The FBI Announces Gangs Have Infiltrated Every Branch Of The Military

Business Insider

A soldier in a combat zone throwing gang signs

Image: FBI

The FBI has released a new gang assessment announcing that there are 1.4 million gang members in the US, a 40 percent increase since 2009, and that many of these members are getting inside the military (via Stars and Stripes).

The report says the military has seen members from 53 gangs and 100 regions in the U.S. enlist in every branch of the armed forces. Members of every major street gang, some prison gangs, and outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) have been reported on both U.S. and international military installations...[Full Article]

2011 National Gang Threat Assessment – Emerging Trends

view printable version (pdf)

US Army to fly 'kamikaze' drones

Breitbart

A miniature "kamikaze" drone designed to quietly hover in the sky before dive-bombing and slamming into a human target will soon be part of the US Army's arsenal, officials say.

Dubbed the "Switchblade," the robotic aircraft represents the latest attempt by the United States to refine how it takes out suspected militants.

Weighing less than two kilos, the drone is small enough to fit into a soldier's backpack and is launched from a tube, with wings quickly folding out as it soars into the air, according to manufacturer AeroVironment.

Powered by a small electric motor, the Switchblade transmits video in real time from overhead, allowing a soldier to identify an enemy, the company said in a press release last month.

"Upon confirming the target using the live video feed, the operator then sends a command to the air vehicle to arm it and lock its trajectory onto the target," it said.

The drone then flies into the "target," detonating a small explosive...[Full Article]

Army Embeds Active-Duty PSYOPS Soldiers at Local TV Stations

Vigilant Citizen

By VC | May 4th, 2011

In the last twenty years, it has been reported several times that army specialists in propaganda and psychological warfare have been embedded in the staff of television networks.

In the 1980s, officers from the 4th Army PSYOPS group staffed the National Security Council’s Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), a shadowy government propaganda agency that planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration’s Central America policies. In an article in the Miami Herald in 1987, a senior US official described OPD as a “vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory.” An investigation by the congressional General Accounting Office found that OPD had engaged in “prohibited, covert propaganda activities,” and the office was soon shut down as a result of the Iran-Contra investigations. But the 4th PSYOPS group still operates.

An unofficial strategy paper published by the U.S. Naval War College in 1996 and written by an Army officer entitled “Military Operations in the CNN World: Using the Media as a Force Multiplier” urged military commanders to find ways to “leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate” for the purposes of “communicating the [mission's] objective and endstate, boosting friendly morale, executing more effective psychological operations, playing a major role in deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection.”...[Full Article]

New rifles give Army snipers in Afghanistan needed range

USAToday.com

The Army is shipping powerful new rifles to its snipers in Afghanistan to kill insurgents who are firing from greater distances and shooting at troops more frequently than in the early years of the war.

The XM2010 sniper rifle can hit a target 3,937 feet away, which is a quarter-mile farther than the current Army sniper rifle shoots.

The added distance is important because insurgents have been shooting down from ridges and mountaintops where gravity helps their bullets travel farther and beyond the range of Army snipers...

[Full Article ]

Army's largest base reeling from four apparent suicides in one weekend

(CNN) -- Four soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas died over the week. In all four cases, it appears the soldiers, all decorated veterans from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, took their own lives, according to Christopher Haug, a Fort Hood spokesman.

If confirmed as suicides, it would be on top of 14 other suicides on the base this year. Base officials called a news conference for Wednesday afternoon to discuss the problem of suicides at the huge base in central Texas...

[Full Article]

Defense Companies Developing 'Iron Man' Suit for U.S. Army

Army Gears Up to Outfit Soldiers in 'Iron Man' Suit

(Sept. 28) -- Defense companies are hoping someday to outfit soldiers with external skeletons that would bestow the wearer with superhuman capabilities.

That day may still be years away, but Raytheon, one of the companies working on this technology for the Army, is riding the coattails of "Iron Man," which helped popularize the notion of such high-tech armored suits, to show off the prototype it's already created. The company Monday released a video featuring actor Clark Gregg, who plays Agent Phil Coulson in the movie version of "Iron Man," talking about the latest updates to the suit.

Raytheon

Raytheon's second-generation exoskeleton, essentially a wearable robotics suit, was unveiled recently at the company's Salt Lake City research facility. The suit is lighter, stronger and faster than its predecessor, yet it uses 50 percent less power.

While such technology may not have quite the capabilities provided by the "Iron Man" suit of comic book fame, it does have similar goals of bestowing the wearer with superhuman strength. A video of the second-generation exoskeleton robotics suit shows a test engineer karate-chopping wood, performing push-ups and lifting weights...

[Full Article]


Related Article:

Real-Life Iron Man: The Raytheon XOS 2 Exoskeleton [Wired.com]

Veterans sue CIA, Army for experiments at Detrick, Edgewood

A year and a half after a group of veterans sued the CIA, Army and Department of Defense for testing chemicals on troops without consent, the group has asked a judge to penalize the agencies for refusing to cooperate and provide vital records.

According to the veterans, the CIA "exposed thousands of test subjects to hundreds of toxic compounds over the course of many years," states the most recent court document filed in Vietnam Veterans of America v. Central Intelligence Agency.

The veterans claim they were part of experiments that involved psychochemicals, such as LSD, nerve gas and mind control tactics. The veterans never gave informed consent and have not been compensated for health problems they now suffer, they claim...

[Full Article]

High-Tech Army Team Turns From Killers to Airborne Spies

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, AFGHANISTAN — In 2006, the U.S. Army unleashed a lethal machine on Iraq’s insurgent bombers. Relying on a mixture of attack helicopters, unmanned drones, piloted planes and a massive amount of high-tech intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting gear, Task Force ODIN decimated the builders and planters of improvised explosive devices, helping take out hundreds of militants in a single year.

Today, ODIN is in Afghanistan. But it doesn’t do much killing anymore. Its armed drones have opened fire exactly three times since coming here in December 2008. Its commanders shy away from ticking off body counts and measure success by how relevant their information is to ground commanders. It doesn’t even have helicopters these days, relying on partner units when the mission calls for using rotary-wing aircraft. Instead, the task force’s spy planes, drones and analysts quietly track the bombers’ networks instead of targeting individual insurgents. ODIN — short for Observe, Detect, Identify and Neutralize and recalling the All-Father of Norse mythology — takes a broader view of the battlefield now, its All-Seeing Eye trained on giving soldiers a real-time aerial view from above.

Consider ODIN-A, as the task force is known here, another example of the U.S. military’s gamble in Afghanistan: That it can wage a successful counterinsurgency while deemphasizing the killing of insurgents. “’Kill’ isn’t the only answer here. This is a counterinsurgency fight,” Lt. Col. Kevin Diermeier, a 42-year-old Green Bay native who took command of ODIN-A on July 12, tells Danger Room. Adds Maj. Jason Periatt, his executive officer, “You can’t just say, ‘I captured this dude, I killed this dude, I’m making a difference.’ I go back to the ’80s. We started rolling up drug dealers. That doesn’t mean you’re necessarily [succeeding], you’ve got to take the whole concept.”

But some people don’t like their classic myths revamped. For the first time, the heralded program faces angry congressional criticism. But Diermeier has a new, experimental program underway, known as Project Ursus, that brings the task force back to its IED-fighting roots.

It’s one thing to go after the guy who gets paid $50 to plant an IED in the path of a Humvee. There’s an obvious value in doing that, and it’s a component of the task force’s mission. But it’s too narrow a focus, according to Diermeier. “I want the guy who paid him $50,” he says...

[Full Article]

Army Report: AWOLs Up 234%

Tucked into this massive Army report on suicide is an interesting fact: Since 2004, the number of soldiers going AWOL, deserting, and "missing movement" -- that is failing to deploy when they're supposed to -- has gone up a shocking 234 percent...

[Full Article]