Thumbing through the business pages of the Boston Herald, a photograph caught my eye. What appeared at first to be a miniature bulldozer was actually, as described in the accompanying article, a remote-controlled robotic bomb detection and disposal vehicle now being deployed extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. This robot system called "Talon" can be configured for offensive chores such as firing rockets, as well as the bomb disposal mission highlighted in the article. [
http://business.bostonherald.com/...]
(The Herald images are not available online, but you can see "Talon" in multiple configurations at Google images.)
The Carlyle connection over the flip:
The Herald article explains that a Boston-area company called Foster-Miller had developed the Talon prototype several years ago and begun manufacture. The price tag for each unit is $140,000. A Pentagon contract to acquire several thousand units for $257 million is now in place, but not with the local company. The Carlyle connection: it turns out Foster-Miller had been sold seventeen months ago to a UK defense technology company called Qinetiq, which had been "spun out of the British Ministry of Defence" per the article with significant start-up funding from the Carlyle Group. When Qinetiq recently went public, Carlyle pocketed a profit of about $500 million from an investment of $75 million made two years before.
Yet another way for the Bush crime family to profit from the war on terra. No wonder they want to "stay the course."