Reddit user Envinoverdad posted this photo yesterday after taking it with an iPhone. The thread is tilted: Shell shocked soldier hiding at a fireworks show. The comments are from responses on the thread. I think the whole thing speaks for itself.

From Envinoverdad: "I took the picture. There was a fireworks show at a local speedway. She walked out to the concession stand area and stood by herself. She covered her ears and cried uncontrollably the whole time. Some tried to console her, but she wanted no part in it. Possibly one of the most gut wrenching moments in my entire life. I was shaken and began crying hysterically after seeing this."

From commenters: 

Gypsyred: "I had a roommate who moved in with me shortly after leaving the hospital after his return from Afghanistan where he lost his leg. He was generally a cheerful, clear-thinking person who always seemed to be coping far better than I think I would have. That being said, he was still very much dealing with PTSD.

He spent the Fourth of July rocking himself under the dining room table, much like this woman. All I could think to do was sit and hold his hand and tell him random stories. I think I kept talking about this aquarium I loved as a kid. I don't know if he even heard me because he seemed almost catatonic. We never talked about it."

Unisolusa: "I have had this happen to me every year since my return from Iraq in 2008. My girlfriend has been by my side and held my hand and never once ask or question me about what happens or goes on in my head when I hear the fireworks start going off. It's the ones that whistle that get me. I was injured by a mortar blast at the beginning of 2008 and that whistle is such a distinct sound. I am glad to say I haven't lost my cool like a few of my friends do, but I do close my eyes, and cover my ears. ON occasion I do apparently rock back and forth but I never realize I'm doing it until someone mentions it later."

Greiton: "my cousin (a huge marine tough guy that honestly i didn't think was scared of anything) got his first leave from Iraq over the forth of July several years back i remember sitting in the house with him as he was covering his ears crying and shaking. i cant imagine what kind of horrors he endured that would ever reduce him to tears in front of a group of people. our soldiers deserve all the respect and support we can give them."

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It's getting easy to overlook the tired rhetoric and hollow tension surrounding Iran, the U.S. and Israel.

It's been months, and months since the back-and-forth began. First, Iran's shutting the Strait of Hormuz, then it's saying it'd never shut the strait. Then Israel's planning a solo attack. No, they're not.

It's frustrating, and more than a little confusing, but that doesn't mean the situation couldn't turn ugly at the drop of a hat.

Joby Warick at The Washington Post reports improved Iranian weapons and an enhanced plan of attack could nail the U.S. fleet parked in the Gulf, and there may be little Navy officials can do about it.

From The Post:

[Iran's] emerging strategy relies not only on mobile missile launchers but also on new mini-submarines, helicopters and hundreds of heavily armed small boats known as fast-attack craft. These highly maneuverable small boats, some barely as long as a subway car, have become a cornerstone of Iran’s strategy for defending the gulf against a much larger adversary. The vessels can rapidly deploy Iran’s estimated 2,000 anti-ship mines or mass in groups to strike large warships from multiple sides at once, like a cloud of wasps attacking much larger prey.

“This is the scenario that is giving people nightmares,” said [an] official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing strategy for defending against a possible Iranian attack.

We recently wrote on one strategy for thwarting a multi-pronged attack against a naval task force, but Raytheon's new system isn't up for handling the hundreds of heavily armed small boats officials believe Iran would send against the U.S. fleet.

While Iran has called American ships in the region a threat, and Tehran has allowed nuclear discussions to seemingly fizzle, the latest round of sanctions are entering the final phase of Washington approval.

The Iranian sanctions already in place are having quite a bite, with the cost of chicken doubling in the past year.

The lack of enough chicken, a staple in the Iranian diet, has led Tehran's security forces to ban creative agencies from showing poultry in movies or on TV.

The "chicken crisis" as it's being called, has seen many people take to the streets in protest, while others wonder how long it will be before the poor to take up arms against the rich.

Assuming the next round of sanctions make matters worse, it seems reasonable to wonder when Tehran might decide it has little to lose, and accepts the Pyrrhic victory found in sinking a couple of U.S. Navy ships.

With its flotilla of speedboats, fleet of submarines, and huge inventory of missiles and mines, Iran is in the position to inflict some damage on the U.S. fleet if for no other reason that it has such a wide array of vessels to attack.

In addition to the more than 20 ships of the 5th Fleet stationed in Bahrain, there will be another strike group headed to the Gulf led by the carrier USS John C. Stennis. On top of this, four additional minesweepers arrived in the region last month to ensure shipping lanes remained open and undisturbed. Those craft joined the refitted USS Ponce which is being used as a forward staging base.

To that end, 19 other countries will descend upon the Gulf September 16, with the U.S., to conduct an immense 11-day mine sweeping operation to practice mine countermeasures.

So while the dialogue about Gulf developments can appear to be the same tired old mantra from yesterday, the situation continues to develop and it may not be Iran that strikes first.

With both the U.S. and Israel blaming Iran for the Bulgarian terrorist bombing, it seems likely the two nations could be keeping score, and reach a point where they jointly launch a strike against the Muslim nation.

If that happens, expect the U.S. to suffer casualties and the price of oil to go through the roof. Just don't expect to see it before the November elections.

 Now: See how the US may respond to a full-on attack >

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Yesterday we wrote about Phil Stewart's report for Reuters that laid out the daunting statistics regarding the current state of benefits for veterans.

One of the bleak numbers is that a veteran within the VA healthcare system attempts suicide once every half hour.

On Wednesday Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called the situation – in which as many as 206 service members have taken their own lives this year compared to 220 coalition forces who have died in attacks in Afghanistan – an "epidemic" and added that "Something is wrong."

The extended version of the Reuters report includes this story that encapsulates the difficult situation that returning service members face: 

On a warm summer afternoon in Champion, Ohio, Michael Ecker, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, called out to his father from a leafy spot in their backyard. Then, as the two stood steps apart, Michael saluted, raised a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

“His eyes rolled back,” his father, Matt, said softly as he recounted the 2009 suicide. “There was just nothing I could do.”

Weeks before he killed himself, Michael received a letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs accusing him of “over- reporting” the extent of his psychiatric problems. It was the culmination of a long struggle that Ecker, diagnosed with post- traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury related to his service, had waged since returning home from the war to try to hold down a steady job, obtain VA disability benefits and resume a life as close to normal as possible.

“I’ve often thought about finding that doctor and saying, ‘Over-reporting?!’ and giving him the death certificate,” Matt Ecker said.

SEE ALSO: Injuries Suffered By Troops In Iraq And Afghanistan Cause More Long Term Damage Than Anyone Imagined >

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The Lun-class Soviet Ekranoplane was a marvel of late 20th century technological prowess and the Soviet's considered it an integral part of their colossal military machine.

I stumbled upon these pictures back in January when aviation blogger Igor113 posted them to Live Journal, but thought they deserved to be looked at again.

Check out the photos >

Maybe it was joining the Navy on an amphibious assault craft in May, or pondering the naval developments in the Persian Gulf for most of today, but something about this vessel implies the past is just a step away and maybe serves as a reminder to not take too much, too seriously.

I like it and this is what I wrote about it early this year: Equipped with nuclear warheads and able to blast across the sea at 340 mph, the Lun-class Ekranoplane; part plane, part boat, and part hovercraft — is a Ground Effect Vehicle (GEV).

A GEV takes advantage of an aeronautical effect that allows it to lift off with an immense amount of weight, but limits its flight to 16 feet above the waves. Its altitude can never be greater than its wingspan.

Think of a large seabird, like a pelican, cruising inches from the water and not needing to flap its wings.

The only complete Ekranoplane now sits on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

While there is talk of refitting the Lun-class and getting the GEV back in the fleet, it's now rusting away, and was spotted by aviation blogger Igor113 who posted these pictures to his blog.

The Lun-class Ekranoplane was used by the Soviet Navy from 1987 to the late 1990s

Nearly 243 feet long, almost as big as the Spruce Goose, the Lun is a ground effect aircraft that can only fly near the surface of the sea

Eight turbofans producing 28,600 pounds of thrust apiece are mounted at the nose of the aircraft

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) gets a ton of funding to develop the science and technological future of the military.

This is the agency responsible for GPS, the internet and stealth planes. They're the real deal. 

We looked at their active projects to find the ones that might have massive civilian implications if they eventually produce real-world tech.

Last round, we focused on the Defense Science Office and their Information Innovation Office. This time, we're looking at DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office, which is researching the next age of computing technology. 

Excalibur is an operational laser gun

The Defense Department is always worried about the use of conventional weapons in urban warfare. The risk lies in confining the damage to enemies and their weapons and avoiding collateral damage. 

That — among other reasons — is why the Department of Defense really, really wants a laser weapon. DARPA plans to give it to them. 

The Excalibur program is developing laser weapons that are ten times lighter than existing combat lasers. They're practically handheld. Eventually, DARPA wants to enable 100 kilowatt devices used in precision strikes against ground and air targets. 

A way to scrub blood just like in dialysis, but to remove an infection

As it stands, blood infections impacted more than 1,500 servicemembers in 2009 alone. 

DARPA is developing a portable device that will remove contaminated blood from the body, remove harmful agents, and return the "clean" blood to the body, similar in style to the way dialysis machines remove toxins from patients' blood. 

The researchers are well aware of the civilian implications. DARPA claims that the eventual device could save "thousands of lives and billions of dollars in the United States annually."

DARPA plans to build the portable device beginning in Fall, 2012.  

Nanobots in the human body to monitor a person's health

While externally monitoring for disease is important, DARPA is working on an inside way to find out if someone is sick.

The In Vivo Nanoplatforms program is trying to develop classes of nanoparticles to sense and treat illness, disease, and infection on the inside. 

The tech involves implantable nanoparticles which sense specific molecules of biological interest. DARPA is working on a complete system demonstration in a large animal. 

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I didn’t notice him right away—a scruffy haired kid that came in one Sunday night last fall. But with football season in full swing, I couldn’t get the attention of the other men around stage, whose eyes were glued to the TVs.

But he had come there to see naked women. So I sat down and talked to him. He looked like a construction worker, possibly for one of the local unions. Barely out of his teens, he weighed in at maybe 150 lb.

What he didn’t look like was one of the deadliest men in the world — a Marine sharp shooter with dozens of confirmed kills and nightmares of the Middle East that haunted his nights. And his days. He was also a single father—the primary caregiver of his young daughter.

I talked to him for my whole stage set. I didn’t mean to. I was antsy, still trying to get the attention of the older guys who were in the place but he kept talking. Afterwards, he did a bunch of lap dances—maybe six or seven. Then he wrote his number down on a dollar bill and handed it to me. I went to sit with him afterwards. We talked like friends—as if he had forgotten I was naked or as if it hadn’t ever mattered at all. 

That was when I learned about his military past. He joined the Marines at 17, before he would have been able to vote—not that it would have mattered. He’s 23 now. We’ve been in Iraq for almost half his life. He was 12 years old when a plane struck the World Trade Center.

By the time he was old enough to drink he had seen things most people will never see. He talked about how the men he had killed had families, children like his daughter, he said. Men who had killed his brothers-in-arms, men who don’t believe in Western democracy, and while they were men who would see all women in burkas, not in G-strings, they were still men with families.

He explained that he couldn’t sleep when he first came back. He'd be awake for days at a time. The things he had seen and the things he had done wracked him with guilt and remorse. Not entirely unfamiliar with the two emotions, we connected deeply. 

I wanted to tell him that he did the right thing, that it was his job and sometimes just doing your damn job is the best you can do. But I didn't, because what the hell do I know what it's like to have 69 confirmed kills and raise a daughter alone.

His buddies, his shrink, his superiors, they all told him he shouldn’t feel guilty. It didn’t ease the pain. It just made him feel guilty about feeling the way he did.

Most returning soldiers don’t come into strip clubs to talk about their past. They come into strip clubs to escape their disciplined days. To be frivolous. Something both ridiculous and normal and worlds away from the military life. They come to see girls who've been running around naked for so long, they've forgotten they're nude. They come in to the type of place that doesn’t exist in most countries we fight. Most guys don’t seem to need or want me to justify their acts of war. I imagine most guys don't have 69 kills.

But he was telling me all of this because of the dollar bill he had handed me with his number on it. He wanted me to call him, but he wanted me to know that if I did that he was a damaged and dangerous person. At least, that was how he saw himself. PTSD was as foreign to him as our enemies are to me and I think he was as afraid of this mental state as he ever was of the Iraq and Afghan soldiers. Maybe more so.

He could trust the enemy. They were trained to do the same thing he was. Kill or be killed.  What he couldn’t trust was his own feelings. He couldn’t trust the things he saw. He was afraid of how he might act or the things he might do. 

He failed to convince me that he was dangerous—just a kid with the misfortune of having good aim and a country that would take advantage of that.

In a few years, we will send kids to Afghanistan who don’t remember September 11^th. They will not remember a world that was not marked by a terrorist attack on our home soil.

But they will continue to fight for our right to run around naked.

They will continue to pay a heavy price for that freedom.

They will continue to have scars.

I can’t fix those scars, but I can offer one piece of advice. Don’t put your phone number on a dollar bill.   It will accidentally get slipped into the vending machine for a can of Diet Coke.

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July 28, 2012

Dear ____________,

I’m not sure how to address this letter because I am not really sure to whom I am writing. Not being one that believes someone is going to swoop in and “fix” my problems I don’t sit here holding out hope that I’ll wake up and everything will be ok, nor do I place the impetus on searching for a solution on anyone but myself. Everything in life truly happens for a reason and for everything in life there is a season, right? So, that being said, I’d like to share with you a story—one that begins long before April 20, 2012.

Mine is a life lived by principle of leaving things—no matter what they are—better than you found them. Often the inner compass which guided my decisions led me down the road less traveled rather than the path of least resistance. I was never one to back away from a challenge. Fairness and justice were always of the utmost importance for me. Suffice to say, I’m outspoken, a bit “in your face”, challenge the “norm” and refuse to “conform without question”. Why do I share this information? Merely to prepare you for being “uncomfortable” while reading this letter. So ready or not, we are going back to the story.

Robert E. Wise came into my life shortly after the death of my first husband. I was 21, a widow and mother to my then 13 month old son and 3 year old daughter. Believing I couldn’t effectively and successfully raise my two “young’ns” on my own, I very quickly went about finding a “new” daddy for my kids. I made a list of criteria…186  check off points and prayed that God would let me know the first time I saw the man that was meant to be the “new” daddy for my children. Foolish perhaps, but truthfully part of this story.

January 28, 2005—while hanging out with some girlfriend’s at McCabe’s Country Bar in Tacoma, WA—this tall drink of water entered the door wearing an obnoxiously yellow ball cap…and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Even now, the memory creates butterflies in my stomach. I said to my girlfriends that whoever that tall, handsome fellow was—he was the one that I was going to marry. Their response? “Oh you mean Rob? He’s dumber than a box of rocks.” Lovely, eh?

That night, after heading home and tucking my children in bed, I logged on “Match.com”…Rob’s profile was the first profile to come up. So, I sent a quick little note saying something along the lines of, “Hey aren’t you that handsome guy that was two-stepping around the dance floor at McCabe’s?” I woke the next morning to a note from him saying, “Why yes I was at McCabe’s last night—though I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing you there. Next time we are both there, come introduce yourself!”

Well, I never could muster the courage to go say hi, but for the next ten or so months, I did sent him a quick invite to go do fun stuff like hiking with a group of friends, bowling, fishing, etc. Rob chose to respond to literally none of these messages. Finally, in January 2006—I send him what I thought would be my final note: “I’m not sure exactly where you come from, but where I come from men are respectful enough to a woman who is clearly showing interest in them to let that woman know the ‘interest’ isn’t reciprocated, and if you aren’t disrespectful then, the only other option I can think of is that you are gay.”

Interestingly enough, I had a message from Mr. Wise the following morning stating: “Boy do I feel small…” Our first date was January 28, 2006—one year to the day after I saw Rob for the first time and let my friends know he was the one I’d be marrying someday. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Rob met 182 out of the 186 criteria. The criteria he lacked: 

• He was 6’4” rather than 6’6”
• He had brown eyes instead of blue
• He made less than $120,000/year
• He couldn’t play the guitar—though he could sing. (He sounds exactly like Johnny Cash, too!)

We became an instant couple—we “dated” only five days before he left for a 30 day rotation at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. I was in heaven on Earth—deciding quickly to be “in this for the long haul no matter what and come what may”. My children loved him, too. Everything seemed amazing—I was happy finally…we were married November 20, 2006.

Basing an assessment of our marriage off of only the beginning of our relationship, one might think we’ve lived happily ever after—as the start of our story is made of the same “stuff” in fairy tales. Sadly that isn’t the case. Ours is a relationship where smooth road is the exception to the rule and ridiculous situations rule, but I never could give up and walk away though he lied, broke promises, didn’t show love and affection, chose friends and “battle brothers” over our family consistently. He was moody and selfish much of the time—but still, like a sliver of sunlight peaking through a small crack in the clouds, I would see the Rob I knew and loved. 

You see, there was always some justifiable reason for his douchebag moments… his back gave out and he was constantly in excruciating pain until he finally had his L4/L5 spinal fusion surgery in May of 2007. I was constantly in and out of the ER in severe pain with pelvic inflammatory disease or other girlie part issues, needing an emergency appendectomy, needing a hysterectomy, having my gall bladder quit working—all from “missed” and undiagnosed Celiac disease. If it wasn’t our family’s health issues, it was money issues. If it wasn’t money issues it was Rob feeling like a failure and less of a man because he was “weak” and went through with the surgery—causing him to be sent home early from his 2^nd tour in Iraq or some other stupid situation that seemed unreal.

Oh yes, part of me seriously hated him at times. I couldn’t understand why he would chose to hurt me again and again. “Pull your head out of you’re a**, Rob.” “Why can’t you just love me, Rob?” “Read this book with me and we’ll fix ‘us’ together, Rob.” “Together we can do this, babe.”…things I said over and over and over again. I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince, Rob or myself. Rob was perfectly happy with the way things were, it seemed, but why wouldn’t he be? I cooked. I cleaned. I did the laundry and the yard work and the grocery shopping and managed to “un-jack” the check book every month no matter what spending spree he went on. I forgave him for the same B.S. over and over again, and I kept hearing the voice of my now dead first husband saying, “If you could just be a better Proverbs 31 woman, Ashley, he would love you the way you want him to…you need to earn his love.” Yeah—stupid, I know, and I’ve since dealt with it.

Through all the bull-crap, throwing in the towel never “felt” right. I knew that I would always wonder “what if I had stayed just a little longer”. There were many times I would cry out from the shambles of my life and ask God to heal my broken heart—take away this longing for “something more” from Rob or for God to please just give me peace about leaving. Each time, I was offered a choice:

Option #1 I, Ashley Wise, lacked the faith to believe that God could move mountains or would move this mountain for me.

Option #2 I, Ashley Wise, lacked the patience to wait for God’s timing for this mountain to be moved.

Both of these options were unacceptable to me because both options dealt 100% with me and 0% Rob. 

So, I stayed—through everything. Friends and family called me crazy. Accused me of being codependent and fighting an “unwinnable battle”. I felt foolish many times, but I kept seeing glimpses of the man I knew Rob truly was—like a rainbow after a thunderstorm reminding me the sun would shine and “all would be right in the world” someday. 

At some point, after Rob returned home from his 2^nd tour in Iraq, several different events caused me to start researching PTSD. He had gotten out of bed on different night and stood in the dark yelling at the wall—all the while sound asleep.  He kicked in the door to our son’s bedroom and lifted his hands like he was holding a gun—the incident occurring after returning home from the horse barn to a Symphony Chocolate bar rapper torn up all over the floor by our Shih Tzu—apparently our 4 year old had snuck some out of the pantry before we left and hidden the wrapper under the couch. It was a silly thing to cause such a crazy response from Rob and scared all of us half to death.

Getting Rob to head to a counselor to over a year and a half of convincing, poking, prodding, nagging, printing out information from reliable sources on the internet and saying “see this Ph. D. says the same thing—it’s not just me!” I was so full of hope the day he told me he was going to go see the Battalion counselor. I actually allowed myself to “hope” for the first time in a really, really long time. Unfortunately, that hope was smashed into a million tiny shards on the floor when my husband walked through the front door, smug/slightly peeved look on his face as he told me: “There is nothing wrong with me. You are a drama queen and a hypochondriac. I wasted 25 minutes filling out all of these forms about my history to only spend 5 minutes in front of a counselor who said there was nothing wrong with me!” I had to pry to get what the counselor said out of him. Her words, “Well, SSG Wise, I wouldn’t say you have PTSD. I wouldn’t even say you are suffering from anxiety or combat stress. You are experiencing the ‘normal’ difficulties of reintegrating.” This advice from a counselor came after Rob had been home 18 months from his prior deployment. The curtain had closed on this source for help and healing. So, I kept my chin up, kept looking for “home remedies” or “self therapy” type solutions, and “soldiered on”.

After finding out that he didn’t make the E7 list again early in 2011, Rob began making requests to transfer to a different base. During that process, we discovered that a faulty code on his ERB was preventing him from “favorable” action. I’m not sure of the exact “trigger” in this ordeal, but Rob began isolating himself, avoiding spending time with me and the family and drinking copious amounts of alcohol again—though this time it was beer and not whiskey, as he had realized whiskey was the “trigger” for his previous episodes of “crossing the line”.

We were able to get the legal code situation corrected and “came down on orders” to Fort Campbell where Rob was assigned to 2-327^th “No Slack” Battalion. We experienced multiple stressors during and after the move—starting with arriving in Joplin, Missouri only hours after the EF5 tornado destroyed much of Rob’s home town. 

The pressure from all of the stress finally caused Rob to break in October 2011. We had been arguing nearly every day for a few weeks and on this particular day, we had scheduled a baby sitter to watch the kids so Rob and I could meet for coffee in town and discuss our future on “neutral” ground. Rob never showed and refused to answer my calls or texts. I had no clue where he was or what he was doing. 

Upon arriving at the house, the baby sitter informed me that Rob had loaded up his Jeep with 2 cases of beer and “a bunch of guns”. After searching the house, I realized Rob had, in fact, loaded up every weapon we owned other than his compound bow. I frantically checked the bank account hoping to find a charge from a bar or something, when I discovered a $40-ish dollar charge for some hotel on Fort Campbell Blvd. Knowing Rob wouldn’t answer his mobile phone, I called the hotel’s front desk and was transferred to Rob’s room. Thankfully he answered—slurring his words quite heavily. 

Not wanting to irritate him or cause him to hang up the phone, I danced around my concern but was eventually able to ask him, “Babe—why do you have all the guns?” His response shot through me like a bullet: “Life really sucks right now. It’s really hard. I might do something stupid.”

In a panic, I called his unit and tracked down his Platoon Leader. The Clarksville police were called and arrived at the hotel before Rob’s PL. He spent the night at the unit and the next morning was asked by his Company Commander, Platoon Leader, Platoon Sergeant and First Sergeant if he was having thoughts about killing himself. My husband has served in many leadership positions: Battle Captain during his 3^rd tour in Iraq, Platoon Sergeant, rear-D First Sergeant, to name a few—so, he knows the ball that gets set in motion when a Soldier admits that “yes, I am having thoughts of killing myself.” Not wanting to deal with the ramifications of that statement, he said “No, I’m fine. I was just drunk.”

A few weeks later, Rob was moved from “No Slack” Battalion to the Warrior Transition Battalion to serve as cadre and nothing ever came of the event that October Night. In fact, things started to seem a little better. He seemed happier. He wasn’t yelling at the kids as much—but then again, he was gone a lot with WTB stuff…and then, shortly before Saint Patrick’s Day this past March, I sat next to my husband on the couch watching TV when the news of “an E-6 assigned to 2-3 Infantry based out of Fort Lewis, Washington may have killed 16 Afghan civilians last night” broke. 

Rob immediately got up, went to the computer and logged on Facebook. By the time I walked into our front room/office area, Rob’s face was white and he had logged off of face book. “I know who it is, babe. I can’t tell you right now, but I know him. He’s my brother.” At that moment, I could feel all hell breaking loose inside our home—any progress we had made was shot out of the sky. The following week, our entire family walked in to be seen by an MFLAC counselor. While walking to our car after the hour plus sessions concluded, our ten year old daughter turned to me and stated what a waste of time that session had been. “She didn’t even listen, Mumma. Can we please not go back there again?”

After the failure of MFLAC, Rob self-referred himself to ASAP—the Army’s version of AA…or so I thought. After a few sessions, Rob came home and said this program wasn’t for him because they were talking about moderation and having a designated driver rather than the reason for the drinking. “I drink because the world feels like it is full of hope and promise again, Babe. I want to feel that way without alcohol in my system, but it’s like my brain doesn’t work right without alcohol.”

After several weeks of isolation and being given the cold shoulder, I asked Rob via text message if he wanted me to leave with the kids so he could figure himself out. His response was cold and worded in such a way that I knew he was hurting, angry and to full of pride to admit it. In this moment, I decided to try one last Army program: Family Advocacy.

Late on a Thursday afternoon this past April, I called and spoke with a Family Advocacy Counselor who told me she couldn’t help me unless I came in and met with her. I hadn’t slept in a few days, so the idea of expending the energy required to  get myself ready and head over to her office was incredibly unappealing, but for the sake of pulling my husband out of his funk and getting our marriage back on track, I sucked it up and went.

The directions to her office were fairly easy—and honestly the fact that her office was located inside the Fort Campbell Military Police Station didn’t really strike me as odd at the time. The MP station building is rather large with multiple wings—so I figured it was just connected. After a few moment, a Ms. Nicole Elkin greeted me at the door and led me back to an interrogation room. Her office wasn’t private—so, I really didn’t think anything of heading into an interrogation room either. 

After we sat down, Ms. Elkin introduced herself. She placed her hand on my upper arm and in a soft, soothing voice stated: “Mrs. Wise, you are in a safe place. I am here to help you. Everything you tell me is confidential and nothing will the leave the four walls of this room.” As we talked, Ms. Elkin shared facts and figures regarding how 11B (infantry guys) can snap and spouses end up dead sometimes when they snap. Infantry guys are trained to take human life you know. 

Typically these statistics wouldn’t have much, if any, shock factor with me; however, for the past several weeks, Soldiers snapping, murdering their spouses and then killing themselves was a rather common occurrence—most often we’d find out because we’d go to order pizza or something and be told “no one is getting in the gate right now because Fort Campbell is on lock down”—so, these statistics were my reality and I began to feel panic rising within my chest as questions began to race through my mind: “What if he comes home and snaps? Bobby Bales just snapped and he was a good dad…Rob even said he was a good dad.” So, I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God as I spoke with this Ms. Nicole Elkin—whom I later found out wasn’t “just” a Family Advocacy Counselor. She was specifically a Domestic Violence Victim Advocate. She heard about his mood swings, his anger, his drinking, the episode with the booze and guns at the hotel in October 2011, the times he shoved me in while we were stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. I even told her about the time my nose was broken.

OK—before you go passing judgment here on the fact that my nose was broken, allow me to explain the context of the situation. Rob had just had his L4/L5 spinal fusion surgery two months prior. On this particular night, he was drinking excessively again and his beverage of choice was Crown Royal whiskey. Rob turns into a total jerk with whiskey in his system. 

Please keep in mind that this interaction between my husband and myself took place prior to really educating myself about PTSD, triggers, etc. So, Rob would turn into a jerk after consuming whiskey. I, in turn, would quite directly call him out on his complete jerk-ish behavior, thus resulting in the most amazing arguments over stupid topics ever. I wouldn’t back down—even after the time reach 3 .am., thinking I was being rational and following the advice of “successful” marriages before me…you know “never go to bed angry”. So, rather than let my massively drunk, douche-bag acting spouse sleep off the “mood”, I’d flip on the lights, yank the covers off the bed—pillows too, and jiggle him saying, “Wake up, Rob. I know you’re not sleeping, Rob. You promised me we wouldn’t go to bed angry, Rob. You’re breaking that promise, Rob.” He would respond with “I’m sick of you. I’m sick of dealing with you.” At this point I would see red because breaking promises equals a lie—drunk or not—in my book and I simply cannot stand lies.

OK—so now you see our incredibly stupid, immature fight dynamic (that I am completely embarrassed of, by the way, but this is the story and you can’t change the past, right?). Fast forward back to the “night of the broken nose”…Rob was drunk. I called him out on it. He took of running—he has the foresight to see he was in no condition to drive—and as he is running down the street all I can hear inside my head is the sound of the surgeon’s voice saying “It takes a year for the fusion to be solid. Rob could still injure himself and wind up paralyzed”. So, in a panic and thinking of only one way to get my massive 6’4” husband to stop this stupid run he was on, I socked him in his “man-parts” to which he reacted by  nailing be square in the nose. Now, the funny thing is, if you were to ask Rob in the following months, he could tell you down to the smell of the body odor of the Iraqi man this exchange occurred with….but, the exchange occurred with me. Odd, huh?

Back to my conversation with Family Advocate, Nicole Elkin…after sharing my “tell-all” tale, she left the room and came back with an MP. She stated she wanted me to share my story with her co-worker. She also told him exactly what questions to ask me and stated several times: “I’m not supposed to tell them what questions to ask you, but I want to be sure they build a solid case. So, I have to tell them what questions to ask.”

How I failed to grasp I was writing a sworn statement, I still cannot tell you. Chalk it up to no sleep for three days prior to heading to Family Advocacy and being completely freaked out by the statistics shared by Ms. Elkin prior to the sworn statement paperwork entering the room. The exact reasoning for my lack of attention to detail I may never know, but I will always remain true to the fact that I did not realize the paper I was writing on was a sworn statement. This adventure of heading to Family Advocacy for help for my family resulted in 72 hours of no contact and an immense amount of worry, anger and stress…it also resulted in the birth of Battling BARE for I cannot be sorry.

As the gravity of the situation settled, I found myself more and more angry. I was manipulated and lied to—two things I can stand least in this world. On top of that, when I went to correct the situation I was told it was out of my hands. For the love of everything decent and holy in the world, my husband is NOT a piece of crap wife beater! What the hell?! 

As a coping mechanism for my intense anger, I began sharing my story with anyone and everyone who would listen. Wow did that “coping strategy” back fire! I learned that my story is repeated over and over and over. I learned that wives are waking up to their husband’s hands around their throats during a flashback but refuse to seek help or say anything because what was happening to me with the domestic assault charges against my husband would happen to them. I also learned that Nicole Elkin is not a federal employee she is a contract who is graded periodically throughout the year. Guess what, part of that grade comes from being able to meet the Domestic Assault case quota. Nice, Huh?

So, as my sky was falling and I was wrapping my mind around the fact that I seemingly had no place to go for help with my husband’s undiagnosed PTSD, I jokingly said to my friend, Christy, that I should streak the 101^st Airborne Division Command Building because maybe a naked woman running across the lawn would get their attention and they would hear what I had to say. Instead, the idea for the picture of a barebacked, faceless woman holding a weapon above her head came into my mind—shortly after the words began to flow as I began to allow my heart to feel again. I stood at the workbench in our garage after getting my husband’s mock-up M4, and while letting go of the numbness, my eyes filled up with tears and I wrote: 

Broken by battle,

Wounded by war,

My love is FOREVER,

To YOU this I SWORE.

I will:

Quiet your silent screams,

Help heal your shattered soul,

Until once again, MY LOVE,

YOU ARE WHOLE.

I ran upstairs to grab Rob’s cap and my eye liner. I came downstairs shirtless, handed a piece of paper with a diagram of how the lettering should be written on my back and handed it to Christy. She looked at me like I had gone daft, but she wrote the words and snapped the picture. The next day the photo was uploaded to Facebook with the intent being to have about 100 other wives make the same sort of picture to raise awareness about PTSD. Most of all, this was an outlet for my anger and a way for me to publicly say that I wasn’t just going to “fade quietly into the night”—thankfully Rob and I had been told by his chain of command that the domestic assault issue had been “taken care of” and would be handled “at the commander’s discretion”. All was right in the world and nearly everything else is history.

What many do not know are the events that have taken place since the birth of Battling BARE, Inc. and since the original interview for the article published June 25, 2012 in Clarksville’s Leaf Chronicle. You see, the Wednesday prior to this article going live in the paper, my husband was preparing to head off to Virginia to attend a 5 day healing program for PTSD entitled Operation: Restored Warrior. After completing this program, Rob would head to Fort Gordon, Georgia where he would serve 6 months TDY as cadre for the WTB. Before getting in the car to head off to Virginia, Rob and I walked together to get the mail where we were greeted by a Letter from the US Court System with a July 13, 2012 Court Date regarding the domestic assault charges we had been told were “handled”.

Tempers instantly flared. Rob dressed in his uniform and headed off to speak with his Commander. I preceded to call the 1-800 phone number on the letter, the Fort Campbell Court Clerks Office and the Fort Campbell Prosecuting Attorney’s office. While speaking to the PA’s office, I was given the run around when asked for which attorney was assigned to my case. When I asked to speak with this attorney, I was told he was busy but I could leave a message. After leaving the message I asked when I could expect a return phone call from this attorney—the response, from a SGT White, was some vague “he’s really busy right now” statement. I then asked what the return phone call policy was: 24 hours? 3 business days? 5 business days? This SGT White literally laughed at me and said “He’ll call you when he gets around to it.” (Click) Yes, that’s right…SGT White hung up the phone without saying good bye to me.

Well, laughing at and disrespecting me was the straw that broke this Army wife’s back. So, I immediately dialed up the office for CSM Smith—Command Sergeant Major of the 101^st Airborne Division. I was told command could not get involved because it was a “conflict of interest”. When I responded with the domestic assault quota situation and how I was in this situation as a result of being lied to, manipulated and also a direct conflict of interest—get domestic assault cases equals meet my quota equals keep my job—I wasn’t granted another response.

The following Monday, unbeknownst to me, the Leaf Chronicle article was published. Initially we had been told this article would be part of the community insert that was dedicated to honoring the 101^st Airborne Division. The community insert is placed in the papers where the store fliers and coupon inserts go—much to my surprise, we were front page news!

Around 10:30 a.m., Monday, June 25, 2012, my cell phone rang. It was LTC Bill Gaylor—Fort Campbell Chief of Staff—stating that the General among other members of command wanted to hear what I had to say. So, a meeting was scheduled for that following Friday at 3:30 p.m. 

Overnight, “The Daily Mail” in the UK picked up the story of Battling BARE and by Tuesday, our story had gone global. A reporter from Yahoo’s Shine called me Tuesday for an interview—a few hours later Battling BARE became one of the top trending articles and remained there for longer than expected. Tuesday night around 6:15 p.m., my cell phone rang with another Fort Campbell number. This time it was the top JAG attorney for Fort Campbell, LTC Bovarnick, stating that he would like to sit down with me to talk about my husband’s case. We scheduled a time for the following morning at 8:30 a.m. I had a few questions about what I could and could not say with the media—so the LTC arranged for Public Affairs officials to be made available for me. Then the LTC said that the CG would like to speak with me. I replied that I already knew that and had an appointment scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on Friday. The LTC said, “Well ma’am, the General is making himself available to you.”

Preparing myself to meet with the General based off of my 40 minute conversation with LTC Bill Gaylor the previous Monday morning, I was looking forward to sharing some of what I had learned regarding the issue of PTSD/TBI, domestic assault and Service Member suicide from the then 3000 followers of Battling BARE. What I had prepared myself for and what I experienced were to vastly different animals.

Upon walking into the General’s office, saying hellos and shaking hands, the first thing the CG said to me was “a little intimidated to be here aren’t ya?” I found this a bit odd, but responded with “No, sir. Not really.” We then sat around his conference table…and when I say “we”, I mean the CG, Rob’s Battalion Commander, two Public Affairs officials and LTC Bovarnick, the JAG officer. I felt a little out numbered, but thought “what the heck—I’ve nothing to hide. I’ve nothing to lose. I haven’t done anything wrong, and this man with the two stars on his chest needs to fix the fact that his Family Advocacy counselor completely screwed me over.” 

Throughout most of the conversation, which really was more like a radio interview where the DJ likes to hear himself speak, the General’s body language was closed off, and apparently the clock—or whatever was on the wall behind me—was far more interesting than making eye contact with me. During one part of the conversation (which I would be willing to bet a Jone’s Soda on was recorded without my knowledge), the General quasi leaned over to me and said:

Mrs. Wise, I’m a 31 year career Soldier. I’ve been deployed more times than your husband. I’ve done everything your husband has done and I came back just fine…and I’m not about to paint the entire 101^st Airborne as a bunch of combat crazies like they did back in Vietnam.

At this point in the conversation, I am biting the inside of my cheek to keep from being rude—the sound of my Mother and Grandmother’s voices in my head saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say—shut your mouth.”

Later on in the conversation, after being told the decision had been made to pull my husband off of TDY so he could come home and be evaluated “in house by the best the 101^st have to offer because we take care of our own”, the General made another statement I will never forget:

Mrs. Wise, don’t you think for one minute that your husband is getting preferential treatment because of your media campaign. I want all my Soldiers to receive the top notch care they deserve…and I don’t care what you said to the reporters. Say whatever you want. Just be sure you get it right. (Here the General pointed to the letters on his name tape one by one.) It’s M-C-C-O-N-V-I-L-L-E.

At this point I knew I was on the verge of chewing the butt of a 2-star commanding general. So, I reverted to my “Mmm-Hmm” responses which did not require me opening my mouth. I will admit I really didn’t know what to expect during my meeting with the CG, but I will tell you with 100% honesty, being disrespected is NOT what I expected.

More has happened since Battling BARE, Inc. went viral—my husband is being seen by the best Fort Campbell has to offer and we have come to find there is a very high likelihood that Rob doesn’t suffer merely from PTSD but also TBI that has gone unchecked since the IED explosion in 2004 when Rob earned his Purple Heart. Additionally, I have read story after story at the failing of the “systems” in place by both DoD and the VA. The response from DoD and VA? “We are doing the best we can.”

Well, DoD… VA… are you up for a little game of Bull-S**T? I’ve got my cards ready and over 24,000 Battle Buddies watching to make sure neither one of us cheat. You ready? Let’s play.

Respectfully,

That Naked Woman Running Across Your Lawn

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The iOptik contact lens is a revolutionary product that's about to change the future of augmented reality vision.

We chatted with Stephen Willey, the CEO of Innovega, about his company and their iOptik product.

The iOptik lens allows a user to clearly perceive images beamed onto special pairs of glasses, enabling augmented reality in a way never achieved before.

The lenses could be the missing link between fuzzy pictures on clunky glasses and crystal clear images projected onto designer lenses.

Willey has an eye for tech, and he took the time to chat with us about how he runs a business on the cutting edge of innovation. 

The takeaways?

• Find a single problem and try to solve it.
• Don't be afraid to start completely from scratch 
• Once you've started, fire on all cylinders and don't stop
• Build your team of people who love to flirt with the impossible
• Give your staff high goals but a wide latitude to accomplish them
• Shoot high and never give up

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The USS Virginia-class submarines are the United State's newest and most advanced submarine.

The first Virginia slipped beneath the waves just eight years ago and  only nine vessels have been completed.

They take more than five years to build and run about $2.4 billion apiece.

Here, we look at the Virginia class of submarines from stern to bow, finding out what makes these ships unique.

We'll start in the engine room, move our way over the reactor, through the barracks to the command center and down into the torpedo room. 

The Virginia-class submarine is a new breed of high-tech post-Cold War nuclear subs

The submarines are nearly 400 feet long and have been in service since 2003

The ships were designed to function well in both deep sea and low-depth waters

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This map showing the locations of 330 American drone strikes in Pakistan, using data from the Buruea of Investigative Journalists, via The Guardian.

The strikes are believed to have caused up to 3,247 casualties - including up to 852 civilians. 

Not surprisingly, most of the strikes are concentrated in Waziristan, a Federally Administered Tribal Area known to be a major terrorist hotspot. 

But within Wazirstan, upwards of 50 of the strikes have taken place within a few miles of a single traffic artery —  Miran Shan Bannu Road. 

Click to enlarge:

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Slate editor David Plotz revives interest Thursday in a great piece of Abraham Lincoln writing.

According to Plotz's post, Lincoln reviewed death sentences by court martial during the Civil War, and in the case of Michael Delaney, a condemned soldier who deserted his Colorado regiment but was found while fighting for another regiment, Lincoln proved himself concise, rational, and probably pressed for time.

His note, scratched on the bottom of some yellowing legal paper, reads:

Let him fight instead of being shot. A Lincoln

Plotz got to see Lincoln's writing on the document during a recent tour of the National Archives vaults (hence the post.) As Plotz writes:

I guess it's not surprising that the author of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address could manage to convey humanity, common sense, and a flash of dark wit in just seven words.

At 46 characters, let's just assume that this quote would have dominated the Twittersphere of 1863. This isn't a brand new finding, it's been noted in modern Lincoln biographies. (Unsurprising, given the estimated 65,000 books written on the Civil War and the 15,000 about Lincoln, some of which are stacked to the ceiling at the Ford's Theatre Center for Education and Leadership.) But it's new to us and a refreshing reminder of Lincoln's sober humanity as he's lately been recast as a Vampire Hunter.

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Days after Hiroshima, a deadlier atomic bomb was bound for an armaments factory in Kokura – until bad weather forced a change of plan. In an extract from his new book, Nagasaki, Craig Collie gets inside the cockpit of the plane that dropped Fat Man.

Born out of a small research programme, the Manhattan Project began in 1942 as a joint American-British-Canadian project, and was responsible for producing the atomic bomb.

A secret US government advisory group made recommendations for proper use of atomic weapons. It never questioned whether the bomb should be used on Japan, only where it should be dropped.

The preference was for a large urban area with closely built wooden-frame buildings densely populated by Japanese civilians. The project’s target committee recommended detonation at altitude to achieve maximum blast damage.

Five cities were proposed as targets: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, Kokura and Niigata. The armed forces were instructed to exclude these cities from conventional firebombing: the project director, General Leslie Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and his team of scientists wanted a 'clean’ background so the effect of the bomb could be easily assessed. They also wanted visual targeting without cloud cover so damage could be photographed.

Henry Stimson, the US Secretary of War, was concerned that America’s reputation for fair play might be damaged by targeting urban areas. General George Marshall had a similar view, believing the bomb should be used first on military targets and only later on large manufacturing areas after first warning the surrounding population to leave. Both men’s views were ignored.

People in Hiroshima became aware that their city was not being subjected to the incendiary attacks of other cities. A rumour spread that President Truman’s mother had been imprisoned in Hiroshima Castle, that the American military had been instructed to spare the city.

Groves’s first choice was Kyoto. It was largely untouched by bombing and was psychologically important to the Japanese. Its surrounding mountains would focus the blast and thereby increase the bomb’s destructive force.

Stimson, who had visited Kyoto in the 1920s, knew its status as Japan’s intellectual and cultural capital and considered its destruction to be barbaric. He argued for Kyoto to be dropped from the list and eventually won Truman over to his view.

On July 25 1945 General Thomas Handy issued on their behalf an order to General Carl Spaatz, the Guam-based commander of US Army Strategic Air Forces, to 'deliver’ the first 'special bomb’ as soon after August 3 as weather permitted visual targeting. The target was to be selected from a list of four: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and, added that day, Nagasaki.

The sub-committee had decided not to specify military-industrial areas as targets since they were scattered, and – apart from Kokura, which had a huge munitions factory in the middle of the city – generally on the suburban fringes. Aircrews were to select their own targets to maximise the effect on a city as a whole. The greatest impact would be achieved by aiming at the centre of a city, where the population was densest.

It wasn’t clear how the mass killing of civilians would drive the Japanese to capitulate. Japan’s cities had been firebombed since March, setting a precedent for targeting non-combatants, without any surrender resulting. Stimson had to settle for persuading himself that the project was not intentionally targeting civilians, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.

Hiroshima, Monday August 6 1945

Little Boy took 43 seconds to fall from the B-29 Enola Gay, flying at 10,000m, to a preset detonation point 600m above the city. A crosswind caused the missile to drift 250m away from Aioi Bridge. It detonated instead over Shima Surgical Clinic. Working like a gun barrel, thousands of kilograms of high explosive propelled one piece of the unstable uranium isotope U-235 into another piece. A nuclear chain reaction was triggered when the two pieces pressure-welded to supercritical mass.

The explosion had a force equal to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, and the temperature rocketed to more than a million degrees centigrade, igniting the air in an expanding giant fireball. At the point of explosion, energy was given off in the form of light, heat, radiation and pressure. The light sped outwards. A shock wave created by enormous pressure followed, moving out at about the speed of sound.

In the centre of the city everything but reinforced concrete buildings disappeared in an instant, leaving a desert of clear-swept, charred remains. The blast wave shattered windows for 15km from the hypocentre – or, as it is more colloquially known, 'ground zero’. More than two thirds of Hiroshima’s buildings were demolished or gutted, all windows, doors, sashes and frames ripped out. Hundreds of fires were ignited by the thermal pulse, generating a firestorm that rolled out for several kilometres. At least 80,000 people – about 30 per cent of Hiroshima’s 250,000 population – were killed immediately. The figure is possibly nearer to 100,000; the exact number will never be known.

At the instant of detonation, the forward cabin of Enola Gay lit up. Colonel Paul Tibbets, the commander of 509th Composite Group and the command pilot on the Hiroshima mission, felt a tingling in his teeth as the bomb’s radiation interacted with the metal in his fillings. A pinpoint of purplish-red light kilometres below the B-29s expanded into a ball of purple fire and a swirling mass of flames and clouds. Hiroshima disappeared from sight under the churning flames and smoke. A white column of smoke emerged from the purple clouds, rose rapidly to 3,000m and bloomed into an immense mushroom. The co-pilot, Captain Robert Lewis, wrote in his log, 'My God, what have we done?’

Marianas Islands, Tuesday August 7 1945

At the US Army Airforce base on the North Pacific island of Tinian bomb parts were being checked before they were installed in Fat Man’s metal casing. On the neighbouring island of Saipan the US Office of War Information was designing leaflets calling on the Japanese to petition their emperor to end the war. It planned to airdrop 16 million leaflets on 47 Japanese cities over the next nine days.

It said (in translation), 'TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE: America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet.

'We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2,000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.

'We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city. Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our President has outlined for you the 13 consequences of an honourable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan.

'You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.’

Tokyo, Wednesday August 8 1945

While the leaflet campaign began over Tokyo, the Japanese set out to block American propaganda broadcasts from Saipan, Manila and Okinawa. With army encouragement, newspapers and radio tried to nullify the message in the leaflets. An editorial in the Tokyo daily Asahi Shimbun ran the headline, strength in the citadel of the spirit. Regardless of the intensity of the bombing and the number of cities destroyed, it said, 'the foremost factor to decide the war is the will of the people to fight and how well they are united to fight… now we have to strengthen the citadel of the mind.’

At the same time the government of Japan filed a protest through the Embassy of Switzerland in Tokyo against the government of the United States for its use of the new inhumane weapon. It was described as 'a new crime against the whole of humanity and civilisation’. The worst manifestation of the new weapon was only now becoming apparent. Radiation had been a marginal concern during the development phase of the atomic bomb. The physicist Dr Norman Ramsey, the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory team on Tinian, was surprised to hear that Tokyo Rose, the English language voice of Japan’s propaganda broadcasts, was claiming large numbers were sick and dying in Hiroshima. They were reported as suffering from some unknown disease, not from burns from the bomb’s blast. Reports of radiation sickness were appearing in the American press.

The Manhattan Project’s director of scientific research, J Robert Oppenheimer, told the Washing-ton Post on August 8 that there would be little radiation on the ground at Hiroshima and it would decay rapidly. He continued to hold this view long after the war, despite evidence to the contrary. The Manhattan Project’s official assessment summed it up: 'No lingering toxic effects are expected in the area over which the bomb has been used. The bomb is detonated in combat at such a height above the ground as to give the maximum blast effect against structures and to disseminate the radioactive products as a cloud. On account of the height of the explosion, practically all of the radioactive products are carried upward as a column of hot air and dispersed harmlessly over a wide area… In the very unlikely and unanticipated case that these radioactive particles should be suddenly precipitated to the ground, the amount of radiation could be very high but would remain so for only a short period of time.’

The report doesn’t say what it considers a 'short period of time’. The uncertainty is consistent with the recollection of Stimson’s undersecretary of war, John J McCloy. 'When the bomb was used, before it was used and at the time it was used, we had no basic concept of the damage it would do.’

Tinian Island, Wednesday August 8 1945, pm

The hook of an overhead crane was slipped carefully into a metal loop on Fat Man’s bulbous body. The fully armed weapon was winched gingerly and carried sideways like an abattoir carcase out of the shed. It was lowered on to a transport dolly, sitting close to the ground on large rubber tyres. Technicians covered Fat Man with a tarpaulin. A prime mover pulled it across the asphalt, escorted by armed military police, photographers and technicians. Travelling slowly but smoothly for more than a kilometre, the cortege made its way to a floodlit loading pit. The dolly was wheeled on tracks over a three-metre pit. A hydraulic lift raised the bomb and its detachable cradle so the crew could wheel the dolly away. The tracks were removed and the bomb rotated 90 degrees and lowered into the pit. It was almost 10pm.

The B-29 Bockscar was towed alongside the loading pit. With its pitside landing gear run on to a turntable, the bomber was positioned over the pit, its forward bomb doors open. The hydraulic system again whined into action and Fat Man rose to a point just below the open doors. A plumb line enabled the bomb’s metal loop to be lined up accurately. With little clearance from the plane’s catwalks, this was a delicate operation. With a shackle locked on to the bomb, the live weapon was cautiously winched upwards into the plane. A single shackle held the bomb and the adjustable sway braces bearing on it. Bockscar was approaching 'mission-ready’ status. At 11pm the crew members of Mission No 16 dropped their wallets on the beds of men not flying that night and crossed to the briefing room.

Tibbets, the pilot of the Hiroshima mission, opened proceedings with a few general remarks. Fat Man was a different bomb from the one used on Hiroshima, he told the men. More powerful, and able to be mass-produced, it would make Little Boy obsolete. Tibbets wished the crews good luck and handed over to the intelligence officer Colonel Hazen Payette. Major Charles Sweeney would carry the bomb in Bockscar. Captain Frederick Bock would fly Sweeney’s plane, The Great Artiste, still fitted out with the measuring instruments installed for Hiroshima. They would record data transmitted by capsules that Bock’s plane would drop as soon as the bomb was released. Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Hopkins would fly The Big Stink with film cameras, scientific personnel and the official British observer.

The communications officer reported that the weather was expected to be rough. Two weather planes would report on conditions at the targets just before the mission’s arrival. A typhoon was gathering over Iwo Jima. The mission would involve flying some five hours through turbulent weather in complete radio silence and carrying an armed atomic bomb. It was an unsettling prospect. Payette conceded the Japanese might recognise the purpose of three unescorted B-29s, so the altitude at which they were to fly towards Japan was raised from the normal 3,000m to nearly 6,000m. The price of flying at the higher altitude would be greater fuel consumption. The rendezvous point for Hiroshima had been Iwo Jima, but that was no longer practical with the prevailing weather. They would rise to 10,000m at Yakushima off the south coast of Kyushu. From that small island they would proceed in formation towards Kokura.

Tibbets finished the briefing by stressing two directives. One was that the planes should wait no more than 15 minutes at the rendezvous point before proceeding to Kokura. The other was that Fat Man should be dropped visually. They must be able to see the aiming point to minimise the chances of a wasted drop. The additional, unstated reason was to allow the effect of the bomb to be photographed. The meeting closed with a short prayer by Chaplain William Downey and the crews went to their mess hall for a pre-flight snack.

After the briefing, Sweeney walked around aircraft No 77 on the hardstand. (The name Bockscar was not yet painted on – that would be done years later when it was installed in a museum.) He checked the aircraft’s surface and looked for telltale fluid on the tarmac below it. The bomb-bay doors were open and he looked inside. Fat Man was waiting there silently, as if taking the nap that Sweeney had not managed to grab. The bomb’s boxy tail had rude messages to Emperor Hirohito scribbled on it in crayon. As Sweeney backed out from the fuselage his heart jumped. An admiral was there standing alongside him, watching silently. 'Son, do you know how much that bomb cost?’ the admiral asked. 'No, sir.’ The admiral paused for dramatic effect. 'Two billion dollars,’ he eventually informed the command pilot. 'That’s a lot of money, Admiral.’ 'Do you know how much your airplane costs?’ 'Slightly over half a million dollars, sir,’ Sweeney replied. 'I’d suggest you keep those relative values in mind for this mission.’

Kokura, Thursday August 9 1945, am

A front was blowing in over eastern Japan from the China Sea. Smoke from the overnight bombing of neighbouring Yawata to the west was now drifting across Kokura. The sky was still hazy with broken clouds. Because of the wind change it hadn’t cleared as the weather plane had predicted. Some landmarks were visible. Others were hidden below patches of cloud.

Bockscar and The Great Artiste arrived at Kokura at 9.20am. On board Bockscar, the radarman, Sergeant Ed Buckley, and the navigator, Captain James Van Pelt, used the radar scope to line up the target, the armaments factory in the middle of the city. Standing orders were that it had to be sighted by eye. Van Pelt called to Sweeney, 'Two degrees right. One degree left.’ 'That’s the target,’ said Buckley. 'I have it in range. What’s our true altitude?’ 'Give me one degree left, Chuck. Fine. We are right on course,’ continued the navigator. 'Roger,’ said Sweeney. 'All you men make damned sure you have your goggles on.’ The crew put on their purple protective goggles. Grey clouds were scattered below. The ground was obscured by dark smoke from Yawata’s burning steelworks. 'Twenty miles out now, captain,’ said Buckley. 'Mark it!’ Van Pelt continued his commentary, 'Roger. Give me two degrees left, Chuck.’ 'You got it, boy!’ The pneumatic bomb-bay doors opened with a humming sound. From inside Bockscar’s Plexiglass nose, the bombardier saw Kokura unfurl 10,000m below. He noted the railway yard a kilometre from the armaments factory, but features were covered after that. With his eye glued to the Norden bombsight, the bombardier, Captain Kermit Beahan, could find nothing apart from smoke and cloud to fix the crosshairs on.

'I can’t see it. I can’t see the target,’ Sweeney called into the intercom. 'No drop. Repeat, no drop.’ He banked the plane sharply to the left and swung around for a return approach.

The bomb doors closed.

Bockscar rolled in again over Kokura with the noise of the bomb door mechanism opening and the rush of air outside. Through his rubber eyepiece Beahan saw the stadium, then the cathedral, then the river near the arsenal, then… the same impervious screen and no munitions factory. 'No drop! No drop!’ he cried out in frustration.

'Sit tight, boys. We’re going around again.’ Sweeney wheeled into another turn. As the plane came in for its third run, the crew were anxious and edgy. Van Pelt pointed out the stadium was near the arsenal. Beahan responded that the stadium was not the aiming point. Through the Norden, he saw streets and the river, but once again the munitions factory was shrouded. Again, he reported no drop. The tension released a rush of comments: 'Fighters below, coming up’ (Dehart); 'Fuel getting very low’ (Kuharek); 'Let’s get the hell out of here!’ (Gallagher); 'What about Nagasaki?’ (Spitzer). 'Cut the chatter,’ Sweeney said.

The radio operator Sergeant Abe Spitzer’s comment, meant as a rhetorical question to himself, made sense. Fuel was getting dangerously low and the hornets’ nest of defence they had stirred up below was an unacceptable risk for a plane carry-ing so destructive a weapon. Sweeney conferred by intercom with Beahan and the weaponeer, Lieutenant-Commander Frederick Ashworth. They decided to leave Kokura and head for Nagasaki, 160km to the south. The weather there didn’t look any more promising than Kokura, but the only other approved target, Niigata in northern Honshu, was too far away for their remaining fuel. Sweeney gathered his composure and asked the navigator, 'Jim, give me the heading for Nagasaki.’ Van Pelt gave a direction and pointed out it would take them over the Kyushu fighter plane fields. 'I can’t avoid it, Jim,’ Sweeney said. Fuel was critical, they were an hour and a half behind schedule and Fat Man was still live in the bomb bay. Bockscar turned south for Nagasaki.

Sweeney said to his co-pilot, Lieutenant Don Albury, 'Can any other goddamned thing go wrong?’ On the ground at Kokura, an all-clear had sounded before the Americans’ aborted bombing runs began. People were out of the shelters and getting about their business when they heard the aircraft engines high above them. However, this wasn’t the massed formations they associated with firebombing missions. They assumed it was a reconnaissance mission. Some noted the two planes made three passes over the city, the drone of their engines fading and returning each time. Then the planes disappeared, never to return. Kokurans got on with their lives, the struggle to stay afloat in a war-ravaged country.

The Japanese today have an expression, 'Kokura’s luck’. It means avoiding a catastrophic event you didn’t even know was threatened.

Nagasaki, Thursday August 9 1945, am

Bockscar headed across the north of Kyushu towards Nagasaki with The Great Artiste trailing off its right wing. There had been no opposition from Japanese fighter planes. A check of fuel reserves by the flight engineer, Sergeant John Kuharek, confirmed there was not enough to get to Iwo Jima and maybe not enough even to get to Okinawa – particularly as they were still carrying a five-tonne bomb. Major Sweeney asked Commander Ashworth to join him in the pilot’s area. Sweeney was the officer in charge of the plane, Ashworth the officer in charge of the bomb. Major decisions had to be made jointly.

Sweeney said, 'Here’s the situation, Dick. We have just enough fuel to make one pass over the target. If we don’t drop on Nagasaki, we may have to let it go into the ocean. There’s a very slim chance that we would be able to make Okinawa, but the odds are very slim. Would you accept a radar run if necessary and we can’t see the target? I guarantee we’ll come within 500 feet of the target.’

'I don’t know, Chuck.’ 'It’s better than dropping it in the ocean.’ 'Are you sure of the accuracy?’ 'I’ll take full responsibility for this.’ 'Let me think it over, Chuck.’

After a few moments of thought, Ashworth told Sweeney that he had decided to risk returning to Okinawa with the bomb. He could not agree to the radar drop. No one in the plane said anything. Ashworth looked perplexed. Even though he had ostensibly made his decision, he was still torn between three unwelcome alternatives: disregard orders to target visually; return to Okinawa and risk the lives of the crew; or dump the billion-dollar bomb into the ocean to ensure the lives of the crew. For some minutes, torment and doubt prevailed in Ashworth’s mind until he spoke again to tell Sweeney he had reversed his decision. He now agreed they should drop on Nagasaki, whether by radar or visually. The crew cheered.

At 10.50am Bockscar and The Great Artiste arrived from the north-west, high above Nagasaki at 10,000m. The 20 per cent cloud cover of the 8.30am weather report had grown to 90 per cent as the front moving in from the China Sea blanketed the city, hanging at two or three thousand metres. Sweeney swung Bockscar over the bay and north towards the cloud-covered downtown area. Beyond that was the more westerly of the two valleys running up from the city centre, the Urakami. Cloud had broken a little on the outskirts, but was thick at the centre of the city. Sweeney instructed the crew to put on their goggles, although he left his off. He’d already experienced how little visibility they allowed.

The navigator and the radar operator coordinated the approach to the aiming point, Tokiwa Bridge on the Nakajima river in downtown Nagasaki. Beahan fed data into the bombsight. 'Right. One degree correction to the left. Good,’ recited Van Pelt. Buckley reported, 'We’re coming in right on course. Five. Mark it.’ They were two minutes away. 'I still can’t see it,’ muttered Beahan. 'OK, Honeybee,’ encouraged the skipper, 'but check all your switches and make damned sure everything is ready.’ One minute to target and there were no dry runs.

The bomb-bay doors opened and the plane shuddered as it caught the air stream. They would remain under radar control unless Beahan could see the target and lock on it. 'I’ll take it,’ came the bombardier’s excited voice. 'I can see the target.’ There was a substantial hole over the mid Urakami valley with some scattered low-lying cloud below. Through the gap Beahan (the 'great artiste’ that the bomber was named after), could see an athletics track. It looked nothing like Tokiwa Bridge, 4km away on the other side of the ridge separating the two river valleys. He put the Norden crosshairs on the oval track. 'You own it,’ said Sweeney. A tone ran through the radio system indicating 15 seconds to go. Beahan was silent, concentrating, the automatic bombsight locked on the stadium where sports events had long since ceased to be held.

At 11.01am the shackle was released and Fat Man tumbled out, diving down. Wires snapped, the radio tone stopped abruptly. Bockscar lurched upwards. 'Bombs away,’ announced Beahan, and corrected himself. 'Bomb away.’ Sweeney turned sharply to port at a steep angle. In The Great Artiste the bombardier shouted, 'There she goes.’

Nagasaki, Thursday August 9 1945, midday

The horizon burst into a super-brilliant white with an intense flash, more intense than Hiroshima. From the air, a brownish cloud could be seen spreading horizontally across the city below. A vertical column sprang from the centre, coloured and boiling. A white, puffy mushroom cloud broke off at 4,000m and sped upwards to 11,000m. Fat Man took 43 seconds to fall to its detonation point 500m above a tennis court at 170 Matsuyama-cho. From the ground, a huge fireball could be seen forming in the sky. The bomb exploded with a bright blue-white light like a giant magnesium flare. A powerful pressure wave followed with an explosive rumbling. The view from the ground of the white vertical cloud was obscured at first by a bluish haze, then by a purple-brown cloud of dust and smoke.

Almost everything within a kilometre of the hypocentre was destroyed, even earthquake-proof concrete structures that had survived at similar distances in Hiroshima. People and animals died instantly. Heat rays evaporated the water from human organs. A boy standing in the shadow of a brick warehouse a kilometre away saw a mother and children out in the open instantaneously disappear. Tightly packed houses of flimsy wooden construction and tiled roofing were completely obliterated. The explosion twisted and tore out window and door sashes, and ripped doors off their hinges. Many buildings of brick and stone were so severely damaged that they crumbled and collapsed into rubble. Glass was blown out of windows 8km away.

The detonation flash lasted only a fraction of a second, but ultraviolet light coming from it was sufficient to cause third-degree burns to the skin and to cause heavy clay roof tiles to bubble up to one and a half kilometres away. Clothing ignited, telegraph poles smouldered and charred, thatched roofs caught fire. Paper spontaneously incinerated 3km away. As in Hiroshima, black clothing absorbed heat and charred or caught fire; white and light-coloured material reflected the ultra-violet rays. Patterns in people’s clothing were duplicated in the patterns of burns on their skin.

Fat Man was a most democratic weapon, dispatching the good, the bad, the ugly and the ordinary with equal finality and equal indifference. Anyone within a kilometre of the hypocentre without some sort of cover was reduced to ashes.

The Pacific War had been Japan’s belligerent attempt to rectify a trade difficulty. The United States, its main source of oil, had refused to do business while Japan maintained its occupation of China, and Japan had resorted to invasion as a means of obtaining resources. Except in the short term, it hadn’t proved productive.

Japan’s post-war economic miracle was, ironically, the product of a stand-off between its former enemies. Occupation fashioned Japan into a peaceful pro-Western democracy, but the balance of global power was moving. The Communists prevailed in China, and the Cold War changed Allied economic policy in the Far East. Japan was to be a bulwark against Communism, and in 1947 it was given $400 million to underwrite an economic plan.

With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 came $4 billion of orders for Japanese supplies. (The prime minister Shigeru Yoshida called this war 'a gift from the gods’.) Japan’s industry surged, restoring its people’s incomes to near pre-war levels. Out of the disaster of the Pacific War, Japan was able to become the global economic and trading power that it had tried to become through conquest.

Those who survived would see the sun rising on a new Japan. But in Nagasaki on the morning after the attack people had no comprehension of a future. And the atomic bomb would stalk them with lingering and deadly radiation that would claim many more victims. Perhaps 40,000 died on the day from the blast and 40,000 more from injuries and radiation illness. No one knows for sure.

'Nagasaki’ (Portobello Books, £20) is available for £18 plus £1.35 p&p from Telegraph Books (0844-871 1515)

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British defence planners are seeking to develop a new generation of unmanned sea drones with the capability of attacking submarines and launching missile attacks on enemy vessels, it has been reported.

The Royal Navy is already using unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to help stop Iran laying mines in shipping lanes and also being considered for deployment for the pirate-infested waters off Somalia.

Documents obtained by a newspaper showed the Ministry of Defence wants to boost its unmanned warfare capabilities across the services, seen as a cheaper way of providing round-the-clock intelligence and surveillance.

A report published by the MoD’s defence, science and technology laboratory, sets out to defence manufacturers how it wants them to help develop technologies “to provide greater support to maritime operations such as mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare and missile defence”.

It says: “Innovation in maritime technology, including unmanned systems, will make it possible for UK armed forces to continue to use the sea with security and persistence.

“Unmanned systems are being considered as a potential option to aid in the delivery of a range of different maritime tasks given the range of potential threats and increasing demands on the smaller number of highly capable manned platforms in which much of the UK capability is currently focused.”

The paper sets out the tasks as anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures, anti-ship missile defence, counter-piracy operations and support to future submarine operations, and makes clear they could be used to attack potential enemies.

Drones on land, sea and air could “could be expected to perform a number of roles, including, but not limited to, remote sensing, communications relay, delivery of effects such as the deployment of weapons or countermeasures”, it says.

Lieutenant Commander Kevin Giles explains in the report that such vessels are wanted for “dirty, dangerous and repetitive” tasks, and to keep costs down, according to the Guardian.

A spokesman for the MoD said: “Exploring innovation in maritime defence is part of the work we do to exploit the latest technology and ensure the Royal Navy is best equipped to meet future requirements.

“We are considering options for how we can use unmanned systems to support the vast range of future naval capabilities that include Type 45 destroyers, global combat ships, Astute class submarines and the two Queen Elizabeth class carriers that together with Lightning II jets will provide world-leading carrier strike from 2020."

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's only facility for handling, processing and storing weapons-grade uranium has been temporarily shut after anti-nuclear activists, including an 82-year-old nun, breached security fences, government officials said on Thursday.

WSI Oak Ridge, the contractor responsible for protecting the facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is owned by the international security firm G4S, which was at the center of a dispute over security at the London Olympic Games.

Officials said the facility was shut down on Wednesday at least until next week after three activists cut through perimeter fences to reach the outer wall of a building where highly enriched uranium, a key nuclear bomb component, is stored.

The activists painted slogans and threw what they said was human blood on the wall of the facility, one of numerous buildings in the facility known by the code name Y-12 that it was given during World War Two, officials said.

While moving between the perimeter fences, the activists triggered sensors that alerted security personnel. But officials conceded the intruders were still able to reach the building's walls before security personnel got to them.

Ellen Barfield, a spokeswoman for the activists who called themselves "Transform Now Plowshares," said three were arrested and charged with vandalism and criminal trespass.

She said the three, identified as Megan Rice, 82, Michael Walli, 63 and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, were being held in custody and appeared for a hearing before a U.S. magistrate judge in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Thursday.

A detention hearing is set for Friday afternoon, when prosecutors must show the defendants are a flight risk and a danger to the community in order to keep them in custody, according to court officials. The trial date is October 9.

Barfield forwarded a statement from the group in which it said the activists had passed through four fences and walked for "over two hours" before reaching the uranium storage building, on which they hung banners and strung crime-scene tape.

Ralph Hutchinson, coordinator for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, said the group's intention was not to demonstrate the lack of security at the plant, but to take a stance against the making of nuclear weapons.

"It wasn't so they could show how easy it was to bust into this bomb plant, it was because the production of nuclear weapons violates everything that is moral and good," Hutchinson said. "It is a war crime."

NUCLEAR MATERIALS 'NOT COMPROMISED'

Officials said that the storage building itself, which was built after the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, was designed with modern security features and that its contents were not compromised.

WSI Oak Ridge, the private firm employed by the U.S. Department of Energy to provide security at Y-12, is a subsidiary of the giant international security firm G4S.

G4S drew criticism for failing to provide the number of security personnel it promised to protect the London Olympic Games, forcing the British government to deploy extra army troops.

A spokeswoman for G4S declined to comment and referred inquiries to government spokespeople.

The security failure was an embarrassment both for the security firm and for the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, the Energy Department branch that operates U.S. nuclear weapons plants. "It was obviously a pretty serious incident," NNSA spokesman Joshua McConaha told Reuters.

"We're taking this very, very seriously," added Steve Wyatt, a spokesman for the NNSA office in Oak Ridge, which supervises the activities of Y-12 contractors.

The NNSA officials said the activists cut through two chain-link fences surrounding the sprawling facility and a third fence surrounding the ultra-secure enriched uranium stockpile building, known as the "Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility."

Wyatt said the building served as the U.S. government's only "warehouse" for storing highly enriched uranium used in nuclear weapons.

Highly enriched uranium is a radioactive material used in the core of bombs to produce a nuclear detonation. The Oak Ridge plant is one of the most important government installations involved in the maintenance and production of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

INCIDENT REVEALED NUCLEAR RISKS

Although the security breach occurred overnight last Friday, officials confirmed that the shutdown - which applies to "all nuclear operations" at the Y-12 site - did not begin until Wednesday. Officials said it was expected to continue into next week.

In the meantime, personnel at the facility would be given additional security training.

Peter Stockton, a former congressional investigator and security consultant to the Energy Department, expressed skepticism at government assertions the nuclear material was not at risk.

"It is unbelievable this could happen," Stockton said. "The significance is outrageous. If they were terrorists, they could have blown open the door and got inside."

Stockton said the security breach was the "worst we've ever seen." He said it was more serious than the case of Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwan-born scientist who was suspected of espionage at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory. He pleaded guilty in 2000 to a less severe charge when the case against him collapsed.

(Additional reporting by Mary Wisniewski in Chicago and Preston Peeden in Knoxville, Tennessee; Editing by David Storey and Peter Cooney)

Now take a look aboard the Navy's newest class of nuclear submarines >

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The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to create a new office that will oversee all prosthetics and rehabilitation programs, department officials told Congress on Tuesday.

VA officials want the office to support a national program director and a “large staff” devoted to prosthetics, sensory aide services, and rehabilitation, said Lucille Beck, the Veterans Health Administration’s acting chief consultant for prosthetics services.

The office will oversee the procurement, contracting, and development of prosthetics and rehabilitation programs.

“We have a plan now in the approval stages that will give us the resident resources and expertise in one office,” she told the House Veterans Affairs’ Subcommittee on Health that sponsored the oversight hearing on veterans’ prosthetics.

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According to reports, Russia is sending three boatloads of Marines to their base in Syria, and everyone is speculating about why. 

One of the more compelling theories is that Russia wants to deploy a force to secure their naval base at Tartus. Since only 360 marines are reportedly en route, it's pretty clear that this isn't the spearhead of an invasion — for now.

Russia has played ball with the UN and supported negotiations, clearly preferring that this whole situation just goes away as quickly as possible in the least messy manner. 

While Defense ministry officials quickly dismissed the claim that they were sending marines to Tartus, they left it open that that Navy could land there for "logistic reasons" at any point. 

One possible "logistic reason" is that there are an estimated 30,000 Russian nationals in Syria. Should the excrement hit the air conditioning, Russia would want to pull their people out, or at least protect the base where that many people could take refuge.

Like, you know, 360 Marines defending a base at Tartus. 

The base at Tartus is crucial for Russia, as it is the only place in the Mediterranean where the Navy can refuel and repair. It's the lynchpin of Russian Mediterranean naval strategy. They will not give it up to a rebellion. 

If Russia is prepping for an evacuation, this is just the first wave. Pulling that many people out of a country is a difficult endeavor.

Consider that in 1991, when Mt. Pinatubo erupted on Luzon Island in the Philippines, it took the USS Abraham Lincoln — one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world — leading a 23 ship armada to pull 45,000 Americans off of the island from an air base there. If Russia is seeing an evacuation in the future, this is just the first step of many. 

This movement could signal that the Russians are acknowledging an escalation. The battle at Aleppo is taking place a mere three hours northwest of Tartus, and it's pretty much expected that a nation with 30,000 citizens in a country with a brutal civil war underway would want an exit strategy for its people. 

In all likelihood, this troop movement is just that — the groundwork for an exit strategy in the event of the Russian's worst case scenario, and a force to hold the fort. 

Now check out what Syria has in its arsenal > 

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While the world went back and forth about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in 2002, Saddam Hussein was planning for the worst and did all he could to acquire a batch of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles.

Say what you will about Saddam Hussein, but the man had a pretty well-defined sense of self-preservation and knew the S-300s were all that stood between him and spending his final days in a "spider hole."

Perhaps thinking it's staring down a similar fate as Iraq, Iran has been doing everything it can to acquire the same missiles in the hope of developing the ability to thwart any potential attacks.

Tehran actually pinned down a deal to buy the highly capable missiles from Russia in 2007, but then president Dmitry Medvedev quashed the deal three years later citing UN sanctions prohibiting the exchange.

Iran obviously disagreed with the decision and took Russian defense contractor Rosoboronexport to international arbitration court in Geneva last April, and sued them for $900 million.

The court sided with Iran and not only granted it their requested damages, but tacked on another $4 billion fine for good measure.

Iran doesn't want the money so much as it wants those S-300s, and has now come out saying it'll forget all about the $4 billion if Russia simply agrees to fulfill its original contract.

The S-300 is the best anti-ballistic missile, anti-aircraft ordnance Russia has to offer and has enjoyed nearly 50 years of improvements and modifications. They're what China has lined up along the no-nonsense Taiwan Strait.

They're very effective, very hard to jam, and very difficult to stop. They're reputed to be one of the most advanced "multi-target anti-aircraft missile systems in the world ... [with] a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12 at the same time."

If Iran's acquisition of the S-300s didn't put the brakes on a possible attack scenario, it would certainly send military planners back to the drawing board to reconsider any eventual attack scenarios.

Forgiving the $4 billion may not be enough to spur Russia's desire to do the deal, but if it actually finds itself abandoning its Syrian base in Tartus all bets may be off.

Ilya Arkhipov at Bloomberg reports a Russian Think Tank believes that if Syria falls to the opposition, the Kremlin may be prompted to give Iran what it wants.

Russia is nearly as reluctant to see an attack on Iran as Tehran, and will likely do what it can to keep that from happening.

In the meantime, the pressure is building within Iran as a new round of deep and biting sanctions received approval from House and Senate negotiators Monday.

None of this is good news for the Iranian people who are already struggling to maintain their way of life and put a decent meal on the table.

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Veteran police officer and counter terrorism strategist Marc Goodman discussed the future of crime and terrorism in a recent Ted Talk.

Goodman warns that "the flip side of the technologies we marvel at" provides criminals and terrorists with unprecedented abilities.

"Frankly, I'm afraid by what I see," he says.

Goodman's talk was brought to our attention by BI contributor Bob Adams, who has written a series of posts on future threats.

Criminals already have a tech advantage. During the 2008 Mumbai terrorists attacks, terrorists used mobile phones, blackberries, satellite imagery, satellite phones and night vision goggles.

The terrorists even built their own operation center in Pakistan to monitor international news outlets, the internet and social media in real time to give them "unparalleled situational awareness and tactical advantage over police and government."

Mexican cartels have deployed cell phone towers in all 31 states in Mexico that support a national encrypted radio communication system.

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General Dynamics has been quite open in its opposition to the Army’s proposed three-year closure of its tank plant in Lima, Ohio. But what has that actually meant, in practical terms?

The Center for Public Integrity detailed GD’s fight against the Pentagon in an excellent story this week, detailing the nuts and bolts of a high-stakes effort by a powerful company to protect one of its key interests. Multiply this story by the Defense Department budget and the many brand-name contractors that depend on it, and you’ve got a look inside the workings of the Iron Triangle.

As CPI’s Aaron Mehta and Lydia Mulvany write, official disclosures show that General Dynamics’ contributions to key lawmakers coincided with important events on Congress’ calendar:

Sharp spikes in the company’s donations — including a two-week period in 2011 when its employees and political action committee sent the lawmakers checks for their campaigns totaling nearly $50,000 — roughly coincided with five legislative milestones for the Abrams, including committee hearings and votes and the defense bill’s final passage last year.

After putting the tank money back in the budget then, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have authorized it again this year, allotting $181 million in the House and $91 million in the Senate. If the company and its supporters prevail, the Army will refurbish what Army chief of staff Ray Odierno described in a February hearing as “280 tanks that we simply do not need.”

They continue:

Top Army officials have so far been unable to get political traction to kill the M1. Part of the reason is that General Dynamics and its well-connected lobbyists have been carrying a large checkbook and a sheaf of pro-tank talking points around on the Hill.

For example, when House Armed Services Committee member Hank Johnson, D-Ga., held a campaign fundraiser at a wood-panelled Capitol Hill steakhouse called the Caucus Room just before Christmas last year, someone from GD brought along a $1,500 check for his re-election campaign. Several months later, Johnson signed a letter to the Pentagon supporting funding for the tank. Johnson spokesman Andy Phelan said the congressman has consistently supported the M-1 “because he doesn’t think shutting down the production line is in the national interest.”

The contribution was a tiny portion of the $5.3 million that GD’s political action committee and the company’s employees have invested in the current members of either the House and Senate Armed Services Committees or defense appropriations subcommittees since January 2001, according to data on defense industry campaign contributions the Center for Public Integrity acquired from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

These are the committees that approve the Pentagon’s spending every year. Without their support, the tank — or any other costly military program — would be dead.

Kendell Pease, GD’s Vice President for Government Relations and Communications, said in an interview that the company — which produces submarines and radios for the military as well as tanks — makes donations to those lawmakers whose views are aligned with the firm’s interests. “We target our PAC money to those folks who support national security and the national defense of our country,” Pease said. “Most of them are on the four [key defense] committees.”

But Pease denies trying to time donations around key votes, saying that the company’s PAC typically gives money whenever members of Congress invite its representatives to fundraisers. “The timing of a donation is keyed by [member’s] requests for funding,” he said, adding that personal donations by company employees are not under his control. He said the donations tend to be clumped together because lawmakers often hold fundraisers at the same time.

In other words, contractors don’t even need to watch the House or Senate calendars to see when topics of interest are going to come up — lawmakers just ask forthrightly for donations when they need them.  Sometimes, however, outside events will prompt an increase in donations, as Mehta and Mulvany write:

During the current election cycle, General Dynamics’ political action committee and its employees have sent an average of approximately $7,000 per week to members of the four committees. But the week President Obama announced his defense budget plan in 2011, the donations spiked to more than $20,000, significantly higher than in any of the previous six weeks. A second spike of more than $20,000 in donations occurred in early March 2011, when Army budget hearings were being held.

General Dynamics isn’t the biggest contributor of the big brand names, according to data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics, and defense is only the 13th biggest giver by interest group for this election cycle. Overall, defense firms have given more than $16.7 million since 2011, and the biggest givers are Lockheed Martin with more than $2 million; Boeing with $1.8 million; Northrop Grumman with $1.8 million; Raytheon with $1.4 million; and then General Dynamics with more than $1 million.

“Although the defense sector contributes far less money to politicians than many other sectors, it is one of the most powerful in politics,” as the Center for Responsive Politics puts it. Part of the reason is that lawmakers have an inherent political interest in protecting their districts, and part of the reason is the industry’s spending on lobbying: In 2012, “defense aerospace” firms have spent $28.8 million on lobbying, according to the center; “misc defense” firms have spent $18.4 million; and “defense electronics” companies have spent more than  $18 million. Taken together, that’s more than $65 million as of this month. Last year’s total was $133.9 million.

So who are some of the lobbyists who advocated for GD on the tank question? Many of them are former staff members from the House or Senate Armed Services Committee, and Mehta and Mulvany include thumbnail profiles here.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told officials in a closed meeting that he prefers the U.S. “do the work" in a potential strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, Barak Ravid of Haaretz reports.  

Based on unnamed officials who attended the meeting, Ravid reports Netanyahu admitted that the U.S. is not prepared to pursue a military option at this point.

Netanyahu knows that Israel doesn't have the bombs to penetrate Iran's underground bunkers as it only has at least 55 of the 5,000 lb GBU-28 bunker-busting bombs.

Any attack would require Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP) – 30,000 lb bombs that can crash through 60 feet of reinforced concrete and detonate up to 200 feet below ground – which the U.S. announced were ready for action last week. 

President Barack Obama reportedly offered Netanyahu bunker-busters and refueling planes in March in exchange for an agreement to postpone an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities until 2013, but Netanyahu feels the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

Netanyahu reportedly said he would accept responsibility for any fallout after a U.S. attack, saying “the Israeli home front will be hit with ricochets no matter what happens.”

From Haaretz:

At one point during the meeting, a participant asked Netanyahu what he thinks could possibly happen the day after an Israeli strike on Iran. According to one official present at the meeting, the question angered Netanyahu. “If an investigative committee is formed, I’ll go and say that I, I am responsible,” said Netanyahu, as he pounded the table, and his chest, with his fist.

Netanyahu reportedly detailed the following criteria for a U.S.-led strike: Iran enriching uranium to 90 percent (instead of 20), an Iranian attack on American interests in the Persian gulf, or a massive Iranian attack against Israel.

Some officials present at the meeting told Ravid that Netanyahu’s comments seemed to be part of a “psychological warfare” campaign of Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to pressure the U.S. into attacking Iran itself.

The Prime Minister's Office responded to that report by saying, “We do not comment on issues discussed in closed meetings, including when the quotes from them are inaccurate.”

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