Militaria

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether it’s sex discrimination for the government to require only men to register for the draft when they turn 18.

The question of whether it’s unconstitutional to require men but not women to register could be viewed as one with little practical impact. The last time there was a draft was during the Vietnam War, and the military has been all-volunteer since. But the registration requirement is one of the few remaining places where federal law treats men and women differently, and women’s groups are among those arguing that allowing it to stand is harmful.

It has long been widely accepted as orthodoxy that the world was saved from nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis because of the wisdom of John F. Kennedy and the diplomatic backchannel his aides had with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. But this is only half true. The Soviet sources that have emerged since the end of the Cold war as well as recently declassified KGB archives suggest that, more than anything, we were saved from nuclear annihilation by sheer luck.

Indonesia’s navy says items have been found from a missing submarine, indicating the vessel with 53 crew members has sunk with no hope of finding survivors.

Navy Chief Yudo Margono said rescuers found several items including parts of a torpedo straightener, a grease bottle believed to be used to oil the periscope and prayer rugs from the submarine.

“With the authentic evidence we found believed to be from the submarine, we have now moved from the ‘sub missing’ phase to ‘sub sunk’,” Admiral Margono said at a press conference in Bali where the found items were displayed.

Hope it was quick. h/t Mauser

The U.S. Air Force’s top officer wants the service to develop an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-vintage F-16s and complement a small fleet of sophisticated—but costly and unreliable—stealth fighters.

The result would be a high-low mix of expensive “fifth-generation” F-22s and F-35s and inexpensive “fifth-generation-minus” jets, explained Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr.

If that plan sounds familiar, it’s because the Air Force a generation ago launched development of an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-vintage F-16s and complement a small future fleet of sophisticated—but costly and unreliable—stealth fighters.

I thought we were on the cusp of autonomous fighter jets etc.