Want to know everything there is about piloting a US Military Predator drone? Probably not on most of our lists of things to do, but just in case it was, the leaked manual for this drone has now hit the Internet, courtesy of PublicIntelligence. This is the full manual that includes everything you need to know about maintaining, troubleshooting, and more. The original manual was crafted in 2010 by Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems and, obviously, wasn’t meant for the general public.

So what does the drone let you do? Basically it’ll provide information about approaching enemies, perform surveillance, report enemy movement and activity, and even fire upon the enemy, if needed. Probably not the most exciting read of the century for those of us that aren’t part of US Intelligence, but it’s still always kind of interesting how this classified items end up in front of any all who would see them. Sure, the manual might be free and easily accessible for all to see, but don’t expect to get your hands on one of these at your local big box retailer. If you really want to use one though? Uncle Sam could always use a few more good men.

You can check out the full manual right here:
US Drone Flight Guide

[ source ]

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Every single soldier who has seen action would have one or maybe more than one of those tales describing an incident in battle when his ‘intuition’ or as some describe it – ‘the gut feeling’ – saved his life from a potentially fatal scenario.

Battle-hardened soldiers do possess that sixth sense to smell danger. And though it is an intangible factor in a war zone, US Office of Naval Research (ONR) wants to develop a way to train soldiers to harness this inner voice to improve their chances of getting out of a battle alive and kicking.

What the US Military is looking at is a way to train young and fresh soldiers to develop inner voices which only battle-hardened veterans possess. That end result will be young, yet “experienced” super soldiers in the field, who are armed outside as well as inside to take on the enemy.

The ONR is looking at ways to develop further a soldier’s ability to detect and react to unique patterns of danger they are likely to experience during a situation in a battle field without actually consciously and intentionally analyzing them. The attempt is to imbibe the instincts and reflexes of battle-field veterans into soldiers who are basically in their first deployment.

Of course, to act instinctively the soldier has to learn to react to signals and situations as second nature. Researchers are trying to learn further about “implicit learning” techniques where the soldier gets exposed to such cues and then gets used to reacting to signals without actually knowing they are learning.

We are all used to implicit learning, day-to-day examples being learning to ride a bike or learning new languages.

But when it comes to applying it in battle situations, lots of other factors come into play, like individual differences of the soldiers involved, battle stress and fatigue among others.  So the ONR needs to develop an elaborate model revolving around their training method which mainly involves virtual battlefield simulations.

More research is on in this area and in all likelihood there will be a time when younglings will graduate out of military academies as “war veterans”, at least mentally.

Photo: Men Who Stare at Goats

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Our good friends over at the Department of Defense (DoD) who’s chief aim is to protect the nation has deployed a new app.  Ever wanted to be tapped in to the DoD’s Video and Imagery distribution system (DVIDS)?  Well, there’s an app for that.  This release from the DoD gives you videos, photography, newscasts and a bit of social sharing capabilities via Facebook and Twitter.  You won’t get any mission information, terrorist activities with realtime geo-location updates, maybe that will be rolled out in the second version. And since your tax dollars already paid for it, you can grab it off iTunes for free.

[iTunes]

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