A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck near the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, Saturday, but officials said there was no damage reported. The quake was centered 27 miles southwest of Guantanamo and had a depth of 14 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
A magnitude-5 quake can cause considerable damage, but Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta, a spokesman at the base, said there was none reported. There was no tsunami warning issued for the region.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Wavy Gravy Green/Greenish Bands of "Northern Lights" + SKYBALLS oer GUAM-EASTPAC.
FYI the GREEN BANDS have been changing their SKY-TO-SEA SHAPES.
#2
ION SINA WMF > KAZAKHISTAN IN THE EYS OF ITS NEIGHBORS: KAZAKHISTAN IS CHAUVINIST CHINA'S NEXT ATTEMPT AT TIBET-STYLE ANNEXATION | KAZAKHISTAN IS CHINA'S NEXT "TIBET".
* SAME > CHINA WILFULLY TOPPLES THE DOMINOES: SINO-NORTH KOREAN PORTS DEAL ALLOWS CHINA TO "PUSH THE ENVELOPE" IN NORTHEAST ASIA-PACIFIC AGZ THE US, JAPAN, AND RUSSIA, SCEURE THE FIRST ISLAND CHAIN.
SAME [old] > CHINA NEGOTIATES WID RUSSIA OVER SAKHALIN FREE PORTS, INVESTMENTS.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Police in Moscow have dispersed a group of demonstrators, as thousands participated in a nationwide rally against the United Russia government and the Kremlin's economic policies.
Around 50 rallies were staged across the country on Saturday called by a coalition of opposition groups that declared a national "Day of Anger."
The demonstrators are decrying the downward spiral in living standards under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin since the economic crisis, as well as rising unemployment and transport taxes.
In the eastern port city of Vladivostok, at least 1,500 people took to the streets to express their anger over the country's economic situation, while another 1,000 in Saint Petersburg chanted slogans demanding Putin's resignation.
The country is facing its worst economic slump in a decade and the Kremlin critics are blaming the prime minister for not taking steps in the direction of ending the crisis.
The public's discontent was reflected in last week's local elections. Putin's United Russia party won the poll but support had visibly weakened since the financial downturn.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Kind of makes a body wonder when the re-constituted IRS will start arresting Obama protesters.
Posted by: Kelly ||
03/21/2010 13:00 Comments ||
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Now why on earth would the Chinese be studying this kind of thing?
In other news: Japan's military schools studied how to attack Pearl Harbor for years before actually attacking Pearl Harbor. Top political minds are still trying to decide if this means anything.
It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress.
Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be concerned because Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.'
When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang said he and his professor had indeed published Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid' in an international journal called Safety Science last spring. But Mr. Wang said he had simply been trying to find ways to enhance the stability of power grids by exploring potential vulnerabilities.
We usually say attack' so you can see what would happen,' he said. My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.' And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang's work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.
The difference between Mr. Wang's explanation and Mr. Wortzel's conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction.
Already people are interpreting this as demonstrating some kind of interest that China would have in disrupting the U.S. power grid,' said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based cybersecurity research and consulting group. Once you start interpreting every move that a country makes as hostile, it builds paranoia into the system.'
Mr. Wortzel's presentation at the House hearing got a particularly strong reaction from Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, who called the flagging of the Wang paper one thing I think jumps out to all of these Californians here today, or should.'
He was alluding to concerns that arose in 2001 when The Los Angeles Times reported that intrusions into the network that controlled the electrical grid were traced to someone in Guangdong Province, China. Later reports of other attacks often included allegations that the break-ins were orchestrated by the Chinese, although no proof has been produced.
In an interview last week about the Wang paper and his testimony, Mr. Wortzel said that the intention of these particular researchers almost did not matter.
My point is that now that vulnerability is out there all over China for anybody to take advantage of,' he said.
But specialists in the field of network science, which explores the stability of networks like power grids and the Internet, said that was not the case.
Neither the authors of this article, nor any other prior article, has had information on the identity of the power grid components represented as nodes of the network,' Reka Albert, a University of Pennsylvania physicist who has conducted similar studies, said in an e-mail interview. Thus no practical scenarios of an attack on the real power grid can be derived from such work.'
The issue of Mr. Wang's paper aside, experts in computer security say there are genuine reasons for American officials to be wary of China, and they generally tend to dismiss disclaimers by China that it has neither the expertise nor the intention to carry out the kind of attacks that bombard American government and computer systems by the thousands every week.
The trouble is that it is so easy to mask the true source of a computer network attack that any retaliation is fraught with uncertainty. This is why a war of words, like the high-pitched one going on these past months between the United States and China, holds special peril, said John Arquilla, director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
What we know from network science is that dense communications across many different links and many different kinds of links can have effects that are highly unpredictable,' Mr. Arquilla said. Cyberwarfare is in some ways analogous to the way people think about biological weapons that once you set loose such a weapon it may be very hard to control where it goes,' he added.
Tension between China and the United States intensified earlier this year after Google threatened to withdraw from doing business in China, saying that it had evidence of Chinese involvement in a sophisticated Internet intrusion. A number of reports, including one last October by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, of which Mr. Wortzel is vice chairman, have used strong language about the worsening threat of computer attacks, particularly from China.
A large body of both circumstantial and forensic evidence strongly indicates Chinese state involvement in such activities, whether through the direct actions of state entities or through the actions of third-party groups sponsored by the state,' that report stated.
Mr. Wang's research subject was particularly unfortunate because of the widespread perception, particularly among American military contractors and high-technology firms, that adversaries are likely to attack critical infrastructure like the United States electric grid.
Mr. Wang said in the interview that he chose the United States grid for his study basically because it was the easiest way to go. China does not publish data on power grids, he said. The United States does and had had several major blackouts; and, as he reads English, it was the only country he could find with accessible, useful data. He said that he was an emergency events management' expert and that he was mainly studying when a point in a network becomes ineffective.'
I chose the electricity system because the grid can best represent how power currents flow through a network,' he said. I just wanted to do theoretical research.'
The paper notes the vulnerability of different types of computer networks to intentional' attacks. The authors suggest that certain types of attacks may generate a domino-style cascading collapse of an entire network. It is expected that our findings will be helpful for real-life networks to protect the key nodes selected effectively and avoid cascading-failure-induced disasters,' the authors wrote.
Mr. Wang's paper cites the network science research of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a physicist at Northeastern University. Dr. Barabasi has written widely on the potential vulnerability of networks to so-called engineered attacks.
I am not well vested in conspiracy theories,' Dr. Barabasi said in an interview, but this is a rather mainstream topic that is done for a wide range of networks, and, even in the area of power transmission, is not limited to the U.S. system there are similar studies for power grids all over the world.'
(1) Network science is a fairly new discipline. Barabasi and Albert published some foundational papers in network science in 1999. A lot of work has been done since using a variety of old and new mathematical tools. It's a hot topic to publish in.
(2) The I3P, a US government-private consortium, has been evaluating higher level policies and sponsoring research on topics such as the security of the control systems in the power grid from cyber attacks.
#2
Wang was not researching or planning an attack on the US (or it would not have been publicly publshed) but pursuing a more broadly useful branch of study. I have no doubt though that he has countrymen who ARE specifically studying how to take out the US power grid. And we are probably studying similar topics for similar reasons. And like Wang says, understanding the vulnerabilities is key to understanding the defense - against malicious or natural 'attacks'.
#3
Distributed Grid with more local (neighborhood etc) power generation is safer from attack!
To top it off - %75 of the power is lost in transmission so we save energy with local generation on a massive scale.
#5
Public paper, this is much ado about little. Frankly public papers about general vulnerabilities are fine, and if it helps in fixing them, they should actually send a thank you letter. Less so for specific vulnerabilities, unless they dont fix it for a long time.
Why is the beginning of this article so strongly worded and the end less so? Is this article trying to spin and then back itself up to say it isn't?
#6
It is helpful that they published this so that any problems can be addressed. Not that I think the Chinese are allies but they do have a lot of interrelated economic issues that would make collapsing the US powergrid painful to them as well as us. Perhaps this is their way of (a) getting us to fix the problem (b) Embarrassing some Americans at the same time without really causing problems.
#7
I have no doubt though that he has countrymen who ARE specifically studying how to take out the US power grid. And we are probably studying similar topics for similar reasons.
One Dam, one BIG physics package...say in the 1 to 4 megaton range. BOOM!
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
03/21/2010 14:26 Comments ||
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#8
SAM - you don't need anything like that big a boom. They have had enough soil and rock stability problems without any booms at all - shouldn't take much to set the equivalent of a tsunami going in that lake, and I doubt the dam would stand up to it. That said - there is still a whole lot of China that would not be severely affected - how much would Boston be affected by the collapse of Hoover Dam, for instance?
#9
G, yeah, I figured that was way overkill. But hey, anything worth doing is worth doing well. Sure, it would leave a vast bulk of China untouched, but the psychological value of the hit would be devastating. Interesting times we live in.
Stupak folds.
God Bless America!
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
03/21/2010 18:02 Comments ||
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#10
I hate to derail a good argument, but Power grids are NOT interconnected.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/21/2010 18:16 Comments ||
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#11
they should actually send a thank you letter.
Ah, everyone in the donk regime in Washington is too busy trying to figure out how to complete the bankruptcy of the U.S. When we need weapons to defend ourselves, we can always borrow the money from China or outsource production to China.
#12
To top it off - %75 of the power is lost in transmission
It's 7-8%. It's higher now than 30-40 years ago (5%) because of NIMBYs forcing power plants further from consumers. Which also prevents the waste heat from being being used for district heating and cooling.
Posted by: ed ||
03/21/2010 19:50 Comments ||
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#13
ION NEWS SKERAALA > RUSSIA NEEDS 50 NEW N-SUBS TO COUNTER US, UK FLEETS [ + now rising Chin PLAN], to add to 60 RussNav FBM, SSK + Multi-functional Subs already in its fleet.
* SAME/ TIMES OF INDJUH > REPORT:JAPAN WANTS 14 NEW NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. ENERGY-POOR NIPPON desires to reduc its national dependency on ener imports.
#14
NEWS KERALA > EXPERT: UK "UNDER-RESOURCED TO FIGHT A WAR WITH IRAN [NOR ANYONE ELSE, be it singly or in coalition].
ARTIC > Same Pert argues the best Britannia can do in time being is to NUKE 'EM FROM THE GETGO.
* PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUMS > RUSSIAN MEDIAS: CHINA TRYING TO BECOME KEY IN CENTRAL ASIA [ anti-RUSS ECON INVESTMENTS, GEOPOLX VEE former Soviet -STANS].
#16
Distributed Grid with more local (neighborhood etc) power generation is safer from attack!
A distributed grid or (gasp!) a reverse-flow grid in which people generate their own power and sell it back to the grid won't help our overlords in Washington DC control things very easily, will it?
#17
CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [famine]DEATH STALKS THE FROZEN LAND OF GENGHIS KHAN. UNO delcares sttae of emergency for Mongolia.
ARTIC > HEALTHY SELECT ANIMALS are a form of MONGOLIAN HISTOR, ECON, CULTURAL "CURRENCY" + HENCE WEALTH, CREDIBILITY. APPROXI TWO MILYUHN ANIMALS HAVE REPOR DIED THIS PAST WINTER WID ANUTHER TWO MILYUHN AT RISK OF SAME.
IOW, the DEATH OF THEIR CHERISHED ANIMALS = SEEMING WRATH-Of-GOD/KHAN" "APOCALYPSE" FOR ORDINARY MONGOLIANS???
+ VARIOUS > SEVERE DROUGHT STILL RAVAGES SW CHINA/YUNNAN PROVINCE.
US Senator John Kerry expressed support today for about 1,500 Massachusetts immigrants and advocates who are heading to Washington D.C. to call for immigration reform.
"You deserve more than the empty rhetoric and impractical calls for mass deportation we see from opponents of comprehensive immigration reform," Kerry said today in a statement.
The Massachusetts marchers planned to join with tens of thousands of others on the National Mall on Sunday.
The marchers, who are demonstrating the same day as a historic health care vote in the House, are hoping to call attention to an issue they say has been neglected for the past year.
"We were very excited when President Obama talked about the importance of immigration reform and how his administration was working hard on the subject back in June," said Frank Soults, communications director for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, "but although he's made several statements, there hasn't been anything put forward in Congress yet."
Obama has promised to build bipartisan support for immigration reform, even though it's classically been seen as a divisive partisan issue.
On Friday, in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, two leading senators, New York Democrat Charles Schumer and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, outlined a new reform proposal intended to fix what they called a "badly broken" system.
The two senators said Americans overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigration and support legal immigration. They called for requiring high-tech Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; strengthening border security; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a "path to legalization" for those already here.
#3
"You deserve more than the empty rhetoric and impractical calls for mass deportation we see from opponents of comprehensive immigration reform," Kerry said today in a statement.
And thank God we didn't get you for President. We deserve more than you and we deserve more than extremely well-armed narco-terrorists shooting up the Mexico-U.S. border. These terrorists are as bad as AQ except they have a profit motive instead of a religious motive. These terrorists are smuggling illegals and drugs into the U.S. for huge profits. These scum are polluting our cities and our country. Does anyone in D.C. give a flip?
#5
Each illegal in California imposes net costs on the state that amount to about $2,000 per taxpaying CA household. But it's worth it to Tweedledum and Tweedledee: 'dum gets a lock on cheap labor for its greedy business owner constituency, and 'dee gets a lock on the fast-growing, soon to be dominant latino voting bloc. Win-win!
The Federal Reserve Board must disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever, a federal appeals court said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled today that the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched primarily after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The ruling upholds a decision of a lower-court judge, who in August ordered that the information be released.
The Fed had argued that disclosure of the documents threatens to stigmatize borrowers and cause them "severe and irreparable competitive injury," discouraging banks in distress from seeking help. A three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected that argument in a unanimous decision.
Continued on Page 49
The community organizing group Acorn, battered politically from the right and suffering from mismanagement along with a severe loss of government and other funds, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, officials of the group said Friday.
Acorn is holding a teleconference this weekend to discuss plans for a bankruptcy filing, two officials of the group said. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
Over the last six months, at least 15 of the group's 30 state chapters have disbanded and have no plans of re-forming, Acorn officials said. The California and New York chapters, two of the largest, have severed their ties to the national group and have independently reconstituted themselves with new names. Several other state groups are also re-forming outside the Acorn umbrella, and will not be affected if the national organization files for bankruptcy.
Continued on Page 49
I attach nothing but shame with anyone associated with or working for ACORN.
Its the bottom of the buck scumbagness of the whole thing.
Sham on all of you bottom feeders with useless jobs sponsored by punk asses that raid public coffers for your paycheck.
Baggers in the grocery market have far more respect from me than any ACORN employee"". Heck, bagging groceries is far more honorable than being a scumbucket government leach.
Let me see one of you, I will call you a leach or a slug to your face.
#2
The New York chapter has been replaced by a new group, called New York Communities for Change, whose Web site promotes many of Acorn's goals and many of whose staff and community members are the same.
#8
Perfectly-timed msm lies...In reality, Acorn is poised to rx a fin windfall WAY beyond their wildest dream. Tanx 0bami. You be 'da man what am! U-b organizin' like a Chi-Town slumlord, Bro!
#9
Perfectly-timed msm lies...In reality, Acorn is poised to rx a fin windfall WAY beyond their wildest dream. Tanx 0bami. You be 'da man what am! U-b organizin' like a Chi-Town slumlord, Bro!
RTWT before commenting. Both updates are important.
At the House Rules Committee meeting, Democrats desperate to pass their national health care plan are running into the barrier of basic civics. Here is the problem: The Senate has passed its HCR bill. If the House passes the same bill, it goes on to the president; once he signs it, the bill becomes law. But House Democrats, when they vote for the Senate bill using the "Deem & Pass" dodge, also want to simultaneously pass a package of amendments to the law. Except HCR will not, at that point, be law. It will only become law when the president signs it. Congress can amend the law -- it does so all the time -- but can it amend something that isn't law?
Which is where Democrats are tripping up. Passage of their HCR proposal should be very simple: Senate passes it, House passes it, president signs it. But House Democrats are terrified of voting for the unpopular bill, so they hope to pass it by "Deem & Pass," in which they will vote, not for the bill, but for a rule that both deems the Senate bill to have passed and, in the same vote, passes the package of amendments. So House Democrats will have two fig leaves: 1) they didn't vote directly for the Senate bill, and 2) they voted to simultaneously amend -- to "fix" -- the Senate bill.
#1
only in DC... real world common sense has no place there... a bizzaro world where you can with a straight face amend a law that has not passed. (and other even wackier things)
:(
Posted by: abu do you love ||
03/21/2010 2:12 Comments ||
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#2
Our founding fathers probably never even considered this idea because it doesn't make sense. Otherwise, they would have enacted the Bill of Rights before they ratified the Constitution in order to quell concerns, not after.
I wonder what the Constitution would look like if they knew then how people would behave today.
It's gone from "What does the Constitution let us do" to "Well, it doesn't say we can't do that!" And if that is a problem, they redefine the meaning of "regulate" or whatever word is being inconvenient.
Imagine that. My solution: Come back with an estimate of about $6T. The whole thing would run off the rails one way or another, giving them more time to dig through this pile-of-$hit bill and find out that it's going to cost way more than they are proclaiming. Don't forget to include military insurance and the Doctor Fix for starters.
WASHINGTON, DC -- The Obama administration's chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) notified Republican leaders Saturday that the "very tight time frame" and "complexity" of the Democrats' health spending bill would prevent them from fully analyzing the costs and efficacy of the bill before the House voted on the legislation. The letter was in response to a request from House and Senate Republicans.
The Chief Actuary, Richard S. Foster, wrote: "In your letter, you requested that we provide the updated actuarial estimates in time for your review prior to the expected House debate and vote on this legislation on March 21,2010. I regret that my staff and I will not be able to prepare our analysis within this very tight time frame, due to the complexity of the legislation."
#1
It doesn't matter, Barry doesn't care what's in the bill or what it costs. It's all about control, nothing else matters.
Posted by: Jefferson ||
03/21/2010 10:07 Comments ||
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#2
That is exactly right Jefferson. I think there is a strong case for not obeying any law that Congress passes which they don't have to obey themselves. What the hell kind of example do they provide other than being a bunch of arrogant elitists. Why should anyone obey this health care dictatorship they are shoving down our throats. The ruling 30% (Democrats) are forcing 70% shut up and go quietly into the night. Congress doesn't follow any of the laws it passes for the rest of us.
#3
Maybe some of the answer is to get the States to nullify the laws and isolate this cancer called DC.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/21/2010 14:08 Comments ||
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#4
If this turkey passes; it is not over. The States are readying lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of the bill. Many of the states are already broke (mostly historically Democratic). This is an unfunded mandate that will make the situation far worse. You cannot get money from a state that doesn't have any. You can't get money out of 30 million + unemployed people or others who are just hanging on. You can't force people to buy something they can't afford to buy. Next you will be told you can only buy pink tofu, no soft drinks with sugar, only vegetarian food, no tranfats, certain cars, certain types of insulation, and heaters, and on and on...Enough is enough.
#5
This is part of the problem of govt controlled health care: they don't work weekends, even when it means crunching numbers prior to a history altering vote.
Posted by: regular joe ||
03/21/2010 16:43 Comments ||
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[Iran Press TV Latest] In Thailand, the government and the opposition have reportedly agreed to settle their conflicts by attending a meeting in Bangkok, as anti-government protests continued for a seventh consecutive day.
A government minister will meet with a representative of the opposition on Monday, after opposition protesters rejected an earlier government proposal for reconciliation talks.
The red-shirted protestors, mainly supporters of the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, want incumbent Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to step down and snap parliamentary elections to be held.
Vejjajiva has turned down their demands, saying he is ready to negotiate, as long as protesters abide by the law and protests remain peaceful.
However, he rejected calls to dissolve parliament and the call for new elections.
The opposition has been rallying in the capital Bangkok for a week with the hopes of winning support for their anti-government campaign.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2010 00:00 ||
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[Straits Times] CAMBODIA has temporarily banned marriages between local women and South Korean men over concerns about human trafficking, officials said on Saturday.
The ban was enforced after Cambodian police arrested a woman who had lured 25 girls from rural areas, each of whom paid money to marry South Korean men, government spokesman Koy Kuong said. 'This act was trafficking of women and children,' he said, adding that the Cambodian court recently sentenced the woman to 10 years in prison.
Mr Koy Kuong said the South Korean embassy in Phnom Penh had been notified on March 5 about the temporary ban. It was not known when the restriction would be lifted.
Cambodia is a hugely popular destination for South Korean tourists and investors. South Korea is Cambodia's second-biggest source of foreign direct investment after China. An influx of investment from the country after 2004, mainly in garments, IT, and tourism, helped spur four years of double-digit growth in Cambodia. It has since fallen by about 50 percent as a result of the global financial crisis.
Mr Bith Kimhong, head of the police's Anti-Human Trafficking Department, told Reuters that the convicted woman had charged US$100 (S$140) from every girl selected by South Korean men for marriage.
He said agents were banned from facilitating marriages, adding that the law required foreigners to first talk to the parents of their future spouses. 'Taking commission for marriage is illegal,' he said. 'If you want to have a Cambodian woman to be your wife, you have to ask for her hand traditionally and be registered at the village and community level.'
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Interesting to consider what would happen if the North Asian nations with their traditions towards Male children all came to the south for brides. The article only mentions South Koreans but I'm wondering if China and Japan followed suit. Would the ethnic blending likely to occur do anything to change the inherent racism of the Chinese and Japanese?
A space-age "force field" capable of protecting armoured vehicles and tanks by repelling incoming fire is being developed by British military scientists.
The new type of armour will use pulses of electrical energy to repel rockets, shrapnel and other ammunition that might damage a vehicle. Researchers at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), which is the research and development arm of the Ministry of Defence, claim it is possible to incorporate material known as supercapacitors into armour of a vehicle to turn it into a kind of giant battery. When a threat from incoming fire is detected by the vehicle, the energy stored in the supercapacitor can be rapidly dumped onto the metal plating on the outside of the vehicle, producing a strong electromagnetic field. Scientists behind the project claim this would produce a momentary "force field" capable of repelling the incoming rounds and projectiles. Although it would last for only a fraction of a second, if timed correctly it could prevent rocket propelled grenades, which detonate on impact, from reaching their target. The supercapacitor could then be rapidly recharged ready for another attack. The idea is similar to the force fields portrayed in science fiction movies which produce an invisible protective shell around a vehicle or object.
Professor Bryn James, head of Dstl's armour and protection science and technology centre, said the electric armour had the potential to dramatically decrease the weight of military vehicles and tanks. Currently few tanks are able to carry enough armour needed to resist impacts from RPG rounds, which produce jets of molten copper capable of punching through more than foot of solid steel upon impact. He said: "The supercapacitor material can be charged up and then discharged in one powerful event to repel incoming fire. You would think this would require huge amounts of energy, but we have found it can be done with surprisingly small amounts of electrical power. Conventional armour is just a lump of metal but an RPG round can punch through more than a foot of steel. Carrying around enough armour to protect against that is extremely heavy. The real advantage to the electric armour is how light it can be by comparison."
Sophisticated tracking systems will also need to be developed to work in conjunction with the new armour so that incoming threats can be identified and the electrical discharge timed correctly to repel the rocket. It is unlikely that such a system would be used against fire from small arms as the outer skin can be made to be bullet proof. Armour piercing rounds, RPGs and "shaped charge" roadside bombs pose a far greater threat to armoured vehicles and tanks as it is not possible to put enough armour plating on all parts of the vehicle to protect it completely. The comparatively lightweight electric armour, however, could be used to protect the entire outer shell of a vehicle by using a thin cloth-like flexible supercapacitor material. This can be used to form a lining beneath the armour that turns the vehicle into a giant battery pack.
An early incarnation of a different type of electric armour technology has already been trailed by Dstl. It used several layers of metal which have electric current flowing through them. When an RPG round penetrates the outer layer, it completes the electrical circuit creating a highly electrically charged field between the layers. This charged field vaporises the copper jet that shoots out from the front of the RPG warhead, preventing it from penetrating the inner hull of the vehicle and keeping the soldiers inside safe. At a test in 2002, senior British Army officers saw the chassis of a Warrior infantry carrier, which was fitted with the early electric armour, survive repeated attack by RPGs before being driven away with only minor damage.
Scientists from Dstl outlined their plans to use this technology at an MoD showcase of military technology last week. The MoD has tasked Dstl with reducing the weight of armoured vehicles by 70 per cent over the next decade in a bid to improve speed and manoeuvrability.
Dstl has also developed an experimental armour steel that is covered in holes known as Super Bainite, which could also be used on vehicles. Scientists found they could double the ballistic performance of the armour by introducing the holes to the steel, while halving its weight. Professor Peter Brown, who headed the Dstl team that developed Super Bainite, said: "This is because when a bullet hits, it's always near to the edge of a hole. This causes the bullet to topple over, turning it from a sharp projectile to a blunt fragment which is easier to stop."
#2
Such an electromagnetic pulse would fry electronics, ON/IN THE TANK.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/21/2010 11:31 Comments ||
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#3
RJ is right, Military equipment is shielded against EMP pulse but this might be pushing the boundaries. Shielding the vehicle and any other electronic equipment nearby might be a real challenge.
#4
Even assuming it works like advertised, sounds like it would be vulnerable to volley fire, or even just getting hosed down with small arms fire prior to a shaped charge hit. It's discharging a battery, right?
Presumably this wouldn't be combined with existing reactive armor sets, as I'd be more worried about shorts setting off the explosive plates than any damage to the interior electronics, which should be somewhat shielded inside the faraday cage of the armor shell, anyways.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/21/2010 13:59 Comments ||
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#5
With that much electromagnetic energy around, I would worry about the health risks to the soldiers as much as the electronics.
#9
I'm sorry, but if you have the capacitor ability to power this thing, then likely you could arm every tank with a frigging rail gun.
This isn't the first time this idea has popped up, I've seen rumors about it before. And funny how the articles always say they can do this and yet you wait five years and the same idea pops up in the same stages.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck near the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, Saturday, but officials said there was no damage reported. The quake was centered 27 miles southwest of Guantanamo and had a depth of 14 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
US Senator John Kerry expressed support today for about 1,500 Massachusetts immigrants and advocates who are heading to Washington D.C. to call for immigration reform.
Obama has promised to build bipartisan support for immigration reform, even though it's classically been seen as a divisive partisan issue.
The Federal Reserve Board must disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever, a federal appeals court said. 
The community organizing group Acorn, battered politically from the right and suffering from mismanagement along with a severe loss of government and other funds, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, officials of the group said Friday. 
