CNN: PATRIOTS SAVED ALLIED HQ

"The Iraqi military came within seconds of possibly wiping out the headquarters of the coalition ground forces with a missile on March 27," CNN reports. "The missile was intercepted and destroyed by a U.S. Patriot missile shortly before it could have hit its target."

The short range, relatively slow al-Samoud missile was launched toward Camp Doha in Kuwait from just north of Basra.

An analysis of the Iraqi missile's trajectory by the U.S. Army's air defense unit showed it would have landed on or near the building housing the Coalition Forces Land Component Command operations center and war room.

The missile was launched during the middle of the command's morning battlefield update, a time when ground forces commander Lt. Gen. David McKiernan and other top officers were in the building.

A U.S. missile battery crew based across the street from Camp Doha fired two Patriot missile at the Iraqi al-Samoud. One intercepted it...

Just minutes after the Iraqi attack, the air defense command was able to plot the location of the Iraqi launch site and two A-10 Thunderbolts already in the Basra area destroyed the missile battery.

LIFELOG'S LEGS

You may have read about the Pentagon's eerie LifeLog proposal here first. But now, the rest of the press is starting to take interest in the project, which aims to gather up everything in a person's life, index it, and make it searchable.

Reuters has a story on LifeLog here. The Register and the Washington Post's online edition chime in here and here.

But the most interesting analysis comes from Reason's Charles Freund, who compares LifeLog to "the CIA's Cold War fascination with the chimera of mind control." He also questions the biographical impulse behind the project.

"The notion that peoples' lives actually have had the narrative shape... is one of our more pleasant cultural delusions," Freund writes.

THERE'S MORE: Ten days after my story on LifeLog, the New York Times is running the Reuters take on the system.

HIGH-TECH WAR NOT SO BLEEDING EDGE

You remember all those breathless accounts of American bleeding-edge technology being used in the air war above Iraq? Well, you can forget 'em now.

Sure, the U.S. did use an unprecedented number of spy drones in Gulf War II. But "many of the weapons used were quite old—some of them nearly antique—and most of their missions were not in the least bit exotic," Slate's Fred Kaplan writes.

A recently-released Air Force report documents exactly what the service did in the war -- the number and kind of bombs dropped, missions flown, and planes used.

Kaplan sifts through the report, and finds a number of surprises. Here's one:

During the war, most analysts assumed the majority of bombs were smart bombs and the majority of smart bombs were the new, cheap Joint Defense Attack Munitions or JDAMs. The old smart bombs, the ones used in Desert Storm, were laser-guided. In other words, a crew member would shine a laser on the target; the bomb would follow the beam. However, the beam could be deflected by dust, smoke, rain, even humidity. And the laser-guided bombs were expensive—around $100,000 apiece. JDAMs are guided by Global Positioning Satellites. The pilot punches the target's coordinates into the bomb's GPS receiver andthe bomb homes in on the spot; environmental conditions aren't a factor. And they're cheap—a JDAM kit can be strapped onto an old-fashioned "dumb bomb" for $18,000.

However, it turns out that of the 19,948 smart munitions fired during Gulf War II, 8,716—two-fifths—were the '90s-era laser-guided bombs. Substantially fewer, 6,642, were JDAMs. The other 4,590 smart weapons were GPS-guided but much more expensive models than the JDAM.

More surprising, another 9,251 bombs—or one-third of all the bombs dropped during this war—were unguided, unmodified dumb bombs. It would be good to know where these dumb bombs—and the less-reliable laser-guided bombs—were dropped: on the battlefield, in cities? In other words, was "collateral damage" a greater problem than our vision of a JDAM-dominating war suggested?

CIA'S INFO TECH: FLOP

Years to buy computer systems. Palm Pilots treated like handguns. Technology innovation discouraged. Analysts unwilling and unable to share what they know with their colleagues.

These are just some of the things Hoover Institution fellow Bruce Berkowitz found in his tenure as a "scholar-in-residence" at the CIA, examining how the Agency uses information technology. His conclusion: the spooks don't use it all that well.

Check out his report here.

(via /.)

BURIED BACTERIA AT MARYLAND ARMY BASE

"Two years of digging at the U.S. Army's Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland has unearthed more than 2,000 tons of hazardous waste -- including vials of live bacteria and nonvirulent anthrax that the military did not know was buried there," the Washington Post reports.

Discovery of the pathogens at the former biological weapons research center turned what the Army thought would be industrial waste removal into the biggest cleanup in its history. So far, cleanup crews have discovered more than 100 glass vials, many containing live bacteria, and in a few, a nonvirulent strain of anthrax. The $25 million excavation is due to end this year.

While the Army searches for evidence of biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, Fort Detrick's cleanup saga shows how, nearly 40 years after the United States ended such programs at home, it still struggles with their lingering dangers. As in the Middle East, poor documentation, the passage of time and the programs' secrecy have slowed the effort.

"You find it, contain it and try to figure out what it is," said Col. John Ball, Fort Detrick garrison commander. "We're learning, but it's expensive."

(via Global Security Newswire)

PENTAGON: SPACE IS FOR AMERICANS ONLY

The National Reconaissance Office -- the government agency in charge of all U.S. spy satellites -- "is talking openly... about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time -- not just adversaries, but even longtime allies," EE Times reports.

At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, (NRO director Peter) Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide 'persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters.' If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have 'no veto power.'

While empire-cheerleaders, like the fine folks at Winds of Change, are applauding the move, such a denial seems sure to piss off America's dwindling handful of pals -- again. And when fighting a global, decentralized enemy like Al Qaeda, don't you need all the friends you can get?

THERE'S MORE: As if on cue, the European Space Agency has announced plans to move ahead with the 30-satellite Galileo system, which is widely seen as a rival to the U.S. military's Global Positioning System (GPS) array. The plans call for Galileo to be operational by 2008.

As Slashdot notes, the U.S. opened up access to GPS three years ago "partly to make GPS more useful for all mankind, but also to dissuade other countries from developing their own navigational satellite system, and thus be dependant on the U.S. for both peaceful and military purposes.

"Since the demise of the Russian GLONASS system, GPS is the only game in town. Evidently recent events make Europe feel less comfortable about such things, and so they're building their own." (emphasis mine)

UBER-SOLDIERS A LONG WAY OFF

Thanks to their sleek, form-fitting battle suits, ordinary soldiers may someday turn into supermen.

Bullets won't stop them; neither will chemical attacks. Their nanotech-made muscles might let them jump higher and kick more butt than their opponents. And if they do somehow get hurt, the suit could immediately start to heal them and report their injuries back to headquarters.

At least, that's what a collection of industrial, academic and military bigwigs promised, as they gathered here this week for the official launch of MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.

The reality is that a new kind of waterproofing for their vests and ponchos is the only technological advance infantrymen are likely to see in the next few years from "ISN."

The 125-person-plus Institute, started last year with a $50 million grant from the Army, got its official kickoff Thursday at MIT's Technology Square. Under a pair of large white tents, and in the Institute's new offices, a battalion of generals and vice presidents heralded the dawn of the über-soldier with high-end videos, slick brochures and a buffet lunch.

Grunts paraded around in mock-ups of their new uniforms. And Army Specialist Jason Ashline, shot in the chest during the Afghan conflict, briefly mentioned how body armor saved his life.

But it was the nervous, smiling MIT graduate students and professors in the ISN labs upstairs who gave the most realistic assessments of what to expect from the Institute.

Yes, they've developed molecular structures that can swing open and shut like a hinge when hit with an electric field. And sure, someday, if they can figure out how to coordinate millions and millions of these hinges, they could maybe turn them into exo-muscles on a soldier's battle suit that could "provide additional muscle strength for lifting or jumping."

But right now, they can't even get the hinges to line up, "even on a micron (1,000th of a millimeter) scale," said graduate student Nathan Vandesteeg. It's a long way from a micron to a muscle.

"We're always confronted with the fact that the people we're working for are coming up with these crazy ideas," he continued. "It gets you excited. But then there's the whole realization of whether this will happen when I'm here -- or ever."

Check out my Wired News article for more from the ISN.

MEDIA TECHNO-DROOL ALERT: Those critical thinkers at Reuters and USA Today have swallowed MIT's super-soldier hype, no questions asked.

Reuters: "If you ask the U.S. Army's chief scientist what the future American soldier may look like, he points to the science fiction body armor depicted in the 'Predator' movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger."

USA Today: "It was once the stuff of science fiction movies: soldiers equipped with high-tech gear that made them stronger, swifter and smarter — invulnerable to bullets and able to survive the harshest conditions. On Thursday, the U.S. Army and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled a joint project that generals and scientists said could make fiction a reality within this decade."

CNet, on the other hand, plays it straight -- providing good background on nanotech -- while the Register gets deliciously mean.

BUSH OFFICIAL: IRAQI "INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY" JUSTIFIED WAR

The Bush Administration is backtracking -- hard -- from their pre-war claims that Iraq had stockpiles of biological and chemical arms.

It doesn't matter whether or not Iraq actually had any of the toxins in their possession, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Bolton said today. What counts is that Iraq had the "intellectual capacity" to build these uncoventional weapons.

As Global Security Newswire notes, this directly contradicts statements made by the president during the build-up to war.

In his March 17 televised address, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." (emphasis mine)

SURVEILLANCE: WHAT'S RIGHT, WHAT'S WRONG

Not all domestic surveillance and biometric technologies are created evil, says the Cato Institute's Wayne Crews, in an e-mail to privacy advocates.

Here's his framework for distinguishing between the mildly creepy surveillance efforts and the truly invasive:

1) BAD: Mandatory National ID cards encoded with biometric identifiers, or compulsory databases for data mining purposes.

2) NOT (NECESSARILY) BAD, but can be wholly abused and require extensive 4th amendment safeguards that do not yet exist: Gov't run face cameras (and related technologies like iris scanners) that ride on top of a database of criminals or wanted individuals. These should **not** collect data on individuals other than those already in the database (presumably there thru appropriate 4th amendment procedures). Incidental data collected on random individuals cannot be retained. Problem is the guarantee. This is where I think the real future fight lies, and the most risk for sensible evolution of these technologies.

3) GOOD: Countless private uses of biometrics that offer the opportunity for extraordinary security by preventing others from posing as us. This is where the market can shine. However, these must not be allowed access to data gleaned by gov't coercion, or they move into category 1 or 2 and give the entire industry (biometric or data mining) a black eye, and make it impossible to defend the industry from regulation. Let's keep it self-regulated.

Nutshell: (1) avoid mandatory databases (2) ensure 4th amendment protections even for public surveillance, and (3) avoid mixing public and private databases.

Agree? Disagree? Let's hear it.

READY-TO-WEAR SHOCK

Women worried about their safety have a new alternative to mace or pepper spray: a jacket that fries would-be attackers with an 80,000 volts of electricity.

"Dubbed 'exo-electric armor,' the No-Contact Jacket looks like an ordinary fashionable women's coat," Wired News reports. "But an inner layer of conductive fiber carries a low-amp charge that delivers a nasty but non-lethal shock to anyone who messes with its wearer."

"It's kind of like sticking your finger in a wall socket," said Adam Whiton, one of its designers. "It hurts. If someone tries to grab you from behind, they get the full, hefty shock out of it. That's really painful."

The jacket is made from Aracon, a conductive fiber developed by DuPont, which is sandwiched between an inner rubber lining which protects the wearer from shocks and an outer layer of waterproof nylon.

Powered by a regular 9-volt battery, which builds a high-voltage but low-amp charge through a series of step-up circuits, the jacket uses technology similar to the circuitry in stun guns and bark-deterring dog collars. While the charge is enough to deliver a jolt, it won't kill anyone, Whiton said.

SPRAY-ON SHOCK

It's always been a cool idea; zap bad guys with electrical shocks, instead of shooting them with a bullet. But in practice, the taser has often been problematic device.

The weapon fires a pair of darts, connected to seven meter-long wires, at a target. That means the weapon's range is limited by the wires' length. You only get one shot with a taser. And if the darts don't connect on the first try, you're in trouble.

A German company is testing out a so-called "plasma taser" to fix these inadequacies, New Scientist reports. By firing "an aerosol spray towards the target, which creates a conductive channel for a shock current," the plasma taser can, in theory, hurl repeated strikes over greater range.

DEFENSE TECH UMS AND AHS

Got four and a half minutes to kill? Listen to me grope my way through an interview about DARPA's LifeLog project on public radio's "Future Tense."

LESS LETHAL OPTIONS FOR POLICING IRAQ

While keeping the peace in Iraq continues to vex American military planners, less-lethal, high-tech ways of controlling crowds continue to emerge.

In addition to the methods discussed here before, Jane's Defence Weekly looks at technologies in the pipeline like:

* The Clear A Space Device, which is similiar to a "flash-bang" grenade, but the effects last up to five minutes long. It would be used to disorient and remove personnel from an enclosed area, like a room or a ship's hold.

* The Running Gear Entanglement System, which would stop sea vessels by entangling the propellers.

* Drones carrying tear gas or malodorants.

* High-powered versions of the tasers currently used by police forces.

DARPA WANTS YOUR LIFE INDEXABLE AND SEARCHABLE

It's a memory aid! A robotic assistant! An epidemic detector! An all-seeing, ultra-intrusive spying program!

The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index it and make it searchable.

What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why the hell would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?

The embryonic LifeLog program would take every e-mail you've sent or received, every picture you've taken, every web page you've surfed, every phone call you've had, every TV show you've watched, every magazine you've read, and dump it into a giant database.

All of this -- and more -- would be combined with a GPS transmitter, to keep tabs on where you're going; audio-visual sensors, to capture all that you see or say; and biomedical monitors, to keep track of your health.

This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to "trace the 'threads' of an individual's life," to see exactly how a relationship or events developed, according to a briefing from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, LifeLog's sponsor.

Someone with access to the database could "retrieve a specific thread of past transactions, or recall an experience from a few seconds ago or from many years earlier … by using a search-engine interface."

On the surface, the project seems like the latest in a long line of DARPA's "blue sky" research efforts, most of which never make it out of the lab. But Steven Aftergood, a defense analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, says he is worried.

With its controversial Total Information Awareness database project, DARPA already is planning on tracking all of an individual's "transactional data" -- like what we buy and who gets our e-mail.

Aftergood said he believes LifeLog could go far beyond that, adding physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.

"LifeLog has the potential to become something like 'TIA cubed,'" he said.

My Wired News article has details on the LifeLog program.

THERE'S MORE: The idea of committing everything in your life to a machine is nearly sixty years old. In 1945, Vannevar Bush -- who headed the White House's Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II -- published a landmark Atlantic Monthly article, "As We May Think." In it, he describes a "memex" -- a "device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility."

Minicomputer visionary Gordon Bell, now working at Microsoft, sees his "MyLifeBits" project as a fulfillment of Bush's vision.

There are other commercial and academic efforts to weave a life into followable threads, including parallel processing prophet David Gelernter's "Scopeware" and "Haystack," from MIT's David Karger.

AND MORE: LifeLog may eventually dwarf Total Information Awareness, DARPA's ultra-invasive database effort. But "TIA" could wind up being pretty damn large on its own, with 50 times more data than the Library of Congress, according to the Associated Press.

AND MORE: Lovers of civil liberties, you now have nothing to fear. Henceforth, the creepy "Total Information Awareness" program will be known as "Terrorism Information Awareness."

Feel better?

AND MORE: DARPA's report to Congress on TIA is online here.

HOW THE WAR WAS WIRED

Listen to the techno-slobberers, and you'd think the networks that brought unprecedented communication among U.S. troops popped up, fully formed, out of the Mesopotamian sand.

Wired magazine's Joshua Davis -- in one of the most interesting "embedded" accounts from Gulf War II -- paints a very different picture.

What I discovered was something entirely different from the shiny picture of techno-supremacy touted by the proponents of the Rumsfeld doctrine. I found an unsung corps of geeks improvising as they went, cobbling together a remarkable system from a hodgepodge of military-built networking technology, off-the-shelf gear, miles of Ethernet cable, and commercial software. And during two weeks in the war zone, I never heard anyone mention the "revolution in military affairs" (the catch-phrase for a quicker, ultra-connected Army).

In an article filled with you-are-there color, the most vivid report comes from a convoy ride:

The further down the line I go, the easier it is to see the holes in the system. "Who the fuck do we look like, Lewis and Clark?" Private Jared Johnson blurts out when I ask him how we ended up lost in the Iraqi desert. I'm headed north again, this time with a 97-vehicle convoy whose mission is to deliver missile launchers and set up a Tactical Operations Center just south of the Baghdad suburbs. But there's a problem; the convoy makes two massive U-turns in search of a side road that leads to a much-needed fuel stop.

"We're lima lima mike foxtrot in Iraq," says Sergeant Frank Cleveland, who's riding shotgun in the truck where I've hitched a ride.

"What does that mean?" I ask from the backseat.

"We're lost like a motherfucker," he says.

Theoretically, the commander of the convoy should know its position. This guy hasn't been able to figure it out. But even without human error the system can break down. One soldier I talked to said the screen icons representing the convoy and all other forces disappeared when we crossed the border. All that was left was a map of Iraq.

There are other problems. "When we were deployed from the States," says Lieutenant Marc Lewis - the commander of the convoy's 27 heavy equipment trucks - "they told us that we would be given encrypted, military-issue radios when we got here. When we arrived, they told us we should have brought our own."

What Lewis brought was four Motorola Talkabouts, each with a range of about 1,000 feet. In the half-dozen convoy trips he's made since arriving in country, Lewis has taken to distributing a Talkabout to the first and last trucks. The other two go to vehicles at strategic points in between. It's hardly secure. Anybody with a radio could monitor the conversations.

Lewis is improvising as best he can. Before leaving the States, he bought a handheld eTrex GPS device, which he uses to track each of his forays into Iraq. In essence, he's created a map of Iraq's charted and uncharted freeways and desert roads. He just has no way to share it with anybody. But he is able to navigate as well as any of the tank or missile commanders he transported. I notice that at least four other soldiers in the convoy have brought their own store-bought GPS handhelds. These devices keep the convoys on track in lieu of having proper systems.

"If we run out of batteries," Lewis says when showing me his map of Iraq, "this war is screwed."

NAVY NOT READY 'TIL DECEMBER

There's been a lot of talk about the Pentagon understaffing the Iraq ground war. Now, a new question is arising: Did it overstaff the sea war?

"If something were to crop up in two or three months with North Korea, there is a good chance much of the (U.S.) Navy would be in the shipyards," GlobalSecurity.org's Patrick Garrett tells Copley News Service.

The Iraq war has so upset the Navy's carrier deployment schedule that admirals are shelving prewar plans and rethinking the strategy for dispatching naval power to faraway trouble spots.

In the meantime, with nearly a third of the fleet deployed or returning from wartime service, it may take up to six months before the Navy could deploy a similar force to handle another large-scale contingency, such as operations against a hostile North Korea.

"We'll be re-cocked and ready to go as early as December," said Vice Adm. Timothy LaFleur, who oversees the Navy's surface warships from his San Diego headquarters. (emphasis mine)

INSIDE A DESTROYER

Blogger James Rumel takes readers inside the Navy destroyer USS McFaul, with some fun, you-are-there details. Check it out here.

BIOMETRICS GET REAL

First came the post-Sept. 11 rush for biometrics -- the science of using faces, fingerprints and irises to identify people. Then the disappointing lull. Now, biometric technologies are finally starting to provide a layer of security at government and business facilities across the country.

Once at a near-standstill, biometrics' pace of adoption has quickened to a slow trot, as prices for the systems have dropped, standards have been agreed upon and public comfort with the technology has risen. But a full gallop toward biometrics won't happen, experts said, until costs fall further, reliability improves and privacy protections are put in place.

Read more about biometric security measures at the Marines' Pacific headquarters, a New Jersey school, and at the Illinois DMV in my article for the Chicago Tribune.

U.S. ANTI-S.A.M. EFFORTS BEGIN

After terrorists in Kenya fired shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles at an Israeli charter Boeing 757 last year, the world's passenger jets looked like sitting ducks.

Today, "the federal government will announce that it is taking the first steps toward outfitting the nation's commercial airliners with electronic protection" against this threat, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to award two companies contracts to build prototypes of anti-missile systems that will be tested for effectiveness and durability. It will also issue a general call to other companies to offer their ideas for deflecting heat-seeking missiles, thousands of which are believed to be in the hands of terrorist groups around the world.

The technology (for countering the missiles) generally consists of a sensor system on a plane's underside, sometimes with a mounted pod that contains a guidance system or a heat source.

Some of the existing systems jam missiles' guidance systems, while others send out a heat source to deflect the missile.

A low-tech version, which could be pilot-initiated, involves launching flares to attract the missile. However, those systems depend on advance warning to the cockpit.

LESSONS EMERGING FROM MOCK TERROR STRIKE

Quarantines don't work.

That's one of several lessons being drawn from this week's TOPOFF 2 anti-terrorism exercise, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

During a mock outbreak of pneumonic plague in Chicago, officials considered setting up a quarantine. But those can be problematic. They can create major panics. And serious moral dillemas.

With quarantines, "you have to decide whether you're going to shoot a grandma in her pickup who's trying to leave the city," Randall Larsen, head of the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, told the Montior.

Instead, the Monitor reports, Chicago authorities "used the media to put out a slogan that aimed to keep people in their homes: 'Stay at home, stay alive.' Officials then decided to mobilize postal workers to deliver medicines to affected neighborhoods."

IRAN IN BIOWEAPONS PUSH

The Washington Post reports:

Iran has begun production of weaponized anthrax and is actively working with at least five other pathogens, including smallpox, in a drive to build an arsenal of biological weapons, according to an opposition group that previously exposed a secret nuclear enrichment program in the country.

The group, Mujaheddin-e Khalq, citing informants inside the Iranian government, says the anthrax weapons are the first fruits of a program begun secretly in 2001 to triple the size of Iran's biowarfare program. The push for new biological weapons was launched in parallel with a more ambitious campaign to build massive nuclear facilities capable of producing components for nuclear bombs, said officials of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political arm of the Mujaheddin, which seeks the overthrow of the Iranian government.

"We can say with certainty that the Iranian regime now has the capability of mass production of biological material for weapons use," Alireza Jafarzadeh, the council's U.S. representative, said in an interview.

Although many weapons experts believe Iran maintains at least a rudimentary biological weapons program, few details are known. The CIA, in an unclassified report released this year, said Iran "probably" maintains an offensive biological weapons program and likely "has capabilities to produce small quantities" of biological agents.

The opposition group's claims, if true, would suggest that Iran's pursuit of biological weapons is more aggressive than previously believed.

SIMULATION SHOWS HOMELAND SECURITY GAPS

"The largest terrorism exercise since the 2001 attacks has pointed up severe gaps in the nation's ability to respond quickly and effectively," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.

In Seattle, first responders descended on the site of the (simulated) dirty bomb explosion to rescue those injured by the simulated blast, only be told to leave the area because had there been a real explosion they, too, would have been exposed to radiation, officials said...

Meanwhile, Chicago's health system was being pushed to the brink (by a mock outbreak of pneumonic plague). Hospital beds "are being diminished quickly," a Chicago area health official reported to federal health officials in Washington. One reason, officials said, was that there were not enough nurses in the metropolitan area to staff all the available facilities -- something officials said reflects a national problem.

At least 2,400 Chicagoans were infected during the exercise.

This happened, despite the fact that local, state, and federal agencies were given advanced warning of the timing and nature of the threats. What would have happened, had the attacks caught them off guard?

THERE'S MORE: The Chicago Tribune has a preview of the day's simulated events.

"VIGILANTES" USE DRONES ON BORDER PATROL

"An Arizona vigilante group is testing homemade drone reconnaissance planes on the U.S.-Mexican border to monitor illegal immigrants," Reuters reports.

Glenn Spencer, head of the American Border Patrol vigilante group, said on Tuesday the group has been testing two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for about a month and plans to have a fleet making passes over the border by early July...

The vigilantes say they plan to outfit each UAV with a global positioning device to pinpoint migrants, and then forward hose coordinates to the Border Patrol.

Dubbed the Border Hawk, the $5,000 drone has a wingspan of 5-1/2 feet and flies at an altitude of 300-400 feet -- under the 500 feet mandated for aircraft that need certification by the Federal Aviation Administration.

As previously noted, Congressmen and Department of Homeland Security higher-ups are all pushing to use drones to officially keep tabs on the Mexican border.

PATRIOTS: "HOLD YOUR APPLAUSE"

During the early days of Gulf War II, the media was filled with breathless reports marveling at the accuracy and deadly power of the new generation of Patriot missile defense system.

"Hold your applause" on the Patriots, Victoria Samson, with the Center for Defense Information, counsels. Much is still unknown about the Patriots' performance. And what is known isn't all that impressive.

None of the Patriots actually encountered the Iraqi "missiles which were so vexingly difficult for the Patriot to intercept during the first Gulf War – the Scud," Samson writes in a new report. Instead, the Patriots tussled with Saddam's slower, easier-to-shoot-down, Ababil-100s and al-Samoud-2s.

And the Patriots couldn’t handle Iraq's cruise missiles. By flying low to the ground, two CSSC-3 Seersucker cruise missiles were able to avoid setting off the Patriots’ radar. Samson notes, "One landed outside Camp Commando in Kuwait in the morning of March 20; the other landed just off-shore Kuwait City’s shopping mall on March 29. In both cases, there was minimal damage and only two minor injuries reported."

On the other hand, the Patriots' "friendly fire" encounters were deadly, killing one American and two British pilots.

U.S. CONTRACTOR SUFFERS IN RIYADH ATTACK

Whether by accident or by design, most of the Americans killed in Monday's terrorist strikes in Riyadh worked for Vinnell Corporation, a division of the giant defense contractor Northrop Grumman.

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Of the hundreds of U.S. firms operating in Saudi Arabia, perhaps none is more important to the royal family than the Vinnell, which trains the National Guard."

The National Guard, 100,000 strong, is tasked with protecting the royal, ruling House of Saud. Crown Prince Abdullah, the country's de facto ruler, is head of the National Guard, the Times notes.

"Vinnell has about 800 employees in Riyadh, 300 of whom are American. Most of the Americans are retired military personnel," according to the paper. The company's website tells prospective employees that they can "continue to do you what you did in the military."

The firm has been hit by terrorists before. In 1995, a car bomb struck a military training facility, killing seven Vinnell employees.

THERE'S MORE: "The United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia said today that the United States sought unsuccessfully to persuade the Saudi government to tighten security around residential compounds in Riyadh before Monday night's attacks," the New York Times reports.

The ambassador, Robert W. Jordan, said the request had been prompted by intelligence reports that by late last month had indicated that militants might be in the final stages of planning a terrorist attack.

"As soon as we learned of this particular threat information, we contacted the Saudi government," Ambassador Jordan said on the CBS program "The Early Show."

"We continue to work with the Saudis on this, but they did not, as of the time of this tragic event, provide the additional security we requested."

U.S. TO SHOOT IRAQI LOOTERS

Looters will be shot on sight. That's the new policy of the U.S. forces policing Iraq, the New York Times reports.

After a month of near-anarchy, the time has come for the iron fist, Iraq's new American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, had decided.

"'(U.S. troops) are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around' that assaults on property, the hijacking of automobiles and violent crimes will be dealt with using deadly force," an American official told the Times.

Did it have to come this?

Hell no, says former military policeman Phillip Carter.

It's a band-aid measure to cover up the fact that we simply don't have enough soldiers in Iraq to do the job. A strong show of force -- soldiers on dismounted patrol; mounted patrols by armed HMMWVs and Bradley fighting vehicles, quick response to any breach of the peace -- could impose law and order on the chaotic streets of Iraq. But such a show of force takes a lot of manpower -- more manpower than the U.S. has in theater. It would have been wise to mobilize 3-5 National Guard divisions 6 months ago, when we committed to the Iraq mission, so they could be ready to perform this kind of mission today. America's military is stretched thin, but despite the callup of 150,000 reservists, we did not reach very deeply into the ranks of the National Guard, who have a proven track record in peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. It's not too late to pursue this course of action, or to enlist the help of our NATO allies in this mission. But we must do it quickly, or else our soldiers will be forced to compensate for their lack of manpower with overwhelming and excessive force -- as evidenced by this new policy.

CHEM WEAPONS DETECTION GOES TO THE DOGS

The government's weapons-detection menagerie continues to grow. After enlisting chickens and pigeons to sniff out deadly chemical toxins, the Department of Homeland Security is now training dogs to do the job, the New York Times reports.

According to the paper, the pooches will be deployed at "airports, seaports, government buildings and other potential terrorist targets, where they will work alongside the police dogs that have long been used to sniff out narcotics, explosives and human remains."

BUSH EASES CONTROLS ON SPY SATELLITES

"The Bush administration is significantly loosening controls on commercial spy satellites, allowing them to capture images with high enough resolution to show people on the ground and using them as a much greater resource for national security organizations," USA Today reports.

"In 1994, President Clinton signed a directive allowing U.S. companies to sell commercial images taken from space on a restricted basis. Clinton's policies limited these businesses to images of about 20-inch resolution, too big to show a person, and severely limited exports of satellite technology by U.S. companies. The new policy will allow these exports, subject to approval by Defense and foreign policy officials."

OLDER DRONES COME THROUGH FOR MARINES

For the U.S. Marines in Gulf War II, the latest unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) didn't work very well. Instead, they relied on two decade-old, Army hand me downs for robotic reconnaissance, according to StrategyPage.

During the assault on Iraq, the Marines had two units, each with four, 450-pound Pioneer drones. The UAVs -- with a range of 180 kilometers -- were handed over by the army in 1995.

The drones first entered service in 1985. So by Gulf War II, the Pioneers were the "experienced veterans," StrategyPage explains.

In Iraq, the two Pioneer squadrons leapfrogged each other during the march on Baghdad, so that one unit was always getting UAVs into the air at any one time. They managed to keep at least one Pioneer out in front of the Marines at all times. The Pioneer can use either a day or a night camera (the max payload is sixty pounds), and was used mainly to spot enemy artillery or armored vehicles.

The brand-new Dragon Eye UAV didn't fare as well.

"The main problem was that the laptop computer used to control it failed after a week and they couldn't get it fixed," the site says.

The drone itself was "too flimsy," according to troops. "The large rubber bands used to launch it kept breaking." And when it was in the air, it didn't stay up there long enough. The Dragon Eye's flight time was only an hour, and its 10 kilometer range wasn't enough to satisfy Marines on the ground.

13 DEAD IN SAUDI ARABIA ATTACKS; AL QAEDA SUSPECTED

"Attackers shot their way into three housing compounds in the Saudi capital, (and) then set off suicide car bombs, killing at least 13 foreigners," the Associated Press reports. "Secretary of State Colin Powell said the coordinated terror strikes had 'the earmarks of al Qaeda.'"

10 Americans are among the dead, and overall casualties are in the hundreds, according to the wire service.

The gated communities attacked Monday were all in the neighborhood where Saudi officials seized on Thursday "a huge arms cache including 800 pounds of advanced explosives along with hand grenades, assault rifles, ammunition, disguises and tens of thousands of dollars," the New York Times says.

Those munitions supposedly belonged to al Qaeda, according to CNN. The "simultaneity of the explosions" -- an al Qaeda hallmark -- also leads American officials to believe that Osama bin Laden's group is behind the strikes.

"Last week, the Saudi government issued an all-points bulletin for 19 men -- 17 of whom are Saudi citizens -- on suspicion of planning attacks," CNN reports. "The suspects had fled after a shootout with security forces in Riyadh last Tuesday, according to police."

Jeremy Binnie, an editor at Jane's Sentinel Security Assessments, says, "While the attack could be an isolated incident, it was probably intended as the opening shot in a sustained campaign against Western interests in Saudi Arabia."

THERE'S MORE: According to the Associated Press, "An al-Qaida commander warned that the terror network was about to carry out major attacks in Saudi Arabia in an e-mail just a day before the deadly assault in the Saudi capital."

SIMULATED BIO-ATTACKS, "DIRTY NUKES" HIT TODAY

A terrorist group has set off a "dirty nuke" south of downtown Seattle. There are more than a hundred reported casualties so far.

In Chicago and Vancouver, hospitals are being flooded with patients reporting mysterious, flu-like symptoms. And the national stockpile of pharmaceuticals in Chicago is missing.

How will federal authorities and local officials respond? That's what TOPOFF 2, a five-day, $16 million, 8,500-person anti-terror simulation, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), aims to find out.

According to DHS, TOPOFF 2 (short for "Top Officials 2"), is "the most comprehensive terrorism response exercise ever undertaken in the United States." Designed to train Federal, State, and local responders in putting together a coordinated, international response to WMD attacks, TOPOFF 2 involves 19 Federal agencies and the American Red Cross, in cooperation with participants in Washington State, Illinois, Canada, and the Washington DC area.

While some experts see a great deal of value in the event -- which begins today, and runs until May 16 -- others aren't so sure, Government Executive reports.

"It's too big and too scripted," said Frank Hoffman, a homeland-security consultant who was a top aide to the Hart-Rudman Commission on terrorism, which presciently warned of terrorist attacks in February 2001. "There's no tolerance for failure. There's no risks being taken. It can't just be all choreographed in advance. You don't test anything."

For starters, the biggest decision makers—the president, his chief of staff, and his press secretary—have all made their decisions about the "crisis" ahead of time. Some top Bush administration officials even met to decide in advance how they would respond, and their stand-ins will merely be following a prepackaged playbook. "You lose the spontaneity; you lose that aspect of pressure which is so important," said Stephen D. Prior, research director for the National Security Health Policy Center at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. "Decision-making under pressure is a very different beast than decision-making with time on your hands, and without the pressure of everyone needing to know what your decision is in order to take your next action."

In any case, let's hope the exercise is an improvement over TOPOFF 1. Reuters says the simulation, conducted three years ago, was plagued by communications and coordination problems between federal, state and local officials grappling with simulated disasters that could have killed hundreds.

In TOPOFF 1, Government Executive notes, Denver and Portsmouth, N.H. were hit by mock pneumonic plague and mustard gas attacks, respectively.

But differences between the first exercise and this one abound. In the Colorado-New Hampshire scenario, participants were not told where or what the threat would be. Instead, they were told only that it would happen within a 10-day window. So when the emergency rescue teams in 2000 left the scene after tending to the first victim of this fictitious attack, they took the pneumonic plague home with them and spread it. This time, said Hoffman, "if you tell them this is a drill with pneumonic plague, everyone shows up with the bio suit on, and they don't treat people like they have a cold."

Similarly, "Silent Vector," a recent exercise run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies gave only the broadest hints in advance of what might go down during the simulation. Here's my Wired News story on that event.

THERE'S MORE: The Seattle Times and Seattle P-I both have nice reports from the drill, including some great pictures.

AND MORE: Wednesday's Chicago Tribune has a report on the city's feaux bio-strike.

INFRARED SENSORS BECOME SARS DETECTORS

"Authorities in Singapore have adapted devices originally developed for a military purpose — seeing enemies in the dark — to help combat the spread of SARS," the New York Times reports.

The new version of the device, called an infrared fever sensing system, detects passengers' body temperatures, spotting people with a fever — one of the symptoms of SARS — without having to touch them or even make them stop walking...

The camera "sees" the warmth of objects relative to the ambient temperature, and translates that information into a video image of people walking by. The customized software is set to display anything cooler than 93.2 degrees as black. Normal exposed skin in the mid-90's registers as lime green, brightening to yellow as it gets warmer. Anything at 99.5 degrees or above, like a feverish forehead, glows bright red in the image.

The system is remarkably sensitive, able to discern temperatures to within one-half a degree at a range of 15 feet. It can see warm bodies much farther away, though less precisely.

Of course, not every fever is a sign of SARS, and a fever is not the only reason a person might redden on the screen, according to Ace Cheong, an operator of one of the devices.

A sunburn, a few drinks of alcohol or just some brisk exercise might raise skin temperature enough to earn a trip to the special cubicle nearby for an encounter with an oral thermometer.

U.S. CHEMBIO HUNTERS LEAVING IRAQ

The U.S. military's team hunting for banned weapons in Iraq is getting ready to leave the country, their confidence of ever finding illicit stockpiles of biological or chemical arms shattered after seven weeks of fruitless searches.

The 75th Exploitation Task Force "consistently found targets identified by Washington to be inaccurate, looted and burned, or both," the Washington Post reports. And "some information known in Washington, such as inventories of nuclear sites under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, did not reach the (75th's) teams."

Task Force 75's experience, and its impending dissolution after seven weeks in action, square poorly with assertions in Washington that the search has barely begun.

In his declaration of victory aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, President Bush said, "We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated." Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that U.S. forces had surveyed only 70 of the roughly 600 potential weapons facilities on the "integrated master site list" prepared by U.S. intelligence agencies before the war.

But here on the front lines of the search, the focus is on a smaller number of high-priority sites, and the results are uniformly disappointing, participants said.

"Why are we doing any planned targets?" Army Chief Warrant Officer Richard L. Gonzales, leader of Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, said in disgust to a colleague during last Sunday's nightly report of weapons sites and survey results. "Answer me that. We know they're empty."

"Am I convinced that what we did in this fight was viable? I tell you from the bottom of my heart: We stopped Saddam Hussein in his WMD programs," Col. Richard McPhee said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction. "Do I know where they are? I wish I did . . . but we will find them. Or not. I don't know. I'm being honest here."

NUKE MAINTENANCE PLANS A MESS

The National Nuclear Security Administration may be "unable to ensure the vitality and readiness of the nuclear weapons complex," according to a new Energy Department report.

The NNSA says it needs $1.5 billion over the next five years for maintaining the nuclear storage facilities at places like Los Alamos National Laboratory. In order to properly dole out this money, each of the nuclear sites is supposed to put together a plan to ascertain what needs fixing and what doesn't. But, the report says, most of these plans were wildly off-target.

At Los Alamos, only about 15 of the 1,500 assessments were correct. That's pretty bad. But not as lame as Sandia National Laboratories, which "did not have any accurate…assessments," according to the Energy Department.

Without these evaluations, it's difficult to keep the country's nuclear weapons stockpile stable, the report concludes. How can you do maintenance, if you don't know what to fix?

U.N. STOPS AFGHANISTAN MINE-CLEARING

The war in Afghanistan was won eons ago, it seems. So that means the country has now become a quiet, peaceful place, right?

Not exactly. Many parts of Afghanistan are almost as lawless as they were before the American assault.

On Thursday, the United Nations had to stop mine-clearing operations along a critical highway, because of repeated attacks on the people removing the mines.

"On May 3, gunmen shot and killed the driver of a car belonging to a local de-mining agency...on the main Kabul to Kandahar road, and wounded one of the passengers," Reuters reports. "Two days later, six gunmen stopped a car belonging to a U.N.-funded de-mining agency further south on the same road, opening fire on the Afghan staff after finding no foreigners in the car."

Taliban guerillas have been blamed for the strikes.

(via Periscope)

GROUND DRONES FALLING APART

During this week's Technet International 2003 military-industrial schmooze-a-thon, executives at the Boeing booth repeatedly ran an animated forecast of the American military's future: packs of robot tanks, teaming up to assault a Middle Eastern foe.

Cool concept. But don't count on this prediction coming true any time soon, National Defense magazine warns.

Today, even the most basic unmanned ground vehicles (or "UGVs") are plagued with problems. The so-called "Small UGV," a 30-pound drone being designed for chemical and biological detection, has an 80 percent failure rate. In recent trials, batteries had to be swapped out every hour-and-a-half. Cold and rain stopped the drones in their tracks. And any kind of vibrations proved deadly.

“The military environment is harsher than the desktop environment," the Small UGV's military master, Dave Kinchel, observes.

Indeed.

IRAN, N. KOREA CONTINUE NUCLEAR MARCH

While the U.S. struggles to find concrete proof of Iraq's banned weapons programs, there's new evidence of Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

"After assuring the White House for months that North Korea had not begun producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, American intelligence officials changed their assessment," the New York Times reports.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration, citing increased concerns about Iran's Natanz uranium-enrichment plant are pressing International Atomic Energy Agency board members to declare that Iran has violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

"Such a finding could lead to punitive action by the United Nations, adding pressure on Iran, which is already nervous about American troops in Iraq," the Times says. "The atomic energy agency is to meet on the matter next month."

BUSH NAMES NEW ARMY, NAVY CHIEFS

It's no secret that, as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld has long clashed with the Pentagon's top uniformed officers. A quick win in Iraq has given Rummy the chance to clean house.

Yesterday, President Bush named two Rumsfeld picks to the Defense Department's highest echelons. Collin McMillan -- a New Mexico oilman and assistant to then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney -- has been tapped to become the Secretary of the Navy. And Air Force chief James Roche will move become Secretary of the Army.

"Roche is an extremely intriguing—and, to any senior Army officer, an equally shocking—candidate for the job," says Slate's Fred Kaplan.

First, he's a 23-year veteran, and retired captain, of the Navy. Second, for the past two years, he's been secretary of the Air Force. It's unusual enough for Rumsfeld to appoint a service secretary who's had no experience with the service in question. It's a blatant poke in the eye to pick someone who comes from a rival service. It's a poke in the eye and a kick in the groin to name someone who's built up years of allegiance to two rivals.

(What's more), Roche has been closely associated with a group inside the Pentagon that the Army top brass deeply abhors. This group advocates remaking the military—and especially the Army—into a lighter, faster fighting force.

More changes in Army leadership are on the way, soon. According to the Baltimore Sun, Rumsfeld is pressing the President to name U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks as the replacement for Gen. Eric Shinseki as Army chief of staff.

During his tenure, Shinseki frequently tangled with Rumsfeld and his staff, the paper says.

Shinseki helped sidetrack Pentagon plans to cut two of the 10 active-duty Army divisions in 2001. Last year he fought -- and lost -- a battle with Rumsfeld over the long-range Crusader artillery system, which Rumsfeld said was obsolete and too heavy to be placed aboard aircraft and sent into battle.

When Shinseki suggested this year that it might take "several hundred thousand" troops to occupy Iraq, he was rebuked by the Pentagon as being "wildly off the mark." About 125,000 U.S. ground troops are in Iraq, a figure the Pentagon hopes to drastically reduce in the coming months.

THERE'S MORE: It's ironic that Shinseki was sacked, Phil Carter notes. Shinseki "has pushed harder than any officer in the Pentagon" for the modernizations Rumsfeld is seeking, and "he's been doing it since 1999, before Rumsfeld came to town."

TECH FIRMS PREPPING FOR HOMELAND WINDFALL

The dinner bell hasn't rung yet. But technology companies of every breed are scrambling for a place at the trough.

A $9 billion homeland security IT feast is set for the coming fiscal year. And after lean times gnawing on scrawny private-sector contracts, these firms can't wait to get their hands on new government fat.

Pre-meal preparations are in full swing this week at the new Washington Convention Center, where the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association has assembled 10,000 military techies and defense contractors for a three-day confab.

The best way to shore up the United States' defenses, they've collectively decreed, is to boost communications, increase information gathering and heighten collaboration between military and civil authorities.

And in the center's fluorescent-lit exhibit halls, they've laid out hundreds of handsomely priced tools for facilitating all that talk: secure cell phones, Humvee-mounted communications hubs, software for directing ambulances and fire trucks like so many Predator drones.

Some of the executives here -- like the waxy, rumpled suits from Boeing and Lockheed Martin -- have long histories of handling the government's business and are looking to expand their ancient, lucrative ties.

Others, like Paul Kirchoff, a tanned, crystal pendant-wearing vice president of Austin, Texas, software firm United Devices, are newcomers to the public sector.

But this dot-com refugee knows money when he smells it. "There's a sense of urgency in the government space," Kirchoff said, slipping quickly into business jargon. "And an ability to monetarily support your business."

Read more about the event in my latest Wired News story.

THERE'S MORE: You'd think that a brand-spanking-new convention center would be a huge boost to downtown DC. But you'd be wrong. Defense contractors may be playing billion-dollar footsy over $2.25 bagels in the recently-completed center. But across the street, boarded-up storefronts and abandoned, graffiti-covered brownstones continue to crumble.

LIGHTS OUT DOOMED APACHE ATTACK

March 23rd's failed Apache helicopter attack on Republican Guard forces was perhaps the lowest point of the American effort in Gulf War II. How did the out-gunned Iraqis manage to turn such a strike back?

By turning off the lights.

Lt. Gen William Wallace, commander of the U.S. Army's V Corps, told the Associated Press that the Iraqis "orchestrated a localized power outage to serve as a signal of the coming Apache attack." They also used cell phones to warn troops that the Americans were approaching.

Wallace got into trouble with superiors for his comments during the war that the enemy in a Iraq was "a bit different than the one we war-gamed against." He defended those comments Wednesday:

"The enemy that we fought" in numerous cities in southern Iraq in the opening days of the ground offensive "was much more aggressive than what we expected him to be, at least what I expected him to be." He mentioned the cities of Najaf, Hillah, Samawah, Karbala and Nasiriyah.

The Iraqis were "willing to attack out of those towns toward our formations, when my expectation was that they would be defending those towns and not be as aggressive," he added. Wallace also noted that foreigners who fought alongside Iraqi paramilitaries were "fanatical if not suicidal."

"So all of those things led to that comment," he said.

According to the Associated Press, the Pentagon has replaced Wallace as V Corps commander.

CROWD CONTROL STINKS

In recent weeks, Defense Tech has highlighted some on-the-cusp technologies that might help make military policing efforts -- like the one currently underway in Iraq -- a less deadly task. Popular Science has a few more, including malodorants, "the chemical brews that mimic revolting smells and can disperse attackers and crowds."

Pamela Dalton, an experimental psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, says a military group approached her organization...to study odorants likely to offend everyone, everywhere. "We focused on odors that had biological origin, reasoning that they had the best chance of being universally recognized and reviled," she explains. "Vomit odor, the odor of human excrement, urine, human sweat odor, rotting fish, decomposing bodies, burned hair."

The Monell Center examined how the presence of a malodor distracted people from tasks they were performing, and researched the best strategies for developing chemical likenesses of the odor combinations. Although it didn't tackle dispersal techniques, Dalton says, "I can say from personal experience that the diffusivity of some of these odorants is quite high. As little as a few molecules in the AC system was capable of odorizing—and evacuating—the entire building."

PREDATORS STILL ROAMING IRAQ

Gulf War II may be over. But Predator spy drones are still patrolling the Iraqi skies, according to UV Online.

During the past week an