Tag: military
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Digging up a Dornier
Dornier was a German aircraft manufacturer active during World War II. One of their more interesting designs was the Do-17 bomber, nicknamed the Pencil Bomber because of its unusually thin fuselage. All surviving examples of the aircraft were thought destroyed until one was found on the floor of the English Channel. Yesterday the Royal Air…
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Testing the Atom Bomb
The Washington Post looked at the testing of the first atomic bomb at White Sands. Nuclear weapons are a topic on which I have done some work in the past. But this piece looks more at the historic test called Trinity. Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Cuadra and Laris Karklis.
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Arming a Civil War
War is good for the arms business. So a long and bloody civil war in Syria is just what arms manufacturers want. And while arming the Syrian government is fairly easy, how do you get weapons and ammunition to the Syrian rebels? The New York Times maps the flow of arms through an almost Sankey-like…
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The ABCs of the F-35
Certainly in the more illustrative range, a few weeks back the Washington Post published a small piece that looked at the F-35. Somehow it has survived budget cuts and become a monstrous $400 billion defence project. Partly that is because it is being built in three different versions for all the main aircraft-flying service branches:…
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All Your Drone Base Are Belong to Us
John Brennan’s confirmation for heading up the CIA begins today. He’s been pretty instrumental in strengthening the United States’ counter-terrorism programme, especially the use of drones to eliminate terrorists. For those drones, the Washington Post mapped out the known bases in Africa and the Middle East from which we operate our drones.
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French Special Forces Seize Kidal
On Tuesday French special forces captured the airport in Kidal, Mali. (Although the use of the term airport is a bit generous.) In an unanticipated move—the Malian army was not informed before the operation commenced—the French retook the last major urban centre that had been under Islamist control. This may well end the first phase…
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Operation Serval
The tricky part about doing an infographic on a current event, like the conflict/war in northern Mali, is to keep the graphics updated and timely. Alas, I don’t have the necessary amount of time to do that. But, I still do want decent graphics explaining just what is happening. With Mali, the hard part is…
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Fighter Jets
A large-scale infographic with lots of drawings of fighter jets. That’s pretty much what this is. And that’s cool enough for me. The background is that the US fighter programme for the F-35 is increasingly ridiculously expensive and beyond budget. Some nations, like Canada, are starting to have second thoughts. This post outlines potential options…
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Drone Wars
This is a small interactive piece by the Washington Post that looks at the drone wars being waged by the United States specifically in Pakistan and then Yemen/Somalia. Clicking on a specific date in the timeline brings that date into focus with articles about the attacks in question. What would have perhaps been interesting is…