Theresa Hitchens analyzes the Bush Administration's new National Space Policy, finding that "while [it] doesn't go as far as some space hawks wanted it to in openly endorsing the strategy of fighting 'in, from and through' space, neither has it served to put a blanket – even a thin one – on those ambitions."
Defensetech's Noah Shachtman and Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information pick apart a recent story in Defense News that claims China is testing blinding lasers on U.S. military satellites.
A U.S. Navy program called the Revolutionary Approach to Time-Critical Long-Range Strike (or Rattlrs) aims to build a hypersonic missile demonstrator "with trace-ability to an eventual tactical weapon."
The Israeli government is openly considering jamming Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV broadcasts -- which stayed on the air, despite repeated aerial and electronic attacks -- despite the fact that these transmissions are carried by commercial satellites.
The Chinese National Space Administration recently invited NASA's head to visit China. The hope is that would be the first step in future cooperation between the two agencies, a first date in case "we need to get married some day."
The U.S. is developing a set of palm-sized, networked sensors that can be scattered around, and work together to "detect, classify, localize, and track dismounted combatants under foliage and in urban environments." It's part of a larger Defense Department effort to establish "military omniscience" and "ubiquitous monitoring."
David Hambling has a two-part series up on current research into directed-energy weapons that target the nervous system. The first part looks at U.S. Air Force research into this, including the infamous Active Denial System or "pain ray". The second part looks at Russian research into developing a heart-stopping, death ray.
The Pentagon has finally approved the deployment of the Active Denial System to Iraq. The system is a directed energy weapon that causes acute but non-lethal pain to all subjects within range and is slated to be used for breaking up prison riots and controlling unruly crowds.
An in-depth look at that claim that Iraqi insurgents might be using a military-grade hallucinogen on themselves to artificially increase their agressiveness.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg responds to a recent article in Technology Review that argued advances in genetic engineering technology made 'home-brewed' biological weapons a real possibility. Rosenberg argues that more attention should be paid to known government research into biological weapons than the hypothetical risks from bioterrorism.