Slug Invasion

Morning breaks on a sleepy suburb but the quiet is soon to be disturbed by an army of slugs with only one thing on their mind – to find and eat the flowers in the garden.  Yet they have an enemy, the little old lady who tends the lawns and shrubs each day.  Total war is about to break out – one of savage attrition and in which there can only be one winner, but who will it be?

This is a great animated short by a group of students at The Animation Workshop in Denmark.  The Animation Workshop is an international centre of knowledge and development for animation (and related) professions and businesses.

Copehill Down – Sleepy English Village with a Difference

Copehill Down is situated on Salisbury Plain in the English county of Wiltshire.  Built on the windswept chalk plateau it looks, at a cursory glance, a peaceful and welcoming place. Stonehenge is just a short drive away and the area around it is rich with history. Yet look again and you get the feeling that something isn’t quite right. Where are the people? And the houses – the architecture doesn’t look quite as English as perhaps it should.

Image Credit Flickr User Stoic

Copehill Down is a sleepy English village with a difference.  No one lives there. No children play in the neat gardens around the houses. No worshipers go to mass on a Sunday at Saint Jude’s church. The village is a mock-up or, more accurately, a FIBUA – an acronym standing for Fighting in Built Up Areas.  The pictures you will see here are closer than most people will ever get to the village as civilian access to Copehill Down is generally restricted.

Forward March!

When you are proudly marching through the streets in your ceremonial uniform, the one thing that tops off your general resplendence is the bearskin, the tall fur cap that has been used by the guards regiments of the British Army for centuries.  However, when one of the bearskins takes on a life of its own, there may be trouble ahead.

Created by students at ESMA in France, Forward March gently ribs the British (yet the propensity for tea at a certain time might be said to help save the day here).  However, it’s the crazy bearskin come alive that steals every scene here.  Pierrick Barbin, Rimelle Khayat, Loïc Le Goff, Guillaume Lenoël and Garrick Rawlingson are the students responsible for Forward March. So, if Mr Angry of Tunbridge Wells is reading this, those are the names you may wish to include in your hopping-mad missive to the French Embassy…

The Dogs of War – A Tribute to the MWD, Military Working Dogs

Dogs have been used in warfare for millennia – and are still trained to operate in war zones today. The Ark in Space today has a pictorial feature on the Military Working Dog. From the scouts to the tracker, detectors and sentries, this is a tribute to those dogs who work with the military today - and of course their trainers.

Image Credit Flickr User US Army

First Image Credit Flickr User Lisa

US Soldiers Issued Ray Guns in Afghanistan

Image Credit Wikimedia

A new weapon, the Active Denial System (or just plain old ADS if you are in a hurry, which if you are a soldier in Afghanistan you may just well be) has been dispatched to troops in the country torn apart by years of conflict.

When deployed the vehicle-mounted weapon emits a focused heated beam.  Fans of science fiction shows might be a little disappointed to learn that the heat rays are invisible (a nice shade of ruby would have been nice) – but while this is true they certainly give the target something to think about.

They cause an unendurable feeling of high temperature on the skin which must be immediately relieved (by vacating the area) but leaves no permanent damage.

Yet to be used on the battlefield or indeed in cases of public disorder either in Afghanistan or elsewhere, the Active Denial System has undergone thorough tests on home soil in the US.  It seems the system actively denies pretty well, with those exposed to it saying that the need to get away from its heat ray was quickly of paramount importance.

Image Credit Wikimedia

How does it work? The beam breaks the surface of the skin to a tiny depth, no more than a few pieces of paper thick.  This, however, is more than enough to reach nerve endings and burn them, so causing pain.  Lots of it.  People that the ADS is aimed at quickly retire to a safe distance, such is the discomfort.

According to the US military there is so little chance of injury from the system (a tenth of a percent) that it will not cause long lasting harm to those against whom it is used.

It has been tested on people – hundreds of volunteers – and the beam can reach more than five hundred meters.  The army sees it is an important new way to limit deaths in a war zone.  It could also be used domestically in the future, of course.  Which is a worry.

The great question is, of course, is how easily can the weapon be changed to go from non-lethal to deadly?

Boy oh boy.  This in the same week that a US Navy laser successfully shot down four UAVs off the California coastline.  Perhaps Thunderbird are 'Go', after all.

Additional Image Credits
Technicians with ADS
Humvee Mounted Active Denial System