"The documents do not describe why Awwad was targeted."

I'll be interested to see this if it ever comes out, too many of our federal law enforcement services don't really bother trying to find criminals these days, they are generated to provide the illusion that they're actually doing something. How many "terrorists" have been caught in the past decade who have had an paid FBI "informant" alongside the entire time giving them ideas, motivation, money, and equipment in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars.

At a bare minimum small blocks of the sold spectrum should be opened up for non/minimally regulated open uses, much like what has happened with the frequencies used by routers, wireless cameras/microphones, etc. Most of the frequencies that have been opened up for such uses are the crap that no one else wants or are limited to such low power levels as to be useless for decent applications. I recently had a local fixed wireless ISP check my house for connectivity, despite being surrounded by towers they couldn't get a signal since the frequencies they use can't go through a few leafs. At the same time I have fine mobile communications, including 3G internet connectivity despite the nearest tower being considerably more distant than the wireless ISP towers.

"APCs are very useful when...."

The situation you describe is a one in a billion chance, there have maybe been a handful of them in the last few decades nation wide. Most recent incidents involve a nutcase running around killing as many unarmed people as possible, they aren't camping out waiting 45 minutes or more for the police to roll up in armored vehicles. By the time they get the APC loaded up, started and driven to the scene probably 97% of incidents are already concluded (shooters dead, surrendered or escaped) and those that haven't probably could have been solved 30 minutes earlier by a few officers, some vests, a few rifles/shotguns and a well planned entry. I'm not saying that police don't need access to them on very rare occasions, but one APC per million citizens is probably too much, where as we're seeing police departments as covering areas of less than a 100,000 trying to get a couple of them. And also having too many of them them seems to see their use as often as possible, a minor drug arrest or some off hand remarks can result in one rolling up in your yard with a half dozen heavily armed police piling out of the back of one like they're afraid you've got a nuke in your basement.

http://www.amazon.com/Surefire...

Not quite there but close, some of the weapon mount flashlights are pretty expensive. I'm sure some of it is government procurement kickbacks, some of it is probably the 24 hour on call assistance military contracts demand, but the lights themselves have to be built insanely tough as well. I once bought a cheap knock off flashlight/laser combo just to try out on my shotgun. It shook itself apart before I fired the fifth round.

I'm happy to say that none of my local police departments received anything too crazy (grenade launchers, APC's, etc). Mostly it was pretty reasonable stuff like rifles, pistols, gear, trucks, etc. I am a tad concerned with the number of weapons some of them received, most of the departments seemed to want an assault rifle for every single officer and enough pistols for every employee in their department. I realize that police need to keep up with some of the stuff used by the exceedingly rare nutcase but a few well trained officers with a few properly maintained rifles would seem more suited to that end rather than a bunch of poorly trained officers with some rusty possibly inoperative rifles in the back of their cars.

Few advancements? Dark mater/energy (assuming that it even exists) wasn't even theoretical 50 years ago, the presiding theories of the day said that the universe was slowing (current theories say it is accelerating), the Higgs Boson (still not proven) was just beginning to be theorized and I don't know if it qualifies as physics but it was assumed that the solar system was swept clean of asteroids millions of years ago, then Shoemaker-Levy Nine slammed into Jupiter, the resulting search eventually led to the discover of tens of thousands of asteroids and a number of "dwarf planet".

"physics very probably forbid warp drives and traversable wormholes."

I would imagine that the human understanding of physics 50 years ago would have forbid the creation of the kind of microelectronics/transmitters/battery technology that are commonplace in most of our pockets today. Admittedly the physics of FTL (or any interstellar travel method) are far more difficult than what we have done in the electronics field over the past few decades, but believing that our pre infantile understanding of the universe makes us in any way knowledgeable of what is and is not possible is hubris of the highest degree.

I wonder if they did any real world testing, as in a static solar panel and a complete day average. Somehow I would imagine these would make the solar panels great, during a narrow window of the day where the sun is directly overhead. I can't shake the feeling however that this kind of patterning would have a detrimental effect on indirect exposure. Not that it is a major issue, sun tracking systems are becoming more prevalent, but it may be an issue.

"Um, easement!"

That is far from certain, for modern installs they tend to be pretty good about getting one and making sure they stay in it. But in the past at a bare minimum they didn't maintain proper records of when they did get an easements, and in some cases for older lines an easement was never procured or they were but the line wasn't put on the easement. So it is a legal quagmire that most utilities don't like to get into so they generally get permission, and if they can't get permission THEN they start digging for legal justification.

We recently (as in the day before yesterday) had some high winds tear through our area causing power at my house to go out twice, each stint lasting about 6 hours. The cause in both cases?, a single quarter mile stretch where a major power line goes through a wooded wetland area. While the power companies in our area are getting a lot better, for about the past year there have been over a dozen permanently stationed tree trimming trucks trimming along power lines, even so there are still areas that have yet to cleared. That is a constant battle, made worse by some homeowners/areas which seem to freak out if the power companies so much as clip a few branches. So at least in my experience most of the cause is mother nature combined with a lack of "maintenance" (not to the lines, but trees). Beyond that my power hasn't went out once for nearly a year, not bad uptime for residential.

"No, the 'x wings' are not passive"
Neat, never seen airbrakes used in such a way (the article only showed a picture). But I still think my previous statement is not too far off the mark. They would be partially extended after "reentry" to help slow the stage, and perhaps used to help steer the stage towards the landing pad. Then as seen in the video they would be used to help control orientation to the pad and aid in deceleration. Standard fins wouldn't be able to do all of these at once and would be susceptible to the unexpected forces I mentioned.

(Also) Not a aerospace engineer, but steerable fins often require some pretty complex navigation hardware/software, they can often be subject to some unexpected aerodynamic forces (stall, angle of attack, flow separation, etc). A few "tennis-racket shaped x-wings" are a nearly foolproof method of slowing and righting a underpowered cylindrical body to a desired orientation. For bombs that would be nose down, for a reusable VTVL rocket that would be rockets down so the "tennis-rackets" would be placed near the top of the segment.

"Most of our power usage in our house is at night"

Maybe for you specifically but for the grid in general power usage is usually highest during the day. This is especially obvious during the summer when the use of air conditioners requires a number of peak power plants to keep he grid from browning out. Most solar systems are grid tie, which do not require batteries, nearly all solar systems require inverters as homes use AC power and solar panels produce only DC power. Its not a perfect situation but it does lessen the need for expensive to run peak power plants.

I don't know about where you live but in my area the public transportation infrastructure managers (City Works, County Road Commissions and State Transportation) are under quite a bit of fire for mismanagement, waste and failing infrastructure. They recently blew well over $300k to extend a turn lane a few hundred feet that no one seems to see as necessary. A bridge replacement (which probably only requires a culvert anyways) was delayed to do an idiotic study on rerouting a minor creek, they decided it wasn't "necessary" probably resulting in tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum in additional cost due to a year delay for the study. There definitely needs to be some kind of change to the last mile communications infrastructure, but I'm quite certain that simply turning it over to the government won't solve the problem and may well create others.

But I thought the polygraph was infallible, they've been saying for years that an "well trained and experienced" polygraph technician can always spot a lie. Sounds like they aren't quite a confident as the decades of propa .... I mean "public service announcements" have portrayed.