America has fought in a lot of wars so it can be hard to keep track of all of them.

As a quick reference guide, here is every American war, each captured in a single tidy sentence.

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American Revolution: The Colonials hated King George and his taxes on tea, so they fought to be ruled by President George instead.

Whiskey Rebellion: Americans hated President George and his taxes on whiskey, but Washington won a bloodless victory and kept his tax.

Quasi-War: America didn’t want to pay debts owed to France, so France started stealing ships; America recreated its Navy, and everybody fought until they realized the war was costing everyone more money than anyone was making in profit.

President Obama's eighth and final $4 trillion-plus budget proposal will be sent to a Republican-controlled Congress on Tuesday.

Earlier this month US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter highlighted a few new weapons the Pentagon wants to add to its arsenal for a cool $583 billion budget in 2017.

The budget includes $7.5 billion to escalate the fight against the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh).

Another $71.4 billion would be used for military research and development spending.

Carter unveiled that the Pentagon will continue to sink resources into the development of "swarming, autonomous vehicles," writes Patrick Tucker of Defense One.

These vehicles will be able to perform highly calculated and synchronized movements by land, air, and sea. Ideally, such swarms would be highly effective for collecting data and coordinating defense movements.

Carter said:

For the air, they've developed micro-drones that are really fast, and really resilient — they can fly through heavy winds and be kicked out the back of a fighter jet moving at Mach 0.9 ... And for the water, they've developed self-driving boats, which can network together to do all sorts of missions, from fleet defense to close-in surveillance — including around an island, real or artificial, without putting our sailors at risk.

Second, Carter would like to see the US Navy's rail gun system continue to receive funding.

The rail gun uses electromagnetic forces to power projectiles, which can manage to reach ranges of up to 100 nautical miles. That range is about the same for a cruise missile, but a cruise missile can cost the Navy around $1 million while a rail gun projectile can be as cheap as $25,000.

Depending upon the success of the rail gun, Carter would like to miniaturize and expand the program, placing "five-inch [rail guns] at the front of every Navy destroyer, and also the hundreds of Army Paladin self-propelled howitzers."

Carter is also envisioning the creation of an "arsenal plane." The arsenal plane concept, according to Military.com, "would take an existing 'large platform' aircraft, such as a B-52, stock it with a variety of munitions, and have it led into battle by an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to provide targeting."

Carter notes that such an arsenal plane will essentially function as a "very large airborne magazine, networked to 5th-generation aircraft that act as forward sensor and targeting nodes — essentially combining different systems already in our inventory to create wholly new capabilities."

This combination of legacy and more cutting-edge elements may also become a recurring theme at the Pentagon.

Included in the new budget for 2017 is the aging but still highly effective A-10 "Warthog." The Warthog, which the US Air Force has been attempting to retire, will find continued used under Carter's proposed five-year military budget until 2022.

"The budget defers the A-10's final retirement until 2022, replacing it with F-35s on a squadron-by-squadron basis so we'll always have enough aircraft for today's conflicts," Carter said.

The decision to postpone the A-10's retirement was because of the aircraft's "devastating" role in attacks against ISIS, Carter noted.

Finally, Carter also noted that the Pentagon will continue to dedicate significant resources to the development of cyber abilities.

In 2017, Carter has earmarked $7 billion for cyber, with $35 billion set aside for the next five years.

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Over the weekend, North Korea earned further worldwide scorn after it tested a highly technical long-range rocket system.

Pyongyang claimed that the test was part of a peaceful and benign space program.

However, the rogue regimes' latest launch is almost assuredly a cover for testing a ballistic and nuclear weapons program. 

Gordon Chang, writing for The Daily Beast, notes that the satellite system that North Korea claims to have launched over the weekend would weigh essentially as much as a nuclear warhead. This satellite launch could thus dovetail with Pyongyang's claimed successful testing and detonation of a miniaturized hydrogen bomb. 

Although there is still no indication that North Korea would be able to develop missile and nuclear warheads en masse, let alone successfully deploy them beyond tests, this latest rocket launch is alarming. 

According to The Heritage Foundation, North Korea's new Taepodong 3 missile has an estimated range of 13,000 kilometers. This would place the entire continental US within range of the missile. Assuming that Pyongyang would be able to attack a warhead to a Taepodong missile and manage to launch it at the US, the missiles could be capable of delivering major damage to the country. 

"If its warhead is nuclear and explodes high above the American homeland, an electromagnetic pulse could disable electronics across vast swatches of the country," Chang writes.

In October, Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also assessed that North Korea has "the capability to reach the [US] homeland with a nuclear weapon from a rocket," The Guardian reported.

Gortney also warned in an April 2015 news conference that he was confident that, according to a Pentagon assessment, Pyongyang would be able to place miniaturized nuclear warheads on its KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile. 

However, Gortney did qualify this assessment. 

"Should one get airborne and come at us, I'm confident we would be able to knock it down,"he told reporters.

In the face of such a challenge, the US has agreed to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to South Korea.

The missile system is able to knock enemy missiles out of the sky, hopefully limiting the utility of any long-range missiles in North Korea's arsenal. 

SEE ALSO: How a quiet boy from North Korea became one of the world's scariest dictators

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NOW WATCH: Meet THAAD: America’s answer to North Korean threats

Syrian rebels are using US-made TOW anti-tank missiles again in their fight against forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. 

Reports of the use of these advanced missiles, which are highly regulated by the CIA, have trailed off in recent months. But the use of TOWs seem to have roared back to life in February. 

“The decrease happened after the record number of 115 TOWs recorded in October,” Qalaat al-Mudiq, a analyst of the Syrian conflict told The Daily Beast.

“There were 73 in November and 49 in December. There were no recorded TOW launches in January until the 12th, and that entire month saw only 22 in total," al-Mudiq continued.

The TOW missiles, which had been provided to 39 US-approved anti-Assad militias, made a name for themselves in October of 2015, when rebels carried out what became known as a "tank massacre" on the regime forces.

But after a few quiet months, al-Mudiq reported that there had been 16 reports of TOW missile use in just the first three days of February.

Coinciding with these reports, is a video posted by the Free Syrian Army's Northern Division, one of the CIA-backed groups, which allegedly shows them taking out a group of Russian military officials with one of the TOW missiles on February 3.

Russia's state media outlet TASS did report on the deaths of Russian military advisors in Syria, but attributed the kills to ISIS.

Media associated with the Free Syrian Army later reported that “15 militants, including 3 Russian officers and 4 Assad’s forces officers,” had been killed by the TOW missiles.

While TOW missiles don't represent an overwhelming part of the rebel's arsenal, nor are they the most advanced missile systems currently available, they're interesting because they're highly regulated and monitored by the CIA.

“With the TOW, each 50-man team gets one launcher and five missiles. They’re told to make a video verifying the missiles’ use and bring the spent missile casings to show they haven’t sold them or whatever,” a Jordan-based rebel liaison with knowledge of the TOW supply chain told The Daily Beast. 

The role of TOW missiles in the Syrian conflict show just how much what started as one nation's civil war has become a proxy war between Eastern and Western powers.

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Elderly Hamama Yousif was rushed to the main hospital in one of Yemen's largest cities after an artillery round lashed her chest with shrapnel, only to find that the doctors there had run out of the oxygen tanks needed to save her life.

In a video captured by local news station Yemen Youth TV, worried relatives carry her, still talking, to almost every clinic and hospital in the war-torn city of Taiz - none had any oxygen - until motionless and dead, she was finally taken to the morgue.

Once known as "Arabia Felix" or happy Arabia, Yemen has been disfigured by 10 months of war into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, where over half the population faces hunger and not even hospitals are spared.

The wounded and the dying find little comfort in al-Thawra hospital in the southwestern city of Taiz: Pressure from nearby shelling has blown out all the windows and several direct hits have reduced one ward nearly to dust.

"Our situation is disastrous in every possible way," said Sadeq Shujaa, head of the local doctor's union.

"Shelling hit the only cancer hospital and the children's hospital, shutting them down. The war has sent doctors fleeing for their lives to the countryside and siege tactics mean we have to smuggle in medicine through mountain passes."

Taiz is contested between local militias and the armed Houthi group which many residents say blocks aid from entering and bombs civilian targets. It is one of the worst fronts of the war, in which forces loyal to a government ousted by the Houthis in March are seeking to fight back to the capital Sanaa.

After the government fled into exile, a Saudi-led alliance of Arab states joined the war to restore it, recapturing the port city of Aden where President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi is now based.

Riyadh and its allies have launched hundreds of air strikes, sent in ground troops and set up a naval blockade to restrict goods reaching the country. The Saudis say the Houthis, drawn mainly from a Shi'ite sect that ruled a thousand-year kingdom in north Yemen until 1962, are puppets of Shi'ite Iran.

The Houthis have allied themselves with army units loyal to long-serving former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and say they are leading a revolution against a corrupt government in thrall to the foreign invaders. They deny receiving support from Iran.

 Staggering Crisis

The fighting has killed around 6,000 people, about half of them civilians. Many times more are now in danger as a result of the humanitarian catastrophe wrought by the conflict.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warns of a "staggering" food crisis, saying famine looms as over half the population or some 14.4 million people are food insecure.

"The economy shrank by 35 percent in 2015. People who used to have decent standards of living have become Yemen's 'new poor' because with no electricity to power their business and no fuel to get anywhere, they have no way to earn money," said Mohammed al-Assadi of UNICEF.

"2.4 million people are internally displaced. In these conditions there's no easy access to basic hygiene or healthcare, and now about 320,000 children under five years old are severely malnourished," he added.

On the outskirts of Sanaa and in towns outside Taiz, clusters of shabby tent encampments housing thousands of families fleeing nearby violence have cropped up, where jobless parents idle and many children shrivel with hunger.

In peacetime, impoverished Yemen imported 90 percent of its staple foods. Much of the 4 percent of the arid country that is arable land now lies untilled because of the war.

"Besides the humanitarian catastrophes, a lack of jobs paves the way for a social and political crisis in which work skills erode and some people join the war effort to earn a living, feeding a cycle of violence," said Salah Elhajj Hassan of FAO. 

Hiding in caves

Workers from the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), among the few foreign aid groups operating in Yemen's worst war zones, have suffered repeated attacks in the far northern province of Saada straddling the Saudi border.

An ambulance from an MSF-affiliated hospital rushed to the scene of a suspected Saudi-led air strike on Jan. 21, but just as crowds gathered to assist the victims another bomb fell and killed a medic.

An MSF hospital was bombed on Oct. 27 in what the Saudi-led coalition says was a strike intended to target militiamen nearby.

Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said the foreign forces were working to reduce civilian deaths, but aid groups like MSF should prevent Houthi fighters from approaching their facilities.

As Yemeni society becomes increasingly militarized, combatants are often mixed among civilians. Rights group Human Rights Watch blamed Houthis for basing forces in a center for the blind in the capital that was bombed on Jan. 5.

The bomb did not explode, but rendered the facility unusable.

Days after the blast, a young boy with grey sightless eyes felt his way through the rubble and picked up a dead pigeon, in a moment captured by a local cameraman that has embodied for many Yemenis the sadness of the war.

Fear now reigns even where aid is available. MSF official Teresa Sancristoval said in a statement that most of the 40,000 residents in an area near an MSF hospital bombed on Jan. 10 now live in caves to avoid Saudi-led air strikes.

"Since the attack, there have been no deliveries in the maternity room – pregnant women are giving birth in caves rather than risk coming to the hospital," she said.

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In a service whose mission includes rescuing lives in peril, it’s hard to pick and choose legends among so many heroes. The Coast Guard’s history is filled with ordinary men who rose to the challenges presented by extraordinary circumstances.

Here is a list of 13 folks who embodied the Coast Guard ethos:

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1. Douglas Munro

The ultimate hero of the Coast Guard is arguably Douglas Munro.

As he commanded a group of Higgins boats at the Battle of Guadalcanal, Munro coordinated the evacuation of more than 500 Marines who came under heavy fire, using his boat as a shield to draw fire.

During the evacuation, he was fatally wounded, but his last words were, “Did they get off?”

2. Thomas “Jimmy” Crotty

Lt. Thomas “Jimmy” Crotty was the first Coast Guard prisoner of war since the War of 1812 and served at the front lines of the Battle of Corregidor as the Japanese took the Philippines.

A 1934 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy where he was an accomplished athlete, Crotty served as an skilled cutterman before being attached to a Navy mine warfare unit. After several different positions in the Pacific Theater, Crotty found himself attached the Marine Corps Fourth Regiment, First Battalion, as the Japanese forces attacked the last American stronghold.

One eyewitness report says that Crotty supervised army personnel manning a howitzer dug-in until the American surrender on May 6, 1942. Crotty was captured by the Japanese and taken to Cabanatuan Prison, where he died of diphtheria.

3. William Flores

On January 28, 1980, the USCGC Blackthorn collided with a tanker in Tampa Bay, Florida. Seaman Apprentice William Flores, just eighteen years old and a year out of boot camp, stayed on board as the cutter sank, strapping the life jacket locker open with his belt, giving his own life jacket to those struggling in the water, and giving aid to those wounded on board.

He was posthumously awarded the Coast Guard’s highest non-combat award, the Coast Guard Medal.

Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney was one of the most lethal snipers of the Vietnam War with 103 confirmed kills. In a particularly daring engagement, Mawhinney stopped a Viet Cong assault by hitting 16 headshots in 30 seconds at night in bad weather.

“Chuck was extremely aggressive,” retired Master Gunnery Sgt. Mark Limpic, Mawhinney’s squad leader, later told LA Times. “He could run a half-mile, stand straight up and shoot offhand and drop somebody at 700 yards.”

Mawhinney was operating out of a base near Da Nang in what the U.S. military called Arizona Territory.

A large North Vietnamese Army force was spotted moving its way south towards the U.S. base, but a monsoon shut down air support. So Mawhinney volunteered to cover a river crossing where the force was expected to march.

Mawhinney left his sniper rifle at the base and moved forward with an M14 semiautomatic rifle and a Starlight scope, an early night vision device.

The sniper and his spotter positioned themselves overlooking the shallowest river crossing. A few hours later, the NVA appeared.

A single scout approached the river first, but Mawhinney waited. When the rest of the NVA began to cross the river, Mawhinney kept waiting. It wasn’t until the men were deep into the river that Mawhinney began firing.

He engaged the enemy at ranges from 25 to 75 meters, nailing one man after the other through the head. As he describes it, in 30 seconds “I shot 16 times, 16 went down the river.”

The two Marines then hastily fell back as the NVA tried to hit them with small arms and machine gun fire.

See Mawhinney and another Marine sniper describe the engagement in the video below:

SEE ALSO: 13 legends of the US Coast Guard

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The US military has released twovideos showcasing the anti-ISIS coalition obliterating a militant oil and gas plant. The airstrikes were conducted on February 2 against ISIS facilities near Deir al Zor in eastern Syria. US Central Command notes that four airstrikes were carried out near Deir al Zor against four separate ISIS plants.

The strikes aimed at ISIS's oil production were part of the broader Operation Tidal Wave II, which was to shutter ISIS's production of oil in eastern Syria and its subsequent sale on the black market.

The Combined Joint Task Force, responsible for anti-ISIS operations, notes that ISIS receives two-thirds of its revenue from oil production. And, according to The New York Times, ISIS is estimated to be able to earn $40 million a month through the production and sale of oil on the black market.

The strikes against the oil and gas facility come amid an intensification of strikes against the militant group. On February 2, the anti-ISIS coalition conducted 20 strikes, with targets ranging from the oil and gas plants to ISIS mortar positions and weapon caches.

We have GIFed two of the strikes below:

You can view the videos of the airstrikes below:

SEE ALSO: Watch a US-led coalition airstrike annihilate an ISIS HQ building

DON'T MISS: US military has released video of its airstrikes pounding ISIS oil trucks

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For nearly 50 years, Sirhan Sirhan has been consistent: He says he doesn't remember fatally shooting Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in a crowded kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

The Jerusalem native, now 71, has given no inkling that he will change his version of events at his 15th parole hearing on Wednesday in San Diego.

He is serving a life sentence that was commuted from death when the California Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972.

During his previous parole hearing in 2011, Sirhan told officials about his regret but again said he could not remember the events of June 5, 1968.

The parole board ruled that Sirhan hadn't shown sufficient remorse and didn't understand the enormity of the crime less than five years after the killing of President John F. Kennedy — the senator's older brother — and two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

His memory will be tested this time in front of Paul Schrade, 91, a Kennedy confidante who was one of five people injured in the shooting. Schrade will appear for the first time at a Sirhan parole hearing.

Schrade, who declined in a brief interview to preview his planned remarks to the parole board, has steadfastly advanced the view that there was more than one gunman.

Sirhan initially refused to appear at the parole hearing at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where he has been held since 2013, said Laurie Dusek one of his attorneys. Memories of the 2011 hearing made him physically ill, but Sirhan relented after Dusek begged him to come and said Schrade would be there.

Sirhan, who skipped earlier parole hearings, sent word through his brother, Munir, that he would appear, but Dusek said she didn't know what he will say, if anything.

"If you don't show, you've got nothing to gain," Dusek said she wrote to Sirhan.

Schrade, who was western regional director of the United Auto Workers Union when he was shot in the head, was labor chair of Kennedy's presidential campaign and was at the senator's side the night he was gunned down moments after delivering a victory speech in California's pivotal Democratic primary.

Schrade has devoted the second half of his life to preserving Kennedy's legacy and trying to unravel questions surrounding the assassination. He proposed the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools at the site of the former Ambassador Hotel and has a library named for him there.

Schrade, who has kept a low profile in recent years, "is a family friend of the Kennedy's, he's very much in touch with the senator's children," Dusek said. "He feels that justice has not been served."

Author Dan Moldea said Schrade was instrumental in arranging 14 hours of interviews with Sirhan for Moldea's 1995 book, "The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy," which concluded Sirhan acted alone. Moldea began his research believing there was more than one gunman.

"Paul is a great man of honorable intentions at all times, but Paul has grabbed at every thread of conspiracy in this case," Moldea said. "When I concluded that Sirhan did it and did it alone, basically Paul cut me out of his life."

Sirhan's lack of memory of the attack makes expressions of remorse and accepting responsibility difficult.

In one of many emotional outbursts during his 1969 trial, he blurted out that he had committed the crime "with 20 years of malice aforethought."

That and his declaration when arrested, "I did it for my country," were his only relevant comments before he said he didn't remember shooting Kennedy.

Last year, a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected arguments by Sirhan's lawyers that their client was not in position to fire the fatal shot and that a second shooter may have been responsible.

Some claim 13 shots were fired while Sirhan's gun held only eight bullets, and that the fatal shot appeared to come from behind Kennedy while Sirhan faced him.

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Sometime before his death in a US drone strike in June 2015, Nasir al Wuhayshi recorded an insider’s account of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

As the aide-de-camp to Osama bin Laden prior to the hijackings, Wuhayshi was well-placed to know such details.

And al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which Wuhayshi led until his demise, has now published a version of his “untold story.”

A transcript of Wuhayshi’s discussion of the 9/11 plot was included in two editions of AQAP’s Al Masra newsletter. The first part was posted online on Jan. 31 and the second on Feb. 9. The summary below is based on the first half of Wuhayshi’s account.

Wuhayshi began by explaining al Qaeda’s rationale for attacking America. Prior to 9/11, the jihadists’ cause was not supported by the Muslim people, because the mujahedeen’s “goals” were not widely understood. The jihadists were divided into many groups and fought “tit-for-tat” conflicts “with the tyrants.” (The “tyrants” were the dictators who ruled over many Muslim-majority countries.)

While the mujahedeen had some successes, according to Wuhayshi, they were “besieged” by the tyrants until they found some breathing room in Afghanistan. The “sheikhs” studied this situation in meetings held in Kabul and Kandahar, because they wanted to understand why the jihadists were not victorious.

And bin Laden concluded they should fight “the more manifest infidel enemy rather than the crueler infidel enemy,” according to a translation obtained by The Long War Journal. Wuhayshi explained that the former was the “Crusader-Zionist movement” and the latter were the “apostates” ruling over Muslims.

While waging war against the “apostate” rulers was not likely to engender widespread support, no “two people” would “disagree” with the necessity of fighting “the Jews and Christians.” If you fight the “apostate governments in your land,” Wuhayshi elaborated, then everyone – the Muslim people, Islamic movements, and even jihadists – would be against you because they all have their own “priorities.”

Divisions within the jihadists’ ranks only exacerbated the crisis, as even the mujahedeen in their home countries could refuse to fight.

Wuhayshi then cited Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, a prominent pro-al Qaeda ideologue, who warned that the “capability” to wage “combat” in Muslim-majority countries did “not yet exist.” So, for instance, if al Qaeda launched a “jihad against the House of Saud,” then “many jihadist movements” would oppose this decision. Al Qaeda’s fellow travelers would protest that they were “incapable” of defeating the Saudi government. And these jihadists would complain they did not want to “wage the battle prematurely,” or become entangled “in a difficult situation.”

For these reasons and more, according to Wuhayshi, bin Laden decided to “battle the more manifest enemy,” because “the people” would agree that the US “is an enemy” and this approach would not sow “discord and suspicion among the people.” Bin Laden believed that the “Islamic movement” would stand with al Qaeda “against the infidels.”

Wuhayshi’s explanation of bin Laden’s reasoning confirms that attacking the US was not al Qaeda’s end goal. It was a tactic, or a step, that bin Laden believed could unite the jihadists behind a common purpose and garner more popular support from “the people.”

Not all jihadists agreed with bin Laden’s strategy. In February 1998, bin Laden launched a “Global Islamic Front for Waging Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders.” Wuhayshi claimed that a “majority of the groups agreed to” the initiative, but some, like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), opposed it. (However, some senior LIFG members were folded into al Qaeda.)

Gamaa Islamiya (IG), an Egyptian group, initially agreed to join the venture, but ultimately rejected it. As did other groups in the Arab Maghreb, according to Wuhayshi. (Some senior IG leaders remained close to al Qaeda and eventually joined the organization.)

Although Wuhayshi claimed that a “majority” of jihadist organizations agreed with bin Laden’s proposal, only three ideologues joined bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri in signing the front’s infamous first fatwa.

In August 1998, just months after the “Global Islamic Front” was established, al Qaeda struck the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to Wuhayshi, bin Laden held a series of meetings around this time, as he sought to convince as many people as possible that attacking America was the right course. Some jihadists objected, believing it would ensnare them in a trap. But bin Laden pressed forward, telling those who didn’t agree that they want to fight “lackeys” without confronting “the father of the lackeys.” Al Qaeda’s path “will lead to a welcome conclusion,” Wuhayshi quoted bin Laden as saying.

The “initiative against the Crusaders continued” after the US Embassy bombings, Wuhayshi said, and the number of people who supported it increased “dramatically.” During this period, the “Global Islamic Front” launched operations against the “Crusaders” on the ground and at sea, but the idea to strike “from the air with planes” had not yet been conceived.

The origins of the 9/11 plot

Wuhayshi traced the genesis of the 9/11 plot to both Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who would come to be known as the “mastermind” of the operation.

But he also credited Abdullah Azzam for popularizing the concept of martyrdom in the first place. Azzam was killed in 1989, but is still revered as the godfather of modern jihadism. After the mujahedeen had defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan, they considered “hitting the Americans,” Wuhayshi claimed. Azzam “spoke harshly about the Western military camp.” Azzam also “introduced” the jihadists to a “new tactic.” Wuhayshi recommended that people listen to Azzam’s “final speech,” in which he reportedly said: “God gave me life in order to transform you into bombs.”

Years later, on Oct. 31, 1999, bin Laden watched as the co-pilot of EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed the jet into the Atlantic Ocean, killing more than 200 people on board. Bin Laden, according to Wuhayshi, wondered why the co-pilot didn’t fly the plane into buildings. After this, Wuhayshi claimed, the basic idea for 9/11 had been planted in bin Laden’s mind.

In reality, the EgyptAir crash came after the outline of the 9/11 plot had been already sketched. For instance, the 9/11 Commission found that KSM “presented a proposal for an operation that would involve training pilots who would crash planes into buildings in the United States” as early as 1996.

“This proposal eventually would become the 9/11 operation.” In March or April 1999, according to the Commission’s final report, bin Laden “summoned KSM to Kandahar…to tell him that al Qaeda would support his proposal,” which was referred to as the “planes operation.”

Indeed, Wuhayshi recounted how KSM and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, plotted to attack multiple airliners in the mid-1990s. In the so-called Bojinka plot, KSM and Yousef even conceived a plan to blow up as many as one dozen airliners. Wuhayshi recalled how Yousef placed a bomb on board one jet as part of a test run. Their plot failed and Yousef was later captured in Pakistan. Yousef has been incarcerated for two decades after being convicted by an American court for his role in Bojinka and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wuhayshi prayed for his release.

Wuhayshi told a story that, if true, means KSM had dreamed of attacking the US since his youth. When he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, KSM wrote a play in which a character “ponders how to down an American aircraft.” Wuhayshi claimed to have searched for this play online, but he and another “brother” failed to find it.

Still, Wuhayshi insisted that KSM wrote the play, showing he was already thinking of ways to strike America as a young man.

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Iranian state TV has released new images of the US sailors who were detained for entering Iranian territorial waters on January 12, Abas Aslani of Iran's Tasnim News Agency reports.

The pictures were accompanied with a video, that shows one sailor crying while detained.

A filmed apology by one US sailor during their brief detention was a major propaganda win for Iran.

"Had that Navy sailor been SERE trained, he would have made that statement, but he would have injected stuff so any English speaker watching it would have said 'Oh, he's being coerced to make that statement,'" former Navy SEAL and SERE graduate Brandon Webb told Business Insider.

The Navy's SERE school or Survive, Evade, Resist, and Escape teaches soldiers how to survive if they are captured and tortured by the enemy.

During SERE school troops are trained "how to tell these half truths, and how to tell them just enough but not be taken advantage of for PR purposes," Webb told Business Insider.

Webb explained that SERE training draws from the experiences of POWs in Vietnam, who were famously tight-lipped even in the face of brutal, inhumane treatment.

A perfect example of half truths comes from then-Navy pilot Sen. John McCain when he was held as a POW in Vietnam for nearly six years.

McCain gave the names of the Green Bay Packer's offensive line to his captors as faux-information in order to receive medical treatment for his perceived cooperation.

"When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed," McCain wrote in his memoir "Faith Of My Fathers." 

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NOW WATCH: Here’s footage that appears to show Iranian authorities detaining 10 US Navy sailors

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NOW WATCH: The US Navy's last line of defense is this ultimate gun

The unarmed Iranian drone that flew over a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf last month is similar to those that can carry missiles and was the first to conduct an overflight of an American carrier since 2014, U.S. Navy records obtained Wednesday showed.

The Jan. 12 reconnaissance flight by Iran's Shahed drone over the USS Harry S. Truman while a French aircraft carrier sailed nearby marked the latest tense naval encounter between the U.S. and Iran since Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.

It also suggests that incidents like it, as well as another that saw Iranian speedboats fire rockets near U.S. warships and commercial traffic in late December, remain a danger in Gulf waterways crucial to global oil supplies.

"You're one broken rocket fin away from creating a serious international incident that could have had unfortunate consequences," said Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain.

The Associated Press obtained video of the drone and a report about the overflight from the U.S. Navy through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The report said the drone flight happened as the Truman and the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle were in international waters 89 nautical miles southwest of the Iranian port of Bushehr.

A French helicopter watched the Shahed-121 drone on the cloudy day and the U.S. Navy dispatched a Seahawk helicopter to film it as it flew over the Truman, a nuclear-powered carrier based out of Norfolk, Virginia.

The local U.S. Navy task force first described the drone's overflight as "safe, routine and professional." But the internal report says the Navy's higher command later called it "safe, abnormal and unprofessional," as Iranian drones seldom fly over U.S. carriers.

U.S. and French sailors repeatedly confirmed that the drone had its "wings clean," the report said. That means it did not carry weapons and didn't pose a risk to the ship, Stephens said.

"They're operating in international airspace. You can't shoot (it) down; that would be illegal," he said.

Shahed, which means "witness" in both Farsi and Arabic, is a name of a family of drones produced by Iran. The Shahed-129 resembles the Israeli-built, V-tailed Elbit Systems Hermes 450, according to IHS Jane's Defence Weekly, which suggests it may have been reverse-engineered from a downed drone.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard is using the Shahed-129 drones to support forces fighting on the side of President Bashar Assad in Syria, the semi-official Fars news agency reported last week. Jane's, citing news reports in Iran, suggested in an article Monday that the Shahed-129 may have fired missiles in Iraq and Syria, putting Iran into an elite club of nations who have used the unmanned aircraft as a battlefield weapon.

The last Iranian drone overflight of an U.S. aircraft carrier was in September 2014 and involved the USS George H.W. Bush, according to the U.S. Navy report. That came as the U.S. and other world powers were negotiating a final agreement over Iran's disputed nuclear program. An interim agreement had been reached to limit the program in exchange for sanctions relief the previous year, but neither side had been able to finalize the deal by a June 2014 deadline, leading talks to be extended.

In January, Iranian state television showed video it said came from a drone overflight of a U.S. carrier. The footage, which the AP could not independently verify, purported to show the drone being launched and then hovering over an unidentified carrier, a targeting bracket briefly passing over a jet parked on the deck.

P.W. Singer, a drone expert and strategist at the New America Foundation in Washington, said that while a drone can potentially guide a cruise missile, the aircraft itself didn't pose a significant danger to the carrier.

"The drone, on its own, we shouldn't overplay it," Singer said. "There are very real, real threats from unmanned systems ... but we don't want to overblow these kinds of propaganda examples."

Iran and the U.S. have faced off before in the Gulf and the nearby, narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a third of all oil traded by sea passes.

U.S. and Iranian forces fought a one-day naval battle on April 18, 1988, after the near-sinking of the missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts by an Iranian mine. That day, U.S. forces attacked two Iranian oil rigs and sank or damaged six Iranian vessels.

A few months later, in July 1988, the USS Vincennes in the strait mistook an Iran Air flight heading to Dubai for an attacking fighter jet, shooting down the plane and killing all 290 people aboard.

The U.S. has criticized some of Iran's recent maneuvers in the Gulf, including what it called a "highly provocative" Iranian rocket test in December near the Truman, the destroyer USS Bulkeley, the French frigate FS Provence and commercial traffic in the strait.

A second report obtained Wednesday by the AP on that incident named the commercial ships nearby as the M/V Glovis Pacific, a car carrier, and the M/V SPF Prudencia, an oil tanker. The report suggested the rocket fire by five Iranian speedboats in an international shipping lane after 23 minutes' warning was meant to "intimidate" the U.S. warships — a test Stephens called extremely dangerous given the nearby military and commercial traffic.

Last month, Iran seized 10 U.S. sailors in the Gulf after their two riverine command boats headed from Kuwait to Bahrain had ended up in Iranian territorial waters after their crews "misnavigated," the U.S. military said. The crews were taken to a small port facility on Farsi Island, held for about 15 hours and released.

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The United States' top intelligence official just added gene editing technology to a list of threats that includes North Korea's nukes and Syria's chemical weapons, MIT's Technology Review reported.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday about 2016's US Intelligence Community's Worldwide Threat Assessment.

Genome editing is a technology used to cut and paste DNA inside living cells.

In recent years, a technique known as CRISPR has been widely adopted because it is far easier and more precise than previous methods.

It has been touted for its potential to cure or eradicate diseases and modify crops, but critics worry it could lead to the creation of designer babies or rogue organisms.

A 'weapon of mass destruction'

The assessment includes a rundown of what the intelligence community thinks are the major threats facing the world.

The report included genome editing in a list of "weapons of mass destruction and proliferation," along with threats like North Korea's nuclear weapons, China's nuclear capabilities, and Syria's chemical weapons.

"Research in genome editing conducted by countries with different regulatory or ethical standards than those of Western countries probably increases the risk of the creation of potentially harmful biological agents or products," the report reads.

"Given the broad distribution, low cost, and accelerated pace of development of this dual-use technology, its deliberate or unintentional misuse might lead to far-reaching economic and national security implications."

Specifically, the report drew attention to experiments to modify human reproductive cells — changes that can be inherited. 

In fact, Chinese scientists have already used CRISPR to modify human embryos, spurring an international ethical debate. And just last week, British scientists got approval to use gene editing in humans to study how embryos develop.

Piers Millet, a biological weapons expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, told Tech Review he was surprised that gene editing made the WMD list, because making a bioweapon requires knowledge of a "wide raft of technologies."

Aside from WMDs, the report also singled out cybersecurity, terrorism, space and counterspace, counterintelligence, transnational organized crime, economics and natural resources, and human security.

DON'T MISS: US intelligence chief: These are the main global threats for 2016

SEE ALSO: Scientists may soon be able to 'cut and paste' DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies

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NOW WATCH: This is the US military's biggest weakness

Normally, James Martin is the very model of a modern major general.

But the Air Force officer, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget, recently collapsed at the podium while answering questions about the F-35.

Air Force Deputy for Budget Carolyn Gleason held Maj. Gen. Martin up, while aides came to help Martin, who regained his senses seconds later.

“That’s what the F-35 will do to you,” Gleason laughed.

The struggle over at the USAF Budget Office is real.

You can watch the video below: 

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NOW WATCH: America's $400 billion warplane has some major flaws

Air Force pilots of the 1980s-era stealthy B-2 Spirit bomber plan to upgrade and fly the aircraft on attack missions against enemy air defenses well into the 2050s, service officials said.  

“It is a dream to fly. It is so smooth,” Maj. Kent Mickelson, director of operations for 394th combat training squadron, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

In a special interview designed to offer a rare look into the technologies and elements of the B-2, Mickelson explained that the platform has held up and remained very effective – given that it was designed and built during the 80s.

Alongside his current role, Mickelson is also a B-2 pilot with experience flying missions and planning stealth bomber attacks, such as the bombing missions over Libya in 2011.

“It is a testament to the engineering team that here we are in 2016 and the B-2 is still able to do its job just as well today as it did in the 80s. While we look forward to modernization, nobody should come away with the thought that the B-2 isn't ready to deal with the threats that are out there today,” he said.  “It is really an awesome bombing platform and it is just a marvel of technology.”

The B-2 is engineered with avionics, radar and communications technologies designed to identify and destroy enemy targets from high altitudes above hostile territory.

“It is a digital airplane. We are presented with what is commonly referred to as glass cockpit,” Mickelson said.

The glass cockpit includes various digital displays, including one showing Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) information which paints a rendering or picture of the ground below.

“SAR provides the pilots with a realistic display of the ground that they are able to use for targeting,” Mickelson said.

 The B-2 has a two-man crew with only two ejection seats. Also, the crew is trained to deal with the rigors of a 40-hour mission.

“The B-2 represents a huge leap in technology from our legacy platforms such as the B-52 and the B-1 bomber. This involved taking the best of what is available and giving it to the aircrew,” Mickelson said.

The Air Force currently operates 20 B-2 bombers, with the majority of them based at Whiteman AFB in Missouri. The B-2 can reach altitudes of 50,000 feet and carry 40,000 pounds of payload, including both conventional and nuclear weapons.

The aircraft, which entered service in the 1980s, has flown missions over Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. In fact, given its ability to fly as many as 6,000 nautical miles without need to refuel, the B-2 flew from Missouri all the way to an island off the coast of India called Diego Garcia – before launching bombing missions over Afghanistan.

“Taking off from Whiteman and landing at Diego Garcia was one of the longest combat sorties the B-2 has ever taken. The bomber was very successful in Afghanistan and very successful in the early parts of the wars in Iraq and Libya,” Michelson added.

The B-2 crew uses what’s called a “long-duration kit,” which includes items such as a cot for sleeping and other essentials deemed necessary for a long flight, Mickelson explained.  

B-2 Mission

As a stealth bomber engineered during the height of the Cold War, the B-2 was designed to elude Soviet air defenses and strike enemy targets – without an enemy ever knowing the aircraft was even there. This stealthy technological ability is referred to by industry experts as being able to evade air defenses using both high-frequency “engagement” radar, which can target planes, and lower frequency “surveillance” radar which can let enemies know an aircraft is in the vicinity.  

The B-2 is described as a platform which can operate undetected over enemy territory and, in effect, “knock down the door” by destroying enemy radar and air defenses so that other aircraft can fly through a radar “corridor” and attack.

However, enemy air defenses are increasingly becoming technologically advanced and more sophisticated; some emerging systems are even able to detect some stealth aircraft using systems which are better networked, using faster computer processors and able to better detect aircraft at longer distances on a greater number of frequencies.

The Air Force plans to operate the B-2 alongside its new, now-in-development bomber called the Long Range Strike – Bomber, or LRS-B. well into the 2050s.

B-2 Modernization Upgrades – Taking the Stealth Bomber Into the 2050s

As a result, the B-2 fleet is undergoing a series of modernization upgrades in order to ensure the aircraft can remain at its ultimate effective capability for the next several decades, Mickelson said.

One of the key upgrades is called the Defensive Management System, a technology which helps inform the B-2 crew about the location of enemy air defenses. As a result, if there are emerging air defenses equipped with the technology sufficient to detect the B-2, the aircraft will have occasion to maneuver in such a way as to stay outside of its range.

The Defensive Management System is slated to be operational by the mid-2020s, Mickelson added.

“The whole key is to give us better situational awareness so we are able to make sound decisions in the cockpit about where we need to put the aircraft,” he added.  

The B-2 is also moving to an extremely high frequency satellite in order to better facilitate communications with command and control. For instance, the communications upgrade could make it possible for the aircraft crew to receive bombing instructions from the President in the unlikely event of a nuclear detonation.

“This program will help with nuclear and conventional communications. It will provide a very big increase in the bandwidth available for the B-2, which means an increased speed of data flow. We are excited about this upgrade,” Mickelson explained.

The stealth aircraft uses a commonly deployed data link called LINK-16 and both UHF and VHF data links, as well. Michelson explained that the B-2 is capable of communicating with ground control stations, command and control headquarters and is also able to receive information from other manned and unmanned assets such as drones.

Information from nearby drones, however, would at the moment most likely need to first transmit through a ground control station. That being said, emerging technology may soon allow platforms like the B-2 to receive real-time video feeds from nearby drones in the air.

The B-2 is also being engineered with a new flight management control processor designed to expand and modernize the on-board computers and enable the addition of new software.

This involves the re-hosting of the flight management control processors, the brains of the airplane, onto much more capable integrated processing units. This results in the laying-in of some new fiber optic cable as opposed to the mix bus cable being used right now – because the B-2’s computers from the 80s are getting maxed out and overloaded with data, Air Force officials told Scout Warrior.

The new processor increases the performance of the avionics and on-board computer systems by about 1,000-times, he added. The overall flight management control processor effort, slated to field by 2015 and 2016, is expected to cost $542 million.

B-2 Weapons Upgrades

The comprehensive B-2 upgrades also include efforts to outfit the attack aircraft with next generation digital nuclear weapons such as the B-61 Mod 12 with a tail kit and Long Range Stand-Off weapon or, LRSO, an air-launched, guided nuclear cruise missile, service officials said.

The B-61 Mod 12 is an ongoing modernization program which seeks to integrate the B-61 Mods 3, 4, 7 and 10 into a single variant with a guided tail kit. The B-61 Mod 12 is being engineered to rely on an inertial measurement unit for navigation.

In addition to the LRSO, B83 and B-61 Mod 12, the B-2 will also carry the B-61 Mod 11, a nuclear weapon designed with penetration capabilities, Air Force officials said.

The LRSO will replace the Air Launched Cruise Missile, or ALCM, which right now is only carried by the B-52 bomber, officials said.

Alongside its nuclear arsenal, the B-2 will carry a wide range of conventional weapons to include precision-guided 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMs, 5,000-pound JDAMs, Joint Standoff Weapons, Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles and GBU 28 5,000-pound bunker buster weapons, among others.

The platform is also preparing to integrate a long-range conventional air-to-ground standoff weapon called the JASSM-ER, for Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, Extended Range. 

The B-2 can also carry a 30,000-pound conventional bomb known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, Mickelson added.

“This is a GBU-28 (bunker-buster weapon) on steroids. It will go in and take out deeply buried targets,” he said.

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NOW WATCH: These planes have changed the military aircraft game over the past 15 years

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1. Operation Torch

The first large-scale deployment of American paratroopers took place on 8 November 1942 as part of Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. The men of the 509^th Parachute Infantry Battalion (at the time designated 2^nd Battalion, 509^th Parachute Infantry Regiment) were tasked with securing airfields ahead of the seaborne force landings.

To accomplish this, they conducted the longest flight of airborne forces, originating from airfields in England.

However, the jump was unsuccessful with troops widely scattered and ten planes having to land in a dry lake bed to disembark their troops due to a lack of fuel. A week later, three hundred men of the battalion conducted a successful combat jump on Youks-les-Bains Airfield in Algeria.

2. Operation Husky

However, due to numerous Axis air attacks and confusion within the invasion fleet, the troop carrier aircraft were mistaken for German bombers and fired on. This resulted in twenty three planes being shot down and the loss of eighty one paratroopers with many more wounded.

3. Landing at Nadzab (Operation Alamo)

In a sharp change reminiscent of the Cold War, the US is seeking to reopen parts of its former military base in Iceland for the express purpose of hunting Russian submarines. 

The base, situated at Keflavik International Airport close to the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, was first opened as a strategic US airbase for US bombers during World War II.

However, the base took on key strategic use during the Cold War as it allowed the US easy access to patrol the North Atlantic against potential Soviet threats, Forces TV reports. 

After the Cold War, US presence in the region began to draw down and within the past ten years the US and NATO have largely stopped using Naval Air Station Keflavik. But, with a sudden return to Cold War-like tensions, the US is planning on once again opening the base for the express purpose of submarine hunting. 

Stars and Stripes reports that the US Navy is asking for funds in its 2017 budget to reopen and upgrade its hangar at Keflavik. The upgrade would allow the US to fly P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft over the North Atlantic with ease — currently, the US has to fly the aircraft out of a base in Sicily to the Atlantic for operations.

The Poseidons would be used for patrolling the Atlantic waters off of the coasts of England, Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland.  

The decision to base Poseidons once again in Iceland reflects the gradual shift towards a Cold War-like state between NATO and Russia. For reasons still unknown, Moscow has greatly increased the number of submarines operating the North Atlantic. 

There is now more reported "activity from Russian submarines than we've seen since the days of the Cold War," NATO Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone told Jane's. 

In addition to an increased number of submarines, the subs are also of higher quality and feature a more professional crew, leading to a general unease among NATO nations. 

SEE ALSO: NATO Admiral: We're seeing more Russian submarine activity in the Atlantic than 'since the days of the Cold War'

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NOW WATCH: The US Navy's last line of defense is this ultimate gun

I had an opportunity to chat with a friend of mine, Red, who went to fight for the Kurdish Peshmerga, but ended up incarcerated after an unsuccessful attempt to cross the border into Syria.

SOFREP: So can you walk me through how it went down? Your arrest, I mean.

Red: Well, we were passed off near the border on the Syrian side to two guys in Pesh uniforms.

From there, we drove to the border, which we were told we would be able to get across just fine, so I assumed we’d be going to the YBS (Sinjar Resistance Units) base near Shengal.

Instead, they ended up taking us right to the legitimate border crossing. At that point, we were stopped like every other vehicle, but we had Westerners in the vehicle so they asked who we were, at which point the Pesh guys gave us right up and said they had no idea who we were.

One of the Westerners in the truck with me happened to speak the language. We were all taken to the office there at the crossing one by one and questioned; they were seeing if our stories matched up, which of course they did not because we were all doing different things and hadn’t planned on needing an alibi.

All of our bags were dumped and we were searched, then we waited around until we were shuffled off to Dahuk.

That’s sketchy, bro.

We were told there would be no prison, which I knew was a lie, and we spent the next couple days getting interrogated by the Asayish (Kurdish secret police) at some base there in Dahuk. We did sleep in a hotel, which we paid for. All part of the illusion of us not being prisoners.

Once they got the information they wanted out of us, they told us we would be going to Erbil and getting freed, but they would not give us our passports until we got there. At that point, a prison van with a cage in the back showed up. We were put in the cage and locked up. They once again told us there would be no prison, which I knew was bullshit.

We got to Erbil. They pulled us right into the prison just inside the city, a compound with eyes on the gate. We were unloaded and sent into the booking room where we were searched again.

From there, we were told to remove all personal belongings, our shoes, belts, cell phones, wallets, etc.

We had our pictures taken (front, left, right), and our fingerprints done.

Then we were shuffled down a series of hallways, passing through a series of barred doors, until we ended up in our prison cells.

Did they give you prison clothes?

Nah, just the clothes we had on our backs. Prison there is a lot different than American prisons.

Ah OK, I was just wondering if they gave you ANY clothes. So what happened next?

Two of the inmates gave me an extra pair of clothes. There are a lot of really good people locked away by those pieces of s***. Next was just the waiting. We got into the cell, not really sure how big it was, but we were put in a cell for one night with just us Westerners.

Next day, we were taken out and interrogated. It wasn’t violent, just them playing good cop/bad cop routine shit to make sure we weren’t terrorists.

We got brought back into the cell area, but this time put into the main cell with like 50 other people. We were in there for a week and a half or so, something like that. The only thing shitty about it was the sleeping; we basically slept on top of one another. Everything was regimented: We received three meals a day, and three times a day we were let out of the cell to roam in circles around the “yard,” which was nothing but a cement-floored central area with bars overhead.

Sounds mind-numbing.

We were required to stay seated all day inside the cell, so we basically only got three hours a day to stand up.

So how did you end up getting out?

Once that first week and a half was over, a few new Western prisoners came in, one of which threatened to bring the situation to the Western media. So they put us in another cell with just Westerners. The US consulate, on around the sixth day, came for me and the one other American there. We talked to them, they left, and then they came back like a week later and we were let go after whatever investigations they had to do were completed.

Man, that is wild.

Yeah, I went and stayed with a couple of friends for a few days so I could get my exit visa in order. Once that was set, I flew out shortly after.

Right on, man. I appreciate you sharing.

No problem, brother. Anytime.

SEE ALSO: Syrian Kurds just scored a big victory near Turkey with the help of Russian airstrikes

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A series of incredible images show how quickly the world can change. 

In photographer Patrick Strijards "Old vs. New" collection,Strijards combines images of Germany during World War II with photos of the present day. The photographs artfully contrast the broad sweeps of Nazi propaganda and the devastation of the war in Berlin with the vibrancy of the city today.

The following photos are republished with permission from Patrick Strijards.

The Brandenburg Gate, with Nazi propaganda on full display.

The Reichstag in Berlin, heavily damaged after the war.

US soldiers maintain the US Army Checkpoint Charlie, the best known crossing between East and West Berlin following World War II.

SEE ALSO: The remarkable story of the World War II 'Ghost Army' that duped Hitler

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NOW WATCH: The US Navy's last line of defense is this ultimate gun