TSA WANTS "SUSPICIOUS" SPOTTER

As if you weren't nervous enough in the airport. The Transportation Security Administration has started to hunt for technologies that'll secretly spot "suspicious behavior" in passengers.

The request for information, filed by the minds of the William J. Hughes Technical Center in the Atlantic City Airport, hopes to find ways to "sense patterns of individuals' physiological response(s) and/or overt behavior that are reliably associated with malicious intent."

Proposed technologies may be applicable to the screening of travelers or of employees of transportation facilities (e.g., airports, rail stations, and bus terminals) and carriers.

Ideally, proposed technologies will be non invasive, remote, covert, passive, automatic, and suitable for area, as well as portal use. However, alternatives requiring contact, interaction (challenge-response, for example), manual operation, etc. will also be considered.

Great. Just great. (via Cyrptome)

ANTI-LASER CONTACT LENSES

I think we all winced when we read, back in September, about the Delta pilot who was hit in the eye by a laser while flying a 737. Or about the 20 year-old Los Alamos intern who was zapped during a July experiment.

Air Force researchers must not have liked what they read, either. That's presumably why they're looking to develop a contact lens that can protect against laser blasts (scroll down to find it).

Lasers are becoming more and more common on the battlefield. Range finders, smart bomb guidance packages, and airplane protection systems all use the rays. And while the Air Force has been working hard to put together eyewear that'll keep the lasers at bay, it's been hard to integrate the things with "protective equipment (helmets, goggles, and chem/bio gear), life support equipment (visors and oxygen masks), and avionics (head/helmet mounted displays and night vision goggles)." Corrective glasses only make the problem worse.

Anti-laser contact lenses might solve many of the problems, though. And they'd cover the eye better than glasses or goggles.

The contact lens sits on the eye, the entire cornea and pupil are covered, so there is no chance of a reflection, or high angle incident beam, sneaking behind the LEP [Laser Eye Protection]. Therefore, coupled with the appropriate laser protection technology, contact lenses provide a perfectly sized defense against eye injury, eliminating direct and off-axis retinal hazards from today’s most dangerous military lasers that operate in the far red and near infrared spectrum (670 nm – 1200 nm).

INSIDE FALLUJAH'S INSURGENCY

IED factories, packed with radios and plastic explosives. Martyr training manuals. Illicitly-used mosques, pinpointed on a map.

That's all part of an eye-popping PowerPoint presentation, obtained by Military.com, "Telling the Story of Fallujah to the Word." Allegedly created by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the Multi-National Corps - Iraq, the slide show is meant to catalog just how venomous insurgent forces in Fallujah had become.

Sixty percent of Fallujah's mosques had fighting positions within them, according to "Telling." That's a violation of the laws of war. 203 weapons caches were found dotted around the city. 653 IEDs were discovered – as well as 11 factories for building the bombs.

The presentation also shows ledgers, supposedly tracking foreign fighter in the city, evidence of torture chambers, and a rundown of the weapons confiscated by American and Iraqi government troops. Grisly stuff, especially for a holiday weekend. But well worth the 3MB download.

THERE'S MORE: The bosses here have turned that PowerPoint beast into good ol' HTML. So now there's no excuse the check it out.

AND MORE: A review of Palestinian militants' stockpiles and production facilities, produced by a former Israeli Army soldier, is here.

MAPS, JETS, AND CHATS

- From commerical satellite pictures, the Army is putting together 3D maps of Mosul and Fallujah.

- Out of a 737 passenger jet, Boeing is making an anti-sub spyplane.

- In online chat rooms, the CIA and the National Science Foundation are hoping to catch terrorists scheming.

THERE'S MORE: With a program called FalconView, the Air Force has been cooking up satellite-generated 3-D maps since 1995 in Bosnia, notes Defense Tech pal CA.

"One of the best things about FV is not just that you can place items on imagery, but that you can 'drape' that imagery over 3-D Digital Terrain Elevation Data. This is what enables the hi-fidelity fly-throughs [of the area]. More cumbersome technology, using [government] imagery, has been around for years. But time and progress now allows it to get to the field...

Hi-fidelity imagery is not only a boon to the troops, but also to the intelligence community. Now lower-priority, lower-fidelity requirements (like low-resolution maps, environmental studies) can be [handled by] commercial [satellites], and not take up valuable "national" resources as they have always done. The main drawback to commercial is lack of assets (though improving), and lack of timeliness. But the capability is great if you want to, say, get mid-res city graphics of major Iranian cities, or produce mid-res familiarization products of Iranian nuclear/missile facilities.

TANKER SCANDAL: START HERE

Maybe it was out of sheer laziness. Maybe it was because so many others have been covering the subject so thoroughly. But I haven't been blogging about the ongoing Boeing-USAF tanker scandal, even though the mess has drained billions in taxpayer funds, cost several Air Force leaders their jobs, and made for some of Washington's best political theater.

Anyway, here is a good place for background on Tankergate. Hopefully, I'll get off my butt and start covering this thing myself.

"WHEN I GROW UP, I WANNA SPY ON THE NEIGHBORS!"

Imagine a world where Teletubbies pack heat and Spongebob goes undercover. That's apparently what US government web designers had in mind when they followed President Clinton's 1997 order to add child-oriented Web pages to government sites. Today, the results are bizarre - cryptographic coloring books, drug-sniffing dog cartoons, and spy-satellite sing-alongs. Are they giant inside jokes? Coded messages? The remnants of LSD experiments gone awry? Only Dick Cheney may know for sure.

Here are two examples. Click on over to my story in this month's Wired magazine for the rest:

NRO Jr.
The National Reconnaissance Office used to be so hush-hush that officials wouldn't admit it existed. Now the spy-satellite agency has gone cute. The site has songs ("Whoosh Goes Satellite," to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"), stories of cats in space, and "simple-to-make, paper-plate satellite puppets."

CIA's Homepage for Kids
Youngsters can thank CIA "Ace Photo Pigeon" Harry Recon for the exciting overhead views of the agency's Langley, Virginia, headquarters (presumably with some details redacted). Meanwhile, Ginger, a mischievous blue teddy bear, takes a tour of spook HQ - without a security badge. "Lucky the guard knows me!"

USAF WANTS SELF-AWARE SATELLITES

The possibility of a sneak attack in space has the Pentagon spooked. And one of the things that makes Rummy & Co. the most nervous is that nobody has a clue what's actually up there in orbit. Imagine how vast and opaque the seas must have seen to World War I-era commanders, and you'll get the idea.

There are an array of efforts underway to try to fix this. But a just-introduced Air Force program wins the coolest name award. And it could be in the running for a biggest-bang-for-the-buck prize, too, if it ever gets off of the ground.

"The Self-Aware Satellite" (scroll waaay down) starts with the premise that orbiters already have a lot of sensors on board. But these instruments are oriented inward, to keep tabs on the satellite's health. What's worse, many of the sensors "are fixed and uni-purpose, and they cannot be accessed in a way inconsistent with this originally envisioned purpose," the Air Force notes.

The Self-Aware Satellite – also known as Satellite-As-A-Sensor, or SAAS – looks to break that rigid mold, and let free up the orbiters' instrumentation.

In SAAS, all sensor data is posted to a centralized database, which can be freely accessed in real-time by a satellite's own processor(s). Sensors can furthermore be redirected to other purposes. For example, a timing, telemetry and control (TT&C) radio can be retargeted to behave as a radio-frequency (RF) threat-warning sensor when not otherwise engaged. Correlations between sensors can be analyzed by the platform on orbit. When combined with an autonomous ability to exploit the information for short-loop responsive actions, a "self-aware" satellite is created.

But pulling off this trick means doing a big time reworking of satellites' closed and centralized software. And it means reprogramming sensors, so they can spot both internal trouble as well as threats from without.

BUNKER-BUSTER WIPED OUT

I couldn't quite believe it, when I first got the news over the weekend. But it's true: "Congress, in a surprising blow to the Bush administration's nuclear weapons ambitions, has eliminated funding for two major bomb research programs, including a so-called bunker buster that the president had said was essential to the country's security," the San Francisco Chronicle (among others) is reporting.

The bunker-buster – or, more formally, the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" – is a weapon that burrows about 10 yards beneath the ground before unleashing hell. And it has been a contentious issue in Congress ever since it was proposed by the Administration in 2002. Last year, legislators cut funds for the project in half. Then, in June, a key Republican representative – Ohio's David Hobson, who chairs the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee – moved to wipe out funds for the program entirely. The money was later restored in the Senate.

Now, Hobson seems to have struck again, fulfilling a pledge John Kerry made in the Presidential debates, to ban the bunker-buster.

"The U.S. has about 10,000 warheads in the stockpile already. To him, that number is enough," Hobson's press secretary, Sara Perkins, tells the Chron.

But while Hobson has complained long and loud about America's Cold War-sized atomic stockpile, there's a little more to his bunker-buster opposition than that. Hobson has also been a big-time critic of the Energy Department bureaucrats in charge of the country's nuclear weapons programs. And he's not afraid to use issues like the bunker-buster as a club against them. As I wrote back in June:

[In 2003], he pared back proposed funding for some weapons research programs. For others, he withheld funds until the Bush administration came up with a plan to shrink the country's nuclear weapons stockpile. That road map -- to halve the American arsenal by 2012 -- was submitted last week.

"After several years of frustration, we finally put a fence around some of (Energy Department's) advanced concepts funding and said that it would not be available until the department delivered a revised stockpile plan," Hobson said in a statement. "I admit that we held a DOE program hostage until they produced this revised stockpile plan, and you know what? -- the power of the purse does work!"

CHICAGO LISTENS UP FOR GUNS

"Gang members in Chicago who fire off a few rounds at their rivals [could] find cops on the scene in minutes, thanks to new gunshot-detection devices being installed in 80 locations around the city before the end of the year," Wired News reports.

The devices, mounted on telephone poles in specific neighborhoods, listen for the distinctive sound of a gunshot and immediately alert a police dispatcher when one is detected. A video camera in the device allows the dispatcher to keep an eye on the scene until officers arrive.

The system is similar to those being used to decrease gunshot-related injuries and deaths in a half dozen other cities in the United States, including Redwood City, California; Glendale, Arizona; and Charleston, South Carolina.

Here's how the systems work: Police mount the detection devices, which include microphones and sound-analysis hardware, on telephone poles and other locations in neighborhoods where gunfire is a problem. The devices are connected to a control center where dispatchers wait to receive alerts via their computers.

Chicago authorities have been getting increasingly worked up about using distributed technology to keep tabs on their less-than-friendly residents. In September, Mayor Daley announced a proposal to network together 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city.

Chicago's gunshot detectors sound a whole lot like Darpa's "Boomerang," sniper-finder system, which G.I.s have been mounting on their Humvees since early in the year. More info on the project's next stage --designed to fight off RPG attacks, as well -- is here.

SOFTWARE SPOTS A MASTERPIECE

No, this doesn't have a damn thing to do with killer drones, pain rays, or mullahs with nukes. But I'm posting this Wired News story of mine anyway, dammit. It's about software tools that may be able to spot the difference between a real painting, and a slick forgery.

Scholars have had their suspicions that the painting of Madonna and child credited to the Italian Renaissance master Pietro Perugino wasn't really done by him alone. But they could never be sure.

Now, a new set of software tools, developed by a Dartmouth College team, seems to confirm the art historians' doubts, showing evidence of at least four different painters working on the canvas. The programs' makers hope this will be the first in a long line of art authentication mysteries they can help put to rest, with code that can sort out real from fake.

"There are properties in an artist's pen and brush strokes that aren't visible to the human eye, but that are there nonetheless. And we can find them, through mathematical, statistical analysis," said Dartmouth computer science professor Hany Farid, who developed the algorithms, along with math professor Daniel Rockmore and graduate student Siwei Lyu.

But museum curators and statisticians caution that the Dartmouth group's techniques have only begun to be tested. Using algorithms to back up scholars' suspicions is one thing; uncovering a fraud with just a computer, that's completely different. And in the art world, no scientific method is considered as sure as the eye of a seasoned connoisseur.

"This is very unusual," said Nadine Orenstein, the curator of the drawings and prints department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "We're all a bit skeptical."

THERE'S MORE: Earlier this year, Farid made noise when he unveiled his software for finding faked digital images. My New York Times story on that work is here.

ANOTHER I.E.D. STOPPER?

"Two Missouri professors seeking ways to track civilian automobiles for General Motors have discovered a way to detect and conceivably even detonate so-called Improvised Explosive Devices," Soldiers for the Truth says. It sounds a lot like what the Army already has, in its Warlock series of radio frequency jammers.

Simply stated, the scientists have figured out a way to eavesdrop on the ether to detect ambient electronic noise floating around when the mad bombers set up their devices in preparation of setting off an ambush. Both the transmitter the insurgents need to send out a radio signal ordering the detonator to explode and the detonator itself, emit these radio signals.

The trick is isolating the unique signals much the same way sonar operators on submarines filter out biologic and machinery noises until they can identify the sounds of the target they are looking for. That radio signal sounds very much like the rapid electronic “beep-beep-beep” emitted by Soviet-era SA-2 acquisition radar...

“It would be relatively easy to override these radio receivers if we can recognize them,” Hubing told me last week. “When we identify the receiver, it is possible to prevent an IED from ever receiving the initiation signal.”

Hubing said operators using the same equipment could then detonate the IED under a controlled situation where it would not cause any casualties.

The technology to create the device already exists. The laboratory where the two scientists do their research possessed enough equipment to make a working theoretical model of the IED detector and present their finding to the Pentagon, Hubing said. Beetner, the other half of the team and the fiscal wizard in the equation, said he thinks it will take about $750,000 and a year of focused attention to field a working prototype.

SOVIET BATTLE STATION SNAPSHOTS

Thank you, Slashdot. Thank you. How else would I have found out about these photographs of the Soviet Union's orbiting battle station?

The Skif and its Polyus prototype were supposed to be the Soviets' answer to Star Wars -- a spacecraft to defend against (and launch its own) anti-satellite weapons. The Polyus was launched in '87. But it couldn't get itself into a working orbit, probably because of "a faulty inertial guidance sensor," according to the Encyclopedia Astronautica. "No member of the Reagan or Bush administrations ever admitted or revealed publicly any knowledge of Polyus. The US Navy has made no statements about any attempts to investigate the wreckage of Polyus, which lies on the floor of the South Pacific."

MORE ON WARLOCK'S TRICKS

It's not much. But I've got a leeetle more information on the military's hush-hush defense against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

The Warlock radio frequency jammers are made by the New York and Simi Valley firm EDO. And they're based on an earlier EDO product called the Shortstop Electronic Protection System, which is designed to protect troops against proximity-fused weapons, like mortar rounds and artillery shells. According to EDO, Shortstop grabs the electronic signal that one of these weapons makes, "modifies the signal and sends it back to the weapon making the fuze think it is close to the ground. The fuze then prematurely detonates the warhead rendering the weapon essentially harmless."

The Warlock doesn't do anything quite so dramatic. Instead, "it basically works by intercepting the signal sent from a remote location to the IED instructing it to detonate," an Army official told Inside Defense (which has a wrap-up of all its recent IED stories here.) "The signal 'cannot make contact, therefore when it can’t make contact it doesn’t detonate,' much like a cellular phone call that does not connect, he added. "The cell phone never gets through, but [enemy forces] think it go through."

The jammers come in two flavors, each interrupting different frequency bands. Warlock Green connects off of the 24V DC power supply of any military vehicle, an Army document notes. Warlock Red is "designed to connect off the cigarette lighter and/or 12V DC power supply."

THERE'S MORE: "The Army is testing a new method of intercepting improvised explosive devices that relies on an up-armored humvee and two types of vehicles designed in South Africa to withstand blasts from land mines," Inside Defense also notes.

$2.9 million will pay for two "Hunter/Killer" teams, each with an up-armored humvee, an enhanced RG31 Medium Mine Protection vehicle, and a bulldozer-like Buffalo Explosive Ordnance Disposal vehicle, the magazine says.

U.S. forces -- including the 82nd Airborne's Task Force Pathfinder -- have been using the vehicles since the beginning of the year. According to an Army public affairs story, soldiers like the RG31 because it's built to withstand a bomb (more on how that's done here) and because it's roomy. "Like riding in an armored Cadillac," one soldier quips.

IRAN'S NUKE PAUSE - BAD NEWS?

So Iran has apparently stopped enriching uranium for the moment, pressing pause on its nuclear program. Great news, right?

Actually, it could hardly be worse, argues Michael Levi, the Brookings Institution's resident atomic authority. Iran's time-out is the product of a deal between Tehran and three European countries. The mullahs made similar commitments last year -- and didn't keep them. And even if Tehran decides to stick to its agreements this time around, this new bargain has "dealt Iran a stronger hand," Levi contends.

Supporters insist that the new language is more specific and provides fewer loopholes than the last deal. But in exchange for a mere tightening of loopholes, the EU-3 has offered Iran a pretty indulgent deal. Most importantly, the Europeans have again promised to keep Tehran away from the Security Council, a commitment with irreversible consequences -- after all, while the Europeans can change their minds and head to the Security Council whenever they please, they cannot turn back the clock. Every day Iran operates under lessened pressure is a day it might move closer to producing a bomb. (Only an overly optimistic or naïve observer can confidently believe Iran continues no nuclear efforts in secret.) Moreover, the past two years have shown that the further into history Iran's most egregious actions recede, the less willing other countries become to punish Tehran for them. So by delaying a Security Council confrontation, the EU-3 has, for now, dealt Iran a stronger hand.

The Europeans didn't stop there, however. They promised to bring Iran into WTO-entry negotiations; they also promised the possibility of nuclear, technological, and economic cooperation. Finally, they delivered an important intangible to Iran--the deal, which never mentions the country's violations, will provide Tehran with useful ammunition for its propaganda machine domestically, in the Middle East, and around the world. As a guest on Iranian and Arabic television programs, I've experienced first-hand the importance of this factor: Iranian officials seize on any sentiment or phrase from an outside power that can be read as exonerating its nuclear program and use it to drown out reasoned opposition. Now, faced with claims that the outside world, including Europe, believes Iran violated last October's agreement--a plain truth--Iran will repeatedly produce the EU-3 deal as evidence to the contrary. That, in turn, will bolster domestic support for the regime and its actions while creating regional sympathy for Iran's claims of mistreatment at the hands of the West.

It isn't just the EU-3 that is to blame here. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which for the most part has done a solid job in investigating Iran, put itself in an inappropriate political position as part of the EU-3 negotiations. Scheduled to deliver a critical report on Iran's activities last week, the agency delayed its release pending the outcome of the EU-3 negotiations. In doing so, it clearly suggested that Iran could influence the report--which is presumably a factual accounting of Iran's activities--by agreeing to the right deal. Imagine a criminal psychiatrist delaying her assessment of a defendant pending the outcome of plea bargain negotiations, and you've got an idea of how irresponsible this is.

VETS BATTLE MYSTERY SICKNESS

A pointer to this Reuters article landed in my in-box with the subject "Gulf War II Syndrome?" That's probably a little premature. But this is weird, weird stuff, nonetheless.

An unexpectedly high number of U.S. soldiers injured in the Middle East and Afghanistan are testing positive for a rare, hard-to-treat blood infection in military hospitals, Army doctors reported on Thursday.

A total of 102 soldiers were found to be infected with the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii. The infections occurred among soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and three other sites between Jan. 1, 2002, and Aug. 31, 2004.

Although it was not known where the soldiers contracted the infections, the Army said the recent surge highlighted a need to improve infection control in military hospitals.

Eighty-five of the bloodstream infections occurred among soldiers serving in Iraq, the area around Kuwait and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army said in a report published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Military hospitals typically see about one case per year.

If there is a Gulf War II syndrome, it may have the same roots as the mystery illness that struck the veterans of Gulf War I: depleted uranium, or D.U. That's the ultra-hard, apparently toxic material American forces have been using for years in their anti-tank shells.

Vanity Fair chronicles how soldiers who have been exposed to the stuff in Iraq have been coming back in bad, bad shape.

At first, Terry merely had the usual headaches, body pain, oozing rash, and other symptoms. But later he began to suffer from another symptom which afflicts some of those exposed to D.U.: burning semen. "If he leaked a little lubrication from his penis, it would feel like sunburn on your skin... In England, Malcolm Hooper, professor emeritus of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland, is aware of 4,000 such cases. He hypothesizes that the presence of D.U. may be associated with the transformation of semen into a caustic alkali.

"It hurt [Terry] too. He said it was like forcing it through barbed wire," Riordon says. "It seemed to burn through condoms; if he got any on his thighs or his testicles, he was in hell." In a last, desperate attempt to save their sex life, says Riordon, "I used to fill condoms with frozen peas and insert them [after sex] with a lubricant." That, she says, made her pain just about bearable. Perhaps inevitably, he became impotent. "And that was like our last little intimacy gone."

By late 1995, Terry was seriously deteriorating. Susan shows me her journal-she titled it "The Twilight Zone"-and his medical record. It makes harrowing reading. He lost his fine motor control to the point where he could not button his shirt or zip his fly. While walking, he would fall without warning. At night, he shook so violently that the bed would move across the floor. He became unpredictably violent: one terrible day in 1997 he attacked their 16-year-old son and started choking him. By the time armed police arrived to pull him off, the boy's bottom lip had turned blue. After such rages, he would fall into a deep sleep for as long as 24 hours, and awake with no memory of what had happened...

Even after he died, on April 29, 1999, Terry's Canadian doctors remained unable to explain his illness. "This patient has a history [of] 'Gulf War Syndrome' with multiple motor, sensory and emotional problems," the autopsy report by pathologist Dr. B. Jollymore, of Yarmouth, begins. "During extensive investigation, no definitive diagnosis has been determined.... Essentially it appears that this gentleman remains an enigma in death as he was in life."

The article never quite gets around to what D.U. exposure really does to a man. Is it burning semen? Bone cancer? Psychotic breaks? Lung problems? All of the above? But the amount of stories and studies accumulated leads to only one conclusion: that D.U. is somehow linked to a whole bunch of soldiers getting sick. And the Pentagon doesn't seem to be in any particular hurry to figure out why.

THERE'S MORE: D.U. was also used extensively in Bosnia and Kosovo, Mike Davis points out. And there seems to be "no difference in the symptoms of those infected in the Balkans as those in Iraq from the first Persian Gulf War." But the Pentagon isn't impressed. This 2001 study says there's no link between D.U. and leukemia.

For a history of soldiers coming home sick, Defense Tech pal Ryan Singel recommends The Wages of War: When America's Soldiers Came Home.

TASTY SPAM

Maybe it's because my e-mail account has been hijacked by spammers recently, leaving me to clean up the mess when a zillion people get hit with advertisements for "Unlimited Free Music," "Hot Deals from Adobe," and "Moms Ready to Cheat." But boy, did I like my weekend read, Brian McWilliams' Spam Kings.

Brian has been one of my favorite freelance writers, ever since he hacked his way into Saddam's in-box two years ago. I must have tried a dozen times to get him to write for Defense Tech. But he always demurred.

Now I know why. He was too busy cataloguing the exploits of backwoods neo-Nazis, shady stock-pickers, and sexy anti-spam crusaders.

The result is breezy, naughty fun, with deeply-flawed good guys and painfully-human villians. Think Dominick Dunne, edited by the geeks at Slashdot. Good stuff.

Now, if I could only figure out a way to get these spammers to stop using my e-mail...

PENTAGON: MORE RAY GUNS, PLEASE

The Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate is the tiny Pentagon agency that's pushing weapons like the microwave-like pain ray and a slippery goo to make angry mobs lose their footing. Now, the JNLWD is on the lookout for new, far-out projects to fund. And the Directorate's $57.6 million shopping list is heavy on the ray guns:

* Emerging Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) that have non-lethal applications -- specifically counter-personnel, counter-material, and counter-capability missions (examples include novel HPM [high power microwaves], RFR [radiofrequency radiation], laser, and laser induced plasma sources).

* Human effects of non-lethal directed energy exposures, to include physiological and behavioral responses (examples include HPM, pulsed and continuous radiofrequency radiation RFR, laser radiation, and laser induced plasma stimuli).

* Advanced Materials that either provide or enhance non-lethal capabilities (examples include advanced anti-traction materials; engine suffocates, electrical and mechanical foulers, malodorants, thermobarics, NL [non-lethal] nanoparticles; rigid foams/materials, morphing materials, and NL payload delivery systems or payloads for long range remote engagement; and other NL reactants).

* Human effects relating percussive and continuous sounds, incoherent light sources, and overpressures that alone or in combination would provide operational capabilities while minimizing adverse health effects (examples include exposure-response relationships resulting in glare and flashblindess, or behavioral responses resulting from aversive sounds.) Also includes establishing either safety thresholds or probability relationship for adverse health effects for these stimuli.

* Development of long-range acoustic and ocular technologies and devices that support operational requirements while minimizing adverse health consequences.

* Development of long-range, extended duration, wireless electro-muscular incapacitation technologies or devices (include characterization of human effect and safety issues, miniaturization and advanced technology issues, and precision targeting). (via The Sunshine Project)

NET HUNTING TAKES AIM

Ah, progress. A Texas company, Live-Shot , is planning to let hunters use a webcam and an Internet-controlled rifle to shoot down deer, mouflon sheep, antelopes and wild pigs as they roam a 54-acre ranch, according to the BBC.

John Underwood got the idea a year ago when he was watching deer via a webcam on another net site, "We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that'. A little light bulb went off in my head..."

Each remote hunting session will cost $150 with additional fees for meat processing and taxidermy work.

Already the Live-Shot site lets people shoot 10 rounds at paper and silhouette targets for $5.95 for each 20-minute shooting session. For further fees, users can get the target they shot and a DVD recording of their session.

Handlers oversee each shooting session and can stop the gun being fired if it is being aimed off-range or at something it should not be...

Mike Berger, wildlife director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said current hunting statutes did not cover net or remote hunting. Besides, the law only covers "regulated animals" and there's thus nothing to stop Mr Underwood letting people hunt "unregulated" imported animals. (via The Near Near Future).

I.E.D.S - WHY THE WHISPERS?

It all seemed pretty straightforward, at first.

I wanted to do some follow-up on a post from a few weeks back, about the U.S. military's efforts to counter improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Those are the roadside bombs which are proving so lethal to American troops in Iraq.

A company out of New York, EDO, put out a couple of press releases announcing their $45 million contract with the Army, to make radio frequency jammers that could block the signals triggering the IEDs. Some of the government trade press had followed up, with quick articles on the jammer, called Warlock Green.

But despite the semi-public profile, when I asked EDO chief Bill Walkowiak about Warlock Green, he went mute. The Army wouldn't let him talk any more, he said. Anything having to do with IEDs – it was all classified now.

And that's a problem, some defense industry insiders are saying. Not whether or not Walkowiak will talk a reporter -- defense contractors clam up all the time, often rightly so. The dark blanket of secrecy that's been thrown over any and all information about these roadside bombs is the issue. "The Pentagon remains tight-lipped about how much money it is spending on a regular basis to counter the threat of such devices and how many troops who need it have access to specialized equipment, such as electronic jammer devices," Inside Defense notes. "Even details on how the enemy builds the IED remain under wraps."

Finding and stopping IEDs is a super-hard problem. They don't give off heat, so thermal sensors won't work; they're not made of metal, generally, so magnets are out; they're not unstable, like a chemical agent, so detectors that "sniff" the air haven't done the trick, yet.

In fact, the problem is so hard, that all interested researchers and contractors and scientists – not just the ones with security clearance – need to get a whack at IEDs, says John MacGaffin, former associate deputy director for operations at the CIA.

“Why is it classified?” he asks Inside Defense. “What is the secret?”

MacGaffin, who spent 31 years at the CIA, now runs the AKE Group, which provides training and security in Iraq for major media organizations and industry. He says the only information that should remain classified are the frequencies used by the United States to jam IEDs. He acknowledged that if information on how enemies build IEDs is released, other insurgents could learn how to construct the devices. But there is also a strong likelihood that release of that information will prompt industry to find the solution that will make the weapon less deadly, he says.

“What’s more important? Keeping people alive,” MacGaffin told sister publication Inside the Army last week.

Not everyone agrees that DOD should be more generous with IED threat data. Defense officials say the protection of such information is vital to ensuring countermeasures will work for as long as possible…

“I know there’s a frustration,” Scott Gooch, senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, said. [The company] is conducting capabilities assessment work on IEDs for the Joint Staff.

But classification issues are nothing new, Gooch noted -- and new ideas are making their way to the Pentagon. In one example, a farmer discovered a material that could withstand explosives and sent it via UPS to the Defense Department.

But doesn’t the farmer example actually argue for more people getting involved in the process – and less secrecy?

THERE'S MORE: Shhh! Keep quiet when you're reading Steven Aftergood's Slate story on why airport screeners don't have to tell you what law they're relying on to give you the pat-down.

AND MORE: House Armed Services Committee chair Duncan Hunter "is developing a proposal to boost production" of Warlock Green-like jammers, Aerospace Daily says. "The Army plans to buy another 3,300 jammers, a figure that Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) asserted still would leave many U.S. vehicles unprotected against IEDs."

ARMY BASES STILL VULNERABLE?

"Pentagon inspectors say police, firefighters and doctors are still inadequately prepared to respond to attacks using weapons of mass destruction against Army bases — even though the Army had tried, in vain, to improve that after the 9/11 attacks."

That's the story from the Deseret Morning News, which says that "'plans to implement an Installation Preparedness Program for first responders were substantially fragmented and ineffective," according to an Army Audit Agency report.

For example, the report complained that one set of Army officials and rules oversaw police; another set of officials and rules governed firefighters; and a third, separate set oversaw medical personnel.

Inspectors said that not only did those groups not coordinate with each other, they often failed to consult special response teams and other Army experts on biological, chemical and radiological weapons to develop training criteria and equipment lists.

Inspectors said while the Army had meant to separate and assign key roles to ensure they were accomplished, "the unintended result was a lack of coordination and communication between key Army proponents and technical experts to collectively address installation preparedness issues related to first responders.

(From a tip by Phil Carter, who's got a dynamite story on the Fallujah mosque shooting in today's Slate.)

DARPA TAKES A DIVE

The first in the U.S. Navy's new class of Virginia submarines was commissioned just last month.

But already, the mad scientists over at Darpa, the Pentagon's way-out research division, are bored.

They want a sub that can run with a fraction of the crew of current boats. So Darpa has put together a new, $97 million effort to build the submarines of the future, code named Tango Bravo. Last week, the agency held a classified meeting with defense contractors and researchers interested in bidding on the project.

At the heart of the Tango Bravo project is a problem that's older than U-Boats: how to run a sub without packing the crew in like fish in a can. Why the concern? Well, it's not for the sailors' comfort. "People are expensive," notes GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike.

For years, the Navy has been pushing to run bigger and bigger ships with fewer and fewer sailors. It took a crew of about 320 to run the World War II-era Fletcher destroyers. Today, an Arleigh Burke destroyer uses the same number of men – but, at 8300 tons, it's three times as big.

Things have been different on submarines, however. While crew sizes have basically remained stable, sub sized have only doubled – a lot less than the destroyers' three-fold increase.

One way to cut down on the number of people is to automate the sub, particularly its attack center and sonar battlestations. Those areas require 17 people on the Virginia class submarines, Darpa notes. The agency wants to see that crew cut to eight, with "a set of systems should be proposed which can replace the current VIRGINIA Class sonar, fire control, and tactical data display systems."

But even with a crew trim, space on a sub is still beyond cramped. "There's never enough room for people," says retired Rear Admiral Hank McKinney, the former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's submarine force. "On the Los Angeles class [of subs], a third of the crew didn't have bunks of their own. Seawolf – same problem."

Tango Bravo's solution: take the torpedoes, and store them outside the sub, not within. "They take up a lot of room inside what we call the people tank," Adm. McKinney notes. And it's something that's been done on a number of submarines before. Tomahawk missiles were kept in the ballast tanks in some of the later Los Angeles-class subs, for example, to increase the number of torpedoes that could be kept aboard. What's more, the latest Mark 48 torpedoes aren't even maintained on the ship, McKinney observes. "They're prepped before hand, and then left alone."

ARMY'S INSURGENT MANUAL AUTHOR SPEAKS

Last week, Defense Tech took a look at the Army's new field manual for Counterinsurgency Operations – and how that guide seemed, at first blush, to be at odds with the assault on Fallujah.

The story kicked up a nice little dust-up over on the new Defense Tech forum. One of the people who weighed in: Lt. Col. Jan Horvath, with the Army's Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate. He's the man who led the team that put together the counterinsurgency manual, "FM-I 3-07.22."

Lt. Col. Horvath and I have traded e-mails a few times this week. I've parsed the conversation into a Q & A. In it, he's sometimes critical of U.S. operations in Iraq -- the Fallujah strike should have emphasized "operational secrecy and surprise," for example. But he finds a lot of good in how American troops are handling this ongoing guerilla war.

DEFENSE TECH: Who put together this manual? And what is it supposed to be used for? Is it some kind of academic exercise, or does it really guide troops on the ground?

JAN HORVATH: The FM-I is a collaborative product developed primarily by the U.S. Army but in collaboration with the USMC [U.S. Marine Corps], the [Army's] Special Warfare Center and the British Army.

The FM-I is NOT academic. It applies lessons learned and tactics, techniques and procedures to articulate what we learned in Vietnam, El Salvador, Afghanistan and Iraq and what others learned in Colombia, and Northern Ireland. It is descriptive and not prescriptive. The FM-I recognizes each environment (and for that matter each day) is unique.

I believe we all recognize doctrine has rarely ever been an American strength. However, the FM-I is just a good, first-draft for the field manual we are now writing.

Did we miss anything? Of course, we only had five months to research and write it. What are we adding? An operational and theater strategic focus and guidelines, near state-of-the-art intelligence analysis, [and] principles for training indigenous security forces. Tactically, [we missed] the "swarm" attack, urban operations (going through walls rather than down the street); logistics, Intel[ligence] analysis, and the media and communications. After all, if counterinsurgency is a war of ideas, we better win the formulation and communication of those ideas.

The Army refers to me as the author of FM-I 3-07.22 -- I am not. I am the leader of an informal, distributed, team that put the material together and then shaped it into a coherent (and what we regard as a useful) product.

DT: But the manual is already being challenged, in some ways, by events in the field, right? For example, FM-I suggests commanders should "concentrate on elimination of the insurgents, not on terrain objectives" and "get counterinsurgency forces out of garrisons, cities, and towns." Doesn't the Fallujah attack run counter to these suggestions?

JH: No, I do not believe the Fallujah attack runs counter to these recommendations. Why not? An imperative is to eliminate insurgent sanctuaries. Fallujah is the primary sanctuary from which most insurgent political direction emanated. The armed supporters of that specific counter-state had to be broken and eliminated. The political and ideological apparatus will be eliminated in Fallujah over the next 6 months.

Our military's role is to secure the populace from insurgent violence and intimidation, therefore, influence. In securing the people, we must separate them from the insurgents. We do this by patrolling everywhere, talking with the people, and earning a modicum of trust. After all, we don't want anything from them... except information. Our very presence (on-the-spot) should disrupt the insurgents' influence and movements.

We learned from an earlier misstep when we attacked the insurgents too soon in Samarra. Yes, we won. However, we left the area and did not remain to secure the local populace AND the police. The insurgents came back, attacked the police and intimidated their way back into authority. The next attack had to wait until the militia and police we were training were trained and capable of effectively defending the people and area, initially with our assistance, after our successful attack. Then, soldiers and militia attacked in the middle of the night together, and surprise and disruption reigned. We still own the people of Samarra, and the city is no longer a sanctuary.

DT: So what do you see as the big issues ahead as the U.S. fights the Iraq insurgency?

JH: Operationally, there are two issues. We must eliminate all sanctuaries, and we must permanently sever the lines-of-communication and supply from Syria through Ar-Ramadi to Baghdad -- darn near done. We did not do this in Vietnam.

Second, we must effectively eliminate all enemy insurgents that will prevent or interfere with the Iraqi Govt establishing a strong presence in Fallujah that provides security for the residents while separating them permanently from the insurgents -- critical, and we are successfully creating those conditions.

Tactically, we haven't used firepower to flatten Fallujah as we applied in Hue, Vietnam to destroy the VC [Viet Cong] battalions during Tet in 1968. We have used distributed, networked systems (drones and long-range surveillance, and eyeballs to ID where the enemy is followed by precision FA [field artillery] and tanks, LAVs [light armored vehicles], BFVs [Bradley Fighting Vehicles] and sniper and rifle fires to kill them.

We should move along a city block by moving inside buildings and through walls more. However, more residents might have become injured. We must still find the two leaders of the Fallujah Muj[hadeen] -- an Imam and a Sheikh -- regardless of where they have fled in Iraq or Iran, and assist them in their rapid transition to Paradise.

We [also] missed on the operational secrecy and surprise, but we will continue to tactically surprise. [FM-I counsels U.S. commanders to "emphasize secrecy and surprise" during their attacks. But the build-up to Fallujah was long and noisy -- ed.]

Yes, we must still root out the counter-state infrastructure in Fallujah using population resource control. [That's a] mechanism to collect social and economic intelligence... The Nazi's Gestapo and the Eastern European communists were the best at this. Without becoming tainted or infected by their methods and attitudes, we have picked up some of their systems and processes.

We rarely have an opportunity to plan and execute such operations -- this is exactly one of those opportunities. [It'll take] 6-12 months [for this to work].

Otherwise, I appreciate our military leaders' application of the principles and common sense. They are smart enough to have teams following the soldiers to provide food and blankets, medical care, and basic services as well as turning power and water on in areas we have secured.

We won't convince everybody overnight we mean them well, but we can provide a stark contrast -- deeds, not words. Fortunately, people will always demonstrate their intentions for us. What we must demonstrate very quickly is the Iraqi Government is legitimate, and we are not the same though our goals and objectives are complementary. Then perhaps, the Iraqi people can show us whether they have the capacity for freedom, or not.

After all, freedom is never free.

RUSSIA WANTS NEW ICBM

Oh, super. Just super. Not only is a dictator now in charge of Russia. But the guy wants to develop new, nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, according to the AP.

Speaking at a meeting of the Armed Forces' leadership, Putin reportedly said that Russia is researching and successfully testing new nuclear missile systems.

``I am sure that ... they will be put in service within the next few years and, what is more, they will be developments of the kind that other nuclear powers do not and will not have,'' Putin was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Putin reportedly said: ``International terrorism is one of the major threats for Russia. We understand as soon as we ignore such components of our defense as a nuclear and missile shield, other threats may occur.''

No details were immediately available, but Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said earlier this month that Russia expected to test-fire a mobile version of its Topol-M ballistic missile this year and that production of the new weapon could be commissioned in 2005.

News reports have also said Russia is believed to be developing a next-generation heavy nuclear missile that could carry up to 10 nuclear warheads weighing a total of 4.4 tons, compared with the Topol-M's 1.32-ton combat payload.

Topol-Ms have been deployed in silos since 1998. The missiles have a range of about 6,000 miles and reportedly can maneuver in ways that are difficult to detect.

Anybody wanna bet how long it'll take for the White House or the Pentagon to say this proves the need for its missile defense array -- even though the system is so lame, it can't be tested?

THERE'S MORE: "This is not something that we look at as new," White House press secretary Scott McCllelan now says. "We are very well aware of their long-standing modernization efforts for their military. ... We are allies now in the global war on terrorism."

AND MORE: The Russian military has been working for a number of years, now, on missiles that can juke American interceptors, Jeffrey Lewis notes. In December 2003, "a source on the Russian General Staff told Interfax that every Topol-M [missile] will be outfitted with... the capability of launching decoys."

Last February, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists observes, the Russians successfully tested "a new hypersonic 'Crazy Ivan' warhead that follows a nonclassical scenario, changing flight altitude and course repeatedly, making it nearly impossible to track and target. Putin declared Russia able to penetrate any missile defense system with ease."

AND MORE: Putin refers to his new missile as some sort of anti-terrorist weapon. That's like calling TNT a cockroach fighter. As "Retired SSBN" mentions in the Defense Tech forum, ICBMs don't have a damn thing to do with fighting Al-Qaeda & Co.

AND MORE: "If you can't think of novel uses for ICBMs, you're not trying very hard," TM Lutas says over in the Defense Tech forum.

Steven Den Beste once noted that we could win 10 simultaneous wars with today's military. It's just that 8 of those wars would have to be nuclear. For example, An ICBM at Tora Bora would have settled matters quickly, removed a relatively remote bit of land from productive use and ensured that no urban area would tolerate terrorists active against the launching power, whether it's the US or Russia.

Apparently, some in the Pentagon agree -- sort of. About a year ago, Defense Department planners handed out contracts to 10 firms to start designing a hypersonic missile that can outrun the now-retired Concorde, and can hit a terrorist nest in Europe from the East Coast.

LASER JET PAYOFF

A few days ago, we found out that the Airborne Laser -- that's the modified 747, designed to zap incoming missiles -- successfully tested its ray gun for the first time. Well, it seems that good fortune comes with a price. Because the Missile Defense Agency has just added $1.47 billion to the program," the jet's program manager tells Inside Missile Defense.

That means the price of the project just doubled, instantly. And there could be more to come. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) officials are only about "80 percent" sure that this new windfall will cover the cost of the Airborne Laser (ABL) tests they want to run.

Originally, the ABL was supposed to be blasting by 2002. Now, the MDA isn't committing to a timetable. But they do have three goals in mind: keep testing the 747's laser, finish the plane's "battle management system," and shore up the ABL's "beam control system, which is really critical to our ability to be able to point and track the high-energy laser."

While the laser is being tested on the ground, the aircraft will begin a series of flight tests -- fewer than 20 in total -- carrying the beam control and the battle management system. “Initially, with the beam control system we will just test what we call the ‘passive pieces,’ which is without the two solid state lasers we use to track the missile,” ABL Program Manager Air Force Col. Ellen Pawlikowski said. “We will check that out, we will do some tests to make sure we get good handoff between battle management and beam control. Then we will bring the plane back down for a short period and we will put two illuminating lasers on [the aircraft] in the second half of 2005.”

When the laser finishes all of its ground tests, program officials will move it out of the systems integration lab and begin putting it on the ABL aircraft, Pawlikowski said. “We will do that as the next step after we finish the flight tests and the ground tests and then we will have our final test period when we test the complete system first against target boards and then against a boosting missile.”

Program officials will take a measured approach as they finish each major phase, such as the completion of the first light test, according to Pawlikowski. “We will do two things when we reach a major milestone,” she said. “We will look at what our schedule is and what does the budget look like for the rest of that path. I am not going to tell you today that we are going to complete such-and-such by 2006 because I am going to look at that in January, when we finish these two milestones, and then I am going to look at it again. And we are going to take it one step at a time."

SO LONG, SPENCE

Most of the attention today is on Colin and Condi. But Defense Tech has had a somewhat, um, intimate relationship with the Department of Energy and its nuclear labs. And so I'd like to distract you for a moment, with a bit about Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's departure from the cabinet. Because he may have been one of the few, authentic good guys on Dubya's first-term team.

As the Times rightly points out, gas prices nearly doubled under Abraham's watch. And the country never could put together a particularly coherent energy policy. But with two oilmen as his bosses, I don't think Abraham ever really had much of a chance in these areas.

What Abraham did have control over is the country's nuclear research centers. And on that topic, you've got to give him some credit. Because he leaves the American nuclear weapons complex safer than when he found it.

After a seemingly-endless series of scandals at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Abraham forced the feckless lab chief John Browne out, and installed a former admiral in his place. When computer disks with atomic secrets went missing, Abraham ordered the labs to stop using 'em, and move to a "diskless" working environment, instead – a move watchdog groups had been begging for years for someone to make. He ordered the removal of nuclear material from the lab's most vulnerable areas. And Abraham broke with 60 years of tradition, opening up Los Alamos' management contract to competitive bidding for the first time, the San Francisco Chronicle notes.

Abraham was "a real visionary" in his push for improved security at the nation's post-9/11 nuclear weapons complex, said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Procurement, an activist group in Washington, D.C., that is normally highly critical of the Energy Department.

"He was able to dramatically increase security standards and really was willing to go head to head with a very stubborn bureaucracy" that preferred less stringent safeguards -- in particular, the National Nuclear Security Administration, whose employees tend to be overly close to the nuclear weapons labs that they're charged with overseeing, Brian said.

"It's a club -- it's very insular," and Abraham tried with some success to overcome its insularity, she added. "The next (energy) secretary will have to fill big shoes."

SPOOKS BATTLE NEW BOSS

Former CIA agent -- and Military.com columnist -- Richard Coffman was high on Porter Goss, when the congressman was first tapped to take over the spy agency. Not any more.

"What promised to be a rebirth of a robust, aggressive CIA under Porter Goss’ leadership has quickly turned sour," he writes. "Morale in the Agency’s Operations Directorate, which conducts the nation’s espionage and is on the front lines of the battle against terrorism is said to be at its lowest ebb since the directorship of Stansfield Turner in the late 70’s."

Clandestine veterans believe changes are required and have been clamoring for a return to the basics of espionage unencumbered by excessive bureaucracy, intrusive lawyering and politicized oversight. Many have been looking forward to Porter Goss as the right director at the right time to strengthen human source collection across-the-board, even employing “tough love” to make it happen.

But, turmoil at Langley has stopped promised reforms in their tracks. In an atmosphere of mutual distrust and animosity, Goss has yet to articulate the direction and substance of the moves he has in mind. In any event, his plans have been overshadowed by the lack of credibility and overbearing manner of his assistants.

PAIN RAY GOING AIRBORNE

It was only a matter of time, I guess. First, the Air Force builds a real-life, microwave-like pain ray. Then, it gets a company to strap that real-life, microwave-like pain ray to the back of a jet.

For years, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has been working on a millimeter-wave beam that penetrates a 64th of an inch beneath the skin. That causes the water molecules there to bubble. And that hurts like hell; people tend to run -- fast -- in the other direction. Small wonder, then, that non-lethal weapons experts call this "Active Denial System" the "holy grail of crowd control."

Active Denial been tested on people a bunch of times. A Humvee-mounted prototype is about to start undergoing trials. And now, Active Denial is going airborne.

AFRL handed Palo Alto's Communications & Power Industries a four year, $7 million contract, according to the Hilltop Times -- the in-house paper of Hill Air Force Base.

Dr. Diana Loree, the project officer for Active Denial, said four AFRL directorates are involved in developing this airborne capability: directed energy here; propulsion and vehicles at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; and human effectiveness at Brooks City-Base, Texas.

Experts from directed energy, as the lead directorate, focuses on the systems engineering and radiating system development, she said. Propulsion directorate experts focus on the airborne power generation and conditioning required for the radiating system. Vehicles directorate scientists and engineers put their efforts toward Active Denial's thermal management and aircraft integration issues while human effectiveness experts focus on biological effects research.

STRYKER FIGHT RAGES

With Fallujah largely under U.S. control, the epicenter of the fighting in Iraq has shifted to Mosul, in the north. And returning to action there is one of the most controversial cards in the American military's deck -- the Stryker light armored vehicle.

When the Strykers were first being introduced to the Army, in 2002, they were damned for a variety of sins -- it's armor wasn't thick enough; it couldn't hit targets on the run; it's wheels went flat too easily; and, boy, could it get hot inside.

Now that they've been in use for a while, Stars & Stripes declares that "the naysayers have been converted... The vehicles are almost too good to be true, say those who ride them, fix them or command them."

But doubters still remain. USAR Lt. Mike Sparks has long been one of the Stryker's most vocal critics. And he's still convinced that the vehicle's "air-filled rubber tires" are trouble. Previous personnel carriers, like the Gavin 113s, had tracks, which were a whole lot more durable. Wheels, on the other hand, are awfully succeptible to roadside bombs. "Would you go into combat with your family car?" he asks.

But Staff Sgt. Lee Hodges, with the Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Target Acquisition Squadron of the 14th Cavalry, says not to worry. "I’ve seen Strykers be hit by an [improvised explosive device] and drive home on eight flats," he tells Stars & Stripes.

The controversy continues. Over the weekend, the Defense Department indentified two soldiers, attached to the Stryker brigade, who were killed by a mortar strike in Mosul.

THERE'S MORE: Defense Tech pal CA doesn't see how the Stryker "controversy" and the recent mortar strike in Mosul are lnked.

The individual was killed in his living area, not in a Stryker. Just because he was killed while attached to a Stryker brigade doesn't make their deaths a Stryker controversy.

Not that his death should mean any less, but I think it is irrelevant to the subject of the blog item. Had he been killed by a mortar while in a Stryker then it would be overly appropriate.

CA's right, of course. My bad.