New Medievalism

Japan to have a 'military' again for first time since WWII
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan will once again have a "military" in name, six decades after the United States stripped the country of the right to keep armed forces, in tis first revision of the post-World War II constitution.

The revision will mean little practical change for Japan, which has skirted its 1947 constitution by calling its military the "Self-Defense Forces," but marks a symbolic milestone in breaking another post-war taboo.

Indonesia welcomes renewed US military ties
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia has welcomed the resumption of military relations with the United States while human rights groups expressed concern and said monitoring of the armed forces would need to be tightened.

The United States restored military ties on Tuesday with the world's most populous Muslim nation as a reward for Jakarta's cooperation in the war on terrorism, U.S. State Department officials said.

Death sentence for Korean soldier
...Kim Dong-min threw a grenade inside his barracks near the border with North Korea, and then opened fire at random at colleagues they slept.

...An inquiry into the incident found Kim had become so obsessed by computer war games that he could no longer tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

New Russian ICBM can 'dodge interceptors'

The Russians have been talking for a couple of years, now, about their new missile which can dodge American interceptors. According to Bill Gertz (and grab the usual handful of salt here), that weapon was tested earlier this month.

... It "flies a faster, flatter trajectory and has more opportunities to change course in flight... [It] carr[ies] realistic decoys [that] have the same weight and radar cross section as the actual warhead... [And those] warheads and decoys are also equipped with active-deception jamming systems." Look out.

Invention: Landmine arrows
The modern military is borrowing an idea from Robin Hood to deal with unexploded landmines. Patents filed by US defence contractor Raytheon concede that current landmine clearance is ineffective, especially if mines are in sand or under water.

But the company has developed a shell containing hundreds of steel "arrows" – 155 millimetres long and 15 mm in diameter – that can trigger landmines with a single shot.

Clash over military recruiters on campus
High court must decide if schools can discriminate against military if it discriminates against gays.
Less than a week after it heard arguments in an abortion notification case, the US Supreme Court Tuesday takes up another hot-button issue in the nation's culture wars. This time it involves law-school protests designed to end discrimination against gays in the military.
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On one side of the current case are a group of law professors and law schools seeking equal treatment of gays interested in serving the nation as members of the armed forces. In protest of the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning openly gay individuals from the military, the law schools restricted military recruiters from fully participating in school-sponsored employment events.

Army recruiting tops new goals

The Army has exceeded recruiting goals in the first two months of this fiscal year, reversing a trend that had some Iraq critics saying the armed services branch was "broken."
The Pentagon yesterday said the Army signed up 5,856 recruits in November, 5 percent above its goal. It previously announced the Army also exceeded its target in October, the first month of the 2006 fiscal year.

Pentagon rolls out stealth PR
By Matt Kelley, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.

Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and "novelty items" such as T-shirts and bumper stickers.

Giving soldiers a high-tech leg up
Those whiz kids at Darpa are at it again. This time they want to use technology to let soldiers carry up to 220 lb in backpacks over all types of terrain, terrain vehicles can't get through, and for extended lengths of time. They believe the key is wearable robotic exoskeletons and have invested $50 million in the project. One recipient, a design team at the University of California, Berkeley, is under the lead of Mechanical Engineering Prof. H. Kazerooni. They've completed work on their first prototype, Bleex 1 (for Berkeley lower extremity exoskeleton) and are working on Bleex 2.

Bleex 1 consists of a pair of hydraulically powered leg braces, more than 40 electronic sensors, a control computer, and an internal-combustion engine providing power from an attached backpack. The plastic and carbon-fiber braces are affixed rigidly to the soldier through a customized pair of standard Army boots, with more compliant and giving connections at the chest and waist. These looser connections prevent blisters and abrasions.

Doobie Brother now a secret weapon on terror
Guitarist Jeff Baxter is a founding member of Steely Dan and a member of the Doobie Brothers. The 56-year-old Baxter has eight platinum albums and two Grammys, but he likes to call himself a hippie rock guitarist with top secret clearances. Now, believe it or not, he's one of the top counterterrorism experts in the United States. “Today” national correspondent Jamie Gangel caught up with Baxter in between top-secret meetings in our nation’s capitol.

Baxter: So, one day, I don't know what happened. I sat down at my Tandy 200 and wrote this paper about how to convert the Aegis weapon system — why it would make sense to convert it to do theatre missile defense because it would be on a mobile platform and give the United States a new role in NATO in the 21st century. I have no idea. I just did it.

Notebook: U.S.'s New Air Weapon
... in the more than two decades it took to develop, test and build the F-22, the threat to the United States –- and the need for a high performance stealth aircraft -- changed dramatically. The Soviet Union disintegrated, and al Qaeda attacked America with hijacked airliners.

So what does a $350 million supersonic stealth aircraft have do with defeating an enemy that has no air force and whose deadliest weapon is the roadside bomb? Nothing, and that’s not just my opinion. Here’s what the Air Force chief of staff said recently about the F-22: "In the role that we’re in now…does the F-22 bring something significantly different to this fight this afternoon? The answer is no."