Unseen World!

No clue as to what happened though, cant find any official reports on it, maybe and accidental ejection or more likely a structural failure. Only info I have is

"A September 21, 1995 video of a F-14 fly-by that goes wrong. The aircraft nearly breaks the sound barrier (you can see the mist forming), then explodes because of what was apparently an engine compression failure. The two pilots, from VF-213 (Black Lions) ejected successfully. The carrier battlegroup, with the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), was 1,400 kilomters west of Guam at the time."

If you look closely at the back of the aircraft in the first frame you see that thin streak protruding from the rear of the plane, its only there for 1 frame, the next to you have to look really closely and you can see a very faint smoke trail, difficult to see in the still images but if you import the movie into Windows movie maker 2 (free) and play it frame for frame its much more noticeable.
When a jet engine ‘flames out for instance you get a puff of smoke from the fuel and the reeds trying to fire, but this is obviously a bit more terminal.
As for the sound barrier, this effect is common with anything moving fast in an area of high humidity and is caused by the changing air pressure around the object as it knifes its way through the air causing condensation to form. The speed at which this would occur depends on the shape of the object and the surrounding air pressure and % of humidity at the time.
You can witness this type of effect to a much lesser degree by watching formula1 for instance ( vortices off the tailfins) when they race in high humidity conditions or on a normal aircraft on short final approach sometimes off the flaps and spoilers prior to landing.
It can happen before he breaks the sound barrier, during or after that.
The point to note is, If he did pass through the sound barrier at that point these folks on the deck would of known about it for sure with a loud cracking sound (like a extended firecracker going off) shortly after the flyby which is most certainly not present.

I was watching this movie other day i.e. “Red Planet” where their so called robot AMEE goes haywire and starts playing “Guerilla tactics” and trying to kill them. Then I started wondering what exactly is “Guerilla tactics” as I keep hearing this word in every now and then warfare movies. Have you also wondered?

Guerilla tactics is the usage of "sneaking" and "ambushing" in warfare. To attack, and disappear. Often practiced from dense areas such as woods, or jungle.

Guerrilla warfare is the unconventional warfare and combat in which a small group of combatants use mobile tactics in the form of ambushes and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal army.

The guerrilla army uses ambush and mobility in attacking vulnerable targets in enemy territory. Guerrilla warfare is countered with counter-insurgency warfare.

This term means "little war" in Spanish and was created during the Peninsular War. The concept acknowledges a conflict between armed civilians against a powerful nation state army, either foreign or domestic.

The tactics of guerrilla warfare were used successfully in the 20th century by, among others, the People’s Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War, the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence, and Fidel Castro’s rebel army in the Cuban Revolution. Most factions of the Iraqi Insurgency and groups such as FARC are said to be engaged in some form of guerrilla warfare.

For full information

c. -15,000 years ago

The principle of the bow and arrow is developed, with yew or elm for the bow and points of flint on the arrows

c. -2500 BC

The treasures found in the royal cemetery at Ur include a depiction of soldiers in copper helmets, armed with battleaxes

c. -1800 BC

In Mesopotamia the new weapon is a light chariot, drawn by two horses

c. -1500 BC

The composite bow, accurate to 200 yards, is used by warriors in Asia fighting from chariots and on horseback

c. -1100 BC

The Phoenicians develop the war galley, with a sharp battering ram in the bow

c. -850 BC

The Assyrians develop the battering ram into a mobile and powerful siege engine

c. -800 BC

The Assyrian army makes good use of the new technology by which iron can be hardened into steel suitable for weapons

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US military researchers are developing a method for communication that uses lasers to make sound underwater.

The approach focuses laser light to produce bubbles of steam that pop and create tiny, 220-decibel explosions.

Controlling the rate of these explosions could provide a means of communication or even acoustic imaging.

Researchers at the US Naval Research Laboratory say the approach could be used for air-to-submarine or fully underwater communication.

One of the peculiar effects of high-intensity laser beams is that they can actually focus themselves when passing through some materials, like water.

As the laser focuses, it rips electrons off water molecules, which then become superheated and create a powerful "pop".

Because different colours of light travel at markedly different speeds underwater, the precise location where different colours focus together could be manipulated by the suitable design of a many-coloured input pulse.

The approach could use commercially available lasers

Those same focusing effects are significantly reduced in air, so that a laser "signal" could be launched from an airborne source to communicate with submarines, so that they do not need to surface.

The idea could also be used for underwater acoustic imaging, by using a moveable mirror to direct the pulses into an array of pops whose echoes can give a detailed picture of underwater terrain.

The total proposed American defense budget for 2008 is more than half a trillion dollars—with $75 billion of that set aside for research and development. For decades, the Pentagon’s investment in science and technology has produced widely hailed achievements like the Internet and the Global Positioning System. It has also backed quixotic and costly failures, like space-based lasers. And sometimes it has gone off the deep end, funding such things as psychic spies and weapons that defy the laws of physics.

The Department of Defense began systematically funding basic and applied research in a big way after World War II. Today the Pentagon’s investment in science R&D remains a cornerstone of the country’s national security strategy. Yet in the aftermath of the low-tech attacks

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), like this MQ-9 Reaper, are receiving a great deal of funding.
Image courtesy of USAF/SR. Airman Larry E. Reid Jr.

of 9/11, the growing insurgency in Iraq, and the threat of worldwide terrorism, technology experts both within and outside the Pentagon are questioning whether Defense Department research is producing the results that America needs.

So what are we getting for our money? That $75 billion budget covers a vast array of projects, from perfecting new weapon systems like the Joint Strike Fighter plane to studying pure physics. Focusing on the research side of R&D, DISCOVER looked at four key areas where the military is placing its bets: hypersonic vehicles, laser technology, using information technology and neuroscience to combine human and machine on the battlefield, and employing sociology and psychobiology to combat terrorism.

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions surrounding the current M16A1, M16A2, M4, M16A4NATO 5.56 round and its effectiveness on the battlefield. Now before you make a judgment as a soldier or as a firearm enthusiast (a more euphemistic way of saying “gun nut”), consider your sources. Who is it that is telling you the 5.56mm, or .223 if you prefer, is an ineffective round? Is this source an armchair general who has watched Blackhawk Down one too many times; or a Navy Corpsman who has been attached to a MEF fighting in Fallujah and has seen, treated and inflicted these wounds with his own M-4? People look at the .30-06 round from their grandfather’s M1 Garand and the 7.62×51mm round from their dad’s M-14 and compare it to the M-16/M-4’s 5.56 and think; “Wow, this is considerably smaller. Therefore, it must be less effective.”

M16A1, M16A2, M4, M16A4

Now Joe Nichols had it right when he said, “Size Matters.” However, when you are talking about combat cartridges this is not always the case, and I say that hesitantly. When the 5.56 was derived from Remington’s .223 in the late 1950’s, it was meant as a “force multiplier” if you will. By that I mean a soldier could literally carry twice as much ammunition as one who has the older 7.62 for the same weight. They wanted a soldier who could stay longer in the field without re-supply and could literally out-last and out-shoot the enemy in many aspects. The 5.56 is an incredibly fast and flat shooting round compared to the 7.62, but is under half the bullet weight.

So one might ask; ‘How in the world can a smaller bullet be more lethal than a bigger one?” One word: cavitation. Cavitation is the rapid formation and collapse of a substance or material after an object enters it at a relatively high velocity. I guarantee you have seen cavitation before. Next time you are in the pool or on the boat, look at your hand as it passes through the water or the propeller spinning. In both cases you will notice bubbles on the trailing edge of each. You see this because the liquid water falls below its vapor pressure. Without getting into physics and the hydrodynamics behind it, I’ll just leave it at that. When a human body is hit with a 5.56mm 62-grain bullet traveling at 3,100 feet per second; essentially the same thing happens but much, much more violently. For a split second, the cavity created inside the human body by the round from an M-16/M-4 is about the size of a basketball (if hit dead center of mass). The 5.56 creates this massive cavitation by tumbling through the body initiated by inherently unstable flight.

5.56 ballistic test

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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 going 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.

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MONTREAL — Canadian soldiers are bringing home from dusty Afghanistan a powerful, drug-resistant superbug that health officials have been worrying about for several years.

Three Canadian soldiers who recently returned from Kandahar carrying so-called "Iraqibacter" are under quarantine at a civilian hospital in Quebec City.

Two civilian patients who came in close contact with the soldiers at Hopital de l’Enfant-Jesus have also been isolated for fear they may have contracted the superbug officially named Acinetobacter baumannii.

The hospital-acquired germ, commonly found in soil and water, strikes weakened immune systems, especially in those recovering from wounds.

It has been known to cause conditions such as pneumonia, meningitis as well as blood, urinary tract and wound infections.

Some people carry the bacteria on their skin without showing symptoms.

Two years ago, the Public Health Agency of Canada warned Canadian hospitals that outbreaks could happen after wounded soldiers returned home from Afghanistan either sickened by the strain, or simply carrying it in their system.

The department did not immediately answer requests for an interview on the subject Thursday.

A 2007 report in the publication Wound Care Canada said incidences of the strain have increased in U.S. military hospitals.

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Alfa Tsentr is a private military company of the Russia and pronunciation of the word in English is Alfa Center. Alfa Tsentr is based in Beloretsk, Russia. An important logistics and support role was played the Alfa Tsentr throughout during the Second Chechen War. They have also served as a supplementary guard during the Akhmad Kadvrov’s pro Kremlin regim.
Originally Alfa Tsentr was considered for the newly privatized state assets as a holding company. Many large military hardware factories, air force and army operational facilities were purchased by the Alfa Tsentr in the mid of 1990s. These assets were purchased by Alfa Tsentr from the formerly Soviet government of Boris Yeltsin at only fractional values.

The operation units are being considered as the core assets of the Alfa Tsentr in which non conventional warfare units like Spetsnaz, ground and pilot crew operators, close protection teams and body guard detail, combat engineers, command and control units, logistical support teams, combat medics, search and rescue crews and evacuation units are included.

Outsourced training of the Russian Federation government is being handled by the Alfa Tsentr, particularly training of local police forces is also included. Local police forces participate to deal with the crime activities nation-wide. Some logistical support has also been provided by the Alfa Tsentr since 2000 at the Kosvinsky Mountain in the Sverdlovsk Oblast.