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AirForce
Air Force Aims to Launch 'Spy Pigeon' Drone by 2015
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL News(July 8) -- In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials often had to rely on grainy satellite photos to decide whether facilities on the ground were intended for producing weapons of mass destruction. Now imagine that instead of overhead satellite imagery -- or even high-flying unmanned aircraft -- they could send in a flock of microdrones that could actually fly right over, or even inside, such facilities. Even better, these drones -- equipped with chemical sensors that could pick up possible weapons work with near certainty -- would resemble typical birds, like pigeons, making ...
Air Force Launches Mystery Space Plane into Orbit
By Christopher Weber - Politics DailyThe U.S. military has launched an unmanned rocket carrying a new kind of space plane into a nine-month orbit, but exact details of the mission remain under wraps. The 20-story Atlas rocket with a X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle on its back took off Thursday night from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Air Force Space Command in Colorado, which oversees the X-37B mission, has classified details of the prototype shuttle's payload, experiments, and planned orbital operations, Reuters reported. The mission is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The project is part of a long-term plan ...
Air Force Eyes 'Mud Fighters' for Afghanistan, Maybe
By David Wood - Politics DailyWhen infantry grunts are being hard-pressed by an enemy they can't reach -- maybe taking lethal mortar fire from the other side of a ridgeline -- there's almost no better feeling than seeing the United States Air Force show up. Filthy, sweaty and thirsty, the ground pounders gawk upwards at those shiny silver darts carrying freshly showered pilots in air-conditioned cockpits. The planes scream down in glorious arcs of manly killing power, loosing on the bad guys 500-pounders whose fireballs and ka-WUMP! Ka -RUMP! detonations you feel in your chest and eyeballs. And then silence falls like ...
China, Iran Creating 'No-Go' Zones to Thwart U.S. Military Power
By David Wood - Politics DailyDuring the Cold War, the Pentagon built the greatest naval and air forces the world had ever seen, endowing the United States with the superpower ability to land huge military forces anywhere in the world, at any time, whether invited in or not. So it was that Washington, using its armada of aircraft carriers, cruise missile-launching submarines, fast cargo ships, long-range bombers, airlifters, and air refueling fighters, could eject the Iraqis from Kuwait (1991), bomb Serbia (1999), kick over the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (2001), and knock off Saddam and his cronies (2003). Everybody ...
Military Wants to Tag Vehicles to Track Terrorists
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL News(Jan. 26) – The Air Force is asking the defense industry for ideas on how it can clandestinely "tag" vehicles and people from an overhead aircraft or drone, a concept that someday may help military planners track down and kill terrorists. The idea involves placing a tag on a vehicle from several miles away, and then tracking the vehicle remotely. "An ideal tag will be unobservable to the unaided eye, but readily detected with a sensor from an airborne platform similar to the one tagging or from a ground sensor," the Air Force says in a request for information posted earlier this ...
U.S. Military Drone Helps with Haiti Relief Effort
By Christopher Weber - Politics DailyAir Force drones have been used extensively to collect data in Iraq and Afghanistan and now an unmanned aircraft has been deployed to help survey the devastation in earthquake-stricken Haiti, the military reported. An RQ-4 Global Hawk provided images to determine the extent of the damage in Haiti and the "usability of its infrastructure," Air Force Col. Bradley G. Butz announced shortly after the Jan. 12 quake. "We've got pretty good coverage of the entire country of Haiti," Colonel Butz told reporters. Some of the up to 700 images collected by the drone helped officials determine ...
Chaos a Constant for Haitian Relief Effort
By not in system - AOL NewsPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Jan. 23) -- With yellow lights flashing atop his small pickup truck, Air Force Master Sgt. Bill Van Newkirk crept along the airport taxiway with practiced precision. It was close on to midnight. Immediately behind him, a newly landed C-17 cargo plane was following, relying on Newkirk to find and insert the plane (wingspan: 178 feet) safely into a parking space among the jumble of cargo and passenger planes jammed along the single runway of Haiti's largest airport. ...
No Runways? No Problem for New Drone
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL News(Jan. 11) -- The Air Force Research Laboratory is funding a West Coast company to build a drone that can stay aloft for 24 hours and land and take off in areas where there are no runways. The Sand Dragon is a "runway independent, heavy fueled engine, Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) with a minimum of 45 lb./500 W sensor payload to theater," reads an official government notice released Friday. "This effort would demonstrate and transition a UAV system capable of runway independent launch and recovery." The Air Force is poised to spend about $18 million over the next two years on the Sand Dragon, a ...
How Long Does U.S. Need Nukes? At Least 40 Years, General Says
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL NewsAs the Obama administration conducts several key reviews of the country's nuclear arsenal, a top military general said he believes the United States will need nuclear weapons for at least several more decades. "Will we still need nuclear weapons 40 years from now?" Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, asked at a talk on Capitol Hill today. "I believe the answer to that question is yes." The statement is one of the clearest time lines a military official has placed on the future of nuclear weapons, though Chilton was also quick to point out that his views were ...
Military Reports Record Recruiting Year
By Shahzad Chaudhary - Politics DailyThe military exceeded its recruiting benchmarks for the first time since the start of the all-volunteer force in 1973, a top Defense Department official said Tuesday. ...
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