The final 3,800 pages of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails were released on Monday.

But the most serious controversy surrounding the Democratic presidential frontrunner's exclusive use of a private email account — connected to a server she set up in the bathroom of her New York home — to conduct official government business is far from over. In fact, the worst of it probably lies ahead.

The 30,000 emails the State Department released over the past 10 months in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by VICE News in January 2015 did not contain any smoking guns about Clinton's tenure at State. But it was the emails the department deemed too sensitive to publicly disclose that attracted the most attention from the media and Clinton's detractors — and they will continue to do so.

More than 1,800 emails were withheld or heavily redacted under exemptions to the FOIA law, including 22 that were not released because they were deemed Top Secret and would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if disclosed. About 65 others were classified Secret and were heavily redacted. VICE News is currently fighting in federal court for a summary of the information contained in those emails. 

Moreover, VICE News and dozens of other news organizations and good government groups are still in the process of obtaining emails from Clinton's top aides in response to separate FOIA lawsuits filed against the State Department. There is little doubt the issue will continue to play out through November's election.

Clinton has insisted she never sent or received any emails that contained classified information. Her campaign press secretary, Brian Fallon, said the decision by the State Department and the intelligence reviewers from other government agencies who scrutinized her emails were overzealous in their decision to deem a total of 45 Secret and Top Secret. 

"This is overclassification run amok," Fallon tweeted on January 29, after it was revealed that 22 of Clinton's emails received the highest classification following a State Department review. "We adamantly [sic] oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails."

Last August, when it became clear that many of Clinton's emails contained sensitive information, the State Department asked Intelligence Community reviewers from five of the 17 intelligence agencies to review Clinton's emails after concerns were raised that they were not being properly vetted for classified information.

The email controversy has taken a toll on her campaign, largely due to Clinton's shifting reasons for why she used a private email account, the monthly reminder of the emails due to the State Department's rolling releases, and separate investigations currently underway, including one being conducted by the FBI, that are probing her use of a private email server and any potential intelligence breach.

VICE News first filed a FOIA request for all of Clinton's emails in November 2014, when it became clear that she would announce her candidacy for US president. Our goal was to provide the public with information about Clinton's work as the nation's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013, along with any insight it offered into what a Clinton presidency would look like. (We've also used FOIA to disclose information about Republican presidential candidates.)

Around the same time VICE News filed its FOIA request, the State Department contacted Clinton — and four other formers secretaries of State — and asked them to turn over all records, like emails, from their time in office for preservation as required by the Federal Records Act.

The State Department took the step after it received a notification from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in September 2013 about new guidance governing the management and preservation of personal email used for official business. 

We sued the State Department in January 2015 for failing to respond to our request in the timeframe required by FOIA. Two months later, the New York Times revealed that Clinton exclusively used a private email account to conduct official business; shortly thereafter, the Associated Press reported that Clinton had set up an unsecured server in her home.

Initially, Clinton was highly defensive of her decision to use private email. She released a 9-page statement saying the decision was a matter of convenience and noted that her predecessors also engaged in the same practice. That stance was echoed when she responded to demands that she release transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs by claiming that many people give paid speeches and that she would disclose the transcripts only if all the other candidates did the same.

But the way Clinton communicated through email was unique; she did not abide by the State Department's own internal guidelines, updated in 2005, that say, for security reasons, "normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized" computer system.

Clinton was clearly aware that the use of private email to conduct official business was frowned upon. Indeed, she had at one point questioned why a State Department staffer used his private email to conduct official business.

"I was surprised that he used personal email account if he is at State," she wrote in an email to one of her aides.

When the revelations about her email practices surfaced — Clinton's use of private email was leaked to the Times by a House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks — the rationale of Clinton and the State Department appeared to be to thwart federal preservation laws and FOIA regulations. Indeed, for years, the State Department failed to respond to any requests for Clinton's emails.

To this day, one of the unanswered questions about the Clinton email scandal is why the State Department did not rein her in for exclusively using private email, which numerous White House and State Department officials were aware of, and whether she received any internal legal guidance authorizing her to engage in the practice.

Dan Metcalfe, the founding director of the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy (OIP), which is supposed to ensure government agencies are complying with the FOIA, told VICE News it is clear to him that Clinton's exclusive use of private email was a "blatant circumvention of the FOIA [in addition to] the Federal Records Act by people on both sides of it who unquestionably knew better."

"You would think that if agency FOIA officials knew she used a personal account across the board, they would have gone to her and said that they have a FOIA request targeted toward her emails in particular, so they of course need access to the official information in that account," said Metcalfe, who now teaches secrecy law at American University in Washington, DC.

In fact, one of the major discoveries to come from Clinton's private email use was that the State Department's FOIA office was a disaster. Last month, the department's internal watchdog said in a new report that the agency repeatedly failed to provide FOIA requesters with accurate responses to their document requests and also gave a misleading answer to a requester three years ago in response to information about Clinton's email use. 

During Clinton's time as Secretary of State, the State Department received at least a half-dozen FOIA requests for her emails covering various issues. But because Clinton operated a private server out of her home, her emails were not accessible to the FOIA analysts tasked with processing the requests. The State Department failed to produce any records responsive to the requests, some of which dated back five years.

In an attempt to showcase that she was transparent, Clinton, in a tweet last March, called for the State Department to release all of her emails. But by then, VICE News' FOIA lawsuit was already before a federal court judge who ordered the department to release the 52,459 pages of Clinton's emails on a rolling monthly basis, rejecting a State Department proposal to release the entire archive in January 2016. 

I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 5, 2015

But in declarations filed in federal court as part of VICE News' FOIA lawsuit, the State Department's FOIA chief disclosed that the emails Clinton turned over to the department — in "paper form in twelve bankers' boxes" — was not her entire archive. Clinton's attorneys first reviewed her emails and decided which ones were work-related before turning them over to the State Department; she deleted some 30,000 emails asserting they were "private, personal records."

Still, the emails that have been released thus far matter a great deal. They provide unprecedented insight into the inner workings of State and shed enormous light on Clinton's work on pressing issues such as Guantanamo, Wikileaks, Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, and Israeli-Palestinian relations.

One email suggested that Clinton was on the fence about whether she should support a proposed troop surge in Afghanistan in late 2009 and only backed the idea when her former campaign adviser said it would be political suicide to vote against it.

The emails revealed that she was the recipient of hundreds of "intelligence" reports and unsolicited advice from longtime confidante Sidney Blumenthal, who told Clinton in one noteworthy email to "avoid ever being drawn into commenting on any aspect" of the CIA's torture program.

Emails showed that Clinton staunchly supported the closure of Guantanamo and praised her colleagues for working to secure the release of a high-profile detainee named Omar Khadr — one of the youngest detainees held captive at Guantanamo — who pleaded guilty to war crimes charges for throwing a grenade that killed a US Army medic.

Yet many of Clinton's responses to emails contained nothing more than a directive to her aides: "Pls print." Hundreds of other emails showed Clinton's close advisers showering her with compliments about her appearance, her public remarks on a wide-range of issues, and her testimony before Congress. Additionally, the emails helped shed light on how aggressively State Department officials dealt with individual reporters and publications that portrayed the Secretary of State in a negative light.

The emails also contain plenty of quirky exchanges between Clinton and her staff, such as one in which she asked an advisor how to make a smiley face on her Blackberry, and another for instructions on how to use a fax machine.

The final batch of Clinton emails are being released Monday evening at 6pm ET, hours before Super Tuesday, when voters in 11 states will go to the polls to choose their presidential nominee.

SEE ALSO: 6 New Jersey papers call on Chris Christie to resign over his Trump endorsement in brutal joint editorial

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NOW WATCH: IAN BREMMER: Ukraine's government will fall apart 'by the end of this year'

The US Air Force will be flying operational prototypes of hypersonic weapons by 2020. At least that's according to Major General Thomas Masiello, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, who spoke last Friday at the Air Force Association Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Florida.

This may mean that hypersonics are just about through what engineers and program managers call the "Valley of Death," which is a sort of Catch-22 where a lot of good ideas languish and die.

Taking any idea from the drawing board to operational deployment is expensive.

There's one phase where that development starts getting really expensive, but it's before anyone has enough confidence in the new idea that they're will to lay out enough money to make that technology usable in practical terms.

Once a program makes it through the Valley of Death, it's pretty much a given that it'll go from being an exotic idea to an actual thing in the US arsenal.

That 2020 target is ambitious, and quite simply because going hypersonic is not easy at all. Hypersonic speeds begin at, roughly, Mach 5 — one mile per second or five times faster than the speed of sound.

That's a sort of generic cutoff at the low end, while the top end runs all the way up to Mach 25, (depending on who you ask). However, the actual, not-completely-arbitrary, laws-of-physics cutoff is a bit harder to precisely define.

An object traveling at hypersonic speeds is going so fast that it generates enough heat, shock, and pressure to alter the basic chemistry (and therefore aerodynamic properties) of the air it's plowing through. It just so happens that this kind of disruption is a pretty major factor by the time a vehicle has hit Mach 5. But the transition isn't sharp. As you go faster, the whole engineering problem gets increasingly screwed up in new and extremely difficult ways.

The big problem is that computer modeling of hypersonics is really hard when the individual elements start becoming recursive and, therefore, computationally very demanding. Beyond that, the vehicle itself is putting tons of energy into the system; thermal loading becomes an enormous pain in and of its own right. And on top of that, trying to keep a jet engine lit at 3,000 miles per hour is a nightmare, too. Blah blah blah.

Or something. The basic deal is that hypersonic stuff is well into the range of super-duper hard even for the bright bulbs at NASA and DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Related: What Does the US Military's New Space Plane Really Do?

While it's been a huge pain to do hypersonic stuff, it's also been something that aircraft designers have wanted pretty bad. Ever since people started making combat aircraft, making them faster has been a pretty surefire way to guarantee a better warplane. But in the 1960s, designers started hitting a wall up around Mach 3 or 4, after which it starts becoming very difficult and expensive to make the plane go faster.

By the 1970s, designers quit pushing speed limits, and focused on how to camouflage aircraft instead. They did this first by flying super close to the ground so enemy radar had a hard time picking planes out against the terrain. Later, this approach was overtaken by stealth technology that made it hard for enemy radars to pick out the plane against much of anything at all.

In a way, stealth and hypersonics represent two completely opposite solutions to not getting shot down. Stealth is all about being so ninja-like that nobody can see you. On the other hand, vehicles at supersonic speeds and above generate a huge amount of heat, which makes them easy to spot. But they are cruising along so fast that it's tough to intercept them and shoot them down.

But there's more. Hypersonic aircraft can get anywhere pretty quick, and that's important if you want to react quickly to something that's happening far away from you — which is a big deal if you are the United States.

The US already does have a global reconnaissance network of satellites and drones, which hugely expands the area in which it might find super important and timely targets. But often it doesn't have the ability to actually do anything about those targets. Even if you do have bombers on standby, there's no point in them even taking off if it's going to be 12 hours before they can get into firing position.

In fact, a couple times before 9/11, the US caught Osama bin Laden and his buddies hanging out at various training camps in Afghanistan and was totally going to blow those guys up with cruise missiles. But the cruise missiles arrived too late, and blowing up the place where your enemy was hanging out eight hours earlier is considered a rather poor use of millions of dollars' worth of sophisticated weaponry.

With hypersonic technology in hand, one could build a system that could, in theory, deliver a conventional strike to any place on the planet within an hour. This is the basis behind the Prompt Global Strike or PGS program that the US has been fussing with for more than a decade. (There's a huge set of arguments for and against this particular kind of weapon, including the risk of setting off an accidental nuclear war because it's hard to tell the difference between an incoming nuke and incoming hypersonic conventional strike. But that's a separate article altogether.)

Related: Hypersonic Weapon Explodes After Four Seconds as the Catch-Up Arms Race Begins

Weapons range is an increasingly important factor these days. While the US was preoccupied with low-tech and tough conflicts in the Middle East and nearby areas, Russia and China were busy figuring out how to offset US advantages in fancy aircraft and missiles. One big development has been long-range anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, which would push US forces way the hell back from anywhere useful. But the range that's kind of inherent in hypersonics starts doing a lot to erode the advantage those new Russian and Chinese weapons might buy.

Now, while it's almost a certainty that hypersonic weapons will turn out to be more expensive than their slow-ass counterparts, combining hypersonic and slower missiles can be pretty powerful. For instance, if you were launching a big attack intended to saturate enemy defenses, you could mix in a few hypersonic missiles to take out known defenses, opening up a gap for a larger, slower cloud of missiles and decoys.

Hypersonic weapons can also pack a smaller warhead to achieve the same damage to a given target, simply because flying into anything at a dozen times the speed of sound is going to really, really hurt it bad. At about Mach 12.5, a 1,000 lb warhead has as kinetic energy equivalent to 1,000 lbs of TNT. This abundance of kinetic energy comes in very handy when you start talking about digging out very deeply buried targets, like Evil Genius Headquarters. Or, say, a nuclear facility, or a command bunker.

What makes this relevant now is the idea that the US may almost be through what call that "Valley of Death." Generally speaking, there are a lot of different stages of development for new technology, from the level of things that exist only in concept and a handful of calculations, up through basic technology demonstrations, all the way up to something operational in the real world. But the really ugly part is in the middle, where programs go to die.

Related: China Has a New Hypersonic Glider That Could Deliver Nukes — But Can They Steer It?

All the math, simulations, and modeling at the very beginning are pretty cheap. But after a while, computer models alone won't cut it anymore and you just need to start making and testing actual hardware to learn more. This can quickly get a lot more expensive than the theoretical work.

On the other hand, at that point, the technology is not reliable or well-understood enough to actually be anything you want to bank on. Thus, no actual, real-life program wants to pick up all the extra costs and risks associated with trying to use technology that's still pretty far from prime time. Everyone's under cost and schedule pressure already, so why gamble on the unproven?

Hypersonics have been a Technology of the Future for half a century, but a lot of those technologies never made it anywhere and are now just curious artifacts. Some, like fusion power, seem insurmountably difficult. Others, like airships, are less technologically challenging, but never seem to find a market. But so many technologies and programs that get stuck aren't too difficult to fix, they just can't get enough backing to make it all the way through.

Hypersonic technology isn't just one thing, but a whole host of things, like aerodynamics, propulsion, cooling, and so on. That means that it's not a matter of getting this or that particular technology through the Valley of Death, but smuggling a whole family of stuff across to the land of opportunity. So if the Air Force claims it will be flying prototypes of operational systems by 2020, what it's really saying is that it expects to have many if not all of the subsidiary technological stuff completely (or most of the way) through.

And if the Air Force is right, there's a pretty good chance that we'll see hypersonics arriving in the real world before we know it.

SEE ALSO: Despite having a 5th-generation jet 'in name only,' Russia is pushing ahead for a 6th-generation plane

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NOW WATCH: This military tradition calls for swimming where no human has ever swum before

South Korea, neighbor to the warlike and ever-threatening North Korean regime, have developed fierce military practices, including training their soldiers in Krav Maga.

Krav Maga is an Israeli martial arts system, developed on and off the battlefield and known for its brutal and effective striking and grappling.

In the slides below, see some of Korea's most elite soldiers honing their skills in one of the world's most deadly martial arts:

SEE ALSO: Watch the insane knife training South Korean special forces go through

"Everyone has a plan until they get hit" former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson is often quoted as saying. The Krav Maga training of South Korean soldiers seems to take that into account, as we see two recruits trading blows to the face and chest.

RAW Embed

Source: KOREA KRAV MAGA ASSOCIATION

Here we see two South Korean soldiers in a knife fight atop a slanted roof. The fighting looks so incredibly technical as to be choreographed and staged.

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Source: KOREA KRAV MAGA ASSOCIATION

However, further training footage reveals that these are everyday practices. Soldiers duel at night in virtually every environment you could expect to engage in.

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Source: KOREA KRAV MAGA ASSOCIATION

The Army is preparing for the first official flights of two high-tech, next-generation aircraft now being designed with a wide range of abilities to include flying faster, flying farther without needing to refuel, operating in high-hot conditions and having an ability to both reach high speeds and hover like a helicopter.

The new aircraft are part of an Army-led effort, called Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator, aimed at paving the way toward ultimately engineering a new fleet of aircraft for all the services to take flight by 2030.

Construction of two different high-tech, future oriented demonstrator helicopters is already underway in anticipation of ground testing later this year and initial flight testing next year, Dan Bailey, JMR TD program director, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

“Things are moving along very well. We are on schedule with exactly what our industry partners have planned,” he said.

While some of the eventual requirements for the new aircraft have yet to be defined, there are some notional characteristics currently being sought after by the program. They include an ability to travel at airplane-like speeds greater than 230 knots, achieve a combat radius of 434 kilometers, use a stronger engine and operate in what’s called “high-hot” conditions of 6,000-feet and 95-degrees Fahrenheit.

“We had set 230 as the speed requirement because we wanted to push the technology.  We wanted people to bring new ideas and new configurations to the table,” Bailey said in an interview with Scout Warrior several months ago.

A faster, more manueverable helicopter that can fly farther on one tank of fuel would enable forces in combat to more effectively engage in longer combat operations such as destroying enemy targets or transporting small groups of mobile, lethal ground fighters.

The new helicopter will also be designed to use next-generation sensors to find enemies on the move and employ next-generation weapons to attack them, Army officials describe. 

The JMR TD technology effort will inform a planned program of record called Future Vertical Lift, or FVL, which will design, build and test a series of next-generation aircraft for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

“FVL is a high priority. We have identified capability gaps. We need technologies and designs that are different than what the current fleet has. It will carry more equipment, perform in high-hot conditions, be more maneuverable within the area of operations and execute missions at longer ranges,” Rich Kretzschmar, project manager for the FVL effort, told Scout Warrior in an interview several months ago.

The first flights of the demonstrator aircraft, slated for 2017, will include developmental helicopter/aircraft from two industry teams – Bell Helicopter and a Sikorsky-Boeing team.

TWO HELICOPTER DESIGNS

The Bell offering, called the V-280 Valor, seeks to advance tilt-rotor technology, wherein a winged-aircraft with two rotor blades over each wing seeks to achieve airplane speeds and retain an ability to hover and maneuver like a helicopter.

Bell’s V-280 recently finished what’s called a system-level design review where Army and Bell developers refine and prepare the design of the air vehicle.

“They have an air vehicle concept demonstrator that they call the third-generation tilt-rotor. Their fuselage was completed and it is being delivered to Bell for the build-up of the aircraft,” Bailey said.

Along with Boeing, Bell makes the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft which is currently praised by military members for its excellent operational performance in recent years. The Osprey has two rotating rotor blades which align vertically when the aircraft is in helicopter mode and then move to a horizontal position when the aircraft enters airplane mode and reaches speeds greater than 280 knots.

The V-280 Valor also has two propellers which rotate from horizontal airplane mode to a vertical position, which allows for helicopter mode.  Bell officials have said their new aircraft will be able to reach speeds of 280 knots. Bell and Army officials explain that their V-280 Valor substantially advances tilt-rotor technology.

“What Bell has done is taking its historical V-22 aircraft, and all the demonstrators before that, and applies them to this next-generation tilt-rotor. It is a straight wing versus a V-22 which is not straight. This reduces complexity,” Bailey explained. “They are also building additional flapping into the rotor system and individual controls that should allow for increased low-speed maneuverability.”

The Sikorsky-Boeing demonstrator, called the SB>1 Defiant, uses a coaxial rotor system configuration. This is a design structure, referred to as a compound configuration, which relies upon two counter-rotating rotor blades on top of the aircraft and a thrusting mechanism in the rear.

“To make a rotorcraft go fast you have to off-load the rotor lift onto something else or else you run into problems when you try to reduce the speed of that rotor. Typically, you do that with a wing but Sikorsky-Boeing came up with a lift-offset design,” Bailey added.

The pusher-prop on the back of the aircraft is a small propeller behind the counter-rotating rotor heads. It is what can give the aircraft airplane-like speeds.  It operates with what’s called positive and negative pitch, allowing the aircraft to lean up or down and move both forwards and backwards, Boeing officials have said.

MISSION EQUIPMENT

The JMR TD program and the follow-on FVL effort will also integrate a wide range of next-generation sensors, weapons and avionics, Army officials explained. 

Some of these technologies will include a “fly-by-wire” technology allowing for a measure of autonomy or automation so that the helicopter can fly along a particular course by itself in the event that a pilot is injured or incapacitated. This is the kind of technology which could, in the future, allow for unmanned helicopter operations.

Along these lines, the Army is looking for technical solutions or mission equipment which increases a pilot's cognitive decision-making capability by effectively managing the flow of information from an array of sensors into the cockpit, Army program managers have explained.

Army JMR TD development documents describe autonomous capability in terms of the need to develop a Human Machine Interface, HMI, wherein advanced cockpit software and computing technologies are able to autonomously perform a greater range of functions such as on-board navigation, sensing and threat detection, thus lessening the burden placed upon pilots and crew, Army experts have explained. 

In particular, cognitive decision-aiding technologies explored for 4th-generation JMR cockpit will develop algorithms able to track, prioritize organize and deliver incoming on- and off-board sensory information by optimizing visual, 3-D audio and tactile informational cues.

The idea is to manage the volume of information flowing into the aircraft and explore how to best deliver this information without creating sensory overload. Some of this information may be displayed in the cockpit and some of it may be built into a helmet display, Army officials said.

Manned-Unmanned teaming, also discussed by Army developers, constitutes a significant portion of this capability; the state of the art with this capability allows helicopter pilots to not only view video feeds from nearby UAS from the cockpit of the aircraft, but it also gives them an ability to control the UAS flight path and sensor payloads as well. Future iterations of this technology may seek to implement successively greater levels of autonomy, potentially involving scenarios wherein an unmanned helicopter is able to perform these functions working in tandem with nearby UAS.

COUNTERMEASURE SYSTEMS

Integration is key to the Army's Mission Systems strategy, as the overall approach is aimed at fielding an integrated suite of sensors and countermeasure technologies designed to work in tandem to identify and in some cases deter a wide range of potential incoming threats, from small arms fire to RPGs, shoulder-fired missiles and other types of attacks.

One such example of these technologies is called Common Infrared Countermeasure, or CIRCM, a light-weight, high-tech laser-jammer engineered to divert incoming missiles by throwing them off course. CIRCM is a lighter-weight, improved version of the Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures, known as ATIRCM, system currently deployed on aircraft.

CIRCM, which will be fielded by 2018, represents the state of the art in countermeasure technology, officials said. Future iterations of this kind of capability envisioned for 2030 may or may not be similar to CIRCM, Army developers have said. Future survivability solutions will be designed to push the envelope toward the next-generation of technology, he explained. 

The mission equipment for the new aircraft will be tailored to the new emerging designs, service developers said.

Additional countermeasure solutions proposed by industry could include various types of laser technology and Directed Energy applications as well as missile-launch and ground-fire detection systems, Army officials said.

SENSOR TECHNOLOGIES

The new helicopter program is also working with its industry partners to develop a new technology which might improve upon the state-of-the-art Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor, or MTADS, systems currently deployed on helicopters; MTADS sensing and targeting technology provide helicopters thermal imaging infrared cameras as well stabilized electro-optical sensors, laser rangefinders and laser target designators.

The current, upgraded MTADS currently deployed on aircraft throughout the Army were engineered to accommodate the size, weight and power dimensions of today's aircraft, dimensions which will likely change with the arrival of a new Air Vehicle built for the new JMR demonstrator aircraft.

WEAPONS SYSTEMS

JMR Weapons Systems Integration is a critical part of this effort. The JMR aircraft will be engineered to integrate weapons and sensor systems to autonomously detect, designate and track targets, perform targeting operations during high-speed maneuvers, conduct off-axis engagements, track multiple targets simultaneously and optimize fire-control performance such that ballistic weapons can accommodate environmental effects such as wind and temperature, Army documents on the aircraft have stated.

AUTOMATIC AVOIDANCE

Air-to-Air "tracking" capability is another solution sought by the Army, comprised of advanced software and sensors able to inform pilots of obstacles such as a UAS or nearby aircraft; this technology will likely include Identify Friend or Foe, or IFF, transponders which cue pilots regarding nearby aircraft, Army officials have said.

Technical solutions able to provide another important obstacle avoidance "sensing" capability called Controlled Flight Into Terrain, or CFIT, are also being explored; in this instance, sensors, advanced mapping technology and digital flight controls would be engineered to protect an aircraft from nearby terrain such as trees, mountains, telephone wires and other low-visibility items by providing pilots with sufficient warning of an upcoming obstacle and, in some instances, offering them course-correcting flight options. 

Using sensors and other technologies to help pilots navigate through "brown-outs" or other conditions involving what's called a "Degraded Visual Environment" is a key area of emphasis as well.

The Army is looking at a range of solutions such as radar, electro-optical equipment, lasers, sensors, software, avionics and communications equipment to see what the right architecture is and how we would integrate all these things together.

PROGRESS THUS FAR

In addition to conducting the first official Army-industry flight of the two demonstrators, the program will conduct what’s called a Material Development Decision, which will begin to pave the way for the FVL acquisition program. This effort will conduct a thorough examination of all the available technologies and their performance through what is called an “analysis of alternatives.”

The MDD is slated for October of this year.

A key advantage of a joint FVL program is that it will engender further inter-operability between the services and, for example, allow an Army helicopter to easily be serviced with maintenance at a Marine Corps Forward Operating Base, Bailey explained.

Bell and Sikorsky-Boeing teams are both done with their subsystem critical design review and the components are in fabrication and safety flight testing, Bailey explained.

“Bell has a completed fuselage that is undergoing the nuances of getting landing gear attached to it and holes for wiring. They are complete with their wing build and they are just starting to make it to the engine itself,” Bailey said. 

 Later in April, Bell will begin to mount the wing to the fuselage.

“It really is starting to look like major components to the aircraft. By May it will likely look like a complete aircraft but it will not have all the subsystems,” he added.

The Sikorsky-Boeing – fuselage is almost complete as well, Bailey said.

“The transmission, main rotor and hubs have been forged and cast – they are in the process of preparing for final assembly,” he explained.

Both companies we have completed the final design and risk review, which is the government review of their process to say the Army understands the final design and the risks going forward.

“The demonstrators help to inform the feasibility both from the technical and affordability aspects of a future program of record,” Bailey said.

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US-led coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State on February 24 and 25 destroyed an IED production/storage facility and an oil-processing facility near Al Qaim, Iraq, and Abu Kamal, Syria.

These were just two of dozens of precision strikes targeting members of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh, in Iraq and Syria each day as part of the Combined Joint Task Force's Operation Inherent Resolve.

Though Syrian regime forces and opposition factions, as well as their international backers, are observing a tenuous cease-fire, Al Qaeda and ISIS targets are still fair game. Recently OIR airstrikes have severely limited ISIS' ability to make money and pay its fighters.

In the video below, see the February 24 strike that disabled an ISIS IED production/storage facility:

In a separate Facebook post, OIR released the following footage of a strike destroying an ISIS oil-processing facility:

SEE ALSO: Watch the US-led coalition's precision airstrikes shred ISIS positions in Syria

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Military designers and the countries they work for have always sought to outdo one another on the battlefield, and creating massive artillery pieces has been no exception. Though there have been many extremely large artillery pieces manufactured, and some that are even larger than the ones listed here, these are the only ones that were actually used in combat.

SEE ALSO: 17 reasons why the M1 Abrams tank is still king of the battlefield

1. Schwerer Gustav and Dora

The Schwerer Gustav and its sister gun Dora were the two largest artillery pieces every constructed in terms of overall weight (1350 tonnes) and weight of projectiles (15,700 pounds), while it’s 800mm rounds are the largest ever fired in combat. The guns also had a range of over 24 miles.

The guns were originally designed to be deployed against the French Maginot Line though the Blitzkrieg rendered that mission obsolete. Instead, the guns were deployed to the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union. The Schwerer Gustav entered combat during the German siege of Sevastopol in June 1942.

The gun was manned by a crew of over 1400 men, 250 to assemble the weapon, two anti-aircraft battalions to protect it, and the rest to load and fire the weapon. Dora was set up to be deployed against Stalingrad, though it cannot be confirmed whether it fired against its target or not.

Both guns remained on the Eastern Front but were not used in combat again. They were destroyed in Germany to avoid capture by the advancing allied armies.

2. Karl-Gerät

Another product of Germany, the Karl-Gerät was a massive self-propelled mortar. Though it was capable of its own propulsion, its massive size made this an inconvenience, so it was usually disassembled and reassembled when it arrived at its firing position. The Karl-Gerät was designed as a siege weapon in particular to attack the Maginot Line.

Its 21 man crew could fire a 600mm heavy bunker-busting shell nearly 3 miles at a rate of about 6 per hour. A total of 7 of these weapons were produced, one test piece and 6 others that saw extensive combat on both fronts.

The Karl-Gerät made its combat debut when a 3 gun battery shelled the fortress at Brest-Litovsk during the opening phase of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. The following year, a battery of Karl-Geräts took part in the siege of Sevastopol in June and July of 1942.

Though it was planned for use in other operations on the Eastern Front, the threat of being captured by Soviet forces kept it out of the fight until 1944 when in August, one and then several other guns were sent to Warsaw to assist in quelling an on-going uprising against the German occupiers.

The Karl-Gerät fired its last shots of the war during the Battle of Remagen in an attempt to destroy the Ludendorff Bridge.

3. Obusier de 520 modèle 1916

The Obusier de 520 was a railroad gun developed by the French during World War I. However, due to a delayed procurement process, the first gun did not reach trails until late 1917 during which a round exploded prematurely and destroyed it. The second gun was completed in 1918 but did not finish trails before the war ended after which it was put in storage.

The Obusier de 520 modèle 1916 fired a 520mm round weighing over 3600 pounds to a range of over 8 miles. When Germany invaded France in 1940, the remaining gun was being renovated for battle where it was captured, still in the workshop, by the Germans.

Germany, with a penchant for enormous artillery, pressed the Obusier de 520 into their own service where it participated in the siege of Leningrad in 1942 before also being destroyed by a round prematurely exploding in the barrel in January 1943.

ISIS is using its safe haven and foreign fighter population in Iraq and Syria to expand influence in Southeast Asia, in pursuit of its grand strategic objective to rule all Muslim lands.

ISIS’s Syria-based Southeast Asian fighters are resourcing and directing local networks to launch attacks. Competition between militant elements vying to lead the Southeast Asian pro-ISIS movement will likely encourage increased jihadist attacks in the short term, threatening urban areas and Western interests in the region.

Support from ISIS’s safe haven may also facilitate the creation of an active, trans-national ISIS affiliate in Southeast Asia in the medium term.  

The US has opportunity to counter ISIS’s network in Southeast Asia before it develops further. ISIS claimed it first attack in the region on January 14 in Jakarta, an act that belied ISIS’s ambitions but reflected relatively low military capability.

Southeast Asian jihadist groups are fragmented and face pressure from domestic counterterrorism operations. ISIS's campaign in Southeast Asia is at an early stage, so the group currently poses a lower threat to security there than it does in Libya, Egypt, and Afghanistan, where its affiliates enjoy sanctuary, and in Yemen, where its affiliate is prolonging a civil war.

Early action against ISIS’s Southeast Asian supporters can limit ISIS’s ability to develop an affiliate in the area, particularly as those supporters face resistance from locally-focused and al Qaeda-associated groups.

SEE ALSO: Watch US-led coalition airstrikes destroy ISIS' IED and oil facilities

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NOW WATCH: ISIS is afraid of girls — here's why

The Italian Army is going to deploy a Helicopter Force made of four NH-90 multirole choppers and four AW-129 Mangusta attack helicopters to Iraq, “very soon” the Italian MoD announced on Mar. 2, 2016.

The helicopters, along with 130 military, will be based at Erbil, in the northern part of the country, and their primary mission will be Personnel Recovery and CSAR (Combat SAR) missions. However, they are likely to be there to protect the Italian team working on repairing the Mosul Dam too: on the same day the Italian MoD announced the deployment of the helicopters, the Iraqi government signed an agreement with the Italian Trevi company (worth 273 million Euro) to repair the Mosul damn, located 130 km to the northwest of Erbil.

This is the not the first time the Italian Mangustas (that have extensively been used in Afghanistan) are deployed to Iraq: the Italian Army operated the A-129 (a previous variant of the current AW-129D) in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, supporting the Italian Contingent based at Nassiryah.

The AW-129D is the latest variant of the A129 attack helicopter equipped with infrared night vision systems, laser systems for range-finding and target designation purposes, OTSWS (Observation, Targeting and Spike Weapon System) for Spike-ER missile guidance in fire-and-forget and fire-and-observe modes.

The Helicopter Force joins the rest of the Italian Contingent in the region, that includes about 760 advisors, MQ-1C Predator A+ UAS (Unmanned Aerial System), four Tornado bombers (for the moment flying only reconnaissance missions)and one KC-767A tanker supporting the US-led coalition jets involved in the air war against ISIS.

Image credit: The Aviationist’s Giovanni Maduli. Top image shows an AW-129 during a simulated SF insertion.

SEE ALSO: Beautiful pictures of the first-ever bombs dropped by an F-35 combat unit

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NOW WATCH: An inside look at Marine One — Obama’s favorite presidential perk

Russian and Syrian government forces have been targeting hospitals as a strategy of war in Syria's conflict, according to an Amnesty International report.

According to the report, there is "compelling evidence" of at least six deliberate attacks on medical facilities in the Aleppo governorate over the past twelve weeks, which killed at least three civilians, including a medical worker, and injured 44 more.

The report notes that the attacks amounted to war crimes.

Aleppo witnessed some of the country's fiercest fighting in the buildup to the partial cease-fire that came into effect Friday as government forces backed by Russian airstrikes cut off a rebel supply route from Turkey.

A supply route to an opposition stronghold in the eastern part of Aleppo city remains open through another border crossing with Turkey, but it is far narrower and more dangerous than the one that used to run to the north.

Amnesty said the attacks on medical facilities aimed to pave the way for pro-government ground forces to advance on northern Aleppo.

On December 25, several missiles struck Baghdad Hospital in Hreitan, a town north of Aleppo City, killing a medical worker, and injuring 10 staff and 20 patients, a doctor and another medical worker told Amnesty International. It left the hospital in ruins.

Some of the last families remaining in Hreitan fled as pro-government forces advanced on the town in early February. "I have lived in Hreitan all my life, and I have never seen it deserted," said a father to Amnesty International. "The airstrikes destroyed the city's infrastructure including hospitals so there are no more services for us to be able to survive."

Meanwhile, Russia denies targeting civilians in its Syria campaign.

Syria's president, Bashar Assad, has also denied targeting civilians, saying he is waging a war against terrorism, but he has said that it is a "rule of thumb" in war that innocent civilians die.

The monitoring group Physicians for Human Rights has documented 346 attacks against medical facilities in the course of the five-year conflict, killing 705 medical staff.

It said 315 of the attacks were conducted by Syrian or Russian forces. A report by the group last year said the Syrian government "systematically violated" the principle of medical neutrality by targeting medical facilities and doctors, detaining patients, and arresting, torturing, and executing doctors.

On Tuesday, NATO Commander and US Air Force General Philip Breedlove asserted that the Syrian regime and Russian forces are “deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”

Breedlove added that the indiscriminate use of crudely made barrel bombs only makes sense as a strategy to displace civilians. “This sort of indiscriminate use of unguided, imprecise weaponry has no other value that I know of other than to terrorize and get people on the road.”

In October of 2015, Russia opposed a UN Security Council effort to condemn and attach sanctions to the use of barrel bombs in Syria. Russia has also been accused of using internationally banned cluster munitions in civilian areas of Syria. 

SEE ALSO: Watch US-led coalition airstrikes destroy ISIS' IED and oil facilities

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NOW WATCH: Refugee kids who fled Syria are thrilled with their first Canadian winter

Even as the Army’s senior leaders, active and retired, are agonizing yet again over the question of what kind of Army the American people want, the nation is beginning to get the Army it needs.

What the United States needs is an Army of sufficient capacity and capability that can deter a resurgent Russian military, counter advanced threats in the hands of nations and non-state actors in the Middle East and support the Joint Force in countering expansionist efforts by China.

There will be time for the Army to develop a grand strategy for the world we are facing, one that includes advanced vehicles, helicopters and weapons.

The challenge for the Army is to maintain a credible force structure while rapidly and relatively cheaply deploying systems to counter the emerging threat.

Operations in Crimea and the Ukraine show that the Russian army is back. It is demonstrating improved capabilities in tactical mobility, operational communications and even logistics.

Ukrainian forces were confronted by an array of new Russian systems and tactics. These included extensive use of cyber weapons and electronic warfare against command and control, massed artillery and mortar barrages directed by targeting drones, airmobile operations involving new generations of helicopters, advanced armored fighting vehicles, highly lethal and mobile air defense systems and even improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Unlike past transformations of the Army such as the Pentomic division or the “Big Five,” this one is not being driven by headquarters and the massive acquisition commands. Instead, it is being driven by urgent operational needs flowing out of the combatant commands.

The Army is applying the lessons learned from more than a decade of dealing with thousands of urgent operational needs. It is seeking to get new capabilities that provide some level of improved performance over existing systems – the so-called 80-percent solution – at low cost while working on something better in the future.

For example, assessing the new Russian threat, the US Army Europe asked for a way of enhancing the lethality of its Stryker Brigade. The first answer was a new 30mm cannon. Rather than a massive new start program that might take a decade to reach fruition, the Army plans to have the new cannons deployed by 2018.

Now the Army is considering expanding this capability to a larger portion of the overall Stryker fleet. The Army also is looking at equipping the Stryker with an existing anti-tank missile, the Javelin.

The Army recognizes that it needs to counter the growing threat from advanced anti-tank guided missiles. These are deployed not only by the Russians but virtually all other potential US adversaries. As I have written elsewhere, the Army has plans to test a number of existing US and international systems that provide active protection for vehicles. At least one of these, the Trophy system, has actually been proven in combat with the Israeli Defense Forces in its 2014 conflict with Gaza.

A high priority for the Army, as identified in its 2017 unfunded priorities list, is to improve its ability to counter Russian artillery and rocket barrages. Not only does the Army need to acquire additional counter-fire radars, it needs to couple these with a relatively low-cost active defense against rockets, artillery, mortars and drones.

One obvious near-term option is to acquire the Israeli Iron Dome system which has a proven capability to deal with massed salvoes of rockets, artillery and mortars. Iron Dome can also address the Army’s gap in short-range air defense, particularly with respect to drones.

The Army has applied the lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to its new strategy for acquiring tactical radios. For years the Army struggled with its massive, complex and very expensive JTRS program while commercial technology advanced and tens of thousands of existing radios were acquired to meet the urgent operational need. Now the Army intends to acquire tactical radios from multiple vendors in lots, leaving the way open for new technologies and lower cost solutions to emerge that can be rapidly fielded.

One area where the Army desperately needs to field near-term capabilities is offensive and defensive electronic warfare (EW). The Army’s current offensive EW program will not be fully operational until 2027, and then only if everything goes well.

At present, the Army is devoting some attention and resources, but certainly not enough of either, to adapting capabilities developed for the counter IED fights in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is one overriding issue for the Army and the nation. The Army can no longer use force structure to pay its readiness and modernization bills. It is time to accept the reality that the Army needs to be both bigger and more capable. Some money can be saved by focusing on acquiring non-developmental capabilities, including products of the global defense industry. But in the end, the Army needs a larger budget.

SEE ALSO: http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-fires-more-missiles-after-un-sanctions-2016-3

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NOW WATCH: Russia's military is more advanced than people thought

While hiding in a fortified two-level 3,000-square-foot underground bunker, one of history's most brutal tyrants promised the world that his empire would last 1,000 years.

Hitler's Third Reich lasted 12 years, officially ending on April 30, 1945, when the Führer committed suicide in his bunker with his new wife after learning that Allied forces had surrounded Berlin.

Before retreating to the Führerbunker, Hitler and top Nazi officials enjoyed lavish compounds in Berchtesgaden, a resort village in the Bavarian Alps.

These are the best surviving photographs of Allied troops reveling in the spoils of war at Hitler's private residence and at Eagle's Nest.

SEE ALSO: Hitler's secret Nazi war machines of World War II

Easy Company after taking the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's former residence.

A paratrooper of the 101st Airborne Division enjoys the view and a cognac while lounging on the terrace of Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden after the end of the war in 1945.

Maj. Dick Winters, Lewis Nixon, Harry Welsh, and two other battalion staff members, celebrate VE-Day in Berchtesgaden, Germany.

In a stark assessment, the US Air Force chief-of-staff warned that China's People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) will be poised to overtake the US Air Force by 2030. 

On March 2, General Mark Welsh told the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee that currently it is estimated that the US has a "couple thousand more aircraft" than China, The National Interest reports.  

The PLAAF is larger than the US Air Force in terms of personnel, and that size will be represented by the number of aircraft China has in the coming years. 

“At the rate they’re building, the models they’re fielding, by 2030 they will have fielded—they will have made up that 2,000 aircraft gap and they will be at least as big—if not bigger—than our air forces," Welsh told the subcommittee. 

More importantly than just the number of aircraft and personnel in the PLAAF, though, is Beijing's trend of acquiring and successfully fielding more and more advanced weapons systems. This drive by the PLAAF will also shrink the commanding technological advantage that the US currently holds over China. 

“We are not keeping up with that kind of technology development,” Welsh said. “We are still in a position of—we will have the best technology in the battlespace especially if we can continue with our current big three modernization programs.”

Welsh also went on to warn that China "will have a lot of technology that’s better than the stuff we’ve had before." 

China is currently constructing prototypes for two different fifth-generation fighters that are specifically tailored to different mission sets. It's J-20 is thought to be making quick development progress, while it's J-31 is believed to be the equal of the F-35 due to espionage and Chinese theft of trade secrets.

Additionally, China is also developing a stealth drone as well as seeking to buy Russia's highly capable Su-35S fighter aircraft. 

All these measures taken together will cumulatively make China a significantly more capable military force that could project its will against US protest across East Asia. 

SEE ALSO: This chart shows the incredible cost of operating the Air Force's most expensive planes

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NOW WATCH: This is why US aircraft carriers are a force to be reckoned with

Retired DEA agent and "Deal" author Mike Vigil spent roughly 20 years undercover in Mexico and Colombia. Vigil argues that GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's proposal to build a wall on the Mexican border will not stop drug cartels from sending drugs into the United States.

Produced by Eames Yates

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Aircraft carriers are the ultimate symbol of a country's military power and prestige. These floating islands of military power take years to build, and they do not come cheap. The first of the US's new Ford-class of super carrier has a $13 billion price tag.

Still, despite the cost, a number of countries have succeeded in building or acquiring a carrier. Although the US has the largest number of carriers with the most advanced technology and the largest flight decks, a variety of carriers of various sizes and sophistication are in use around the world.

The following graphics, created by US Naval Institute member Jeff Head at World-Wide Aircraft Carriers, breaks down the various carrier classes in use around the world today. The first class, Catapult Assisted Take-Off, Barrier Assisted Recovery (CATOBAR), are the largest and most complex carriers in use today.

The catapult-based launch system allows the carriers to fly a greater variety of heavy and lightweight planes and at a greater takeoff rate and velocity, compared to non-catapult systems. The majority of CATOBAR carriers are nuclear-powered.

Short Take-Off, Barrier Assisted Recovery (STOBAR) carriers differ from CATOBARs in more than just their launch technology. The carriers are equipped with "ski-jump" ramps that allow for aircraft to take off from the carriers. They are technologically simpler and thus easier to operate than CATOBAR carriers, although aircraft must be lighter to successfully take off from their decks.

STOBARs, like CATOBARs, still use assisted-recovery methods such as trap wires that help aircraft land and decelerate on a dangerously short runway.

Short Take-Off and Landing (STOL) carriers are the cheapest type to build. Like STOBARs, they run off of conventional rather than nuclear power. Although the carriers sometimes feature a ski-jump to assist with takeoffs, the vessels do not feature any recovery systems to help aircraft land.

SEE ALSO: This is why US aircraft carriers are a force to be reckoned with

DON'T MISS: Thailand has an aircraft carrier with no aircraft

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NOW WATCH: This is why US aircraft carriers are a force to be reckoned with

The US Air Force's unquestioned aerial dominance does not come cheap. For its 10 most expensive planes, operating costs per hour start at $58,059, and it only climbs from there. The following graphic, based upon the Air Force's cost per hour of flight estimations, lists the 10 most expensive planes to operate in descending order:

The E-4 Nightwatch is the most expensive military plane the Air Force operates. The Nightwatch is a command and control aircraft that's meant to serve as a flying airbase for the US president and cabinet members in case of a national disaster. Designed as a doomsday plane, the Nightwatch is expensive to operate because of its size and technical abilities. The plane is specially designed to survive electromagnetic pulses, with additional thermal and nuclear shielding. It can also refuel aerially and fit up to 112 passengers.

Surprisingly, the much maligned F-35 is only the seventh most expensive plane per hour that the Air Force flies. Its costs are partially due to the lack of an efficient supply chain for the aircraft, something that should be sorted out over the coming years. Among the cheapest aircraft that the Air Force operates are Predator drones and the A-10. These aircraft cost an estimated $1,500 and $11,500 per hour to operate, respectively.

SEE ALSO: These graphics show the crucial differences between the world's 3 types of aircraft carrier

DON'T MISS: 25 photos show that America's most versatile plane can do almost anything

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NOW WATCH: This is why US aircraft carriers are a force to be reckoned with

Norway is currently playing host to a massive multi-national NATO exercise that is meant to enhance the military organization's collective response capabilities.  

Hosted in Norway's central region, Cold Response is an annual military exercise. This year, the exercise will be comprised of 15,000 personnel from over ten countries. Some of the countries participating are NATO members Canada, France, and non-NATO country Sweden. 

The US's contribution to Cold Response 2016 include tanks, mobile artillery, and special operations units. 

You can view photos of the exercise below.

SEE ALSO: 19 stunning images of US paratroopers doing what they do best

Cold Response is a Norwegian invitational previously-scheduled exercise that will involve approximately 15,000 troops from 13 NATO and partner countries.

The cold weather exercise is designed to enhance partnerships and collective crisis response capabilities.

The operation is being held in Central Norway.

The Vatican Swiss Guard is primarily regarded as a tourist attraction, but they are actually descended from a famous military tradition and their duties are anything but just ceremonial.

Composed of a company of former Swiss military, the Swiss Guard are responsible for the protection of the Pope and perform many ceremonial functions as well. Though best known for their colorful uniforms and halberds, plainclothes Guardsmen also serve as bodyguards for the Pope and security for the Vatican.

Entrance requirements for the Guard is strict. Potential Guardsmen must be Catholic males, of Swiss nationality, and have completed Swiss military training. Their service records have to be spotless, and they must be at least 5′ 9″ tall and be between 19 and 30 years of age. Though the Guard has considered opening up positions for women, for now it’s exclusively male.

The Guard’s history stretches back to the Middle Ages. Swiss mercenaries, or Reislaufer, were among the most feared fighting forces of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Switzerland was an overpopulated and poor country, and its independent cantons would contract out its militia to other countries as a means of support.

Gaining their reputation with spectacular victories over their Austrian Habsburg overlords in the 13th century, the Swiss were famed for their skill in using pikes and halberds in deep column attacks. Their general refusal to take prisoners only added to their ferocious repute, and they became the most prized mercenaries in Europe.

Noted for their loyalty, Swiss mercenaries served as the bodyguard contingent for many European monarchs such as the French throne. During the storming of the Louis XVI’s palace during the French Revolution, his Swiss Guard refused to surrender despite being hopelessly outnumbered and running low on ammunition. It took a note from the king himself for them to lay down their arms, and their spirited defense so enraged the revolutionaries hundreds of them were summarily executed.

Swiss mercenaries had been serving the Papal States for centuries, but it wasn’t until 1506 that a permanent Guard of 150 men under the direct control of the Pope was formed, at the suggestion of the Swiss bishop Matthaus Schiner.

When mutinous unpaid troops from the Holy Roman Empire sacked Rome in 1527, the Swiss Guard proved their bravery by losing most of their number defending Pope Clement VII. Out of 189 men, only 42 survived, but they bought time for the Pope to escape through a secret tunnel ahead of marauding enemy soldiers hoping to hold him for ransom.

When German forces occupied Rome during World War II, the Guard took up defensive positions and prepared to fight to the death, but Adolf Hitler chose not to attack the Vatican.

The Guard gradually morphed into a mostly ceremonial unit during the later 20th century, but this changed with the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981. Mehmet Agca, a Turkish national believed to have been backed by the KGB, shot the Pope four times as he entered St. Peters Square, nearly killing him. The Guard has since refocused as personal protection, with the pope’s security detail beefed up and armed with light automatic weapons.

In 2006, the Guard celebrated its 500th anniversary by marching a contingent of former Guardsmen from Bellinzona in southern Switzerland to Rome, in emulation of the first Guards journey in 1505-06. Since Switzerland banned mercenaries in 1874 with the sole exception of the Vatican, this unit is the last remaining example of a storied line of soldiers.

SEE ALSO: Every American war summed up in one sentence

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NOW WATCH: IAN BREMMER: Ukraine's government will fall apart 'by the end of this year'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The military services are already beginning to recruit women for combat jobs, including as Navy SEALs, and could see them serving in previously male-only Army and Marine Corps infantry units by this fall, according to new plans endorsed by Defense Secretary Ash Carter and obtained by The Associated Press.

Some of the services predict that only small numbers of women will volunteer or get through training courses, details of the plans show.

The Marine Corps estimates 200 women a year will move into ground combat jobs. And U.S. Special Operations Command said it anticipates a "small number" of volunteers for its commando jobs.

The Navy said it is already collecting submission packages from prospective SEAL candidates and could see women in entry-level enlisted and officer training in September and October. The Navy started collecting the packages last month.

All of the services say they have made required changes to base bathrooms and other facilities to accommodate women, and they will monitor training, injury assessments, and possible sexual harassment or assault problems.

The plans have been under review by senior Pentagon leaders and have not been made public.

Carter said Thursday that he accepted the services' implementation recommendations, but provided no details. He is expected to sign a memo in the coming days telling the military to begin executing the plans next month.

The top Army and Marine Corps generals told senators last month that it will take up to three years to fully integrate women into all combat jobs. And they have insisted they will not lower standards for the combat posts or bow to pressure or quotas to get more women into the grueling frontline jobs.

After a lengthy review by the services and the Pentagon, Carter in December ordered all combat jobs open to women. The Marine Corps initially sought to keep certain infantry and combat jobs closed, citing studies showing combined-gender units are not as effective as male-only units. But Carter and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus rejected that proposal.

Since then, the military services have put together plans outlining exactly how they will incorporate women into the male-only units.

The Marine Corps said that having about 200 women moving into combat jobs each year would mean that they would make up less than 2 percent of the Marines in those occupations. The Corps would use what it called a "teaming concept" that would try to assign two or more junior enlisted women to the same unit.

The plan notes that so far no women have made it through the Marine infantry officer course, and added that, "we recognize there may be small numbers, and the Services are prepared to handle this."

Last year several hundred female Marines participated in a task force studying the impact of allowing women to compete for combat jobs. The enlisted women who were in the program are eligible to transfer immediately into combat jobs since they already completed the training. Although some have expressed interest in the jobs, none have formally requested a transfer.

The Army intends to first assign female officers to jobs in the infantry and armor units, and then gradually bring in female enlisted soldiers. And it plans to also assign more than one woman in a unit.

The first officers will start training in June, and could graduate in October. The first female enlisted soldiers wouldn't begin moving into ground combat units until May 2017.

Unlike the Army and Marine Corps, the Air Force said it will not assign women in groups to units, and will instead follow routine assignment procedures.

The bulk of the male-only units are in the Army and Marine Corps. Only a few of the Navy and Air Force units excluded women, and those were largely special operations-related jobs and assignments on ships that do not have adequate berthing to accommodate women.

The military services said they plan to carefully evaluate recruits, including new types of testing that helps predict whether the person - either man or woman - has the ability to meet the difficult physical demands of the combat jobs. The services plan to conduct regular review and collect injury data that will help guide training and other changes that might be needed.

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NOW WATCH: IAN BREMMER: Ukraine's government will fall apart 'by the end of this year'

The Defense Department announced Wednesday it would allow trusted hackers to test its systems as part of a "hack the Pentagon" program, and computer security expert John McAfee says if he wanted to, he could get inside in about a month.

"You want to find the weakest link," McAfee said in a phone interview with Tech Insider. "You're in and out, and you have everything."

To be clear, the Pentagon's challenge to hackers — which would require them to go through a background check and work only on certain systems — is a test to see whether any vulnerabilities exist in the military's public-facing websites. What's not clear is whether those hackers will be allowed to physically go to the Pentagon building just outside downtown Washington, D.C.

If McAfee were to give it a try, that's precisely where he'd start.

"I would exclusively use social engineering," McAfee wrote Wednesday in an email. "I would most likely use an 'audit authorization letter' on [Department of Defense] letterhead."

Good hackers don't always need to use sophisticated software tools or programming to gain access to a computer network or user account. In many cases, they just need a phone, or they can travel to a target's location and fake their way through questioning — a method of convincing people who are prone to trusting others that's called social engineering.

At 70 years old, McAfee is among the "old school" hackers who worked on computers in the 1960s and '70s, long before they were mainstream and miniaturized. After programming stints with NASA, Xerox, Lockheed, and others, he became a multimillionaire once he sold his shares in the world's first antivirus software company, which he founded, named McAfee Associates.

And that's about where his backstory goes off the rails, as the software legend later moved to Belize, surrounded himself with guns and drugs, and then fled after being suspected as a "person of interest" in the killing of one of his neighbors (He denied any involvement and fled, thinking the government of Belize wanted to kill him.)

McAfee is known for his paranoia — he's still creating software designed to thwart spying and once told Men's Journal the Sinaloa cartel was most likely tracking his movements. "You'd be paranoid if you've lived through what I lived through," he told the magazine.

And yet, despite all this, his technical credentials are pretty well established. He's like an eccentric movie star who says bombastic things. No matter how weird they might sound, you still know they can make a great flick. "This man is batshit crazy," one redditor recently wrote. "Undeniably brilliant, but batshit crazy."

McAfee's now back in the US and running for president on the Libertarian ticket. But most recently, he made headlines when he suggested he could help the FBI decrypt an iPhone used by one of the attackers in December's San Bernardino shootings.

And this is where I catch up with him, wondering how he might approach a hacking challenge posed by the US military.

'This technique seldom fails'

For his con, the eccentric antivirus software founder says he would type up an official-looking letter on Defense Department letterhead explaining to his target that he was there for a security audit, which he calls "the number one technique" for getting into high-security government agencies.

"This technique seldom fails," he wrote in an email.

He gives me a scenario: Let's say I'm a low-level soldier working in a Pentagon data center. In walks a person in a suit and tie leading a team of people who are clean-shaven, well-spoken, and have frowns on their faces. Then they pull out the letter.

"The last thing on your mind is going to be, 'Can I see your credentials?'" Because what credentials [am I] going to have?" McAfee says, mentioning that he might pull out a fake ID. "[We] are going to have this letter and say, 'Call the general.'"

He adds: "The people you hand this letter to are terrorized. Why? Because they know they fucked up. They know that they have problems. They know that they have flaws in the system."

Basically, McAfee says, he's head-faking his military target with a surprise inspection, which could be pulled off if his team has a plausible story and looks and acts confident enough.

But even if he were challenged at this point — let's say a suspicious soldier calls the phone number on the letter to verify McAfee's story — he has a plan.

"If they do call the number, it's even worse," McAfee says, because the number is being answered by other social engineers who are trained to support the team inside. "The operator says, 'Yes, this is extraordinarily important. Tell them they're late and they better get [the audit report] in now. You have no idea how pissed off the general is.'"

'You identify the weakest link'

Before McAfee and his team of social engineers walk through the Pentagon's doors, they will have done about three or four weeks of research, he says.

"You identify the weakest link," McAfee says. He explains that the improvising that happens while social engineering your way into a secure facility would be based on about a month of studying what's happening there beforehand.

He might do physical reconnaissance with telephoto lenses to snap photos of people's badges as they come and go. Those badges could later be counterfeited. Names of important people can be researched through public sources or by calling the military's own phone operators.

"If they give you a name, you're in already because the security is totally fucked up from a social-engineering standpoint."

Scamming his way through security

Sure, you've got this letter, you look legitimate, and you've scared the pants off a soldier. But first thing's first, I ask: How do you get through the main security into the building?

"That's trivial. We all know that's trivial," McAfee says. "You can always get into any fucking secure facility — all you've gotta do is watch it long enough."

He gives me another scenario. This time, McAfee tells me about a close friend who was hired by a major power company to try to break into its data center. He doesn't offer specifics, so the story can't be verified — though most companies who hire hackers to do penetration testing don't want to talk about their security flaws anyway.

"[My friend] noticed that every Thursday, the gardeners came in a whole line of pickup trucks, filled with lawnmowers and leaf blowers and all kinds of gear," he says. "But only the first truck in line had the paperwork."

In other words, they figured out that in a convoy of trucks, only the first one had to go through security. So the team made fake uniforms, bought a beat-up truck, and filled it with similar gear — then jumped into line with the other trucks.

"Now the gardeners, they know something is weird, but it's not their job to turn them in," McAfee says. "They're just there to clean the grounds and get the hell out."

Once inside the gate, they stripped off the uniforms to reveal suits underneath, then social engineered their way into the facility to a locked door for the data center — not much of a challenge for most hackers who make a hobby out of lock-picking.

"They make their report to the executives of the power utility, and they don't believe it's happened until they actually see the photographs," McAfee says. "Social engineering is this easy."

So does McAfee's plan to social-engineer his way into the Pentagon hold up? The strategy seems plausible and has been used to break into other facilities in the past. When asked whether it's possible to sneak in, a senior military officer told Tech Insider: "I'd like to say no, but you and I both know it could be done ... if [you are] committed and determined to do so."

I guess we'll have to wait at least until April — when the "hack the Pentagon" program starts — to see if it might work. That is, if the Pentagon gives McAfee a call.

"It may sound simplistic, but that's what social engineering is," McAfee says. "If it's complex, you're doing it wrong."

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On a hot, sunny day in 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson had just delivered a stump speech during his campaign for the presidency. According to white House reporter Frank Cormier’s book “LBJ: the Way He Was,” once on board Air Force One, the President started taking questions about the economy from the press. In the middle of the Q&A session, Johnson took off his pants and shirt, then “shucked off his underwear… standing buck naked and waving his towel for emphasis” as he continued talking.

The US Air Force 707 code named Special Air Mission (SAM) 26000, referred to as Air Force One while the President is on board, has a long and storied history.

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President Johnson was first sworn in as President of the United States on it.

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, Johnson was sworn in aboard SAM 26000 by U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes, the only woman to swear in the President of the United States.

President Kennedy’s body was returned to Washington from Dallas on board

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Kennedy’s body was ferried back to the nation’s capital with his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, accompanying him. A portion of the plane’s wall had to be torn down to make room for the casket. The same plane performed a high-speed flyover over Kennedy’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.

Air Force One flew President Nixon on his historic trip to China

In 1972, President Richard Nixon made a visit to Communist China, the first for a U.S. President, opening official diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China for the first time since the Nationalist regime fled to Taiwan in 1949. The division between Soviet and Chinese Communism combined with a thaw in U.S-China relations led to arms treaties with the Soviet Union.