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US Marines being sent to Japan for nuclear response 2011-03-31 11:36 by Olivia Hampton WASHINGTON, March 31, 2011 (AFP) - The US military on Wednesday ordered a Marine unit specializing in emergency nuclear response to deploy to Japan to assist local authorities in addressing the massive crisis, officials said. Some 155 Marines from the service's Chemical Biological Incident Response Force are scheduled to leave the United States on Thursday and arrive in Japan Friday, a US defense official told AFP. The CBIRF team, trained in identifying chemical agents, monitoring radiation levels and decontaminating personnel, would not participate in the frenzied...

U.S. Navy video by John WilliamsU.S. Navy engineers at the Office of Naval Research prepared and test-fired a slug from their rail gun in a 2008 test firing. On Friday, December 9, the ONR will attempt to break its own record. A theoretical dream for decades, the railgun is unlike any other weapon used in warfare. And it's quite real too, as the U.S. Navy has proven in a record-setting test today in Dahlgren, VA. Rather than relying on a explosion to fire a projectile, the technology uses an electomagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet at several times...

Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), with support from Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren, for the second time successfully tracked, engaged, and destroyed a threat representative Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) while in flight, May 24, at San Nicholas Island, Calif. This marks the first Detect-Thru-Engage laser shoot-down of a threat representative target in an over-the-water, combat representative scenario. A total of two UAV targets were engaged and destroyed in a maritime environment during the testing, the second series of successes for the U.S. Navy's Laser Weapon System (LaWS) Program. Members of NAVSEA's Directed Energy and Electric Weapon Systems (DE&EWS) Program...

The UK’s Sunday Times recently broke the story of an FBI whistleblower kept from speaking publicly about a State Department official suspected of selling nuclear secrets. Annie Jacobsen digs a bit deeper into this shadowy tale and wonders why American media outlets have greeted the revelations with stunning silence. Two weeks ago, the London Sunday Times broke an exclusive story about FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. For five years, the U.S. government has prevented Edmonds from speaking publicly on what she knows, claiming State Secrets Privilege. The Times got the exclusive on the story, eerily titled “For Sale: West’s Deadly Nuclear...

Finally some reports are coming out regarding the NSA leak investigation and their prime target for the leaks: Capitol Hill. Jay Rockefeller, who was interviewed for the NY Times story which exposed our efforts to identify terrorists here in the US ready to attack us, is probably on the interview list. From the sounds of the reporting it does not appear to be a pleasant exercise for these all powerful men and women in Congress: There are also indications from at least one Senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), that the FBI is asking Members about comments of theirs that appeared in...

A recent Pentagon decision may result in the Navy gaining two additional SEAL teams to fight the war on terrorism, Inside the Navy has learned. Naval Special Warfare Command has not yet decided when those teams could be operational or how they would be organized. Funding for the new billets is expected to be split between fiscal year 2006 and FY-08, according to a naval special warfare spokesman. He noted that although NSWC will receive enough billets to form two new SEAL teams, the command may decide against organizing the additional billets as two teams. NSWC is concerned with maintaining...