon’s continuing quest to destroy without hurting, Boeing announced this week that its CHAMP microwave-burst weapon successfully rendered electronic targets useless without wounding anyone.
“We turned science …
Night Time on the Flight Line
Sky King
Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Dan Hampton flew nearly 4,000 hours – including 726 in combat – in an F-16 during his 20 years in the Air Force. (Battleland has flown about, um, one, including none in combat. Final brave …
War Birds
A Marine UH-1 Venom utility helicopter and an AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter fly over Helmand province on Oct. 17.
