Remember back a few months when news broke about a little device that claimed to detect different sorts of bombs? The ones that the Iraqi government spent $85 million on over the last few years even though American military commanders and the FBI stated that they simply don’t work. Well, as we all assumed, the ADE-651 is a sham. It’s just a dirty racket. Good thing that the British government… → Read More
Let’s move onto something a little more serious for a moment. There’s a device that the New York Times highlighted yesterday called the ADE 651. It’s a small, hand-held explosives detector, or so claims the company behind it, the UK-based ATSC. It’s being heavily used in Iraq, and officials there swear by it. Meanwhile, American officials call the device about as effective and realistic as a Ouija… → Read More
How great is this: in 2003, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had a plan on the books to launch a cyberattack on Iraq that would have zapped the country’s money supply. In other words, Saddam Hussein wouldn’t have had any money to pay his troops or whatever. Three cheers for destruction! → Read More
Turns out the iPod is being used by soliders for psychological operations in Iraq. A very creative solider used his iPod and a loudspeaker to broadcast Iraqi pop music while on an operation to distribute food. Another soldier is using a transmitter to do the same thing. The transmitter and iPod use a very low powered system (normally used for rescue beacons) to transmit a pro-coalition message… → Read More
The methods for detonating bombs, IEDs, mortars, missiles, and so on have multiplied and become more technologically advanced; it follows, then, that a bomb squad should be a high-tech outfit prepared for any tech contingency. This is a very interesting and in-depth article about the lucky soldiers (Army and Navy) whose job it is to detect, disarm, and collect unexploded ordnance and improvised… → Read More
In an effort to “save bandwith”, the Department of Defense is blocking access to pipe-hogs like YouTube and MySpace on official computers. Lots of employers put up such filters, but this is different: Troops and families living on U.S. bases will still be able to view the sites through private Internet networks, but the move leaves service members in Iraq and Afghanistan who use the… → Read More
So it turns out that an iPod didn’t save Kevin Garrad’s life in Iraq, but that his body armor did. That’s a little less interesting (from a gadget blog perspective), but good news nonetheless. The rest of the meme holds true: the soldier got into a firefight with a bad guy and was shot, unbeknownst to him. When he got back to his barracks intending to listen to his iPod and clean… → Read More
An iPod saved a soldier’s life over in Iraq, or so the story goes. A picture of a destroyed iPod showed up on Flickr with a message saying that it was destroyed in a firefight between a U.S. soldier and some Iraqi miscreants. Supposedly an AK-47′s bullet tore through the soldier’s handy dandy iPod jacket pocket, where Apple’s little portable media player stopped the bullet… → Read More
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