North Korea Goes Nuclear

And Obama chooses John Kerry as Secretary of State and Chuck Hagel and Secretary of Defense.

Just Who is that Intelligence Community Team Obama Keeps Mentioning

Who or what is this “intelligence community” that the Obama is administration is quoting when they tell us that this shadowy “intelligence community” told them that the attack in Libya was the result of a demonstration about a video.

Let’s be clear, the only people who have told the American people that the our ambassador and three others were killed in Benghazi as the result of a demonstration that got a little rowdy are people who claim that they’re only telling us what they were told.

Isn’t it convenient that the members of the intelligence community that gave such a spectacularly incorrect assessment of what went on in Benghazi are not identified? I would really like to know who these people are and how they managed to mislead the entire Obama administration for a full month. It is particularly telling that they stuck to their story despite the fact that people in the State Department were actually listening in on the attack. That other member of the State Department knew that it was a terrorist attack within 24 hours. That members or congress and the press knew that it was a terrorist attack even as Ambassador Rice went out to five Sunday morning news shows to lie. That even today Joe Biden tries to keep the lie alive that “we” didn’t know what the truth was. I guess it all depends on the meaning of the word “we.”

I hope someone in the press corpse asks the question: just who were these member of the “intelligence community” that were able to mislead the smartest President the world has ever known. We want names. We want to know if these same people also provide “intelligence” on exactly when Iran will have a nuclear weapon. It will give us an idea of just how worried we should be.

CBS News: "ATF used "Fast and Furious" to make the case for gun regulations"

Did you see that pig fly?

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

This is CBS news you people!

I blame Bush ... or global warming.

Navy Sets World Record With Incredible, Sci-Fi Weapon

A theoretical dream for decades, the railgun is unlike any other weapon used in warfare. And it's quite real too, as the U.S. Navy has proven in a record-setting test today in Dahlgren, VA.

Rather than relying on a explosion to fire a projectile, the technology uses an electomagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet at several times the speed of sound. The conductive projectile zips along a set of electrically charged parallel rails and out of the barrel at speeds up to Mach 7.

The result: a weapon that can hit a target 100 miles or more away within minutes.

"It's an over-used term, but it really changes several games," Rear Admiral Nevin P. Carr, Jr., the chief of Naval Research, told FoxNews.com prior to the test.

U.S. Navy Successfully Tests Laser Gun

This is really neat!  The laser is made by Raytheon.

The U.S. Navy has successfully tested a new weapon that uses high powered laser beams that are capable of destroying high speed planes and ships. The successful test was demonstrated today at an aerospace convention in the United Kingdom where a video showing the weapon destroying a test drone was screened.

PORTSMOUTH, R.I.--If you thought laser weapons were just military writer's futuristic fantasy, think again. On Tuesday, Raytheon and the U.S. Navy announced that they have successfully used a high-power, solid-state laser, in conjunction with a Phalanx Close-in Weapon System, to knock four UAVs out of the sky off the coast of California.

The system was electrically powered, and Raytheon said it offers the military a very cost-efficient and nearly unlimited "magazine" for shooting down things like threatening UAVs, or perhaps airplanes. "Once development is completed," Raytheon said in a release, "the Laser Area Weapon System will give the warfighter a speed-of-light solution for defeating rockets, mortars, UAVs, and other targets."

The Navy's Fighter-Plane-Size UAV, the X-47B, Is Unveiled in California

This is neat. Our military is moving into the future with lightning speed. Consider the evolution of armies.

Beginning with armed mobs,
Then came disciplined armies moving in formation as a single unit.
Then came gunpowder.
Then came aircraf and tanks.

But all of these were masses of men putting their lives on the line.

Now we have unmanned weapons replacing humans on the front lines. And beam weapons replacing impact weapons. Science fiction comes science fact.

The Navy's latest, biggest and baddest unmanned aerial vehicle has just been unveiled. Yesterday in California, Northrup Grumman showed off a completed X-47B Navy Unmanned Combat Air System, the first of two fighter-plane-size UAVs that the company will produce for the U.S. Navy. The second will follow in 2009. The Navy hopes to start flying the X-47Bs next year. The UAV is expected to have the ability to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier, and the Navy plans to start those trials in 2011.

The X-47 was designed to be adept at long-range surveillance because of its large range and high flight ceiling. And despite being a beast—it will have a 62-ft wingspan and weigh around 45,000 pounds at takeoff—the X-47B is designed for stealth. This aircraft shows the Navy's growing embrace of unmanned technology, including both unmanned underwater vehicles and aerial vehicles. But the X-47B would be a technological step forward—besides carrying stealth features, it is supposed to have the ability to execute some maneuvers, such as refueling in midflight, autonomously.

Navy Missile Hits Spy Satellite

This is good news.

A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said. Full details were not immediately available.
It happened just after 10:30 p.m. EST.

"Star Wars" Senator Kennedy?

Captain Ed has a point:

Over the last twenty years and more, we have heard from a variety of experts explaining how this is impossible. A rocket, they claimed, could not reliably be expected to target another rocket. They derided missile defense systems as "Star Wars" fantasy and demanded that we stop pursuing destabilizing efforts to actually defend ourselves from potential missile attack.

The Patriot missile systems began proving their abilities against Scud attacks in the Gulf War. They didn't have a perfect record, but they did have an impressive run of mid-air intercepts -- so impressive that the Israelis bought Patriot batteries from us. In the last seven years, we have continued to develop these defense systems, after the Clinton administration tried to mothball it.

Now we see that we can precisely target moving objects that aren't specifically intended as tests. The missile and the satellite had a closing velocity of 22,000 miles per hour, and yet the Navy hit a bullseye on the first try. It sends a message to people like Kim Jong-Il and Ali Khameini that their ballistic missile systems have just been made obsolete. It also sends a message to the defeatists and naysayers from the last quarter-century that, like so many other times, they have been proven wrong in their defeatism.

Eventually, this could end the ballistic missile era. If effective defenses become widely available, there will not be much point in maintaining ballistic missile inventories at all. Ronald Reagan had that very vision when he first proposed SDI and tried to get the Soviets to partner with him on it.

TIME shows its military expertise

It is frequently a puzzlement when another writer and editor for a major publication shows abysmal ignorance of basic facts regarding the issue he or she is writing about.

Fact checking goes by the wayside when, for example, Richard Quinn of the Virginian Pilot describes Newt Gingrich in unflattering terms including having him seated in a “faux-leather” chair. A little knowledge of office chairs or a quick check with the hotel staff would have saved our Dick the embarrassment of making a small but telling error.

But to have a major-league publication not able to tell the difference between an American and a Russian helicopter in a cover story is stupidity carried to new heights. But really, in re-consideration, it’s not. This is the sort of ignorance of things other than English composition that plagues all the MSM. What can you expect of people whose college major is journalism or creative writing?

From the American Thinker:

Accompanying TIME/CNN's current online article by Michael Duffy entitled, "How to leave Iraq," and reportedly on the cover of the TIME print edition, is an illustration graphically demonstrating how limited these so-called news organizations' knowledge of the American military happens to be. The "last helicopter out" a vision harking back to Vietnam and beloved of the Mainstream Media, in this case just happens to be Russian, an MI-24 Hind gunship, according to the folks over at Blackfive, a leading milblog where contributors tend to know what they are talking about when it comes to things military, unlike the mainstream Media weenies.

From the Belmont Club (The Devil and the Details}

The blooper is no big deal in itself. But I suspect it comes from the same circles where all tracked vehicles are known as "tanks", all automatic rifles are described as "machineguns", all aerial ordnance is described as "cluster bombs" and the general idea of warfare is one in which stupid, yelling men advance shooting from the hip at everything that moves. Amazingly enough none of these shortcomings in knowledge are regarded as disqualifying anyone from discoursing on grand strategic concepts -- which is what the Time article is about.

Russia Suspends Arms Agreement Over U.S. Shield

From the New York times:

MOSCOW, July 14 — President Vladimir V. Putin, angered by American plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe, formally notified NATO governments on Saturday that Russia will suspend its obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a key cold war-era arms limitation agreement.

I am soooo puzzled. I have been assured by the NY Times that the missile defense program, dubbed “Star Wars” by the incredibly wise and witty Senator Kennedy, was a sham. It only existed in the fevered imagination of Ronald Reagan …. and we know what a dunce he was. It would not work. It was a huge waste of money. It would not be effective … against the Soviet arsenal … it could not hit its targets … it was both unworkable and destabilizing.

Stop! You are making my head hurt by holding too many contradictory ideas at the same time.

You would think that Russia would want to see the United States military waste its money in weapons that don’t work. We have been assured by our intelligentsia, our editorial writers and our scientist that anti-missile systems don’t work. Hasn’t any one of these people told Yeltsin to read the NY Times? Why is he concerned at all about US weapons systems that can’t do their job?

I’m convinced that the geniuses that write editorials and article for the MSM are right and the Yeltsin and whoever he’s getting his military information system is wrong. So the way to get Yeltsin to not abrogate this Cold War treaty is for … negotiation. Of course the Bush/Cheney Whitehouse can’t be trusted to do this because the fools believe that the system will work. So, let’s send the editorial staff of the NY Times to Moscow and explain, in words of one syllable, so that silly old Yeltsin will understand, that his military advisors are wrong, the US is wasting its money and he should ENCOURAGE the US to install the missile system.

I mean, it’s like our situation in Iraq. By fighting al Qaida in Iraq we are encouraging that group and actually increasing their power. So al Qaida is really on Bush’s side and hates the Democrats and the MSM and the “peace activists.” Am I right or am I right?

Pour me another bartender.

Robot Air Attack Squadron Bound for Iraq

This is big!

The Reaper can carry a great weapons payload and will be able to stay aloft for 14 hours. The typical fighter/bomber can only "loiter" for a few hours at most. Plus, it can go boldly into enemy fire with no risk of a dead or captured pilot.