Okay, it’s not a “Death Ray” in the tra­di­tional sense, but it’s a laser and its ours!

No longer the fan­tasy weapon of tomor­row, the U.S. Navy is set to field a pow­er­ful laser that can pro­tect its ships by blast­ing tar­gets with high-intensity light beams.

Early next year the Navy will place a laser weapon aboard a ship in the Per­sian Gulf where it could be used to fend off approach­ing unmanned aer­ial vehi­cles or speedboats.

The Navy calls its futur­is­tic weapon LAWS, which stands for the Laser Weapon Sys­tem. What looks like a small tele­scope is actu­ally a weapon that can track a mov­ing tar­get and fire a steady laser beam strong enough to burn a hole through steel.

A Navy video of test­ing con­ducted last sum­mer off the coast of Cal­i­for­nia shows how a laser beam fired from a Navy destroyer was able to set aflame an approach­ing UAV or drone, send­ing it crash­ing into the ocean.

“There was not a sin­gle miss” dur­ing the test­ing, said Rear Admi­ral Matthew Klun­der, chief of Naval Research. The laser was three for three in bring­ing down an approach­ing unmanned aer­ial vehi­cle and 12 for 12 when pre­vi­ous tests are fac­tored in.

But don’t expect in that video to see the fir­ing of col­ored laser bursts that Hol­ly­wood has used for its futur­is­tic laser guns. The Navy’s laser ray is not vis­i­ble to the naked eye because it is in the infrared spectrum.

The video which the Navy pro­vided the media is pretty unim­pres­sive.  The tar­get is never shown being shot by any­thing visual, but it does catch fire quite quickly until it crashes.  The rear admi­ral run­ning the pre­sen­ta­tion called the rays actions sim­i­lar to a blow torch cut­ting through steel.

It is the future of mil­i­tary tech, and so far it is ours and ours alone.

Though, you’d think it would be.

Some­one at the Army has a lot of explain­ing to do.

No fur­ther com­men­tary necessary.

What was the MoveOn.org meme from 2004–2007 again?  That Bush was going to bring back the draft or some­thing like that.

It got so bad and so ill-informed that among 18–29 year olds in 2004, a major­ity seri­ously believed it was going to happen.

Of course back then, the only ones really push­ing for a re-introduction of the Draft were Democ­rats.  Most of them using it as an anti-war tac­tic to turn pub­lic opin­ion against any future war (like they did in Viet­nam) or to just con­fuse the gen­eral public.

Then there’s Con­gres­sional rep­re­sen­ta­tives like New York Demo­c­rat Char­lie Rangel who say there isn’t enough “sac­ri­fice” being done in Amer­ica and the only way to rem­edy that is forced mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion, not so that young peo­ple can learn things like honor, dis­ci­pline, duty and self­less­ness.  No, Rangel’s idea is all about his belief that the mil­i­tary is full of dumb, igno­rant minori­ties (It is not) who the coun­try feeds into an all-killing war machine.

So he’ back with his idea.  The only change to it this time:  Include women.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) on Fri­day said he plans to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion that would bring back the mil­i­tary draft and extend it to women for the first time.

Rangel, who has pushed for years to bring back the draft, said the Pentagon’s deci­sion to allow women to serve in com­bat means that they too should reg­is­ter for the Selec­tive Service.

“Now that women can serve in com­bat they should reg­is­ter for the Selec­tive Ser­vice along­side their male coun­ter­parts,” Rangel said in a state­ment. “Rein­stat­ing the draft and requir­ing women to reg­is­ter for the Selec­tive Ser­vice would com­pel the Amer­i­can pub­lic to have a stake in the wars we fight as a nation. We must ques­tion why and how we go to war, and who decides to send our men and women into harm’s way.”

For­mer Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta signed an order rescind­ing the ban on women serv­ing in com­bat units last month, poten­tially open­ing up as many as 237,000 posi­tions to female ser­vice members.

The move raised a num­ber of pol­icy issues, includ­ing whether women will now be required to reg­is­ter with the Selec­tive Ser­vice. The Pen­ta­gon is required to report on how chang­ing the ban effects the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the reg­is­tra­tion being males only.

In an inter­view on MSNBC, Rangel said the draft should be rein­stated because the major­ity of Amer­i­cans make “no real sac­ri­fice” when the coun­try goes to war.

“The Con­gress never gets a chance to vote up and down on these war ques­tions. Every pres­i­dent just puts our kids in harm’s way and we just foot the bill, but there’s no real sac­ri­fice in what’s going on. Less than 1 per­cent of Amer­i­can fam­i­lies are involved in the mil­i­tary and they really pay the price for it,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morn­ing Joe.”

Mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion has been proven not to work and many even in the Pen­ta­gon at the moment doesn’t want.  Stud­ies have shown that you tend to get more accom­plished by those who want to be there, not by those who are forced to be there against their wills.  A draft would cre­ate the lat­ter situation.

Per­haps some­day the mil­i­tary will indeed see the need for another draft, but at the moment, the world is a long ways away from any type of World War II sce­nario where mil­lions of brave, young adults are needed to save the world once again.

Rangel doesn’t want to bring back the draft to help the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary.  He wants to bring back the draft to have the mil­i­tary destroyed from within by recruits who never wanted to serve in the first place.

By the way, can some­one explain to me how Rangel’s still in Con­gress and not spend­ing the rest of his days in an orange jump­suit for his numer­ous ethics and crim­i­nal violations?

“Chesty” is like Uga of the Uni­ver­sity of Geor­gia, a bull­dog.  And since he’s a dog, he will have to be replaced from time to time with younger — some­times cuter — ver­sions of himself.

The Chesty will the 14th “Chesty” the United States Marines Corps has used for mas­cot pur­poses.  He is kept in Wash­ing­ton, DC and often in the per­sonal care of a bat­tal­ion at Marine Bar­racks — Wash­ing­ton, the famous ones near the Naval Yards at the cor­ner of 8th and Eye SE.

The Marines rolled out the red car­pet for 9-week old Chesty the Recruit Thurs­day night at the Home of the Com­man­dants at the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Marine Bar­racks. Bon­nie Amos, the wife of Marine Corps Com­man­dant James Amos, met the lat­est Chesty Thurs­day night.

“My gosh this is the cutest puppy … I think this one will be fine as wine,” Mrs. Amos said in an inter­view Fri­day. “He has a great lit­tle personality.”

The Marine Corps first announced the arrival of Chesty the Recruit on Face­book and put out a release. After a period of between six and eight weeks of “boot camp,” Chesty the Recruit may have a chance to appear along­side Sgt. Chesty dur­ing the Sum­mer time Fri­day Evening Parades at the Marine Bar­racks in Washington.

At the end of the parade sea­son, the Marines plan to offi­cially hand over the mas­cot duties to the new Chesty. (All Marine mas­cots are named after Lt. Gen. Chesty Puller, the most dec­o­rated offi­cer in Marine Corps history.)

“Sgt. Chesty,” offi­cially known as “Chesty the XIII,” is the first of the Chesty’s to be pro­moted from “Pri­vate First Class Chesty” to full sergeant.

Appar­ently the word is it was a field pro­mo­tion caused by win­ning “a growl-off” with out-going SecDef Leon Panetta’s golden retriever “Bravo” last August.  Chesty, who’s nor­mally pretty calm because he’s a stan­dard photo-op for small chil­dren attend­ing the Fri­day Evening Parades, appar­ently decided he was going to be “Top Dog” when Panetta brought Bravo along for a visit to the Barracks.

Just two weeks before his pro­mo­tion, the Marine Corps mas­cot, an Eng­lish bull­dog for­mally known as Chesty XIII, had a run-in with Bravo, Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta’s golden retriever. Chesty, usu­ally known for hap­pily mug­ging for pho­tos with kids, revealed his inner grunt when he spot­ted the larger dog at the con­clu­sion of a pomp-filled mil­i­tary parade held in honor of the Pen­ta­gon chief. Chesty growled, barked and ignored his choke-chain of com­mand as he went nose-to-nose with Bravo.

As Chesty’s growl erupted into an angry bark, an offi­cer urgently whis­pered in the ear of his han­dler, Sgt. Chris Har­ris: “Keep the leash tight.”

That kind of breach of deco­rum at the head­quar­ters bar­racks, where the top gen­er­als and their wives reside, could have been career-ending for most Marines.

Chesty weath­ered the con­tro­versy and came out of it with a new stripe on his uniform.

Word on the bar­racks was that most of the senior offi­cers wives opposed the pro­mo­tion for Chesty XIII.

No word yet if White House dog “Bo” vis­its the Bar­racks with Pres. Obama.  (He didn’t when the Pres­i­dent attended the same Evening Parade I did in 2009.)

As I said on the air with Joy Cardin on Fri­day, “I’ve seen bet­ter orga­nized train wrecks.”

Meta.

The State Depart­ment on Mon­day reas­signed Daniel Fried, the spe­cial envoy for clos­ing the prison at Guan­tá­namo Bay, Cuba, and will not replace him, accord­ing to an inter­nal per­son­nel announce­ment. Mr. Fried’s office is being closed, and his for­mer respon­si­bil­i­ties will be “assumed” by the office of the department’s legal adviser, the notice said.

The announce­ment that no senior offi­cial in Pres­i­dent Obama’s sec­ond term will suc­ceed Mr. Fried in work­ing pri­mar­ily on diplo­matic issues per­tain­ing to repa­tri­at­ing or reset­tling detainees appeared to sig­nal that the admin­is­tra­tion does not cur­rently see the clos­ing of the prison as a real­is­tic pri­or­ity, despite repeated state­ments that it still intends to do so.

Mr. Fried will become the department’s coor­di­na­tor for sanc­tions pol­icy and will work on issues includ­ing Iran and Syria.

The announce­ment came as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other Guan­tá­namo Bay detainees fac­ing death penalty charges before a mil­i­tary tri­bunal over the Sept. 11 attacks made their first pub­lic appear­ance since Octo­ber on Mon­day, sit­ting qui­etly in a high-security court­room at the naval base in Cuba as pre­trial hear­ings resumed. A closed-circuit feed of the pro­ceed­ings was shown at Fort Meade.

When asked about the office clos­ing at yesterday’s White House brief­ing, spokes-hack Jay Car­ney said that Pres­i­dent Obama ‘remains com­mit­ted’ to clos­ing Gitmo by the end of his term.  Funny, he said that four years ago too.

(Won­der if the Left has got­ten in on the joke that he’s likely never going to yet?)