until recently, one of my "favorite" media ignorance fails was swallowing all the "nano-tech" b.s. example: "self-assembling nano particles" was a phrase used by a media hack to describe what we in the old school would call "a chemical reaction".
well, media ignorance is now at a new low: '"Imagine a soldier on a firebase in the mountains of Afghanistan. A squad is attacked by insurgents. The ammunition starts to run out. Is it worth waiting hours and risking the lives of helicopter pilots to drop it near you, or is it worth a more expensive system that can manufacture weapons and ammunition on the spot?" he said.'
the stupidity of such a statement cannot be sufficiently articulated with words - it requires a piece of 2x4 with nails sticking out of it. i mean, unless the materials required for "printing" are supposed to come from thin air, that is a complete logistics logic fail. and that's ignoring the materials issues.
and on the subject of materials, my main interest, i'm just slack-jawed with awe at this drivel. copper, lead, zinc are all materials with significantly different properties. propellants are a whole new class again. steels, plastics, different ballparks yet again. people that think all this stuff can be simply be dot-deposited together [if they ever could be] and that they'll behave just as traditional materials, are more spectacularly clueless than a politician believing a wall st shuckster on the efficacy of self-regulation.
bottom line, don't let your money anywhere near these snake oil sales'opaths. because snake oil is exactly what it is. and the "media" reporting this stuff? either very very stoooopid logic 101 failures, or paid shills.