Katrina: Relief Links

My brother Dan was one of the lucky ones; he left New Orleans long before Katrina made landfall. But even the fortunate, like him, have no idea whether they will have homes or jobs when they return -- and may not know for weeks, or even months.

Dan is about to start the 1400-mile drive to our folks' house, to wait things out for a while. Many others don't have that luxury. Give to one of the charities linked here.

Giant Blimp on the Rise

The idea is pretty wild, even for the dreamers at Darpa: build a giant blimp that can haul 1,800 soldiers and their gear 12,000 nautical miles, in less than a week.

But the Pentagon's research arm is serious enough about the project, code-named Walrus, to hand out more than $6 million to Lockheed Martin and Aeros Aeronautical Group to start designing the thing.

The Defense Department has renewed its interest in blimps in recent years; a pair of tethered airships kept watch over the giant American military complex near the Baghdad airport, when I was there. The "tri-phibian" (air, land, sea) Walrus is particularly intriguing because the Pentagon is trying to figure out ways to make American forces less reliant on deep-water ports, foreign bases, and billion-dollar airports to wage war. The Army's Surface Deployment and Distribution Command has its own plans for a such an airship.

Darpa hopes the designs they've just funded will lead to a small-scale Walrus, capable of carting 30 tons, by 2008, Defense Industry Daily notes. That's as much as today's C-130 transport planes. But it's only a fraction of the million pounds that the agency wants the Walrus will ultimately be able to lug around.

(Illustration by John MacNeill, used with premission.)

Laser Sat's Big Pipes

"Today’s military satellites "take about two minutes to transfer a simple photo," Defense News notes. "That same image could take about 23 seconds on the next-generation Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites, which will start to go up in the next few years."

The third wave of U.S. orbiters, scheduled for launch in the mid-2010s, "could move the image in far less than a second." And they'd use lasers to do it.

Such blinding speed could finally bring to life the Pentagon’s visions of networked sensors and shooters — unmanned aerial vehicles, Joint Strike Fighters, warships and troops on the ground — trading instant images and video anywhere in the world.

The Air Force's Transformational Satellite System (TSAT) program got off the ground about two years ago.. Boeing and Lockheed, which each have half-billion-dollar contracts to develop initial TSAT systems, are competing for a final production contract to be awarded in a year or so. Both have reported initial success in basic laser communications and other features.

TSAT will offer jam-proof radio and laser connections to compact surface receivers. Instead of lugging around brick-sized satellite phones, troops will sport BlackBerries that deliver space intelligence on the run.

Sounds great. But the Air Force figures it'll take $12-$18 billion to put the five-satellite constellation in orbit. And, given the military space program's track record of legendarily large screw-ups, it's far from clear whether Congress will pony up for TSAT.

During the 2005 budget process, lawmakers cut $300 million from the $775 million request. In 2006, the Air Force is asking for $836 million. The House Armed Services Committee has recommended only about half that be approved, while the Senate Armed Services would like a cut of about $200 million.

THERE'S MORE: The Air Force is adding four more anti-satellite jammers to its arsenal of orbiter stoppers, Inside Defense reports.

Rapid Fire 8/29/05

* Cops n' robot in Chicago standoff

* Get your secret government dossier

* Navy's giant, floating runway

* FBI: peace marchers = terrorists

* Unmanned firefighters (background here)

* Dumb, needy, lovable compu-brains

(Big ups: JQP)

Army Doc: "Bring Us Home"

Captain Daniel Green is an battlefield surgeon, treating soldiers and Iraqi civilians around Baghdad's Green Zone. He has seen more casualties -- and interacted with more Iraqis -- than the vast majority of GIs over there. And that has given the captain a different perspective on this war. He isn't happy with how it's being run. In an e-mail to friends and family back home, Green says that it's time for U.S. forces to get out of Iraq.

I don't rightly know what your US news is saying, but here are a few of my own observations... The US Army is putting forth its main effort to train Iraqi soldiers... It will realistically take years before their Army and police are sufficient to protect the people and resist internal corruption. The reports that the commands are making to the higher-ups are biased and sugar-coated. The corruption is underplayed and the achievements/milestones exaggerated. The results however, may convince Congress and that a successful pull-out is close.

At this point I'd appreciate [it]. I've done my part. I've personally come to the law-of-diminishing-returns. The remaining process will be slow and arduous. Increasing financial expenditures and man-hours are going to be needed to sustain any significant growth.

It's similar to building a house. From the initial ground-breaking to foundation and framing, things seem to go remarkably fast, giving the home owners an unrealistic sense of impending move-in. Then the minor details like outlets, appliances, trim work, and cabinetry begin and little progress is noted after long periods. The tenants-to-be get anxious. The same is taking place here. The American public will not be able to consciously measure our productivity even with the best of media reporting.

Besides, I think the military is the wrong force at this point. We deal effectively with the combat training, but this corruption is a new species. We need Americans more attune to the nuisances of internal governmental fraud...people more like our own lawmakers. Soldiers need to focus on combat, not mafia arbitration.

I witnessed a company commander a few months ago try to expose and bring to justice the perpetrators of an intricately weaved plot of electricity theft. The King-Pin of the scheme was none other than the chairman of the city council. That went over well...

If it moves shoot it. If it doesn't move, shoot it anyway, and leave the rest to the State Department. Bring us home.

THERE'S MORE: As Jon reminds us in the comments, Michael Yon has been doing great fronline blogging from Mosul.

Styrofoam First, Lightning Guns Later

The line between envy and admiration can be pretty thin, when you're a freelance writer. Take, for example, Defense Tech pal Sharon Weinberger's story in today's Washington Post Magazine.

It's genius: a heartfelt, quirky, subtly snarky profile of Pete Bitar, an Anderson, Indiana styrofoam recycling entrepreneur who's now marketing non-lethal lightning guns to the Pentagon. How, she asks, did a guy with no engineering background manage to get a million bucks from the Defense Department to develop a "StunStrike" weapon?

Great question -- one I wished I had asked at the Virginia "directed energy" conference where both Weinberger and I met Bitar for this first time. Anyway, go read her piece. I'll be finished kicking myself by the time you're done.

THERE'S MORE: Speaking of kicking myself, military thinkers have been telling me for months about their idea for bringing some order to Iraq. I never got around to writing about it. The New York Times' David Brooks just did.

You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement.

Once you've secured a town or city, you throw in all the economic and political resources you have to make that place grow. The locals see the benefits of working with you. Your own troops and the folks back home watching on TV can see concrete signs of progress in these newly regenerated neighborhoods. You mix your troops in with indigenous security forces, and through intimate contact with the locals you begin to even out the intelligence advantage that otherwise goes to the insurgents.

AND MORE: Armchair Generalist has a good round-up of the "oil spot" buzz.

M-4s? Not so Fast...

The Times has an interesting story on American relcutance to give Iraqi army units the machine guns and armored Humvees they want.

Simply put, Iraq remains too fragile for any planner to know what shape the country will be in six months or a year from now - whether it will reach compromises and hold together or split apart in a civil war.

And that presents a conundrum for American military planners. With those questions up in the air, they have to fear that any heavy arms distributed now could end up aimed at American forces or feeding a growing civil conflict. And the longer Iraq's army has to wait for sophisticated weapons, the longer American forces are likely to be needed in Iraq as a bulwark against chaos.

New Sensor: Naturally Rad

Ohio State is working on a simple new sensor that could one day put other detectors out to pasture.

Unlike X-ray machines or radar instruments, the sensor doesn't have to generate a signal to detect objects – it spots them based on how brightly they reflect the natural radiation that is all around us every day.

There is always a certain amount of radiation – light, heat, and even microwaves – in the environment. Every object – the human body, a gun or knife, or an asphalt runway – reflects this ambient radiation differently.

Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at Ohio State and head of the team that is developing the sensor, likened this reflection to the way glossy and satin-finish paints reflect light differently to the eye.

Once the sensor is further developed, it could be used to scan people or luggage without subjecting them to X-rays or other radiation. And if the sensor were embedded in an airplane nose, it might help pilots see a runway during bad weather.

(Big ups: Schneier. And yeah, that's a screen grab from Total Recall)

Rapid Fire 8/25/05

* Police vest can't stop bullets

* Robo-guards to Iraq

* Honest-to-God Bat-rope

* Catfish = evildoers?

* Real, virtual war games mash up

(Big ups: TT, GO, RC, Sploid)

Baghdad Battle, First Hand

Pick up the paper today, and you'll read reports of "fierce gun battles [that] erupted between about 40 insurgents and the police... in western Baghdad."

Here's what those battles looked like, from a soldier who was there. He was kind enough to copy me on an e-mail he wrote home immediately after the fighting.

I just strolled back in to the safety net of my surroundings and have been dragged through chaos the past couple of hours. My brain is still spinning and I am not sure where to even start.

We received a request to conduct a post-blast investigation of a VBIED (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device) that detonated near the base camp. The initial report indicated that the target was an Iraqi Police (IP) car. We responded to the incident site and found the smoldering remains of a couple of vehicles in the middle of the road. It appeared at first glance that the only fatalities resulted from the suicide bomber in the car and perhaps the occupants of the IP car. As we walked from our vehicles to the incident site, we heard another car bomb detonating near an IP station approximately 2 kilometers away.

We soon received a request to respond. We quickly finished up with the first incident site, but not before we found additional casualties – persons in the near vicinity. While we prepared for movement to the second site, we heard on the radio that the second site was now getting hit – people were driving past the IP station, and firing RPG's [rocket propelled grenades] at IP's in their vehicles. We conducted movement to the IP station and when we arrived, the scene was full of chaos.

IP's were frantically running down the streets helping injured persons. IP vehicles were speeding up and down the streets looking for the culprits. Vehicles were burning. Gun fire erupted in the background and we just pulled our vehicles into a formation to provide a good tactical posture and prepared to unleash a heavy volley of steel. After everything settled down, we continued to do our work. We found an IED nearby that was meant to add to the attack.

I don't usually write home and talk about the details of specific incidents because I feel compelled to keep the chaos out of the homes of family and friends. But today felt different. I don't know why I had the need or desire to talk about today's events -- other than the fact that perhaps it was time to vent some fumes. All of my soldiers deal with the reality of what we face everyday in different ways. Some have made pacts to not write home and possibly worry family. Perhaps I am wrong in doing so, but I thought I would provide some insight to what you might not see on the news tonight. You will not be able to smell the burnt remains of the suicide bombers or the IP's. You probably won't see the charred remains of persons in the vehicles. And you won't be able to see the full effects of a carefully placed VBIED with a follow-up attack with RPG's and small arms fire.

While writing, I decided to comb through my pictures and add one. But I'll adhere to my promise to not send anything too graphic. Perhaps, if you catch the news, you might just see that suicide bombers once again rocked Baghdad.

Drone-Killer Designed

I don't pretend to know the first thing about designing a drone -- much less desgining a drone-killer. But when I told the folks at Popular Mechanics that Darpa was looking for proposals for a weapon that could take out robo-planes, a team of artist- and engineer-types got busy. This is what they dreamed up.

Sub Base Saved

There was traffic on the highway, on my way to New London, Connecticut last Thursday. And as I sat on I-95, I couldn't help but think that there wouldn't be many cars there for long.

The Pentagon had decided to close the area's big employer, the Naval Sumbarine Base New London. And what the Pentagon wants, the Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) usually delivers.

But not this time.

"In what, in my view, is a landslide victory for maintaining American sea power, the BRAC Commission voted 7 to 1 (with 1 recusal) in favor of preserving Naval Submarine Base New London," notes Joe Buff, the author and undersea commentator, who's been a vocal opponent of the proposed closing.

Click here to read Joe's take on the decision.

Naval Submarine Base New London can realistically claim to be the Submarine Capital of the World. The training facilities there are state of the art, covering almost every conceivable skill a submariner needs to survive at sea and do his job. The nuclear-qualified waterfrontage at the Base, if closed, could never be regained elsewhere. Groton is the East Coast base nearest to the shortest and most covert route to the Pacific, which goes under the Arctic ice cap -- a faster route to North Korea than the subs based in San Diego, in fact. And though details are highly classified, submarines are definitely "bringing home the bacon" in the Global War on Terror. So this is a terrible time to be cutting back on their facilities or disrupting their operational flow.

The vote wrapped up a hard-fought battle that lasted all summer, becoming at times surprisingly bitter and personal. The outcome was no foregone conclusion, either. Despite strong counter-arguments from a group of retired admirals including three former CNOs, plus almost every New England politician from either party, not to mention community leaders and thousands of private citizens, the Pentagon remained insistent that both facilities be shuttered... The debate raged on until the final moments before the vote tally was taken live on C-SPAN 2, with a Department of Defense spokesman saying that New London met all the formal criteria for closure, while someone from the Government Accountability Office firmly stated quite the opposite -- and some Commissioners had pointed words of their own.

While many BRACtivists can now breath a sigh of relief that crucial national security assets, and related jobs, will be preserved, troubling questions do remain. The biggest one, in my mind, is what to make of senior DOD and Navy leaders who, despite admonishments to the contrary from many quarters of the nation, remained so fixated on a narrow view of the Global War on Terror in isolation, and so blind to the vital importance of robust undersea warfare to safeguard our country's future. Mr. Rumsfeld, in particular, must be fuming -- he had a lot of credibility invested in pushing through the closure list unchanged. The fight over an adequately-sized submarine force, especially given the rising threat of China, will undoubtedly continue, and given the ways of the Beltway will almost certainly now escalate.

Humvee 2.0

"The Pentagon is accelerating its search to replace the Humvee after two years of roadside bomb blasts and suicide attacks in Iraq," says USA Today.

"Before the war in Iraq, a successor to the Army's dominant vehicle wasn't due until the middle of the next decade. Now the Army plans to review designs this fall, and working prototypes will be due in June."

The U.S. military needs those prototypes to be better armored than the often thin-skinned Humvees, of course. But they also want "a beefier suspension that can handle the weight of the armor... lower fuel consumption, to reduce the need for supply convoys that have been targets of insurgents... [and] improved onboard power generation to handle the expanding array of electronics that troops take into battle today compared with the simple radios of 30 years ago."

I've got a brief profile of one potential Humvee replacement in next month's Popular Mechanics. Defense Review looks at another, Georgia Tech's Ultra Armored Patrol.

(Big ups: Eric)

Rapid Fire 8/24/05

* D.I.Y. sat-killer

* Air Force personnel files hacked

* Military PDA: $18 mil

* Brits get germ-fighting skivvies

* Grown-ups take over E-ring

* Russian biolabs: no sweat

(Big ups: RC)

Subway Surveillance on Track

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is getting set to announce their subway security plan. And from the details reported in today's Times, the MTA appears to be basing their $200 million effort on the smart surveillance systems we've profiled in places like Chicago and the port of Corpus Christi.

Lockheed Martin will lead a team of contractors in creating an "integrated electronic security system" that will include closed-circuit television cameras, motion detectors and "intelligent video" software that can automatically determine if a package has been left on a train or if a person is in a restricted area.

The MTA could have gone the London route, stringing tons of cameras throughout the subway, and only paying careful attention to the footage once something bad went down. Instead, by using software to detect suspicious behavior, New York transit officials seem to want their thousand new cameras and three thousand electronic sensors to serve as deterrents, tipping cops off to potential bad guys before they act.

The system is a long, long time in coming. Back in 2002, the MTA was given $591 million to shore up New York's mass transit security. As of last month, it had spent just $30 million of that. Finally, the London tube bombings shamed the MTA into making a move.

THERE'S MORE: Bruce Schneier thinks the subway cams are a waste, dealing with the "'movie plot threat'" of the moment... The terrorists bombed a subway in London, so we need to defend our subways."

New York City officials are [also] erring on the side of caution. If nothing happens, then it was only money. But if something does happen, they won't keep their jobs unless they can show they did everything possible. And technological solutions just make everyone feel better.

Darpa's Energy-Savers: Drones, Nets

While the New York Times and others are contemplating the beginning of the end of oil, the Pentagon's way-out research arm is trying to figure out what it would take to make the U.S. military "petroleum free," according to Inside Defense.

Naturally, the mad scientists picked robots and wireless battlefield networks as two of their top energy savers.

“This universal connectivity will allow commanders to track individual soldiers and robots as well as logistics system status and readiness,” the summary [of a February Darpa energy workshop] states. These capabilities, coupled with advanced modeling and simulation tools, will allow commanders to rapidly explore and exploit warfighting options, which in the end translates into shorter execution time lines and reduced energy requirements.

Darpa-ites also saw drones as a potential boost to oil alternatives.

Using more unmanned systems will save energy because they will be smaller and lighter than manned systems that require armor, the summary states. Plus, robots and other unmanned systems “will allow reduction of the number of combat soldiers needed to accomplish the mission, further contributing to reduced energy requirements.”

Electricity will one day be the big replacement for oil, the Darpa conferees believe. And "since electricity can be generated from a variety of sources, it may be possible in 30 years to avoid having to rely on energy and fuel imported into a battlespace," Inside Defense notes.

The military would also need portable generators and "'ultra-high-capacity' electric storage devices to support directed-energy weapons and other 'futuristic gun systems' that require massive amounts of energy in short bursts."

But those ray guns shouldn't be wired up to the generators. The energy should be beamed through the air, instead. "This technology will be valuable because power lines are highly vulnerable to sabotage," the Darpa summary observes. Of course they are.

Rapid Fire 8/22/05

* Soldier stress RX: video games?

* Al Qaeda's new bankroll

* Tiny satellites = target practice

* Copters back from the grave

* Deep inside Gitmo (sub req'd)

(Big ups: RC)

Jet Defense Gets Off Ground

It's taken nearly three years. But the Homeland Security Department is finally ready to start testing out missile countermeasures on commercial planes.

Back in November 2002, an Israeli 757 was attacked with two shoulder-fired MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) over Kenya. Luckily, the missiles didn't connect. But many analysts think it's only a matter of time before an American jetliner is hit; MANPADS have killed hundreds of airline passengers since the 70's. And unless some kind of countermeasure is put in place, the planes will continue to be "almost like sitting ducks. Those aircraft are very slow... Everyone can [attack them]," an Israeli defense researcher told CNN.

Military planes are already equipped with "Directional InfraRed Counter-Measures," or DIRCMs, which use laser beams to confuse the missiles' guidance systems. But just slapping the military systems on commercial planes would cost a ton -- $11 billion, maybe, to install DIRCM on all 6,800 U.S. commercial jets, plus another $40 billion in maintenance over 10 years, according to a Rand study.

Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems have been working on cheaper, easier-to-maintain versions of the countermeasure. And Northrop says it should be ready to begin "operational testing and evaluation... aboard an MD-11 airliner later this month and a Boeing 747 later this year."

A company spokesperson says that the system "will cost airlines $0.003 to operate per available seat mile or about 70 cents per passenger on a 2,000-mi. trip. This is about the cost of a bag of peanuts," Aviation Week notes. "However, there is a weight penalty with the system. The Northrop Grumman installation weighs 500 lb., including 350 lb. for the pod, about the weight of two passengers and bags."

It's still a significant cost for already-troubled airline companies. But given the countless thousands of MANPADS floating around on the international market -- selling for as little as $5,000, according to Rand -- a bag of peanuts and two extra passengers seems like a price worth paying.

U.S. Ships Attacked

"A rocket was fired early today at two American naval ships docked in southern Jordan, killing a Jordanian soldier and marking the first attack on American military ships in the region in five years," the Times reports.

A rocket was fired at the same time from apparently the same area at an airport in a neighboring Israeli port, hitting a stretch of road and wounding a taxi driver, news agencies reported, citing Israeli officials and witnesses. A third projectile was fired at a Jordanian hospital around the southern port of Aqaba but did no damage.

No one claimed immediate responsibility for the simultaneous attacks, which displayed audacity in their use of military-style weapons and techniques. In October 2000, two suicide bombers detonated a launch loaded with explosives next to the American destroyer Cole as it was refueling in a port in Yemen. That attack, which killed 17 people and wounded 39 others, was attributed to Al Qaeda.

The attack today on the American vessels, the dock landing ship Ashland and the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge, took place around 8:44 a.m. and missed two naval ships at dock in Aqaba, said Capt. Ryan Fitzgerald of the United States Air Force, a spokesman for the American military command in the Middle East. The tocket flew over the ships and landed on a warehouse at the pier, he said.

THERE'S MORE: Suspects have been arrested. And the Iraqi Prime Minister is accusing Jordan of allowing Saddam;s family "to finance an insurgent campaign to destabilize Iraq."

More Cash for Human Ray Gun Tests

The Pentagon is dead serious about getting its pain ray into the field soon -- serious enough to test the system out on people.

Defense Industry Daily notes that "Conceptual MindWorks in San Antonio, TX received a $7 million cost-plus fixed-fee contract to provide for research support around emerging directed energy weapons... and their effects on humans."

Work will be conducted in cooperation with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Human Effectiveness Directorate... located in Brooks City-Base, TX. The scope of the proposed contract will focus on bioeffects research on directed energy and kinetic energy systems, to assist in transitioning DoD technologies from the lab to the front lines.

Using electro-magnetic waves that penetrate just a 64th of inch beneath the skin, the Defense Department's pain ray creates a burning sensation that tends to make people run the other way, fast.

Hundreds of people have been voluntarily zapped by the device, known as the Active Denial System, with a little, if any, lasting damage. But that testing was called into question last month, when New Scientist revealed that the trials weren't as realistic as they could have been.

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.... People playing rioters put up their hands when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being targeted again.

A prototype Humvee-mounted ADS system could be sent to Iraq by the end of the year. A modified Stryker armored personnel carrier, equipped with a low-power version of the pain ray, a laser dazzler, and a sonic blaster, isn't all that far behind, officials familir with the program say.

Rapid Fire 8/18/05

* Good news! Only 27,600 nukes!

* "Silent plane" in the works

* Your very own laser trip wire

* Fraud slows Osprey

* Goodbye Hummers, hello donkeys

(Big ups: JQP, JO)

Bee Mine Bee Mine, Baby

Since the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military has used chickens as chemical weapons sensors, dolphins as mine detectors, and armor-wearing dogs as controllers of unruly crowds. And, generally, two-legged soldiers have been grateful for the four-legged and finned assists.

Members of the insect community, however, have been downright pissed. They hate evil-doers just as much as the next genus. And they've been itching to get in on the action.

Luckily, Roland tells us, the little buggers may soon get their chance. Researchers funded by Darpa (of course) are training honey bees to sniff out land mines.

Bees... can be trained in a couple of days to pick up the scent of the explosive in the landmine... When released into a minefield, the bees find their way toward the mines... [They] are too small to detect either with the naked eye or high-resolution video at long ranges. So instead, the team employs a laser emitter that sweeps an area like radar or sonar. When the light hits a bee, it reflects, and sensors are able to tell by the reflection just where the bee is. After sweeping several times, the scientists are able to crunch the data and see statistically where the higher occurrences of bees are located.

In controlled situations, the method is extremely effective: Bees can detect very small traces of explosive vapors with 97% accuracy and are "wrong" -- that is, passing over a mine without noticing it -- less than 1% of the time.

THERE'S MORE: Animal lovers, be sure to read up on England's chicken-powered nuke, the Navy's plan to give sailors the sharks' electric sensors, one police department's camera-equipped pooch, and another's attempt to put a trained monkey on the SWAT team.

AND MORE: Reader DG notes that this "is not a new idea." Back in 1999, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories were training mine-sniffing bees of their own.

AND MORE: "This reminds me of a funny quote I saw about the use of dolphins, from an Aussie navy guy working with them in clearing Iraq's Um Qasr harbor," says Defense Tech pal Peter Singer.

'Flipper's fucked, mate. The dolphins have had all this amazing publicity but as soon as they put one in the water it shot through. There's a war going on and Flipper goes AWOL. If you put one to work in Sydney Harbour it would mark a million things because it can't tell the difference between a washing machine and a mine. The bottom line, mate, is it's a fish. It's also a very smart fish so how do you know it hasn't just gone off for a feed instead of working and then thought, 'Hang on, I'd better mark a few things or they won't give me any fish when I get back.'

"Special Delivery," For Sure

Now I know why the Pentagon's chiefs are spending billions to develop heavily-armed, flying robots. It's so they can get their Amazon deliveries quicker.

Well, maybe it won't be the main mission. But Mike Francis, Darpa's program director for Joint-Unmanned Combat Air Systems, says there might be a couple of commercial applications in the killer drones' underlying algorithms. At the agency's DarpaTech 2005 conference, Francis noted that J-UCAS technology -- including multiple unmanned aircraft (unarmed, of course) and the planes' associated software and ground systems -- could be commercialized for a variety of uses. Inspecting power lines are one possibility. Handling security is another. A third is delivering or tracking UPS or FedEx packages.

Darpa announced that Boeing's X-45A prototype killer drones successfully completed a suppression of enemy air defenses demonstration last week, including detecting multiple simulated threats and performing coordinated attacks on multiple targets. The aircraft also prioritized targets, re-planned attacks as priorities changed and avoided simulated "pop-up" threats. It's no so hard to imagine the drones using the same decision-making processes to cope with slightly less-lethal choices.

-- Catherine Macrae Hockmuth

Retro-nukes

Dr. Arms Control Wonk here. Noah's running around today, so I've hijacked the blog for moment.

Retro fashions don't usually appeal to nuclear weapons designers, save for the odd Members Only jacket you spot on some poor refugee from the 1980s

So you might be surprised to find that uranium -- which fell out of favor with US nuclear weaponeers in the 1950s -- may be the hip Fall fashion in certain New Mexican locales.

Over at my blog, I've started a discussion about a story John Fleck broke in the subscription only Albuquerque Journal.

Bob Peurifoy, a retired Sandia executive, favors dumping plutonium weapons in favor of low-tech uranium designs. Actually, Peurifoy prefers the current US arsenal, but Congress says the weapons labs should relax Cold War design requirements to build new warheads that are more reliable and require less toxic industrial processes.

In that case, Peurifoy says, you can't do better than Uranium 235, which isn't nearly as expensive, toxic or fickle as plutonium.

Although a simpe uranium device (above, right) would produce a relatively small yield -- on the order of tens of kilotons -- dropping one on Kim Jong Il's Pleasure Palace would still ruin his day.

(Special Retro Bonus: Click here for a retro shot of former Sandia, and perhaps future Los Alamos, Director C. Paul Robinson).

Flocking Drones, Stress-Free Soldiers

Inside Defense's John Liang also spent last week snooping around DarpaTech 2005, the sorta-annual get-together of the Pentagon's mad science division. Here's a bit of what he found. You can check out the rest by giving this link a click.

* Birds of a feather. Getting unmanned aircraft to fly in formation is a challenge that still escapes DARPA scientists, according to Tactical Technology Office program manager Tom Beutner. "Formation flight is an idea we know should work," he says. "We see it even in nature, yet while we routinely use formation flight for tactical advantage, it has never been utilized for the full aerodynamic benefit it offers." Flying in formation allows the aircraft behind the leader to conserve fuel by flying in its slipstream, just like geese do when they fly south for the winter. "Only birds now do this routinely, and they can't explain it to us," he said.

* Stressed out. DARPA's Defense Sciences Office has been trying for years, now, to figure out how GIs can fight on little or no sleep. Now, DSO officials are looking for ideas on how soldiers can wage war, just about stress-free. The scientists are seeking ways to completely eliminate post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as techniques to map and identify the neural transmitters that cause the brain to feel stress.

* Let is snow, let it snow, let it snow (or sleet, or blow sand). DSO officials also want to enhance the human body's ability to adapt to extreme environments. Normally it takes a human several weeks to get used to a new environment; DARPA seeks technologies to speed that process up, as well as to identify the essential building blocks of how such adaptations happen.

* Itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka dot . . . contact lens? DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office is looking for ideas that would allow a nano-chip to be placed on a contact lens, according to MTO's Dennis Palla. The technology also would allow soldiers to receive and read data from various sources, as well as act as a miniature camera that could transmit what he or she sees back to either the headquarters unit or to other soldiers in the field via a network, Palla says.

-- John Liang

Phone Book: G.I.'s Best Friend?

Darpa program manager Michael Pagels says he could easily drown a soldier... in data, with more than 400 terabytes each day. A terabyte, from the Greek word for monster, is a thousand billion bytes or a thousand gigabytes. And 400 terabytes is the equivalent of every person in the urban Los Angeles area taking a digital photo every second for a year, noted Pagels, a program manager with the far-side agency's Information Exploitation Office.

Pagels wants a new kind of map to avoid this this "death by data." One that does what our brains do automatically: create models of the world that are constantly updating to reflect our experiences.

We maintain a 4D model of the world in our heads and during every waking moment we update it with information from our senses, identifying objects, and reasoning about the relationships among those objects. It works so well in our brains, but how do we make it work in our exploitation systems?

IXO colleague Robert Tenney argued that the key to this new map might be found in the phone book. By applying longitude and latitude to the telephone numbers in a given operational area, Tenney said the military can create models that indicate whether there's a market on the street around the corner or a warehouse. Useful info for a soldier on the move, assuming they have Yellow Book in Tikrit. The models would merge data from imagery and conventional maps as well.

Our Soldier in Baghdad knows where she is; GPS solves that problem, at least in terms of lat/long. Maps, perhaps updated with images, give her an address and that of the street around the corner. The telephone book tells her what's on that street around the corner: a gas station, a mosque, a firehouse, a factory, whatever.

Ideally, Tenney said, all of that information would be matched up, somehow, with the knowledge of a neighborhood's recent past.

Did the beatup car come from a residence or a chop shop? Did a pedestrian come from a home or from a car that sped away? Did the fire engine come from a firehouse or a warehouse?

Let's call these things "track history." In the urban world, it's good to know where a truck came from. It's good to know with whom it interacted along the way. Because this historical information can help distinguish the guy who's just picking up the trash, from the guy who's about to die—along with you, and many others...

More people will be in the market during morning and afternoon on weekdays, than at night, at noontime, or on holy days. They may be expressed as travel patterns: garbage trucks have more-or-less normal routes. They may be expressed as social or business activities: neighborhood soccer games happen in the evening. All these normal behaviors, when filtered out, leave indications of abnormal behavior.

Okay… sounds good. But remind me again: Who puts out the Yellow Pages for Baghdad?

-- Catherine Macrae Hockmuth

THERE'S MORE: Richard Parent nicely illustrates the potential for these Darpa proposals. Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase is involved.

Unmanned Future Plotted

The Defense Department's "Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2005-2030" is a pretty cold-eyed document, detailing in no uncertain terms what the pilotless planes of the world can and cannot do. But there is a part of the Roadmap where the Pentagon's planners let their imagination run wild, where they consider the flying robotic equivalent to concept cars. Here are a few models…

DP-5X
length: 11 ft. weight: 475 lbs. endurance: 5.5 hrs. 0 delivered/TBD planned
The DP-5X is planned to be a… VTOL [vertical take off and landing] UA [unmanned aircraft]. The program has successfully completed development and test milestones and is planning to enter initial flight demonstrations. The vehicle is modular and will facilitate reconfigurations to include or remove subsystem components. The modular design allows the aircraft to be separated into distinct modules that are man-transportable. The DP-5X has an ample payload capacity and is designed to fit into a common HMMWV system. The unique construction allows it to be rapidly launched by two operators. The vehicle can serve as a tactical Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition (RSTA) and Communication Relay platform to the Army small unit commanders at the Battalion and below level.

Long Gun
length: 12 ft. weight: 720 lbs. endurance: 30+ hrs. 0 delivered/TBD planned
The DARPA Long Gun program will evaluate and develop a re-useable, long endurance, low cost, joint, unmanned/armed missile system combined with a tri-mode long wave infrared/near infrared/visible (LWIR/NIR/VIS) sensor with laser spot targeting. Ducted fan propulsion will provide efficient thrust for long endurance. The missile will be launched from a canister carried on a sea or ground vehicle, will fly to a specified target area, and use a tri-mode sensor operating at visible, long, and near-infrared wavelengths to search for targets. If a qualified target is found, the missile will attack the target with a self-contained munition. If no targets are found, the missile could be commanded to return to base. The missile will include a data link back to a human controller/ operator to confirm target characteristics, approve engagement, and perform battle damage assessment.

A-160 Hummingbird
length: 35 ft. weight: 4300 lbs. endurance: 18 hrs. 4 delivered/10 planned
The A160 Hummingbird is designed to demonstrate the capability for marked improvements in performance (range, endurance, and controllability), as compared to conventional helicopters, through the use of a rigid rotor with variable RPM, lightweight rotor and fuselage structures, a high efficiency internal combustion engine, large fuel fraction, and an advanced semi-autonomous flight control/flight management system. The patented Optimum Speed Rotor (OSR) system allows the rotor to operate over a wide band of RPM and enables the A160 rotor blades to operate at the best lift/drag ratio over the full spectrum of flight conditions. First flight occurred in January 2002. In flight testing, using a 4-cylinder racing car engine, the A160 has achieved 135 knots speed, 7.3 hour endurance on an 18% fuel load, 7,000 ft altitude, and wide variation in rotor RPM. Autonomous flight achieved for take-off, waypoint flight, landing, and lost-link return to base. Current plans are to test with a 6-cylinder engine, then migrate to a turboshaft engine, and ultimately to a diesel engine, to achieve high endurance (24+ hours) and high altitude (30,000 feet). The DARPA contract ends in 2007.

X-50 Dragonfly Canard Rotor/Wing (CRW)
length: 17.7 ft. weight: 1485 lbs. endurance: 30 mins. 2 delivered/2 planned
The CRW concept combines the VTOL capability of a helicopter with the high-subsonic cruise speed (as high as 400 knots) of a fixed-wing aircraft. CRW intends to achieve this by stopping and locking the rotor and using it as a wing to achieve high speed forward flight; the canard and tail provide additional lifting and control surfaces. For both rotary and fixed-wing flight modes, the CRW is powered by a conventional turbofan engine. The X- 50 is a technology demonstrator designed to assess and validate the CRW concept. Hover tests were conducted in December 2003 and March 2004, but a hard landing resulted in significant damage to the first air vehicle. The second X-50 is now being readied to continue the flight testing, planned for summer 2005.

Cormorant
Length: 19 ft. weight: 9000 lbs. endurance: 3 hrs
The Cormorant project is currently conducting a series of risk reduction demonstrations for a multi-purpose UA that is “immersible” and capable of launch, recovery, and re-launch from a submerged SSGN [guided missile] submarine or a surface ship. Such an UA could provide all- weather ISR&T, BDA [battle damage assessment], armed reconnaissance, or SOF and specialized mission support. In particular, the combination of a stealthy SSGN submarine and a survivable air vehicle could introduce a disruptive capability to support future joint operations. If the current demonstrations are successful, follow-on efforts could involve building an immersible and flyable demonstrator UA.

It's interesting to see, too, what's not on the Roadmap's list. For example, Future Combat Systems, the Army's gazillion dollar modernization program, is supposed to have at least four new kinds of flying drones by 2008, from backpack to mini-helicopter sized. But, according to the Roadmap, two of those four robo-planes will be ones that G.I.s are already flying. Instead of the UFO-buttplug hybrid that the Pentagon had originally been pushing to put in soldiers' packs, the model airplane-esque Raven will get the nod, at least initially. Although there are hopes for the DP-5X to become the Army's two-man portable drone of the future, the rail-launched Shadow 200, which first flew in 1991, will be drone of choice, for now.

THERE'S MORE: Aviation Week looks at the Roadmap and notes that UA missions "will be quickly expanding into the more exotic areas of electronic jamming, communications interception, pulling imagery from obscure portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and the measurement of faint signals that could betray enemy activity."

The Roadmap has several chronological buckets for the appearance of specific capabilities. In 2005-10, some UAVs are to be inaudible from 1,000 ft. or less, detect targets under trees, distinguish facial features from 4 naut. mi., and automatically recognize target vehicles. By 2010-15, UAVs are to be capable of automated aerial refueling and employing a 100-band hyperspectral imagery sensor. Capabilities added in 2015-20 are to be the ability to map sea mines in real time and increased endurance (of 40%) without an increase in fuel load. The period 2025-30 is to produce 1,000-band hyperspectral imagery and human-equivalent processor speed and memory in a computer small enough for airborne use...

One big obstacle to expansion, particularly among the most sophisticated of these aircraft, appears to be the recruitment and training of qualified pilots and sensor operators to fly and fight them. Possibly the most sought-after and overworked units are the U.S. Air Force's three Predator squadrons stationed at Nellis AFB and Creech AFB in Nevada; only the aircraft and small launch and recovery teams operate in Afghanistan and Iraq. Crews flying the overseas missions are actually operating from "cockpits" at Nellis.

For example, the Predator training squadron flying from Creech will produce only 15 pilots and 15 sensor operators per class during the next year, and perhaps double that in the following year, say USAF officials. There are plans to establish a second flight training unit, possibly operated by the Air National Guard. But demands of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq will make it a slow process.

Mag: Tehran's Iraq Moves "Rival Those of U.S."

The Times had a titilating piece ten days back about Iran supplying some of the Iraqi insurgency's roadside bombs. Today, Time magazine carries the story about seven football fields further, documenting a wide-scale effort by Tehran to make its presence felt through Iraq.

A TIME investigation, based on documents smuggled out of Iran and dozens of interviews with U.S., British and Iraqi intelligence officials, as well as an Iranian agent, armed dissidents and Iraqi militia and political allies, reveals an Iranian plan for gaining influence in Iraq that began before the U.S. invaded. In their scope and ambition, Iran's activities rival those of the U.S. and its allies, especially in the south.

Read it all.

THERE'S MORE: "The American commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. John Vines, speaking to reporters from Baghdad June 21, played down the notion of outside [read: Iranian] expertise coming into the country," Defense News observes.

“They are certainly getting some outside advice, but there is some technical expertise that was resident in the Iraqi Army, probably from their explosive ordnance personnel.” He said it is not so much technical sophistication that’s a problem; the lethality of the IEDs comes from a combination of bombs. “The tactical expertise to do that, that capability exists here in the country,” he said.

Brain Caps and Pentagon Pandas

I wasn't able to make it out to DarpaTech 2005, last week's get-together of the Pentagon's way-out researachers. Luckily, Defense Tech spy Catherine Macrae Hockmuth snuck in for all of us. She a veteran defense industry reporter who's returning to the field after a little hiatus. Here's what she found...

It’s amazing how much defense conferences are like episodes of Law & Order. Even when you stop watching for a time it’s easy to jump back in because the issues never change. Law & Order is forever about perverts on the loose, people who kill family for insurance, and weird, doped-up rich kids who kill for fun. Speeches at defense conferences are always about shortening DOD’s odious procurement cycle, managing hordes of data, lifting the fog of war, and managing hordes of data.

DarpaTech, a technology conference held every 18 months in Anaheim by the Defense Department’s mad scientists is no exception. Fortunately, Darpa program managers have always had a certain I-have-no-idea-if-this-will-work,-but charm, and that allows for some wild animation and ideas. And, oh yes, pleas to the defense industrial complex for help, which is the basic function of DarpaTech. Some 2,500 attendees listened attentively this week as PMs laid out their big ideas, closing with some variation on “if you can help make this happen come see me.”

At that, a few ideas:

Brain Caps. Navy Cmdr. Dylan Schmorrow wants to put “brain caps” on soldiers to improve their ability to take in new information under stress. Schmorrow, a Darpa program manager in the Information Processing Technology Office, is a naval aerospace experimental psychologist. The concept is based on the fact that humans can only handle so much information at any given time. As a result, “complex human-machine interactive environments” common in the military often fail under stress, according to a description of the program, Improving Warfighter Information Intake [formerly known as "Augmented Cognition" --ed.], on IPTO’s Web site.

Schmorrow said if you were to ask a person whether he wanted lunch while he was giving a presentation and simultaneously answering questions from a crowd of people, you wouldn’t get much of an answer. That’s because his brain’s verbal center is overloaded. But if you gestured to him by simulating eating a sandwich, he could probably nod or motion yes or no.

Schmorrow said brain caps would not read minds; they would just measure types of activity much the way mood rings report when someone is stressed out. More broadly, as displayed in IPTO’s giant brain exhibit, artificial intelligence researchers are trying to teach computers how to learn and reason like us. It’s the difference between programming a robot to play soccer, and enabling a robot to learn the game.

PANDA. Darpa’s IXO office wants software that can analyze strange maritime behavior, alerting the Navy when something’s not right such as a shipful of terrorists transporting WMDs. Apparently, pirates are something of a menace on the high seas, hijacking commercial vessels, stealing and selling illicit materials and wreaking havoc on the shipping industry. PANDA, or predictive analysis for naval deployment activities, would track local and global patterns of behavior by commercial vessels including their shipping routes and routine detours for fuel or paperwork. That way when a ship that always travels between Malaysia and Japan winds up in the Indian Ocean we know something is up.

Information Explotation Office (IXO) Program Manager Kendra Moore said currently this sort of tracking is done manually based on a list of about 100 vessels that are known to be troublemakers. She plans to issue a broad area announcement on the program in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the Sixth Fleet will soon be the first to deploy new software that will automate the tracking process until PANDA comes along. Moore said the automation software, Fast-C2AP, would make tracking down certain ships more like looking for a stock price online.

Multi-Modal Missiles. The military has missiles that can shoot down planes, and destroy tanks and bunkers, what it doesn’t have is a single missile that can do all of those things. Oh, and, Tactical Technology Office Director Art Morrish asks, can it be handheld? Morrish asked attendees to play other “thought games,” such as:

What if we didn’t have to trade efficiency for speed? What if we could make aircraft that could fly in and out of an area at Mach 1.5 or better and still have tens of hours to days of loiter time?

Space Dust. Gary Graham, from the Virtual Space Office, continued the game with a call for WMD-hunting space dust and other novelties.

The time is ripe for revolution. What if we could launch many small microsatellites and network them with WiFi, the way we link laptops to the web at Starbucks? What if we could develop a launch vehicle so light and reusable that we could move from limited launches to space sorties? What if we could develop antennas that are small on launch, enormous on orbit? Or apertures that build themselves in space? What if we could exploit near space to take advantage of the closer distances and eliminate orbital launch requirements altogether? What if, in the quest to monitor weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), we could sprinkle large geographic areas with dust that changes in the presence of WMD agents and monitor all this from space?

Sounds swell, Gary. As long as I'm not allergic. For more on Catherine's take on DarpaTech, click on back tomorrow...

Special Forces' Drones

The Pentagon came out the other day with its "Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2005-2030." It's the Defense Department's once-every-few-years wrap-up of everything it's doing in drone-land. And there are, of course, a number of interesting tidbits. I'll share 'em with you here, as I make my way through all 213 pages.

But here's something that caught my eye right away: a breakdown of the robo-planes being used by (or in the works for) Special Forces. Two of 'em I had heard of before -- the Snow Goose and Onyx delivery drones. The rest were new to me.

BATCAM
length: 24". weight: .84 lbs. endurance: 18 mins. 46 planned
First flown in 2003, the Battlefield Air Targeting Camera Micro Air Vehicle (BATCAM) will be a recoverable/attritable asset for the Air Force Special Operations Command and Air Force Battlefield Airmen. The BATCAM w provide the ability to covertly navigate, reconnoiter, and target objectives, ultimately enhancing situational awareness, reducing fratricide, increasing survivability, and mission success rates.

Neptune
length: 7 ft. weight: 20 lbs. endurance: 4 hrs. 5 delivered/27 planned
Neptune is a new tactical UA [unmanned air] design optimized for at-sea launch and recovery. Carried in a 72x30x20 inch case that transforms into a pneumatic launcher, it can be launched from small vessels and recovered in open water. It can carry IR or color video sensors, or can be used to drop small payloads. Its digital data link is designed to minimize multipath effects over water. First flight occurred in January 2002, and an initial production contract was awarded to DRS Unmanned Technologies in March 2002.

XPV-2 Mako
length: 9 ft. wieght: 130 lbs. endurance: 8.5 hrs. 30 delivered
Mako is a lightweight long endurance versatile unmanned aircraft capable of a variety of missions, yet of sufficiently low cost to be discarded after actual battle, if necessary. It is a single engine, high wing, Radio Controlled or computer assisted autopilot UA capable of daylight or infrared reconnaissance and other related missions. Although it is a relatively new aircraft, the recent modifications that included the addition of navigation/strobe lights, a Mode C transponder, dual GCS operational capability, and a new high resolution digital camera, made it a success during support to OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom].

Monday: experimental drones. Stay tuned.

I Doubt This is True...

...But it's still nice to hear, anyway.

"You're usually right, more so than most, and I *do* read your site. Everyone at the Pentagon does, from time to time."

- anonymous Defense Department official

Rapid Fire 8/12/05

* "Able Danger" not so able?

* 50 ICBMs going conventional?

* Darpa wants tiniest drone

* Senator: Bioshield 2.0, please

*Sci-fi scribes too close to truth

* D.I.Y. flamethrower

(Big ups: Boing Boing, Ace)

L.A. Cops' Super Sonic Blaster

Since the early part of last year, U.S. soldiers and marines have been experimenting with a series of sonic blasters in Iraq. The Long Range Acoustic Devices, or "LRADs," can broadcast messages hundreds of yards away -- or be ear-splittingly loud at close range. The New York Police Department also had the devices at the ready during the Republican National Convention, although it's unclear whether the LRADs were actually used or not.

Last week, the L.A. Sheriff's Department tested out an acoustic transmitter that makes earlier models look like "childrens' toys" in comparison, LASD Commander Sid Heal, a world-renowned expert in non-lethal weaponry, tells Defense Tech.

On Thursday, August 4th, we put the magnetic acoustic device (I'm not sure it has a name yet, so this one will have to do for now) to the test on one of our ranges... Using a variety of sounds from human voice to music to sound effects (screams, shouts, gunfire, sirens, and the like), we succeeded in listening to the sounds from the transmitter located one statue mile in the distance!

Admittedly, this was a crude proof of concept test. But the device met and exceeded our expectations. There was nearly no distortion. In fact, at one statute mile, we clearly listened to a Frank Sinatra record and could understand the words, hear the intonations and pitch, and even the background music! Other sounds, especially those in the higher frequency ranges like sirens and screams, were easily detected even over the noise from the 5 Freeway a short distance away.

The edge of the energy path was clearly discernible and you could easily detect when you were standing in it and not, even at one mile. In fact, near the end of the test a wind gusting up to 20 knots blew across our line of sight and we had to adjust for the wind to remain in the energy path.

This device far exceeds anything I'm aware of. Others are childrens' toys compared with this thing. The developer tells us that there are other configurations they believe will allow it to take even more energy. They estimated we were using 15,000 watts, but with a different type of magnet they believe we they can easily exceed 100,000 watts without overheating.

Further, by rearranging the orientation of the magnetic speakers, they can increase or decrease the width of the lobe, as well as decrease the size, weight and power. The device we tested is "full range;" that is, it provided clear sound from about 50 Hz to about 20,000 Hz. But if we were going to use it just for human voice or a siren, or some other specific frequency range, they can also "tune it" to provide maximum effectiveness for a specific frequency range and reduce the size and power, while increasing the range.

We are currently scheduling a full-blown demonstration in September... We'll keep you in the loop and notify you of the particulars of the demo when we have them.

Sounds good, Sid. Uh, I think.

THERE'S MORE: "I saw LRADs in the Gulf," says Kevin, commenting at Ace of Spades HQ. "Basically, we hooked them to an iPod or similar mp3 player and sent out warnings in Arabic. Pretty slick. About the size of a stop sign, but only 6 inches. Definitely don't want to try hand-holding it though. One little sneeze and your buddy could be deaf."

Rapid Fire 8/11/05

* "Los Alamos dork radiates two states"

* Bin Laden to Iraq? (take with giant salt lump)

* Israeli doc's "super bandage"

* Transit cops don't learn -- unless you bomb them

* Dog vs. dog in Iraq

* Cell phones = air sensors?

(Big ups: Murdoc)

Phone Bomb Interceptor on the Line?

In Iraq, I had knowledgeable folks swear to me that cell phones had never been used to detonate bombs there. Those images we've all seen on CNN -- they're of long-range cordless telephone, not cells. The cell network just isn't reliable enough for a quality-conscious bomber, they say. Since I've been home, I've had other people swear the exact opposite to me.

Either way, New Scientist is right in saying that cells "provide a simple yet effective way for terrorists to remotely trigger a bomb." And that's why it'd be great news if an idea for "a portable device devised by US defence contractor Raytheon [to] quickly identify and disable such weapons" really works out. {Here's a link to the patent.)

The device includes a transmitter that mimics a cell phone base station and a metal horn to concentrate the signal from a 10 milliwatt power source in a single direction. Scanning... a concealed phone... with the tool... tricks it into thinking it is in range of a new network base station and blocks it from any genuine stations in the vicinity.

The suspect phone will also respond with a “handshake signal” containing its phone number, allowing a network operator to temporarily disconnect it from the real network, and preventing it from receiving a detonation call.

(Big ups: CC)

Rapid Fire 8/10/05

* RFID papers, please (background here)

* Marines' robo-fighter flexes

* India's spy sats

* Biometrics still suck

* Radio caller saved sub

* Army whistleblower dissed

(Big ups: Victor, Sploid)

"Open Source" Insurgents Rise

A few days ago, a Marine Corps major, David High, argued that the fight in Iraq isn't really an insurgency at all.

There is not a web of like-minded (much less amenable) patriots gaining succor and inspiration from the populace. There are a thousand disparate cabals and petit punks and opportunists, each with competing motivations and interests... The permutations are endless and motivations intertwined.

All of which, from what I've understand, is interesting and true; I've heard reports of more than 75 distinct groups fighting the U.S. over there. But it's also kind of irrelevant. Because these insurgents may not need a cohesive ideology to thrive. Technology, in many ways, has taken its place.

It used to be that a small group of ideological-driven guerilla leaders would spread information, tactics, training, and cash to their followers. No more. Internet-enabled insurgents with only the loosest of real-world connections can now share all of that freely online. These guys don't have to like each other. They don't have to agree with one another. They don't even have to interact, really. All they have to do is post material to the Net. John Robb -- who's doing some of the smartest thinking and writing around on the subject -- calls it "Open Source warfare."

Without using the term themselves, the Washington Post has just finished a must-read three-part series on these Open Source guerillas. Here's a snippet from today's final installment:

An entire online network of Zarqawi supporters serves as backup for his insurgent group in Iraq, providing easily accessible advice on the best routes into the country, trading information down to the names of mosques in Syria that can host a would-be fighter, and eagerly awaiting the latest posting from the man designated as Zarqawi's only official spokesman.

"The technology of the Internet facilitated everything," declared a posting this spring by the Global Islamic Media Front, which often distributes Zarqawi messages on the Internet...

This and other Arabic-language forums hosted discussions on the latest news from Iraq, provided a place for swapping tips on tradecraft, circulated religious justifications for jihad, and acted as intermediary between would-be fighters and their would-be recruiters...

Many postings to the boards were not official statements from al Qaeda but unsolicited advice, such as the recent notice called "the road to Mesopotamia" posted on an underground Syrian extremist site, in which one veteran offered a detailed scouting report, down to advice on bribing Syrian police and traveling to the border areas by claiming to be on a fishing trip.

The bulletin boards also make information quickly available from Iraq, where fighters are gaining combat experience against the U.S. military. In one case cited by John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, would-be insurgents in the Sahara Desert were able to ask for -- and receive -- information from the ground in Iraq about how best to build bombs.

In this way, the new Iraqi "non-insurgency" may be tougher to beat, ultimately, than the more ideological guerillas of the past. With such a diverse band sharing information so quickly, there's no one "leader" or group of leaders to eliminate. In fact, taking out the most visible leaders might only make the Open Source network more efficient, by eliminating unnecessary nodes.

Some might read Major High's comments, and take comfort. Me, I'm nervous as hell.

THERE'S MORE: Major High -- and a whole lot of other people -- respond in the comments section. Be sure to read.

Army Picks New Killer Drone

The Army has finally settled on a company to build its next generation of long-range killer drones, according to Defense Daily.

General Atomics, maker of the wildly succesful Predator robo-plane, got the $214 million gig to build 48 of the Extended Range Multi-Purpose drones. The first of them should be ready to go by 2008. 132 are planned, all told.

Defense News notes that "unlike Predator, the ERMP will be able to take off and land automatically" -- handing off the trickiest parts of piloting a drone to a computer. Which means that the ERMP can be flown by young enlisted men, instead of by the ex-fighter pilots, who now operate the Predator fleet. (My Wired magazine story on drones has a bit more on this.)

The Army sees the drones staying up in the air for 72 hours straight; the Predator, by comparison, can't even manage a whole day in flight, right now. While it's airborne, the Army expects the ERMP to snoop on enemies, relay communications, identify targets -- and blow stuff up, if need be. It'll start out with Hellfire missiles, same as the Predator. Other weapons may be added, later on.

Rapid Fire 8/8/05

* "Vietnam Buffs Bring Jungle to Va."

* Happy 50th, U-2!

* Mozart, crime-fighter

* Pentagon's US war plans

(Big ups: JQP)

Block That Missile!

As a politico-turned-editor-turned-musician-turned-whatever-the-hell-I-do-now, I've got no beef with guys who switch careers. But former jocks who explain everything in terms of sports? They really make me laugh -- especially when what they're trying to explain is missile defense.

For example: Former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Riki Ellison, who now serves as Star Wars' chief cheerleader, in his role as the president of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

“The [missile] launcher is a quarterback. What’s the best way to stop the quarterback from throwing the ball?” he tells The Hill. “You use your defensive linemen. If you can tackle him before he launches the ball, there’s not a threat. That’s what we call our boost-phase defense.”

The San Jose Mercury-News -- which, apparently, isn't afraid to mangle a sports reference either -- assures us that Riki's "background, combined with more than two decades studying the issue, makes him a unique pitchman for missile defense. He attacks the issue with the same intensity that made him a favorite of teammates and fans during his playing days with the 49ers."

And what is that background, you ask?

Ellison earned a bachelor's degree in international relations, along with an honors certificate in defense and strategic studies in 1983... [When] his football career ended in 1992... Ellison went into marketing for the [now-defunct] United Missile Defense Co., a joint venture pursuing missile-defense contracts. He formed the MDAA in 2002.

"I think defense wins championships," Ellison says, displaying his years of sophisticated analysis of this complex issue. "A great defense gives you the ability to win, the ability to protect."

So true. And of course, as NFL.com noted, "when it comes to finding someone who knows more than his fair share about defense, Riki Ellison is your man. And we're not just talking DE-fense, but de-FENSE."

Iran Supplying Iraq's Bombs?

On Wednesday, I talked briefly about how Iraqi insurgents' are increasingly using armor-piercing "explosively formed projectiles" to form the deadly hearts of their improvised bombs.

Today, the Times is reporting that "many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs... have been designed in Iran."

The spread of the new weapons seems to suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out - a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq.

Unlike the improvised explosive devices devised from Iraq's vast stockpiles of missiles, artillery shells and other arms, the new weapons are specially designed to destroy armored vehicles, military bomb experts say. The bombs feature shaped charges, which penetrate armor by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high speed. The design is crude but effective if the vehicle's armor plating is struck at the correct angle, the experts said.

Since they first began appearing about two months ago, some of these devices have been seized, including one large shipment that was captured last week in northeast Iraq coming from Iran...

Pentagon and intelligence officials say that some shipments of the new explosives have contained both components and fully manufactured devices, and may have been spirited into Iraq along the porous Iranian border by the Iranian-backed, anti-Israeli terrorist group Hezbollah, or by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. American commanders say these bombs closely matched those that Hezbollah has used against Israel.

"The devices we're seeing now have been machined," said a military official who has access to classified reporting on the insurgents' bomb-making abilities. "There is evidence of some sophistication."

Rapid Fire 8/6/05

* "The mother of all decoder rings"

* Pentagon wants science scripts

* Laser spots passport fakes

* Insurgents' super-sniper

* "Are mines always bad?"

(Big ups: RC, JQP)

Bot to the Rescue

The U.S. Navy is sending an unmanned, underwater robot to help rescue a Russian mini-sub caught on the Pacific floor.

The "Super Scorpio" submersible has been used repeatedly to salvaged downed fighter planes and sunken ships in the Pacific. It can "can reach depths of up to 5,000 feet and is equipped with high-powered lights, sonar and video cameras," according to the AP. The American Forces Press Service says it's capable of cutting one-inch-thick steel cable.

The 4500-pound Scorpio and its human handlers "will be flown from San Diego on a U.S. Air Force C-5 aircraft later today to the Kamchatka Peninsula, where many of Russia's most secret military projects are based. The airlift "will mark the first time since the World War II era that a U.S. military plane has been allowed to fly there," the AP reports.

Sneak Peeks at Car Bombs

It's not easy, trying to figure out what's inside a suspicious car or truck. Often, the vehicle has to be searched by hand, putting soldiers right up against a possible car bomb. That's a risk not many are willing to take. Instead, I saw a bunch of trucks around Baghdad (like this one) get torched, just to be sure there weren't any explosives inside. Most of the time, there weren't.

Defense Industry Daily points out a new, less destructive way to make that call.

[The] Z Backscatter Van (ZBV) is a low-cost, extremely maneuverable screening system built into a commercially available delivery van. The ZBV employs... Z Backscatter technology, which offers photo-like images that reveal contraband that transmission X-rays miss - such as explosives (including car bombs), people and plastic weapons...

[It works] by directing a sweeping beam of X-rays at the object under examination, and then measuring and plotting the intensity of scattered X-rays as a function of the beam position.

Akin to light reflection, Z Backscatter signals are particularly strong whenever the incident X-rays interact with explosives, plastics, and other biological items, which typically contain low Z materials. Even inorganic objects, such as metals, are given shape and form in Z Backscatter images - making them easier to interpret than transmission images during X-ray evaluation.

Eight of the vans are supposed to go to U.S. Central Command, for use in Afghanistan and Iraq. Baghdad's truck drivers can't wait.

When Pigs Sail

The Navy's tricked-out, ultra-fast catamaran has just arrived for duty in San Diego, where it'll be used to chase down drug runners at 50 knots.

It's a pretty impressive feat, considering the blueprints for this "Sea Fighter," or "X-Craft" were only drawn up two years ago. Thank a little slab of ol' fashioned pork for getting the job done, Murdoc says.

By finding funds outside the normal defense appropriations process, and by ignoring special interests such as traditional ship builders and Navy officials who "want to keep building big slow ships," Hunter said he, Issa and Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Escondido, [yeah, the same guy who got caught in bed with local defense contractors -- ed.] helped military and private industry visionaries "conspire to beat the bureaucracy..."

Hunter said the money for the project ---- about $79 million ---- came from congressional "add-ons," which are often referred to as "pork."

In 2003 the Navy's Office of Naval Research awarded San Diego-based Titan Corp. an exclusive contract to develop the vessel. The Sea Fighter was built in only two years ---- an unprecedented feat in the world of naval acquisitions.

"I knew if we got this thing in the water we could sell it to the Navy," Hunter said.

The Sea Fighter is the latest example of how the Pentagon's old rules for buying gear aren't keeping up with the defense technology's Lance Armstrong. Jammers to stop roadside bombs are essentially rotting on the vine, waiting for Defense Department bureaucrats. Companies like General Atomics, maker of the Predator drone, are self-financing their research, because they can't wait for the endless Washington decision loop to close.

Maybe that works for companies with big bankrolls and Congressional pals. But it leaves out tens of thousands of others who might be able to give American troops a hand.

Iraqi Shabbat

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend Friday night services with a group of Jewish G.I.s serving in Baghdad. Here are the first few lines from my report for the Forward on what I found...

They are a minyan, just barely. Half of them come to pray with guns.

The rabbi, Mitchell Schranz, would rather his congregants leave their Berettas and their M-4 rifles at home than bring them to this nondescript alcove, not far from a former palace of Saddam Hussein. But this is Camp Victory, the American military's main headquarters in Iraq — and Jewish soldiers don't always have the option of welcoming Shabbat unarmed.

"We're in a wartime, combat situation," U.S. Navy Commander Schranz said in a recent interview. "You've got to be flexible."

Big Blast Aftermath

Eric has all the best links. Read deep.

Blog Beg: DarpaTech

It pains me to say so, but I'm going to have to miss the mystery and majesty that is DarpaTech 2005. Yes, the every-18-months confab of the Pentagon's Q branch and its associated mad geniuses will have to go on without me this year. But I still want to know what's going on. So if you're planning on hoofing it out to Anaheim next week, shoot me a note at defense-AT-defensetech-DOT-org.

Back on the Beeb

I'll be back on BBC/Public Radio International's "The World" this afternoon, talking about the technologies used to catch the London bombers.

THERE'S MORE: Well, whadya know. The New Republic was pressed enough for copy to give the site a shout out in its July 25th issue. Somewhere, my grandfather Leon is smiling.

Big Blast: Why?

Of course, the day's worst news is that 14 marines have been killed by a single roadside bomb. That means, in the last ten days, 39 American service members have died in Iraq -- more than in the entire month of March.

The attack, also near Haditha, is one of the worst since the American invasion. Usually, such strikes only hurt or kill a few people at a time -- if they wound anyone at all. Taking out 14 people in a single stroke is just about unheard of.

It either means the attackers had the devil's odds, timing their blast perfectly. Or, more likely, there was something very different about the explosive used in this strike.

While I was in Iraq, I saw several examples of "explosively formed projectiles" -- concave cylinders that shoot out jets of molten metal when they're detonated. Armies have been using them for years as anti-tank weapons. But lately, Iraqi bomb-makers have been fashioning home-made, crude versions of their own. And these improvied explosive devices, or IEDs, have wreaked havoc, sawing through armor and limbs with a terrifying ferrocity. Perhaps that's what happened in Haditha today. I sure hope it was just awful luck.

THERE'S MORE: John Robb, decoding a Defense News article I sent his way, unravels the business processes behind the "IED Marketplace."

Awful Day

Even though I've been home for five days, my fiancee is still shaken, and frankly a little angry, about my time in Iraq. Her nerves weren't exactly calmed this morning. She woke me up to tell me that a freelance writer, from New York no less, was killed in Basra.

Steven Vincent, author of "In the Red Zone," wrote an op-ed in Sunday's New York Times that lit into British authorities for allowing the local police to be inflitrated by Shi'ite extremists.

An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations - mostly of former Baath Party members - that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of "death car": a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment.

Yesterday, Vincent was kidnapped "by masked gunman in a pick-up truck as they left a moneychanger's shop... The gunmen may have been in a police vehicle." Vincent's body was found this morning.

Before I left for Iraq, a pair of Marines warned me -- and the crew of young troops they were training -- not to trust the Iraqi army or police forces, under any circumstances. Treat them as hostiles. Too many of them were insurgent agents, only pretending to be on the government's side.

The advice kept going through my head this morning, as I read about Vincent's death, and the ambush of six marine snipers, near Haditha. "The attack is eerily similar to one in nearby Ramadi more than a year ago," MSNBC notes. "In both cases, it's feared the Marines were betrayed by insurgents who had infiltrated the Iraqi military."

When I was in Iraq, I saw the increasing number of patrols by local police and army units as a good thing. Now, in hindsight, I'm not so sure.

Hear This -- or Better Yet, Don't

War is hell -- on your ears. Everything is a combat zone is death metal loud, from the props on the transport plane that takes you into Iraq to the rotors of the Black Hawk which hauls you from base to base to the sirens on the Humvee, keeping potential adversaries away. And that's before the bombs or the RPGs start going off. A buddy of mine lost 75% of his hearing in one ear when a bomb detonated nearby. The military has to shell out more than $300 million per year to compensate soldiers for their busted ear drums, according to one study.

Soldiers are supposed to wear ear plugs at all times. But often, they don't. Makes hearing orders and warnings tougher, they say.

The Air Force Research Lab has developed a pair of new jack, noise-cancelling ear plugs that might change some minds, however. The Attenuating Customized Communications Earpiece System (ACCES) was designed for the maintennance crews who work on the deafening F/A-22 stealth fighters.

The system filters out high-frequency noises from fighter aircraft while using tiny speakers to allow the wearer to hear radio communications.

“The real issue was the sound pattern around the F/A-22 was so loud, maintainers couldn’t hear,” said Hendrick Ruck, director of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s human effectiveness directorate. “With these, communication is almost perfect.”

The system makes use of several features to reduce noise.

“By being molded, (the ear plugs) have good passive protection,” Mr. Ruck said. “They are perfectly fitted. They also use active noise reduction. They take the predictable noises and cancel the wave forms.”

All fighter aircraft have high-frequency noise, Captain Kevin Divers, 27th Fighter Squadron aerospace physiologist, said. The plugs are made from silicone, which blocks out the higher frequencies while the form-fitted seal provides better protection from noises on the lower end...

“Our tests are pretty good,” he said. “(The ear plugs) canceled out 47 decibels in tests, which we think is a record.”

Larger ear protection devices and foam plugs, like those used now, only block out a maximum of 40 decibels, Mr. Ruck said...

Along with the F/A-22, the system is being considered for helicopter pilots and special operations forces troops. It was used by civilian astronaut Mike Melvill aboard SpaceShipOne, the first manned, private spaceship that made history with its voyage into space.

“Before these plugs, we had problems because we were using little foamy earplugs,” Mr. Melvill said.

“When I switched to the new system, I had perfect hearing of what was going on from mission control throughout both of my flights and had no discomfort at all from the noise of the rocket motor,” he said.

Camera Shoot

"In the near future, a soldier who needs a quick look over the next hill will be able to aim his rifle skyward, fire a grenade-sized reconnaissance device and instantly receive imagery on his pocket computer," writes Defense News' Barbara Opall-Rome.

"No special training or adaptation equipment is necessary" to fire the Firefly, from Israel's Rafael Armament Development Authority, or Israel Military Industry's Reconnaissance Rifle Grenade.

Grunts just fire the disposable "ballistic cameras" from "standard-issue M203 grenade launchers attached to M16 or other assault rifles," and then wait for the pictures to come back, 8 seconds and 600 meters later.

In this way, the ballisitc cameras a lot like the pint-sized drones which have become so popular among American company commanders in Iraq.

In 2002, the U.S. Army had 25 year-long Raven unmanned mini-planes; today, company and platoon chiefs are using about 800 in combat.

"Why the boom?" I asked in Wired a few months back.

Eyes in the sky keep soldiers from getting killed. "The way you used to get intel on the battlefield was you fought for it, sending your squad into a building, forcing your way in," says former Army captain Phillip Carter. Now company commanders can see around corners and over hills - a God's-eye perspective that once was the domain of generals, with their Predators, manned spy planes, and satellites.

The Ravens are simple to use -- one of the best-known operators is a cook. But, with no guidance system to operate, the ballistic cameras would be easier still: "point and shoot," to use a cliche. Which means the ability to see a battlezone from above could shift from a general to a captain to a buck private, rifle in hand.

Rapid Fire 8/2/05

* Shock baton for airport security

* Bio-defense: lame (background here)

* Guardsman fined for blogging

* Gangbangers = terrorists?

* Iran's A-bomb: take a seat

(Big ups: Boing Boing, Sploid)

B.O. = Terror Sensor?

In the wake of the London bombings, BusinessWeek has put together a cover story on "The State of Surveillance." Most of the tech discussed in the piece should be pretty familiar to Defense Tech readers -- face scanners, RFID tags, yadda yadda.

But the article also mentioned a sci-fi sounding research thrust I hadn't heard of before: "a little chemical lab analyzes the sweat, body odor, and skin flakes in the human thermal plume -- the halo of heat that surrounds each person."

In the quest to sort bad guys from good, scientists are poking ever more intimately at the core of each person's identity -- right down to the DNA. One day people's distinctive body odor, breath, or saliva could serve as an identifier, based on the subtle composite of chemicals that make up a person's scent or spit. One's smell "is a cocktail of hundreds of molecules," says Frank V. Bright, a chemistry professor at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. "The question is whether it's a gin and tonic or a margarita." While some of these sensors perform well in the lab, he adds, the real world may be different: "The technology is still in its infancy."

Science today is hard put to identify smells a beagle could nail in an instant. "We want to show there is a set of underlying odors in people independent of perfume and what they ate that day," says Gary K. Beauchamp, director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center at the University of Pennsylvania, a pioneer of odor prints.

Sand Bullets for Israeli Troops

First it was sonic ray guns. Now the Israeli military is "replacing its sometimes lethal rubber-coated steel pellets with compressed sand bullets," says the AP.

Rubber bullets have killed dozens of Palestinians in the past two decades. The new sand bullets were originally developed for close-quarter hostage rescue situations...

The new round, in which the head of the bullet is made from compressed sand and can be fired from a regular rifle, has already been used in the West Bank against Palestinians protesting against the separation barrier Israel is building, the army said.

The sand bullet, said to be extremely painful but less dangerous because it does not penetrate the skin, was developed and first used by Israel's Prisons Authority, the army said. The rubber bullets will be phased out.

THERE'S MORE: "I'm glad to see they are switching. It is LONG overdue," says Sid Heal, a long-time veteran L.A. Sheriff's department veteran who's considered one of the world's leading authorities on non-lethal weapons.

My guess is that the "sand" will provide sufficient mass to gain the stand-off distances they needed and obtained with their rubber coated steel pellets but with reduced ability to penetrate and imbed themselves into the body...

It sounds like a variation of the frangible rounds we've been experimenting with. It began with a round nicknamed the "Avon Round," that used Xerox powder and dental plaster. It remained intact until it struck an object -- and then it released excess kinetic energy by breaking into "dust." The breaching round got nicknamed the "Avon Round" because when it strikes a door lock, it pulverizes itself into harmless powder.

(Big ups: RC)

Silly "Stealth"

Cockpits in unmanned planes. A steath fighter that every radar can see. A drone so evil it illegally downloads MP3s. Popular Science's Eric Adams watches the supersonically silly Jamie Foxx flick, "Stealth," so we don't have to.

Noah Hearts Dan, Jim, Jeffrey

So I'm back from Iraq -- the previous post was actually written a few days ago. And hot damn, was this blog good while I was gone. Dan Dupont, Jeffrey Lewis, Jim Lewis: Thank you so much.

If you haven't been checking in regularly while I'm gone -- and shame on you, if that's the case -- here's a little smidgeon of what you missed:

- Punk at the Pentagon

- Moon Shine

- Supercaviation-alisticexpealidocious

- Brilliant Pebbles Returns

- Fun with Nuclear Targeting

- FCS Jitters

- What, no Blimps?

Killing Time

For the first time since I landed in Iraq, I'm panicking. Not that a bomb has gone off. Or that an RPG has hit nearby. It's my flight out of here that's got my heart ready to jump out of my ribcage.

I'm sitting in a hangar-sized waiting room in the middle of the Baghdad airport's military wing. Defense Department contractors, most of them overweight by 75 pounds or more, waddle about the canvas-walled terminal, dripping sweat. Dozens of soldiers sit in rows of movie theater-style seats, reading paperbacks and watching "The Elephant Man" on a big-screen TV. Others catch naps on the floor, leaving their uniforms and their rucksacks covered with a talcum-like white dust. Many of them have been waiting around here for more than a day, killing time until their planes are ready to take off.

I may be joining them in the powder. Sandstorms regularly ground flights here. And after a perfectly clear morning, the air is beginning to grow hazy with dust. The people at the terminal are talking about "maintenance issues" which could ground my flight to Kuwait – or maybe re-route it to Mosul, 300 miles in the opposite direction. And that has me pacing around the terminal with worry.

Why I'm acting like this, I have no clue. In the last two weeks, bullets have zinged over my head. A mortar began smoking at my feet. And the patrol I was with was ambushed on at least two occasions. None of that really bothered me. But now, I might be missing a goddamn plane ride, and I'm freaking the fuck out. What the hell?

Maybe my reaction isn't so mysterious. After all, when it comes to travel, I'm the latest in a long line of nervous nellies. My grandfather, he'd show up to an airport three hours before takeoff. My dad leaves an hour to get to the train station, even if it's only twenty minutes away. I like to think of myself as not quite as twitchy as them. But check me out now, drumming my fingers against my thigh. Am I really all that different? On the other hand, I've never seen any member of my family in combat. There's no neurotic blueprint to follow.

Or maybe it's because I've done so much waiting around for this story already: waiting for my body armor and my shockproof laptop to show up; waiting to leave the country; waiting to get into Iraq from Kuwait, and into my unit once I was there; waiting for the insurgents to do something, so I could write it down; waiting for them to stop. And I know I've got more waiting ahead. It's going to take three days, at least, to get back to New York. God knows, I don't want it to take any longer.

Or maybe I'm so anxious because I finally can be. Because the real danger has past, and now I'm free to exhale. When I was a musician, I'd almost always come down with a nasty cold right when a tour was done – as if my antibodies were finally giving up, after a month of holding germs at bay. As if my body finally knew that I could afford to spend a day in bed.

Which gets me thinking about the soldiers I've just left behind. They've got five months, at least, until they have the luxury of worrying about a missed plane. And even when they do come back home, it won't be much of a reprieve. Most of them figure they'll be back in Iraq in another year. And while they're stateside, they'll be extremely busy. Before they shipped out to Iraq, these soldiers spent 11 of the prior 15 months on domestic missions; before that, they were on duty in the Balkans.

These guys are a small sliver of the half-million or so men and women who are rapidly becoming this country's permanent warrior class -- centurions for whom there's no break in the fighting, no rest from the alerts, no chance to get nervous before a flight. All of the burdens of war fall on these men and their families. The rest of us -- 95 percent plus of the country, as Uwe Reinhardt notes in today's Washington Post – get off basically scot-free. We don't even pay extra taxes to support them.

Not too long ago, we used to have "citizen-soldiers" in this country. That's feels almost antiquated these days. Today, our citizens and our soldiers have become increasingly separated into distinct camps. The former gets all of the benefits of the latter's sacrifice. And the segregation is only getting worse, as new recruits become harder to find, and our legionnaires get tax-free lump-sums worth a year's salary or more by re-enlisting while deployed.

When I get back to the States, I'll pick up with my reporting on the gadgets and mechanics of the military. But I'm also going to try a lot harder to be a voice for this marginalized segment of society that is being asked to do so much in our name.

I'll start as soon as I can. But right now, I have to go. My flight is getting ready to board.

THERE'S MORE: USA Today has a must-read story today on the "bidding war" between the government and private industry over our warrior class.