trips

At Pendleton, teaching Marines calm in the chaos of combat

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.--I knew there might be firing in my direction. I was given protective gear. And they told me how to avoid getting in harm's way. And after all that, I still got shot.

Welcome to the Infantry Immersion Trainer, a system set up to help prepare U.S. Marines for possible future combat deployment. Set up in a former tomato packing plant at Camp Pendleton -- the West Coast home of the Marines -- the IIT employs "sets, sound systems and special effects -- including holograms and pyrotechnics -- to simulate [an … Read more

At NASA Dryden, the futuristic X-48C gets ready to fly

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--If you want to know what the future of airplane design looks like, you might have to make your way out to the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Tucked away inside a nondescript warehouse building at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center here, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, Boeing, and Cranfield Aerospace are working on an entirely new kind of plane, one which they hope could someday revolutionize aviation.

Known as a hybrid wing body, the plane design, which NASA describes as a cross between a conventional plane and a flying wing design, is … Read more

Getting schooled with the Air Force's elite test pilots

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--He might be the most famous airman in the history of the U.S. Air Force, and he's a graduate of the Test Pilot School.

In 1947, Capt. Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier, hitting Mach 1.0 in a Bell X-1 rocket plane 42,000 feet above this Mojave Desert outpost. And today, to commemorate the import of the event that ushered in the supersonic era, the aircraft hangs from the ceiling in the entryway of the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Yeager … Read more

Exclusively for CNET Members: Get ready for your summer road trip with great savings from Accessory Genie

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I recently borrowed my dad's car for a 4-hour road trip up to Cape Cod -- yeah, right where that guy in a kayak got chased by a great white shark last week -- and about 5 minutes in I realized he didn't have a jack for … Read more

For Shelby, 50 years of blowing other cars' doors off

LAS VEGAS, Nev.--It may be the most valuable American car ever made. Sitting inside what looks from the outside mostly like a non-descript suburban warehouse, the vehicle fills a lot of people with lust.

Still a striking and shiny blue, the 1962 Shelby Cobra 427 is the very first of its kind. And it is such an important entry in the pantheon of American muscle cars that someone recently offered $25 million for it.

Welcome to Shelby American, a company whose rare cars are built to blow by just about any competition, yet are designed to be everyday drivable … Read more

How Nevada became America's Nuclear Age ground zero

MERCURY, Nev. -- From the side that faced away from the blast, you might never even have bothered to look at this concrete dome. But walk around the other side, and there's no question something extraordinary happened here.

Welcome to the Nevada National Security Site, formerly known as the Nevada Test Site. As part of Road Trip 2012, I've come to visit this 1,375-square-mile expanse of harsh desert and even harsher mountains that begins about 75 miles north of Las Vegas. Here, from 1951 through 1992, a total of 928 nuclear weapons exploded, many of them sending … Read more

In the Mojave, an Army dress rehearsal for Afghan war

FORT IRWIN, Calif.--The shoulder-launched rocket-propelled grenade was aimed at several U.S. Army soldiers trying to work their way through the chaos of an Afghan insurgent attack. This was not looking like a good day for the members of the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

Fortunately for those soldiers, the RPG wasn't real, and they weren't even in Afghanistan -- yet. They will be soon, though. But before deploying to the combat zone, the entire 4th Brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash., spent four weeks in the June heat of the Mojave Desert at the Army's National Training Center … Read more

How the Border Patrol uses tech to combat smugglers

TUCSON, Ariz.--It's summer in the Southwest, and there may not be a hotter border anywhere in the United States. For one thing, the mercury is easily over a hundred every day. And then there's the steady flow of organized smugglers trying to sneak themselves and their substantial cargo -- of migrants and/or drugs -- across Mexico's long desert frontier with Arizona.

There are nine U.S. Border Patrol sectors stretching across America's southwestern frontier. And back in 2000, the agency was snagging more than 2,000 people a day for crossing illegally into its … Read more

Virtual reality vs. PTSD: Helping combat vets heal

LOS ANGELES--I'm sitting across from a soldier named Garza, trying to get him to open up about why he got caught drinking and driving.

This is a serious offense in the military, and Garza could lose his rank, if not get kicked out of the Army altogether. And it's my job as his superior officer to try to understand that Garza -- who used to be among the best in his unit -- may be struggling with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

This, of course, is a simulation. I'm not in the military, and Garza doesn'… Read more