Over the weekend I was able to get sometime at the paintball courses out here in Thailand. The courses are actually just jungle with some forts and miscellaneous vehicles for reference points. Paintball is a huge hobby for military guys and a great way to hone your military skills. Most bases offer paintball courses, and of course you can always set up your own in your backyard. Today well list out where to get the latest paintball gear online.

Ultimate Paintball Gun Store, obvious by its name, carries a large selection of hot paintball manufactures such as: Tippmann, Spyder, Smart Parts, Dye, Draxxus. The list doesn’t stop there so you can easily compare prices, check out the latest styles, and research extreme paintball gear to find which is best for you.

(Click Here To Read More…)

During a family member’s, who is a former Marine, recent vacation in the Richmond area, he met a family who had pulled into the same motel. They had a Marine Corps sticker on their vehicles so obviously he was interested to learn when he had served. He said that he hadn’t but that his son had and was killed in Iraq recently. He then told him about what the program below, and then told me about it. Maybe you can send some small items maybe you can’t. But this is non-political and a small way to show support. Think about it anyway. It’s nice to live in relative safety and FREEDOM! Think about those that provide that for you!

At The Least, Please Help Get This Message Out To As Many People as Possible! It is A Wonderful Way to Support Our Troops and Provide Them With A Little Comfort From Home.

Remember there are two battle fields. The one overseas and the one here at home. It seems like we have to battle the media and the cowards in congress. The American’s of the World War II era helped shaped the great lives we share today by greatly helping the outcome of the War by sacrificing a little bit of their time and little bit of their luxuries.

:: :: :: ::
:: :: :: ::

Mission Statement:

We are a non profit organization. We do not support nor oppose the war. Our only interest is in supporting the brave men and women who put their lives on the line everyday to protect our great country. Their mission in Iraq is a difficult one, both physically and mentally. Our goal is to show them how grateful we our for their service and sacrifice.

Our mission is to send some of the comforts of home to those who so diligently watch over and protect us.

We appreciate all the supply donations you have to offer. Please click here to learn more about where to send them. http://www.adamconboymemorialfund.org/

(Click Here To Read More…)

Inspirational soldier rap video from a Marine expressing his patriotism for love for fellow troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan

UPDATE FROM BLACKFIVE:

Just in- Another co-worker of SSGT Dean’s forwards his have MySpace page In deference to accuracy and at the request of many of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, I have added a T to the SSG in SSGT Dean’s rank. Ooh rah, Eat the Apple……never mind. Semper Fi.

Most of you saw this video when we posted it earlier this week, and most of you wrote to say how wonderful it was. It contained many heartfelt sentiments about what being an American and an American fighting man means. The artist was unknown, until now. Ladies and Gentlemen I introduce you to SSGT Lawrence E. Dean II. A reader who may claim her kudos in the comments if she wants to, alerted us that SSgt Dean was the artist and he worked with her husband. She sent along B5 contact info and then let me know we needed to coordinate with the Cherry Point PAO and Mr. Mike Barton was very helpful and facilitated a phone interview w/ SSGT Dean. Here is the coolest thing, the piece is titled She Called, well She is his Grandma and the piece is his explanation to her of why he would go to war. WOW! It was great to talk with him and I wish him the best in what could be a second career. Semper Fi!

Visit http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/08/exclusive-inter.html For The Exclusive Interview

Israeli women play a vital role in the Israeli Armed Forces. All citizens are drafted at the age of 18, the guys are required to complete of 3 years service and the women 2 years. With a whole country of 18-20 year old ladies attending the Armed Forces perhaps the guys would not have to be automatically drafted if some these pictures were used in recruitment campaigns.

Here is a Collection of Israel’s Military Armed Forces Finest!

(Click Here To Read More…)

Range, speed and flexibility. Hard rules once defined by the limitations of previous medium-lift helicopters. The V-22 is the world’s first production tilt-rotor combines the vertical performance of a helicopter with the high speed and range of a fixed wing aircraft which offers twice the speed, three times the payload, five times the range, and can fly more than twice as high as older rotor craft it is destined to replace. The Osprey is about to revolutionize military air transport in a way that has not been seen since the introduction of helicopters more than 50 years ago.

The Osprey is a tilt rotor vertical/short take off and landing (VSTOL) multi-mission aircraft with capabilities like no other. Combining the vertical flight capabilities of a helicopter with the speed and range of a turbo prop airplane it permits air to aerial refueling and worldwide self deployment.

(Click Here To Read More…)

Boeing have been hot press this year following the highly anticipated 787 Dreamliner, despite the huge launch campaign and all the time spent perfecting the Dreamliner, Boeing have still found time to develop and begin testing the new X-48B an unmanned Blended Wing Body Aircraft or BWB.

The first ever flight took off on the 20th July from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. This X-48B is only the second prototype that Boeing has built and the only one tested in flight; it was created to test the “structural, aerodynamic and operational efficiencies of the BWB concept,” according to Bob Liebeck, the BWB program manager, especially during take off and landing.

BWB planes don’t have a tail, the wing itself blends into the fuselage, giving more lift and less drag than a traditional circular fuselage. This means 30% less fuel consumption than a normal plane and also less noise, both inside and on the ground.

(Click Here To Read More…)

Great video clip, from the cockpit of a U.S. Military Jet turbo-prop, of a fighter pilots naval aviator’s view when landing on a runway flight deck of a military nuclear powered aircraft carrier during a military exercise in the middle of the ocean.

Can anyone give us any information on the type of Jet this pilot is flying or which carrier they are landing on?

Iraq war veteran Sgt. Juan Arredondo can now grasp tennis balls and door knobs with his left hand again, now that he’s been outfitted with a bionic hand that has flexible fingers. This brings new meaning and current implementation to once futuristic themes such as Terminator, Robo Cop and Star Wars.

The 27-year-old former Army soldier, who lost his left hand in 2005 during a patrol in Iraq when a IED exploded through the left side of his vehicle, is one of the first recipients of the i-LIMB. Arredondo was on patrol in Iraq on Feb. 28, 2005, when an explosive device blasted through the left side of his vehicle. As he jumped from the driver’s seat, he noticed that his left hand was still clutching the steering wheel. At San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center, he was stabilized enough to have his amputated arm closed up and readied for a prosthesis. He went through two artificial arms until finally receiving the i-Limb.

“To have this movement, it’s — it’s amazing! My son tells me I’m half robot, half man,”

Arredondo said Monday as he showed off the limb made by Scotland-based Touch Bionics.

(Click Here To Read More…)

With a few new additions to 800hightech digital camera range, I thought we would take some time to take a look at what Nikon digital cameras have to offer for those interested in photography. Nikon has long been a leader in photography and still remains a professional camera brands in the digital photography realm. Nikon produces a wide range of cameras to suit everyone’s needs. We at 800hightech have selected and made available three different models, the compact digital CoolPix P5000, the D40x Digital SLR and the D80 Digital SLR, which are ideal for military members who are interested in photography and cover technical ranges from beginner to professional.

Digital SLR Cameras

A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that operates on the same optical and mechanical principles as a modern electronic autofocus 35mm film single-lens reflex camera. The key difference is that the film is replaced with a CCD or CMOS image sensor plus accompanying electronics, thus creating images digitally in-camera, without the need to first chemically develop a latent image on film.

We will explore advance Nikon Digital SLR and SLR-like Cameras. The Nikon CoolPix 5000 is a SLR-like Digital Camera, while the Nikon D40X and the Nikon D80. Considering taking up or enhancing your photography hobby? Here are some new cameras that will take your photography to a new level that takes advantage of the newest digital photo technology!

(Click Here To Read More…)

Defense and security has come a long way in recent years, with tragic events like Sept 9/11 the public has seen a sharp increase in security measures worldwide. Now a Florida based start-up dubbed SeaAway (no relation to Segway) has turned their attention to making our ports a lot safer and guarding against terrorist attacks.

To security experts, the immense cargo ships that ferry more than 11 million containers into this country annually are potential Trojan horses each one could easily harbor a WMD (weapons of Mass Destruction), such as a dirty bomb. At present, only once the ships have been unloaded is their cargo subjected to random inspections and radiation scans. This method is outdated and well overdue for an upgrade!

SeaAway has developed a security system that would move cargo screening 14 miles offshore to the safety of the open seas. The plan calls for pairs of 100-foot-wide platforms anchored outside the world’s major ports. Equipped with an array of unmanned surveillance drones and sensors such as RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification), the system monitors for chemical, biological and nuclear traces as ships travel between the platforms. If the sensor flags a suspicious container the Coast Guard is called into action. Robots have played a vital role in the War on Terror as we have seen from our previous posts.

(Click Here To Read More…)

A three letter abbreviation that’s becoming synonymous with the Iraq War is IDE. Improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action.The Navy recently pressed for new out-of-the-box technologies that could predict where IED bombs will explode, now the Marines have just ordered 1000 mine resistant, ambush-protected vehicle (MRAP’s) to further save lives on the streets of Iraq.

The Cougar (known in the United Kingdom as “Tempest”, and previously it seems in the US as “Lion” and “Typhoon”), is designed to withstand a 30-pound blast of TNT to either the front or rear axles as well as a 15-pound blast to the center portion of the vehicle. The Cougar Hardened Engineer Vehicle, until 2002 marketed as the Lion, can be configured to complete a wide variety of mission requirements. The new HEV can serve as a mine-proof troop transport vehicle, a law enforcement special response vehicle, a weapons platform, or an escort protection vehicle.

The $490 million contract, which will be the biggest order for MRAP’s so far, calls for 300 Cougar 4 x 4s and 700 of the larger, six-wheeled Cougar 6 x 6s. Whilst no vehicle is completely safe from an IDE the Cougar is better armored than the Humvee and features a V-shaped undercarriage that partially redirects explosive blasts around the vehicle. The Marines field-tested various mine-resistant vehicles before settling on the Cougar. In 2006 this Cougar RG-31 suffered a direct IED hit, but none of the crew were killed.

The Cougar 4 x 4 and 6 x 6 models both have 330-hp diesels, top speeds of 65 mph, a 600-mile range, and seating for 10. The 6 x 6 can haul 14,000 pounds, nearly triple the 4 x 4 max load. Cougar, developed and produced by Force Protection Inc. is a multi-purpose, 12 ton mine protected armored patrol vehicle. The design uses a monocoque, bulletproof and blast-proof capsule fitted with transparent armored glass, which protects the driver and crew from small arms fire, mine blasts and IED.

Typical roles for the vehicle are armored, mine protected troop transport for security, stability and peacekeeping missions, protected weapons platform, law enforcement special response vehicle, counter IED an EOD / Range Clearance vehicle. The vehicle can accommodate 10 passengers in a 4×4 configuration and 16 passengers in a 6×6 configuration. Cougar was selected to serve with the US Marine Corps as a Hardened Engineer Vehicle (HEV), to support engineer mine clearing and explosive ordnance disposal teams deployed in Iraq.

As of June 2006, there are more than 130 Cougars and Buffalos in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since their deployment to Iraq in 2003 the Cougar and Buffalo vehicles employed with explosive ordnance disposal teams and engineers units have taken about 1,000 IED hits without a loss of life, said Wayne Phillips, a company vice president in charge of Marine Corps programs. The vehicle has proven to be superior to less protected vehicles, such as the up-armored Humvee or armored trucks.

Bigger plans to order more MRAP’s are still caught up in political controversy however the Pentagon hopes to eventually deploy a total of 7774 MRAPs at the total cost of 8.4 billion dollars. A small price to pay for the lives of our Troops on the streets of Iraq.

Defense Technology on the H Series Cougar Armord Truck

Air Force 326 Training Squadron Head Shot

The threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or street bombs is ever growing, especially on the streets of Iraq and detecting them has always been a problem. Now the Navy is trying to take bomb disposal to the next level by requesting proposals and offering grants for new technologies that can predict where bombs will actually be placed.

The office of Naval Research says it is looking for theoretical and technical approaches to:

• Permit the prediction of bomb emplacements
• Identify and localize bomb makers, storage nodes, safe zones and caches
• Identify or predict changing or emerging threat tactics.
• Track components, practices and procedures used in fabrication and assembly.

The project will possibly use any combination of statistical, logical, chemical, and psychological data to predict where the next bomb will be placed and is all part of a broader push to develop “fundamentally new theories, data, concepts, and principles that could one day help U.S. forces detect, neutralize, and guard themselves against improvised bombs.

Other ideas include “advanced sensor networks” to automatically detect bomb-placing, with “minimal” human involvement, technologies to “quickly and remotely destroy explosive devices without necessarily having to detect them” and methods to identify the “behavioral [and] physiological” signatures of the bombs’ “human initiators and observers.”

The closing date for proposals is 20th of July with grants being given sometime before Halloween, perhaps it won’t be too long before this technology is more than just an idea.

American soldiers have been using laser scopes for a long time, to make their shots more accurate. But what if the bullets themselves were steered by lasers, and able to turn on a dime? That’s the idea behind a new, $7.5 million Darpa initiative to be a “laser-guided bullet” recently unclassified. DARPA have justified plans to begin funding research into designing a laser guided bullet, the 7.5 million dollar initiative could see science fiction become a reality with bullets actually able to change trajectory in mid-flight. The hope with this technology is that the compact targeting systems embedded in the projectiles will enable,

Overmatching fire power and significantly improve first site effectiveness in engaging distant enemy forces.

The goal appears to be to “enable low-cost, high performance guided projectiles” that take advantage of “guidance and targeting systems.” While the idea of a laser-guided bullet conjures images of soldiers marching across fields, spraying ammo that never misses, the report mentions that the technology is intended to be used by Special Forces and Army Sniper Teams. So, boiled down, we’re talking a bullet that’s going to be fired at long range by a sniper and be able to adjust its trajectory mid-flight, as to have a better chance of hitting the target.

To make this possible researchers will have to design whole new guidance technologies, such as MEMS based thrusters and initial side thrusting technologies with sufficient authority to move projectiles in flight. The bullet will need high stress tolerant electronics and new targeting systems robust to field operations under a variety of conditions.

The developments in fire power have continued to make warfare more precise, could laser guided-bullets be the next generation of ammunition?

Great video of an AC-130 Gunship in Action Over Afghanistan. Silently Hovering Taking the Taliban Out!!