You’re walking with your buddy in the woods and one of you steps in what you thought was a dog mine only it cracks instead of squishes.

During the Vietnam War, what looked like dog dookie could possibly be an Air Force homing beacon in disguise…like a sad Transformer toy no one’s going to ever want to play with…ever. Officially called the T1151 Dog Doo Transmitter, this T1000 version of your standard dog dropping would relay movement of supply vehicles during the night and even transmit and receive morse code messages.

According to someone who actually worked on the project, these nuggets of espionage were customized to resemble the fecal matter of local animals so…you know…they wouldn’t stand out in an area full of non-local dog spam.

We’re betting there could be enough material for a book from all the prank-pulling that took place with these things.

[Sploid]

Grappling hooks are so 1985.

Check out this thing.

Looking a LOT like some kind of steampunk version of Spiderman’s climbing apparatus circa 1944, the vacuum-powered gear in this video was developed by students at Utah State University for an Air Force competition in order to secure a $100,000 grant to continue working on this contraption.

Their next step is to use the money they won during this competition to develop a much stealthier version that doesn’t sound like your mother’s coming for your room with a Dyson.

[YouTube]

The Air Force has launched its second X-37B space plane (X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle-2 to you) into orbit for a 270 day mission. The original mission lasted for 224 days before OTV-1 landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in December and managed to shake observers by changing orbit more than a few times.  The Air Force won’t say what they are up to, but the Chinese and Russians are skeptical.

While the Air Force has said the space plane is designed to stay in orbit for 270 days, it hasn’t said much about the overall mission. It has said only that the vehicle provides a way to test new technologies in outer space, such as satellite sensors and other components.

[LA Times]

This software looks amazing; watch as Space Fence monitors the skies.

[Lockheed Martin via Gizmodo]

The human mind has no firewalls. Recently the 711th Human Performance Wing requested proposals examining “Advances in Bioscience for Airmen Performance” for advancing the deployment of extreme neuroscience and biotechnology warfare in the service of the Air Force.

But perhaps the oddest, and most disturbing, of the program’s many suggested directions is the one that notes: “Conversely, the chemical pathway area could include methods to degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm enemy cognitive capabilities.” That’s right: the Air Force wants a way to fry foes’ minds — or at least make ‘em a little dumber.

For any interested parties, the Air Force is warning the project “may require top secret clearance.”

[Wired]

Air Force Lt. David Steeves died in 1965, a liar. According to popular thought, his claim to fame was a hoax at best and treason at worst. He was divorced, slandered and wound up in court suing a publisher who’d once courted him to write a book about his miraculous story of survival.

13 years later, a gang of Boy Scouts stumbled upon proof that corroborated Steeves’ story. A missing piece of the puzzle that could have silenced decades of doubters had finally been found.

So what was the story?

On May 9, 1957, Air Force Lt. David Steeves, piloting a T-33 training jet, took off from Hamilton Air Force Base, near San Francisco, on a flight to Arizona. Then, like a character in the television show the “Twilight Zone,” he disappeared.

Days passed, then weeks. When no trace of Steeves or the plane was found, the Air Force declared the 23-year-old pilot officially dead.

But, 54 days after he vanished, a gaunt, bearded Steeves, filthy clothing hanging from his body, hobbled into a camp in the remote backcountry of Kings Canyon National Park, east of Fresno. He told an almost unbelievable tale of survival.

Get the full, insane, heartbreaking story here.

[LA Times]

Conspiracy nuts, on your mark! The top-secret X-37B space plane has already gone missing once this year (proving the craft to be far more agile than amateur military tech experts predicted) and now it has again disappeared. Many now suggest that the plane is preparing to land or has landed already.

The Air Force is not saying anything, because after all it is a top-secret military space plane.

Our guess? Invisibility shield. But then again, we run a blog about Nazi-fighting bears.

[Fox News]

Newly declassified documents have revealed that former Prime Minister Winston Churchill demanded a cover-up of an encounter between a Royal Air Force plane and a UFO.

The revelation was found in a letter from the son of one of Churchill’s bodyguards who claimed to have witnessed Churchill viewing pictures of the incident and demanding it remain secret for at least 50 years because ‘it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one’s belief in the Church’.

UFO experts aren’t surprised, however. Churchill is known as a big UFO buff, and even requested an update from the British government in the 50’s.

[Telegraph.co.uk]

In case you were tired of running down all the conspiracy angles for the Air Forces’ new X-37B shuttle, here is a fresh new piece of AF intrigue for you to chew on.

The Air Force’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2—designed to attack global targets at Mach 20—has disappeared nine minutes into its first test flight, just after separating from its booster. Contact was lost, and it hasn’t been found yet.

The Falcon was supposed to splash down in the Pacific Ocean after a 30-minute, 4,100-nautical-mile test flight. Not to be confused with the unmanned X-37B space shuttle—which launched on April 22—the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 blasted off last week from the Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Minotaur IV rocket.

The Falcon is designed to launch conventional weapons at any point on the globe in under one hour, Gizmodo continues.

[Gizmodo]