Free Republic

Intelligent advanced aircraft is one thing, but if the Air Force wants to be in prime warfighting condition, its pilots had better come with advanced weaponry, too. That’s why the Air Force wants neuroweapons that can enhance airmen’s performance, while degrading the mental states of their foes. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing just updated a call for proposals that examine “Advances in Bioscience for Airmen Performance,” according to Wired's Danger Room. The initial announcement came out last November, but no one has yet come up with new stimulants that help airmen focus, or models that fuse...

of electrical energy to repel projectiles away from an armored vehicle, British scientists say. Researchers at the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, better know as "Dstl" and located at four sites in England, say it is possible to corporate material known as supercapacitors into armor that would turn a vehicle into a kind of giant battery, The Daily Telegraph reported. Dstl is the research and development arm of the Ministry of Defense. The report said when a threat from an incoming projective is detected, the energy in the supercapacitor can be rapidly pushed into the metal plating on the outside...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

As students settle in to their classes at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., there is good news and bad on the academic front. First, the former because it will take less time than the latter, although the more positive update is not inconsiderable. “On May 20, 2006, President [Brian C.] Mitchell not only attended the ROTC commissioning ceremony, but also spoke movingly about the value of both the ROTC program and our military,” the staff of The Counterweight wrote. “While those outside of academia might see such an act as commonplace, it is anything but.” “When even Bucknell’s own course...