NEW SECURITY LEARNING

by Andrew Rosthorn

Two British-designed robots crawled into the radioactive ruins of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station over the weekend of April 17, 2011, to start work in the hazardous debris of the Japanese nuclear disaster.

Experts from the North American arm of the defence technology group Qinetiq had flown into Tokyo to show engineers at the Tokyo Electric Power Company how to operate the company’s TALON robots with standard Xbox 360 computer game remote controllers.

Germany has 5,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and supplies the third largest force to ISAF. Dr Hubertus Hoffmann recently visited Camp Marmal in Mazar-e-Sharif and spoke to officers and soldiers of the Bundeswehr about their mission and the implementation of a new "partnering concept" to provide training for the Afghan Security Forces.