Tag: AFGHANISTANWAR

Captain Jonathan J. Springer reached into his own pockets to produce the $26,000 needed to develop a new iPhone app, one specifically designed for American soldiers battling the Taliban. The 31-year-old soldier worked with programmers to bring his idea of a navigation and targeting app to life. The result, called 'Tactical Nav,' should soon be available in the iTunes App Store for $0.99. The app ...

Consumers unceasingly fall prey to faulty GPS units, but military organizations -- with access to cutting-edge communication systems and navigation technology -- might seem invulnerable to such aimless mistakes. [Ed. Note: Not if they use Google Maps, apparently.] Several units of Poland's 2,600-troop force in Afghanistan recently disproved that notion, though, when their GPS devices reportedly ...

When the newest version of 'Medal of Honor' hits living rooms on October 12th, users will still be able to spend hours of their lives shooting at each other in a hostile, virtual rendering of Afghanistan. One thing they won't be able to do, though, is play for the Taliban, as producer Electronic Arts, has now decided to pull the highly controversial option from the game's multi-player feature. ...

In an effort to exert greater control over militant groups in Afghanistan, several governmental ministries, in conjunction with NATO forces, are now hoping to issue biometric ID cards to over 1.65 million Afghan citizens by May. Local and foreign forces have already begun compiling biometric files on policemen, criminals, insurgents and normal citizens, and are currently collecting information ...

During the five months that he was held captive by Islamic militants in Afghanistan, Japanese journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka never thought he'd ever see his friends or family again. Now, however, he's finally back home -- thanks, in part, to Twitter. As the AP reports, Tsuneoka recently seized a golden opportunity to communicate with the outside world, when one of his captors asked him how to use ...

Well, it looks like storm clouds are brewing over the Wikileaks horizon once again. Just a few days after leaking more than 77,000 classified military documents about Afghanistan, the mysterious whistle-blowing site has now posted a far larger, encrypted file, entitled 'Insurance.' Weighing in at 1.4 gigabytes, the file is about 20 times larger than the pile of military documents leaked earlier, ...

With the release of its Afghan War Diary, Wikileaks has just perpetrated what many are calling one of the largest leaks in military history. Comprising nearly 92,000 classified reports from Afghanistan, the Diary sheds new light on the challenges that the U.S. and coalition forces face on the ground, exposing the conflict as more dire than most may have imagined. The documents reveal, among other ...

Just last month, the Pentagon confirmed that its 'pain ray' weapon had been sent to Afghanistan. However, nobody would say whether or not the non-lethal device, also known as the Active Denial System, had been tested or deployed. Now, according to BBC News, Raytheon's 'pain ray,' which uses a focused invisible beam to generate an intolerable burning sensation, is being carried by U.S. troops in ...

Last week, a nationwide be-on-the-lookout (BOLO) alert was sent to law enforcement agencies across the country after 17 soldiers in the Afghan military went AWOL from a Texas Air Force base, where they had been learning English. Even as they were in the middle of escaping the law, though, many of the deserters still managed to spend some quality time on Facebook. Not long after the BOLO ...

If you happen to be a fan of the Taliban, you may now have another thing to worry about besides your psychological well-being: hackers. As Wired reports, a Taliban-endorsed, online jihadi forum has apparently come under cyber-siege from people who, shock of shocks, disagree with what the radical Islamic organization espouses. Abu al-Aina'a al-Khorasani, the administrator of the belligerent forum ...

We like to believe that the U.S. military knows a thing or two more than the rest of us. Your devoted Switched team, for example, would be hard pressed to dismantle an IED, no matter how many times we've seen 'The Hurt Locker.' But it turns out that the men and women in uniform are entangled in the simplifying software magic known as PowerPoint, no different from the soporific strategy meetings ...

As the war in Afghanistan continues to lurch forward, U.S. and Western coalition forces are increasingly implementing initiatives to help impoverished Afghans pick themselves up and get on the road to economic recovery. Among these programs is "cash-for-work," a set of projects run by NATO and U.S. development organizations, whereby organizations give money to local communities for creating ...