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You know all those drones you kids use to rain grim death upon your unfortunate friends in Modern Warfare 2 ? Well, according to an American University law professor’s Congressional testimony, they may be illegal under international law. Of course, they could be totally fine, too, it’s just that nobody really knows for sure. That’s probably not what the U.S. military wants to hear, given how much it has spent, and will spend, on drones. The deal is that the U.S. government has never actually justified, on a legal basis, its use of drones. It has never written a memo, went in front of a Congressional committee, tweeted a quick thought—nothing. The question becomes, OK, at some point you’re going to have to explain the legality of these things, so what’s the hold up? Or, in the words of the professor, one Kenneth Anderson: [Lawyers] have not settled on what the rationales are, and I believe that at some point that ill serves an administration which is embracing this. Now, maybe the answer is: This is really terrible and illegal and anybody that does it should go off to the Hague. But if that’s the case, then we should not be having the president saying that this is the greatest thing since whatever. That seems like a bad idea. Hmm, you’d think the government would have cleared that up before deploying all of those drones… It gets better! It’s cool and all when the U.S. military has a monopoly on drone technology, but what happens when a proper rival gets a hold of them? Do we, as Americans, want to straddle this line of legality ad infinitum, then find out that Rival Country now has ‘em, too? We occasionally write about drones because they’re quite neat: the amount of engineering and research and development that goes into drones is well worth any tech fan’s attention, if only for a moment. Maybe by the time Modern Warfare 13: Still Fighting comes out, the legal status of drones would have been cleared up.

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Those drones you use in Modern Warfare 2? They could be illegal in real life.

Yup, perpetuating the idea that Doom = violent video games What do I know about Australia? Not much—I know Jim Jeffries is from there. In recent years, Australia to me has always been associated with weird censorship and video games being banned left and right. Those days may soon be behind us, as Australia seems to be inching closer toward an R18+ rating for video games . That would mean that, instead of outright banning violent games, they could only be sold to adults. Pretty shocking that it has taken until 2010 for that to be the case, but what are you gonna do? So the deal is that, thanks to the resignation of a well-known stick-in-the-mud attorney general down there, Australia could be on its way to finally introducing the much-needed R18+ video game rating. It’d be analogous to the ESRB’s M rating in that games carrying said rating can only be sold to people 17 and older. (Kids younger than 17 know to get their older brother, or the friend’s older brother, or their parents for that matter to buy said games for them.) Society has deemed that you need to be 17 years old to play Grand Theft Auto and God of War just like you have to be 18 to buy cigarettes and 21 to buy alcohol. Granted, at 18 you can sign up for the military, but you’re not allowed to walk into a 7 Eleven and buy a can of beer. But that’s a hack argument for some local talk radio show. Anyhow, in Australia the age is 18. Well, would be 18, provided all the Ts are crossed and Is are dotted. Someday soon our Australian brothers will be able to walk into Big Store and walk out with an uncensored copy of Left 4 Dead II . That’s the dream, at least.

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Will Australians finally be able to buy video games for a change?

There’s a certain amount of pride in seeing a country pump out something like the new F-35B Lightning II fighter jet. At $113.5 million per aircraft, it’s about as far away from the meaning of the word “inexpensive” as possible. It makes you think, well, if we can afford things like that , why can’t we afford things like this ? But, whatever. The entire purpose of this post is to watch a legitimately exciting video. So, let’s! The very first test flight of the aircraft happened yesterday , and lasted 14 minutes long. (Yes, there’s a certain irony in finding out about the latest American military technology in the British press.) That works out to $8.1 million per minute in the air. Granted, that’s a horrible way of looking at the aircraft, but it’s a fun stat nonetheless. The F-35B Lightning II has been in development since 2001, and it was originally promoted as an affordable option to keeping old birds like the F-16 and F-10A in the air. The marines will start using the jet, if all goes according to plan, in December, 2012. And now I’m off to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 , using more terribly expensive weapons to beat up Kirilenko .

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Video: The $113.5 million F-35B Lightning II can float in the air for a little bit

Who saw The Hurt Locker ? Oh, right: none of you . Even if you didn’t you probably are already familiar with the basic concept: a U.S. Army guy whose job it is to disable I.E.D.s sorta goes crazy. That’s the gist of it. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense in the UK has unveiled something called the Dragon Runner , a remote-controlled robot that disables bombs. It has four—count ‘em, four!—on-board cameras that transmit the images of what’s what to the soldat behind the controller. Said soldat can then use the robotic arm, which can lift up to 100 pounds, to try to disable a bomb or move it to a safer location. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Back to The Hurt Locker . It was an OK movie, sure, but there’s no way in hell you can tell me it was better than Un prophète .

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If only you had actually seen The Hurt Locker

Well, there goes Zion. That rave-lovin’ excuse for a remnant of humanity would have been taken out in a trice by these Robotic Underground Munitions . And so it will be once the Robocalypse hits. Why are we doing the machines’ job for them? Here, I’ve got a better name for these bunker-busting subterranean missiles: Drill-based Earth-Asploding Terrifying Horrorbots. I guess it’s worth nothing that pretty much every missile fired is at this point a robot, what with the GPS navigation, on-board cameras and all that. But somehow when they’re in the air they aren’t quite as scary. Under the ground, though — remember Tremors? And Screamers? And Gremlins? Well, that last one not so much, but still worth thinking about. Note: the above illustration is not an accurate representation of this nightmare technology. It is Drill Man . [via Ares and Gizmodo ]

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Bunker buster robot will be like an underground missile

Just so you know, I’m not making light of warfare — it’s just that virtual training like this, while valuable, does remind one simultaneously of Modern Warfare and Ender’s Game . Of course, as this article notes , the current generation of potential soldiers has grown up in a digital age and expects a little Xbox with their ammo box. Training has, since the introduction of America’s Army in 2002 (remember, everyone thought it was going to suck, and it really didn’t at all), incorporated more and more virtual or simulated training, though admittedly the technology used is decidedly last-generation still. But when you can save a million rounds of ammo by having your recruits shooting pixelated guys in a 360-degree combat room like this one, the benefits are clear. I wish we didn’t have to send 19-year-olds into a war zone, but every advantage we can give them is helpful. And for the record, if I had to have someone watching my back while bullets whiz past, I wouldn’t mind if it was one of my old Counter-Strike clanmates.

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360-degree virtual combat room is like Iraq: The Arcade Game

Here’s something old, but definitely cool and worth showing you. Livejournal user Igor113 posted some pictures from his trip to… somewhere in Russia. He loves to travel and take pictures, and these are some extremely cool photographs of some rusted and cool equipment. Igor did apologize for the quality of his camera though, and requests that you don’t kick his legs. The submarine pictures aren’t the only cool things on Igor’s site, he’s apparently traveled all over the EU and taken many many pictures of defunct Russian military vehicles and aircraft. I’d definitely recommend checking out some of his other posts as well.

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CrunchCool: Russian Typhoon class submarine