.: LarsonsWorld :.
just another persons waste of time
just another persons waste of time
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others,
are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams
.: The Wild Weapons of DARPA :.
04 March 2004
.: The Wild Weapons of DARPA :.
Found this interesting article on TomDispach.com by Nicholas Turse.
When, in October 1957, the USSR launched the first man-made earth satellite, the basketball-sized Sputnik, it caught the United States off guard and sent the government into fits. Not only had the Soviets exploded an atomic bomb years before the Americans predicted they would, but now they were leading the "space race." In response, the Defense Department approved funding for a new U.S. satellite project, headed by former Nazi SS officer Wernher von Braun, and created, in 1958, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to make certain that the United States forever after maintained "a lead in applying state-of-the-art technology for military capabilities and to prevent technological surprise from her adversaries."
Almost half a century later, what's left of the USSR is a collapsed group of half-failed states, while the U.S. stands alone as the globe's sole hyperpower. Yet DARPA, the agency for an arms-race world, seems only to be warming up to the chase. There may be no country left to take the lead from us, the nearest military competitor being China which reportedly had $65 billion in military expenditures in 2002 (compared to our $466 billion according to GlobalSecurity.org) and which, only in 2003, put its first "Taikonaut" into outer space. Undaunted, DARPA continues to develop high-tech weapons systems for 2025-2050 and beyond – some of them standard fare like your run-of-the-mill. hypersonic bombers, others more exotic.
The rest of the article:
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1290
~ ~ ~
Posted by: Peter - 7:53 PM MST
Tags: Internet Surfin' The Written Word
Permalink
|
Digg 
|
reddit 
|
StumbleUpon 
