Lockheed’s Flying Dud

The Self-Locking F-22

Barlett and Steele Are Back

Exposing SAIC in the Bowels of the Hollywood Issue of Vanity Fair

Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow

Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the “body shops”—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the “expertise” behind the Iraq war.

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

Eisenhower’s Worst Nightmare Now Harsh Reality For Americans

Eisenhower…in his last speech before vacating the White House to make room for the just-elected John F. Kennedy, warned America of a “disastrous rise of misplaced power” if we continued allowing the germination of a new historical entity he called “the military-industrial complex.”

Very few Americans knew what the heck Eisenhower was talking about. We do now.

George W. Jetson’s plan for Iraq

The president checks in on the development of jet packs and laser guns to be sent to the Mideast.

[Thanks William]

Safety fears as US demonstrates crowd control heat-ray weapon

It looks like a table top stuck on a Humvee, but to the US military it is a revolutionary new weapon, a controversial heat-ray destined to change the face of conflict by dispersing mobs, protecting military bases and sorting friend from foe without inflicting injuries.

Called Silent Guardian, the prototype fires a high-intensity beam of millimetre waves, inflicting a burning sensation like a light bulb pressed against the skin.

Carlyle and BAE bid for missile subs

BRITAIN’s biggest defence contractor, BAE Systems, has teamed up with Carlyle, the controversial American private-equity house, to launch a joint bid for control of Britain’s nuclear submarine industry.

The move could also lead to the creation of a single “super-contractor” that would build and maintain all of Britain’s warships, both submarines and surface vessels.

Interior, Pentagon Faulted In Audits

Effort to Speed Defense Contracts Wasted Millions

Slipping and Sliding and Groping and Hoping

December 3, 2006

About 8 inches of snow came down around Chicago early yesterday. Then the temperature dropped and it got icy. Not an insurmountable problem, but it was a struggle.

Meanwhile, I hear Blackwater Security is setting up a big training center about 80 miles or so out west of here, in the middle of nowhere.

US casts sole ‘no’ vote against proposed treaty restricting arms trade

The United States, which is the world’s biggest exporter of arms and accounts for more than 50 per cent of all arms exports, on Wednesday became the only country in the United Nations to vote against letting work begin on a new treaty to bolster arms embargoes and prevent human rights abuses by setting uniform worldwide standards for arms deals.

Only paranoia can justify the world’s second biggest military budget

George Monbiot

Britain’s level of defence spending isn’t related to real threats we face, but the needs of our military-industrial complex