Circle girl to the rescue!

Financial Times headline:

Asia defence spending to overtake Europe

Fortunately, the European Empire has women who sit in circles with disapproving looks to defend it.

For thee, but not for me

Who should be made to ride second class?

Members of Parliament who abdicated their power to an unelected Brussels elite and then proceeded to plunder their expense accounts like their personal bank?

Don't be ridiculous!

Military officers who actually do a job of work in defence of the realm in the face of insane budget cuts and command one of the few institutions that still embody traditional British values despite decades of social engineering?

Of course!

Going Dutch

The Dutch unveil a new modular helmet system that allows soldiers to go from shooting glasses to full "Luke, I am your father" with a few additions.

Any smart ass who does heavy breathing in the thing gets a fortnight of guard duty.

On The Job Training: Afghanistan

President Barack Hussein Obama met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss Afghanistan and displayed a poor grasp of what it means to be Commander in Chief. According to The Telegraph,

The president was concerned by a lack of strategy at his first meeting with Gates and the US joint chiefs of staff last month in “the tank”, the secure conference room in the Pentagon. He asked: “What’s the endgame?” and did not receive a convincing answer.

I suspect that's because the Chairman of the JCOS's reply was along the lines of : "Um, Mr President, it's your job to tell us that. You give the orders, we carry them out".

We Can Regrow Him

Spray-on limbs and print-out organs; the cutting edge (pardon the pun) of military surgery

Frenching The Army

France is reducing it's army with combat-ready forces cut from 50,000 to 30,000.

Number of white flags remains constant.

V-STAR

At Tales of Future Past we see a lot of flying cars, but a "flying Humvee?"

The mental picture is a bit frightening.

PHaSr

I don't know if it works or not, but it definitely looks like something Avon would tote around.

Baron Frankenstein, Call You Service

Prof. Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield warns that battlefield robots "Pose a threat to humanity".

In other news, Skynet was seen whistling casually and staring at the ceiling.

Outrage Football

The US military handed out footballs festooned with flags of all nations to Afghan children as goodwill gift and received heartfelt thanks in return. No, actually the kids' elders were (all together now) outraged because one of the flags in question was the Saudi Arabian flag, which has the ward "Allah" written on it.

Did the elders take the footballs away from the kids and put them in a place of veneration and leave it at that? Was the "outrage" aimed at the Saudis for the presumption and poor foresight of putting a supposedly inviolable holy word on a flag, given that flags tend to end up on footballs and other things that get kicked, thumped, bashed, sloshed and shot depending on circumstances? Of course not. It was focused like a gun sight at those wicked Americans for distributing something that they almost certainly did not manufacture themselves and was intended to be used in a way that no one who has a sense of proportion and was not constantly looking for a new grievance would regard as unreasonable. After all, the Union Jack, to give one example, has not one but four Christian crosses on it and no one howls sacrilege when a pair of Reeboks gets scuffed.

This is one of those situations where a strong "get a life" statement is the only one appropriate. For propaganda reasons the Pentagon can't do it, so let's leave it to the more general observations of Pat Condell via Theo Spark.

So Near, Yet So Far

From The Register:

US wants trucks mounted with frikkin' laser beams

I was so disappointed to learn this wasn't about commercial haulers.

Robobear

The US military is developing a robot stretcher bearer with a "Teddy bear face designed to be reassuring."

That is "reassuring" as in "guaranteed to induce a fit of the screaming meemies."

Pain Ray

How fast does the US military's new pain ray work?

That fast.

Roboshark

The US military is working on ways to convert sharks to remote control.

Now if we can just put frikkin' lasers in their heads we'll have the set.