"JITTERS," BROKEN DOWN

The Army's massive modernization project, Future Combat Systems, isn't just one program. It's hundreds of interlocking, interwoven efforts to update armor, uniforms, logistics, medical care, and much, much more. A few key threads hold the whole tapestry together. And one of them is rapidly coming undone.

Without communications -- specifically, without the Joint Tactical Radio System, or "Jitters" -- many of FCS' most innovative efforts just won't work. FCS is an attempt to turn the Army into a force that takes out opponents with ultra-precise attacks and almost Godlike knowledge of the battlefield instead of with overwhelming firepower. To make this nimbly lethal dream come true, the Army needs almost-instant information-sharing, both between soldiers and with FCS' new fleet of robots. It needs Jitters.

Right now, the Army isn't getting what it needs. Jitters is flailing, badly. As we noted the other day, the Army has put one of the program's main contractors, Boeing, on notice that it could cancel one component, or "cluster," of Jitters in a month.

Winds of Change offers today some stellar background on the program -- what Jitters does, the problems it faces, and what might happen next. And it the site's comments section, a Jitters engineer weighs in on how the program got so tangled up. Good stuff.

THERE'S MORE: Meanwhile, Inside Defense reports, the Army is starting to look around for alternatives to Jitters.

The Army's next-gen set of rockets is called the Non-Line of Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS). It's supposed to rely on Jitters' "Cluster Five" to direct its assaults. But, like Boeing's component of the radio system, Cluster Five "has hit its own program snags," says Inside Defense. As a result, the Army is considering the possible use of surrogate systems.

NLOS-LS is made up of three key components: the Precision Attack Munition, a direct-attack missile that can autonomously acquire a target; the Loitering Attack Munition, which is being designed to fly to a target up to 70 km away and loiter above it for up to 30 minutes before striking; and the Container Launch Unit, the box that stores, commands and fires the missiles.

The CLU, which officials call “the heart and soul of the program” because it contains the… information that… will tell the PAM where to go, depends on [Jitters].

“The number one risk to the NLOS-LS program currently is the network,” said Ric Magness, president of NetFires LLC, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon established to build NLOS-LS.

NLOS-LS is supposed to rely on a future software programmable radio called the Joint Tactical Radio System’s Cluster Five, but that program has hit its own program snags. As a result, the Army is considering the possible use of a surrogate for the PAM and the CLU.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, JTRS -- designed to transmit voice, video and data -- was put on a system development and demonstration path with immature technologies and few well-defined requirements. The program faces technical challenges because of its size, weight, power and data processing requirements. Its early development was delayed because of a contracting dispute.

“Consequently, the report said, "the Cluster 5 radios are not likely to be available" for the initial roll-out of FCS." And that includes the new rocket system.

AND MORE: Winds' sister site, Defense Industry Daily, is tracking the criminal investigation into the disfunctional search and rescue radios L-3 Communications has built for the Army.

MASLOW, COVEY VS. TERROR

How do you stop the spread of terror? Blowing stuff up in Fallujah won't help much, says one Defense Department intelligence analyst, over at Kris Alexander's blog. Instead, you've got to focus on Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- especially the parts about "belonginess" and "self-actualization." And adopt Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The craziest part about the plan? It isn't as as crazy -- or as touchy-feely -- as it sounds at first. Give it a read.

THERE'S MORE: Defense Tech Dad Tom Shachtman says Maslow doesn't really apply to would-be Muslim terrorists.

Maslow's frame of reference is western, Judaeo-Christian tradition, and his hierarchy of needs, wonderful and applicable to us though I think it is, falls apart when used as a criterion for judging the motivations of people who are not in those traditions. Highly religious, highly-traditional cultures, and non-Western cultures, place greater emphasis on the third level of needs than on anything having to do with individual aspirations. So holding out the carrot to a Muslim mother that her son will become a well-trained professional in a non-lethal field does not have the same appeal as it does to a Cincinnati soccer mom.

RUMMY + SPIDEY

You'd figure that soldiers might be a little confused about whether Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld was really on their side, after he started holding their paychecks hostage. But Rummy knows just how to block out those nasty thoughts: by trotting out Spiderman and his costumed pals.

"Join Secretary Rumsfeld in welcoming Marvel Comics and special guests Spiderman and Captain America as they distribute the new Special Limited Edition of Marvel's Salute to Our Troops Comic Book," reads the announcement over at AmericaSupportsYou.mil. "Thursday 1:00 - 2:30 pm. Pentagon Main Concourse."

Blast! Just missed it! Well, I'm sure there will be other chances, now that Marvel has "recently joined the Department of Defense's 'America Supports You' team," and put all those concerns to rest, once and for all.

(snapshot via Wonkette)

GOOGLESAT MANIA CONTINUES

It's been a week since Defense Tech reader DS dug through Google's archives of satellite pictures, and found a lonely airstrip out by Nevada's legendary Area 51. Apparently, you guys can't get enough of the pics. The tide of, um, interesting Googlesat images keeps pouring into Defense Tech HQ.

In honor of Passover, perhaps, reader DC uncovers this Hebraically-themed shape, carved out of the desert near Groom Lake. "It's a bombing target, set up to simulate a SAM [surface-to-air missile] or antiaircraft berm," says DS, examing U.S. Geological Survey diagrams. Strangely, the targets are often labelled with people's names. This one's called "David."

JC sends in this link, from near Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Zoom on the top right of the image, northwest of the base, and you'll find the "Test Track where they launch 'things' at Mach 10," JC claims. A little further over, he notices this cryptic black bar.

Taking a second look at one of the images from the last Googlesat onslaught, DS notices that the picture looks a whole lot like this overhead view of Nellis Air Force Base -- the headuqarters for the Predator robotic squadrons. DS even finds a close-up, showing planes on the runway.

"Are we ready for a Googlesat contest?" pants JA. "How about a search for an aircraft in flight?"

THERE'S MORE: Game over! Reader NW reminds us that Slashdotters found some mid-air plane pictures a couple of weeks back, including this one, where you can pan left, and watch the plane gain altitude.

AND MORE: This Googlesat picture of a plane in flight "is over my previous residence in Richardson, Texas," says McZ.

ARMY PAYROLL = POLITICAL FOOTBALL

If we're going to send hundreds of thousands of young men and women into harm's way, the least we could do is not screw with their paychecks.

Common sense – maybe. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld presumably disagrees. Back in December, regular Defense Tech readers will recall, Rummy's braintrust decided to dip into the Army's payroll into order to fund truck armor and other wartime expenses. Congress would make up the difference later on, they figured, with a second, emergency "supplemental" funding bill. The fact that the payroll accounts would dry up in May didn't seem to factor into the Pentagon calculus -- except maybe as a lever to force Congress into action.

But as senators loaded the $80 billion supplemental with pet projects -- $23 million for a baseball stadium in DC, $32 million for forest roads in Cali -- and the Pentagon added billions in long-term programs to the supposedly last-minute funding measure, its progress slowed.

So now, Rummy is getting all weepy, complaining to Congress that they're keeping soldiers from getting paid.

"Our folks out there need these funds," he moped in handwritten notes to Capitol Hill chieftains, obtained by CNN.

The Army has slowed its spending, so it can continue operations in Afghanistan and Iraq through early May when the funds are due to run out, Rumsfeld said...

Without [the supplemental's] passage, Rumsfeld warned he would have to move funds which would "seriously disrupt other activities," and he might have to invoke the "Feed and Forage Act" to keep the deployed troops operating.

The Feed and Forage Act allows the military departments to incur obligations in excess of available appropriations for clothing, subsistence, fuel, quarters, transportation and medical supplies, according to Pentagon officials.

I suppose it's nice that Rumsfeld cares enough about our soldiers to invoke emergency measures in order to clothe and feed 'em. But wouldn't it have been better not to sneak off with their paychecks in the first place?

THERE'S MORE: "Who in their right mind would vote to stop the production of armored Humvees?" asks Minstrel Boy. "The odds are 39% that it was your senator. That's right. "A simple measure [an ammendment to the supplemental] to keep the production of armored humvees at two shift capacity for a couple of extra months this summer passed by only a 22 vote margin; 61 to 39 in the Senate [last] week."

EUROPE'S KILLER DRONES

I'm expecting fashionably-sleek little wings and long, tapered missiles. The Italians are about to start testing a prototype killer drone of their own.

Rome-based Alenia Aeronautica is aiming "to fly its new Sky-X unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) technology demonstrator by the end of May," according to C4ISR Journal. "The 7-meter-long demonstrator — which has a wingspan of 6 meters, takeoff weight of 1,100 kilograms and maximum speed of 800 kilometers per hour — will undergo flight trials at Sweden’s Vidsel military test range."

The $43 million + drone is a technology demonstrator, mostly -- a test-bed to see how many decisions the plane can make on its own in midair.

Presumably, Sky-X's new-found smarts will be used to educate the larger, $360 million, pan-European UCAV that's in the works. France's Dassault Aviation is teaming up with Alenia, Saab, and a whole mess of other Continental defense contractors to build the Neuron killer drone.

In early sketches, the Neuron looks a whole lot like the X-47 UCAV that Northrop is developing for the U.S. Navy. But the Neuron might wind up being way meaner than its American counterpart. According this website -- and take this unconfirmed report with a giant rucksack full of salt -- "the aircraft may have... the eventual ability to launch nuclear warheads."

Robots with nukes? Tres mal, if you ask me. A prototype Neuron is supposed to take off from European runways starting in 2009.

COSTS M.I.A. FOR RADIO EFFORT

It's been nearly three years since Boeing won an Army contract to develop the next generation of military radios. But neither the company nor its government partners have any idea how many billions it's going to cost, in the end, to build the Joint Tactical Radio System -- "Jitters" for short. (I've seen estimates as low as $5 billion, and as high as $15 billion. That's a major spread.)

On Monday, the Army told Boeing in a letter than the mega-corporation had 30 days to give a good reason do to some 'splaining about why they let Jitters get so screwed up. The note also gave outsiders a peek into just how wrong Jitters has gone.

"It is impossible to predict with any confidence what the overall program will cost or the associated schedule," Defense Daily quotes the letter as saying. "Further, the government has not seen sufficient evidence of the contractor teams’ understanding of the scale of integration required for [Jitters' first phase] to ultimately achieve the program requirements. Nor has the industry team displayed sufficient ability to estimate a cost and schedule baseline and rigorously manage to that baseline."

As noted earlier, Jitters is not some minor experiment. It's a cornerstone to the Army's modernization plans. Without it, soldiers are stuck using a jury-rigged collection of radios to talk. Figuring out how much the damn things are going to cost seems like a most basic of first steps. Three years into the program, it shouldn't be that hard to take.

GITMO GOES GREEN

Happy belated Earth Day, enemy combatants! You may be staying here at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. And lawyers might be a bit tricky to come by. But at least we won't be burning up a whole lot of oil to keep the lights on when we force you to stay awake! Nope, now we've got four brand-spanking-new, 275-foot tall wind turbines supplying the power around here, Defense Industry Daily says.

Together, the four turbines will generate 3,800 kw [kilowatts], and in years of typical weather the wind turbines will produce almost 8 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. They will reduce the consumption of 650,000 gallons of diesel fuel, reduce air pollution by 26 tons of sulfur dioxide and 15 tons of nitrous oxide, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 13 million pounds each year.

The new wind turbines will provide as much as 25% of the base's power generation during the high-wind months of late summer, and are expected to save taxpayers $1.2 million in annual energy costs.

Sweet!

ARMY READY TO UNPLUG RADIO PROJECT

Boeing has a whole lot more to worry about today than its weak earnings this quarter. Another giant Boeing defense contract is in deep, deep trouble.

First, the company came under fire for its shady, $23.5 billion deal to lease tankers to the Air Force -- and fleece $5.6 billion from taxpayers. Then, projected costs for the its hulking Army modernization effort, Future Combat Systems, grew from $92 billion to a possible $450 billion (all while operating under some quirky purchasing rules that kept government auditors from getting too nosy).

Now, Inside Defense reports, "the Army has put Boeing on notice that within 30 days, the government could terminate" the company's $15 billion contract to replace 750,000 old-school radios with software-based models.

The Army stopped work on the Joint Tactical Radio System ("Jitters") back in January -- partly because of technical screw-ups, partly because of trouble getting the National Security Agency to sign off on the encryption algorithms.

"The government is also concerned that the contractor won't be able to produce a radio that meets the Army's requirements for processing, heat dispersion, size, weight and power. In addition, the software remains immature, and the contractor lacks proper controls," Inside Defense says.

For all these reasons, Boeing now has 30 days to come up with a reason why the Army should not pull the plug on the Jitters contract.

If that happens, it won't just be a couple of Boeing execs who suffer the consequences. Soldiers today need a backpack full of radios to talk to their commanders and comrades. Jitters was supposed to be the way to reduce that load, and get a single communication system for G.I.s, marines, sailors, and airmen. But thanks to another blown defense contract, it looks like they're still going to be forced to carry that burden.

THERE'S MORE: The Washington Post's take is here.

TROUBLE FOR JOINT FIGHTER

Bad news for an already battered Joint Strike Fighter program: the New York Times is starting to throw punches, too.

The Joint Strike Fighter is [supposed] to be a jet fighter for all people and all places. For the Air Force, it will land on runways. A version for the Navy will be able to land on aircraft carriers. And the one for the Marines will land vertically to drop into global hot spots... Eight nations [are] joining with the United States to build it.

But now soaring ambitions are confronting hard realities. What was started five years ago as a streamlined way to do business appears to be going the way of most other Pentagon weapon programs: over budget, behind schedule and with big cuts in the number to be produced...In 2002, the Pentagon estimated the entire program would cost $192.5 billion. In the most recent Selected Acquisition Report, an internal semiannual report by the Pentagon on the costs of major weapon systems, that number had risen to $256.6 billion...

On paper, all the money is being poured into building a craft that would be the Chevrolet of the skies - affordable, dependable and ready to be sold in vast numbers. It is to replace the workhorse F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet, perhaps the most successful in aviation history...

[But] Tough design issues relating to the [replacement's] excessive weight have caused the program to fall two years behind schedule. Some of the international partners are becoming restless and have hinted they may not ultimately buy the plane. And a report last month, from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that the program was so complicated as to be "unexecutable."

BUSINESS = WAR, BUT NOT "WWIV"

We don't do much military strategy around here at Defense Tech. I don't think I'm smart enough for it, frankly.

But guys like John Robb and Thomas P.M. Barnett, they're different. Both of them have brains bigger than watermelons in July. And they both have had fascinating posts in the last week on the changing nature of war.

"Is business war?" Robb asks, over on his Global Guerillas blog. "It is in the world of post-industrial, post-state conflict."

Case in point: Equipment Express CEO Jeffrey Ake, who was taken hostage in Iraq earlier this month.

CEO kidnapping isn't new. It is common practice in Brazil, Mexico, etc. The difference in Iraq is the motive. In Iraq, it isn't purely financial gain. It is being used as a way to unravel the fledgling Iraqi government.

Here's why. America's second largest ally in Iraq isn't the UK. Not even close. Corporations like Halliburton provide almost as many trigger pullers and engineers as the US Army. They are the battalions of foot soldiers in Thomas Barnett's sys-admin force -- connecting Iraq to the US and the world.

This role converts CEOs into generals/colonels in the US globalization machine... They are now legitimate and highly prized targets.

That's because the CEO is so central -- too central, in fact -- to his company's success. It makes him "a single point of failure for the entire corporate organism," Robb says. With comapnies so important these days to the American war effort, this centrality makes CEOs "better targets than government or military officials."

Barnett, on the other hand, is focusing on what people are calling this struggle with Islamic extremism. Since 9/11, some administration officials – and their tag-along reporters – have are gotten used to calling this fight "World War IV" (the Cold War was III). Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map, says that's dead wrong. Click here to find out why.

The WWIV crowd wants to use this notion to rally the nation, to make it the defining cause of the next "greatest generation." In reality, the struggle has little to do with America, which may have started the current iteration of globalization… This struggle is currently about how Islam adapts itself to globalization. America is a distant "devil" in this fundamentally intra-civilizational process, a convenient scapegoat for past failures and current deficiencies, but nothing more. Trying to make this all about us is the height of historical arrogance, and a fundamental misreading of history. Globalization comes with rules, not a ruler. America plays globalization's bodyguard, but hardly its sole defender. Yes, 9/11 was the prompt for us to step up and assume our rightful strategic role, but let's argue this role rationally, without invoking any war clause that the unscrupulous will inevitably use to shout down opponents and their criticisms of current policy. There is no with-us-or-against-us dynamic at work here, but rather a with globalization-or-against-it choice that America makes for no nation, no culture, no individual.

Worse still, Barnett says, is that WWIV "is a self-serving concept that encourages us to rationalize failure."

All's fair in love and war, or so we are told. But nothing could be further from the truth, especially in this struggle, which will involve elements of warfare but hardly be dominated by them. Since warfare will be but a means and never the sole determinant of our achievement of ends, how we wage war will be incredibly important. It has to be contextualized within the larger framework of rule-set extension, meaning we fight and kill and die not just by example but for example. Demonstration of values means everything in this conflict, and so the rationale that some failure can be excused simply because "we're at war—damnit!" is wrong—very wrong.

We don't wage warfare simply to deny our enemies their desired future (although that is an outcome we seek), but rather to invite [other] societies to join our inevitable, shared future. Globalization will win out in the end, because connectivity trumps disconnectedness, and if we have confidence in that outcome, then we must temper our desire for short-term successes with a sense of playing out history's clock and understanding that if we cannot look our opponents in the eye upon any conflict's resolution, our victories will seem hollow indeed. There will be no globalization at the barrel of a gun, but rather at the acceptance of legitimate rule sets to which we likewise must submit in both wartime and peace. Abu Ghraib was wrong, as is Guantanamo, as is rendering terrorist suspects to Gap states which use torture. "WWIV" is easily distorted to excuse all these failures of judgment and action, and for that reason alone it does us far more harm than good.

RFID PASSPORT PLAN FIZZLING?

The State Department may be backing off a bit from its dumb-ass plan to embed radio frequency ID chips in passports, according to Wired News sleuth Kim Zetter.

Instead of freely broadcasting to the world the passport-holder's personal information, the State Department is mulling the idea of requiring the "RFID reader to provide a key or password before it could read data embedded on a... passport's chip. It would also encrypt data as it's transmitted from the chip to a reader so that no one could read the data if they intercepted it in transit."

Pretty Good Privacy creator Phil Zimmerman thinks the plan can "end the threat of skimming and eavesdropping" on the passports by potential evil-doers and identity thieves.

But anti-RFID jihadist Bill Scannell notes that the chips would still contain a code that says the passport belongs to an American. "And for a lot of bad guys," he adds, "that would be enough."

THERE'S MORE: Ryan Singel has the scoop on international reactions to the E-passports -- and what the government may be hiding about its RFID tests.

AND MORE: Awww, yeah. "Responding to fears raised by privacy advocates that new electronic passports might be vulnerable to high-tech snooping, the State Department intends to modify the design so that an embedded radio chip holding a digitized photograph and biographical information is more secure," the Times reports.

MORE GOOGLESAT FUN

Defense Tech reader DS got himself a shout-out in Slate last week, after finding an airstrip out by Nevada's infamous Area 51 in Google's database of satellite pictures. So reader McZ decided to raise the stakes, and sent in to Defense Tech HQ a whole heap of "airfields and strange structures" he discovered in the Googlesat archives.

"All these locations are generally in the same reservation as Groom Lake/Area 51," says JA, who, along with DS, was nice enough to take a gander at the pics for me. "Given that this was the location for a lot of the testing for the F117s and various other black craft, it makes sense to have local targets -- keeps you from having to fly over unsecure ground. But the lack of an identifiable golf course is highly suspicious for a supposed USAF facility."

Anyway, here are a half-dozen of the locations, and what DS and JA had to say about 'em:

latitude 37.363237, longitude -116.827273
DS: Appears to be the same as my airstrip...a target for aerial bombing.
JA: Yep, an airstrip in the middle of nowhere, a target or training site of some other sort.

37.705925, -116.659646
JA: It has the feel of a target about it. But there's a lack of infrastructure around. It just occurred to me to wonder whether any of this apparent plethora of target runways might be set up to resemble certain 'airfields of interest' in other parts of the world. As landmarks they're pretty hard to hide.
DS: Probably not a place you'd want to visit any time soon, since the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] sketch says in big letters "RADIOACTIVE AREA."

37.586145, -116.915330
JA: Definitely the recipient of numerous bombings.
DS: I think we're seeing here why our Air Force is so good at bombing the crap out of the enemy.

37.421686, -116.822768
DS: I'd have to say that this is definitely a bombing target. You can see the blast marks all around the strip.
JA: Target, decoy, or simulation. Large circle appears to have been done over top of earlier scrapings, possibly done for different purpose.

37.485010, -116.228459
DS: It's a strange circular structure -- a possible target range?
JA: It's a location directly north of the strip that got all this started would indicate a target or some other form of training site. There appear to be a couple of towers pointing NNW from the center of the thing. There's a couple of reasons to create a large bull's-eye. A seismographic test facility, perhaps?

37.628036, -116.848060 (pictured above)
DS: Five circles inside of a triangle. It looks fake. But it shows up on other images and has road to it. It has to be an ultra secret homing symbol to assist E.T. with landing...Ok, just kidding...it's a bombing target.
JA: Sand, Cat D9, Bored Airman, Time, some assembly required. It could possibly be another navigational target, but just how many of those do you need in a 10 square mile area? Yanking the former Soviet Union's intel guys' chains? Yanking the Roswell bunch's chain?

RUSSIA'S ROCKET DRONE

One of the nastier weapons in the Russian arsenal is getting an unmanned spotter. According to C4ISR Journal, the Smerch multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) can now be stuffed with a drone that spots a target 90 kilometers away in just four minutes.

The 92-pound unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, is fired in one of the Smerch's 300 mm rockets. Once it gets to its target, it can loiter for about a half-hour at an altitude of 600 to 1800 feet.

The UAV carries a TV camera and sensors that transmit imagery and coordinates with the MLRS, which in turn identifies a more precise target location.

Trials of the UAV have shown that it reduces by 25 percent the number of times rockets need to be fired to hit a target. “It is a precedent,” said Sergei Malevsky, with Smerch-maker Splav State Research and Production Association. “You can also have three in one: reconnaissance, strike and control...”

Malevsky lamented that due to financial constraints, it will be hard to market the product to the Russian armed forces.

“The most likely clients would be the countries that already operate Smerch,” said Marat Kenzhetayev, an expert with the Center for Arms Control here.

In service since 1987, Smerch was delivered to Algeria in 1999 and Kuwait in the mid-1990s.

NORTHROP WANTS LOS ALAMOS CASH

A second giant defense contractor is getting into the race to run the world's leading nuclear lab.

In a press release that just landed in my in-box, Northrop Grumman has announced that it will "leverage its expertise in advanced technology and large-scale program management to bid on the contract to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory."

Two weeks ago, Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense contractor, made a similar announcement. But there are key differences between the two firms. Lockheed already has a bunch of experience running this kind of research center. The company has been operating Sandia National Laboratories for years -- and plucked Sandia chief Paul Robinson to head up its Los Alamos bid. Northrop says it is "assembling a world-class team of partners from the academic and business communities who offer particular expertise in areas such as scientific research." But it doesn't have the same track record as Lockheed.

Still, a bid from another defense industry heavyweight can't be good news for the University of California (UC), which has run Los Alamos for the Energy Department since the Oppenheimer era. Not long ago, it looked like UC would be the only bidder on the $2.2 billion per year contract -- despite a decade-long series of scandals at the lab. But the Energy Department upped the Los Alamos management fee by 500 percent. Companies can now turn a nice $73 million profit from running the lab. And after 60 years of having the waters to themselves, UC suddenly finds itself surrounded by sharks.

SNOOP PROGRAM RETURNS

Everyone at Defense Tech HQ did a little hat dance after we heard about the demise of MATRIX, the far-flung, state-run, terrorist-profiling database. But it looks like we danced too soon.

Officials in Florida -- who helped run the original data-mining effort -- have put out a call for information for MATRIX II, Defense Tech pal Ryan Singel reports in today's Wired News. And the sequel looks even more invasive than the original Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.

That system "allowed law enforcement to search a centralized database populated with records collected by states -- including criminal history, driver's license photos, property deeds and fishing licenses -- and billions of commercial data records," Ryan writes. To that, MATRIX II's architects would like to see insurance and financial information added.

That's a giant red flag, Ryan notes.

Though scores of companies sell data-mining and searching technology, only ChoicePoint, currently under media and government scrutiny for allowing identity thieves to harvest hundreds of thousands of records on Americans, has search technology and centralized insurance claim information.

Supposedly, Florida officials need all this information to fight terror. But of the 1,866,202 original MATRIX searches between July 2003 and April 2005, "less than 3 percent were related to terrorism investigations," Ryan says.

Kinda makes you wonder what they'll do if MATRIX II ever gets off the ground.

GPS JUMPERS

He spent way, waytoo much time watching an awful, sports-themed porno called Blowin' the Whistle. But my college housemate Chris will be forever rad in my book. Because he would jump out of planes at 35,000 feet or higher -- braving sub-zero temperatures, sucking on oxygen tanks, free falling for minutes at a time. And then, when he'd finally splash down, he'd go rescue sailors and astronauts lost at sea.

All that was brutal, of course. But there was an equally large danger looming – that he'd miss his target entirely. You see, guys like Chris, doing HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) and HAHO (High Altitude High Opening) jumps, have to leap out of their planes during fog and rain and woolly-thick cloud cover. All of which makes it awfully tough to stick a target.

A new set of gadgets being developed at the Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center should help the Chrises of the world. The Military Free Fall Navigation System connects GPS guidance controls to a helmet heads-up display – "a tiny TV-like display mounted to one side of [a] goggle," Natick says. All of that is then plugged in to a PDA-based mission planner, which can recalculate drop zones and redirect parachutes in the sky, based on wind speed and direction. Natick hopes to field a prototype by 2006.

THERE'S MORE: The navigation system for jumpers runs off of many of the same technologies being used to make precision cargo airdrops. Defense Tech previewed that system – called, no joke, the "Sherpa" – here.

MISSILE MEN NEED WORK

What's with General Lance Lord looking for "alternative uses" for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles? Has "the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War have actually increased the importance of our Minuteman III ICBM," as he says? Or is the general just looking for something to keep his 9,000 misileers busy? The answer from Slate's Fred Kaplan: # 2.

THERE'S MORE: While Gen. Lord tries to keep his current crop of missile men engaged, the Pentagon is developing a next generation of hypersonic, intercontinental missiles. Here's what I wrote about project Falcon ("Force Application and Launch from the CONtinental United States") back in '03.

AREA 51'S HIDDEN AIRSTRIP?

By now, most of you have probably heard the news that Google has added satellite pictures to their maps. And that those eyes in the sky have taken some pretty amazing pictures -- an erupting volcano, a Baghdad firefight, a Russian sub trapped in ice.

Defense Tech reader DS was rifling through Google's satellite database the other day, and found what he says is "an unknown facility" near the infamous Groom Lake military complex -- the place called "Area 51" by tin-foil hatters worldwide.

DS' discovery, at latitude 37.399263 and longitude -116.223850…

is an isolated airstrip with a road connecting it to what appears to be an underground facility of some sort. I pulled up the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] sketches on the area, and it shows no identifying information, however it does reveal what appears to be a tunnel system connecting the various buildings in the underground complex... If you or someone in your circle can shed some light on what this is, it would be interesting I'm sure.

THERE'S MORE: Here's a guy who claims to have Googled his way into pictures of Area 51 itself (via Blogs of War).

SEARCHMILITARY.COM

The overlords at Military.com has come up with another cool app -- a Google-powered search that lets you "find everything military." That means hunting for guys in your old unit, combing through .mil websites, and digging for post-service jobs just got a whole bunch easier. End of plug.

REMOTE CONTROL WACK-A-MOLE

I've been meaning to write for weeks about the Army's new, remotely-operated mine system. Defense Tech pal (and Project on Government Oversight investigator) Nick Schwellenbach finally decided to save me the trouble. Here's his rundown...

Using laptops, US soldiers will soon be able to remotely whack enemies approaching their bases with radio-controlled mines, according to the AP on Monday [via Schneier on Security].

Sound familiar? It should. Iraqi insurgents have been using a similar tactic with improvised explosive devices that are activated with garage dooropeners.

Human Rights Watch has pooh-poohed the system, called 'Matrix' (not to be confused with the movie or the multi-state data-mining exchange), an off-shoot of the 'Spider' smart mine program. "[W]e're putting a 19-year-old soldier in the position of pushing a button when a blip shows up on a computer screen,'" said HRW's senior researcher Mark Hiznay. [Doesn't the Army have 19 year-olds pulling triggers all the time? – ed.]

Bruce Schneier doesn't think this is a bad thing, "With conventional landmines, the man is out of the loop as soon as he lays the mine. Even a 19-year-old seeing a blip on a computer screen is better than a completely automatic system."

Yet, two problems stick out. Could accidental radio interference or clever insurgents trigger the mines? And it might be a bit of a "brain teaser" figuring out which mine to trigger if, say, "you've got 500 of these mines out there [and] the clock's ticking," according to John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.

-- Nick Schwellenbach

THERE'S MORE: "Can't get enough of mines?" Nick asks. "Check out Defense Tech's coverage of mines that move and communicate with each other to inflict 'maximum harm' and on temporary mines that stop working within 'hours or days' to reduce their long-term danger.

FAB FIVE

For some reason -- probably just plain sloth -- I never seem to get around to linking to these top-notch blogs. That'll change, starting now. Say hello to Airborne Combat Engineer, Murdoc Online, Armchair Generalist, Winds of Change, and the wickedly-funny Ace of Spades. Interesting reads, all. I don't agree with everything these folks say. But I sure do like how they say it.

STOP! OR MY MONKEY WILL SHOOT!

"Can you imagine having your house searched and the cop who walks in with the Kevlar vest using the two-way radio is a monkey?" asks TalkLeft.

Officer Sean Truelove is spearheading the [Mesa Police] department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations...

Weighing only 3 to 8 pounds with tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills, Truelove said it could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command. Dressed in a Kevlar vest, video camera and two-way radio, the small monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go.

It has been a little over a year since Truelove filed a grant proposal with the U.S. Department of Defense under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and he is still waiting for word.

BLOG BEG: STRYKERS

The fine folks at the Project on Government Oversight want to hear from soldiers who've served in the controversial Stryker armored vehicle. Give 'em a shout at defense@pogo.org.

COMMANDO-HIDING CREAM

"The growing use of inexpensive, and commercially available, thermal cameras (that can see at night by detecting body or engine heat), has created more risk for commandos… who typically operate at night, and use stealth," says StrategyPage.

A Greek company, Intermat, has jumped in with clothing, and even a face cream, that makes thermal cameras much less effective. In fact, anyone wearing clothing made from the Intermat material, and wearing the anti-thermal cream, is barely visible to a thermal camera, and would probably be missed by guards glancing at a bunch of monitors showing what thermal cameras outside are scanning. This can work both ways, giving terrorists an edge, but Intermat is a military supplier, and sells only to legitimate military customers. So, for the moment, the troops retain the edge.

RAPTOR READY FOR WAR -- MAYBE

The controversial F/A-22 "Raptor" stealth fighter "is months away from being declared war-ready, but the Pentagon is still trying to decide where it fits in its vision of future warfare," observes the Washington Post. (In a related video, a Raptor squadron commander says his group will be ready to fight in December of '05.)

The Bush administration has proposed cutting $10 billion from the program over the next five years, leaving enough to buy fewer than half the 381 planes the Air Force says it needs. And the plane will have to compete, in an age of budget deficits, with plans to refurbish the Army and fund an even more expensive fighter program, the Joint Strike Fighter, which is still years from delivery.

How many Raptors the Pentagon buys -- no one expects the program to be killed -- is part of a debate over what kind of wars the nation's leaders should fear most: a large-scale battle with another industrial power, where the Raptor could dominate, or skirmishes in rogue states such as Iran or Syria, where ground forces would lead. (via Sploid)

FUTURE NAVY SINKING?

"The Navy's new destroyer, the DD(X), is becoming so expensive that it may end up destroying itself," the Times' defense tech reporter, Tim Weiner, writes today. "The Navy once wanted 24 of them. Now it thinks it can afford 5 - if that."

The price of the Navy's new ships, driven upward by old-school politics and the rusty machinery of American shipbuilding, may scuttle the Pentagon's plans for a 21st-century armada of high-technology aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines.

Shipbuilding costs "have spiraled out of control," the Navy's top admiral, Vern Clark, told Congress last week, rising so high that "we can't build the Navy that we believe that we need in the 21st century."

The first two DD(X)'s are now supposed to total $6.3 billion, according to confidential budget documents, up $1.5 billion. A new aircraft carrier, the CVN-21, is estimated at $13.7 billion, up $2 billion. The new Virginia-class submarine now costs $2.5 billion each, up $400 million. All these increases have materialized in the last six months.

The Navy says it can make do with fewer big ships patrolling the oceans. It wants more fast boats and aircraft to fight offshore and upriver, a speedier force to counter terror. But Congress, seeking to sustain America's shipyards, wants as many big ships as possible.

Admiral Clark, who plans to retire later this year, says both strategies could be sunk by soaring costs.

"MATRIX" UNLOADED

Score one for the good guys. A project to find enemies of the state in the credit card records, marriage licenses, and vehicle registration data of avergage citizens appears to be over.

At one time, at least a dozen states had jacked into the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or MATRIX. Dozens more were considering participation in the four billion-record database. But then came the howls from privacy advocates. And the revelations that MATRIX's founder had been linked to Bahamian drug smugglers in the '80s.

In the end, only Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Connecticut were left. And now that $12 million in federal grant money has run out, it seems unlikely that these states will continue with the project.

“This may be the biggest victory for privacy since we and our allies from across the political spectrum shut down Total Information Awareness,” the ACLU's Barry Steinhardt said in a statement, referring to a similarly Owrellian Pentagon program shuttered by Congress in 2003.

TOUGHEST DRONE, DEFENDED

Navy roboticist H.R. "Bart" Everett is not happy with me, or with a post I wrote back in March on his creation, the ROBART III.

"Maybe there's been a less intimidating guard drone developed by the U.S. military. But I haven't seen it," I said then of the 2XL-looking robot prototype, designed to detect intruders, and pop 'em with a simulated dart gun.

Here's what Everett had to say this morning about Toughest. Drone. Ever, my "put-down article on ROBART III:"

1. This platform is a research prototype only.

2. It was never intended to leave the laboratory environment.

3. It serves as a tech-base development tool for hardened production systems which are designed for the real world.

4. The production version of ROBART is called the Mobile Detection Assessment Response System (MDARS).

5. There is an indoor version and an outdoor version, which you can see at www.spawar.navy.mil/robots/.

6. As a research platform, ROBART III is one of the most sophisticated mobile robots in the world.

7. It has been featured numerous times on the History and Discovery Channels.

8. The basic thrust of the research is an ability to enter and map a completely unknown environment, without getting lost.

9. The secondary thrust is to develop a vision-controlled weapons system that is self targeting [sic].

10. The pneumatically-powered non-lethal weapon is for demonstration purposes only.

11. It supports the vision-based weapon control research without undue risk to personnel.

12. The third research thrust is to develop a natural language interface that eliminates the need for a robotic controller.

13. You can read about the technical details at http://www.spawar.navy.mil/robots/pubs/spie5609-33.pdf.

14. In trying to be cute, you have seriously misled your readers, and lost your technical credibility.

THERE'S MORE: Ah, what are friends for? Over in the Defense Tech forum, the Arms Control Wonk gets my back. And gets nasty.

PENTAGON'S HACKERS

"The world's most formidable hacker posse."

That's how Wired News describes the Pentagon's Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare. The highly classified U.S. Strategic Command unit is "charged with defending all Department of Defense networks" -- and with attacking other countries' computers, too.

BLOG BEG: E.O.D.

I'm slowly starting to put together a story on explosive ordnance disposal, or E.O.D. If you or any of your buddies have ever been in the bomb-defusing business, give me a holler: defense@defensetech.org. It'll all be kept off-the-record, unless you tell me otherwise.

DRAGON LADY'S "MASSACRE"

"Just when you thought you’d heard the end of the illegal escapades of former Boeing exec Darleen Druyun, along comes another chapter that includes allegations of a 'clean up' and deletion' of documents," the Project on Government Oversight notes. "Government auditors are calling this one the '15 September Massacre.'"

Earlier this year, Druyun began serving a six-month sentence at Club Fed for felony conspiracy in relation to her illegally taking a job with Boeing Company while overseeing a fat Air Force tanker lease contract... Since the tanker scandal Druyun also has been suspected of steering other weapons contracts to Boeing and other defense contractors – more than you can count on your two hands. Druyun’s name surfaced again during testimony Thursday afternoon before the Senate Armed Services’ Airland Subcommittee...

The man pointing the finger at Druyun this time was Daniel I. Gordon, [with] the [Congressional investigators at the] Government Accountability Office. Gordon led an investigation... into the awarding of contracts that the former No. 2 Air Force acquisition official supervised – one a small diameter bomb contract and the other a C-130 avionics modernization contract. Gordon’s investigation concluded that the two contracts were improperly awarded.

During the C-130 Avionics contract, Gordon said, [Druyun] requested that contract evaluators first come to Washington D.C. on September 15, 2000 to discuss the “status” of their evaluations of who should get the contract. During that meeting and four subsequent meetings, Druyun “expressly or implicitly directed multiple changes to the evaluators’ ratings, many of which favored Boeing,” Gordon said. Then following the request for final proposal revisions, the contracting officer (not named in the testimony) sent an email to a recipient list that included “virtually everyone” involved in the source selection process, directing them to “clean up” and “delete” various portions of the evaluation record.

With so many big Defense Department projects going so wrong, it's no wonder McCain is now calling a "broad review" of the Pentagon's system for buying things.

The sleazy Druyun affair is just one "glaring example of a management and oversight failure in our acquisition process," McCain said at an Armed Services subcommittee hearing yesterday. "Clearly, we need to examine the whole procurement process as it works today in the Department of Defense."

"MINORITY REPORT," FOR REAL

Sometimes, military researchers like to pretend that they aren't grabbing ideas from science fiction. Then there are times like these:

A computer interface inspired by the futuristic system portrayed in the movie Minority Report... could soon help real military personnel deal with information overload.

The film sees characters call up and manipulate video footage and other data in mid-air after donning a special pair of gloves. Now defence company Raytheon, based in Massachusetts, is working on a real version and has even employed John Underkoffler, the researcher who proposed the interface to the makers of the film.

"Pamela Barry, then a Raytheon Co. engineer, had a eureka moment while watching the... sci-fi flick," the Wall Street Journal reports. "Ms. Barry believed such a system could be a boon to the military as it tries to parse reams of information in the heat of a battle."

Commanders are increasingly unable to process the massive flow of intelligence from satellites, sensors and soldiers. To tackle that challenge, Mr. Underkoffler and Raytheon are devising ways to visually display and manage the data in a user-friendly way to quicken combat responses...

"Keystrokes and mouse clicks limit your degree of freedom," says Mr. Underkoffler , who earned his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By communicating with a computer through gestures, hands can do as much as five or six mice, he adds. "Your hand becomes a Swiss Army knife," he says.

Raytheon, which has licensed Mr. Underkoffler's technology and unveiled it to Air Force and intelligence officials last week, aims to adapt it for use in future command centers. The idea is to streamline the disjointed and limited functions currently performed by scores of soldiers manning banks of individual PCs. In Raytheon's vision, real-time video and maps will be fused with database information on large interactive screens to assess battle situations.

Raytheon has no plans to use psychically-sensitive crack babies to parse the information. Or, at least, not yet.

UK'S CHICKEN-POWERED NUKE

Like me, you've probably stayed awake countless nights wondering, "Did the Brits ever make plans for a nuclear landmine, powered by chickens?"

Well, dear reader, I'm here to tell you that the answer is yes. At least, according to the UK's National Archives.

Conceived during the Cold War, the seven tonne device was the size of small truck and was designed to be buried or submerged by a British Army retreating from Soviet forces. The landmine had a plutonium core surrounded by high explosive and would have been detonated by remote control or timer, causing mass destruction and contamination over a wide area to prevent subsequent enemy occupation.

Scientists working on the project realised that the bomb could fail in winter if vital components become too cold, so they explored ways of keeping the inner workings warm. One proposal put forward consisted of filling the casing of the nuke with live chickens, who would give off sufficient heat, prior to suffocating or starving to death, to keep the delicate explosive mechanism from freezing. Despite the potential importance of chickens to the project, the mine was codenamed 'Blue Peacock'.

"The mines were to be left buried or submerged by the British Army of the Rhine. They would then have been detonated by wire from up to five kilometres away or by an eight-day clockwork timer. If disturbed or damaged, they were primed to explode within 10 seconds," New Scientist explains.

Each mine was expected to produce an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, about half that of the atom bomb the US dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945...

Blue Peacock was to consist of a plutonium core surrounded by a sphere of high explosives, all encased in steel. The design was based on Blue Danube, a free-fall nuclear bomb weighing several tonnes that was already in service with the Royal Air Force. But Blue Peacock, weighing over seven tonnes, would have been much more cumbersome.

The steel casing was so large that it had to be tested outdoors in a flooded gravel pit near Sevenoaks in Kent. If questions were asked, Nuclear historian David Hawkings says the army's cover story was that it was a container for "an atomic power unit for troops in the field". In July 1957, army leaders decided to order 10 Blue Peacock mines and to station them in Germany.

Hawkings describes their plans for deploying the weapons in the event of an imminent Soviet invasion as "somewhat theatrical". One problem was that the mines might not work in winter if they became too cold, so the army proposed wrapping them in fibreglass pillows.

In the end, the risk from radioactive fallout would have been "unacceptable", says Hawkings, and hiding nuclear weapons in an allied country was deemed "politically flawed". As a result, the Ministry of Defence cancelled Blue Peacock in February 1958. (via Linkfilter and Improbable Research)

BLIMPS FOR MARINES IN IRAQ

We're all huge -- huge! -- fans of blimps here at Defense Tech HQ. So when the word came down from Defense Daily that the Marines are starting to use aerostats as communications relays in Iraq, it brought a chorus of huzzahs in the newsroom.

The blimps, called the Marine Airborne Re-Transmission Systems (MARTS), will receive signals through a fiber-optic tether. Then, the airships will transmit messages up to 100 miles away, via UHF and VHF frequencies. Troops on the ground, as well as pilots in the air, will be able to communicate through the blimps.

One airship, first tested in February, is being deployed to Iraq right now (exactly where, the Corps won't say). A second is being readied. The Marines are scrounging up $14 million to buy four more. It may sound like a lot, but it's cheaper than building radio towers -- and having Marines protect those towers.

A MARTS blimp "can run for two weeks before it would need refueling, and can remain afloat in winds up to 50 mph," according to DD. With a combination kevlar/mylar skin, the ae