A defense science board panel has prepared a report that urges the development of anti-satellite weapons.

Several U.S. cities will get an experimental "medical surveillance system" this fall and winter to track diseases in hopes of identifying a biological attack before it reaches epidemic proportions according to Pentagon officials. The system will cobble together environmental monitors that will sample the air for biological agents, and software to collect data from pharmacies, hospitals and doctors' offices and send it to a central system that will search for "spikes" of unusual symptoms.

The Defense Department was braced for a new onslaught of cyber attacks from Chinese hackers in May 2002 but they never materialized: the Chinese government asked private hackers not to repeat the 2001 defacement of U.S. government Web sites according to U.S. defence officials.

North Korea has quietly built a long-range missile base that is larger and more capable than an older and well-known launch pad for intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to independent analysts relying on new satellite images of the site and other data.