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A fascinating collection of illustrations shows how America keenly observed Britain and Germany as the countries prepared for the first world war - long before the United States was drawn into battle. In 1913, before WWI even began, military scientists watched from across the Atlantic as the rival nations raced to build more efficient and effective weapons in a bid to control sea, sky and land. The images, published originally by the magazine Scientific American in 1913 and again on its website this week, mostly depict these weapons, though some of the drawings show mistaken assumptions about how a war...

If outlanders tend to associate Australia with kangaroos, broad-brim leather hats and an opera house, many Australians are different. They think of iron ore and bauxite, copper and coal, nickel, gold and uranium, a trove of mineral riches that is their nation’s birthright and the bedrock of its prosperity.

Visiting Sweden, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that Sweden is one of NATO’s most important partners and is welcome as a member in the rapid reaction force, should Sweden decide to join. On Friday Morning, NATO’s Secretary General met Sweden’s Defence Minister Sten Tolgfors to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, one of the two places where Swedish troops come under NATO command as part of the ISAF force. They also discussed possible participation in NATO’s rapid reaction force (NRF), with Sweden saying a decision may be reached by the spring. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also promised to...

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Faced with a threatening military buildup by China, an increasingly outgunned Taiwan is quietly pushing ahead with plans to develop missiles that could strike the mainland, defense and security experts say. Taiwan successfully tested its first cruise missile with that kind of range this year, one that could send a nearly 900-pound warhead more than 600 miles, to targets as distant as Shanghai, military analysts said. Some Taiwanese military specialists have argued for decades that Taiwan should develop offensive weapons, including missiles, as a deterrent to the mainland, which has threatened to attack the self-governing island if...

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam — To take part in its annual exercises with the United States Air Force here last month, Japan practiced dropping 500-pound live bombs on Farallon de Medinilla, a tiny island in the western Pacific’s turquoise waters more than 150 miles north of here. The pilots described dropping a live bomb for the first time — shouting “shack!” to signal a direct hit — and seeing the fireball from aloft. “The level of tension was just different,” said Capt. Tetsuya Nagata, 35, stepping down from his cockpit onto the sunbaked tarmac. The exercise would have been...

"A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit." - Army's magazine of preventive maintenance ------------------------------------------------------ "Aim towards the Enemy." - Instruction printed on U.S. Rocket Launcher ------------------------------------------------------ "When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend." - U.S. Marine Corps ------------------------------------------------------ "Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed always to hit the ground." - USAF Ammo Troop ------------------------------------------------------ "If the enemy is in range, so are you." - Infantry Journal ----------------------------------------------------- "It is generally...

  Rakkasan Armament Program Saves Lives Welders add armor to Humvees to protect troops from improvised explosive devices. By U.S. Army Sgt. Waine D. Haley 133rd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment TIKRIT, Iraq, July 20, 2006 -- A safety innovation has hit the battlefield in the form of heavy armor added to Humvees and is now on the roads of Iraq. The 626th Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, created the Rakkasan Armament Program, known as RAP, in January 2006. This program is intended to provide shielding between the soldiers and the number one killer of...

From Myanmar to Russia with love By Sergei Blagov MOSCOW - Russia has never let human-rights abuses get in the way of a good bilateral relationship. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union overtly supplied arms and concessionary loans to anti-Western allies such as Iraq, Syria, Vietnam and North Korea. Although the Soviet collapse in 1991 undermined those ties, President Vladimir Putin's accession to power in 2000 has seen Russia move to re-establish itself as a military ally to small countries that are willing to stand up against the United States. So when Myanmar's General Maung Aye recently visited Moscow,...

A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials. The ceramic plates in vests now worn by the majority of troops in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds...

Rafael wins $70m contract with Polish Army Rafael beat leading manufacturers of remote controlled weapon stations. Hadas Manor 14 Nov 05 12:29 The Polish Army has chosen Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd. to supply cannon stations in a $70 million contract. Rafael won the contract when the Polish Ministry of Defense and WZM decided to equip the Polish Army with Patria Armored Modular Vehicle (AMV) equipped with Rafael cannon stations. Rafael’s Remote Controlled Weapon Station (RCWS) enable troops to direct and fire cannons from inside armored cars, without being exposed. The cannon station has fire control system includes a high-performance...

Since it opened its doors on May 1, 1909, Walter Reed Hospital in Washington has been a healing destination for hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, several presidents and luminaries like Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur, Gen. George C. Marshall, King Hussein of Jordan and the exiled shah of Iran. But last month, Walter Reed became a casualty of the Pentagon's plan to shut, reduce or reorganize military facilities in all 50 states. If Congress accepts the recommendation to close the medical center, most of its 113-acre campus will be razed. Some have suggested preserving the complex's most historic buildings for...

When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year to tour the Abu Ghraib prison camp, military officials did not rely on a government-issued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground. Instead, they turned to Halliburton, the oil services contractor, which lent the Pentagon a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner. State Department officials traveling in Iraq use armored vehicles that are built with V-shaped hulls to better deflect bullets and bombs. Members of Congress favor another model, called the M1117, which can endure 12-pound explosives and .50-caliber armor-piercing rounds. Unlike the Humvee, the Pentagon's vehicle...

Nine years ago, the Navy set out to build a new guided missile for its 21st-century ships. Fiascoes followed. In a test firing, the missile melted its on-board guidance system. "Incredibly," an Army review said, "the Navy ruled the test a success." Recently, the Navy rewrote the contract and put out another one, with little to show for the money it already spent. The bill has come to almost $400 million, five times the original budget. Such stories may seem old hat. But after years of failing to control cost overruns, the most powerful officials at the Pentagon are becoming...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 24 - In what American military officials said was the largest Iraqi-led operation to date and evidence that the country's fledgling army was up and running, hundreds of Iraqi soldiers fanned out Sunday and Monday in a dangerous western suburb here, arresting 437 people they accuse of having ties to the insurgency. The officials said Tuesday that more than 2,000 Iraqi soldiers and special police commandos carried out the operation, which was aimed at rooting out insurgents and closing down car bomb assembly lines in Abu Ghraib, which is predominantly Sunni Arab and has been a hotbed...

London I think that this could still fail." Those words - uttered by a senior American officer in Baghdad last week - probably gave opponents of the war in Iraq, particularly those clamoring for a hasty exit, a bit of a kick. They should be careful what they wish for. For history strongly suggests that a hasty American withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster. "If we let go of the insurgency," said another of the officers quoted anonymously last week, "then this country could fail and go back into civil war and chaos." As many of the war's opponents...

A rendering of a DD(X) destroyer. The Navy's new destroyer, the DD(X), is becoming so expensive that it may end up destroying itself. The Navy once wanted 24 of them. Now it thinks it can afford 5 - if that. The price of the Navy's new ships, driven upward by old-school politics and the rusty machinery of American shipbuilding, may scuttle the Pentagon's plans for a 21st-century armada of high-technology aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines. Shipbuilding costs "have spiraled out of control," the Navy's top admiral, Vern Clark, told Congress last week, rising so high that "we can't build...

IRKUK, Iraq, April 16 - Equipment plundered from dozens of sites in Saddam Hussein's vast complex for manufacturing weapons is beginning to surface in open markets in Iraq's major cities and at border crossings. Looters stormed the sites two years ago when Mr. Hussein's government fell, and the fate of much of the equipment has remained a mystery. But on a recent day near the Iranian border, resting in great chunks on a weedy lot in front of an Iraqi Border Patrol warehouse, were pieces of machine tools, some weighing as much as a car, that investigators say formed the...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR OF the Pentagon's $419.3 billion budget request for next year, only about $10.5 billion - 2 percent - will go toward basic research, applied research and advanced technology development. This represents a 20 percent reduction from last year, a drastic cutback that threatens the long-term security of the nation. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should reconsider this request, and if he does not, Congress should restore the cut. These research and development activities, known as the "technology base" program, are a vital part of the United States defense program. For good reason: the tech base is America's investment...

WASHINGTON, April 8 - After two senior-level meetings between North Korean and Chinese leaders over the last two weeks to discuss the North's nuclear-weapons program, the Chinese have failed so far to persuade North Korea to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks, senior administration officials and diplomats said Friday. As a result of the continuing deadlock, informal discussions have begun among the five parties to the talks on new, more aggressive strategies that could be used if and when it is decided that the talks have reached a dead end. Among the steps being discussed, the administration officials and diplomats said, are...

Nelson Ching for The New York Times Chinese Navy sailors took part in a welcoming ceremony for the flagship of the American Seventh Fleet at a port call last month in Zhanjiang, China. A buildup by China's navy presents new concerns at the Pentagon. ZHANJIANG, China - At a time when the American military is consumed with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, global terrorism and the threat of nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, China is presenting a new and strategically different security concern to America, as well as to Japan and Taiwan, in the western Pacific, Pentagon...