NASA-Langley photos of a wind tunnel model, circa 1994, showing an F-117 packing two stealthy, flat-bottomed missiles with stowed flip-out fins. Propulsion system unknown, although similar “conformal” missiles were shown repeatedly in the 1980’s with an inlet up front for a turbojet engine.
After all the bitching about how Arizona’s law telling state police to enforce federal immigration laws is going to cause racial profiling… the United States Federal Government, in the forms of both ATF agents and sitting judges, have decided that American citizens had better racially profile… or face jail time:
Yes, yes, I know… “Inforwars” is not exactly the high water mark of non-crazy reporting. But the basic facts of the story seem to check out through other sources:
1) One Paul Copeland was a private citizen at an Austin, TX, gun show in Jan 2010
2) He was there selling a handfull of firearms. Which, as a US citizen, he’s perfectly within his rights to do without obtaining a FFL or any such nonsense.
3) A group of undercover ATF agents as well as Austin PD were at the gun show and observed a group of four Hispanic males. “The agents observed only one member of the group was speaking English, and that the men were avoiding the licensed gun dealers at the show. These observations led the agents to believe that the men might be illegal aliens.”
4) One of the Hispanics (“Aviles”) wanted one of Copelands guns. After the usual haggling, Aviles agreed to buy the gun.
5) Copeland asked to see Aviles identification.
6) Aviles refused to show it.
7) Another one of the group (“Huerta”) produced a seemingly valid Texas drivers license. Aviles gave the money to Huerta, who then bought the pistol from Copeland.
8 ) Huerta then gave the pistol to Aviles. Copeland saw this and objected that he had sold the pistol to Huerta.
9) The ATF agents saw this, and rightly noted that this is what’s known as a “straw purchase…” when someone who is legally notallowed to buy a gun gives the money to someone who is, who then buys it for the other person and gives it to them. This is a federal crime. The criminals here, however, are the straw *purchasers.*
10) The ATF agents stopped Aviles outside of the gun show and determined that he was an illegal alien.
11) The ATF agents then hassled Copeland, claiming he’d sold a firearm to an illegal alien. Copeland countered that he’d sold it to the guy with the apparently valid Texas drivers license.
12) The ATF confiscated all his weapons (the ones for sale as well as the one he was wearing) and let him leave.
13) On March 2, 2010, Copeland was indicted on charges of selling a firearm to an illegal alien, arrested on March 22. At trial, Huerta was brought in as a witness, admitted to being an illegal, admitted to the straw purchace… and was allowed to simply walk out of the courtroom. He has apparently not been arrested for his federal firearms crime *or* for being an illegal alien.
14) Copeland was convicted in federal court on July 20, 2010, and sentenced on August 27 to six months in a “work camp.”
Let me sum up: Copeland was arrested for selling a firearm to someone with a seemingly valid ID. He had no way to determine the legal status of Huerta, Aviles or anyone else. The ATF agents made a preliminary determination that the group of Hispanic males were worth watching as potential illegals because of the way they looked and spoke.
It seems to me that anyone who now wants to discriminate against Hispanics – or pretty much anyone, I suppose – now has a legal precedent for it: simply wave these news articles in the face of anyone who complains. According the the US FedGuv, American citizens will face arrest and conviction if they do business with anyone who *might* be an illegal.
The obvious joke here would be for someone to refuse to serve President Obama a hamburger because he *might* be an illegal.
This is *beyond* sick and wrong:
ANY ITEM that looks like a gun will have to be licensed under several changes to the Weapons Act being considered by the Queensland State Government.
Even guns made out of materials as unlikely as soap or plastic may have to be kept under lock and key if they could “reasonably be taken to be a weapon”. …
Gotta hand it to the gun-grabbers, this is actually fairly clever:
http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480b37fc2
Petition to the Environmental Protection Agency to Ban Lead Shot, Bullets, and Fishing Sinkers Under the Toxic Substances Control Act
It is of course akin to leaving “freedom of the press” intact but banning ink or paper.
Yes, there are non-lead options available for bullets and shot. But not being a reloader myself, I can’t claim to have ever actually heard of reloaders (who cast their own bullets) who reload with much of anything *but* lead.
I don’t know if this will get anywhere, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it does. If there’s one the the government – and that includes the EPA – loves, it’s to grow in scope, power and reach. And banning lead ammo would fill that need niceley: hundreds of millions of American citizens would be left with ammo that they’d get arrested for firing.
You have no idea how much I want me one of these…
http://www.max-11.com/TopSecret.html
THIS ITEM IS NOT FOR SALE, DO NOT ASK TO BE PUT ON A WAITING LIST
Awww.
Now under development for the Army is a modular suborbital/orbital launch vehicle known as MNMS (Multipurpose Nano Missile System). In its basic form, it will be composed of 24-inch diameter cylindrical rockets using pressure fed ethane/nitrous oxide engines. Stack two of these stages together, and a third, smaller stage and cluster six more stages around the first, and you can put 10 kilograms into orbit. At a vehicle cost of $1,000,000 it’s about the cheapest way to put something into orbit… but it works out to a hundred grand a kilo, ten times more expensive per kilo than the Space Shuttle. It can also use surplus ATACMS solid rocket boosters and surplus MLRS rockets.
A video of the concept can be seen here.
It can be used to lob small satellites into orbit, conventional munitions, experimental payladds, and almost certainly things like tactical hypersonic boost-glide recon bots.
All you need is some money and a time machine.
The sad finale of the Navaho intercontinental cruise missile program: selling off the stuff. In this case, the massive launcher. One of the missiles was given to a local high school. My high school never had a strategic weapon… 🙁
The Strategic Defense Initiative was all the rage in my high school days. One of the ideas was to locate missile-killing lasers in low Earth orbit; when the Soviets finally pushed the button, their missiles would get zapped right out of the sky.
In order for that sort of thing to work, there’d have to be a lot of really powerful, really accurate, really reliable lasers in orbit. And in order to build such things in large quantities, you must first build experimental items. One of these was to be the Martin Marietta “Zenith Star” orbital laser platform, which was to be built around the “Alpha” laser platform.
Zenith Star, in most of its incarnations, was composed of two separately-launched spacecraft, joined together once in orbit. The aft portion was the actual Alpha laser generator; the forward portion was the optics and tracking system. The Alpha laser used the reaction of fluorine with hydrogen to generate the laser energy… about two megawatts worth. It would essentially have had an onboard hydrogen/fluorine rocket engine, with all the materials and thermal nightmares that that entails.
Back about 1988, I wrote to Martin asking for info on the Zenith Star (I think I wanted to build a scale model of it or some such). What I got back was a short press release and a glossy of a very nice painting. A few years ago I went hunting for that glossy… I wanted to make a scale model of it, and for the life of me I could not find it. It had utterly vanished. A few versions of it were available online, but they generally kinda sucked. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across it a few days ago while digging through some old (*old*) rocket science/rocket engineering books in my hopeful-yet-unwise attempt at preparing for a job interview that doesn’t seem to be coming. Damned if I know why it was there, but there it was, and now it’s here.
It’s coming, and will be administered byt the IRS. Joy unbounded.
http://www.pgnh.org/obamacare_s_hidden_gun_control
Effective January 1, 2012, the national healthcare legislation passed by Congress contains tax provisions that will require gun dealers to report to the IRS purchases and sales of guns and any other goods valued over $600. IRS 1099 forms will have to be filed, reporting the sale/purchase. This reporting will be required for purchases from either individuals or corporations. The new IRS provisions apply to all goods and services.
Looks like it also means that if you, Regular Joe, decide to sell your $601 hunting rifle to your neighbor, you’ll need to fill out the IRS paperwork… or you’ll go to federal prison.
Use technology. And have Hot Israeli Chicks operate it.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100713/FOREIGN/707129834/1002
It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick.
The aim: to kill.
Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army.
Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.
…
Another piece of hardware recently developed for the Israeli army is the Guardium, an armoured robot-car that can patrol territory at up to 80km per hour, navigate through cities, launch “ambushes” and shoot at targets. It now patrols the Israeli borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Freakin’ AWESOME. The Israelies are surrounded and massively outnumbered; and systems like these will allow them to defend themselves with less risk to their own people’s lives.