Month: June 2007

Raytheon Studies Supersonic Tomahawk

Given its relatively low speed, less than Mach 2.5, this is much easier than some of the high supersonic (Mach 3+) and hypersonic vehicles (Mach 5+).

The lower speed eliminates a whole bunch of leading/bleeding edge technologies which are EXPENSIVE and time consuming.

Raytheon Studies Supersonic Tomahawk

Raytheon Studies Supersonic Tomahawk
Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/18/2007, page 56

Douglas Barrie
London

Raytheon studies supersonic cruise missile within Tomahawk infrastructure constraints

Printed headline: High-Speed Shortcut

Raytheon is studying a “Supersonic Tomahawk” concept it believes could offer the U.S. Navy a quick path to fielding a comparatively high-speed conventional strike weapon.

After 18 months of company-funded concept development, Raytheon has submitted preliminary study work to the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR).

“We decided to look at what we could do from a Raytheon viewpoint. . . .Could you design a supersonic Tomahawk to fit . . . in the current tube,” says Harry Schulte, vice president of strike weapons at Raytheon Missile Systems.

One aim was to examine whether the constraints of fitting within the existing Tomahawk launch-tube would place unacceptable limitations on a supersonic weapon’s performance in terms of range. “Could we live with the constraints?” says Schulte.

The 1,000-mi.-range subsonic Tomahawk has a cruise speed of about 0.8 Mach. While a supersonic weapon based on the “same” airframe size would not give a similar range, Schulte says the figures came back suggesting 600-650-mi. ranges were achievable.


The Supersonic Tomahawk concept indicates a clear lineage to its subsonic origins. Credit: RAYTHEON

The company discussed with engine manufacturer Williams propulsion options for the design concept. The design studies suggested that a cruise speed of Mach 2 to Mach 2.2 was viable.

Alenia Aeronautic Unveils New Unmanned Aircraft

I just think that this drone is wicked cool looking.

It’s a Predator-B class drone.

Alenia Aeronautic Unveils New Unmanned Aircraft

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/18/2007, page 112

Andy Nativi
Rome

Sky-Y prototype could clear the way for pan-European unmanned aircraft project

Printed headline: Unmanned and Unveiled

Alenia Aeronautica hopes its work on a medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aircraft demonstrator will spur interest in a future European collaborative program.

The so-called Sky-Y has been underway in secret for several months, but this week the company is expected to lift the veil on the project. A Sky-Y model will be shown at the Paris air show, while the real version is undergoing trials at the Vidsel test range in Sweden.


Finmeccanica is trying to break into the medium-altitude unmanned aircraft market, building on work done with earlier UAV demonstrators. Credit: ALENIA AERONAUTICA

Radar Threatens Stealth

I would note that the basic science of stealth originates same Russian mathematics paper of the mid-1960s as it always had, so my money is on anti-Stealth in the medium term.

Radar Threatens Stealth (Subscription Required)

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/18/2007, page 132

David A. Fulghum
Washington

The debate continues over whose black projects are most effective

Printed headline: Stealth Rules

The stealth versus radar contest is making another of its periodic swings–this time in favor of new, advanced radars. But stealth specialists say it won’t be enough because stealth is improving even faster than the radars.

There’s a new generation of stealth on the way that will be seen in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Navy’s new Unmanned Combat Air System. It will provide protection against high-frequency radars traditionally associated with advanced air defenses. But stealth designs will also be tuned to evade low-frequency radars that can detect older stealth designs like the F-117.

Meanwhile, advanced radars are being developed by the U.S., France, Britain and Russia, with Moscow expected to share the technology with the Chinese military. The active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars are made up of thousands of efficient transmitter/receiver modules that produce a versatile, long-range radar. The F-22’s radar, which measures about 2 X 3 ft., has an estimated range of about 125-150 mi. The MP-RTIP radar–designed for the E-10 with a 4 X 20-ft. antenna to counter stealth–would have had an estimated range of perhaps 300 mi. or more. U.S. officials hint at ground-based radars with even greater ranges. It’s known that Israel’s Green Pine AESA radar is big and powerful enough to watch missile tests in Syria and Iran.

Even more intriguingly, if all the beams can be focused on a single spot–perhaps an enemy cruise missile, radar or a headquarters packed with computers–an electronic spike of electricity can be produced large enough to blind sensors, fill them with false targets and scramble computer memories. Raytheon has already tested an air defense system that uses radar transmitters to shoot down shoulder-fired air defense missiles.

Perhaps best of all for the U.S., researchers discovered how to take the products of electronic warfare effects generators and pump them through AESA radars on fighter aircraft–in particular, the latest F/A-18E/F and EA-18G models. That means electronic effects, such as false targets and other misleading data, can be fired as a data stream into the radars and other sensors of other aircraft, missiles and air defense arrays at ranges of a 100 mi. or more, farther than air-to-air weapons.

Air Force officials hint that the capability also exists in the F-22.

“We’re rapidly finding out the things the F-22 brings and how to use them,” says Lt. Gen. Chip Utterback, commander of 13th Air Force. “We are soon to integrate the F-22 and the [Marine Corps AV-8] in ways I would never have imagined. I’m talking about a joint team for a Harrier and an F-22 using the low observability of the F-22 and the ability of the AV-8 to identify and work targets while close to the ground–and while under a high-threat surface-to-air environment. We can put an F-22 in that environment and work some magic . . . in the electronic attack arena where we couldn’t before. With F-22, we can work our conventional forces much more aggressively in a high-threat area.”

Another clue comes from a longtime Pentagon stealth and radar specialist.

“The combination of the F-22’s stealth and electronic attack capabilities allows it to play both sides of the equation by being hard to detect and carrying the capability to generate false targets and jam enemy radars.”


This X-45C tailless flying wing represents the fourth generation of stealth that protects against detection by low-frequency radars as well as it does against traditional high-frequency air defense sensors.Credit: BOEING

….

Phoenix Mars Lander Readied for Launch

This is a highly ambitious project with a real possibility of finding signs of extra-terrestrial life.

Let’s hope that NASA does not screw this up.

Phoenix Mars Lander Readied for Launch(Subscription Required)

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/11/2007, page 56

Craig Covault
Denver, Colo. & Tuscon, Ariz.

The Phoenix lander—with U.S., Canadian and European technology—will broaden the search for life’s clues beyond Earth

Printed headline: Back to Mars

The NASA Phoenix Mars lander, carrying the most ambitious laboratory hardware ever sent to another planet, is ready for launch on a mission to taste Martian water and search for the organic carbon building-blocks of life near the planet’s north pole.

The spacecraft’s nearly 8-ft.-long robotic arm will dig trenches up to 3 ft. deep for imagery of subsurface layers and the retrieval of soil and ice samples for its complex mini-laboratories. This should enable Phoenix to determine what’s happening now, relative to the suitability for life, at a specific landing site where scientists know there’s water in the form of permafrost or ice. This is in contrast to the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are equipped with geology sensors to determine what happened in the past, back to billions of years ago at their respective landing sites.

And Phoenix, with advanced technology from the U.S., Canada and Europe, will conduct much more complex sample processing and climate studies than was possible on the 1976 twin Viking landers that had a less capable arm and different analysis labs.


The Phoenix lander will lift off in August on a Delta II headed for touchdown in the north polar region of Mars. It will sample Martian water, ice and soil, searching for organic compounds critical to life. The circular Phoenix solar arrays, spanning 18 ft., were designed by ATK and adopted by Lockheed Martin for its winning Crew Exploration Vehicle design.Credit: PAT CORKERY/LOCKHEED MARTIN


Phoenix will land on 12 Aerojet hydrazine-powered rocket engines. They will be fired after separation from the spacecraft’s parachute at 1,870-ft. altitude 26 sec. before touchdown—171 million mi. from Earth. Phoenix is too large to use airbags, as did the Mars rovers and earlier Pathfinder lander. The 1976 Vikings also used powered descents.Credit: NASA JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA


Water blasts through 12 descent engines on nonflight engineering model of spacecraft in critical test of propellant-line stresses as engines cycle on and off on split-second basis.Credit: PAT CORKERY/LOCKHEED MARTIN


Robotic arm (A) equipped with lights and scoop (B) will deposit water, ice and soil samples in eight TEGA ovens (C) that will bake out organic signatures at up to 1,800F. The arm will also deposit soil in MECA wet chemistry lab (D) that will add water to four cells. MECA also has 10 atomic force microscope slides. Canadian weather station (E) includes laser ranging beam and silver temperature/wind mast (center). Stereo imager (F) will take detailed images of trench layers. Lander must relay all data by UHF antenna (G) to Mars orbiters.


Phoenix in launch configuration is encased in aeroshell with heat shield at blunt end for a Mars atmospheric entry. It will employ Mars hypersonic guidance using a segment of the Apollo Earth-reentry algorithm.Credit: PAT CORKERY/LOCKHEED MARTIN

America’s Mayor Skipped 911 Panel for Lucrative Speaking Gigs

Damn, this guy is such a disaster.

He will make Goldwater’s run look like a walk in the park for the Republicans.

Rudy missing in action for Iraq panel

Giuliani’s campaign fundraising kept him from commitment to panel studying Iraq.

BY CRAIG GORDON
craig.gordon@newsday.com

June 18, 2007, 11:41 PM EDT

WASHINGTON — Rudolph Giuliani’s membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel’s top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited “previous time commitments” in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why — the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani’s lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Giuliani failed to show up for a pair of two-day sessions that occurred during his tenure, the sources said — and both times, they conflicted with paid public appearances shown on his recent financial disclosure. Giuliani quit the group during his busiest stretch in 2006, when he gave 20 speeches in a single month that brought in $1.7 million.

On one day the panel gathered in Washington — May 18, 2006 — Giuliani delivered a $100,000 speech on leadership at an Atlanta business awards breakfast. Later that day, he attended a $100-a-ticket Atlanta political fundraiser for conservative ally Ralph Reed, whom Giuliani hoped would provide a major boost to his presidential campaign.

Someone In NASA or the ESA Loves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Maybe, it’s happenstance, but I think that it’s the turtles.

Think about it, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphaelo. Some Italian turtles fan?

NASA Nears Decision on Permanently Attached MPLM

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/11/2007, page 33

Michael A. Taverna
Turin, Italy

NASA nears decision on MPLM; European inflatable and robot concepts advance

Printed headline: Housecleaning

Thales Alenia Space says it’s close to clinching a deal with the European Space Agency and NASA to modify a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module so it can be permanently moored to the International Space Station once the shuttle is retired.

Such a plan–intended to add pressurized storage space needed to reduce clutter in living and working areas of the ISS–has been “kicking around for a while,” says Dino Brondolo, the company’s director of infrastucture programs, but has grown in priority as NASA confirmed its decision to phase out the shuttle by 2010. A green light would have to be given by the fall in order to complete modifications in time for the final MPLM mission, he says.


This X-45C tailless flying wing represents the fourth generation of stealth that protects against detection by low-frequency radars as well as it does against traditional high-frequency air defense sensors.Credit: BOEING

NASA is working out final specifications and discussing a barter acquisition arrangement with ESA and Italian space agency (ASI) for the plan, along the lines of previous agreements involving two new interconnecting modules, Node 2 and 3, and the Cupola astronaut viewing station, all of which, like MPLM, were built by Thales Alenia. Brondolo rates the chances for a go-ahead as “good.”

Carried in the shuttle cargo bay, the 21-ft.-dia., 15-ft.-long MPLM can supply up to 10 metric tons of pressurized cargo to and from the station, arranged on 16 standard racks. Attached to the ISS, it would provide an additional 70 cu. meters of volume–comparable to the Columbus or U.S. habitation modules–freeing up storage space for other functions.

Three vessels were initially procured from Thales Alenia, for a design life of 25 missions each. However, because of the drastic reduction in shuttle missions, only two–Rafaelo and Leonardo–have flown since their inaugural flight in March 2001, and they have totaled only seven missions between them. The third ship, Donatello, is set for a sole mission in January 2009. Only two other flights are currently planned–Leonardo in October 2008 and Rafaelo in July 2009.

If there had been 4, it would have been named Michaelangelo.

AMD To Challenge Intel on Ultra Mobile PC Chips

I’m rooting for AMD on pretty every thing that they challenge Intel on.

AMD ‘Bobcat’ to challenge Intel next-gen UMPC platform

By Tony Smith
11 Jun 2007 09:43
Rival for ‘Silverthorne’

AMD will next year launch a processor specifically designed for ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs), the chip maker revealed last week at the Computex show in Taipei.

Details remain scarce, but the chip is currently codenamed ‘Bobcat’, a feline moniker that perhaps aligns it with ‘Puma’, AMD’s upcoming notebook platform. Puma comprises new mobile chipsets and AMD’s ‘Griffin’ processor, the first CPU it has designed specifically for mobile applications rather than a tweaked version of its desktop processors.

It’s not hard to envisage Bobcat as a combination of processor and GPU with both of these components bonded together in a single package. But that’s just conjecture at this point.

France Pushes Operational Space Surveillance, Elint Capabilities

Another case of a headline abuse. The “Accent Graves” thing in the printed version is a bad French pun.

FWIW, Sarkosy will be big on the ability to do this independently, the Gaullists, and his party is one of their descendants have always been bigger on this than the socialists.

France Pushes Operational Space Surveillance, Elint Capabilities

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/18/2007, page 70

Michael A. Taverna
Broye-les-Pesmes and Rennes, France

France pushes Europe to develop operational space surveillance, elint capabilities

Printed headline: Accent Graves

France is inviting its European neighbors to collaborate on a ground-based space surveillance system as part of a proposed military space buildup that could include operational signals intelligence and data relay networks.

Since December 2005, the French air force’s air defense/air operations command has been operating a space surveillance facility that was initially intended as a technology demonstrator. Unlike existing systems in the U.S. and Russia, which rely on an array of sensors, the French installation, called Graves, uses a single bistatic radar and a powerful 60-Gflop/sec. processing system to detect the angular and radial velocity measurements of orbiting spacecraft and–using patented algorithms–determine their orbital parameters. A four-transmitter array is located at Broye-les-Pesmes, east of Dijon; receivers are on the Plateau d’Albion, 400 km. (250 mi.) south.

Non-NATO Tactical Data Link Developed

Thales can’t be the only people offering this sort of capability.

I imagine that the British or Germans have something similar, and that there was a similar system that dates back to the USSR.

Thales Develops LX16 Tactical Data Link for Non-NATO Countries

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/18/2007, page 114

Joris Janssen Lok
Paris

Link 16-equivalent data link gives nations option for tactical network

Printed headline: Non-NATO Network

Thales is proposing a tactical data link that gives nations not currently allowed to use the NATO-standard Link 16 the option to acquire a similar capability, which Thales calls LX16.

At least one Asian country is in negotiations to equip all of its armed forces (air, land and maritime) with LX16, say company sources, while declining to identify the customer.

Thales is also receiving “strong interest” in LX16 from several other nations as well as from “aircraft manufacturers who are not in NATO countries and who sell outside NATO.”

“Non-NATO air customers often love to get a Link 16 capability, but they can’t–so we developed an equivalent tactical data link that uses the same message set, grammar and vocabulary,” says Patrice Caine, vice president for communications, navigation and identification activities in Thales Land & Joint Systems.

Once installed, the equipment behind LX16 can be modified “virtually overnight” to support Link 16 proper, Caine suggests. Such an upgrade could be considered if an LX16 user becomes eligible to join the Link 16 user community–for example, when there’s a need to participate in Link 16 networks during coalition operations.

The change from an LX16 to a Link 16 configuration can be achieved by adding a MIDS-LVT (Multifunctional Information Distribution System-Low Volume Terminal) to each aircraft, ship or land asset that needs to participate in the Link 16 network.

Thales is also working to make LX16 interoperable with Link 16 without having to add MIDS-LVT terminals to all platforms. That would be a gateway system that allows the LX16 network to interface with Link 16.

While Link 16 operates in the 960-1215-MHz. frequency range (L-band), Thales’s LX16 operates at 300-600 MHz.

The lower frequency implies that there would be lower throughput, but I’m not up on radio Frequency stuff, so I’m not sure how much.

Mine Hunting Dolphins and Sea Lions ????

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? They use dolphins and sea lions?

U.S. Navy Fielding First of Many Organic AMCM Tools

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/18/2007, page 95

Amy Butler
Washington

U.S. Navy takes first of many steps to overhaul countermine capabilities

Printed headline: Going Organic

The U.S. Navy is planning to field its first organic airborne mine countermeasures (AMCM) capability this fall with the introduction of the first of five of the MH-60S’s key mine-hunting components into the fleet by year-end.

The AN/AQS-20 Mine Hunting Sonar system is nearing completion of its technical evaluation phase and will be dispatched to the fleet by the end of the year. The device, designed by Raytheon, will be towed behind the MH-60S and is used to detect mines in deep water.

With the fielding of this device and a new semi-submersible mine-hunting vehicle also being deployed for the first time this year, the Navy is embarking on a years-long shift in handling the tricky and elusive task of finding and neutralizing mines. The central tenet of the Navy’s new countermine strategy is to remove its sailors, mine-hunting dolphins and sea lions and ships from direct contact with the mines during future countermine operations. Today, minesweeping ships operate in the minefield and Navy divers or sea mammals physically attach charges to neutralize each individual mine. This process is both time-consuming and dangerous.

…..

I can just see the ad: Wanted EOD* expert. Must work for fish.

*EOD=Explosive Ordinance Disposal.

Impeach Antonin Scalia

Impeach him now.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

With real, and counter productive, torture going on RIGHT NOW, authorized at the highest levels of government, this twit has to use a bit of schlock TV, because he just wants to torture people.

What would Jack Bauer do?
Canadian jurist prompts international justice panel to debate TV drama 24’s use of torture

COLIN FREEZE

June 16, 2007

OTTAWA — Justice Antonin Scalia is one of the most powerful judges on the planet.

The job of the veteran U.S. Supreme Court judge is to ensure that the superpower lives up to its Constitution. But in his free time, he is a fan of 24, the popular TV drama where the maverick federal agent Jack Bauer routinely tortures terrorists to save American lives. This much was made clear at a legal conference in Ottawa this week.

Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge’s passing remark – ‘Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?’ ‘ – got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.”

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.
….

Bloomberg Leaving Republican Party

Great. Now we get to see Another exercise in political masturbation.

Seeing as we have a large number of people who won’t be able to bring themselves to vote Republithug this time around, this gives them a way NOT to vote Democratic.

Wanker.

Bloomberg Leaving Republican Party
By Sewell Chan
UPDATED, 8:01 p.m.

Michael R. Bloomberg, a longtime Democrat who switched to the Republican Party to run for mayor of New York City in 2001, announced this evening that he is changing his party status and registering as an independent. His office released this statement at 6:05 p.m. (EST):

Neat Tech, Two Mics for Clearer Sound

It sounds obvious when you hear about it, but this one actually sounds patentable.

Bluetooth headsets to get dual mics
Aussie developers use secondary mics for noise suppression
By Bryan Betts → More by this author
Published Sunday 10th June 2007 09:02 GMT

Adding a second microphone to a Bluetooth headset significantly improves its ability to capture speech by making it more effective at noise cancellation and suppression, according to Australian audio software developer Dynamic Hearing.

The company has added a multi-mic feature called VoiceField to its Atlas audio processing software for CSR’s Bluetooth silicon. VoiceField uses two microphones, one in the usual place to capture the user’s speech, and the other located elsewhere to pick up the background noise.

The software in effect subtracts the latter from the former, leaving what Dynamic Hearing’s CEO, Dr Elaine Saunders, called “an extremely clean transmit signal”.

MAV goes into battle in the hunt for IEDs

I worked on the Manned Ground Vehicles (MGV) of the FCS “system of systems“, not this, though some of the “stowage envelopes might have included this.

MAV goes into battle in the hunt for IEDs

Honeywell’s Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) is being deployed in Iraq to help US troops hunt for improvised explosive devices (IED). This is the first time a ducted-fan unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has been used in combat missions.

Developed for the US Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) programme, MAV is designed to be man-pack portable. It operates like a small remote-controlled helicopter and can take off and land vertically without runways or helipads. Information from its electro-optical and infra-red (IR) video cameras relay information back to hand-held terminals on the ground.

Deployment takes less than five minutes, and lifting power for the 13in (325mm) device comes courtesy of an RCV-supplied engine-driven ducted fan. The MAV has a 50kt (90km/h) top speed and an operating ceiling of 10,500ft.

The YouTube – uTube Lawsuit

The suit is just plain silly. It’s clear that Utube had real damage as a result of Youtube, intentional or not, and Google could have made this all go away for a few bucks.

See the website screen capture below. All they have done is to put up a banner to cover the costs of clueless people who can’t type in a web site correctly.

A screen shot of Utube: Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

YouTube – uTube showdown stays alive in federal court

A website by any other name
By Kevin Fayle in San Francisco
Published Tuesday 12th June 2007 22:14 GMT

Silicon Justice What’s in a name, right?

For the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation, operator of uTube.com, its domain name means cash – and with a federal court’s recent refusal to dismiss the company’s suit against YouTube, the possibility of even more cash in the future.

The company has operated uTube.com as a means to sell used pipe and tube mills and rollform machinery since 1996. After YouTube’s launch in 2005, the sleepy little Ohio website went from around 1,500 visitors a month to roughly 70,000 per day. The company alleges that this caused its web host’s servers to crash, which disrupted its business and sullied its reputation. It also claims that bandwidth overages bumped its hosting fees from $100 a month to $2,500.

In true Midwestern fashion, the company made the best of a bad situation by adding a ringtone search engine to the site, as well as links to dating, insurance and gambling sites. These new features now pull in $1,000 a day or more, according to one report.

In addition to capitalizing on the name confusion by hawking Internet crap, uTube has also sued YouTube in federal court. The company has asked for monetary damages, as well as injunctions to stop YouTube’s operation and for the court to transfer the YouTube.com domain to uTube.

The judge hearing the case just dismissed a number of uTube’s complaints, but also refused to grant YouTube’s motion to dismiss the entire suit. The judge also gave uTube permission to amend its complaint to see if it can revive any of the dismissed causes of action.

This guy is Too Stupid to Cut His Own Meat

In fact, I’d be worried if he knows how to consume oatmeal.

Never heard of Rand McNally, huh. Or the fact that this imagery is available through third parties for less than the cost of a air of expensive chows.

Why the hell is he a Democrat? It’s too f&^%ing stupid to be a Democrat.

There are real issues of privace with some of the stuff that Google is doing, like it’s new “Street” program, and they seem have lost the word “Don’t” from their motto*, but this objection is just asinine.

Google Maps aids terrorists, NY lawmaker warns

‘It’s only a matter of time’
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
Published Monday 11th June 2007 20:24 GMT

Adding to the chorus of critics who say detailed images on Google Earth can aid and abet terrorists and snoops, a New York state lawmaker is calling on the company to blur potential terrorist targets.

The plea from Assemblyman Mike Gianaris follows the alleged discovery earlier this month of a plot by a Muslim terrorist cell to blow up fuel tanks and a jet fuel pipeline at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Some of the suspects planning the attack had used Google-produced images clearly depicting airport infrastructure after surveillance video they secured proved inadequate, according to an indictment in the case.

“It’s only a matter of time before someone uses the information Google Earth provides to do this country harm,” Gianaris was quoted as saying in an article in the New York Post. He objects to the satellite images carried on Google Earth and Google Maps that gives detailed views of skyscrapers, airports and other potential terror targets.

Gianaris is only the latest individual to criticize Google for making available images that have the potential to violate national security, privacy or other vital interests. In addition to officials in the US, Australia, India and South Korea complaining about sensitive facilities being clearly visible in online mapping services, other critics warn the rich detail could trample civil liberties.

*“Don’t be evil.” Is the Google motto.

I Hate This

It seems that any day of the year, you could put this story in the newspaper, and not be wrong, just either late or early.

Damn, damn, danm, damn.

Rockets fall on northern Israel – CNN.com

JERUSALEM (CNN) — At least two Katyusha rockets fired from Lebanon landed near the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona on Sunday, police and Israel Defense Forces said.

Lebanese security sources later reported that another rocket fired from Lebanon never made it across the Israeli border and landed near an observation post operated by the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

A representative from the U.N. force called the attack a “serious violation of Security Council Resolution 1701 and of the cessation of the hostility agreement” that followed last year’s war between Israel and Hezbollah militants.

“An investigation is under way,” the representative said, asking all parties to “exercise maximum restraint.”

All three missiles were launched using timing devices, and a fourth rocket failed to fire and is being dismantled by the Lebanese army, the sources said. (Watch the aftermath of the rocket attacks Video)

Hezbollah quickly denied responsibility for the attack, Lebanese security sources said.

A Lebanese security source told the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, that suspected Palestinian gunmen carried out the attack.

This is, of course, a bald faced lie. Nothing goes down in southern Lebanon without Hesbolla’s asy so, and they are not going to allow Sunnis (Palestinians) fo screw things up for them.

There were no reports of casualties, police said. Only minor damage was reported.

Thank goodness for that.

And in The OTHER War….

This is why the Iraq debacle is so damaging.

As a result, we are now losing TWO wars, not just one.

Taliban fighters seize south Afghan area – Yahoo! News

By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Taliban militants overran a district in southern
Afghanistan and are pushing for control of another key area, sparking fierce clashes with
NATO and Afghan forces that have left more than 100 people dead over three days, officials said Tuesday.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters launched raids on police posts near the strategic town of Chora in Uruzgan province Saturday, forcing NATO, backed by fighter jets, to respond. Fighting was continuing Tuesday, and some officials reported there have been dozens of civilian casualties.

Also late Monday, Taliban occupied Miya Nishin district in neighboring Kandahar province, said provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai. Authorities were planning an operation to retake the remote area, he said.

The insurgent push in the south appears to be the biggest Taliban offensive of the year and marks a change in tactics.

Quote of the Day: George Soros

An appropriate Nazi metaphor from a holocaust survivor.
Here:

The United States is now recognizing the errors it had made in Iraq, he said, adding, “To what extent it recognizes the mistake will determine its future.” Mr. Soros said Turkey and Japan were still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany’s rejection of its Nazi-era past.

“America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” he said. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.” (Emphasis Mine)