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20 January 2012

Carbon 15 Pistol – Bushmaster



The Carbon 15 pistol is a firearm similar in design to an ArmaLite AR-15 or the Colt M4 Carbine. The main differences between the Carbon 15 “pistol” and actual M4 is the absence of the shoulder stock and the fully automatic option. You don’t really want or need full auto though, because the Carbon 15 is not designed for suppressive fire, likewise, the red dot sight fitted on the accessory rail optimizes this weapon for close quarter personal defense-ideal for confined spaces. 

We got the chance to let off some rounds with one of these bad boys not too long ago, and let me tell you, fire literally shreds it way out of the barrel. The accuracy was limited to short ranges, but the proprietary carbon 15 construction material makes it so light, coupled with the red dot sight, that one can hit successive targets accurately with little trouble.

Carbon 15 Pistol

Manufacturer: Bushmaster

Small Diameter Bomb – GBU-39


The GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb – the future of ultra-surgical air strikes.

Since the days of the first Gulf War, when it became clear to the world that precision air strikes would be the “go to” option for the opening rounds of nearly any theater scale military operations, the technology of precision guided munitions has increased rapidly. We have witnessed bombs being guided into their targets by lasers, GPS, and even a human watching through a camera on the nose of the weapon. Once the concept of precision guidance was no longer a novelty, the virtuous auspices of limiting collateral damage and economic efficiency have led military planners and weapons designers to push the envelope of precision weapon technology even further.

During the Desert Storm era, the smallest precision bombs available packed 500 lb high-explosive warheads, and the 500 pounder was typically used on only the smallest of targets. They certainly were precise enough on surgical targeting, but the massive explosion and pressure wave still causes widespread devastation to buildings and well, people, that are in the vicinity of the blast. Now I’m not saying that it’s ever goign to be possible to truly eliminate collateral damage, but I believe technology has reached a stopping point concerning precision-guided air-launched munitions. It’s not as if limiting collateral damage is such a bad thing after all; so I guess we can go ahead and bestow the honorable hallmark characteristic of the next wave of precision munitions: Efficiency…because accuracy is a given.
Fresh on the block is the new GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb. The GBU-39 is the first 250 lb class precision guided munition, and is not only intended to allow the pilot to strike more targets per sortie, but also to -you guessed it- limit collateral damage. A full rack of GBU-39s, 4 bombs total, can easily take the place of one 2000 lb GBU 109 “bunker buster” guided bomb on typical strike platforms such as the F-15C or F-22 Raptor aircraft. While the 2000 lb GBU-109 penetrator definitely retains its place as a select weapon of choice for large and hardended targets, the GBU-39 SDB surpasses the GBU-109 in many different realms of performance. For starters, the GBU-39 also has significant stand-off capabilities. With it’s guidance wings, the bomb can coast into targets from far greater ranges than the GBU-109, from more than 40 nautical miles out. Likewise, the design of the warhead also allows the Small Diameter Bomb to achieve the same penetration capabilities of it’s much larger 2000 lb counterpart. All in all, the SMB GBU-39 allows for a great amount of flexibility for whomever is designing strike missions for an urban environment.


US Army Burns off Final Chem Weapons in Utah


STOCKTON, Utah -- The U.S. Army has destroyed about 90 percent of its aging chemical weapons after it wraps up work this week in Utah, where it has kept its largest stockpile - a witches' brew of toxins, blister and blood agents that accumulated through the Cold War.


The Army's Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah's west desert burned its last hard weapons in a 1,500-degree furnace on Wednesday - projectiles that contained mustard agent, which can produce painful skin blisters. The last tray of 23 projectiles came out of a furnace at 2:11 p.m. after baking for two hours, a process that rendered the mustard agent harmless.


The depot - which at its peak held some 13,600 tons of chemical agents, making it the world's largest - expects to complete the job by the weekend when it incinerates bulk supplies of Lewisite, a powerful skin, eye and lung irritant.

source: Military.com

17 January 2012

Why Iranian student had radioactive metal in his bag


Ears prick up around the world at any news involving radioactivity and Iran. The most recent story broke on Friday, when Russia's customs service announced that it had stopped an Iranian man bound for the Iranian capital, Tehran, with 18 pieces of radioactive metal packed in steel pencil cases in his luggage. The material had triggered radiation detectors at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

What was the radioactive material in the man's luggage and what is it normally used for?
It was sodium-22, an isotope used to make internal organs and tumours show up in medical PET scanners, and also to determine the thickness of metals and calibrate radiation measurements.

Was it part of a plot to make a bomb?
Unlikely. Mark Hibbs, a non-proliferation expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank based in California, says he discussed the incident on Saturday with "extremely senior" security staff at the White House. "The talks convinced me the sodium had no weapons use whatsoever", he says. "If it had been for weapons, we wouldn't have found out about it."

The material would be little use for a dirty bomb aimed at scattering radioactive contamination, as its emissions die fairly quickly, with a half-life of 2.6 years.

But is Iran trying to make a bomb all the same?
The Iranian government denies it – but it probably could it if wanted to. Both inreports last month and in unpublished assessments, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran has the know-how and enough fuel-grade uranium to make four nuclear bombs, if it enriches the uranium further. It has already enriched 80 kilograms of it to one step short of weapons grade.

Why would Iran need sodium-22, then?
Probably for medical use. The Tehran Research Reactor, where Iran makes its own medical isotopes, is out of fuel, and although Iran says it will soon make its own, "the production line isn't working yet", says David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank in Washington DC that watches Iran.

Why was the man taking it out of Russia in his luggage?
"Iran is a magnet for isotopes dealers, and Russia is a major supplier," says Hibbs.

Sodium-22 can be imported into Iran legally because of its medical uses, he says. The man might simply have been dodging the costly export permit.

The incident happened a month ago, and the Iranian, a dental student, was released after what the Iranian ambassador to Moscow called "a misunderstanding" – although apparently without his radioactive stuff.

How did it get through?
The real question raised by the incident is how much radioactive material like this breezes unimpeded through airports less vigilant, or well-equipped, than Moscow's. There's enough of it about: in September the IAEA reported 172 incidents of radioactive material going astray just in the past year, including 46 attempts to steal, smuggle or sell it, and 10 where it wasn't recovered.

Sixteen incidents involved the plutonium or highly enriched uranium that can be used to make bombs. Last year in Washington DC governments agreed to take better care of their stocks – but the agreement lacked teeth.

How was it detected?
Moscow would have spotted the sodium-22, which emits gamma rays, with a detector similar to a Geiger counter, says Hibbs. These were installed in several Russian airports by a US-Russian programme in the 1990s to lock down nuclear material after the fall of the Soviet Union. But they aren't routine everywhere, says Jason Woods of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, because "if you stopped everything with gamma rays, you'd hold up a lot of shipments".

For example, US airports scanned flights from Japan after the Fukushima nuclear accident this year and found gamma rays coming from cargo onflights to Chicago and Dallas. The source turned out to be ordinary medical equipment.

Moreover, "there are big holes in export controls worldwide", says Hibbs, especially outside the Nuclear Suppliers Group of 46 mostly rich countries.

What is being done to stop other forms of radioactive material being smuggled?
The IAEA is developing better handheld detectors to spot different kinds of radiation. Neutron detectors, meanwhile, can spot plutonium without being distracted by legitimate gamma emitters. The US wants to install them at land transport hubs, seaports and airports worldwide.

The problem, says Woods, is that current detectors use helium-3. "It's shy a neutron, so it's hungry for them and good at picking them up," he says. But US production of helium-3 is 8000 litres per year, and the detector programme needs 60,000. Last year Russia stopped exporting it.

Moreover, says Woods, helium-3 is irreplaceable for work in ultra-low-temperature physics and medical uses such as lung imaging. "It should be kept for that," he says, and told the US Congress so earlier this year. Congress agreed: the detector programme is on hold while equipment manufacturers develop alternatives based on boron-10.

15 January 2012

2 Navy Pilots Among Dead in Murder, Suicide


Two Navy pilots and the sister of one of them were among four people killed in an apparent New Years Day murder-suicide on the wealthy island of Coronado off the coast of San Diego, officials say.

The two F/A-18 pilots were in training at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, the base said. The San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office initially posted on its website that the pilots were both 25-year-old males and that a third male among the dead was a 31-year-old resident of nearby Chula Vista.


The county office later took the information off the website, according to the Reuters news service.

Sheriff’s deputies found the bodies shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday when responding to a call about shots being fired at the residence.

Though officials have yet to identify all the dead, the Navy confirmed for The Associated Press that David Reis, 25, of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and his sister Karen Reis, 24,were among the four.Their father, Tom Reis of Bakersfield, told AP that he didn’t know who else was living in the condo of the wealthy seaside community where his son was staying.

"He just had his first F/A-18 flight," Tom Reis said. "Oh man, he loved it."

David Reis held a mechanical engineering degree from the University of New Mexico. Karen Reis graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2009 and stayed in the area, coaching volleyball and working at a grocery store.



"It's still a shocker," said Rebecca Bailey, 26, who played college volleyball with Karen Reis and later coached with her at a high school and club program. Karen Reis graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2009 and stayed in the area, coaching volleyball and working at a grocery store.

"This kind of thing doesn't happen to people like her and David. Their family is the family everybody wants to be a part of. They're just so loving, and there's so much love in their family."

"She has a really great spirit and knows how to make things fun," Bailey said.

The remaining victims were another 25-year-old Navy man and a 31-year-old man from Chula Vista, authorities said. Their names were not immediately released.

Officials found a dead man in the doorway to the three-story condo and the bodies of two men and a woman inside in different parts of the structure.

It was not immediately clear how the four people died. However, authorities previously said they did not believe there were any outstanding suspects.

Messages left Monday with Navy Region Southwest and the San Diego County sheriff's homicide detail were not immediately returned.

Neighbor Don Hubbard said he was awakened by the shots that he thought were fired by New Year's revelers. He went back to sleep, but two hours later got a phone call and heard SWAT teams swarming the area.

Hubbard, a retired Navy commander, said he saw the body of one man in the condo doorway and recognized him as his neighbor - a Navy pilot receiving training at Miramar.

"I knew these guys were pilots because I was one and we'd talk about airplanes," Hubbard said. "Even now, you say, how could this have happened? What the hell is going on here?"

The condo is located a few blocks from the famed Hotel del Coronado and a block from the main street lined with boutiques and restaurants.

Coronado is home to Naval Air Station North Island and is a haven for Navy retirees. Homicides are extremely rare in Coronado - just one was recorded in 2010.

Source: Military.Com

14 January 2012

Iranian Nuclear Scientist Killed in Car bombing in Tehran, Iran



(CNN) -- It's a question many people inside Iran -- and those who watch the country closely around the world -- were asking Wednesday: Who is killing nuclear scientists in Iran?

An explosion on Wednesday killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a top official at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, Iranian officials said.

 

He is the third man identified as a nuclear scientist to be killed in Iran in a mysterious explosion in the past two years. A fourth survived an assassination attempt.

In each case, someone placed a bomb under the scientist's car.

Iranian officials, on state-run media, blame Israel and the United States.

"I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday.

"We believe there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community and be a productive member of it," she said.

While Israel generally refuses to comment on accusations and speculation , Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said on his Facebook page Wednesday, "I have no idea who targeted the Iranian scientist but I certainly don't shed a tear."

Mickey Segal, a former director of the Iranian department in the Israel Defense Forces' Intelligence Branch, told Israel Army Radio that Wednesday's attack was part of broader pressure being brought to bear on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime. "Many bad things have been happening to Iran in the recent period. Iran is in a situation where pressure on it is mounting, and the latest assassination joins the pressure that the Iranian regime is facing," Segal said.

With no one claiming responsibility, the killings remain shrouded in mystery. Iran experts contacted by CNN could only speculate.

"The most likely contender among people who are following this is that the Israelis are doing it, possibly in cooperation with the Iranian mujahedin," said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council and author of the book "A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran."

"There's almost no downside for Israel," he said. The killings "take out nuclear assets and embarrass Iran" by showing that the regime can't prevent such attacks, Parsi said. And "if Iran retaliates with a violent act, then Israel can point to it as a reason to take military action against the regime."

Michael Rubin, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, agrees that Israeli involvement is the most "plausible" scenario. And Mark Hibbs, senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also said the way the attacks took place "would be consistent" with the possibility of Israel acting with cooperation inside Iran.

Parsi told CNN he does not believe the killings are the work of the United States, and said they do not match the kind of activity U.S. intelligence would carry out in a country with which there is no declared state of war.

Rubin agreed, and gave a different reason. "Frankly, I don't think the United States has the human intelligence knowledge," he said.

The United States and Israel have been the most vocal opponents of Iran's nuclear program, although numerous countries have expressed serious concern as well. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian energy purposes.

If Israel is cooperating with the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) to carry out attacks on Iranian nuclear officials, it faces a significant risk, Parsi argues. The United States lists the MEK as a terrorist group. "Israel is a victim of terrorism and pressing other states to take measures against terrorism," Parsi noted. If it turns out to be collaborating with a group on the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Israel's efforts to get other countries to crack down on terrorist groups could be damaged.

MEK, an Iranian opposition group, has support from some members of Congress who say it should be removed from the terrorist list.

Several analysts said they are certain that, whoever is organizing the killings, Iranians are involved.

If Iranian leaders had a "clue" who is behind the killings, "they'd have stopped this by now," said Daniel Serwer, Middle East Scholar with Johns Hopkins University. "The incredible thing is that it continues. That suggests it is Iranians doing the deeds, no matter who is the sponsor. Foreigners are under pretty tight scrutiny in Iran these days."

But Hibbs, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he believes Israeli agents could be inside Iran.

Whoever's behind the attacks knows who the nuclear officials are, and the specifics of their travel plans. That could be foreign governments with intelligence assets in Iran, Hibbs said.

But it's also "conceivable this could be carried out by Iranians who oppose the government even without the support of outside governments," Hibbs said.

The nuclear program "is a centerpiece for Iran, a very, very important aspect for this regime," he said. Groups inside Iran dedicated to overthrowing the regime would have reason to target the program, he said. "This is a program which is right at the heart of the legitimacy of this government."

Rubin, of the American Enterprise Institute, said there is another "plausible" explanation: that "Arab intelligence services" are involved.

"The assumption that many Americans have that the Mossad," Israel's foreign intelligence unit, "is the most skilled intelligence service" in the Middle East is "a couple of decades out of date," he said.

Some intelligence services in the Arab world "could have recruited Shiites" in the region, potentially in Iraq, to take action against the nuclear program, he said.

There is also some speculation that the Iranian regime itself could have been involved in at least one of the killings.

The first, in January 2010, left university professor and nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi dead in a car bomb. That attack came shortly after major riots against the regime, and many people thought the regime was behind that killing, Parsi said.

Mohammadi "did not seem to be a particularly valuable nuclear target," he said. Some reports suggested Mohammadi was an outspoken supporter of the "green movement," and had helped organize protests, Parsi said.

But the man killed in November 2010, Majid Shahriari, and the one who survived an assassination attempt at the time, Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, were a different story. It "would make no sense for the Iranians to assassinate them," Parsi said. "They were critical nuclear assets."

No matter who is behind them, the attacks do not seem to be reversing Iran's efforts, said Parsi. "Arguably, the incentive for the Iranians to go forward with what they have has grown, because now they're under such critical threat," he said.

But there are suggestions that the overall pressure being applied against Iran, including international sanctions, for its failure to cooperate on nuclear issues is making some scientists wary of adding their efforts. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency earlier this week quoted Davani, now the head of Iran's nuclear program, describing as "deserters" in a "scientific war" the "scientists who, for the sake of preserving their international connections, refuse to cooperate in (our) nuclear projects."

The killings of Iranian scientists have come up on the campaign trail in the United States among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. Newt Gingrich, at a debate in November, expressed support for the idea of "taking out their scientists." Rick Santorum, at an event in October, referred to the scientists turning up dead as "a wonderful thing."

Roshan's killing comes amid growing tensions between Iran and the West. U.S. officials say the international sanctions on Iran have taken a toll. Iran earlier this week sentenced a U.S. ex-Marine to death on charges of espionage, despite statements by him, his family, and the U.S. government that he is not a spy.

Source: CNN NEWS

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