Photo: Andrew R. Whalley/Flickr CC

Blackwater, among the most tainted blood-soaked brands out there, is now slapping its pay print logo on pro shops.

The shops are located near military bases along the East Coast.

In an effort to distance themselves from the name which many felt was tainted, Blackwater executives came up with the inert name “Xe” to help revamp their tarnished image. Here we are a little over a year later and although Xe didn’t seem to do much for anyone, it seems that the name Blackwater still has some life in it. Despite negative connotations almost everywhere else, the firm still enjoys a great deal of support from the gun owning public. So it only seems natural that the Blackwater name and iconic bear paw logo would begin to see a resurgence. Poised to open are combination pro shops and indoor ranges in Fayetteville, North Carolina and Salem, Connecticut. What is the significance of these two disparate locations you might ask? Fayetteville should come as no surprise as it is home to Fort Bragg. However, many would not know that Salem is right up the road from the Navy’s submarine force based in Groton, Connecticut.

via Blackwater Pro Shops – Coming to a Town Near You « Soldier Systems.

Photo: Cory Doctorow/Flickr CC

A British army sniper got lucky in Afghanistan last year, when he plugged two enemy fighters more than one-and-a-half miles away, with his 8.59 mm long range rifle.

The rifle has a 25X scope.

The Times of London, in a piece that furthers the sniper mystique, says the soldier scored his record kills in November of last year, in a piece that reads like something ran today.

“Tom Irwin, a director of Accuracy International, the British manufacturer of the L115A3 rifle, said: ‘It is still fairly accurate beyond 4,921ft, but at that distance luck plays as much of a part as anything.’”

via Hotshot sniper in one-and-a-half mile double kill – Times Online.

via I am Military on Twitter.

MOSCOW – Russia admitted on Thursday that its much-touted Bulava intercontinental missile failed another test, after unusual lights were spotted in Norway across the border from the launch site.

via Russia admits missile caused UFO lights – Space- msnbc.com.

The US government’s allegations back-up the explosive testimony of two former Blackwater employees. Gov’t says Blackwater shot Iraqis as “payback for 9/11”

I am disgusted that my tax dollars are propping-up the tinpot dictators who permit miserable bastards, like these, to torture girls.

I’m also sickened by the YouTube commentators who either endorse this torture (one stupidly argues that flogging will solve America’s drug “problem”), or say the girl appears to be sexually aroused.

Photo: CC/David Lisbona

Military brass and scholars this May will meet to discuss a frightening near-future scenario, filled with loose nukes, bioweapons and untraceable terrorists.

This year’s symposium will examine the nation’s preparedness to prevent or manage four WMD crises that could transform U.S. security:

* Collapse of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime, in which a number of current, unresolved nuclear proliferation challenges threaten to unleash a sudden and destabilizing wave of proliferation;

* Failure of a WMD-Armed State, creating unprecedented risks that radical actors will obtain WMD and unprecedented challenges for prevention;

* A Biological Terror Campaign, in which terrorists employ deadly biological pathogens to strike at multiple cities; and

* A Nuclear Detonation in a U.S. City, delivered covertly and leaving great uncertainty about who did it, will it happen again, and how we should respond.

via Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction – National Defense University.

A proposed "geoengineering" Flettner vessel that would move about on the world's oceans, spraying salt into the air, to make clouds more reflective. Image: The Royal Society

Climate change scientists last week met to discuss how high altitude military jets might spray sulfur into the stratosphere, to “geoengineer” climate changes.

Read this excerpt, below. Note my emphasis on the last sentence. This is one of the reasons why Alan Watt is always on about the Club of Rome.

Richard Turco of UCLA estimated that injecting enough sulfur in the stratosphere to properly geoengineer the climate would require 3000 aircraft sorties per day, and cost $50-$100 billion per year. Model results he presented showed a large amount of uncertainty as to what might happen, and he cautioned that there was “no guarantee of success, and failure would be catastrophic”.

A. Robrock of Rutgers disagreed with Dr. Turco, and estimated that the cost of injecting the required amount of sulfur into the stratosphere would by less that $5 billion per year, provided the U.S. military would let scientists use 167 of the existing fleet of 522 F15C Eagle jets to do the job. After all, he reasoned, why wouldn’t the military want to use their aircraft to confront our enemy global warming?

via Wunder Blog : Weather Underground.

Ta-da! Special Forces to the rescue of the McCain campaign. Stay tuned for calls for "the military leader we need in a time of war." Photo: CC/James Gordon

U.S. military helicopters attacked territory inside Syria close to its border with Iraq Sunday, killing eight people in a strike the Syrian government condemned as “serious aggression.”

A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the foreign fighter network that travels through Syria into Iraq in an area where the Americans have been unable to shut it down because it was out of the military’s reach.

“We are taking matters into our own hands,” the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.

After years of testing, the Active Denial System — the pain ray which drives off rioters with a microwave-like beam — could finally have its day. The Army is buying five of the truck-mounted systems for $25 million. But the energy weapon may face new hurdles, before it’s shipped off to the battlefield; a new report details how the supposedly non-lethal blaster could be turned into a flesh-frying killer.

ABC News: Army Orders Pain Ray Trucks; New Report Shows ‘Potential for Death’

Sunnis out, Shias in

It is a cornerstone of Republican John MCain’s presidential campaign: The troop surge is working in Iraq.

Now it appears that McCain is telling a lie (albeit not his own invention), again.

The truth: It is ethnic cleansing, not additional U.S. troops, which have caused a decrease in violence in Sunni neighborhoods, according to a UCLA professor.

Satellite images analyzed by UCLA georgraphy professor John Agnew show that the lights are out in neigborhoods that–had they been saved by U.S. troops–would be on.

“Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning,” said lead author John Agnew, a UCLA professor of geography and authority on ethnic conflict. “By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left.”

UCLA study of satellite imagery casts doubt on surge’s success in Baghdad.