Eideard

You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives – after all, if someone who doesn’t want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing that most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That’s why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gun on a person’s body. The NYPD announced the project yesterday.

The device uses infrared light rays to image radiation being emitted by a person’s body. Wherever a solid metal object such as a gun is blocking those rays from reaching the body, a silhouette of that object will appear on the scanner’s screen. So far, the technology only works from a distance of about 1 meter, although NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly hopes that its range can ultimately be extended to at least 25 meters.

The plan is for the scanner to be mounted on a van, then used on suspects who would otherwise have to be physically searched.

Har. Long way to go, folks.

Coppers will not only follow your every step – they’ll count the number of zipper teeth on your fly.

Bushehr nuclear power plant – loaded with Russian fuel rods

Iran’s latest claim of a breakthrough in its nuclear program appears unlikely to bring it any closer to having atomic bombs, but serves rather as another defiant message to the West…

“The development itself doesn’t put them any closer to producing weapons,” said Peter Crail of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy group.

It could be a way of telling Tehran’s foes that time is running out if they want to revive an atomic fuel swap deal that collapsed two years ago but is still seen by some experts as offering the best chance to start building badly needed trust.

Not if the response from the Obama White House is any indicator.

Diplomats believe Iran has in the past overstated its nuclear progress to gain leverage in its standoff with Western capitals, and the testing of domestically made fuel does not mean the country is about to start using it to run reactors.

“It is a step in the direction of no longer needing supply from other countries,” said Associate Professor Matthew Bunn of Harvard University’s Kennedy School…But it will be a good number of months or years before it will be at the point where they no longer need supply from other countries…”

Read the rest of this entry »

The armed forces minister has been forced to apologise over misleading statements he made regarding the legality and dangers of depleted uranium weapons…

Nick Harvey admitted that he had inadvertently misled MPs about a Ministry of Defence review that he said had concluded the weapons were permissible on humanitarian and environmental grounds under the Geneva conventions.

It subsequently emerged that the review had never happened, and Harvey has apologised for the error, which he said had been made “in good faith”. He has ordered that a review into the weapons’ legality be carried out by civil servants. The department is facing calls for the weapons to be suspended until it is completed.

The revelations come as a cross-party campaign is launched to pile pressure on the MoD to phase out the use of depleted uranium (DU). The tank shells that depend on it have to be renewed in 2013.

DU is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal produced as waste by the nuclear power industry that is included in weapons because it is an extremely hard material capable of piercing armour. Once the frontline has moved on, however, it can contaminate the environment, and has been linked to health problems in civilian populations.

Uranium is a pyrophoric metal – which simply means if sufficient heat is generated to provide ignition, it will burn to completion leaving nothing behind but radioactive dust. Blowing in the wind.

In 1998 the UK government ratified additional protocol 1 of the Geneva conventions. Article 36 of that requires that all weapons are subject to a legal review to assess whether they are “capable of being used discriminately”, or cause “widespread and severe damage to the natural environment”…

Labour MP Katy Clark accused the MoD of misleading the public, and demanded a public apology. “Compliance with the Geneva conventions has been used to reassure people on the legality of DU weapons, however no review has taken place to ensure that the munitions used by UK armed forces meet the conventions’ criteria,” she said. “I am pleased that the government has stated that a review will now take place and believe it should use this opportunity to carry out a detailed study into the long term impact of DU use.”

Clark is one of the sponsors of an early day motion in the House of Commons calling on ministers to stop using DU weapons before Charm3 expires in 2013. The motion is backed by other Labour, Liberal and nationalist MPs, as well as the Conservative MPs Peter Bottomley and Zac Goldsmith.

The military predictably will try to justify every weapon that ever existed in the demented mind of any general. They are the stock in trade of Death and Destruction and care for the environment or [perish the thought] combatants or civilians doesn’t really enter the equation. Politically, yes. In reality – hardly.

Authorities say a surprise search at a prison in Acapulco resulted in the discovery of two peacocks, 100 fighting cocks, two sacks filled with marijuana and 19 prostitutes.

Police in the Mexican resort city also found dozens of televisions, several bottles of alcohol and knives.

Arturo Martinez, the Guerrero state spokesman, said federal and state police searched the prison before dawn on Monday.

He did not say how the women, birds and other banned objects got into the prison, referring to the peacocks as “pets”. Cockfighting is popular in parts of Mexico.

There are no sanctions announced over this level of corrupt administration. Officials in Mexico’s government will delay any such announcement until they have someone equally on the take ready to resume.

Those who lose their jobs will probably be transferred to another government department – equally incompetent, equally corrupt.

Hungarian police have seized a stockpile of weapons that was shipped to the Hungarian capital for the production of a film about zombies starring Brad Pitt…

Weapons expert Bela Gajdos, who has worked on the filming of zombie movie “World War Z” to ensure the safe handling of the weapons used, told national news agency MTI that each firearm had been converted to restrict its use to blank ammunition. Gajdos added that the weapons were completely harmless and had already been used on a shoot in London…

“We had a police permit to bring these guns into the country,” Gajdos told MTI, adding that the production had contracted arms experts to establish whether the guns complied with Hungarian laws. But the guns were seized before experts could inspect them…

Janos Hajdu, the chief of the Hungarian Anti-Terrorism Center on Monday said the agency seized a large stockpile of weapons, which arrived from England on a chartered plane…Hajdu said the firearms had not been properly disabled and could not be allowed into the country less than two weeks before a national holiday commemorating the 1956 uprising, MTI reported.

Anti-terrorism laws and the coppers chartered to enforce them are damned close to being as demented as the terrorists they say they’re fighting.

Raytheon developing 13-lb smart bomb for drone delivery

Under mounting pressure to keep its massive budget in check, the Pentagon is looking to cheaper, smaller weapons to wage war in the 21st century. A new generation of weaponry is being readied in clandestine laboratories across the nation that puts a priority on pintsized technology that would be more precise in warfare and less likely to cause civilian casualties. Increasingly, the Pentagon is being forced to discard expensive, hulking, Cold War-era armaments that exact a heavy toll on property and human lives.

At L-3 Interstate Electronics Corp. in Anaheim, technicians work in secure rooms developing a GPS guidance system for a 13-pound “smart bomb” that would be attached to a small, low-flying drone.

Engineers in Simi Valley at AeroVironment Inc. are developing a mini-cruise missile designed to fit into a soldier’s rucksack, be fired from a mortar and scour the battlefield for enemy targets…

These miniature weapons have one thing in common: They will be delivered with the help of small robotic planes. Drones have grown in importance as the Pentagon has seen them play a vital role in Iraq, Afghanistan and reportedly in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan…

This comes at a time when expensive weapons programs, like Marine Corps amphibious assault vehicles and Navy cruisers, are being eyed for trims…

“There are a lot of weapons in the military’s arsenal,” said Lt. Col. Brad Beach, an official who coordinates the Marines’ drone technology. “But what we don’t have is something small.”

The military is flush with multi-ton bunker-busting bombs designed to reduce fortified buildings into smoldering rubble. But Marines on the front lines in Afghanistan say there is an urgent need for a weapon that is small and powerful enough to protect them from insurgents planting roadside bombs.

Marines already have small spy drones with high-powered cameras, but what they need is a way to destroy the enemies that their drones discover.

Looking to fill the need, the 13-pound “smart bomb” has been under development for three years. The 2-foot-long bomb is steered by a GPS-guided system made in Anaheim. The bomb is called Small Tactical Munition, or STM, and is under development by Raytheon…

The idea is that the small bomb could be slung under the spy plane’s wing, dropped to a specific point using GPS coordinates or a laser-guidance system, and blast apart “soft” targets, such as pickup trucks and individuals, located 15,000 feet below.

With budget cuts, how will members of Congress maintain their accustomed scale of kickbacks, lobbying contracts post-retirement and trips to golf courses near manufacturers of death and destruction?

Cripes – if Raytheon is funding research on a baby smart bomb all on their own what might be next?

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry

In late 2009, ATF was alerted to suspicious buys at seven gun shops in the Phoenix area. Suspicious because the buyers paid cash, sometimes brought in paper bags. And they purchased classic “weapons of choice” used by Mexican drug traffickers – semi-automatic versions of military type rifles and pistols…

Jaime Avila was one of the suspicious buyers. ATF put him in its suspect database in January of 2010. For the next year, ATF watched as Avila and other suspects bought huge quantities of weapons supposedly for “personal use.” They included 575 AK-47 type semi-automatic rifles.

ATF managers allegedly made a controversial decision: allow most of the weapons on the streets. The idea, they said, was to gather intelligence and see where the guns ended up. Insiders say it’s a dangerous tactic called letting the guns, “walk…”

CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. “It got ugly…” said one. There was “screaming and yelling” says another. A third warned: “this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed.”

Sure enough, the weapons soon began surfacing at crime scenes in Mexico – dozens of them sources say – including shootouts with government officials…

Then, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. The serial numbers on the two assault rifles found at the scene matched two rifles ATF watched Jaime Avila buy in Phoenix nearly a year before. Officials won’t answer whether the bullet that killed Terry came from one of those rifles. But the nightmare had come true: “walked” guns turned up at a federal agent’s murder…

Hours after Agent Terry was gunned down, ATF finally arrested Avila. They’ve since indicted 34 suspected gunrunners in the same group. But the indictment makes no mention of Terry’s murder, and no one is charged in his death…

RTFA for a more detailed account.

Thanks, Tom

Skull Valley sheep kill 1968

A Utah military facility that tests chemical and biological weapons was locked down “to resolve a serious concern,” and authorities were working to reopen the base, officials said Thursday. All base personnel were safe and working, and no evacuation was needed, said spokeswoman, Bonnie Robinson. She would not say why the base was locked down…

About 1,500 employees and contractors are stationed at the base.

Dugway commander Col. William E. King IV said earlier authorities were “working as quickly and as thoroughly as possible to resolve a serious concern within the Test Area” but he didn’t elaborate.

“As you know measures like these (lockdown of our gates) are not taken lightly. No one is in immediate danger but these steps are required.”

The proving ground covers 798,214 acres and is located in the Great Salt Lake Desert, around 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Also a historic center for the development and testing of chemical and biological weapons.

Dugway has been a test site for weaponized anthrax as recently as 1998.

Superintendent: “…find an alternative to a weapon.”

Christan Morales said her son just wanted to honor American troops when he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and small plastic Army figures.

But the school banned the hat because it ran afoul of the district’s zero-tolerance weapons policy. Why? The toy soldiers were carrying tiny guns…

Morales’ 8-year-old son, David, had been assigned to make a hat for the day when his second-grade class would meet their pen pals from another school. She and her son came up with an idea to add patriotic decorations to a camouflage hat.

“Nothing was being done to limit patriotism, creativity, other than find an alternative to a weapon,” [Superintendent Kenneth R. Di Pietro] said.

[Retired commander of the Rhode Island National Guard] Lt. Gen. Reginald Centracchio said he disagreed with the decision to ban the hat…

“The American soldier is armed. That’s why they’re called the armed forces,” he said. “If you’re going to portray it any other way, you miss the point.”

I remember as a kid buying little green army men by the bagfull. I guess that would be considered stashing weapons nowadays.

Let’s face it. Americans don’t get fed up with anything any more.

Laredo police say they made one of their largest weapons seizures in years after pulling over a truck laden with brand new assault rifles, bayonets and ammunition that they believe was headed to Mexico.

The seizure…came less then two weeks after Mexican President Felipe Calderon asked Congress to help stem the flow of guns from the U.S. into Mexico.

Acting on a tip from the Webb County Sheriff’s Office, Laredo police stopped a vehicle containing 147 new, boxed assault rifles, 200 high-capacity magazines, 53 bayonets and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. One of the two men in the vehicle tried to flee, but was apprehended, said Laredo Police Investigator Joe Baeza.

Baeza said…it was the largest weapons seizure in a decade in the area around Laredo, which is 145 miles south of San Antonio along the U.S. border with Mexico.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are investigating the seizure, but Baeza said the presumption is the vehicle was heading to Mexico.

“Two Joe Blows aren’t going to buy a bunch of weapons and it stops there,” Baeza said. “We’re pretty positive it was headed to Mexico.”

Are you certain? They may just have been a couple of law-abiding NRA members on their way to target practice.