Factors that determine what can be composed and the expense and risk of composing various components are examined, and suggestions are presented on both policies and investments that would enhance prospects for composability.

Improving the Composability of Department of Defense Models and Simulations

In 1998, the band Rage Against the Machine decried "the thin line between entertainment and war." Today, even that thin line is in danger of vanishing.

Funny, I can't say I ever thought of Rage as a particularly peaceful band.

Through video games, the military and its partners in academia and the entertainment industry are creating an arm of media culture geared toward preparing young Americans for armed conflict. From "Rogue Spear" and "America's Army" to "Raven Shield" and "SOCOM II", with more to come, the military has embraced entertainment titles at the same time the entertainment industry has embraced the military.

It's also possible that I only recently started paying attention.

With military spending budgeted at nearly $400 billion in 2004, a video game industry generating more than $10 billion a year, a transnational entertainment and media industry with annual revenues of some $479 billion, and no public outcry over the militarization of popular culture, the future of such collaborations seems assured.

It's going to be big, big, big! Act now! Operators are standing by! (Do I get extra credit for using the word "transnational" in my essay?)

We need to start analyzing the effects of blurring the lines between war and entertainment.

I mean, I really need to graduate. Have you got a better thesis idea?

Online, SOCOM II has players competing against each other for promotions and encourages them to form gang-like "clans", roaming the electronic halls in search of a good fight. A player can even take on the role of an RPG-armed terrorist!

Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

The Pentagon Invades Your Xbox

From the 19 November 2003 edition of the Wall Street Journal, in an article by Matthew Kaminski:

... In this Byzantine world, the military must be as innovative as its enemies. The Fourth ID fakes faids to throw off adversaries. "We don't get sidetracked by tribal feuds any more," said LtCol Ted Martin.

The division's analysts headquartered at Saddam's Tikrit palace use "link analysis" to figure who's tied to whom in the Sunni triangle, borrowing a technique honed by the FBI to fight organized crime in the US. The 'insurgents' resemble Mafia organizations, in structure and methods, more than they do a military or guerilla force.

The test this week will mark the second time Eglin has detonated the massive guided bomb this year. It is the largest non-nuclear weapon the Air Force is developing.

MOAB Test is Set for Thursday

To help improve the Air Force’s ability to foresee the implications for safety, aircraft availability, and cost of its plans to retain aircraft fleets for service lives that may be as long as 80 years, and to identify actions that will mitigate or avoid some of the more severe consequences, this study measures how the USAF aircraft fleets’ ages relate to maintenance and modification workloads and material consumption.

Aging Aircraft: USAF Workload and Material-Consumption Life-Cycle Patterns

It supports a much larger research effort examining the future of the structure, innovation, and competition of the U.S. military aircraft industrial base that responds to congressional concerns about that future.

The table of contents is as follows.

1. Introduction
2. Industry Structure And Competition In The Biplane Era
3. The Monoplane Revolution
4. The Subsonic- And Early Supersonic-Jet Revolutions
5. The Agile Supersonic Technology Revolution
6. The Stealth Revolution
7. An End To Competition And Innovation?

The U.S. Combat Aircraft Industry, 1909-2000: Structure, Competition, Innovation

"His life was just one great accomplishment after another."

Ivan A. Getting, 91; Developer of GPS

Current design goals are for the FTR to execute 500-kilometer, round-trip transport missions carrying 20 tons in an all-VTOL mode.

Vertical Envelopment and the Future Transport Rotorcraft

The purpose of the challenge is to leverage American ingenuity to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technologies that can be applied to military requirements.

DARPA Grand Challenge

Retired Adm. John Poindexter, who created a firestorm this week with his plan to create a futures market that would capitalize on predicting terror attacks, will resign in coming weeks from his post at the Pentagon, a senior defense official said Thursday.

Did I call that or what? Who says predicting the future is unreliable?

AOL Time Warner scolds its own employee, Justin Frankel, one too many times; Frankel resigns in protest.

DARPA scolds its own employee, John Poindexter, one too many times; Poindexter resigns in protest.

Poindexter to resign in coming weeks following terror futures flap