FCS Jitters

The latest General Accounting Office study on the Army's massive modernization program finds - surprise - that there are 'development risks' involved in the the communications components. Since Future Combat Systems, or FCS, will network manned and unmanned vehicles and weapons, if the communications don't work, the system is a dud.

Fair enough. The larger problem is whether the constant demand for accounting and oversight that drives GAO and its congressional masters is making it harder for the US to maintain technological excellence in military space. To be risk-free, a program would need to depend on the technologies of the 1980s. The hard question is whether failure and waste are unavoidable companions when making better weapons or technical intelligence systems.

The answer to that question is yes, failure and waste are inevitable and maybe even necessary for real innovation. Corona, the original spy satellite, failed in its first five launches. The first 13 missions were failures and produced no pictures. The expense was enormous - if you adjust for inflation, the total program cost (over 12 years) may have been $40 billion. Of all Corona missions, only 70% were successful. But overall, Corona was an immense success. This sounds like an apology for waste, fraud and abuse, but it's actually a suggestion that it might be worth tilting the balance in how the US thinks about space back towards risk taking and away from accounting.

What, no blimps?

Want to secure your borders? Here’s a state of the art model to look at:

-- First, a razor wire fence;
-- Then a road for vehicle patrols;
-- Another fence that sends out an alarm when it is cut;
-- A 400 foot gap covered with motion sensors and night vision cameras (the Soviets had a similar strip along their western border, which they would rake every morning and then have patrols look for footprints during the day - of course, they also used mines);
-- Finally, another fence with more sensors.

This is what Israel plans to put around Gaza after its withdrawal, to prevent infiltration by terrorists. The cost is about $2.3 million per mile. For the 2000-plus mile U.S. southern border, the cost of this would get close to $5 billion, and the cost would more than double for a similar system on the longer northern border.

The Border Patrol Service (part of DHS) has been increased in size several times since 2001, but the steady growth in the number of patrols and sensors has not stopped the flow of immigrants (and it’s worth asking whether it best serves the national interest to stop immigrants coming to the U.S. for economic reasons, as opposed to blocking illegal crossings by terrorists and criminals).

A high tech fortified border might cost too much even for the U.S., suggesting that in this case, a solution is likely to require coming up with better immigration rules rather relying only on more patrollers and a technological fix.

DARPATech 2005 and Tech Leadership

Every year DARPA has its own annual gathering of the clans – DARPATech. This one is the 24th, scheduled for the week of August 9 in Anaheim. The theme for 2005 (and for 2004) is “Bridge the Gap.” The gap is the difference between what U.S. force can do today and the technological possibilities for the future warfighter. DARPATech includes an overview of each program. The link below goes to the public slides from DARPATech 2004. It’s a quick, easy way to see what DOD is up to in technology.

The issue that DARPA had to face this year is whether it is not doing enough on the “R” side of R&D, particularly in basic research. There were hearings on this in Congress (prompted by a New York Times story) where DARPA’s Director, Anthony Tether, defended DOD spending on basic research. DARPA gots $3 billion in 2004 and put a good hunk of it into basic research that could have security payoffs down the road.

The problem is not with DARPA, but with the sense of unease felt by many people as to whether the U.S. is spending enough on research to ensure its long-term security. Some of this is prompted by China and its commitment to R&D, some of it is from the concern created by the long (and largely fruitless) public debate over the alleged decline of education in the U.S. and some comes from the anxiety over globalization and the state of manufacturing in the U.S.

The U.S. spends more than other nations on R&D, but the pressures on this spending have been to focus on the life sciences and on development, rather than basic research. Basic research in phsyics, math, IT and other 'hard sciences are the most useful for military purposes, but the benefits may take years to arrive. Physicists started talking about nanotechnology in the 1950s; products didn’t begin to show up forty years later. Funding for these areas has either fallen or been flat for years.

The bottom line is that while the U.S. has done more than other countries to make scientific research and technological leadership one of the pillars of its military strength, we may not be making the investments needed to keep this pillar strong. The bumper sticker for this problem is: the country with the most physicists wins. It’s hard to increase funding, however, in a year of big deficits and an active war.

Congress has started to worry about technological strength and has asked the National Academy to look at how the U.S. can maintain its leadership – its study starts in August and is supposed to be done before the end of the year.

Link to DARPATech 2004

Hack Attack

In 2002, the Department of Justice indicted (in absentia) a resident of the UK, Gary McKinnon, of hacking into DOD and NASA computers and causing almost a million dollars worth of damages. Yesterday, they got around to trying to extradite him for trial.

McKinnon, a self described UFO fan, was apparently searching for files labeled "Area 51" or other evidence that the US is concealing all it knows about extraterrestrial life. McKinnon says that any damage was accidental, when he tried to cover his tracks by erasing data. He must have been disappointed, as he found nothing about UFOs.

His biggest crime appears to be that he kept 2000 DOD and NASA computers from being able to access the internet for three days in the Spring of 2002 (although many were still able to send and receive email). As with most computer crimes, no one noticed any visible tremors of panic in the DC area.

McKinnon did not, DOD says, gain access to any classified information. He got access to unclassified systems as a result of sloppy security practices (not changing the default password), but he now says that he was closed out by DOD administrators soon after getting in.

70 years in jail (which is what the US is threatening him with) seems excessive. That an unemployed Brit with a UFO mania was able to tromp around unclassified DOD computers is embarrassing, and he deserves a stiff fine, some community service, and maybe a little jail time.

The real issue is who else is tromping around, perhaps a bit more skillfully, not leaving tracks, and not confining themselves to searching for UFO data. McKinnon himself said "I was always very frightened when I realized there were always other people from all over the world on there [the DOD networks]."

Even if McKinnon was unable to access classified data, people at DOJ say (off the record) that he was able to look at weapons R&D material that shouldn't be public. The internet has been a tremendous boon for espionage, and if McKinnon found a way to get in, we have to assume that other, more professional types, did so as well.

UCAV - Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle

Some people in the Pentagon and the industry wonder if the F-35 will be the last manned fighter the U.S. will ever build. I don't think it will come to that, but they say to watch UCAVs [unmanned combat aerial vehicles, or killer drones] and the possibility for deploying a UCAV/manned combination (1 plane, 1 or more UCAVs).

This could have real merit. The backseater would fly a companion aircraft. That would increase the deliverable payload per sortie and give the manned craft the option of letting the UCAV do things that seemed unacceptably risky. You can think of other scenarios where this could be handy. It's a step beyond the idea of UCAV as a more capable UAV, operated by someone on the ground far away.

The technology is not there yet, but better UAV's (that automate more of the routine tasks for flying that pilots do almost without thinking) and code from gaming software make this a possibility. Think of it not as independent flying robots but a new kind of forward air control (and the military implications of game technology deserve its own entry).

The other question is whether UCAV programs can recover from the summer movie "Stealth," which has gotten a number of terrible reviews. I’ve only seen the trailers, so I can’t say. The picture [a Photoshop special -- ed.] is from DARPA, by the way, and makes it look like some of these programs are pretty far along.

Phrase of the Week - Complex Battlespace

"In general, a more complex force prevails over a less complex force."
Arthur Cerbrowski, Director, Office of Force
Transformation, Department of Defense

The first time I read this, I didn't like it, perhaps because of the old Army adage KISS. Then I thought that Admiral Cerbrowski probably had a different definition of complex in mind. What he might mean is that a complex force is one that is able to create more and different options for action against an opponent.

If this is right, a complex force would do better in a complex battle space. Complex battle space is a dignified way of saying messy. Battlefields have always been messy, but the geographic scope of battle, the rapid pace at which it occurs, and the increase in the number of actors make the conflicts since the '91 Gulf War (with combat mainly between two opposing forces, in uniform, in a mostly uninhabited desert) very different. Now, civilians don't always have time to get out of the way, and there are other agencies, NGOs, the UN, press, private security contractors as well as insurgents and local security forces. Instead of two sides, there may be nine or ten that are often indistinguishable from each other.

Complex battlespace also involves extending the scope for combat, to include ground, air, space, naval and information (or cyber). We might want to amend the statement to say that a force that is better at managing complexity will do better than a force that still tries to keep it simple.

More Surveillance

The French have been inspired by the bombings in London and Egypt to put in place a series of new anti-terrorist measures. Prime Minister de Villepan announced yesterday that the government will ask the National Assembly in August for a new law to expand video surveillance and to require ISPs and telcos to preserve email and phone data for several years. Cameras would be set up in the metro, city squares and other public places. One goal is to install 4,000 cameras in Paris buses by the end of the year. The French, who have tightly controlled the number of cameras until now, were apparently impressed by how cameras helped the British identify bombing suspects.

Another goal is to introduce biometric 'smart passports' (with a microchip) by October. This will be the precursor to a biometric national identity card (French citizens are required to have a national ID, and it doesn't provoke the complaints you see in the US or UK).

France already has tough anti-terror laws and very competent police and security forces. When Paris makes up its mind to do something in the security arena, it usually moves pretty quickly.

Link (in French)

PLA Catch-All

DOD’s 2005 report on China’s military power is actually pretty level-headed. I was expecting something more along the lines of the old Soviet Military Reviews, which routinely attributed astounding technical advances to the Soviets. The noise level in Washington over the yuan and CNOOC also led me to expect something more vociferous.

One development regarding China’s military that hasn’t gotten as much attention is a proposed Commerce Department regulation that would restrict U.S. high tech trade with China. In nonproliferation terms, this would be a “catch-all” rule for exports that could make a ‘significant’ contribution to the PLA. The export wouldn’t have to go directly to the PLA itself to be caught.

The catch-all was developed in the late 1980s in reaction to an episode where Iraq was buying a highly-specialized industrial tool for its WMD programs and the US found it had no way to stop the sale. The regulation implementing the catch-all is called the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative (EPCI), which gives the government the ability to stop any sale by a U.S. company when it thinks that the export might contribute to the proliferation of WMD. Companies hate EPCI, but it’s been used with restraint.

The U.S. already blocks military exports to China, so a new catch-all for the PLA would apply only to commercial goods. The scope of a catch-all might be more limited than EPCI, in that it might apply only to a list of high tech goods, but even this could still have a pretty broad reach, particularly as it would likely focus on commercial high tech products. The Chinese blame the trade imbalance on U.S. technology restrictions and say the catch-all will only make things worse, but this is nonsense. It’s not supported by the numbers, which suggest that U.S. exports to China would not increase very much if all sanctions were lifted.

Most people recognize that a catch-all won’t stop PLA modernization. China can’t make advanced weaponry, but while it tries to build a modern defense industry, it can buy from Russia. It also gets military technology from Israel and it would like to add Europe to its suppliers (and some Europeans would love to sell). The catch-all won’t affect the arms purchases that are the basis of China’s military modernization, although it raises the stakes for the EU if it tries again to lift its own arms embargo.

The catch-all might be aimed at Information Technology. China envies the U.S. military and is trying to duplicate the progress in information warfare/netcentric operations/C4ISR that is at the core of transformation. Since IT exports from Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Europe won’t be affected, it’s not clear how much benefit we’ll get from the catch-all, but we cannot dismiss the possibility of conflict with China as completely improbable. I still think its better to focus on making sure that the U.S. maintains technological leadership rather than worrying about how to slow Chinese economic growth.

Links to the report and a story on the catch-all.

Buy or Build

It keeps getting harder and more expensive to build modern weapons. The combination of cost and complexity drives companies from the market. The most noticeable effect has been on the emerging economies that tried to become arms producers. Brazil, India, Taiwan, Korea, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa all began major arms programs in the 1970s and 1980s. Even when there was substantial foreign assistance, these countries couldn’t sustain their programs. A few decided to specialize in niche production, but none could bear the development costs of major next-generation systems. In those cases where they persevered, the systems they developed tended to be over-expensive, underpowered variants of modern weaponry. This is one reason why all of these countries were also attracted to WMD - it’s cheaper and easier to build. In the West, shrinking budgets, cost and complexity drove defense industrial consolidation.

Making weapons systems requires experience, databases, and integration skills that can’t be acquired quickly. Today, only the U.S., Russia and Europe can make a full range of advanced weapons. This is particularly true for combat aircraft, which brings us to India. India was a Soviet client for decades when it came to arms purchases (Britain sold them used aircraft carriers). India is now in the market for a new fighter and, in a shift, is looking at Western sources. With a planned purchase of 126 aircraft, this is one the last big deals out there. The contenders include Boeing’s F/A-18, Lockheed’s F-16, the Eurofighter and Dassault’s Rafaele. The Russians will probably offer the SU-30M. All are good planes.

Boeing has upped the ante by also offering to coproduce the F/A-18 in India with HAL, India’s big government-owned aerospace firm. Coproduction does not lower the cost for the acquirer. The planes built at the foreign facility are usually more expensive. The hope is that some of the integration skills and experience will rub off onto indigenous programs. When the U.S. and Japan began co-production of fighter aircraft in the 1980s, there were shrieks from protectionists that we were teaching the Japanese how to swallow the aerospace industry, they would soon move over into commercial aircraft, etc. None of this happened, nor is it likely to happen with India. The F/A-18 is a great aircraft, but it entered service in 1981 (the last one, much improved, was built twenty years later).

The trend in the global arms industry is to downsize and consolidate. Few countries can afford to sustain modern arms industries, but if India (or China) commits to spend billions of dollars for at least a decade, it could enter the small club of countries able to produce modern combat aircraft. For now it’s cheaper (and better) to buy than to build.

Posted by Jim Lewis

Unmanned is better

Not many people would try to drive an 24 year old American car coast to coast on Interstate 80 this summer, but that’s a fair description of the launch of the Shuttle Discovery, built in 1981 and flown into space many times. Discovery is a well maintained antique that won’t be retired until 2010. NASA’s Return to Flight Task Group oversaw the implementation of 15 recommendations made after the Columbia breakup and Discovery is a much improved craft that is safer than any of its predecessors.

The shuttle is a flying truck with no military applications. NASA likes this, but when the Shuttle concept was first discussed (ancient history: the Nixon Administration) Air Force played a role in its design as people assumed that there would be military activities that the shuttle could perform. This was before it became clear that unmanned craft did better at everything in space.

There is still an attraction for a space plane or trans-atmospheric craft, albeit unmanned, that could be based in the United States and perform Afghanistan-like air bombardments without the need for expensive overseas deployments, bases, or multiple refueling. The latest program is called FALCON (Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States), part of a larger concept called Global Strike that guides Air Force thinking about its future role. FALCON phase I would be a hypersonic glider – not really a space plane. FALCON phase II would be a reusable, sub-orbital UAV.

FALCON is the latest in a long line of hypersonic aircraft or space plane programs that the U.S. has started. Unlike the earlier efforts, which were usually abandoned somewhere in the middle of testing, this one may actually enter into service, in part because of the skills and technologies developed for long range UAVs like Global Hawk. Seeing FALCON as a space weapon excites arms controllers, but in its first phase, despite its long range and high altitude, it’s not really a space vehicle.

Falcon raises the question of whether the US civil space program should abandon reusable spacecraft and return to an Apollo-like single use vehicle like the planned CEV (cheaper, reliable, old fashioned). Note to space-race watchers: the Europeans recently announced they would support a new Russian plan for a space plane named ‘Kliper’ that could replace the Soyuz capsule. Kliper would have the capabilities of a king-cab pickup truck (6 passengers, 1000 lbs. of cargo).

Urban surveillance networks

I didn’t know, until the terrorist bombing attacks, that most London buses have video cameras installed on them. There are thousands of cameras in London and increasing numbers in New York, Chicago and other major cities. Large swaths of the downtown areas are covered. Coverage goes up significantly if you include private cameras that monitor stores, parking lots and office buildings.

Camera surveillance networks have real benefits – crime and traffic fatalities go down, and they generate useful evidence for a post-facto investigation – but the limitations are obvious – thousands of hours of tape that look like Warhol’s “Empire State” (Warhol pointed a camera at the building for 8 hours – when a pigeon flew by at hour six, audiences burst into applause since it was the first thing to happen).

the key to better surveillance is to replace human watchers with computers. Once the imagery has been translated into bits, software can look for patterns – has that car circled us twice, how did that pile of trash get to the roadside - and can merge imagery with data from other sensors (infrared or sniffers). Some call this intelligent video surveillance. London’s transit system already links fixed cameras to an “Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)” computer system to identify cars that park or drive in bus lanes.

Using urban surveillance networks to prevent attacks (rather than to prosecute the attackers after the fact) is in the too-hard category for now. Some prototype systems will notify an operator when the network detects a suspicious pattern, but this works best when tracking cars rather than people. A lot more code would need to be written to make urban sensor networks able to warn in advance of a mass transit attack. This is the false negative problem – the attacker walks by the camera without triggering an alert. So where we are now is that a city could deploy a sensor network but it couldn’t make use of the data generated for early warning and prevention of attacks. Putting lots of cameras on subway lines might have a deterrent effect, but my guess is that this would be minimal for suicide bombers.

The usual concerns are (1) privacy and (2) false positives, where a system would incorrectly flag a face or a behavior pattern as suspicious. Some people worry about the use of this technology for political control, and the place where this seems to be happening is (surprise) China, where the “Golden Shield” project includes constructing a digital surveillance network in China’s cities.

Here are a few links: http://dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/ (for battlefield applications); http://www.sarnoff.com/products_services/government_solutions/homeland_security/index.asp (critical infrastructure protection); http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/cclondon/cc_fact_sheet_enforcement.shtml

Posted by Jim Lewis

Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions (SAUVIM)

The University of Hawaii (via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends) is testing an undersea robotic vehicle called SAUVIM (Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions).

"Intervention missions" include "construction & repair, cable streaming, mine hunting, and munitions retrieval..."

This sucker is roughly the size of an SUV, with a robotic arm. It can operate at great depths -- down to about 4 miles -- for about eight hours. Operating time is a function of battery life.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported some problems, but the engineers and Navy didn't get down on themselves:

A sensor failed to work, causing a glitch in the performance of the group's Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention during a demonstration ....

But industry and Navy research officials were enthusiastic about the unique vehicle's potential.

"This is technology that the world needs," said Gary Godshalk, of Lockheed Martin, in Kailua. "Underwater vehicles are the future."

I am off to Hawaii, myself, for a friend's wedding in a couple of days. If I scuba, I'll keep an eye out for an any underwater SUVs with robotic arms.

So, here's a big "aloha" to the DefenseTech gang. It's been a blast.

And, since "aloha" is also a greeting, welcome Jim Lewis (no relation), Director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I used to work for Jim. He grasps both the technology and the absurd, which makes him perfect for this gig.

You'll like him a lot.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis

Fun With Nuclear Targeting

My wing o' the blogosphere is all worked up over an article -- in Pat Buchanan's The American Spectator, of all places -- that claims the OVP wants to nuke Iran in the event of another 9/11 attack ... whether Tehran was involved or not:

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States.

The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.

Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

This particular statement may be exaggerated or flat out false. The author, Philip Giraldi, was a source on Sy Hersh's New Yorker article about attacking Iran. Giraldi loathes Cheney almost as much as I do, though from the opposite side of the spectrum.

Wargaming an attack on Iran has been the hot hobby for pundits since Saddam's toppled statue provided a denouement for Operation Iraqi Freedom (the flight-suit-on-aircraft-carrier action was more like the bloopers that run during the credits). Even James Fallows, writing for The Atlantic Monthly, got in on the act (with slides).

So, what's this got to do with DefenseTech?

Most discussions about target sets leave the impression that the decision to use a nuclear weapon here or there is a deeply rational business, with great care taken not just in the selection of each target, but also to ensure each nuclear weapon is really necessary. After all, if we are going to put a nuclear weapon on a tank factory sitting next to a grade school, you'd think that someone made a careful, anguished decision about the lesser of two evils in a morally ambiguous world.

You might think that, but you'd be wrong.

When General Lee Butler become head of STRATCOM in 1991, he did something very strange. He actually asked to look at each and every target, individually -- something no one else had ever done before:

In his first months at SAC, he personally undertook a painstaking review of the million lines of computer code that constitute the SIOP. For the first time, he saw in detail what happens when broad presidential guidance is translated into actual weapons aimed at actual targets, what he calls "climbing down the ladder of abstraction." He was appalled at what he found at the bottom rung.

For example, of the 12,500 targets in the SIOP at that time, one of them was slated to be hit by 69 consecutive nuclear weapons. It seems superfluous to say that this is crazy, but it is important to understand how the planning process could result in such a figure. At the level of a presidential directive, a document of a thousand words or so, you will have the reasonable-sounding requirement--if you're thinking about war-fighting at all--to, say, target the political and military leadership. That guidance goes to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which in a 15- or 20-page document called a NUWEP (for "nuclear weapons employment policy") adds some detail: for example, what sorts of leadership facilities should be targeted. The NUWEP then goes to the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which in hundreds of pages of a document called Annex C to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan lists specific facilities to be struck and damage requirements to be met. Annex C then goes to STRATCOM, where the targetting staff figures out which weapons, and how many, to apply to each target to meet the required level of damage.

[snip]

When I mentioned Butler's 69 weapons to Dr. Bruce Blair, a former Minuteman missileer and acknowledged expert on the operational aspects of nuclear warfighting now at the Brookings Institution, he found in his notes a statement by a high official at SAC in the late 1980s that the highest kill probability for the United States' best weapon against deeply buried, sprawling, hardened command posts was less than 5% (how they calculate this is a whole other matter, but the short answer is, they guess). Blair got out a calculator, assumed a kill probability of 4% for one weapon, and started multiplying. To attain a 50% confidence in destroying the target required 17 weapons. When Blair got up to 69 weapons, the "kill probability" had reached 94%.

The real issue here is that organizations abstract reality to manage it. That abstraction, James Scott pointed out in his book, Seeing Like A State, can produce disasterous consequences such as Soviet collectivization and the Maoist Great Leap Forward.

Most of us intuitively understand the inhumanity of bureaucracies - a perhaps necessary evil in the modern world. This understanding is why General Butler's narrative is so compelling -- a human being acheives a vantage point from which to survey the madness of an inhuman organization. It's Kafka and Joseph Heller in equal measures.

Only an organization would target 69 nuclear weapons on a single facility (later revealed to be the Sofrino missile defense radar) outside of Moscow in a strike designed to minimize "collateral damage". To take another example, STRATCOM calculates only blast damage from nuclear weapons. STRATCOM does not calculate the damage from any fires that would be ignited, even though such fires would be far more damaging than any blast effects. Why? Because fire damage is hard to calculate and, therefore, not real.

Which is where we get to the technology part.

Last fall, Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Solutions won a 10-year, $213 million contract "to develop the new architecture and functions" for the Integrated Strategic Planning and Analysis Network (ISPAN) -- STRATCOM's war planning system.

Although the details are classified, the contract website makes clear that the ISPAN doesn't change how STRATCOM does business. ISPAN does not address the fundamental myopia of "kitchen sink" target sets, artificial damage expectencies and rigid delivery schedules that encourage the President to use nuclear weapons before an adversary has time to take protective measures.

That's one reason to be worried about efforts by the OVP to plan to strike Iran -- not because there has been a policy decision to execute the plan (there has not), but because nuclear war planning continues to define the President's options in ways that alienate him from the execution.

--posted by Jeffrey Lewis

Detonation

The truck exploded only a couple of hours ago. But, already, the wreckage looks ancient, like a ship dredged to the surface after a century on the ocean floor. Everything inside the cab is shredded. The dashboard has been thrown loose, and singed black. The seats are atomized. The odometer sits on the ground, not far from where the driver’s door used to be.

The orange Mercedes was part of a long line of cement trucks, waiting to deliver their goods to Camp Victory when the base opened for commercial traffic at eight. Then, a pair of the trucks exploded -- a botched attempt, apparently, to detonate suicide bombs inside of the base. Two men are dead. One of the attackers has been captured.

Military investigators are still trying to piece together exactly what happened. The bombs might have been thrown into the trucks by a car passing by; the jury-rigged weapons might have already been in hand.

I try to pay attention to the conflicting theories, to the line of men waiting to be questioned. But I keep staring at the scraps of freshly-ended lives that are quickly turning into artifacts under the blazing Mesopotamian sun. The driver must have been wearing the black sandals which now lie in front of the truck. Maybe he had some pita with his breakfast; a crust now sits near the shoes. Before he died, he might have read from the crinkled, torn Koran resting a few feet away. Or he could have listened to a cassette; strands of audio tape are strewn all over the wreckage.

Back on the base, I wonder how much of this to put in public, to share with my family and my fiancée. I want to record what I see; I don’t want to worry the people I love.

It’s a dilemma soldiers here cope with every day. They crave their families’ support; they’re crippled by their concern. Most of the troops I’ve spoken to choose the keep their loved ones in the dark. “I tell ‘em all that CNN is full of shit and that nothing’s going on here,” one national guardsman says. “We don’t get shot at. We haven’t seen anyone who’s unfriendly. They think that I have a desk job, that I never go outside the wire” – Camp Victory’s concrete walls.

But letting CNN write your letters home can only fuel the worry. “Every time a bomb goes off in Baghdad, I get e-mails asking, ‘Are you alright? Are you alright?’” an officer here sighs.

Because the networks aren’t very good at conveying the subtle shades of danger in a place like this. Either they lead, big, with a new act of carnage – or they bury the news from here at the end of the broadcast. That leaves the impression that all of Iraq is in flames, all of the time. Which is just plain wrong.

Here around Camp Victory, for example, the last week has been a relatively quiet one. Iraqi army and police patrols have grown noticeably since I’ve been here. Smiles outnumber hard stares 100 to 1. And when there has been violence, it has been relatively small-scale – like the single RPG shot fired in my general direction the other night.

So I’m going to keep writing what I see, for the few days I have left here. Painting events in muted colors, instead of TV’s garish brights. And capturing my experience in Iraq, before it becomes twisted fragments on history’s road.

Bump in the Night

Years ago, I met Clive Barker, the horror film director, in a New York hotel room. He was in town to promote a video game he had helped edit. One of the first changes he made, Barker told me, was to change the monster at the end of the adventure. It was enormous, ugly – and not in the least bit frightening. Make something smaller, something hidden, he suggested. The scariest things are the ones we can’t see.

It’s a conversation I’ve been thinking about, ever since last night’s patrol. The unit I’m embedded with was called out – for the umpteenth time – to “Route Michigan,” a big, trash-packed road near the Baghdad Airport. The route’s commercial stretch, busy even in a sandstorm, was nearly empty. It was maybe eight-thirty, twilight time here in Iraq. A ribbon of bruised orange rung the sky. The moon had just risen; it was a slickly red, like blood gone bad. “This place is a whole lot creepier in the dark,” I whispered to a Lieutenant, as he peered through a night-vision scope.

Man-sized shadows crept in the background, past the scalloped balconies in the shops’ second stories. A three-legged dog scampered in front of the Humvees. I tried to stare into the dark, to see any potential attackers. If any were out there, I couldn’t see them. For one of the few times on this war zone trip, my heart started thumping, hard, against my chest.

“Hey!” the Lieutenant shouted, shining a green laser pointer at a group of men, walking into the road from an alleyway 50-75 yards away. They scattered.

Five minutes ticked by. Nothing happened. Then, without warning, a bright white flashed where the man had been. There was a cacophonous, almost electric, crack – the sound of a rocket-propelled grenade exploding. “Get cover!” the Lieutenant yelled.

Now, this is the point when I should have been the most scared – when my fears suddenly, deafeningly came true. But that’s not what happened at all. As I crouched behind a Humvee, all of the fright drained out of me. I could see what I was supposed to scare me. And it didn't any more.

Now, this is all easy to say, because the fighting ended after that single round. Who knows what would have happened in a real firefight. But yesterday, there were no more RPGs, or even a single shot fired on either side. Our unit retreated a bit; soldiers swept the area; the threat passed.

When we got back to the base, around 1:30 pm, we watched the last few minutes of “Starship Troopers.” And then I went to bed, sleeping with a baby's calm.

Protecting Mass Transit

Another tough day for Londoners.

Here in DC, Metro is stepping up security, while New York is conducting random bag checks on the subway.

42 percent of terrorist attacks targeted rail or buses, according to the Brookings Institution, which looked at worldwide terrorist attacks from 1991 to 2001.

What can we do to make our trains and buses safer?

Protecting America’s Roads and Transit Against Terrorism, published by the Brookings Institution, calls for a number of measures to protect mass transit systems. (Sewell Chan at the New York Times summarizes the report.)

One recommendation is for the federal government to do a better job of helping states and localities use integrate new technologies to protect our trains and buses:

D. Federal Assistance for Technology Assessment

The feasibility and effectiveness of improvements in physical infrastructure are being debated. New technologies are being developed, tested, and refined, 44 and advances advances are frequently difficult for short-staffed state and local transportation agencies to monitor and review. It would be wasteful, moreover, for each state to perform this function on its own. Thus, a strong federal role in identifying and testing innovative technology and providing technical assistance to states and localities is highly desirable. The federal government can also play a key role in setting standards for technology and security practices, ensuring that investments are not delayed by state and local uncertainty about what will be required in the future.

That's not happening. On July 21, the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science, and Technology of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities of the Committee on Armed Services held a joint hearing on "Technology Transfer: Leveraging Military Technology to Enhance Homeland Security."

Defense News (subscription only) covered the hearing, noting that the Defense Department has "developed an array of technology that could help civilian authorities respond to attacks — from biological weapon detectors to drugs that boost human immune systems, miniature aerial surveillance vehicles to hand-held language translators."

Despite the impressive progress, Representative Martin Meehan (D-MA) told Defense News DOD is still struggling to move the technology "from military labs into the hands of local law enforcement and emergency response personnel."

Get on it, boys.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis

Will DOD Recall Pain Ray?

Last year, Noah wrote about a Defense Department nonlethal "pain ray" called the Active Denial System (ADS).

Now, British magazine New Scientist reveals that investigators testing the system are insisting tons of safety precautions that "raise concerns about how safe [ADS] would be if used in real crowd-control situations":

The experimenters banned glasses and contact lenses to prevent possible eye damage to the subjects, and in the second and third tests removed any metallic objects such as coins and keys to stop hot spots being created on the skin. They also checked the volunteers' clothes for certain seams, buttons and zips which might also cause hot spots.

The ADS weapon's beam causes pain within 2 to 3 seconds and it becomes intolerable after less than 5 seconds. People's reflex responses to the pain is expected to force them to move out of the beam before their skin can be burnt.

But Neil Davison, co-ordinator of the non-lethal weapons research project at the University of Bradford in the UK, says controlling the amount of radiation received may not be that simple. "How do you ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent damage?" he asks. "What happens if someone in a crowd is unable, for whatever reason, to move away from the beam? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?"

During the experiments, people playing rioters put up their hands when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being targeted again. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.

So what's this got to do with the hockey picture? The real problem here is that people respond to very differently to varying levels of force.

When I was a lowly research drone at CSIS, I had the opportunity manage a project on nonlethal weapons. During one of our meetings, Dr. John Kenny -- a member of the DOD Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate's Human Effects Advisory Panel (HEAP) -- gave an amazing briefing on human variability that included these two examples to illustrate the challenge facing "nonlethal" weapons:

On May 9, 1998, police used twelve shots to kill former NFL player Tom Nevile. One day later, St. Louis Blues' captain Chris Pronger (above, right) collapsed after a hockey puck struck him in the chest during an NHL playoff game.

Kenny still believed the problem of human variability could be managed, but I don't know.

We started using the phrase "less lethal weapons" after his talk.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.

End of the Kamikaze?

Okay boys, you're off the hook.

Kyodo News reports that the Japan Defense Agency "plans to produce two prototype high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned reconnaissance aircraft by fiscal 2012 at a total cost of 22 billion yen ..."

JDA sources told Kyodo that the Technical Research and Development Institute hopes to reduce Japan's dependence on imported UAVs:

The move is expected to stir debate over whether it is appropriate to pour large sums of taxpayer money into developing planes that would most likely be inferior to existing U.S. aircraft and that would require even further investment to be practical.

[snip]

The prototype that the institute plans to produce would be able to operate for more than 10 hours at an altitude of about 15,000 meters. It would have a wingspan of about 24 meters.

By comparison, the U.S. Global Hawk, which costs 5.7 billion yen each, flies for more than 35 hours at about 20,000 meters. The U.S. Predator B, at 800 million, yen cruises for more than 30 hours at 15,000 meters.

The announcement follows reports that Japan is considering buying US Global Hawk drones.

The current Japanese surveillance UAV is called the Forward Flying Observation System (FFOS). The FFOS is essentially an unpiloted helicopter, manufactured by Fuji Heavy Industries -- the people who make the Subaru.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.

North Korea's One Ton Bomb?

The Financial Times reports a North Korean defector claims "Kim Jong-il's regime has made a one-tonne nuclear bomb and is working on lighter weapons that could be fired more reliably, according to a South Korean magazine."

Is this plausible? Yeah, kinda.

I wrote a blog post about this a while back, as did my co-blogger Paul Kerr in Arms Control Today.

The unclassified testimony on North Korea and the CTBT suggests Pyongyang has "simple fission-type nuclear weapons ... validated ... without conducting yield-producing nuclear tests.”

"Simple fission-type" is a term of art that means FRICKIN' HEAVY.

Not heavy like Liz Taylor, but heavy like the Nagaski device (left, with a friend), which weighed 9,000 lbs. In practice, "simple fission-type" means too heavy for a long-range ballistic missile, although the emminent John Holdren allowed that a new nuclear state might produce an unreliable warhead that needs testing in the 1,000–2,000 pound range.

Rowan Scarborough (of the Washington Times) reported on a classified DIA report that estimated the NORKs couldn't do better than 650-750 kg (1,400-1,700 lbs).

So, one ton is at the edge of plausible, but my guess is they aren't that good.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.

Brilliant Pebbles Returns

Long-time space-based missile defense advocate Lowell Wood, officially a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has been talking up the Brilliant Pebbles concept that he pushed during the better part of my elementary school years.

Wood was at the Capitol Hill Club for an event sponsored by the American Foreign Policy Council and the Marshall Institute. Sharon Weinberger at Defense Daily summarizes Wood's talk (subscription only, I am afraid).

Wood's presentation was entitled "Ballistic Missile Defense in an Ideal World".

Wood's "ideal world" is one, presumably, where the laws of physics are substantially relaxed. One of his slides caught my eye:

“Total life-cycle cost to the Nation to own” the Brilliant Pebbles defensive system was $11 B $11 B (’89 $)

– CAIG-validated, DoD-certified-to-Congress cost estimate
• Tight consensus of 3 “from the bottom up” cost-estimation projects

– All RDT&E, all production-&-deployment; 2 decades ops

– Total deployed constellation of 2000 Pebbles
• Worst-case GPALS threat: Typhoon salvo-launching off Bermuda
• Clearly met Reagan’s “..impotent and obsolete..” spec for the SDI

– Higher “cost estimates” come from critics-&-opponents
• Manifestly, professional naïfs – “Will you believe this?!?

Whatever you think of the critics, the American Physical Society and Congressional Budget Office (1996, 2002 and 2004) are not staffed by "professional naïfs."

Of all people to hurl this charge, Dr. Wood is not the person with the most credibility.

His days pimping the X-Ray laser remain a source of controversy. Worse, in my view, the technically savy Dr. Wood encrypted his .pdf file -- something that took me three seconds to defeat with Elcomsoft.

Let's hope Brilliant Pebbles fares better than Wood's encryption when dealing with adversary countermeasures.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.

G.I. T.V.

I’m sitting in a room with a half-dozen soldiers. And we’re watching animated carrier pigeons on TV.

“I’ve got this amazing navigation system,” one of the birds says to the other. “I just can’t find Sgt. Kowalski.”

“No change of address form, hunh?” the second pigeon answers. Off-camera, an announcer reminds for G.I.s to notify the post office when they change bases. The soldiers in the room groan. “It’s shit like this that makes me embarrassed to be in the Army,” a sergeant to my left spits, as the television returns to its regular Fox News broadcast.

All of the major networks donate programming to the Defense Department, which re-broadcasts it to military outposts around the globe, commercial-free. But that doesn’t mean the shows run uninterrupted. Instead of slickly-produced come-ons for cars or energy drinks or Tom Cruise’s latest opus, troops are bombarded with amateurish, half-baked ads that sit in the space somewhere between public relations and public nagging. Cross-breed your local Chevy dealership’s TV spot with the company newsletter, and you have the commercials of the Armed Forces Network.

“Baby safe instruction manuals.” Websites that let you apply for jobs at the PX. The Air Force’s traveling, Las Vegas-style review. “The best softballers in Europe.” No item is too picayune or too inconsequential to be hyped on AFN. And at no point do the commercial-makers ever assume that their uniformed audience has any more than a few dozen points of IQ. “Diversification is a big word,” a talking chicken tells us.

But that doesn’t mean that AFN wants their Neanderthals to leave the armed services. Hell, no. Every branch of the military advertises on the network to get troops to re-enlist, to lure them from one service to the other, or to convince their children – presumably watching from military-provided houses – to sign on up.

It’s a tension that I’ve heard ever since I got to Baghdad. Officers keep telling me that the counterinsurgency here is a “thinking man’s war” that requires even the most junior personnel to make quick, smart decisions. And, they assure me, that America’s troops are well prepared for that mission. But, minutes later, those same officers will also tell me that “we’re not too smart” or that “I’m not the brightest guy,” or that “there’s a reason most of our soldiers didn’t go to college.”

So which is it? Has the Pentagon sent a bunch of warrior-geniuses to Iraq -- or a pack of grunts, dumb as rocks? Maybe it’s a self-selecting process, covering defense technology. But most of the troops I’ve met over the past four years have been pretty damn bright – even the ones (often, especially the ones) that never made it past the 11th grade.

AFN, on the other hand, seems to have come to entirely different conclusion. One with simple words, short sentences, and cartoons. Lots and lots of cartoons. “Don’t get wrapped up with these high interest credit cards,” an announcer says, while the television shows us a crudely-drawn mummy. “Quitting cold turkey can be tough,” coos another, as an animated man jumps off of a cliff, and splats on the ground. “Nicotine replacement products can soften your landing.”

Later, an airman shows off the skills he learned in survival school – by wearing green camouflage makeup in a snowstorm. A man dressed up like a human heart does jumping jacks and runs up stairs, to prove a point about exercise. And a doe-eyed young soldier in a gym keeps rocking his head back and forth, left-to-right, left-to-right. A buddy asks what he’s doing. “Training,” he replies. For an Army tennis championship, to be held in Germany soon. “I’m not training to compete. I’m training to watch.”

US-India Nuclear Cooperation

Lolly, lolly get your nuclear fuel here.

I hope Indian PM Manmohan Singh travels light, because he returns to India laden with goodies.

During his state visit to the US, Singh wrung a promise from President Bush to:

... seek agreement from Congress to adjust US laws and policies, and [to] work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India ...

The full text of joint statement and the press conference with Bush and Singh are both available on-line.

The Bush Administration is prohibited by US law and its international obligations from providing civil nuclear assistance to India, because New Delhi refuses to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In fact, the international obligation in question -- the voluntary Nuclear Suppliers Group -- was created as a response to India's 1974 "peaceful" nuclear explosion.

The Bush Administration is eagerly courting India because ... well, frankly, I don't know. I am told the intellectual argument for the Bush Administration policy is reflected in Ashley Tellis' India as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States.

Tellis argues the "change in approach" arose "from three evolving perceptions within the Bush administration":

First, the administration had come to realize that India would not give up its nuclear weapons so long as various regional adversaries continued to possess comparable capabilities. The fact that the administration initially viewed both of India’s antagonists — Pakistan and China — with considerable suspicion only made senior U.S. officials more sympathetic to New Delhi’s predicament.

Second, the administration was now of the understanding that India’s nuclear weapons did not pose a threat to U.S. security and the United States’ larger geopolitical interests, and could in certain circumstances actually advance American strategic objectives in Asia and beyond. The administration’s own antipathy to nuclear arms control agreements such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (which happened to dovetail with Indian interests on these issues), coupled with its strong expectation of an eventual renewal of great-power competition, allowed both realist and neoconservative factions within the administration to take a more relaxed view of New Delhi’s emerging nuclear capabilities.

Third, the administration now appreciated that the range of technological resources associated with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems that were present in India in both the public and private sectors posed a far more serious threat to American safety—were these resources to be leaked, whether deliberately or inadvertently, to hostile regimes or nonstate actors—than New Delhi’s ownership of various nuclear assets. These perceptions, which became dominant in administration thinking in regard to India post-9/11, made tightening the Indian export control regime far more important from the viewpoint of increasing U.S. security than leaning on the Indian state to cap or roll back its strategic programs.

From these three perceptions grew the conviction that the United States ought to focus primarily on safeguarding India’s tangible and intangible WMD capabilities, even as Washington struggled to find ways of accepting New Delhi’s nuclear weaponry within the constraining framework of the existing international nonproliferation order.

Dana Milbank and Dafna Linzer at the Washington Post have a story about the agreement and its implication for the global nonproliferation regime.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.

Update: Scott Gearity has more.

Taking on Israel Over Arms Exports to China

Over at Arms Control Wonk, I summarized a couple of posts by blogger and export control guru Scott Gearity about the growing liklihood that the Commerce Department will issue expanded export controls for trade with China.

Some folks in the Bush Administration are so serious about cutting off arms exports to China that they are willing to take on Israel.

That is a brave move in American politics.

Yuval Steinitz (right), chairman of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) Foreign and Defense Committee, tells Arms Control Today that "very soon [the US and Israel] are going to agree on a procedure with regard to Israeli exports to China."

You may remember an ugly dust-up between between Washington and Tel Aviv a few years back when the latter tried to sell an AWACS-like PHALCON radar to China.

The controversy flared up last year, after Israel proposed upgrading some Harpy UAVs it sold to China (above, big) in the 1990s with U.S. approval. Israel has canceled this deal, too ... but not before lots of Tel Aviv's friends in Washington turned downright nasty. The ever-charming Danielle Pletka called the deal "disgraceful" and "a situation where Israel acts like France."

Them's fightin' words.

The Defense Department was so pissed about these deals that they dumped Israel from the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. You'd be forgiven for missing the story because only Brian Bender at the Boston Globe and blogger Laura Rozen seemed to give this story any love.

Anyway, Israel got the message. Scott Wilson at the WaPo reports (via Ha'aretz):

Israel will sign a memorandum of understanding with the Pentagon that will give U.S. officials some discretion over the terms of future Israeli arms exports. Israeli officials characterized the memorandum as a set of guidelines governing future transactions, including those in which the United States and Israel are competing.

-- Jeffrey Lewis

Supercavitation-alisticexpealidocious

British magazine New Scientist (subscription) reports that Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control has developed a conventional "bunker buster" (right, click for a larger view) using a novel concept:

The design builds on the US navy's work on high-speed torpedoes, which reduce friction around themselves by creating a gas bubble called a supercavity. ...

To create a supercavity that surrounds but doesn't touch the body that created it, the object has to be travelling very fast- at least 180 kilometres an hour if it is in water. And the nose has to be flat to force fluid off the edge with such speed and at such an angle that it avoids hitting the surface of the body. But if this is to be achieved, the result is a supercavitating body with extremely low drag. Instead of being encased in water, it is simply surrounded by water vapour, which is less dense and has less resistance.

But supercavitation may not be limited to liquids. At high enough velocity a blunt-nosed body will force apart any medium it travels through, whether it be water, soil or concrete. If the cavity is large enough, the only surface in contact with the medium will be the blunt tip of the nose.

Joseph Mayersak, Advanced Projects general manager at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, calls the phenonmenon "terradynamic cavitation."

Mayersak claims the Kinetic Energy Cavity Penetrator Weapon "offers the ability to penetrate with a drag factor one-tenth of that associated with other penetrators and the ability to penetrate into targets at an overall depth of ten times that which can be reached by other penetrator geometries."

One thing: Did he have to call it a "cavity penetrator"?

New Scientist reports that Lockheed plans to test four prototypes by the end of the year.

Mayersak filed a patent application, which I have posted as a .pdf at my website, Arms Control Wonk.com.

--Jeffrey Lewis

Black Hawk Up

This has been a wish-fulfillment year for me – riding on cop patrols, shooting white water rapids, proposing to my girl. Today, I checked another item off of the lifelong to-do list, getting in a helicopter for the first time. Of course, flying over Baghdad was never part of the fantasy.

Black Hawk helicopters run a regular route between the main American military bases around the greater Baghdad area. On a clear day, a pair of the copters comes here, to Camp Liberty, about every hour-and-a-half. But the days haven’t all been so clear, lately. So it took a full work week for the captain of the unit that I’m with to secure us spots on the copter down to Ad Mahmudiya, twenty minutes to the southeast.

I had heard helicopters flying off in the distance before. And I knew – from the movies, I guess – that, up close, they were beyond loud. I stuff foam plugs in my ears well before I can see the Black Hawks coming. All of the passengers do.

Maybe the ear protection makes a difference. But, as the copters descend tail first onto Liberty’s makeshift helipad, I can’t tell. A low-pitched, cyclical growl turns into a full-throated roar when Black Hawks touch the ground. It feels like I’m back in New York -- on the subway platform, with a half-dozen express trains rocketing by.

We crouch low and scurry towards the aircraft, the decibels mounting with every skittish step. Everything else is now inaudible, except for the whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp of air being sliced by helicopter blades.

We step up into the Black Hawk. One of the gunners shows me how to stick the lap belt and two shoulder harnesses into a single, circular lock. And then we take off, the copter shuddering as we gain elevation.

Baghdad is just as ugly from the sky as it is from the ground, with block after endless block of colorless apartment buildings and dilapidated factories. The roofs are covered with satellite dishes and trash.

But as the helicopters bank southward, beyond the urban sprawl, a dusty beauty emerges. From a few hundred yards up, we see neatly-groomed farms and patches of palm trees. This could be central California, easily.

The Black Hawk dips and sways. At one moment, we’re flying parallel to the ground. And then, the copter jerks to one side, rolling into a 45 degree angle. I grin. To me, this is fun.

Apparently, I shouldn’t have been smiling, the captain tells me after we land. Just about every time the Black Hawks fly, he says, insurgents take potshots at the copters with AK-47s. The chances of a serious hit are about one in a zillion. Nailing a Black Hawk moving at 150 miles per hour is tough, and a few bullets won’t bring one down.

But, just to be on the safe side, the pilots do pull a few of those crazy rolls. The gunners watch for trouble as they swing their 7.62 milimeter machine guns. And they fire off flares, the captain adds, to attract any heat-seeking missiles that might be headed skyward. I gulp.

Before making the return trip, we have a few hours to kill at the small American outpost at Ad Mahmudiya -- or “FOB Shithole,” as the soldiers here call it, using the acronym for “Forwarding Operating Base.” Life for the few hundred troops couldn’t be much different than the relative luxury and safety of the complex where I’m staying. Soldiers are packed into converted shipping containers and concrete bunkers. Piles of scrap metal and shot-up cars litter the base. The PX and the operations center recently burned to the ground. Helmets and body armor are required wearing at all times.

I sit behind one of the Black Hawk’s two gunners for the ride back. And this time, the noise is even worse, with a high-pitched whirr – from the rotor, I figure – joining the chomp of the blades and the roar of the wind passing over the the weapon. The gusts are so strong, it’s a struggle just to lift my arms to take a picture.

The captain wasn’t kidding. The copter does fire off rainbow-colored, almost iridescent, countermeasures a minute or two after we get into the air. But there aren’t any missiles to distract. The rolls are less intense. The dips are less severe. And we’re back at base just a short while later – safe, sound, and wish granted.

Endgame

Many thanks to Noah for asking me to sit in for a week. It's been fun. Next week you'll be in the hands of a real blogger, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, also known as the Arms Control Wonk.

A few things I couldn't get to:

* The Pentagon's homeland security growing pains

* The Quadrennial Defense Review

* The GamePipe Laboratory and its director, Michael Zyda

* Grand Theft Pentagon (subtle, it ain't)

* And one more for the kids

Stay safe, Noah -- and everyone else over there. Out here.

-- Dan Dupont

Secret knowledge

The Army has picked Lockheed Martin to manage its massive intranet, called Army Knowledge Online. The service started the thing a few years ago to provide soldiers with an Internet portal that offered e-mail, easy access to records and other information. In recent years, though, it's become somewhat difficult to manage, so the service is switching gears, choosing Lockheed Martin to integrate it all.

AKO has a dark side, though. Since 9/11, especially, it's become an easy place for the service to keep information from the prying eyes of reporters and the public. And we're not talking top-secret or even sensitive stuff, either; routine, even mundane info often gets locked away.

Take this site, for example. It's the home page for the branch of the Army responsible for buying weapons and other stuff with the billions of taxpayer dollars provided the service each year.

Right in the middle of the page you'll see a list of documents that appear about as sensitive as the average dry-cleaning ticket. But most are behind the AKO firewall. And way down on the left, there's something called a "PEO-PM" list -- the names and numbers of the program managers who steer Army weapon systems. That was publicly available for years, but now can't be seen by anyone without a .mil IP address.

Also available for years was a monthly Army acquisition newsletter containing routine announcements; that's gone, too. (I read it every month when it was accessible, and