OpenWarfare.org

An interesting story on congress giving the nod to the inclusion of open source software in military systems.

http://www.gcn.com/print/27_23/47157-1.html?topic=&CMP=OTC-RSS

I found this article over at HackADay.
Its a pretty neat little ROV project.  Check it out at:

http://hackaday.com/2008/09/24/underwater-rov-2/

I just found this forum whil searching for info on caseless ammunition.  Pretty fun group of people and a lot of interesting stuff.

http://www.roguesci.org/theforum/index.php

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/09/onward-to-a-hol.html

This is yet another great article from Global Guerrillas.

If you find this at all interested I’d suggest spending some QT there.  Awesome thought provoking articles.  If I can get to that stake with openwarfare I’ll consider it a success..

Gizmodo posted on an interesting article on NetworkWorld about that system administrator in San Francisco who got pissed and 0wn3d the greater San Fran net ops.  Apparently he placed a router somewhere on the net that gives him complete access to the fiber.  The authorities are trying to find it but the guy has been less than helpful.  I thought it was an interesting example of how one person can cause quite a bit of fuss in the digital age.

The folks over at DefenseTech are reporting that the military might finally be taking steps to replace the M4.  For those of you who don’t know, the M4 has several failings that the military has been ignoring for whatever reason.

1) The weapon ports hot gas directly into the breech to work the action.  This makes it pron to jamming and other malfunctions as well as increasing metal fatigue.

2) The high velocity 5.56 round is not a heavy hitter.  There have been consistent reports of people being shot multiple times and not going down.
   
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004416.html

Any tinkerer knows that A/D (Analog to Digital) converters are the heart of many of their projects, especially if said project involves sensors.  Here is a great article about rolling your own using an FPGA.  Even if you never need to do it yourself there is a lot of interesting theory in there.  Well worth the read.

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=21

This is the first time I’ve seen someone doing this.  I had the idea a few years ago to start a courier company that uses micro UAVs to cheaply deliver messages and papers in cities.  Legally it’s a tricky thing to do but I guess the laws are not as strict in Africa

The idea of using this sort of method to communicate on the battlefield is actually pretty good.  I remember reading an article about a Naval exercise where the Op-Force commander used couriers on motorcycles to deliver commands instead of radios, effectively nullifying the Navy’s ability to eavesdrop.  You could build a carrier pigeon UAV that could transmit encrypted data a short distance, say 100 feet.  It would only transmit once it had reached it’s target coordinates.  The data would be delivered and new data entered and the pigeon would fly home. 

Check out the full story over at DIY Drones:

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A46310

I’m sure most of you are familiar with Arduino board.  If you are not and are looking to get into hardware hacking I would highly recommend it as a place to start.

Enough chitchat on to the main event so to speak.

I’ve been working on my own side project involving the Arduino in a limited autopilot capacity so when I found this project I was quite interested.  They are simple, functional and very hackable.  These two products are exactly what Openwarfare is all about.  Using economies of scare to bring usable capability at a throwaway price.  Very exciting.  Check it out pver it DIY Drones.

http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A46080

No it’s not some sort of Japanese tea with gooey chunks of tapioca in it.  It’s Ladyada’s Wave Bubbe Jammer

Of course it is highly illegal to use (maybe even make) but it’s a pretty cool concept/implementation.  According to her blog she even got requests from gubment agencies for it.   

http://www.ladyada.net/rant/category/wavebubble/