There are many weird and wonderful abandoned structures throughout the world, being based in Bangkok, a city of unfinished projects; I certainly see my fair share everyday. But no where has quite as many amazing abandonment’s as the former Soviet Union. The complex political, military and social history has lead to everything from buildings to entire cities being left uncared for, still standing to weather the elements until the end.

More Pictures After The Jump!

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The Pentagon announced last Thursday that a Navy warship has been tasked with shooting down a failing United States spy satellite that is expected to hit Earth within weeks.

In a joint news conference, NASA administrator Michael Griffin and Gen. James Cartwright, the No. 2 officer at the Defense Department, told reporters that an SM-3 missile – originally designed to inbound ballistic missiles - will be fired from a Navy cruiser during the next month to obliterate the inbound spacecraft.

The idea is to break apart the satellite to rid it of toxic fuels which are stored in its tank.The USS Shiloh will be one of three warships that will use the system to target the defunct satellite. Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, did not say when the attempted interception would be conducted, but the satellite is expected to hit Earth somewhere in the Pacific Ocean during the first week of March.

Although Cartwright would not comment on the odds of success it is true that several successful anti-ballistic mile tests have been already conducted from the cruisers, most frequently from the USS Shiloh, but no test has the urgency or high profile as the impending satellite shoot-down.

The Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) can target an object as high as 310 miles when fired vertically. After the third stage of the rocket is spent, the kill vehicle finds the satellite with infrared sensors and then steers towards the target.

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The Navy is hoping that their latest project, a 10 megajoule railgun, will replace the standard 5-inch guns on most of their ships. Currently in testing phase, this awesome weapon uses a magnetic field to fire projectiles at a speed of approx 5,600 mph. But the Navy is not stopping there; they hope to create a 64 megajoule system capable of shooting at over 13,000 mph and hitting 5 meter targets from 200 nautical miles.

Check out two videos of the Railgun in action after the jump>>

“If you’ve got a little over 10 megajoules as with this demonstration model, you’re looking at 5,600 mph. When the system is completed, it’ll be firing shells with over six times that energy (well over 13,000 mph) using 64 megajoules of energy”

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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.

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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?

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.

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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.

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The threat of improvised explosive devices (IED’s) 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.

It is often said that amphibious assaults are the hardest of all military operations to coordinate. High Speed Amphibians enable a transformation of operational maneuvers from the sea to the land like never before. An amphibious operation is a military operation launched from the sea by naval and landing forces embarked in ships or craft involving a landing on a hostile or potentially hostile shore or beachhead. Modern U.S. Navy Amphibious Assault Ships project power and maintain presence by serving as the cornerstone of the Amphibious Readiness Group (ARG) / Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG). The two nations that have made by far the most amphibious assaults during the past century are the United States and the United Kingdom. From the great assaults of World War II to the recent attack on the Al-Faw Peninsula in Iraq, both countries have been at the forefront of developing amphibious assault doctrine and shipping. From small swift reconnaissance missions to truly amphibious expeditionary and support vehicles, High Speed Amphibians have the ability to realize the vision of the future fighting force. The transition from land to sea, and vice-versa, is seamless, eliminating operational pause in ship to objective maneuvers.

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I came across some great Naval pictures of the USN I wanted to post real quick. Eventually I want to add update the photo gallery and get some of these pics up.

Naval Fleet Crusing Near Guam

PACIFIC OCEAN (June 18, 2006) — USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) and USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) carrier strike groups steam in formation during a joint photo exercise (PHOTOEX) in preparation for Valiant Shield 2006. The PHOTOEX featured 14 ships as well as 17 aircraft from Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corp including a B2 bomber. The Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group is currently participating in Valiant Shield 2006, the largest joint exercise in recent history. Held in the Guam operating area (June 19-23), the exercise involves 28 Naval vessels including three carrier strike groups, more than 300 aircraft and more than 20,000 service members from the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Jarod Hodge)