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CONTINUED >>> The Science of People
Popular Mechanics — But how will officials manage what some have speculated will become the largest gathering in American history? The U.S. Secret Service is coordinating a team of 58 public agencies whose overlapping jurisdictions are woven across the district like ...More…
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Questions on the American Rifle for Author Alex Rose
Popular Mechanics — Modern U.S. infantry use their M4 rifles with a precision that George Washington would recognize. (Photograph by Getty Images) The primary advantages of a musket are that it loads quickly, hits hard and is very easy to learn to use. The whole ...More…
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Why UAVs Aren't Scary
Popular Mechanics — When Boeing's Laser Avenger shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a laser last week, the technological might-with focus on a one-kilowatt laser that replaced the Avenger's usual surface-to-air missiles-aimed at a small flying robot begs ...More…
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Can Obama Ban Space Weapons Successfully?
Popular Mechanics — According to space-weapons analyst Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center, the best way to address this is to look at capabilities, not specific weapon systems, and to ban testing of weapons in, or aimed at, space. This would also prevent the ...More…
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The Future of War: Can Special Ops Become Business as Usual?
Popular Mechanics — Experts, government officials and uniformed personnel at this week's 20th annual Special Operations/Low Intensity Conference lamented the Pentagon's focus on big-ticket hardware purchases over more intellectual innovations. Bill Natter, a ...More…
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The International: Hollywood Fact vs. Fiction
Popular Mechanics — The evil bank's plan is to serve as the exclusive broker to funnel small arms from China to African nations in order to foster conflict. The only weapons deal they mention, around which the entire movie revolves, doesn't involve small arms at ...More…
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Behind the Scenes With a Special Ops Gunboat Crew
Popular Mechanics — A live-fire exercise on Kentucky's Salt River offers a rare window into the secretive, dangerous world of the Pentagon's black-ops boat crews. The volume of fire builds as two other Special Operations Craft-Riverine (SOC-R) boats join in, but no . ...More…
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How Hackers Could Take Down a Natural Gas Pipeline
Popular Mechanics — Human nature can sometimes provide an easy end run around a strong firewall. An old hacker trick is to drop a USB drive in a public area, then count on the curiosity of passersby to do the rest. When a facility employee plugs the USB drive into ...More…
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Marathon Robotics' Rover: Segway Target Practice
Popular Mechanics — Usually, Segway vehicles in Washington, D.C., are used only by tourists-and the occasional D.C. Metro police officer-who zip around the National Mall. The Australian company Marathon Robotics has another use for two-wheeled novelties: Affixing ...More…
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Ghosts in the Machine
Popular Mechanics — To dramatize the threat posed by cyber attacks, pyrotechnics expert Drew Jiritano attached an explosive squib to the back of a laptop computer; stop-motion photography captured the results. PM's digital imaging specialist Anthony Verduccio ...More…
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Big Projects, Big Budgets: Fixing Government Procurement
Popular Mechanics — Space and defense contractors have long relied on networks of subcontractors to make critical parts. But in recent years, they have offloaded more work to their suppliers-forcing those smaller companies to develop sophisticated technology. That ...More…
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Career Timeline
Popular Mechanics — One of the things I think is most different is that we know a lot more, and so there's not so much, "Gee, I wonder what will happen when we get there," like it was, say, in the early 1950s. Back in those days, you didn't design unstable ...More…