Tag: AIRFORCE

Share The U.S. Air Force is developing a $211 million surveillance mega-blimp, which, if completed, could stay in the air for a week and will be seven times larger than the Goodyear Blimp. The project, dubbed 'Blue Devil,' could change the way surveillance missions are carried out in Afghanistan by serving as a floating information hub, according to Wired. The 350-foot-long blimp could ascend as ...

Anyone with an Internet connection and some extra time on their hands can access the secret diplomatic cables recently published by WikiLeaks -- except, of course, anyone who works for the Air Force. Yesterday, the Air Force confirmed that it had blocked all sites that had published the full cables, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and more than 25 other news organizations. ...

The U.S. Air Force is apparently concerned that its troops aren't the brightest crayons in the box. Officials are worried that careless updating of social networks that compile geolocation data -- like Foursquare, Facebook's Places and Twitter -- could reveal the forces' locations. Concerns about social media are nothing new in the military, but location-based services pose a particular problem ...

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. ...

Video game playing soldiers looking forward to the upcoming 'Medal of Honor' will have to go elsewhere for a dose of non-lethal action. The game has been banned from all GameStop stores located on military facilities, due to its inclusion of Taliban forces as playable characters in multiplayer shoot-outs. The ban has been enforced by the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which operates ...

DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) is always looking for the latest and greatest (and most 'Terminator'-like) in military and weapons technology. The creepy, high-tech government branch's latest project, dubbed Persistent Close Air Support (or PCAS), is all about speeding up and simplifying the act of raining death from above. As it stands today, when a soldier on the ground 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 the announcement of an $8 billion upgrade wasn't enough, let us further highlight the importance of the 24 satellites that make up the Global Positioning System (GPS). According to the Associated Press, a software compatibility problem knocked out between 8,000 and 10,000 GPS military ground receivers for nearly two weeks in January before the problem could be identified and temporarily fixed. ...

The U.S. government has recently made protecting its computers against cyber-attacks a top priority. Now, according to an Associated Press report, the U.S. Air Force will incorporate basics of cyberwarfare into its training regimen for new recruits. In addition, beginning in June, the Air Force will offer a cyberwarfare undergraduate-level training program for officers. Four-star General Robert ...

A few weeks ago, we told you about the Air Force's mysterious plans to launch the robotic, unmanned X37B shuttle into orbit. Now, less than a month later, the launch is going forward as planned, but the Force is still being strangely silent on details. After nearly a decade of arduous and expensive development, the X37B is slated to take off from Cape Canaveral on April 19, but, as FOXNews ...

A new security measure could leave many U.S. Air Force BlackBerry users grounded. According to Wired, Air Force officials recently announced changes to the service's cyber-security policy, which would effectively disable the Bluetooth functionality of most BlackBerrys. Forget sending or receiving pictures or videos; under this change, the only functional Bluetooth feature on enlisted men and ...

After its long and often troubled history, the U.S. shuttle program seemed to be on life support. But, it may be getting the shot in the arm that it has so sorely needed, thanks to a new robotic aircraft called the X37B. At just 29-feet-long and weighing in at 11,000 pounds, the X37B has been in the works for some time, and was originally conceived, according to The Register, as a "lifeboat" ...

Attention, amateur hackers: Uncle Sam wants you to help fight cyber-crime -- and he's getting pretty desperate, too. As cyber-attacks become more complex and virulent, the U.S. government has poured billions of dollars into securing our nation's digital borders. Problem is, it's facing a severe shortage of manpower. Out of the roughly 20,000 "elite" cyber-experts that the U.S. needs, there are ...

Proving that we might not be quite ready to enter into the space age of modern warfare, a robot-controlled U.S. fighter jet went haywire in Afghanistan Sunday, and had to be shot down to prevent disaster. According to USAFCENT Public Affairs, the plane was "flying a combat mission when positive control of the MQ-9 was lost." That can't be good. Before the rogue robot could get too far afield, ...

What do you do when you're the U.S. government and you need heaps of computing power, quick and on the cheap? You snatch up 300 Sony PlayStation 3's of course. We've seen researchers use the gaming consoles before to crunch numbers and study gravity, and now the Air Force wants in on the Cell processor-powered action. What exactly the Air Force plans to use the 300 PlayStations for is unclear, ...