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What does a Froggy look like on the top rope? Kind of like this
.If you want to know what happens during classified SEAL operations, then nut up and join the fight yourself. You should be satisfied that you are being protected and served by exceptional men who are entitled to your respect if not your gratitude. You are not owed the inside scoop on how we do our business. Rest assured our activities receive oversight from your elected representatives, our chain of command, and most importantly the integrity of the vast majority of the operators. We are not gladiators in the arena to entertain you, and by supporting works like this you are helping to validate a very ugly aberration of our most closely held beliefs.
'Nuff said.
Ahhhh, yes. From wannabee police forces that cannot get enough of spying on people just living their lives, to others looking to look on the cheap - everyone wants their own drone.
Well ... there are issues;Using a GPS spoofing device that cost less than $1,000 to build, a University of Texas team was able to commandeer an unmanned aircraft and send it veering off course.
After initially demonstrating the concept in Austin, assistant professor Todd Humphreys and his team were invited to White Sands, N.M., on June 19 by skeptical Department of Homeland Security officials and proved they could divert a UAV from its flight path from about a kilometer away, a university news release said.
“The recent demonstration ... is the first known unequivocal demonstration that commandeering a UAV via GPS spoofing is technically feasible,” according to the release.
It is one small step from there ... Civilian GPS devices are unencrypted and extremely vulnerable to spoofing attacks. While not impossible, doing the same to military aircraft that use encrypted signals would be more difficult. Military aircraft are more vulnerable to “broad-spectrum attacks,” Humphreys said.
Those attacks do not take direct control but jam an unmanned aircraft’s ability to receive signals. That can confuse them and send them into holding patterns that keep them circling overhead until they run out of fuel and crash or automatically land.
Many drones run on both GPS signals and direct command from a ground station.
“All drones do well if you cut one of the two links, but if you snip both, they don’t,” Humphreys said. “If you overwhelm the aircraft with enough jamming, it fails to navigate and can’t even phone home for help.”
...
Humphreys said there are always possible threats, even to encrypted links, but “this is not going to affect Predator drones, Global Hawks — it mostly concerns civilian drones that will inhabit the national airspace in 2015 and beyond.”
If spoofed, those could be piloted into targets in the U.S., he said, turning even cargo drones into deadly missiles.
Let you imagination go from there.
I'm a fan us UAS/V, but there are limits and risks.
Bits and pieces ... spot by spot.
Sen. Webb (D-VA)'s article linked to above has some points well worth considering. Not to get too excited about - but to put in your nogg'n for future use.On June 21, China's State Council approved the establishment of a new national prefecture which it named Sansha, with its headquarters on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands. Called Yongxing by the Chinese, Woody Island has no indigenous population and no natural water supply, but it does sport a military-capable runway, a post office, a bank, a grocery store and a hospital.
The Paracels are more than 200 miles southeast of Hainan, mainland China's southernmost territory, and due east of Vietnam's central coast. Vietnam adamantly claims sovereignty over the island group, the site of a battle in 1974 when China attacked the Paracels in order to oust soldiers of the former South Vietnamese regime.
The potential conflicts stemming from the creation of this new Chinese prefecture extend well beyond the Paracels. Over the last six weeks the Chinese have further proclaimed that the jurisdiction of Sansha includes not just the Paracel Islands but virtually the entire South China Sea, connecting a series of Chinese territorial claims under one administrative rubric. According to China's official news agency Xinhua, the new prefecture "administers over 200 islets" and "2 million square kilometers of water." To buttress this annexation, 45 legislators have been appointed to govern the roughly 1,000 people on these islands, along with a 15-member Standing Committee, plus a mayor and a vice mayor.
Pardon me for being rude ... but where has Senator Webb been? Where has his leadership been to further the discussion on equipping and training a force for this?The question is whether the China of 2012 truly wishes to resolve issues through acceptable international standards, and whether the America of 2012 has the will and the capacity to insist that this approach is the only path toward stability.
For the full six years of his term as a US Senator, he has always been in the party of the majority in the Senate. You can do a lot with that.
So much power - and from USNA to this topic .... I sure hope he has done much more behind the scenes than he has out front. Though I disagreed with him on many things, he is/was an important voice - shame if it was a lost opportunity.
As our listenership in the last year is up four-fold (!), I decided to roll back this weekend to the 14th episode for a Labor Day best of.
For the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm EST, we will look at what are the pluses and minuses of working with other nations at sea. Are we leveraging the capabilities of other nations enough - or are we in danger of relying on them too much? How does the American Navy see working with other naval forces - and how do they look at working with us? What special capabilities do other nations have that we don't, and what could we learn from them? What do the lessons from multilateralism in ground combat in Afghanistan, and multilateralism against pirates tell us?
Our guests will be Hans de Vreij and James S. Robbins. Hans de Vreij is the Netherlands correspondent at Jane's Defence Weekly, and the Security and Defence specialist at Radio Netherlands Worldwide. He received his education at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, he was economics, web editor, and EU & NATO correspondent for Radio Netherlands World.
Also, James S. Robbins; Senior Editorial Writer for Foreign Affairs at the Washington Times. He is also author of the book, Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point, and a political commentator and contributing editor for National Review Online. Dr. Robbins holds a Ph.D. and Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Massachusetts. He also has Masters and Bachelors degrees in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati. In addition to contributing to a wide variety of publications, h served in government for ten years, and in 2007 was awarded the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award.Join us live if you can, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
When my personal morale and resolve on this issue was starting to flag, and weaken ... what do I see coming over the ridge? The spine stiffens, the line reforms ... and the advance continues.
That is what leaders do. I feel some shame in the weakness I showed mid-month; but enough of that.
There are leaders out there that get it. We have leaders who have a 21st Century mindset and are not intellectually stuck in the second Nixon Administration.
Go to ~ the 9-minute mark and listen to Lieutenant General John Kelly, USMC - one of Maggie's Boston Marines. All the issues we cover here on Thursday - he brings to the front. I can do no better. Do not limit yourself to just this portion of the speech; you need to hear it all - and then share it with as many people that you can.
I don't make that request but once every few years - if ever. I'm not asking you to send links to this post; thought that would be nice. Just use the YouTube link if you need to keep your secret pleasure - CDRSalamander - to yourself.
The real strength of this nation does not come from making a religion of diversity, or emphasizing the differences among us. To the contrary, we have come to a profound understanding of what our founders; our forefathers and foremothers understood as they built the nation that was once proudly referred to as the melting pot.
And our armed forces, the ultimate, the most successful institution of American diversity. Servicemembers have come to understand the simple fact that America's strenght was and should be again a people that sticks together by a shared sense of history, values, customs, hopes and dreams that unite us.
There is great power in us as individuals, but even greater power in individuals voluntarily working together to support each other.
They also know that the opposite is true, that we weakened, and will lose what we have if we continue down a path of identifying ourselves as hyphenated Americans, or closed cultural groups focusing on "what's in it for me."
That in spite of the efforts of those who make their living and often fill their pockets driving wedges between Americans based on race, or religion, ethnicity - our service men and women discover early, and on their own while looking at their comerads and standing with them in ranks - that it is not about the color on the outside, but the character on the inside.
It isn't about where on the earth you were born, but why you came to America, and what you did when you got here. It is not about the god you worship, if you worship any god at all; but you will respect the right of your neighbor to respect the god he or she damn well pleases.
'Nuff said.
Be resolved; advance, advance, advance!Hat tip DrewM.
One of the things I miss the most about active duty is ready access to a ~18-yr of service BM1.
Never are more clear, direct, or accurate observations about what is going on or what should go on found.
I really wish I could have run a few thing by the BM1 ... mostly what I'm pondering over at USNIBlog.
