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Zero Foxtrot, Austin, TX (2026)

07/24/2026

Gadget week #3
THOR III (AN/PLQ-9) - Signal Jammer for RCIEDs &
Flipper Zero - Personal Access & Convenience

First up: the THOR III (AN/PLQ-9). This isn't your average signal booster; it’s a backpack-mounted beast designed to stop RCIEDs (Remote Controlled Improvised Explosive Devices) from ruining everyone's day. Developed by Sierra Nevada Corp, this was a “portable” high-stakes mute button for bombs, precision-jamming detonation signals so dismounted troops can walk through a minefield without becoming a statistic.

Then on the civilian side, the Flipper Zero is hacker cosplay with enough real capability to make the joke uncomfortable. It looks like a Tamagotchi raised by a pen-tester, with a cyber-dolphin that gets happier when you use it to poke at your "digital environment". Under the toy shell is a pocket-sized digital multitool. The Flipper isn't hacking nuclear codes. But it does a good job exposing how much of modern life still runs on old protocols, weak identifiers, and unencrypted signals. But that's also why it is useful. A normal person can learn what signals surround them, consolidate remotes, test equipment they own, experiment with electronics, or understand how physical access systems work.

The Flipper Zero is not dangerous because it creates new vulnerabilities. It is dangerous because it makes old ones visible, portable, and fun enough that people finally start looking for them.

The video demonstrates the only way to listen to a Taylor Swift song via Bluetooth headphones.

07/23/2026

Gadget #2 - NIGHT OPS

Night used to belong to whoever could afford military-grade tubes, specialized mounts, and a pile of batteries. That advantage is over.
Modern night capability is no longer one technology. Digital night vision turns the scene into data that can be recorded, zoomed, and processed but most require an external IR light source. A major weakness if you lack the deep pockets for white phosphorus. Thermal ignores visible light and builds an image from heat differences. Fusion combines those feeds, laying thermal signatures over a digital image so the user gets context and detection together.

However the biggest advancement is in the integrations. Rangefinders feed distance into ballistic calculators. Picture-in-picture preserves a wide field of view, with a second image box that magnifies just the area around your center reticle. So you can take a precise shot and track the runners in the main screen. Recoil-activated recording captures video automatically. Wi-Fi moves files to your phone. Replaceable batteries, USB-C power, smaller housings, and clip-on mounts let one device shift between observation and rifle use.
The PARD FT34-LRF is a great example. It works as a handheld thermal monocular, front clip-on, or standalone thermal optic. Its 384x288 sensor runs at 50 Hz, while an integrated laser rangefinder reaches 1,200 yards. It records video, stores images, connects over Wi-Fi, and runs on a common battery. PARD is only one example of how capabilities that were once split across several expensive systems used by the military, now fit into one portable unit.

What night vision, thermal, or fusion setup are you finding success with and what bombed when you got it in the field?

07/22/2026

Gadget Week #1
RETICULUM - Mesh Network

Reticulum lets people build their own communications network without depending on cell towers, internet service, or a company keeping a server alive. It is not a radio or a messaging app, its the system underneath them that figures out how to move information between devices.
Here is the simple version. Sideband is the app where you type the message. An RNode is a small LoRa radio that sends it through the air. Reticulum finds the path. If your buddy is close enough, the message goes directly to him. If he is far away, it can pass through a Reticulum node on a roof, hill, vehicle, or house. That relay does not need to read the message. It just carries it forward.
Reticulum is not limited to LoRa. The same network can use Wi-Fi, Ethernet, packet radio, serial cable, or an internet connection. A message might leave your phone over LoRa, cross town through a rooftop relay, then jump onto Wi-Fi to reach the next community.
If the person you are trying to reach is offline, an LXMF propagation node can hold the encrypted message until they reconnect, like an answering machine. No SIM card. No user account. No single company deciding who can communicate.
The reason to use it is ownership. During a blackout, hurricane, cyberattack, rural outage, or censorship event, the hardware can keep moving information after normal communications go down.
There are limits. LoRa is slow. Its useful for text, short voice messages, and small files. Relay nodes need height, power, and maintenance. Encryption protects the message, but it does not make the transmitter invisible. Terrain, antennas, and batteries will be your weak points to plan for.
Most people prepare for a power outage with batteries and water. Very few prepare for the moment the phone in their pocket becomes an expensive flashlight.

07/16/2026

This cartoon was published in 1914, before America entered the First World War. Before Normandy, Vietnam, Fallujah, and Helmand. Before more than a century of speeches promising that this war would be necessary, this one would be different, and couldn't be avoided.
The drawing is brutal because it doesn't waste time pretending. A soldier, blown apart and dragging himself forward with his hands, leaves his intestines behind him as he crawls toward a comfortable businessman seated in an oversized chair. The businessman leans forward with a medal in one hand and the possibility of a job in the other. "After the War... A Medal and Maybe a Job."
John Sloan wasn't mocking the soldier. He was asking a question that has survived every war in history. Who benefits when nations go to war, and who gets left with the bill?
For all the progress we've made over the last hundred years, that question still seems to make people uncomfortable. We've revolutionized the machinery of war. We can watch a battlefield from space, strike a target from another continent, and deliver enough firepower to erase a city before breakfast. Yet somehow the burden of proof for going to war still feels lighter than the burden carried by the people expected to fight it.
The men who go are almost always told they are defending freedom, protecting democracy, stopping the next threat before it reaches home. Maybe those claims are true. Maybe they aren't. But if history has taught us anything, it should be that those explanations deserve relentless scrutiny before the first convoy rolls out. Not decades later when the archives finally open and everyone admits the story was all bu****it to justify a far more nefarious plot.
The remarkable thing isn't that this cartoon existed in 1914. It's that after more than a century of war, technological progress, and promises that we've learned our lesson, the question it asks is still unanswered. If there is one lesson worth carrying forward, it isn't that every soldier deserves another ribbon. It's that every government should face impossible questions before asking another generation to come home wearing one.

07/14/2026

In 2007, 2nd Battalion 7th Marines had an unique way of rewarding the snipers for a successful mission. Instead of another challenge coin, they handed out a Battalion Commander's 72-hour Liberty Passes.
This first one came after the first mission of the deployment. A leaders recon to get oriented to the area that turned into an opportunity. As the sun rose they identified three insurgents placing an IED south of Saqlawiyah. Watching for 3 hours in the reeds along the rivers edge, finally 2 of them sat down 400m away, pulled AK's out of their jackets, and the green light was given. The certificate documented the engagement, then rewarded the Marines with three extra days of leave when they got home.
It sounded like a good idea at the time and the snipers certainly weren't complaining. The funny part is these were handed out several times during the opening weeks of the deployment. Then someone higher up apparently realized the battalion might be giving away a lot of 72-hour passes if things kept pace. The incentive quietly disappeared. Every unit had its own traditions. Some gave coins, handed out beers, but 2/7 decided combat effectiveness was worth a three-day weekend.

Curious what incentives or attaboys the rest of you got. Did your unit have any strange traditions, or memorable ways of recognizing a successful mission?

07/11/2026

Operation Fishbowl
JULY 8-9, 1962
Cold War
Johnston Atoll

The United States did not nuke the sky by accident. It put a thermonuclear warhead on a Thor missile, launched it from Johnston Island, and detonated it roughly 400 kilometers above the Pacific. The shot was Starfish Prime, part of Operation Fishbowl, and the yield was about 1.4 megatons.
The Cold War logic was clean enough on paper. If the Soviets were building missiles, America needed to know what nuclear explosions would do above the atmosphere. Could a high-altitude burst blind radar? Kill incoming warheads? Break communications? Fry electronics? Turn the upper atmosphere into a weapon? So they tested it.

The blast lit the Pacific and produced an electromagnetic pulse stronger than expected. Some instruments failed because the event outran the measurement plan. In Hawaii, about 900 miles away, streetlights went out, burglar alarms started screaming, and the telephone systems was damaged. Nobody dropped a bomb on Honolulu, the wiring got fried from space.

Then came the interesting part, the unintended consequences.
Starfish Prime injected charged particles into Earth’s magnetic field and helped create an artificial radiation belt. Satellites started dying early. NASA was learning how to operate inside the natural Van Allen belts. Washington had just unintentionally built a dirty training field overhead.

This is where the conspiracy version gets lazy. The CIA did not secretly launch the shot. The test belonged to the geniuses at the weapons and defense establishment and approved by JFK. But the intelligence world lived inside the consequences. It watched Soviet nuclear tests, measured foreign capabilities, and read signatures.
We’re all lucky that nuking the sky “only” burned out satellites and blacked out cities. If they’d kept going, I wonder how many nukes would it take to destroy the atmosphere and humanity with it.

07/08/2026

Tinian, Mariana Islands

24 July 1944.

WWII U.S. V Amphibious Corps

2ND and 4TH Marine Divisions vs. Japanese Army

Tinian sat three miles from Saipan, flat, hot, and valuable. The Marine Corps wanted it, and the Japanese knew it. The obvious beaches were near Tinian Town and Sunharon Harbor. It was wider, cleaner, and exactly where Japan focused their defenses to slaughter the Americans.

But the strategy was predictable, so they put the Recon teams to work. White Beach 1 and White Beach 2 were barely beaches. One was only 60 yards long with coral, reefs, tight lanes, and almost no room for men, vehicles, or mistakes. On paper, they were terrible ideas, but that was the point.

Recon Marines and Underwater Demolition Teams went in at night and checked whether infantry and vehicles could get ashore without everybody drowning. The answer was yes, barely, if they left the swim waivers in the motor pool, but it was doable.

On July 24, 1944, about 15,600 Marines landed and the plan worked. The Japanese had built their attention around the convenient beaches. By 0800, three battalions were ashore in about 20 minutes with bulldozers and tanks shortly after.

The fight was still ugly as the Japanese counter attack hit that night. Mines, caves, heat, and close terrain still had to be paid for in blood. The Americans lost 389 killed and 1,816 wounded. More than 5,000 Japanese troops were killed. Thousands of civilians died or were interned.

By August 1, Tinian was secured. Then Seabees turned it into one of the busiest airfields of the war. B-29s launched from there against Japan, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sometimes when you know you're in a fight, and you know that they know, you know what they know, you know they know. You can catch em with their kimono down.

07/06/2026

Medic!

Your libo brief was simple. Do not turn your hand inside out because you want to impress people who drink Truly's. Fireworks are not toys. They are tiny bombs, sold next to folding tables and beef jerky by a guy without enough teeth to eat beef jerky. Respect the math.

Do not hold them.

Do not relight duds.

Do not lean over them like you are negotiating with a drunk woman.

Do not mix booze, lighters, and confidence.

Do not let your buddy named Kyle “just see what happens.”

Put the fireworks on the ground. Back up. Keep water nearby. Watch your kids. Keep your dog inside unless you want him to experience Fallujah in the laundry room.

Enjoy you all enjoyed the weekend. Its hard to fight without fingers... Stay capable.

07/02/2026

Tech Sgt John A. Chapman
U.S. Air Force Special Tactics Combat Controller attached to a Navy SEAL team

4 March 2002 War in Afghanistan

Posthumously promoted to Master Sergeant (MSgt) after his Medal of Honor award and Hall of Heroes induction.

Takur Ghar sat around 10,000 feet, cold and occupied. During Operation Anaconda, a special operations recon team tried to insert by MH-47 Chinook onto the peak. The bird came in. The mountain answered with RPGs and machine guns.

Razor 03 was hit. Navy SEAL Neil Roberts fell from the aircraft onto an enemy-held mountaintop. The damaged helicopter limped away and made an emergency landing miles off. John Chapman, an Air Force combat controller who was attached to the SEAL team, coordinated air support and the rescue effort on their way back to recover Roberts. They knew the hill was occupied. They chose to climb back into the fight.

Chapman came off the helicopter and moved uphill through thigh-deep snow under fire from multiple directions. He charged the closest bunker, closed with the enemy, cleared it, and killed the fighters inside. Then another machine gun opened up from a second bunker only 12 meters away.

Chapman left cover again and attacked the second position where he was hit hard. The team believed he was dead and broke contact. Thats the part that get's controversial.

Years later, overhead ISR footage forced the story back open. The grainy feed showed Chapman was still alive. He regained himself, moved, fought alone, and engaged enemy positions firing on the incoming QRF aboard Razor 01. A man written off by the chaos of the moment was still buying time for men who had not even reached the ground yet.

Chapman was later killed on that mountain. His Air Force Cross was upgraded to the Medal of Honor in 2018, making him the first Airman recognized with the medal for combat actions after Vietnam and the first Special Tactics Airman to receive it.

The hill doesn’t care what we write about it. But if we’re going to talk about Takur Ghar, we owe it to Chapman to keep the story as unforgiving as the ridge itself. RIP

06/30/2026

Marvin Heemeyer Bulldozer Rampage
June 2004.
Granby, Colorado.

Marvin Heemeyer was a muffler shop owner in a mountain town of 2,000 people. He was in an ongoing property dispute with a growing belief that the town had sided against him.

The fight started over the land nextdoor. The Docheff family wanted to put a concrete batch plant beside him. Heemeyer fought it through town meetings, lawsuits, and code dispute that is supposed to make citizens feel heard.
In his mind, the channels were fake. The board, the concrete plant, the courts, the fines, all of it became one machine grinding him down. Then came the sewer issue with access problems, code violations, and fines. He paid one city check with a single word written on it. “Cowards.”

For more than a year, Heemeyer worked inside a steel shed. He armored a Komatsu bulldozer with steel and concrete, sealed himself inside, mounted cameras to see, and strolled into town in his private war machine. No escape hatch and no surrender plan.

On June 4, 2004, he sent it.

Marvin crawled for more than 2 hours, crushing the town hall, local newspaper, concrete company, homes, and businesses linked to people he believed had targeted him. The police fired at him but it did nothing. He was probably having a pretty awesome time. I'm curious what playlist he went with. 🤔

No one other than Marvin died, but it wasn't for lack of effort. Five children were rushed out of the library just before he hit town hall. He had a 50 cal M82 mounted and fired at police.

Eventually, the machine buried itself inside a hardware store and stopped moving. SWAT moved in and Marvin shot himself while inside the cab. The internet still praises his legacy while Granby got left with the rubble, reputation, and the bill.

The sh!tty part is that Marvin was not imagining it. Small towns can quietly close ranks and become personal very quickly.

He felt cornered, fined, and unheard. So he made the choice that guaranteed nobody could ignore him. That is the tragedy. He jumped through all of the hoops and filed all of the documents. Somehow the system and community failed to notice or care that a man was drowning.

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