tactical blueberry

boarders ahoy!

NATO has developed a video game. In this game, you’re doing counter-piracy ops. You’re boarding vessels, searching them, and questioning those on board. But one prominent military blogger notes, theres “not even a parrot” featured in the training scenario, and that makes it less-than-swashbuckling.

Read over the possible things-to-say in the screenshot above…there’s something about them being things you click at CGI pirates from the safety of your computer that makes them hilariously stilted. I mean, “We must search you”?

That said, obviously I’d jump at a chance to play. And one day to do the real thing?

superlasers

Okay, the Navy’s been in the news this week and last. First, it was bad news — the firing of another CO. Then, we got a (small) taste of the good news as a boat from USS Laboon took out a pirate skiff in the Gulf of Aden on Monday. Then, it was more bad news — a sailor tragically fell from her destroyer and was lost at sea.

But today — oh, today. Scientific breakthrough. Superlasers.

Wired’s “Danger Room” has the scoop:

But now the Navy thinks it’s broken a power threshold. Tests in December of a new injector yielded the electrons necessary to get the Free Electron Laser up to “megawatt class” beams, the Office of Naval Research said in a statement issued today, nine months ahead of schedule. One of the project’s lead researchers, Dinh Nguyen, said in the statement that he hoped to “set a world record for the average current of electrons.”

I don’t even know what that means, but I’m damned excited about it. They’re expecting these…ahem…carrier-killer-killers…to be in shipboard tests by 2018. Too cool. I guess it really finally is the 21st century.

the great green fleet

Thomas Friedman’s latest column in the Times shines a welcome spotlight on the Navy’s two-year-old push to “go green” in a big way — including having set a lofty goal of having 50% of all the Department of the Navy’s operations, afloat and ashore, powered by alternative energy by 2020.

The underlying thesis is simple — Congress can’t keep itself from buckling under the pressure of Big Oil and Dirty Coal, but the DoD, (with SECNAV leading the charge,) must do everything that can literally save lives, including going green:

Their efforts are based in part on a recent study from 2007 data that found that the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan.

SECNAV has plans in the works to put to sea an entire 13-ship carrier battle group wherein every component member is powered by cleaner energies — nuclear power and 50-50 biofuel blends. Even the air wings would be flying biofuels. This “Great Green Fleet” should be getting in gear by 2012 and fully combat operational by 2016 — and the progress made already, including a successful super-sonic biofuel flight and a handful of surface ships in various phases of production and testing, is keeping spectators impressed by the effort.

A green fleet could fly and drive further on the same tank of fuel, increasing combat effectiveness through the bigger operational range, saving taxpayers millions in fuel costs, all while keeping those deadly fuel convoys to a minimum.

It’s a program of scientific innovation driven by solid leadership and allowed the resources to be successful — and with NASA’s shuttle program trickling to a halt, it’s probably among our military’s most inspiring and forward-thinking campaigns.