ON AIR NOW
Click to Play
Soldiers encounter all sorts of weather conditions on the battlefield: blistering winds, broiling heat, drenching rain. Through it all, they face one constant problem: What to wear? Soon, their fashion dilemma could get a little easier.
The Pentagon has been working for nearly a decade on an audacious plan to strike anywhere on the planet in less than an hour. Wednesday could prove to be the do-or-die moment for that plan.
They might be sophisticated, bizarre or comical, technology-heavy or explosive-proof. All sorts of suits outfit men and women who work hard everyday. Here we showcase a few of the cool, functional or just plain insane fashions fit for the fight.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the Pentagon sank tens of millions of dollars into remote-controlled lightning guns that it hoped would fry insurgent bombs before they killed any more troops.
Spurred by the anthrax hysteria of 2001, the U.S. government has thrown billions of dollars into developing new equipment and technologies to detect chemical and biological warfare agents.
Soldiers encounter all sorts of weather conditions on the battlefield: blistering winds, broiling heat, drenching rain. Through it all, they face one constant problem: What to wear? Soon, their fashion dilemma could get a little easier.
DARPA is continuing its crusade to change the way we make things, selecting Vanderbilt University to set up the vehicleforge.mil website to enable software-style "open source" development of military systems, beginning with a ground combat vehicle.
A decade of war has seriously eroded the military’s preparedness to fight new wars, according to top officers in all four services. And it’s making the brass publicly bridle against the Obama administration’s planned defense cuts.
BAE System’s Mk 38 chain gun was already a formidable opponent: a 250millimeter cannon capable of putting 180 rounds per minute into the air from the deck of a naval ship, urging those without clearance to keep safe distance (of about 2,000 yards).
But the people of America—us—are guilty of a strange sort of arrogance as well: It is not the arrogance of the sort that exagerates our own sense of self-importance or abilities.
President Obama formally signed off on ending the ban on gays serving openly in the military, doing away with a policy that's been controversial from the day it was enacted and making good on his 2008 campaign promise to the gay community.
On Thursday, Defense Department extreme technology arm Darpa unveiled its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program. It's an attempt to get better at both detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media.
Technology is helping de-miners find unexploded land mines in new and cool ways, like the metal detectors augmented with smartphones we learned about this spring. And now, there are mine-chomping tank robots that eat mines for breakfast.
The more popular a lie, and the more destructive a lie, the more important it is to expose the lie. Bring on the hate mail for this one.
On Oct. 13, the day 3/5 took control of Sangin, the first Marine patrol to leave the wire came under fire 150 feet from the perimeter. One member of this patrol was shot dead. Within the next four days, another eight Marines died.
The military and defense contractors can learn a lot from the wisdom of the masses, and American fighting forces could be better equipped and better protected if higher-ups would embrace the DIY ethos of ingenuity and agility.
Parked in front of an American flag was an eight-wheel, 19-ton heavy truck. Affixed to the top of that truck was a laser-beam controller, used to aim and fire lethal rays of coherent light.
The idea is simple enough: Create a cloud-based software tool that can comb through the entire universe of military intelligence reports and come back with actionable intel that battlefield commanders can use on the ground, and do it in realtime.
Germany has allowed the sale of 200 Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia after decades of blocking heavy weapons sales to the kingdom, the Der Spiegel said Saturday.
On his way out the door at the Pentagon, Robert Gates leveled with the military. A staggering $700 billion in defense R&D and gear since 9/11 led to only "relatively modest gains in actual military capability," Gates said on June 2.
Early reports had now-confirmed Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, a career politician who has left his CIA Director post, as a reformer being brought into the Pentagon with his experience as Office of Management and Budget Director...
President Obama surprised Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Thursday with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, paying tribute to his four decades of public service at a regal farewell ceremony outside the Pentagon. The honor came on Gates’s last
A staggering $700 billion in defense R&D and gear since 9/11 led to only "relatively modest gains in actual military capability," Gates said on June 2. No giant robots, jet packs or sharks with lasers.
Rogers’ team of designers and engineers at in Phoenix built the car, nicknamed FLYPmode, from scratch in less than four months, unveiling it for President Obama last week before delivering it to the military’s mad-science division in Virginia.
Goggles can be clunky and obtrusive, and backlit GPS displays can betray a lurking warfighter’s position. A new haptic interface developed by Army researchers will help soldiers feel their way through the darkness instead.
It could be used to shield ships from sonar, or build better soundproof walls for concert halls and other spaces. We’ve seen this idea before, but now Duke University researchers have actually built it.
The United States spends $20.2 billion annually on air conditioning for troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan — more than NASA's entire budget, NPR reported.
Lasers that can take down an aircraft or zap a boat in roiling seas are certainly the weapons of the future. But smaller lasers that disrupt rather than destroy could be an even simpler defense system.
On Sunday, CNN reported on a huge Marine war exercise dubbed Exercise Mailed Fist. “The exercise is designed to test the capability of every type of Marine Corps aircraft, including MV-22 Ospreys and F/A 18 Hornets, as well as some Navy ships and
Watching the clip, it becomes clear that the producers intended to replace obedience to God with obedience to the US military-industrial complex, which by no coincidence also bankrolls the NBC network.
