ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Houthi froces have revealed four “domestically designed and manufactured” combat and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). “The sole unveiled combat aircraft, code-named Qasef-1 (Striker-1), has a wingspan of three meters and a hull length of 2.5 meters. The drone has a flight endurance of 120 minutes, and is capable of carrying a payload of 30 kilograms,” PressTV reported . The “Yemeni” Qasef-1 (Striker-1) combat drone: Iranian Ababil 2 and Ababil 3 UAVs for comparison: Another UAV, dubbed Hudhud-1 (Hoopoe-1), is developed for reconnaissance missions. It has a flight endurance of 90 minutes, and an operational range of up to 30 kilometers, according to the report. Its wingspan is 1.9 meters and the hull length is 1.5 meters. A Hudhud-1 reconnaissance UAV: Another presented UAV is the Raqib, a reconnaissance drone can fly with the flight endurance of 90 minutes and the range of 15 kilometers. The Rased UAV can perform various missions, including aerial monitoring ...

By Elizabeth Kolbert In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person who had subsequently taken his own life. The students were then asked to distinguish between the genuine notes and the fake ones. Some students discovered that they had a genius for the task. Out of twenty-five pairs of notes, they correctly identified the real one twenty-four times. Others discovered that they were hopeless. They identified the real note in only ten instances. As is often the case with psychological studies, the whole setup was a put-on. Though half the notes were indeed genuine—they’d been obtained from the Los Angeles County coroner’s office—the scores were fictitious. The students who’d been told they were almost always right were, on average, no more discerning than those who had been told they were mostly...

Military Industrial Complex Wins: The Trump administration has not said how much money it will ask Congress to spend in total. By Alex Guillén, Sarah Ferris and Jeremy Herb The White House took its first steps Monday toward what would be a dramatic reshuffling of the $3 trillion-plus federal budget, sending guidance to agencies that calls for a $54 billion increase in defense spending and corresponding reductions to most non-security agencies. While Office of Management and Budget officials briefed reporters on the plan this morning, President Donald Trump publicly explained his proposal to focus federal spending on national security, including boosts to the military, local law enforcement and the Border Patrol, while cutting domestic programs and foreign aid. Trump has said his budget will not include cuts to Medicare or Social Security, the usual targets of Republicans trying to trim federal spending. “This budget follows through on my promise of keeping America safe, keeping out ...