INFLATABLE, UNMANNED HUNTER

In the not-too-distant future, the U.S. Navy could be hunting subs and protecting ships using robotic, inflatable boats. That's the plan, at least, from a team of American and Israeli defense contractors.

The Navy and Coast Guard already use a bunch of rigid-hull inflatable boats to zip across choppy waters and brings SEALs to shore. The services have "high hopes" that unmanned inflatables could handle even more jobs, C4ISR Journal says. Like spotting mines and subs, for example.

The advantage of using an unmanned surface vehicle in these roles, Rear Adm. William Landay III noted, is that it will be able to operate autonomously for an extended period of time – perhaps 24 hours – and at night, when the Navy normally doesn’t do towing [sonar arrays] with helicopters. “We may not even find an enemy submarine [but] it may keep him out of where you want, and in the littorals [coastal waters] that in many cases is just as good as finding him.

United Defense Industries and Haifa-based Rafael Armament Development Authority are trying to convince the Navy that their Protector unmanned surface vehicle is the right robo-boat for the job. The 30 to 35 foot-long Protector can skip across the seas at speeds of up to 40 knots. Day and night cameras, a laser range finder, and a 12.7 mm machine gun all come standard. "A light projector, public address system and a microphone," are optional, according to Defense Daily. The Israeli Navy is already trying one out, a Rafael spokesperson tells DD.

KYRGYZSTAN'S KUNG-FU REVOLUTION

"Many say people power brought down the regime in Kyrgyzstan last week. But Bayaman Erkinbayev, a lawmaker, martial arts champ and one of the Central Asian nation's richest men, says it was his small army of Kung Fu-style fighters," according to AFP.

"When our old men were beaten and thrown out of the regional administration building, my fighters were on the front line. And during the siege in Bishkek, my fighters went in first," Erkinbayev says...

Pupils from Erkinbayev's Alysh martial arts school in Osh were sent to protect demonstrators protesting the contested ballot in the Kara Suu bazaar.

Afterwards demonstrations with the participation of Erkinbayev's trainees spread to the southern cities of Jalal-Abad, Osh, and Batken. They captured government sites, burnt down police stations and blocked key highways in the lead-up to the chaos that deposed Akayev in Bishkek. (via Fortean Times)

GRENADE BOT BLASTS AWAY

Those of you who found the idea of gun-toting robots a little creepy should probably click away right now. Because the Army has just finished testing out a unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, that obliterates its foes with electrically-fired grenades.

The robot is the same modified Talon UGV that's now on its way to Iraq, to watch the back of Stryker armored vehicles on patrol. But instead of carrying a M249 machine gun, like the Iraq-bound robo-grunt, this Talon has been armed by Metal Storm Limited -- the Australian firm famous for its million-round-a-minute gun.

The robot, which recently wrapped up trials at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, only had 16 shots. But they were big ones: 40 mm grenades. And the rounds were loaded four to a barrel, giving the UGV 10 more shots than traditional systems supply. It was enough to waste a variety of mock opponents, "including simulated personnel, an infantry carrier and a bunker," according to Metal Storm. (You can watch video of the bot in action here.) Eventually, the firm thinks it can load the UGV up with as many as 48 grenades at a time.

While Metal Storm seemed pretty psyched about how the Picatinny tests went, there was a bit of bad news for the company. The demonstrations "did not include firings from the Dragonfly DP4X unmanned aerial vehicle as previously planned because of operational restrictions on the range which prevented in-flight live fire trials being possible," Metal Storm sobbed. "Arrangements are currently being made for in-flight test-firings and demonstrations to be held in the next few months."

I'm nervous already.

D.I.Y. DEATH RAY

New, from the maker of the internationally-renowned "Girlfriend Quest" PC game, comes a six-foot tall set of mirrors, designed to reflect the sun's light -- and roast whatever comes in its way.

The Solar Death Ray captures sunlight in 112 mirrors, each 3.5 inches square, and then spits it back onto a single spot five feet, six inches away.

"I estimate that the Solar Death Ray can heat things up to between 500-600 degrees Celsius (930-1100 degrees Fahrenheit) under good conditions," its maker says.

Mr. SDR swears he won't turn his homemade weapon on living things. "I’m not going to burn puppies or goldfish or anything like that." But chocolate bunnies, Hootie and the Blowfish tapes, and "my pants" -- all of them have already been reduced to protoplasmic goo with by the Death Ray's awesome might.

DARPA: TRANSLATE THIS

It's not Kirk and Spock's universal translator. Not quite. But the Pentagon is looking to for researchers to build a software set "with the goal of eliminating the need for linguists and analysts and automatically providing relevant, distilled, actionable information."

Global Autonomous Language Exploitation, or GALE, is a project of -- who else? -- Defense Department mad science division Darpa. And the idea, according to Darpa's call for proposals, is to "develop and apply computer software technologies to absorb, analyze and interpret huge volumes of speech and text in multiple languages."

The result won't necessarily be a "natural language" dialogue between man and interpreting machine. But, if GALE works as planned, it will deliver "consolidated information in easy-to-understand forms to military personnel and monolingual English-speaking analysts in response to direct or implicit requests."

The American military is still struggling to fill its ranks with Arabic speakers, three-and-a-half years after 9/11. Language training for enlisted men and junior officers is minimal. And the technological solutions to the problem -- like the hand-held Phraselator and Interact systems -- really only work for the most monosyllabic of conversations.

What Darpa wants instead are a trio of software tools for soldiers and spooks:

• A transcription engine that produces English transcripts [from foreign speech] with 95% accuracy

• A translation engine producing English text [from foreign prose] with 95% accuracy

• A distillation engine able to fill knowledge bases with key facts and to deliver useful information as proficiently as humans can.

And Darpa's not talking about just translating a couple of newspapers in Baghdad. GALE researchers have to be ready to have their algorithms interpret "all the following types:"

• Broadcast news (radio, television)
• Talk shows (studio, call-in)
• Newswire
• Newsgroups
• Weblogs
• Telephone conversations

The source languages will be English, Chinese and Arabic plus surprise languages to be announced later.

MISGUIDED "MINUTEMEN"

I was in Arizona last week, right on the Mexican border. And let me tell you, a whole bunch of folks are about to make asses of themselves there on Friday.

2,200 federal agents are assigned to keep watch over the 260-mile stretch of border known as the "Tucson Sector," which covers pretty much the entire state, except for Yuma. And those agents do a pretty bang-up job, nabbing about a half-million aliens every year. (Compare that to a big city cop, many of whom only make an arrest every few weeks.)

But there's only so much those 2,200 can do. Hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of people illegally enter the country through the Tucson Sector every year.

So a team of geniuses calling themselves the Minuteman Project have decided that they are going to start policing the border on their own. Starting on April Fool's Day, the Project will disperse an estimated 1,000 volunteers to a slice of the border near Tombstone.

Now, the Minutemen says they'll only be "observing" and "reporting" the movements of illegals. This is "not a call to arms," the group swears. But if you think, in that part of the world, that any organization calling itself a "grassroots effort to bring Americans to the defense of their homeland" is going to be gunless, you need to get off of the peyote. Of course the Minutemen are going to be packing heat.

And so will the smugglers. Since October, 180 Border Patrol agents have been assaulted by the "coyotes" who haul people north. That includes 14 shootings and 20 attempts to run agents over.

Remember, those are attempts on federal agents' lives. Do you think the coyotes will have even the slightest of doubts about pulling the trigger on some self-proclaimed defender of liberty? We all know the answer: hell, no.

But the Minutemen are going to be doing more than just endangering themselves. They're going to be reducing the effectiveness of the Tucson Sector agents, too. Those agents are trained to stop any unknown vehicles sitting on the border line -- which, for the month of April, is going to include a whole bunch of Minutemen. So that will mean less time actually going after illegals. The agents are also trackers, used to picking up fresh tire treads and footprints -- and follow them to coyote-led groups. That's going to be a whole lot harder, with so many Minutemen messing up the trails.

Clearly, these agents, they need help. They're absolutely overwhelmed by the tide of immigrants pouring into this country. Maybe this little bit of political theater will shame DC into hiring a whole lot more agents, and significantly upping the amount spent on border security. If that's the case, then the Minutemen have done something right. But in the meantime, a whole of people are going to get hurt in the process.

THERE'S MORE: "The Homeland Security Department will assign more than 500 additional patrol agents to the porous Arizona border," the AP is reporting. "About 155 agents will be immediately sent to Arizona... More than 370 additional agents -- all new trainees -- will be permanently assigned to the Arizona border throughout the year." Good stuff.

ROBODOC GETS PENTAGON CASH

For decades, telemedicine guru and former MASH surgeon Dr. Richard Satava has been pushing the Defense Department to fund systems for remote and robotically-controlled operating rooms. He's not mentioned in the AP article below. But you can see his fingerprints all over this $12 million Darpa grant to "develop an unmanned 'trauma pod' designed to use robots to perform full scalpel-and-stitch surgeries on wounded soldiers in battlefield conditions."

"The main challenge is how can we get high-quality medical care onto the battlefield as close to the action and as close to the soldiers as possible," said John Bashkin, head of business development at SRI International, a nonprofit laboratory that often handles Defense Department research. "Right now, the resources are pretty limited to what a medic can carry with him."

SRI researchers caution that the project remains at least a decade away from appearing on any battlefields. Surgeons will need to manipulate the robot in real time, using technology that prevents any delays between their commands and the robot's actions. The "trauma pod" has to keep connected wirelessly without giving away its position to the enemy, and it has to be nimble and hardy enough to perform under fire.

Still, some of the initial technology is already being put to use in hospitals, and the goal of the initial $12 million project is relatively modest — researchers hope to show that a surgeon, operating the robot remotely, can stitch together two blood vessels of a pig...

SRI spearheaded the Pentagon's first such endeavor to develop a "telesurgery" system in the 1980s. The resulting robot, dubbed the da Vinci Surgical System, proved to be too bulky and too dependent on too many humans to be used in battle.

But the Food and Drug Administration approved the da Vinci in 2000 for civilian medical use and surgeons now use the $1.3 million machines in about 300 hospitals worldwide to remove cancerous prostates, repair faulty heart valves and other procedures.

Of course, this isn't the only Darpa telesurgery program. Not by a long shot. A bunch of others are covered here.

A few months back, I wrote about an unmanned ambulance experiment that's being funded by the Army. And here is an article I wrote back in '03 about Dr. Satava's efforts to digitally recreate every element of a soldier's body, and embed it all on a chip in the soldier's dog tags.

NAVY'S NEW TARGET: SWEDISH SUB

"The Navy has formally agreed to lease a Swedish submarine and its crew for a year so U.S. nuclear-powered subs... can practice hunting it," the Virginian-Pilot reports.

The Swedish navy will send a Gotland-class sub to San Diego, where it will help [U.S. Fleet Forces Command] train to combat the potential threat of diesel-powered submarines in the hands of rogue nations.

The 200-foot submarine, which displaces 1,490 tons and carries a crew of about 30, will become frequent prey of American sub hunters nearly twice its size. Los Angeles-class fast attack submarines, for example, are 360-feet long, carry a crew of 140 and displace 7,147 tons when submerged.

The U.S. is interested in studying the quietness of the diesel-powered boats, since it no longer has any of its own, Jim Brantley, a spokesman for the Fleet Forces Command, said Wednesday. (thanks to reader JH for the tip)

THE TIMES TAKES ON "FUTURE COMBAT"

Ever since it was just a wee little $92 billion program, Defense Tech has been ranting about the spiraling costs and doe-eyed expectations behind Future Combat Systems, the Army's gargantuan modernization plan. Now that the project -- meant to almost reinvent just about every aspect of warfighting, almost simultaneously -- is moving north of $145 billion, the New York Times is finally starting to take notice.

The Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity.

Army officials said Saturday that the first phase of the program, called Future Combat Systems, could run to $145 billion [click here for details]. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the "technological bridge to the future" would equip 15 brigades of roughly 3,000 soldiers, or about one-third of the force the Army plans to field...

That price tag, larger than past estimates publicly disclosed by the Army, does not include a projected $25 billion for the communications network needed to connect the future forces. Nor does it fully account for Army plans to provide Future Combat weapons and technologies to forces beyond those first 15 brigades.

Now some of the military's advocates in Congress are asking how to pay the bill.

"We're dealing today with a train wreck," Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a March 16 Congressional hearing on the cost and complexity of Future Combat Systems.

"We're left with impossible decisions," said Mr. Weldon, a strong supporter of Pentagon spending. One of those choices, he warned, might cut back Future Combat.

Good idea, Curt. What took you so long?

THERE'S MORE: "But there's another, more serious issue, which the Times' otherwise excellent story doesn't explore," says Slate's Fred Kaplan. "Even if all the technical problems could be solved and the costs brought under control, the Army may be tumbling down the wrong road; Future Combat Systems may not address the true nature and needs of future combat."

AND MORE: Project on Government Oversight piles on, too.

WWII PLAGUE SUB FOUND

St. Patrick's Day was just supposed to be another day of routine training for undersea researchers at the University of Hawaii. But then, they found something extraordinary 870 meters down, off of Barbers Point, Oahu: a mammoth, World War II-era Japanese sub, meant for biological combat.

The submarine is from the I-400 Sensuikan Toku class of subs, the largest built before the nuclear-ballistic-missile submarines of the 1960s. They were 400 feet long and nearly 40 feet high and could carry a crew of 144. The submarines were designed to carry three "fold-up" bombers that could quickly be assembled...

An I-400 and I-401 were captured at sea a week after the Japanese surrendered in 1945. Their mission, which was never completed, reportedly was to use the aircraft to drop rats and insects infected with bubonic plague, cholera, typhus and other diseases on U.S. cities.

When the bacteriological bombs could not be prepared in time, the mission reportedly was changed to bomb the Panama Canal. Both submarines were ordered to sail to Pearl Harbor and were deliberately sunk later, partly because Russian scientists were demanding access to them.

"It is not the first World War II-era 'monster' that the HURL [Hawaii Undersea Research Lab] scientists have found," notes the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. "Last year, off Pearl Harbor, they located the wreck of the gigantic seaplane Marshall Mars, one of the largest aircraft built and used as a transport plane by the U.S. Navy. Two years earlier in the same area, the HURL crew also found the wreckage of a Japanese midget sub that was sunk on Dec. 7, 1941." (via Boing Boing)

BACK FROM TOMBSTONE

Laziness wasn't the reason -- or, at least, wasn't the only reason -- for the paltry posting this week. I was also staying in charming Tombstone, Arizona, on assignment for Wired.

Starting today, blogging should resume its normal pace. If I can get my ass in gear, that is.

COOL GEAR; NOW WHAT?

Getting the gear may have been the easy part. The Army has quickly pushed more than 220 new technologies into the hands of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq -- stuff like bomb-detection bots and handheld translators.

"But much work remains to be done in the equally important second phase — offering spare parts, manuals and other important follow-on services, according to senior officials," National Defense magazine says.

The Army was able to purchase and deploy these items in relatively short time by skirting the traditional procurement bureaucracy and, instead, relying on so-called “rapid fielding” organizations.

Many of these new technologies, however, were sent to war in such a hurry that the Army was unable to arrange the support services usually associated with military systems, such as technical manuals and instructions on how to obtain spare parts...

“Products get fielded by the REF [Rapid Equipping Force],” Brig. Gen. Roger A. Nadeau, commander of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, said. “After a while, soldiers start asking ‘where are the parts?’ Where is the log [logistics] plan? … Collectively, we don’t have a good answer.”

DARPA'S DRONE-KILLER

We're not the only ones with drones. China, Russia, Iran, France -- all sorts of enemies of freedom have unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. All in all, "some 32 nations are developing or manufacturing more than 250
models" of drones, according to the Defense Department's UAV Roadmap. So it's only naturally that someone in the Pentagon would be trying to figure out a way to knock those UAVs out of the sky.

Darpa, the Defense Department's way-out researchers, are looking to spend about $11 million over three years for their drone-killer, dubbed the Peregrine. From Darpa's proposed budget for 2006:

The Peregrine UAV Killer program will develop a small, low-cost, high-endurance UAV, with a high dash speed, capable of destroying most enemy UAVs. Small UAVs with GPS guidance systems have reached such a low cost level that expendable UAV programs are now emerging and GPS capable avionics are available for the hobby market. Current options to counter such a threat, especially at high altitude, involve expensive ground launched anti-air systems or the exposure of manned interceptor aircraft. The Peregrine program will develop and demonstrate a UAV interceptor aircraft that will utilize a dual propulsive power system to provide very high endurance for the loiter and surveillance period, and a very high dash speed for intercept and kill...

Program Plans:
- Define system requirements.
- Develop concept design.
- Demonstrate aircraft performance and kill capability.

MILBLOGGER TRIO

It ain't easy, blogging from the front lines. Keeping a website up isn't exactly the top priority under fire. And what's written often leans towards boosterism -- especially when the brass tends to clamp down on the more unvarnished depictions of military life.

But I've stumbled across a trio of U.S. Army bloggers in Iraq that I think are worth a read. With moving, you-are-there descriptions of military life, pictures from the battlezone, and ruminations on the big questions that war raises, Major K, Thunder6, and Lieutenant C are extremely clickable. And, since all three are from the same batallion, readers get the benefit of three sets of eyes on the same questions and situations. Good stuff.

BIG BOOST FOR PREDATOR FLEET

The U.S. Air Force is looking to expand its fleet of flying drones, big time. Right now, the service has three active squadrons of Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. But that could expand to 15 squadrons of the robotic planes under a $5.7 billion plan just introduced by the Air Force.

In recent years, the Air Force and CIA have used the bulbous-nosed, propeller-driven Predator UAVs to blast insurgents in Iraq, take out Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, and spy on Iran's nuclear facilities. The 144-drone buy would be the Air Force's "largest acquisition of robotic aircraft to date and represents a significant milestone in the evolution of unmanned aerial vehicles," according to the Los Angeles Times.

Predator squadrons are slated to be activated in Texas and Arizona in 2006 and 2007, then New York in 2009, said Capt. Shelley Lai, an Air Force spokeswoman. The bases for additional squadrons will be decided upon later this year, she added.

The new squadrons could support operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other overseas hotspots or be deployed domestically for homeland security missions, Lai said.

Last month, the Air Force scooped $160 million out of its maintenance budget to buy 15 new Predators -- and a load of missiles, to arm the drones already in service.

MORE LOS ALAMOS SHENANIGANS

There's only one reporter in the national mainstream press who's had the attention span to stay focused on the ongoing scandals at Los Alamos National Lab. On Friday, CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson had another remarkable story about the almost laughably corrupt business practices at the world's most important nuclear center.

The story centers around Chuck Montano, one of a group of Los Alamos auditors who were supposed to look over the lab's accounts with outside vendors. What he found: "Vendors could charge whatever they wanted." 10,000 purchases out of 56,000 shouldn't have been allowed. Another 38,000 were questionable. "Vendors routinely overbilled and double-billed -- and yet were paid, no questions asked," Attkisson notes. (And you wonder why lab employee tried to buy camping gear and a Mustang with government credit cards.)

But when Montano and his fellow auditors wrote up an account of the fishy deals, the report was buried. Montano was kept idle without work for nine months, he claims.

Obviously, this burying of whistleblowers has become a habit over at Los Alamos. And Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, seems to be getting pretty tired of it. Attkisson asked Barton how could Los Alamos finally be cleaned up. And Barton answered, "One thing we could do is just shut the entire complex down."

ARMY SNAPS UP JAMMERS

For at least six months, military types have been talking up how great Warlock radio frequency jammers have been at stopping roadside bombs in Iraq -- and how few U.S. troops actually had the gagdets.

But the Army is getting wise. Back in December, they beefed up the $4.7 million Warlock budget by $42 million. Yesterday, Army vice chief of staff Gen. Richard Cody announced that the Army is "buying over 8,000 electronic jammers," according to the AFP.

The jammers are "no silver bullet" against the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, Cody warned. But still, it's a good move; they've helped contribute to a 40 percent drop in IED casualties, the General said. Let's just hope the purchase doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the New York Times highlighted the Warlock shortage on page A1 a few weeks back.

CITY-SNOOP PROGRAM RETURNS?

Back in the summer of 2003, I wrote a little story for the Village Voice on the Pentagon's plan to track everything that moves in a city. Since then, there hasn't been much word from the Defense Department about "Combat Zones that See," or CTS. A planned demonstration at Ft. Belvoir never came about – or was kept very quiet. Last year, Congress moved to yank funds from the program's budget.

But now, CTS may be on the way back, if Tony Tether -- the head of Defense Department far-out research arm Darpa -- has his way. The agency's proposed 2006 budget calls for $20 million over three years for CTS. It's part of an expanded, $340 million push by Darpa to develop technologies for urban battles (see Falluja, Najaf, etc.)

Here's what Tether told the Senate Armed Services committee last week about CTS:

We need a network, or web, of sensors to better map a city and the activities in it, including inside buildings, to sort adversaries and their equipment from civilians and their equipment, including in crowds, and to spot snipers, suicide bombers, or IEDs (improvised explosive devices). We need to watch a great variety of things, activities, and people over a wide area and have great resolution available when we need it. And this is not just a matter of more and better sensors, but just as important, the systems needed to make actionable intelligence out of all the data. Closely related to this are tagging, tracking, and locating (TT&L) systems that help us watch and track a particular person or object of interest. These systems will also help us detect the clandestine production or possession of weapon of mass destruction in overseas urban areas. There was a recent incident in Iraq where one of our UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] spotted some insurgents firing a mortar. Then the insurgents climbed back into their car and drove away. The good news was that the UAV was able to track the car so U.S. helicopters could go after it and destroy it. The bad news was that, at one point, some of the passengers got out. Then we had to decide whether to follow those individuals or the car because we simply did not have enough coverage available. If we’d had other sensors available, we would have had a better chance of getting all of those insurgents.

If we could quickly track-back where a vehicle came from, it would greatly help us deal with suicide car bombers. It is difficult, if not impossible, to deter the bombers themselves, just as you cannot deter a missile that has already been launched. But, one key to deterrence that has been missing is reliable attribution, or a “return address.” If we knew where the car came from, using, for example, RSTA [reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition] systems that allowed us to quickly trace the car carrying the explosives back to the house or shop it came from, we could then attack that place and those people.

CTS is one of a bunch of Darpa urban ops programs that skates the fine line between creepy and cool. The agency would also like $10 million to build robotic, flying spies that weight less than 10 grams and are just two inches across. The "Home Field" program would "develop networked video and LADAR [laser radar] processing technology that rapidly and reliably updates a 3D model of an urban area. [Such an] urbanscape will provide 3D situational awareness with sufficient detail and accuracy to remove the 'home field advantage' enjoyed by opponents." Meanwhile, the "Pre-Conflict Anticipation and Shaping" (PCAS) could help American counterinsurgents predict where conflicts might boil up next.

The project will combine computational social science modeling and simulation, scenario generation, evolutionary programming, planning, and multiplayer gaming. When integrated, these technologies allow combatant commanders and senior decision makers to understand and anticipate the societal/regional indicators that precipitate instability and conflict within an area of responsibility, then mitigate the impact of that instability... The goal of PCAS' more powerful societal/regional models is an integrated perspective encompassing, in a consistent way, all the dimensions of social change.

$127 BILLION DOWN PAYMENT

$127 billion? That's just an ante. A down payment in the biggest, most expensive modernization program in the Army's history: Future Combat Systems, or FCS.

FCS -- the Army's plan to completely overhaul its forces, turning troops into a robot-reliant, network-heavy bunch -- has been slated to cost anywhere from $90 to $127 billion, according to the military.

But on Wednesday, Government Accountability Office eyeshade Paul Francis told the Senate Armed Services Committee said those cost estimates were misleading, at best. The first part of FCS, Francis noted, the one that weighs in at $108 billion, would only cover a third of the Army's troops. How much would it cost to upgrade the rest? Well, given the project's history of delays, switchbacks, poor management, and limp government oversight -- that's anyone's guess, Francis said in his prepared testimony.

Nearly 2 years after program launch and about $4.6 billion invested to date, requirements are not firm and only 1 of over 50 technologies are mature — activities that should have been done before the start of system development and demonstration. If everything goes as planned, the program will attain the level of knowledge in 2008 that it should have had before it started in 2003. But things are not going as planned. Progress in critical areas, such as the network, software, and requirements has been slower than planned. Proceeding with such low levels of knowledge makes it likely that FCS will encounter problems late in development, when they are costly to correct. The relatively immature state of program knowledge at this point provides an insufficient basis for making a good cost estimate.

HITLER'S BOMB: B.S.?

"German historian Rainer Karlsch says in a new book, Hitler’s Bomb, that the Nazis successfully tested tactical nukes. While I haven’t seen his book and I don’t speak German, I’m frankly very skeptical," says Military.com analyst Joe Buff.

Not only does Dr. Karlsch publicly admit that he lacks definitive proof. But long-known facts, and his newly-revealed facts, in my mind just don’t add up to anything like a working nuclear weapon.

One supposed eye witness to the test describes “two huge explosions” on one night in March, 1945. Others describe the same event in terms of just one “long, slim pillar of light.” This pillar swelled at the top so that it gained the appearance of a crown of branches and leaves atop a tree trunk. To me, in modern terms, this does sound like a mushroom cloud. People living nearby said that afterward they experienced nose-bleeds, nausea, fatigue, and headache symptoms. One man who was involved said that authorities asked his building company to cremate hundreds of corpses that were burned and dismembered, and then afterward destroy their own clothes -- he said the bodies were obviously those of concentration camp or forced-labor inmates.

To me this reads a lot more like a disaster at a factory handling toxic chemicals, which might or might not have been intended for use as chemical weapons. Here are nine reasons why:

1. Any large explosion creates a mushroom cloud.

2. Any above-ground nuclear detonation, even a small tactical-yield one, begins with a blinding flash across the entire sky. Vision is especially impaired at night, when most peoples’ pupils are dilated due to the dark. The atomic mushroom cloud only results a few seconds after this initial flash. And in war-time 1945, in the remote area where these tests supposedly took place, between blackouts and chronic power shortages and such, at night it would have been really, really dark. One “eye witness” says they were looking out a window and then saw the mushroom cloud. OK, but it weren’t no nuke.

3. Acute radiation sickness severe enough to cause widespread nose-bleeds would cause other subcutaneous hemorrhaging too -- like bruises all over the body -- and both vomit and diarrhea would be bloody as well. Yet these symptoms are not mentioned, and they would’ve seriously stuck in peoples’ memories if they’d occurred, I think.

4. It’s extremely unlikely, especially the way Nazi weapon scientists worked in general, for them to have conducted two nuclear tests at the same place in one night, as one witness claims. A test early in any country’s nuclear weapons program is an incredibly important event. Huge amounts of data are collected and need to be analyzed before it makes any sense to expend additional fissile metal on another test.

5. The Nazis did use slave labor in many of their industrial and weapons plants. Any victim killed in a series of explosions at a chemical factory would likely have been burned and dismembered -- you don’t need a tactical nuke for that. And recovery-worker clothing would indeed get contaminated by whatever chemicals caused the original disaster, so you’d certainly want to dispose of them once you disposed of the corpses.

6. References in some of the media coverage to a Nazi “dirty bomb” seems muddled up with an actual fission device. Hitler is stated to have been relying on these dirty bombs to repulse the Soviet Army’s advance on the Eastern Front. But it’s well known now, and it would have been understood by German physicists in 1945, that dirty bombs are largely psychological weapons -- and they wouldn’t have dented the psyche of Stalin’s revved-up minions marching on Berlin. The toxic effects of true dirty bombs are much more likely to be cancers years down the road, not immediate and total incapacitation and/or death such as occurred to victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To halt a few million Russkie foot-soldiers on a front across hundreds and hundreds of miles, the idea of using radiological bombs is just delusional -- but then, I admit, toward the end Hitler was completely delusional.

7. The actual supposed A-bomb test is described as having a yield much lower than that of the bombs the U.S. used on Japan. The German test, it’s said, was maybe about a kiloton. But in reality it’s actually a much more difficult engineering problem to cause an atomic blast of “just” one KT instead of 20 KTs. Sure, in theory the smaller yield can be obtained with less fissile fuel, which would seem to make it an easier and quicker thing to do, but again there’s a very big “but.” Achieving super-criticality at all with the amount of uranium or plutonium needed to produce a yield of exactly 1 KT is very, very hard, especially with W.W.II-era technology from any nation. Unless, that is, you willing design the weapon to use 20 KT’s worth of bomb fuel and waste it in an intentionally inefficient blast -- which would make no sense at all, even to a crazy Nazi.

8. Ah, you say, but maybe Hitler was going for 20KT and a bad design made the weapon fizzle, so it only yielded 1 KT. Sorry, that still doesn’t answer the other objections above.

9. Dr. Karlsch relies on analysis of modern soil samples to say that the Germans operated a nuclear reactor near Berlin for “perhaps some days or weeks.” It’s been well known since 1945 that the Nazis were working on what was quaintly called in those days an “atomic pile.” The design was dreadfully flawed and its uranium was nowhere near purified enough even to mere reactor grade -- the pile would never have achieved a sustained critical chain reaction. The flawed design, running at its best sub-critical activity level, would indeed leave behind traces to show up in soil samples and get people excited sixty years later, if they enjoy getting excited by this sort of thing.

The book says that the nukes were never used against the Allies because the Nazis didn’t have enough of them. With this part I agree: not enough, as in having exactly zero.

DARPA'S SUMO IN SPACE

It seemed like kind of joke last October, when the Pentagon wished out loud for a spaceship that would grab enemy satellites, and throw them around -- maybe even out of orbit. But the Defense Department is dead serious, the Arms Control Wonk tells us. $35 million serious.

In its proposed budget for 2006, Pentagon way-out research arm Darpa is asking for 35 large over the next two years for its Spacecraft for the Unmanned Modification of Orbits (SUMO) program.

"SUMO combines detailed stereo photogrammetric imaging with robotic... manipulators to autonomously grapple space objects," the agency says. "SUMO offers the potential for spacecraft salvage, repair, rescue, reposition, and debris removal to extend service life or provide a safe and calculated de-orbit."

Sounds friendly enough -- like a tugboat in space, maybe. Until you stop to think that the SUMO could also grab satellites that don't want to be repositioned or de-orbited. Suddenly, that tugboat starts looking an awful lot like a wrestler's arm, about to toss an opponent out of the ring.

THERE'S MORE: Of course, since this is Darpa we're talking about here, there are a whole smorgasbord of wild-sounding space projects waiting to be funded. Using "x-ray celestial sources to determine the three dimensional position... of orbiting spacecraft," anyone? Or how about space tethers, to "rapidly remediate high energy radiation particles produced by a High Altitude Nuclear Detonation?" A bunch of others are here.

DHS SETTING TERROR THREAT PRIORITIES

In the months after 9/11, the government seemed scared shitless of just about everything. Chemical, biological, dirty-bomb attack – it didn't seem to matter what type of scare was involved. For every threat, the fear dial was cranked up to 11. Even cattle poisoning and hacker break-ins were suddenly treated like potential cataclysms.

Thankfully, that's a trend which seems to be petering out. The Department of Homeland Security is in the process of sketching out plausible attack scenarios, and rating them in terms of seriousness, the New York Times reports. And judging from the preliminary results, DHS seems set on separating out the truly scary (and truly likely) strikes from the Hollywood or tin-hat variety.

The chart which accompanies the Times story is particularly useful in this sorting process. An attack on a chlorine chemical plant could leave 17,500 dead and 100,000 hospitalized. Cyberstrikes on "several parts of the nation's financial infrastructure," on the other hand, would have a total casualty count of zero. A deliberate spread of foot-and-mouth disease to American livestock would have similar results – at least among the human population. If you were Michael Chertoff, the new homeland security chief, where would you spend your resources?

Hopefully, this kind of cost-benefit analysis will also lead to a second look at how we're spending bio-defense dollars. The result of a coordinated, five-city aerosolized anthrax attack – which would take a minor miracle of planning and science for a terrorist group to pull off – could leave 13,000 dead and cause billions of dollars in damages, DHS believes. But a new flu pandemic, emerging from China – a not altogether unlikely possibility – could kill five times that number, put 300,000 is the hospital, and cost up to $160 billion to contain. So preventing naturally-occurring diseases, you'd figure, would take precedence over these deliberately-spread agents, right?

Well, maybe in the future. But for now, as the Times recently noted:

...grants for research on the bacteria that cause anthrax and five other diseases that are rare or nonexistent in the United States have increased fifteenfold since 2001. Over the same period, grants to study [viruses and] bacteria not associated with bioterrorism [think flu –ed. ]… have decreased 27 percent

LASER HUMMER IN IRAQ

The Army’s first and only battlefield laser system is back.

In 2003, the Army sent ZEUS, a Humvee armed with a 10kw solid-state laser, to Afghanistan, to blast mines and other explosives left over from years of war. In the six months ZEUS spent there, the laser-hummer zapped over 200 pieces of unexploded ordnance, according to the Army, "at one point setting a record for ordnance disposal by negating 51 pieces in less than 100 minutes."

Now, ZEUS "is being forward deployed" again, Army Space and Missile Defense Command Lt. Gen. Larry Dodgen tells Defense Daily.

"According to spokesman at Headquarters, Department of the Army, ZEUS is in Iraq as part of a three-vehicle convoy protection concept being evaluated now," DD adds.

ZEUS uses a pair of lasers to sizzle its targets, according to Sparta, Inc., the vehicle's maker. A joystick-controlled green Nd:YAG laser is used to designate the target. One it's locked, an invisible high-power Nd:YAG laser swerves around, to heat the sucker up.

The system uses diesel fuel to create the laser beam, which focuses energy on the outer casing of the target, which heats up until it detonates, [triggering] a less violent explosion than if the explosive was activated, causing less damage to the surrounding area...

“Its power level and utility is new and is not for aerial targets, it’s for unexploded ordnance,” Dodgen said. “It is a system that works, and we certainly would like to use it whenever possible.”

GIANT SPIDERBOT STEPS OUT

No one at the Pentagon has plans to stick G.I.s in giant, six-legged, super-strong robots. Yet. But you've got to figure it's only a matter of time, now that a Finnish subsidiary of John Deere is building the machines for new-jack lumberjacks.

In the works for a decade and a half, the Plustech Oy Walking Machine is supposed to be an eco-friendly, log-hauling monstrosity; its six massive legs spreads the weight of the machine evenly, the company claims, to minimize any impact on the forest soil.

"Depending on the terrain, the ground pressure can be adjusted by changing the machine’s six 'shoes,'" according to Plustech Oy. "When the machine confronts obstacles, it simply steps over them... avoid[ing] significant ground disturbance and minimiz[ing] damage to tree roots.

The company's website doesn't have much detail on the machine. But, in pictures and videos, the spider-like Walker seems to be able to toss around logs and step through the forest with ease. And for a Defense Department keyed up to build walking robots, that would seem like a mighty tempting target.

SPACE SWATTER KEEPS HITTING

For some reason, there have been questions in Defense Department circles about whether or not it's a good idea to fund a "giant, kevlar fly swatter that is supposed to whack satellites out of the orbit."

Luckily, the Arms Control Wonk tells us, the pro-swatter crowd seems to have gained the upper hand. The Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite (KE-ASAT) program is still getting Pentagon cash.

The KE-ASAT has spooked some in U.S. Strategic Command, because of the debris it might generate from a mid-orbit smackdown. "As of mid-2001 three prototypes had been built, and all three remained in storage at a Boeing facility in Anaheim, CA," GlobalSecurity.org notes. Defense Department higher-ups haven't funded the program in a few years.

But the Army and the Missile Defense Agency have continued to slip KE-ASAT a few million annually. And now, the Army's Space and Missile Command is thinking about dropping $15 mil to start flight testing parts of the system. If all works according to plan, a swatter prototype could take off some time in 2007.

ASSAULT RIFLE SPRAYS TUNES

Thank God Congress got rid of that annoying assault weapons ban. Otherwise, how could we enjoy the new MP3 player that fits into the magazine of an AK-47?

The 20 GB, USB-compatable player "can be used on its own or it could be attached to the Kalashnikov machine gun instead of the ordinary magazine," promises the gnomes at AudioBooksForFree.Com. The device's "stainless steel body makes this new player uniquely suitable for outdoors."

Speaking of steel bodies, the gagdet's website is worth a click, if only for the "Triple Kalashnikov Girls," barely dressed "in what we can only imagine is standard Russian military attire," Gimzodo snickers. A mere $600 will get you a copy of the Girls' favorite toy, with 450 audio books preloaded.

TOURNIQUETS, AT LAST, FOR G.I.S

"Under pressure from Congress, the Army has decided to quickly dispatch modern tourniquets to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," the AP reports. "That’s more than two years after military doctors recommended that every soldier carry one."

In an article March 6, The Baltimore Sun described a lack of tourniquets among soldiers in the field and delays in supplying them.

Virginia Stephanakis, a spokeswoman for the Army surgeon general, had no immediate details on the number of tourniquets or a timetable by which they will be sent to U.S. troops...

A committee of military doctors urged in February 2003 that every soldier carry one of the $20 medical devices, a nylon and plastic version of the simple cloth-and-stick device armies have used to stop bleeding for centuries.

But many don’t, and some have bled to death from wounds on which a tourniquet might have been effective, according to more than a dozen military doctors and medical specialists interviewed by The Sun.

The U.S. Central Command, which oversees combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, issued a directive Jan. 6 requiring all soldiers to carry a modern tourniquet.

However, compliance was left up to individual units, and many have not acquired the devices.

Three weeks ago, the Army’s surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, approved a new first-aid kit for soldiers that includes a modern tourniquet and other life-saving equipment.

But the training manual was still being written and the kits were expected to be field tested, a process expected to take months.

Now, Stephanakis said that the tourniquets would be sent without waiting for the field testing of the new first-aid kits.

TOUGHEST. DRONE. EVER.

Maybe there's been a less intimidating guard drone developed by the U.S. military. But I haven't seen it, yet.

The ROBART III is the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center's prototype for a mechanical rent-a-cop replacement -- designed to detect intruders, and pop 'em with a "pneumatically powered six-barrel Gatling-style weapon that fires simulated tranquilizer darts or rubber bullets."

In development since 1992, ROBART III uses "head-mounted sensors, includ[ing] two Polaroid sonar transducers, a Banner near-infrared proximity sensor, an AM Sensors microwave motion detector, and a video surveillance camera" to spot infiltrators. But what happens when the bot finds its foes -- well, I'm guessing ROBART's creators haven't thought that far ahead. Faced with a contraption that looks like a cross between Johnny Five, 2XL, and ROM Spaceknight, only the most timid of trespassers would be scared off by the machine, you'd figure.

Maybe that'll change, when ROBART's new helpers come on line. In a new research thrust, drone-builders at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center are looking to put together "a group of slave robots [that] would follow ROBART III into a building and be deployed at strategic locations to serve as communication relays, rearguard lookouts, expendable point men... preventing an intruder from playing 'hide-and-seek' with ROBART III."

I feel safer already.

HAPPY SUNSHINE WEEK!

It's our most basic right, really, to know what the hell the government is doing with our money. But, in recent years, that right has been under attack, with more and more public information being kept away from ordinary folks.

That's why the Associated Press and others have launched Sunshine Week, a seven-day celebration highlighting the dangers of too much government secrecy -- and the steps people can take to get their data back.

People are getting increasingly active, trying to mine the hidden nuggets that lie inside government archives with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, a new AP study shows. But fewer and fewer of those requests are honored by Washington.

"The locations of stores and restaurants that have received recalled meat, the names of detainees held by the U.S. overseas and details about Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy policy task force are all among the records that the government isn't sharing with the public...

At the CIA, just 12 percent of the FOIA requests processed were granted in total in 2004, down from 44 percent in 1998. The FBI gave people asking for records everything they asked for just 1 percent of the time in 2004, compared to 5 percent in 1998.

That's not just inconvenient for reporter types. It costs the country a bundle. And it actually harms national security, Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) argues. Battling complex terrorist networks requires more sharing of information, not less; just look at how effective data-hoarding was at stopping the Twin Towers attacks.

"Our secrecy system is all about protecting secrecy officers, and has nothing to do with protecting secrets. It's a self-licking ice-cream cone," Rich Haver, Donald Rumsfeld's former special assistant for intelligence, told Defense Tech in 2003. "We're compartmentalizing the shit out of things. It's causing a total meltdown of our intelligence processes."

In response, a group of bipartisan lawmakers has introduced a set of bills designed to strengthen and speed up the FOIA process. "The last time Congress approved major reforms to FOIA was nearly a decade ago," the website of Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) notes. It's time to change the law again.

THERE'S MORE: Here's a set of links to help you file a FOIA request of your own.

MOONIE TIMES HEARTS MISSILE DEFENSE

Were these guys even on the same call? If you read the Moonie-owned Washington Times yesterday, you would have thought everything was just hunky-dory with the missile defense system -- never mind all those tests in which the interceptors couldn't get off of the ground.

U.S. defenses against enemy missiles are progressing toward full deployment and a new sea-based version hit a simulated Scud missile flight during a test last month, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, told reporters that the basic system of interceptor missiles, sensors and tracking devices is working and is a critical national security weapon.

"Overall I'm very optimistic," Gen. Obering said during a telephone conference. "This is a critical capability and I think that people will realize over time that we absolutely need this for our security, and I think we'll look back and say thank goodness that we were able to develop this system when we did and get it into the field."

But now, check out what Defense Daily -- the military-industrial trade e-journal, not exactly regarded as a bastion of left-wing thought -- had to say about Obering's chat:

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) director Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering is disappointed with recent flight test problems in the ground- based midcourse defense arena.

"I'm very disappointed in this last test because of the simplicity of the failure," Obering said in a teleconference yesterday.

"The flight test interceptor aborted as designed," Obering said.

"We had a failure of one of the ground support equipment arms to adequately clear out of the way as it should have" within the silo.

Or how about this, from the Washington Post?

The general in charge of the Pentagon's faltering effort to develop a system for defending the United States against ballistic missile attack said yesterday that he has ordered a thorough review of all ground equipment used in testing and appointed a senior Navy officer to oversee future test preparations.

The moves by Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry A. "Trey" Obering III follow failed attempts in December and February to launch interceptor rockets in tests of the fledgling system. Both failures have been blamed on what defense officials say were minor glitches -- a flawed software code in December and a faulty silo retracting arm in February.

In a conference call with reporters, Obering expressed continued confidence in the system. He said that even without the launch of the rockets, the recent tests scored some successes by demonstrating the system's ability to track target missiles and generate intercept instructions. But he acknowledged frustration at the tendency of simple glitches to foil the tests.

"The hard things about missile defense we are accomplishing," Obering said. "The easy things are what we're having trouble with."

So here's my question: Did the Moonie Times' Bill Gertz actually sit down and think, "Hmmm, let me carry the Administration's water today"? Or is blind acceptance so pre-programmed into the paper's DNA that this kind of cheerleading becomes automatic?

(Thanks to Victoria for the catch.)

THERE'S MORE: On second thought, maybe this all has something to do with little piggies. Or with getting high on the job. Sneak a peek at Dr. A.C. Wonk's take on the missile defense hackery.

SHARK SKIN SHIPS?

"A new environmentally friendly coating based on sharks' skin may soon help the U.S. Navy increase ship speeds while saving fuel," Wired News reports.

The coating... will be applied on the hull of ships below the waterline, where all manner of algae, barnacles and other wee beasties attach themselves, slowing ships and reducing their maneuverability...

Of the $550 million to $600 million the Navy spends annually on powering its ships and submarines, at least $50 million stems directly from drag due to marine growth fouling the vessels' hulls, said Stephen McElvany, an environmental quality program officer in the Office of Naval Research's physical science division.

Existing antifouling paints such as tributyltin, or TBT, kill algae and barnacles when they latch on. TBT is being banned worldwide by... the U.N. body responsible for overseeing shipping-related issues...

To find a way to persuade algae to move on rather than killing them, Anthony Brennan, a University of Florida professor of materials science, and his colleagues turned to nature. Sharks don't have algae or barnacle problems despite being underwater all their lives. Shark skin is made up of tiny rectangular scales topped with even smaller spines or bristles. This makes shark skin rough to the touch. This irregular surface makes it difficult for plant spores to get a good grip and grow into algae or other plants.

"It's like trying to walk across a bed of nails when some nails are longer and unevenly distributed," Brennan said.

Using a combination plastic-and-rubber coating, Brennan replicated a version of shark skin that is made up of billions of tiny raised, diamond-shaped patterns, visible under a microscope. Each "sharklet" diamond measures 15 microns, or 15 thousandths of a millimeter, and contains seven raised ribs that resemble different lengths of raised horizontal bars.

In lab tests, the coating -- provisionally named Gator Sharkote -- reduced by 85 percent the settlement of spores from a very common and detrimental type of algae called Ulva, a green seaweed often seen on the sides of ships.

"The only place the spores land right now is where we have a defect in the pattern," Brennan said.

The Navy has had a wicked case of shark envy, lately. A few months ago, the service started looking into how sailors could use sharks' electric sensors to spot underwater mines.

THERE'S MORE: Over on the Defense Tech forum, there's an impassioned defense of TBT, the old-school ways to clean ships.

(photo credit: Callaghan Fritz-Cope/Pelagic Shark Research Foundation)

LOS ALAMOS: HELP WANTED

It ain't easy, running the world's most important nuclear lab. There are billions of dollars to worry about. Tons of lethally radioactive material. And thousands of scientist employees who think they're smarter than you -- and are probably right. Worst of all, if recent history is any guide, you'll be kicked to the curb before your contract is up, the victim of the latest in a series of seemingly-endless scandals.

So maybe that's why Los Alamos is advertising for top jobs in the Washington Post's classified section. Here's one of the ads, for the Principal Associate Director for Nuclear Weapons Programs.

Responsible for the technical and administrative supervision of approximately 2,500 scientific and administrative personnel, and a budget of about $1 Billion.

Manages the Laboratory nuclear weapons technology program, which includes nuclear weapons design... ensure[s] confidence in the safety, security and reliability of the nations nuclear weapons stockpile.

Serves as the Laboratory focal point for all nuclear weapons activities, including the assessment and certification of the performance of the LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] designed enduring nuclear stockpile. Activities include surveillance, maintenance, and stockpile life extension and limited-scale fabrication of a variety of nuclear and non-nuclear components.

Responsible for the pit manufacturing function, which includes the development and implementation of the capability to fabricate plutonium pits [the hearts of thermonuclear weapons] on all types of pits in the enduring nuclear stockpile...

Must have exceptional management skills on large scale programs approaching a 1Billion/year or more.

Desire a nationally recognized expert in the field of nuclear weapons technology, with a strong background in nuclear physics and nuclear weapons design and evaluation.

If that position doesn't quite match up with your expertise, don't worry. There are others available, including the lab's #2 slot, Deputy Director, and associate directorships for science and technology, international security, and engineering and evaluations.

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