X-47B Drone & Manned F-18 Takeoff & Land Together In Historic Test

"Lavi" M-346 Jet Trainer night flight ops.

I can't wait to see these weaponized.  With modern precision attack munitions & air-air missiles I wonder why more countries aren't buying pocket fighters for homeland defense?  With the enormous cost of the F-35, we probably will in the near future.

X-47 operating with Super Hornets aboard carrier (pics)! Beats F-35C to sea!

All pics via xinhuanet.com

Did you hear about the hoax that had Louisville Police and the community on edge?

A little background.  This from the Inquistr.com

Residents in Louisville, Kentucky are being warned that a real life “Purge” could be planned for this weekend, and police say they are ready.
As reported by WLKY, Louisville Metropolitan Police report that posters and fliers have sprung up advertising that a ‘Purge’ crime spree would be in effect on Friday from 8:30 pm to Saturday at 6:30 am for residents in Kentucky’s largest city. Louisville MPD released a statement on the posters and fliers assuring residents that the department will be ready if there are any sort of mass disturbances.

Then this from E! online.

Yikes!
The horror franchise The Purge, in which people are legally permitted to commit crimes, including murder, for 12 hours, appeared to have inspired a hoax threat on Twitter promoting a "Louisville Purge," which even gave a time frame (that has passed). The message spooked scores of people and spurred copycat tweets and Facebook posts, some of which spoofed the original 2013 movie poster, as well as police action.
Officers recently located and spoke to the person they believe posted it, who is a teenager and has not been arrested or charged. The person told reporters on Friday that the message was meant to be a joke and has apologized for it.
"I didn't think it would really get that serious until it actually did," the teen was quoted as telling reporters, according to Louisville's NBC TV affiliate, WAVE 3. "Then I started feeling really bad about it because people's mamma's talkin' bout movin' to Indiana for the night and stuff. It was wrong for me to do that. I apologize to everybody in Louisville. I love my city. It's where I was born and raised. I love my city and don't really wanna harm my city. I just thought it would be funny."

We live in interesting times. 

Venezuelan Marines acquire the BTR VN-1 (Chinese Wheeled Amphibious Combat Vehicle).

Many thanks to Majtaz for the link!

via AFV Club.

The amphibious armored personnel carrier vehicle 8 × 8 Norinco VN-1 is one of the models acquired weapons systems to China as part of a process of re-equipping Marine Bolivariana de Venezuela and will be delivered soon.
Its development Began in the 1990s, being first seen in 2006, to enter service Shortly after the Chinese Army with ZBL-09 designation as a replacement of the armored personnel carrier 6 × 6 Type 92 For export designation is VN-1.
The VN-1 has-been Influenced by Russian and Western vehicles, Especially by American Stryker. Modular in design, construction consisted of six modules, treats including module engine, transmission, control, suspension, helmet and weapons station module.

Read the entire article but now is it becoming clear?

The F-35 has wrecked US Marine Corps procurement plans to such a degree that while 3rd world Marine forces are acquiring new APC/IFVs, we're still operating...and will continue to operate a vehicle that was first conceived more than 50 years ago.

The failure of Amos' is complete... remember this via Defense Tech...

“There are two answers to that, one is as Commandant of the Marine Corps’s answer which is Before I leave leave office four years from now … we’ll have a program of record, we’ll have steel, there will be a vehicle and I’ll be able to drive it,” Amos said responding to lawmakers questions during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. “I’m trying to pressurize industry, I’m trying to pressurize the acquisition folks, I want the word to get out. If we followed the standard acquisition timeline, which in some cases got us to where we are today, it’ll be 2024.”

And then this from the same article...

“Something probably that resembles the sense of urgency that we had for the MRAP but probably a little bit more scheduled, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

He lied, equivocated and was indecisive for one reason.  To save the F-35.   The F-35 will have to stack up an impressive kill record to equal how many Marines will have died in an antiquated vehicles because funding was diverted to it instead of this more pressing issue.

ISIS slaughters 700 Syrians. Before this is done Syrians will beg for Bashar to lead them

via Jerusalem Online.

A human rights organization active in Syria reported today that the terrorist organization ISIS massacred 700 Syrians in Deir Al Zor in the northern part of the country.
According to Reuters, the terrorists murdered members of the Al Sheitat tribe by beheading them, after two weeks of fighting in the area.
Despite the extension of the terrorist organization’s activities in Syria, most of the brutal actions committed by ISIS are concentrated in Iraq. Tonight, ISIS terrorists went to a Yazidi village in northern Iraq and massacred the people. From the reports, it is indicated that at least 80 people were slaughtered. “They came to the village in the afternoon and they simply started to slaughter,” a Kurdish official stated.

I marvel at how quickly reality has destroyed the fantasy coming out of the White House and State Dept.

Once we worked to unseat Bashar.  Now we're all but fighting to keep him in power...as a matter of fact I bet we're secretly doing our best to keep him in charge.  Its a good thing that he doesn't want to see the region burn...or at least his benefactors don't because all he would have to do is announce that he was leaving office and the country and it would be all over.

Things are gonna get worse.  At this point its inevitable.

My prediction?  I expect Lebanon to be targeted soon.  That will be the game changer.  They are NOT strong enough to stop ISIS, and ISIS will continue with this slaughter.  That will be the trigger for US, European and UN troops to be back in the middle of this madness.

A corrected blast from the past....

Many thanks to Ordika for the link.

via Popular Science.

Seventy-four years ago, Russia accomplished what no country had before, or has since—it sent armed ground robots into battle. These remote-controlled Teletanks took the field during one of WWII’s earliest and most obscure clashes, as Soviet forces pushed into Eastern Finland for roughly three and a half months, from 1939 to 1940. The Finns, by all accounts, were vastly outnumbered and outgunned, with exponentially fewer aircraft and tanks. But the Winter War, as it was later called (it began in late November, and ended in mid-March), wasn’t a swift, one-sided victory. As the more experienced Finnish troops dug in their heels, Russian advancement was proving slow and costly. So the Red Army sent in the robots.
Specifically, the Soviets deployed two battalions of Teletanks, most of them existing T-26 light tanks stuffed with hydraulics and wired for radio control. Operators could pilot the unmanned vehicle from more than a kilometer away, punching at rows of dedicated buttons (no thumbsticks or D-pads to be found) to steer the tank or fire on targets with a machine gun or flame thrower. And the Teletank had the barest minimum of autonomous functionality: if it wandered out of radio range, the tank would come to a stop after a half-minute, and sit, engine idling, until contact was reestablished.
Notably missing, though, was any sort of remote sensing capability—the Teletank couldn’t relay sound or audio back to its human driver, most often located in a fully-crewed T-26 trailing behind the mechanized one. This was robotic teleoperation at its most crude, and made for halting, imprecise maneuvering across uneven terrain.

Robotic ground vehicles.

One of the fantasy future technologies that DARPA and the Pentagon are pursuing.

The IDF made the claim that they had accomplished a first by using an unmanned M113 to deliver supplies to troops in Gaza.  That may be true, but the first to use unmanned armored vehicles as a combat and not logistical vehicle appears to be the Russians during WW2.

Is this the end of the debate?  Probably not.  Parallel development happened during this time and I'm sure the Brits or Germans will also make claims...but I need to see the historical evidence to not declare that this was the first combat use of unmanned armored vehicles in combat. 

Sidenote:  Ordika also provided this blog source for more information on Russian Security Forces, White Russian Underground Movement and of course WW2 developments.  A MUST READ!