PROPAGANDA 'R' US?
The Army has been planting stories favorable to the coalition in Iraqi newspapers, according to documents obtained by the L.A. Times.
The Financial Times weighed in today:
Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents, and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country. ... As part of a psychological operations campaign that has intensified over the past year, one of the military officials said that the task force [responsible for planting the stories] also has purchased an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and is using the outlets to channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is identified as a military mouthpiece.
This news should come as no surprise to those following the coalition's information warfare campaign in Iraq. But planting stories represents the seediest -- and least common -- tactic for shaping Iraqi attitudes. The main campaign of the infowar is the coalition's efforts to train up Iraqi journalists in Western-style journalism. Division and brigade public affairs shops throughout Iraq work hand-in-hand with local reporters, helping them gain access to important stories, equipping them with technology they otherwise could not afford and encouraging them to network, check their sources and tell both sides.
Seriously. I've seen it happen in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division, in eastern Iraq with the 278th Cavalry Regiment and with British forces in Basra. A couple bad apples don't represent the entire coalition infowar effort.
Take, for example, the Diyala radio station near Baqubah, where Iraqi journalists host call-in talk programs and the provincial governor delivers speeches. Last year a busload of radio employees were massacred by insurgents, so the 1st Infantry Division began patrolling the area and posted guards at the station. Now it's secure. And sadly, in Iraq these days, secure means free.
Does that make everything that comes out of the Diyala radio station propaganda?
THIS JUST IN: Defense News quotes White House spokesman Scott McClellan responding to the allegations:
"We're very concerned about the reports," ... McClellan told reporters. "We have asked the Department of Defense for more information.
"We want to see what the facts are.
"The United States is a leader when it comes to promoting and advocating a free and independent media around the world, and we will continue to do so," McClellan added.
"We've made our views very clear when it comes to freedom of press.
"And in terms of this specific issue, again, what we want to do is find out what the facts are and then we�ll be able to talk about it more at that point," he said.
--David Axe
So Much for Withdrawal
Well, so much for those plans to withdraw American forces from Iraq. President Bush's big speech at the Naval Academy "did not break new ground or present a new strategy," the AP notes. So that means, despite the chatter beforehand, no new schedule for bringing troops home.
What Bush did say is that "as Iraqi forces become more capable the mission of our forces in Iraq will continue to change."
We will continue to shift from providing security and conducting operations against the enemy nationwide to conducting more specialized operations targeted at the most dangerous terrorists.
We will increasingly move out of Iraqi cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate and conduct fewer patrols and convoys.
As the Iraqi forces gain experience and the political progress advances, we will be able to decrease our troop levels in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists.
Which says to me: kiss the "oil-spot" theory goodbye. That's the idea, which has been gaining momentum in political circles since an August Foreign Affairs article, to use our troops to set up safe havens in Iraq, and then slowly grow them out.
But to do that, you need troops -- lots of troops -- to fill a city up, and patrol virtually every corner. If I'm reading between the lines of Bush's speech right, that's not the idea here -- despite talk in the President's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" or "clear[ing]" out and "hold[ing]" insurgent epicenters.
Speaking of the "Strategy," it ain't. The document reads more like a marketing document than a focused plan for winning a war. And there are some mighty odd statements in it, as Dr. AC Wonk notes. For example, the Strategy claims that:
As of November 2005, there were more than 212,000 trained and equipped Iraqi Security Forces, compared with 96,000 in September of last year.
But "Iraq did not, however, have 96,000 trained and equipped Iraqi Security Forces... in September 2004," the Wonk responds.
Adam Entous with Reuters obtained internal Defense Department documents in September 2004 that revealed only 8,169 had completed the full eight-week academy training. 46,176 of what are publicly called “trained and equipped” forces were listed privately as “untrained.”
Whatever the numbers, Bush's bottom line is clear: no big changes to Iraq strategy, despite all the heavy-breathing. "Stay the course," he repeated four times at the end of his Annapolis speech. "Our clear, hold, and build strategy is working," add his plan.
Calling all Catamarans
In this age of rising shipbuilding costs, uncertain naval strategy and shrinking procurement budgets, nobody knows for sure what the future U.S. fleet will look like. But one thing's for sure ... it'll include a lot of pontoon boats.
Everybody knows about the much-ballyhooed Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a program for up to 75 small modular vessels optimized for coastal combat. Less glamorous but perhaps more important to future operations is the forthcoming Joint High-Speed Vessel (JHSV), which is managed by the Navy's Program Executive Office for Ships.
The JHSV is a catamaran -- basically a 100-meter pontoon boat. Catamarans and their three-pontoon cousins, trimarans, have been the subject of a lot of military experimentation of late. The Marines are using a catamaran, the WestPac Express, to transport infantry battalions to training events in the western Pacific. The Navy has two JHSV prototypes, HSVX-1 and HSV-2, that have been pressed into service in hurricane-relief efforts, while the Office of Naval Research has been testing LCS concepts with its FSF-1 catamaran. The Army has a trimaran, TSV-1X, that it uses for expeditionary logistics.
The idea behind the JHSV is to equip Military Sealift Command (or -- and I'm speculating here -- 
Transportation Command) with a fleet of fast, cheap vessels capable of transporting and deploying a battalion-sized Marine landing teams, an Army Stryker company, Special Forces teams or an equivalent load of cargo at austere shallow-water ports. JHSV would support two H-60 or H-6 helicopters and vertical-launch UAVs like Scan Eagle.
"The JHSV will not be a combatant vessel," reads a Navy press release. "Its construction will be similar to high-speed commercial ferries used around the world, and the design will include a flight deck and an off-load ramp which can be lowered on a pier or quay wall -- allowing vehicles to quickly drive off the ship."
Think of the JHSV and its brothers as super-LCACs, or amphibious LCSs minus the guns. The Navy and Marines would use them as ship-to-shore connectors in their Seabasing concept. The Army might employ them at the theatre level for rapid maneuver, replacing its current trimarans. Special Forces Command wants catamarans as offshore commando bases, in the same vein as the new SSGNs, but a lot cheaper. Retired Rear Adm. George R. Worthington, in the October Proceedings, advocates arming the Special Forces catamarans with loitering missiles for coastal land-attack.
In fact, JHSV's low price-tag, around $100 million (versus $1 billion for the new San Antonio-class amphibious transport) all but guarantees its place in the future fleet. The first production vessel is slated for FY2008.
-- David Axe
Spooks = Bloggers
Earlier this year, former Army intel officer (and Defense Tech homeboy) Kris Alexander told our spooks to start blogging if they wanted to get serious about tracking terrorist-types.
Afterwards, he got a flood of e-mails from government suits asking him for help to implement the idea. I'm not sure if CIA agents were among the callers. But either way, the agency seems to have gotten the message. The lead from a Washington Post article a few days back: "The CIA now has its own bloggers."
(Big ups: CA)
Recon on Radio Project
Over the last year, we've spent a whole lot of time chronicling the woes of the Joint Tactical Radio System. That's the Pentagon's star-crossed $6.8 billion effort to replace their with just a few digital ones. It's the backbone of the military's effort to modernize itself. And it is not going well.
But "Jitters," as the program is Pentagonese, hasn't gotten much mainstream press attention -- largely, I think, because its sprawling and confusing, even for a Defense Department project. (Jitters has four "clusters" of radios, for example -- the last of which is "Cluster 5.")
The current issue of Defense Technology International (pgs 30-34) does the best job I've seen so far at picking through the Jitters tangle, detailing what's working, and what's holding the radio project back. Check it out.
Withdraw, then What?
Lots of people who read this site are die-hard supporters of President Bush. Folks who shook their heads in disgust at Rep. John Murtha's call to withdraw American troops from Iraq; who nodded in agreement when White House press secretary Scott McClellan responded that now "is not the time to surrender to the terrorists."
So guys: I'm curious to hear your reactions to the Administration's apparent newfound-readiness to take tens of thousands of U.S. forces out of Iraq, pronto.
As someone who's been skeptical about the war since before it began, I'm worried that pulling out -- without a viable Iraqi military, and without a discernable "victory" to declare -- gives the global Jihadist movement a gigantic win. After this war, and the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, there are a whole lot of radical Islamists out there who are going to see the scoreboard as Jihadists 2, Superpowers 0. Which, as a resident of the most-bombed city in America, is more than unnerving. Because that first score is what eventually lead to the Twin Towers getting knocked down.
And even if the terrorists never return to New York, without American troops, how do we keep a thoroughly-screwed up Iraq from becoming "a hornets' nest," as Martin van Creveld puts it, with "a hundred mini-Zarqawis spread[ing] all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name."
What's the plan? (And, for God's sake, don't tell me it's air power.)
THERE'S MORE: Eighteen months ago, when a left-leaning defense analyst told me that the U.S. military in Iraq was paving the way for Salvadoran-style death squads, I blew him off as a Bush-hater. I guess I owe him an apology now.
'Duke' Gone; Air Force Bummed
Sure, it means one less crook on Capitol Hill. But Randy "Duke" Cunningham's resignation from Congress also means that the Air Force loses one of its biggest allies in the legislature.
Cunningham "pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and tax charges and tearfully resigned from office, admitting he took $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to conspirators," says the AP.
But before Cunningham got cozy with the likes of shady security analysis firm MZM, Inc. and dodgy digital documenter ADCS Inc., the guy was a hero -- the first American fighter ace of the Vietnam War, shooting down five Russian MiGs. He went on to become an instructor at the Navy's "Top Gun" school, and then to Congress, where he got deeply involved with military matters. Especially matters with wings and big price tags.
When Pentagon chiefs wanted to cut $10 billion or so from the Cold War-inspired, $40 billion F-22 Raptor jet, Cunningham "lectured" Rumsfeld that "no airplane in the world can touch the F-22,'" according to Defense News. "Other U.S. pilots 'are going to die 95 percent of the time' if they fight [new] Russian Su-30s and Su-37s [fighter jets]."
Many former Top Gun graduates, like former Marine Gen. Tom Wilkerson, aren't so sure. Earlier this year, he told me that the days of dogfights were over, basically, and that "maybe you don't need any fighter pilots at all." Let's just say he wasn't impressed with the Raptor rationale.
But credit Cunningham with being consistent. He cited the same 95% death rate back in 2000, when he was pushing his colleagues to bankroll the AIM-9X advanced air-to-air missile and Boeing's "look-and-shoot" Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System. "We needed those five years ago," he told Defense Daily. The Su-30s and Su-37s "have a helmet-mounted site that they can turn their head and lock you up, and that missile will make the corner. Ours won't."
A year later -- before 9/11, before the Predator drone became so famously successful over Afghanistan -- Cunningham was agitating for Congress to pay for the development of the next-generation "Predator B" unmanned spy plane. The Air Force in March announced that it would be buying 144 more of the drones over the next five years, for a $5.7 billion.
THERE'S MORE: Will someone please explain why the Bush administration "hired Duke-briber "MZM, a 'defense and intelligence firm,' to buy office furniture for the White House?
Ward to Wingers: Get Lost
The tone is probably a little different from the one I'd take. But I couldn't agree with Military.com editor and (F-14 flyer) Ward Carroll's sentiments more.
As a veteran I'm put off by the rhetoric (and the media's coverage of it) from the far ends of the political spectrum surrounding so-called “support” for the troops. On balance the dialectic is white noise, not to mention by in large disingenuous. The extreme conservative doesn't have the warfighter's best interest in mind any more than the radical liberal does. Sean Hannity is a poseur and Cindy Sheehan is an opportunist. Neither of them knows what its like to serve. (And, by the way, having service members email you does not count as service.)
The draw of service is an intangible, for the most part. You can't read it in a book or see it on a DVD and get it. It lives under lofty tenets like Duty and Honor but it comes down to climbing into the Humvees day after day because the rest of their squad is. Their mission isn't spreading Freedom; their mission is to keep traffic flowing along the airport road. They'll do it, not because the vice president gave them a pep talk from half a planet away, but because the captain told them to and he's a decent leader, even if he doesn't know a thing about hip hop. And they'll do it because a few weeks back a couple of their buddies died when an IED went off next to their vehicle and there's no way they're going to let those insurgent bastards get away with it.
From the safety and quiet of my stateside home I have the luxury of wondering what happened to the moral high ground. I'm dying to know where all the neo-cons went. What happened to Douglas Feith and the spring darlings of 2003 who graced the cover of Vanity Fair and gave whacky press conferences? Goodness gracious, where did they go? And who gave Janeane Garofalo a microphone? Does the majority of the new left not see what a cartoon they are -- like a middle schoolers conception of a Woodstock reunion or a feature length Tommy Hilfiger commercial?
Thermobaric Foes: Explosive Threat
Thermobaric warheads put the power to demolish buildings into the hands of the average U.S. marine. But Americans aren’t the only ones with the weapons. The Chinese, the Russians -- even guerilla groups -- now have thermobarics' shockingly destructive power in their grasps.
Thermobarics aren't just a more powerful version of normal high explosive. The term encompasses a range of different types of warhead from fuel-air explosives, which release a cloud of flammable material and detonate it, to metallized explosives whose expanding fireball takes in oxygen from the air. What they have in common is that they produce blast which has a lower overpressure but a longer duration than normal condensed explosives. In effect it is a shove rather than a punch: a thermobaric explosion does not smash a hole in a wall, it pushes the wall over. An instantaneous explosive overpressure of 50 psi [pounds per square inch] is needed to kill. But one sustained for a fraction of a second at 10 psi is also lethal. That’s how thermobarics kill.
The basic idea goes way back, and anyone interested in the background - including a bizarre German WWII weapon, how a 500lb of coal dust can break windows five miles away and what new ultra-fine nanoexplosives can do - should put my book Weapons Grade on their Christmas list.
But the thermobaric threat isn’t confined to history books. In Iraq and Afghanistan, many US lives have been saved by the protection afforded by armored patrol vehicles, body armor and prompt medical attention. Thermobarics may change that. Armored vehicles are safe only when buttoned up, as the blast from a thermobaric warhead will 'flow' through hatches or other openings.
A detailed analysis points out that "conventional countermeasures such as barriers (sandbags) and personnel amour are not effective against thermobaric weaponry."
Other research indicates that current ballistic body armor actually increases the severity of blast injuries. Similarly, current combat medicine is not geared to deal with the damage to lungs and intestines which are typical of thermobarics - "diagnosis and treatment of blast injuries may require computed tomography, which might not be readily available in the battlefield."
In 1988, the Russians were the first to field a shoulder-launched thermobaric weapon, the RPO-A. It is also known as Shmel or Schmel from the Russian for Bumblebee.
As with the Marines thermobaric SMAW-NE weapon, the Shmel is quite capable of destroying buildings as this video shows. The Shmel complemented a wide range of other thermobaric weapons including bombs, rockets and artillery in the Russian arsenal. Controversially, security forces used the Shmel in the school siege at Beslan, a questionable choice for a hostage situation.
New Russian developments include a compact multi-shot thermobaric grenade launcher for urban combat and a thermobaric warhead for the RPG-7 used by guerrilla forces worldwide. Similar products are offered for export by the Bulgarians and other Eastern European nations.
Rumors of a Chinese licensed copy of the Shmel appear to be confirmed with the emergence of this clone - it has the same calibre, same appearance and described as "fuel air blasting explosive". Its effectiveness against buildings, bunkers is noted, as well as the fact that because the blast takes oxygen from the air, "personnel in the airtight space suffocates because of the oxygen deficit."
Are such weapons in the hands of insurgents and terrorists? During the Chechen conflict, there were persistent stories that Chechen separatists had them:
"The Russian force, to explain extensive damage to buildings in Grozny, stated that the Chechens had captured a boxcar full of Shmel weapons and were now using them indiscriminately," one report noted. Newspapers reported that the weapons were recovered from Chechen arms caches
However, according to Tourpal-Ali Kaimov, a Chechen commander interviewed by the USMC only a handful of Shmel were captured.
The Russian claim that the Chechens captured a 'box car' load of these weapons was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The indiscriminate use of these weapons combined with its destructive capabilities produced a lot of collateral damage and deaths/injuries among non-combatants. The Russian claim was a ruse in order to place at least part of the blame on Chechen use of the Schmel.
There is at least one documented instance of an irregular force receiving Shmel: the Cobra militia in the Republic of Congo reported in 2003.
Among these shipments were significant quantities of the RPO-A 'Shmel', an extremely lethal hand-held launcher whose projectile uses fuel-air explosive... This is the first time this weapon has been seen in the possession of a non-state actor.
The report, by the Swiss-based Small Arms Survey group, does not identify the source of the weapon, but does provides photographic evidence.
So far, insurgents in Iraq haven’t gotten their hands on thermobaric weapons. And reports from Afghanistan describing thermobaric victims as being found dead without a mark on them have been overstated -- and allegations about 'displaced eyeballs' -- are highly doubtful. But it would seem only a matter of time until these weapons make them into the world’s most intense conflicts.
Some attention has been paid to the threat posed by thermobarics, but little has been made public. In a series of computer simulations called Project Albert, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory has evaluated the effect of arming platoons of attackers and defenders with enhanced blast weapons in urban assault. The results are significant - when the attackers alone are armed with them, they are much more successful, but when both sides have them the advantage shifts towards the defenders.
This may be important for the future of warfare in cities. The spread of these weapons will make such actions more destructive, and it will make infantry assault even more costly in terms of lives.
Agreement on an international ban on the manufacture and export of such weapons might have been possible some years ago, but now the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Now it is a matter of preparing ourselves with better tactical awareness of what such weapons can do, and improving the medical facilities for dealing with thermobaric casualties.
-- David Hambling
Rapid Fire 11/28/05
* Fast track for Iraq pull back?
* Fishy pirate-hunters
* Thermal safe-crackers
* GIs' "post-traumatic growth"
* Pentagon's domestic spies
* Fighter jets' "USB"
* "Nuclear blitz" plans revealed
* Jumping car's big leap
* "Can we cure fear?"
* Jets, gift-wrapped
(Big ups: Geek Press, JQP, R, Joel)
Canadian LAV-3 rolls in Afghanistan
A Canadian soldier with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment was killed and four others injured when their light armored vehicle, very similar in many respects to the US Army's Stryker, rolled over after swerving to avoid a local car that was driving without headlights on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar.
After the light armoured vehicle swerved, the driver lost control of the vehicle which went off the highway and rolled over.
"It was purely and simply an accident to avoid a head-on collision," Craig Oliver, CTV's Chief Political Correspondent, reported.
Pte. Braun Scott Woodfield, 24, died in the accident.
Predictably, the article contains this:
Earlier, the safety of the military vehicle, known as a LAV-III, was called into question after a media report claimed the army had been warned that "speed and driver inexperience" were frequent causes of rollovers.
There have been 10 rollover accidents in the six years the vehicle had been in use.
A 24-year-old Quebec soldier, Pte. Patrick Dessureault, died earlier this year when a LAV-III rolled over into a river during a training exercise in Alberta.
And last year, two Canadians were injured when their LAV rolled into a ravine in Bosnia.
In fact, Google News calls the article "Vehicle safety questioned after soldier's death". Once again we hear of the 8-wheeled LAV's problem with roll-overs. I noted similar coverage of the Stryker very recently. While there's little doubt that an LAV has a higher center of gravity than, say, a tank, and is much more likely to roll over than, say, a tank, I'm a bit skeptical about that wild-eyed claims that so many seem to have made over the past few years. And I'm not quite so quick to just accept the higher probability of rolling in a Stryker or LAV based on incidents like when two Strykers rolled into a canal in Iraq off of a collapsing roadway or rolling into a ravine in Bosnia.
A Marine tank flipped over while falling into the Euphrates during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. I don't ever see that listed when discussing the probability of M1 tanks to roll over. But we all know that M1's are nearly impossible to flip, don't we? And we all know that LAV/Strykers are very prone to flipping, don't we?
If we do, it might be because so many people act like it's a self-evident truth. Take, for instance, this in another story:
Military sources said the LAV-3 - its inherent tippiness exaggerated by armour plates added recently to protect soldiers from explosions - rolled over after a civilian car with no headlights suddenly appeared out of the dark.
"Inherent tippiness" according to "military sources". That, um, leaves a lot of wiggle room, I think. Also, don't miss the fact that that paragraph is a 'twofer'. You noticed how add-on armor was implicated in the event as well, didn't you? And then there's this in an article entitled Military vehicle in fatal accident has history of rollovers:
Documents obtained through Access to Information laws show the army was warned in May 2004 that "speed and driver inexperience" were frequent causes of rollovers involving the LAV III.
A two-page briefing memo prepared for military leaders said the armoured vehicle is limited in the type of terrain it can handle.
I find this a bit interesting because the article seems to use the report as a cornerstone to build its anti-LAV angle from. Except that both factors are not problems with the vehicle itself, but problems with the drivers or the way it's used. Despite a slightly bizarre claim by POGO that training was a "band-aid" solution to Stryker driver inexperience with add-on slat armor, it's obvious that training is how you overcome inexperience. I'm reminded that the first Stryker brigade shredded a ton of tires when they first acquired their vehicles, but as driver experience and training increased, lost tires decreased dramatically. Training and re-training is where it's at in the military. In this particular case, the driver had four years of experience behind the wheel of an LAV, so I doubt that driver inexperience is at fault this time. And if speed was a factor, or maybe the use of the vehicle in terrain that it can't handle, that again comes down to factors unrelated directly to the vehicle.
If you read the report note (1 page .pdf) that the story refers to, you'll see exactly that training seems to have overcome the driver inexperience problems and that steep embankments or collapsing terrain were responsible for the rest. I'm not exactly sure where "speed" comes into it, though.
And how about this:
Like many armoured vehicles and SUVs, the LAV-3s can roll over under certain conditions.
Wow. Comparing LAVs to the big bad SUVs. Though, to their credit, they go on to note that "several defence sources" claim that vehicle structural issues haven't been a factor in any of the Lav roll-overs and that "accidents still happen".
I know it sounds like I'm getting all up in arms about this, here. As a bit of a Stryker fan, I guess I'm tired of seeing the same old "anti wheels" claims peddled about as gospel. Yes, the Stryker/LAV is probably a lot more prone to rolling than a tank. But, then, so is everything else. It's this last point that usually is ignored or goes unmentioned. I don't claim to know if Strykers/LAVs roll more often than most other vehicles or not. But let's look at some numbers and compare.
Oh. The Canadian military has. And it says that they're actually less-likely, statistically, to roll than other troop carriers. And later they also point out that they are also less-likely to roll than a sport utility vehicle. They give no numbers, though.
If you click the pic near the top of this story, you can access a video of a Canadian LAV firing its gun. The fact that standard Canadian LAVs are armed with stabilized turrets sporting the reliable M242 Bushmaster 25mm chain gun probably, if anything, gives them an even slightly higher center of gravity than US Strykers. And, most definitely, significantly greater firepower. Another pic of a Canadian LAV-III with full load-out, crew, and dismounts, can be seen here. For what it's worth, I still believe that a 25mm-armed Stryker would come in handy.
There's no doubt that the Strykers and LAVs have their downsides, but both the US and Canadian armies seem to be taking lessons learned and working hard to apply them to the real world. And there's also no doubt that, in some cases, tracked vehicles (such as the upgraded M113s that so many anti-Stryker folks seem to advocate) would be a better choice. But nothing is a one-size-fits-all solution, and the Strykers have performed quite well overall since first arriving in Iraq at the end of 2003. By all means, let's discuss their pros and cons. Let's just do so fairly and honestly.
Meanwhile, let's not forget that though the US and Canada have had some differences of opinion on a lot of things lately, the Canadians have been in Afghanistan all along and are continuing to do a great job. Sometimes at great sacrifice.
--cross-posted by Murdoc
Israelis: Talk to the Dog
Forbes is right, that "after a half-century of hostile borders and urban guerrilla warfare, Israel has emerged as the go-to country for antiterrorism technologies."
But, oy gevalt, the technologies they pick! They sound cool. But I wouldn't count on the Israeli Defense Forces (or any other military, for that matter) using most of 'em any time soon. Still, they're fun to read about. Here are two of the eight Forbes picks.
Dog Translator (Price: $10,000 and up)
Worn on a collar or mounted on a wall, the Dog Bio Security System translates barking into alarms for police or military. Bio-Sense Technologies spent two years capturing the sound waves of woofs and arfs, encoding them to be read by a digital signal processor. All dogs emit the same type of bark when they sense trouble. The device can distinguish this bark from a dog's "Hello." A consumer version costs $100. A high-end version costs tens of thousands of dollars but is still 25% the cost of video surveillance.
Liar Detector (Price: $200,000)
An airport security guard's greatest fear is letting through terrorists smart enough to stay off the watch list. Suspect Detection Systems came up with a machine to smoke them out. A passenger puts his passport on a scanner and one hand on a sensor. The machine starts asking increasingly tough questions in the official language of the passport-issuing country. Artificial intelligence software monitors physiological responses through the sensor. Agents pull aside those who fail the test. The company claims a 96% accuracy rate after two years of testing. Slated to go into use next year in Israeli and U.S. airports, as well as Gaza Strip checkpoints.
I wouldn't bet my last shekel on it. Here's some background on why lie detection systems, both new school and old, are so spotty.
THERE'S MORE: "For funny Israeli anti-terrorist ideas, it's still hard to beat the terrorist sniffing gerbils," Nick notes in the comments.
AND MORE: Gary Larson 1, Israelis 0. Check out this prescient Far Side cartoon.
Rapid Fire 11/25/05
* Bacteria become "living photos"
* Canada's ex-Defence Minister: "ETs are real..."
* ...and maybe they're hackers
* Bomber targets toy giveaway
* "Brownie" = disaster consultant
* Taser Intl. delisted?
* New destroyer sails ahead (background here)
(Big ups: NOSI, JQP, /., Drudge)
Old planes need love
P-3 Orion patrol planes, the workhorses of U.S. naval aviation, are begging to be put out to pasture. But with replacement a decade away, industry is working overtime to keep the old beasts alive.
The Orion, a modification of the Lockheed Electra propliner, is one of the most in-demand airplanes in the U.S. inventory. 
Designed to hunt Soviet subs then modified for overland use after the Wall fell, the P-3 is prized for its efficiency, range and loiter time -- and for its seemingly limitless flexibility. Orion airframes have been packed with a bewildering array of electronics, from surveillance radars in rotating radomes (for the Customs Service's Airborne Early Warning models) to infrared and visible-light cameras (in the Navy's Anti-Surface Warface Improvement Program, or AIP, model) and sophisticated Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) receivers. It was a Navy SIGINT EP-3 that collided with a Chinese fighter in 2001 while spying on the Chinese navy. Over Iraq, Orions have been all but hijacked by the Marine Corps, which plants a colonel aboard and uses the Orions as command posts.
But overuse in the past decade resulted in 75 of the Navy's 225 Orions being deemed unsafe for flight and retired last year. The remaining planes have been subject to careful maintenance to keep them flying until their replacements -- the new P-8A, the Broad-Area Maritime Surveillance UAV and the Aerial Common Sensor -- are available in large numbers sometime around 2013. So desperate is the Navy for flyable Orions that is has begun upgrading five obsolescent Update II.5 versions to bolster the front-line fleet of 57 AIP Update IIIs.
At Lockheed Martin's Aircraft and Logistics Center in Greenville, S.C., a staff of 1,200 works at capacity to maintain and upgrade Navy P-3s while also modifying Orions for Canada, The Netherlands and (soon) India and Pakistan. Lockheed Martin spokespeople David Jewel and Trish Pagan say that the tired airframes are requiring more and more maintenance and that upgrades are taking longer too. At any given time, there are 18-20 P-3s at the facility, most of them American. Some stay for as long as six months.
Despite everything, P-3s are based on a very sturdy airframe and can fly practically forever if they're properly cared for, Jewel says. Proper care, he adds, might even mean new wings and new engines that would keep the old horses working for decades still. That just might become necessary if the ACS' recent problems aren't resolved and if the P-8 hits any snags.
--David Axe
Beaten With A POGO Stick
I was reading Bill Gertz's article on the EMP threat [that'd be the worry that a king-size nuke would trigger an electro-magnetic pulse, frying every electronic for miles around -- ed.], thinking, I wish someone else would point out that the article is a steaming pile of horseapples."
Nick Schwellenbach from the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has done just that, drawing on his excellent article for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists entitled EMPty Threat and another called The Next Fake Threat.
Gertz is promoting War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World, by Frank Gaffney. Gaffney was a member is tight with many of the members of the EMP Commission, which Schwellenbach points out was … well just read this section from EMPty Threat: [sub. req'd]
[In Congressional testimony, EMP Commission Staff Member Peter] Pry also quoted a passage from an Iranian political-military journal as supporting evidence that Tehran believes the key to defeating the United States is an EMP attack:
"Advanced information technology equipment exists which has a very high degree of efficiency in warfare. Among these we can refer to communication and information gathering satellites, pilotless planes, and the digital system. ... Once you confuse the enemy communication network you can also disrupt the work of the enemy command and decision-making center. Even worse, today when you disable a country’s military high command through disruption of communications you will, in effect, disrupt all the affairs of that country. ... If the world’s industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, then they will disintegrate within a few years. ... American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.
The EMP Commission, as it turns out, has squeezed much mileage out of this quote. In a PowerPoint presentation delivered in October 2004 at James Madison University, EMP Commission Chairman William Graham also cited the Iranian article to argue that “Potential Adversaries Know About EMP.” Ditto [Rep. Roscoe] Bartlett, who included a variation of the same quote on a chart that he presented before the House of Representatives in June.
Just one small problem—the article never mentions EMP, or for that matter nuclear weapons. Titled “Electronics to Determine Fate of Future Wars,” the author offers a brief overview of contemporary Western thinking on information warfare, focusing on such issues as internet hacking, computer viruses, and disrupting communications. The article does indeed envision American soldiers unable to find food or fire a single shot—but this is not due to an EMP attack, but rather the result of enemy infiltration of information networks. As it turns out, the EMP Commission didn’t need to look all the way to Iran to quote this material. The Iranian author credits the information to the Washington Post.
The blog Bouphonia did the leg work on how the EMP Commission misused this quote, after I sent along the FBIS translation of the source (read it for yourself).
-- Jeffrey Lewis, Crossposted at Arms Control Wonk.com
THERE'S MORE: In this PowerPoint presentation, delivered in October 2004 at James Madison University, EMP Commission Chairman William Graham also cited the Iranian article to argue that "Potential Adversaries Know About EMP."
New Cyberthreats
I just sat in on a conference call put together by the SANS Institute. They do all sorts of tracking of computer vulnerabilities, and they also do worldwide training sessions in stopping hackers, etc.
SANS today released a new Top 20 threat list, detailing what kinds of systems and programs are being targeted by hackers these days. Roger Cumming, Director of Britain's NISCC, which is the UK equivalent of the US' own Critical Infrastructure Protection Board,detailed two major trends to look out for as far as protecting critical infrastructure.
First, Cumming noted, as more and more networks converge onto single platforms (think of communications becoming more and more based on Voice over Internet Protocol, for example) the threats are increased. In other words, a cyber-attack won't just knock out your email, it will knock out the voice communications you rely on as well. More and more apps on a single platform will also offer hackers more avenues into your critical systems.
Cumming also mentioned that cyber-watchers are seeing a real shift now in the motives for attacks. He called the current situation a "malicious marketplace," where hackers are getting paid to do their dirty work. It's no longer just teenagers with too much time on their hands. There's no reason why terrorists, for example, couldn't try to hire these professional hackers to launch attacks on critical US infrastructure.
Now, for the record, if you follow Defense Tech, you know the whole "cyberthreat" issue's been raised before. And that it's fair to say that we've been, shall we say, uber-skeptical about this kind of cyber-terrorism. Here, and here, for example.
Also of note: attackers have realized that Microsoft and others now offer automatic patches to plug holes in operating systems, and that, by and large, computer users are taking those patches. So, the hackers are now finding ways to exploit vulnerabilities, not in operating systems, but in applications like media players, and even anti-virus software itself. Beware when streaming that new Britney Spears vid!
All of this, of course, has huge implications for the US military and the Dept. of Homeland Security. They use much of the same, off-the-shelf software that ordinary users do, and so they face the same issues when it comes to hacking, etc. Scary, I know.
Alan Paller of SANS noted, however, that the US Air Force is setting an example of good governance in addressing these threats. Being a radio guy, I give you an audio clip of Paller talking about this during the press conference today. Download Alan Paller's first clip
But, Paller also noted that the hardest work -- finding out what's already been compromised, and removing the offending bugs -- has yet to be done. Download Alan Paller's second clip
-- Clark Boyd, technology correspondent for The World public radio program. The World is co-production of the BBC World Service in London and WGBH public radio in Boston.
Russia's Sneaky Missile: Details Here
The Russians have been talking for a couple of years, now, about their new missile which can dodge American interceptors. According to Bill Gertz (and grab the usual handful of salt here), that weapon was tested earlier this month.
The Topol-M missile has a warhead-carrying reentry vehicle which "can change course and range while traveling at speeds estimated at about 3 miles per second," Gertz notes.
That's a serious problem for missile defenses, "because such countermeasures rely on sensors to project a [reentry vehicle's] flight path and impact point so that an interceptor missile can be guided to the right spot to knock [it] out."
Situational Awareness has details on the Topol-M. And if the site is right, the weapon is pretty hard to stop.
It "flies a faster, flatter trajectory and has more opportunities to change course in flight... [It] carr[ies] realistic decoys [that] have the same weight and radar cross section as the actual warhead... [And those] warheads and decoys are also equipped with active-deception jamming systems." Look out.
Rapid Fire 11/22/05
* Pentagon doc: "chemical" WP
* Arrows vs. landmines
* Home-grown suicide vests
* Spy cams track getaway car
* 75 year-old jewel thief looks back
* "Withdrawal" or "redeployment"?
* Papers please: Denver mom can't ride the bus without showing ID
(Big ups: Schneier, /., JFB)
Pentagon Skimps on IED Defense?
It certainly sounds big league: tens of millions of dollars and the promise of a modern-day "Manhattan Project" to figure out how to stop improvised bombs. And the need couldn't be greater, of course; just on Saturday, another six soldiers and marines were killed in Iraq by jury-rigged explosives.
But is the Pentagon really doing all it can to stop the weapons responsible for more than half of the war's 17,000 American casualties? It sure doesn't seem that way. Consider this story, from Defense Technology International.
The 1940s Manhattan Project is estimated to have cost $20 billion. In Fiscal 2006, the Navy plans to spend just $15 million within ONR [Office of Naval Research] on its new drive, with another $15 million to be spread among the Navy's five affiliated research centers: Pennsylvania State University, Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University, and the universities of Texas, Washington and Hawaii. [The Navy recently became the quarterback for counter-bomb research -- ed.] Another $15 million may be allocated to other universities outside the affiliate network.
Keep in mind, the Pentagon's fringe-science arm is planning to spend $38 million next year on giant blimp research, and $200 million on "cognitive" computers. So $45 million isn't all that much, in Pentagon terms.
"When admirals start talking about 'Manhattan Projects,' do you know how much money was spent on that?" John Anderson, a chemical engineer and provost of Ohio's Case Western Reserve University, asks. "You can't have a Manhattan-Project result with a tin-cup donation... If you're going to influence the academic research environment, you have to provide some resources and a compelling reason for doing it."
Of course, it'd be easier to ponying up the big bucks if there was some technological "silver bullet," some magic solution, that could instantly neuter improvised explosive devices -- or least make them easier to find. There ain't. Which is why the Pentagon is shifting its counter-bomb research "away from short-term solutions toward more basic research," the magazine notes.
After several open calls to industry and hundreds of proposals, the task force already has picked most of the "low-hanging fruit," according to the group's acting technology director...
Proposals are becoming repetitive, he says, particularly in the fields of ballistic protection and IED signal jamming, areas where the task force has placed the most emphasis so far.
But, even with these proven technologies, it's hard not to get the feeling that bomb-stopping isn't anywhere close to the top of the Pentagon priority list. Yes, an extra $250 million was sent over to the Joint IED Defeat Task Force in October, to buy more jammers. I assume that's on top of the agency's $1.2 billion per year budget. But even with all that extra cash, only a slim minority of American troops on the ground -- less than 15%, I'd estimate -- will get the jammers, which are one of the few proven methods for actually keeping the bombs from going off.
And remember: getting these jammers to frontline troops helps in the war after Iraq, too. If IEDs continue to be this effective, you can bet, for the next decade or two, guerilla groups will start jury-rigging some bombs as soon as U.S. land.
Meanwhile, there's talk at the Pentagon of trying to pare back its new destroyer program, aimed at fighting the Chinese one day. The hope is to maybe bring the costs down to a mere $2 billion per ship. Research and development funding for the Missile Defense Agency remains strong, however, at an annual clip of $8.8 billion. Should we therefore assume that the Pentagon thinks a possible ICBM attack is eight times more important than the roadside bombs that are killing our troops today?
Depleted Uranium All That Deadly?
While the subject of how the U.S. military uses white phosphorus munitions is getting such discussion in the blogs and media (and please note this Denver press clip - thanks, Stygius), the other related issue that will get people's hackles up is the topic of depleted uranium-tipped munitions.
Consider this publication as a small example of one extreme in this discussion. I've seen many people, in the same blog posting, talk about the WP munitions and the DU munitions in the same breath as evidence that the U.S. military is committing war crimes.
The Defense Department's official position has been, and continues to be, that the extremely low level of radiation detected from these rounds and their use in combat is not detrimental to the health of U.S. troops or to the environment in general. My wife pointed out this August 2005 Science News article (subscription required) that supports the military's point of view.
Albert Marshall, of the Sandia National Laboratories, conducted a study to calculate the battlefield health risks of exposure to DU shells (here is the SNL press release - also see this local Albuquerque Tribune article). His results indicate only small risks of leukemia or birth defects, even among those troops who breathed heavy amounts of DU-tainted dust. From the Science News article:
The average U.S. adult faces a 7 percent lifetime risk of death from lung cancer, Marshall notes. That number might climb to 8.5 percent in a person who breathed a heavy dose of uranium dust, Marshall estimates. He also calculates that a child could play inside a vehicle destroyed by a depleted-uranium munition for 300 hours and outside it for another 700 hours and face an increased risk of only one death in 1,000 people from colon and lung cancers combined.
"I thought [depleted uranium] was going to be a major player," in causing health effects from radiation, Marshall says. These new calculations "changed my mind." Whether they convince the critics of the military use of depleted uranium remains to be seen.
Now from the critics' point of view, any increase in the chance of cancer is unacceptable, and it may be that they do not believe a report coming from a scientist from the Department of Energy, considering its role in the development of nuclear weapons. But from a practical point of view, considering the military utilities of using DU-tipped uranium (its awesome capability to penetrate most armors) and all the other potential hazards on a battlefield, a 1.5 percent increase in the overall chance of cancer for those few people that might have been close enough to a vehicle hit by DU rounds seems pretty negligible. It's good to have some real science to examine in the highly emotional discussion surrounding this topic.
-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist
Rapid Fire 11/21/05
* 19 types of drones in Iraq
* India 2, USAF 0? (background here)
* Defense guru's in-game lecture
* LEDs: millions of years old
* Flying flu bots
* Rummy WTF?
* This movie made me cry, more than once
(Big ups: RC)
Old is the New New
With the V-22 Osprey ready to enter operational service, the Marines are looking at new toys to take advantage of the tilt-rotor craft's range and versatility. One of these is a new 120-mm rifled mortar. But mortars need vehicles to haul them -- and guess what? The V-22's cabin is too small to fit a Humvee. So the Marines are seriously considering buying a new version of the old M-151 Jeep to move the mortar. Imagine that: the old Jeep back in production, 20 years after it got bumped off the battlefield by the Humvee. It's not the only case where the military is looking to old machines -- some decades out of service -- to meet its current and future needs.
The costs of new weapons are spiraling at an alarming rate. That goes double for adventurous new programs like Future Combat Systems, which are proving largely technologically impossible. But with a war going on, the Defense Department needs gear that's going to work -- now. It's no surprise, then, that the Pentagon is turning to equipment that proved its worth back when Rummy was Gerald Ford's SecDef.
Consider the Vietnam-era Light Anti-tank Weapon, or LAW. Finding modern rockets like Javelin too complicated and expensive for urban warfare, the Marines have begun issuing LAWs to units in Iraq. On the aviation side, the Marines have ordered the first UH-1Y Hueys, new-production updates of the 30-year-old UH-1N. The AH-1 Cobra fleet is getting a similar makeover, albeit in a rebuild program for old airframes. Both helos are coming in on time, on budget and with the capabilities the Marines need. Meanwhile, the CH-53 is about to go back into production in a new version to replace choppers worn out in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Across the aisle, the Army is reissuing old M-14 rifles. And soon the UH-60 fleet will be replaced with -- you guessed it -- the UH-60, in an updated model.
In the Navy camp, skeptical old vets are leading a campaign to put two mothballed battleships back into service as alternatives to the Navy's $3-billion-per-copy DD(X) destroyer, which is being touted as a fire-support platform but, according to the Naval Fire Support Association, will provide only a fraction of the firepower of the old BBs at far greater cost, and much later.
My friend Jim Doner, a retired Marine warrant officer who flew forward air control missions over Vietnam, is not at all surprised at this development. He says the best weapons are the old proven ones ... paired with an experienced, courageous operator. In particular, he laments the premature retirement of the OV-10 Bronco, a rugged, slow, cheap little airplane that excelled at getting airborne controllers over the battlefield where they could direct artillery and bombs more accurately than even today's controllers with their whiz-bang targeting pods. Doner says the OV-10 went away (in 1995) in favor of hi-tech multi-role jets that aren't always good at the simple, dirty and dangerous missions that are important in low-intensity wars.
--David Axe
Limelight for Pentagon Withdrawal Plan
A week ago, this blog picked up on something the big media had all-but-ignored: a Pentagon plan to draw the number of U.S. troops down to about 92,000 by the end of next year.
"I would think that the fact that the DOD announced we were lowering the number of troops in Iraq for 2006 would be huge news, but no one seems to care," the site's author, Pierce Wetter, e-mailed me.
That was before Rep. John Murtha's call to bring the troops home. Now, suddenly, withdrawal plans are all the rage. Especially ones "drafted by Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey, the two top U.S. commanders of the war," as NBC notes.
If Iraqi elections are successful in December and a new parliament seated by January, withdrawal could begin almost immediately. Military officials say it would be an incremental or phased withdrawal — beginning slowly at first, with one or two battalions — up to 2,000 troops at a time.
Entire battalions of soldiers and Marines, now scheduled for duty in Iraq next year, would also be told they don't have to go. Some American troops would be placed on temporary standby in neighboring Kuwait — ready to respond, if needed, to any major outbreaks of violence in Iraq.
THERE'S MORE: In the comments, Murdoc says the 92K number doesn't include Marines... And "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, addressing the renewed debate over American troops in Iraq, said today that any paring down of the forces there would depend on military and security conditions, and that current troop levels must be maintained at least until the December elections in Iraq," according to the Times.
AND MORE: John Robb, as usual, has smart things to say about this. Particularly, about the natural consequence(s) of the isolation of US decision makers from the external reference environment. Instead of making connections, we severed them," he writes.
This isolation... drove: Bad decision making. The willingness to accept flawed intelligence on Iraq's WMD capabilities. The failure to stop the looting after the invasion. The decision to disband the Iraqi military. The failure to send enough troops.
Ad hoc planning and strategy development. The lack of a plan to win the peace in the Iraq. The plethora of different military plans since then: build Sunni militias (Fallujah), stability for elections and a political solutions, aggressive counter-insurgent sweeps, clear-and-hold (oil-spots), etc.
Comments are Back On...
...So start talkin'.
"Future Combat": Cuts, or More Cash?
It's only taken $50 billion in extra cash, a heap of missed deadlines and redrawn requirements, and a war that's lasted about two years too long. But the Pentagon may finally be ready to start putting the axe to the Army's leviathan modernization program, Future Combat Systems.
Inside Defense reports that FCS is on a "short list of...weapon system programs that could be terminated or significantly pared back."
“They are looking to slip it to the right or kill it,” said a source familiar with FCS options advanced by the Pentagon's office of program analysis and evaluation.
Army officials are working to convince Pentagon leaders, including England, to reconsider cutting or even terminating FCS, the service's only major new-start development program.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker is scheduled to meet Friday with England and again make the case for the program, a briefing that is expected to discuss FCS' relevance to today's challenges.
Whoops! Make that $70 billion in cost overruns. The Defense Department quietly released a "selected acquisition report" this week saying that FCS would now run $161 billion -- up from 2003's $92 billion estimate. So we're talking a 75% increase. And remember, folks, that's only down payment. Because $161 billion only pays for modernizing a third of the Army's troops.
"Climax" for Los Alamos Fight
Longtime friends of Defense Tech know I'm, uh, mildly interested in what goes on at Los Alamos National Laboratory. And it's been driving me nuts that I've been too busy to dig into the battle for control of the lab -- a battle which is about to reach its "climax," notes the San Francisco Chronicle.
A decision [about] who runs the world's most glamorous and controversial nuclear weapons lab and that also could end the University of California's unchallenged six-decade domination of the U.S. weapons program... could come soon, perhaps even Friday.
The decision will wrap up a six-month competition to run scandal-shaken Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945. UC and its industrial partners, including San Francisco-based Bechtel National Inc., are competing for the contract against aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp. and its allies -- the huge University of Texas system, several New Mexico universities and various industrial partners...
A Lockheed Martin takeover would be seen as an example of a growing trend toward the "privatization" of the nation's nuclear weapons complex...
UC has run the lab since 1943 without having to compete for its Energy Department contracts. But in 2003, Los Alamos and its management by UC came under fire after a series of security, safety, financial and managerial scandals at the lab, and the Energy Department and Congress ordered that all future contracts be open to outside bidders.
Several lab staff members told The Chronicle this week that they thought the Lockheed-Texas team had the best shot at winning the contract after what some view as a ghastly parade of UC screw-ups.
"The morale here is abysmal," said theoretical physicist Brad Lee Holian. [Check this blog and you'll see what he means -- ed.] "People's lives have been wrenched apart by the political games that have been played. You can't hold people's careers by the heels out over the balcony without them feeling threatened and cheapened."
Rapid Fire 11/18/05
Still no comments, people. But otherwise, we're back in business.
* Behind the IED economy
* Secrecy jargon, decoded
* Body armor recalled
* Anti-missile at sea: bullseye (background here)
* EOD, intel recruits MIA
* Tehran: sat is for spying
* Auto-translator in warzone test
* ChoicePoint Intelligence Agency?
* $1.3 bil for missile-watching blimps
* Spooks on UFOs: Shhhh!
(Big ups: JQP, Russ)
Small Arms in Iraq: What Worked, What Sucked What a Hoax?
I'm getting this e-mail, about how some small arms are working in Iraq, about fifth-hand. So I can't vouch for its authenticity. But it sounds right to me.
Soldiers, Marines: Is this on-point, or not?
UPDATE 11/18/05: A whole heap of people have written in, saying that the letter's author is either badly misiniformed, or that the whole thing is a hoax. (I'm guessing misinformed, since it's not a first-person account.)
For example, the note says that the Interceptor Body Armor only weighs "6 lbs." To which one reader says:
We only wish it weighed 6 pounds. The IBAs with SAPI plates weighs in at just under 16 pounds and when you add in the neck, shoulder and groin protection you're back up over 20 pounds.
In response to the item on the "M243 SAW," the same reader notes:
First off, it's the M249 SAW, and it's not drum fed. It's belt fed. Granted, the plastic box magazines the 200 rd belts come in, could be mistaken for a drum magazine by someone who had never seen one before, but I would think that a Marine would know the nomenclature of this weapon.
Decide for yourself.
-----Original Message-----
From: XXXXXXXXXX
Sent: XXXXXXXXXX
To: XXXXXXXXX
XXXXX saw and did a lot and the following is what he told me about weapons, equipment, tactics and other miscellaneous info which may be of interest to you. Nothing is by any means classified. No politics here, just a Marine with a bird's eye view's opinions:
1) The M-16 rifle : Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere. XXXXX says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it's lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They like the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the picattiny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round. Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits cant be reliably counted on to put the enemy down. Fun fact: Random autopsies on dead insurgents shows a high level of opiate use.
2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon) [I'm guessing he means this -ed.] : .223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun. Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of shit. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly. (that's fun in the middle of a firefight).
3) The M9 Beretta 9mm: Mixed bag. Good gun, performs well in desert environment; but they all hate the 9mm cartridge. The use of handguns for self-defense is actually fairly common. Same old story on the 9mm: Bad guys hit multiple times and still in the fight.
Click here for more, including reviews of the Ma Deuce, and the new body armor.
4) Mossberg 12ga. Military shotgun: Works well, used frequently for clearing houses to good effect.
5) The M240 Machine Gun: 7.62 Nato (.308) cal. belt fed machine gun, developed to replace the old M-60 (what a beautiful weapon that was!!). Thumbs up. Accurate, reliable, and the 7.62 round puts 'em down. Originally developed as a vehicle mounted weapon, more and more are being dismounted and taken into the field by infantry. The 7.62 round chews up the structure over there.
6) The M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun: Thumbs way, way up. "Ma deuce" is still worth her considerable weight in gold. The ultimate fight stopper, puts their dicks in the dirt every time. The most coveted weapon in-theater.
7) The .45 pistol: Thumbs up. Still the best pistol round out there. Everybody authorized to carry a sidearm is trying to get their hands on one. With few exceptions, can reliably be expected to put 'em down with a torso hit. The special ops guys (who are doing most of the pistol work) use the HK military model and supposedly love it. The old government model .45's are being re-issued en masse.
8) The M-14: Thumbs up. They are being re-issued in bulk, mostly in a modified version to special ops guys. Modifications include lightweight Kevlar stocks and low power red dot or ACOG sights. Very reliable in the sandy environment, and they love the 7.62 round.
9) The Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle: Thumbs way up. Spectacular range and accuracy and hits like a freight train. Used frequently to take out vehicle suicide bombers ( we actually stop a lot of them) and barricaded enemy. Definitely here to stay.
10) The M24 sniper rifle: Thumbs up. Mostly in .308 but some in 300 win mag. Heavily modified Remington 700's. Great performance. Snipers have been used heavily to great effect. Rumor has it that a marine sniper on his third tour in Anbar province has actually exceeded Carlos Hathcock's record for confirmed kills with OVER 100.
11) The new body armor: Thumbs up. Relatively light at approx. 6 lbs. and can reliably be expected to soak up small shrapnel and even will stop an AK-47 round. The bad news: Hot as shit to wear, almost unbearable in the summer heat (which averages over 120 degrees). Also, the enemy now goes for head shots whenever possible. All the bullshit about the "old" body armor making our guys vulnerable to the IED's was a non-starter. The IED explosions are enormous and body armor doesn't make any difference at all in most cases.
12) Night Vision and Infrared Equipment: Thumbs way up. Spectacular performance. Our guys see in the dark and own the night, period. Very little enemy action after evening prayers. More and more enemy being whacked at night during movement by our hunter-killer teams. We've all seen the videos.
13) Lights: Thumbs up. Most of the weapon mounted and personal lights are Surefire's, and the troops love 'em. Invaluable for night urban operations. XXXX carried a $34 Surefire G2 on a neck lanyard and loved it.
I cant help but notice that most of the good fighting weapons and ordnance are 50 or more years old!!!!!!!!! With all our technology, it's the WWII and Vietnam era weapons that everybody wants!!!!
Rummy Backing off from Iraq?
This article from Sunday's Washington Post Magazine is the second major attempt I've seen in the last few months to separate Donald Rumsfeld from the Iraq war. (Here's the other.)
The idea, basically, is that Rummy was more fixated on modernizing the military than invading any country. Iraq just happened to be the country that the President wanted to wack.
Rumsfeld portrayed the memo as a warning blast, an attempt to do "everything humanly possible to prepare" Bush for the awful responsibility that had settled onto his presidential shoulders -- and his shoulders alone. For there comes a point when even the secretary of defense must realize that "it's not your decision or even your recommendation," Rumsfeld reflected with Woodward. By which he meant the Iraq war wasn't Don Rumsfeld's decision or recommendation.
As if to underline the point, Rumsfeld also told Woodward that he couldn't recall a moment, in all the months of planning for the war, when Bush asked whether his defense secretary favored the invasion. Nor did Rumsfeld ever volunteer his opinion. ("There's no question in anyone's mind but I agreed with the president's approach," he added.)
"After considerable time with the top-ranking civilian and military leaders of the Pentagon, a new picture of Donald Rumsfeld has emerged for me, and I now believe something that I would have thought preposterous before: There are no 'Rumsfeld wars,'" Thomas P.M. Barnett wrote in July's Esquire.
Of course, he's integral to how the Pentagon has conducted these operations, and he deserves all the credit and blame any defense secretary naturally receives as a result. But they're not his wars, and they never were. And in that, critics of the war might have something. The rationales behind the Iraq war belonged to the departing neocons Wolfowitz and Feith (who took pains in an interview to lecture me on the correct usage of the word neocon). And of course the president.
But if that's true, then what was Rummy doing in the White House on February 11, 1998? That's the day he and six other conservatives pleaded with then-National Security Advisor Sandy Berger to go after Iraq. Or a few days earlier, when he signed an open letter to President Clinton which said:
The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
For that matter, what was the Secretary of Defense thinking on September 11, 2001?
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," [Richard] Clarke said to [60 Minutes' Leslie] Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.'"
Rumsfeld may not like how this war is turning out. But he's been for it for a long time. And no amount of after-the-fact spin is going to change that.
Rapid Fire 11/15/05
* Jihad.com vs. Zarqawi
* UAV sitreps
* Russia's chem-weapon timebomb
* NYT's nuclear hooey
* India-Pak fight = cash cow
* Passenger screening, the game
* CIA slipped Sovs software bugs?
* Admiral Cebrowski, RIP (more here)
* MVP, my ass
(Big ups: JQP)
Riding the Wave(form)
At Shaw Air Force Base in sunny Sumter, S.C., the pilots and maintainers of the 77th Fighter Squadron "Gamblers" are putting a new twist on an old mission, training to kill air defenses with the latest American version of the ubiquitous F-16 Viper.
The Gamblers fly around 20 1990s-vintage F-16CJ Block 50s, the model of the Viper optimized for Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, or SEAD. They're radar killers, Wild Weasels, descendents of the F-105s and F-4s that fistfought SAMs over Vietnam and the Gulf. When the small force of highly-specialized two-seat F-4G Wild Weasels was retired in 1996 and single-seat F-16CJs procured to take over the job, critics said it was a step back for SEAD.
And they were right -- for a while. In its early days, the F-16CJ was limited to getting azimuth-only targeting data on enemy radars using its Harm Targeting System (HTS) pod. Without the ability to determine range, HTS-equipped Wild Weasels could only lob a HARM missile in the general direction of the bad guy's radar and hope for the best.
That was then. Almost a decade after it inherited the Wild Weasel mission, the F-16CJ is finally getting the tools it needs to equal and surpass the F-4G as a SEAD platform. These tools -- the Link-16 datalink, the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS), color displays and a major software upgrade -- are being added to all 650 or so F-16C Block 40/42/50/52s under the $1-billion Common Capability Implimentation Program (CCIP). Paired with GPS and HTS, CCIP enables F-16CJs to share a bewildering variety of data with a wide range of platforms including other fighters, AWACS, J-STARS, Rivet Joint recce planes, Aegis cruisers, Patriot missile batteries and more. 
The key to this data-sharing is the Link-16's encryptable, frequency-hopping, high-volume waveform. Basically, Link-16 is an internet in the sky, and it's revolutionizing the way jet fighters wage war.
The new ability to combine off-board data with their own means the Wild Weasels can now pinpoint the locations of radars, track them with their helmet sights, shoot HARMs accurately and even drop JDAMs -- a new level of destructive capability that has necessitated some new terminology: Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses, or DEAD.
When CCIP wraps in around five years, the USAF will have 650 modern and flexible fighters capable of a full range of missions, from air defense to close air support to SEAD/DEAD. While the fighters are capable of swinging roles, the pilots will continue specializing, meaning the Gamblers will keep focusing on SEAD even though their jets can do much more.
With several hundred older F-16s slated for retirement in the next couple of years, some observers are worried that the Air Force will be stretched thin. The Air Force counters that the remaining fighters will more than make up for the cuts with greatly improved capability. While cuts can go only so far (you still need a four-ship flight to get anything accomplished, regardless of the individual jets' strengths), every indication is that the Air Force is performing a minor miracle, steadily increasing combat capability with a smaller and smaller fleet of airplanes. Research into new waveforms promises even more miracles.
--David Axe
Marines Quiet About Brutal New Weapon
War is hell. But it’s worse when the Marines bring out their new urban combat weapon, the SMAW-NE. Which may be why they’re not talking about it, much.
This is a version of the standard USMC Shoulder Mounted Assault Weapon but with a new warhead. Described as NE - "Novel Explosive"- it is a thermobaric mixture which ignites the air, producing a shockwave of unparalleled destructive power, especially against buildings.
A post-action report from Iraq describes the effect of the new weapon: "One unit disintegrated a large one-storey masonry type building with one round from 100 meters. They were extremely impressed." Elsewhere it is described by one Marine as "an awesome piece of ordnance."
It proved highly effective in the battle for Fallujah. This from the Marine Corps Gazette, July edition: "SMAW gunners became expert at determining which wall to shoot to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms."
The NE round is supposed to be capable of going through a brick wall, but in practice gunners had to fire through a window or make a hole with an anti-tank rocket. Again, from the Marine Corps Gazette:
"Due to the lack of penetrating power of the NE round, we found that our assaultmen had to first fire a dual-purpose rocket in order to create a hole in the wall or building. This blast was immediately followed by an NE round that would incinerate the target or literally level the structure."
The rational for this approach was straightforward:
"Marines could employ blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes. The economic cost of house replacement is not comparable to American lives...all battalions adopted blast techniques appropriate to entering a bunker, assuming you did not know if the bunker was manned."
The manufacturers, Talley, make bold use of its track record, with a brochure headlined Thermobaric Urban Destruction."
The SMAW-NE has only been procured by the USMC, though there are reports that some were 'borrowed' by other units. However, there are also proposals on the table that thousands of obsolete M-72 LAWs could be retrofitted with thermobaric warheads, making then into effective urban combat tools.
But in an era of precision bombs, where collateral damage is expected to be kept to a minimum, such massively brutal weapons have become highly controversial. These days, every civilian casualty means a few more “hearts and minds” are lost. Thermobaric weapons almost invariable lead to civilian deaths. The Soviet Union was heavily criticized for using thermobaric weapons in Afghanistan because they were held to constitute "disproportionate force," and similar criticisms were made when thermobarics were used in the Chechen conflict. According to Human Rights Watch, thermobaric weapons "kill and injure in a particularly brutal manner over a wide area. In urban settings it is very difficult to limit the effect of this weapon to combatants, and the nature of FAE explosions makes it virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter from their destructive effect."
So it’s understandable that the Marines have made so little noise about the use of the SMAW-NE in Fallujah. But keeping quiet about controversial weapons is a lousy strategy, no matter how effective those arms are. In the short term, it may save some bad press. In the long term, it’s a recipe for a scandal. Military leaders should debate human right advocates and the like first, and then publicly decide "we do/do not to use X". Otherwise when the media find do find out – as they always do -- not only do you get a level of hysteria but there is also the charge of “covering up.”
I'm undecided about thermobarics myself, but I think they should let the legal people sort out all these issues and clear things up. Otherwise you get claims of “chemical weapons” and “violating the Geneva Protocol.” Which doesn't really help anyone. The warfighter is left in doubt, and it hands propaganda to the bad guys. Just look at what happened it last week’s screaming over white phosphorous rounds.
-- David Hambling
THERE'S MORE: Americans aren’t the only ones with these weapons. The Chinese, the Russians -- even guerilla groups -- now have thermobarics' shockingly destructive power in their grasps.
Rapid Fire 11/14/05
* Google Earth, military app?
* Jetliner defender takes off
* IDF: sonic booms "confuse terrorists"
* "The bioweapon is in the mail"
* G.I. gum, good for teeth
* Bacteria make rocket fuel?
* Nuke lab scientists spooked (background here and here)
(Big ups: APB, RC, LANL: TRS)
Drudge on Drones - Doh!
"HONEYWELL is developing a micro flying spy drone -- that would be used for civilian law enforcement!" the Drudge Report shouts.
Which is true. In a way.
The company is, indeed, developing a small, "hovering robot carrying video cameras and other sensors," as Drudge explains, and Defense Tech has detailed in the past. And Honeywell officials have talked about unmanned vehicles being "a huge growth area... not only for the military, but for the department of homeland defense and other agencies."
But, near as I can tell, there's been nothing more than loose talk about the Pentagon-funded machines moving into police work.
Oh, another thing: Drudge says that "the vehicle [is] nicknamed 'Dragon Eye.'"
Which is wrong. The Dragon Eye is a Marine Corps drone -- one that's spent the last two years in combat zones, not it research labs, like the Honeywell machine.
Both are meant for short-range recon, true. But the model airplane-esque Dragon Eye (right) looks nothing like the cylindrical Honeywell bot (above). And it uses propellers to fly, not ducted fans.
Yeah, it's a small point. But telling.
Anniversary, Sorta
A year ago yesterday, Defense Tech officially sold out the Man began its fruitful partnership with Military.com. Since then, the site's been visited more than six million times. Thanks, everyone, for stopping by. And extra-special thanks to Chris Michel and everyone at Military.com, for putting up with my B.S.
THERE'S MORE: I always forget to mention this, but Defense Tech comes in a weekly-ish e-mail form, too. This won't be of much use to daily site visitors. But you once-in-a-while people may want to sign up for the mailing list here.
Rapid Fire 11/11/05
* Infrared IEDs - details emerge
* "Better rad detectors, but do we need 'em?"
* India gets Israeli drones
* China, Russia space programs firm up
* Patent for anti-gravity tech
* Artificial flocks = terror foes
* Do tin foil hats work, really?
(Big ups: RC, AS, JQP)
Veterans' Day
Today is Veterans' Day. And I can't think of a better way to honor the people who have served than by donating a few dollars to Project Valour-IT. It's a fund-raising effort, to provide "voice-controlled software and laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand and arm injuries or amputations at major military medical centers."
Once you're done giving, check out Military.com has set up a special site dedicated to America's 26 million living veterans. On it, folks who've served can find old buddies, get career help, and read war letters from every conflict in U.S. history.
Army Wants Synthetic Gills
I was worried there for a minute. Sure, the U.S. military was figuring out ways to give its troops sharks’ electric sensors. But would they remember to outfit the fighters with artificial gills?
I should have a little more faith. Of course they would. The Army recently handed Case Western Reserve University and Waltham, MA’s Infoscitex Corp. a joint contract to start investigating a “Microfabricated Biomimetic Artificial Gill System… based on the subdividing regions of clef, filament, and lamellae found in natural fish gills.” In the first phase of the program, “gas exchange units will be designed and demonstrated for rapid, efficient extract of oxygen from surrounding water.”
“An advanced breathing apparatus that mimics the efficiency, simplicity, and durability of the gill-swim bladder found in fish could greatly improve human maneuverability and sustainability in both aquatic and high altitude settings,” the contract announcement reminds us. Sure could.
But the synthetic gills aren’t the only useful item the military is funding in this years’ crop of Small Business Technology Transfer awards. Others include spray-on thermal coatings for "hypersonic projectiles," "hybrid propulsion system for undersea weapons," and, naturally, "Electromagnetic and Laser Launch Systems for Affordable, Rapid Access to Space." (Here's a bit of background.)
THERE'S MORE: Over in the comments, Willy Volk tells us that an Israeli inventor "has already developed a new 'tankless' scuba system" that's been patented in Europe and in the U.S. IsraCast has an interview with the fellow.
More Kidding Around
It ain't easy being an admiral ... especially when you're overseeing the most controversial naval deal in years.
Rear Adm. Mark Milliken is director of the U.S. Navy's International Programs Office. When the Navy donates or sells retired ships to allied navies, Milliken's the guy who manages the transaction. This means handling some diplomatic hot potatoes -- none hotter than the ongoing transfer of Kidd-class detroyers to the Taiwanese navy.
Two of the four Kidds sailed for Taiwan in October. The other pair is getting a facelift at Detyens shipyard in Charleston, S.C, before its 2007 handover. The Kidds will replace Taiwan's 60-year-old Gearing-class destroyers. Combined with recent procurement of Perry- and Knox-class frigates and French-built Lafayette frigates, the $415-million Kidd deal significantly improves Taiwan's ability to oppose a Chinese amphibious assault on the island.
Which is why many Chinese -- including (full disclosure here) my girlfriend -- oppose the transfer.
That much we all know. But getting Adm. Milliken to say it was next to impossible. In a recent interview, Milliken touted the Kidds' commonality with U.S. systems and their utility in the War on Terror(?). But even when I directly asked, he refused to even acknowledge that the Kidds might one day fight for control of the Taiwan Strait.
Milliken isn't the only one treading lightly when it comes to the Kidds. This weekend, I called on Detyens to photograph the Kidds under renovation. At first, shipyard officials were happy to host me. Then someone from higher phoned down to have me kindly turned away.
One manager told me that even the official launch ceremony for the first pair of destroyers was a deliberately low-key affair, with Taiwanese naval officers attending in civilian clothes. Desperate for material, I had to make do shooting pictures through Detyens' chain-link fence.
The way Milliken describes them, ship transfers are a key facet of U.S. diplomacy. More than hardware changes hands. As part of the Kidd deal, as many as 1,200 Taiwanese sailors and officers all will have spent more than two years in Charleston learning English, training on the destroyers and adopting American ways of doing things. For friendly navies, accepting old American warships and other technology means becoming a virtual adjunct of the U.S. Navy. In this way, American naval power is far greater than our 280 hulls imply.
Consider that just two classes of American warships provide the operational backbones of six important allied navies. Perry-class frigates equip the Taiwanese, Spanish, Polish and Australian navies. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are the basis for the most capable ships in the Japanese, Korean and (soon) Australian navies. And Spain's F100 frigates are built around the Burke's combat systems. So close are our naval ties to Spain that Alvaro de Bazan (F101) joined the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group for its May 2005 deployment.
Look for ship-transfer diplomacy to become only more important in coming years as Milliken and his successors dispose of the many young hulls being retired by the shrinking U.S. Navy.
-- David Axe
Iraq Airwaves: Traffic Jam
Every once in a while around Baghdad, American bomb squads stop what they're doing, and retire to their bunks. The reason why: "Compass Call," a modified C-130 turboprop plane which serves as the "only US wide-area offensive information warfare platform," according to GlobalSecurity.org. The Compass Call and the Navy's EA-6B Prowler can jam radio and cell phone traffic for miles around, disrupting insurgent communications. But the aircraft also can disrupt the jammers that bomb squads use to stop improvised explosives, Aviation Week notes. There's even a fear that all those crossed signals could accidentally detonate guerilla bombs.
"We have a smart system that jams IEDs [improvised explosive devices] in Iraq, that found itself fighting with another smart electronic system," Lt. Gen. Walter Buchanan, chief of the 9th Air Force and Central Command Air Forces, says. "They got locked on [to each other] because of the lack of coordination..."
Another concern is accidentally triggering IEDs with jamming signals. "We deconflict our jamming activities when we know we have people near IEDs... so that we don't unintentionally set them off," he says.
The problems also extend to surveillance and communications systems. "When you take a look at data links and the number of jammers in place and all the radios we have out there, [deconflicting] becomes a very difficult problem," Buchanan says.
Because all of the communication systems are in similar bands and create interference, a Predator UAV at Balad, the main U.S. air base in Iraq, is in danger of losing its ground control link once it is 35 mi. from base, he says. In the less congested airways of Afghanistan, that range is 120 mi.
"The problem is bad enough that Central Command is putting more urgency into developing an EW [Electronic Warfare] Coordination Cell," the magazine observes. "The task is critical because new users of the electromagnetic spectrum come into theater almost daily."
Like the next wave of Prowler planes, for example. They'll come equipped with an ALQ-218 electronic attack system designed to "turn those enemy wireless communications into a weapon against the insurgents who use them," Aviation Week says.
Before the end of the decade, information warfare specialists are expected to use these and other electronic warfare aircraft, both manned and unmanned, to find enemy communications networks and plot with precision their location on the ground. Those networks would then be seeded with false information as well as viruses, worms, zombies, Trojan Horses and other computer attack tools that would leave them communicating with U.S. analysts as often as they do with other insurgents.
Curtains for "Jitters"?
The idea was simple: take the military's tangled mess of radios, any replace 'em all with a single, software-based model.
But executing the idea has been anything but easy. And now, generals are talking about dropping the notion of a universal radio altogether, Defense News' Greg Grant reports -- right when Pentagon chiefs are trying to decide what to do with about the troubled, $6.8 billion Joint Tactical Radio System.
Essentially, the JTRS program [known as "Jitters"] is aiming for something that’s almost physically impossible, or at least extremely expensive, experts say... The desire to use a single antenna for many different wavelengths bumps up against laws of physics, which make it difficult to pull in strong signals across the spectrum. An amplifier that works across the whole spectrum will use much more electrical power than one tuned for a specific frequency band. Waveforms and transmissions that are speedily handled by analog systems, such as the widely used Link-16, are much tougher to achieve with digital computation...
A better solution... is using such software-defined radios only when absolutely needed. More and more communication of data and even voice can be routed via the Pentagon’s burgeoning digital network. Such relays could allow the new radios to coexist with older ones...
Initially, every JTRS box has to host all the waveforms and all the software for the network. To do so requires high-performance computer processors, which translates into more heat and power.
But for the JTRS radio to be carried on missiles to provide guidance and on other platforms such as unattended ground sensors, there is no requirement for all that processing power.
“So maybe one size does not fit all,” [Maj. Gen. Michael Mazzucchi, who commands the Army’s Communications-Electronics Lifecycle Management Command] said. “Maybe we can have it run just one wave form, then you wouldn’t have the same battery, heat and processing speed challenges.”
Mazzucchi said JTRS also ran into the reality of an ongoing war when the Army realized it needed a lot more tactical network radios and so ordered another 100,000 radios. “Those radios are going to last a long time, we’re not going to now go out and replace those radios in three years with JTRS.”
The Army is no longer looking at JTRS as a radio replacement program. Instead, it’s being viewed as a gateway into the network.
The article is "absolutely right," one Air Force radio specialist tells Defense Tech.
Yes, we'd all love a one-size-fits-all radio -- especially one which can tie into larger networks without a lot of mucking around with settings for an hour beforehand. But there are huge technical obstacles to be overcome in the meantime, and the Pentagon is being unrealistic about the timeline for deploying the system. (2 MHz to 2GHz? They're not kidding about laws of physics needing to be overcome.)
In the meantime, they could save a lot of trouble by procuring more of the newer do-it-all radios like the PSC-5D, PRC-117F, or the PRC-148. These radios already have impressive do-it-all capabilities and save a lot of hassle when it comes to interoperability.
Simply, the miltary has finally started using radios that can talk to different services, in different transmission modes, with different encryption, in addition to their normal mission. Our ETACS [Enlisted Terminal Attack Controllers, the guys who help bring in air support] used to need one radio to talk to the Army, a completely different one to talk to the planes, and yet another (different) radio to talk to the next echelon via SATCOM or HF. Each of these needs an encryption device (external, and bulky of course) plus associated power supply, audio cabling, and antennas…
Anyway, since the late 90's companies like Racal and Harris have been making radios which have multi-algorithm encryption built right into the radio, can handle lots of transmission modes (aside from the one or two a given service needs), and cover very broad frequency ranges. As an example, an old PRC-77 (the Army radio operators hauled around on their backs) covered 30-78MHz in FM voice mode only, with no internal encryption. (Mind you, that's just the Army; there's the USMC, USAF, USN, etc. to worry about, plus third parties.) A newer "do-it-all" radio like the PRC-148 MBITR covers 30 to 512 MHZ in AM, FM, SINCGARS (Army frequency hopping), HAVEQUICK II (Air Force frequency hopping) for both voice and data, with internal software that can simulate all sorts of external encryption devices.
AND the damn thing can talk through satellites.
This is typical of what similar radios like the PSC-5D and PRC-117 can do. The only real difference is form factor; the PRC-148 is the size of a largish walkie-talkie (slightly larger if you include the amplifier which makes SATCOM possible), the -5D and -117F are backpack-sized.
So now your ETAC doesn't need a Humvee full of radios and encryption devices; he can carry one radio to talk to anyone he wants. Or maybe two if he needs to talk to two people simultaneously.
...and don't forget that the software-based nature of these new radios means they can learn all sorts of unheard of tricks. For instance, the PSC-5 series of radios can pair up to make a repeater, or retransmit a SATCOM channel over an Army SINCGARS net (for instance) AND vice versa.
Well, to a radio guy, that's pure dynamite.
JTRS wants to take it further, but in my opinion they're trying to turn over two pages at once. There's simply no precedent for tactical radios which self-program to switch nets (the way that cellphones do when changing service areas) and it could take a decade - easily - to get this off the ground.
Rapid Fire 11/08/05
* Whoops! Intel budget revealed
* Los Alamos race: Final lap
* Laser jet makes progress
* U.S. drones crash in Iran?
* Did the Stasi save the world?
(Big ups: Eric, Steven)
Humvees on Crack
That's the only way I can describe the two armored vehicles that were hogging the right lane of I-26 outside Charleston, S.C. this weekend. They were early examples of the ULTRA AP -- "AP" for "Armored Patrol" -- a Humvee replacement being developed by Georgia Tech for the U.S. Marine Corps. The ones I saw were presumably on their way to the Navy lab in Charleston.
"The ULTRA AP will emphasize high-output diesel power combined with revolutionary armor and a fully modern chassis," according to Georgia Tech Research News. But never mind all that. The key difference between the ULTRA AP and the Humvee, and the reason the ULTRA needs a new engine and chassis at all, is that the new vehicle is wrapped in enough steel and ceramic to withstand all but the biggest IEDs. Experience in Iraq, where IEDs are the major killer, has proved that the battlefield of the future is no place for thin-skinned vehicles. In fact, the two newest additions to the Army's vehicle fleet, the Meerkat and the Buffalo (pictured below), are both designed for maximum protection against IEDs.
The Army's flagship program, Future Combat Systems, once hinged on air-transportable vehicles that were lighter than the current fleet. The Army was counting on advanced networks and long-range fires to make FCS surviveable.
Now FCS has been redesigned to cope with dense urban environments and sophisticated IEDs. ULTRA AP, Meerkat and Buffalo have given us a glimpse of the future, where ground combat vehicles are as heavy as ever, if not heavier.
The big question? How do we get these big, heavy vehicles into the fight quicker?
--David Axe
Sonic Booms Redux
Well, whadya know. No sooner do we start blabbing about sonic booms as less-lethal weapons than we find two related stories in the hubbub of the headlines.
First, there's this Times of London article about "a luxury cruise ship" which was "attack[ed] by Somali pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades yesterday as it rounded the Horn of Africa." Luckily, no one was hurt. The reason why:
The liner used a sonic blaster to foil the pirates. Developed by American forces to deter small boats from attacking warships, the non-lethal weapon sends out high-powered air vibrations that blow assailants off their feet. The equipment, about the size of a satellite dish, is rigged to the side of the ship.
Yarrr! Next, Aviation Week tells us that two teams are about to present their designs for supersonic aircraft that don't boom quite as bad.
The main focus of boom reduction efforts is to shape the pressure wave along the length of the aircraft so it won't coalesce into the standard sharp N-wave by the time it hits the ground. Spreading pressure over the signature's length reduces the abrupt changes at the beginning and end of the signature, which are what humans hear...
[But] recent changes in NASA's priorities have set back [the sonic boom work]. The agency's plan was to build a second manned low-boom demonstrator aircraft, and it wanted to issue a request for proposals as early as last September. It would have been a follow-on to the successful Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstration aircraft that flew about two years ago.
But barely two months into the July-awarded concept exploration contracts, Lisa Porter, NASA's new associate administrator for aeronautics, told the teams on Aug. 30 that there no longer was funding for a demonstrator. Team members are trying to devise cheaper alternatives for the next phase of research, but turmoil continues in the agency's aeronautics plans.
THERE'S MORE: The AP now has a story out on the sonic pirate-stopper. The author: a reporter out of Miami named John Pain.
(Big ups: Xeni, who's got more on sonic booms, too)
Rapid Fire 11/07/05
* "Silly String" vs. IEDs
* Coke-runners' hi-tech boats
* Army band FAQ
* Joint fighter project: Israel back
* Nuke bunker-buster's next step?
* Marines heart mini-drones (background here)
The Army's Venture Captialists
Okay. Raise your hand if you knew the Army had a venture capital group. I sure as hell didn't.
OnPoint Technologies was founded in 2002, mostly to kick-start the mobile power sector. Fully-loaded soldiers today are often forced to carry tens of pounds of batteries in their ruck sacks. And the situation is only set to get worse, as more electronics are added to the individual G.I.'s arsenal. So OnPoint has sunk cash into stuff like rechargable batteries and next-gen solar cells.
But don't get too attached to OnPoint, now that you've found out about it. To help pay for Katrina aid, the President wants Congress to take $2.3 billion out of "Download lower-priority federal programs and excess funds." That includes "$14 million in unobligated balances" from OnPoint.
"As of the end of FY 2005, OnPoint had more than $30 million in unused balances," the President's report notes. "The allocation of additional funds to OnPoint is not a high priority and rescinding these funds will have minimal impact on the program."
THERE'S MORE: File this under "Left Hand, Right Hand." OnPoint's "unobligated" $14 million? The Army gave it to the fund at the end of July, Inside Defense notes. Here's what OnPoint expects to see from its investments:
By January, for example, OnPoint expects a “state of charge” capability, now unavailable to the Army, to make it to the field, allowing soldiers to know how much power is left in a battery. Eighteen months after that, Rottenberg expects better, higher-energy batteries to be available, allowing soldiers to carry fewer batteries -- two instead of four for example -- that might weigh a kilogram each. And longer term, he said, the service could see the introduction of fuel cells, allowing soldiers to rely on small cartridges instead of bulky batteries.
War (Sim) and Peace (Sim)
The Serious Games Summit in Washington, DC earlier this week was a study in contrasts -- especially when it came to military sims. On the one hand, you had the America's Army and Full Spectrum Warrior folks. They're trying to figure out how computer and video games can move more into the training sphere.
Maybe the best example I came across was at the raucous America's Army reception, where they demonstrated some of the ways the game's software has been paired with the Army's hardware to try and solve extremely real problems, like convoy protection. Laser Shot, Inc. has been working with the America's Army development team on the Convoy Skills Engagement Trainer.
Here is an excerpt from a piece I did on America's Army for The World public radio program earlier this week.
On the other hand, you had a games project called Foreign Ground. Foreign Ground is being developed by the Swedish National Defense College. Sweden's decided that it "doesn't do wars anymore." Instead, it participates in UN peace-keeping missions. So, working with some Swedish universities, the College has developed Foreign Ground, a computer game that puts five UN soldiers smack-dab in the middle of Monrovia, Liberia. The mission is to go on patrol, talk to the locals, and deal with situations such as looting or angry mobs. The goal of the game is to difuse situations with as little force as possible.
-- Clark Boyd
Upgrade for IED Task Force?
Guys in uniform bitch a lot. Especially when two military groups are tackling related jobs. Handling bombs is no different. The Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) guys think the engineers are constantly interfering in their work. The engineers say the EOD dudes are snobby and too secret squirrel for their own good.
But, around Baghdad at least, the group causing the most friction seems to be the Pentagon's "Joint IED Defeat Task Force." While EOD techs have to scrounge around to buy their own belts, the Task Force has a billion dollar budget. And while bomb squadders spend a year in training, I saw completely green members of the Task Force wandering around bomb sites, picking stuff up at random. The engineers and the EOD techs took bets on whether or not they'd survive their tours of duty.
Not that the Task Force folks had much nice to say about the bomb squads. "EOD has it pretty easy," one member told me.
For most soldiers in Iraq, the Task Force's main contribution was "5-and-25." It's a mantra which means that soldiers should check 5 meters around their vehicles when they first get out, and then do a 25 meter sweep after that.
Behind the scenes, and back in the States, the Task Force is also doing a bunch of technology development to try and slow down the seemingly-endless waves of improvised bombs hitting American forces. Several Task Force members have compared the effort to the Manhattan Project. But with the number of explosives on the rise, there's grumbling in Washington that the Task Force doesnt have the juice or the budget to justify the comparison, the L.A. Times notes. There's talk of replacing the Task Force, currently headed by a one-star general, with a new group that would have "an active-duty three-star general or admiral, or a retired four-star officer."
Some military officials complain that the Pentagon has made little progress in getting the White House to pressure agencies such as the CIA, FBI and Department of Energy to devote more resources and full-time personnel to the anti-IED effort. One difficulty they cite is that a one-star general tends to wield little influence in the government hierarchy.
"It's just amazing how long it takes for the bureaucracy to seriously tackle an issue, when some things should happen lickety-split," said a second senior Defense official.
THERE'S MORE: It's Friday, and I'm feeling punchy and reckless. So here's a pic of me trying to handle an IED leftover.
Israeli Jets in Gaza Soundclash
Regular Defense Tech readers know that sonic weapons are slowly starting to be used by the American and Israeli militaries to disperse crowds with defeaning noise. But here's a tactic in the sound war that I hadn't heard of before: Israeli jets, letting off sonic booms over the Gaza strip.
The removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip opened the way for the military to use air force jets to create dozens of sonic booms by breaking the sound barrier at low altitude, sending shockwaves across the territory...
Palestinians liken the sound to an earthquake or huge bomb. They describe the effect as being hit by a wall of air that is painful on the ears, sometimes causing nosebleeds and "leaving you shaking inside."
The Palestinian health ministry says the sonic booms have led to miscarriages and heart problems. The UN has demanded an end to the tactic, saying it causes panic attacks in children.
"Israel has long used sonic booms to rattle Palestinians in times of tension and violence," Ha'Aretz notes. "The booms can be mistaken for one of the frequent missile attacks aimed at militants or weapons factories."
Israeli kibutzniks living near Gaza are just as spooked by the booms as the Palestinians. “The children are scared because they don’t understand, but the adults are also afraid,” one tells Ynetnews. “We are trying to continue with the daily routine, but it is very unpleasant to live like this.”
The Guardian adds that the IDF "was forced to apologize after one of the sonic booms was unintentionally heard hundreds of kilometers inside Israel last week."
THERE'S MORE: "This has actually been a common tactic by the Israelis for a long while, mostly in the neighbouring country of Lebanon," one reader tells Xeni. "This includes mock divebombing runs, and sometimes even firing live ammo. There's also the danger of windows being blown out. And I must say, even if you're on the other end of a phone somewhere in another country, it still scares the shit out of you."
(Big ups: JQP)
Traffic
107,000 visits in three days? Sweet!
That comes on the heels of another record-breaking month, with 663,000 visits and 1.55 million page views. Which is more than four times the traffic Defense Tech was getting just a year ago.
Thanks so much for coming by and hanging out with me. I'm flattered. And kind of blown away.
Iran's Arsenal for Sale
Grade-B dictators, guerilla chieftains: you are in luck. You've been jonesing to give your troops the latest, greatest gear. But those Lockheed prices? Oy! Even if the Americans let the big contractors sell to you, you'd have to start mortgaging palaces to come up with the cash.
Fortunately, there's a solution: Iran Electronic Industries, "Western Performance" at "Eastern Prices."
The Tehran-based firm "was established in 1972 and presently is the major producer of electronic systems and products in Iran," according to its website. "The foundation of Iran Electronics Industries took place with the help of some reputable international companies like and at the time being has the co-operation of some well-known companies like L.G., Acer, Deawoo, Kenwood, Sagem, Kyodo, NEC… etc."
IEI specializes in four areas: communications, optics, electro optics, and "electronic warefare [sic]." Think encrypted radios. Think laser range finders. Think night vision goggles, "Making a Day from the End of the Day." The firm also claims to make a mean proximity fuse.
"To keep pace with the frontrunners of military technology, IEI has launched ambitious campaigns with focus on modern management methods as well as research and development," the site promises. They've got six subsidiaries, developing everything from a "super data base." to semiconductors. "Pinning its hopes to the six mentioned subsidiaries [and] aggressive managers... IEI is aiming for stronger positions in both regional and global markets."
Army Threatens Retirements to Cut Budget
Acting deputy defense secretary Gordon England is telling the Army to get ready to cut $11.7 billion from its budget over the next several years, Inside Defense is reporting.
But instead of paring back its weapons systems or its massive modernization efforts, the Army is threatening to reduce the number of soldiers in the service.
In a highly unusual development, the Army has classified how it would pay its portion of the England-directed cuts. However, sources familiar with the recommendation say the ground service has turned not to its procurement accounts to pay its share. Instead, the Army -- already stretched thin by current deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan -- is proposing reductions to its force structure, these sources said.
“It’s a gold watch is what it is,” said one industry official who believes the Army is fully aware that the Office of the Secretary of Defense would be loath to reduce the size of the service. “It’s causing quite some perturbations,” said the official.
Stryker Sighting
The Army's new Stryker wheeled medium vehicle has been in a lot of crossfires -- literal and figurative -- since its introduction a couple of years ago. Critics say it's too heavy, too big, too cramped inside, thin-skinned and expensive. Supporters tout its quietness, ease of maintenance and flashy new electronics.
Now that Ft. Lewis, Wash.-based Stryker brigades from the 2nd and 25th Infantry Divisions have finished tours in Iraq, there's some real-life experience to help sort the truth from the vitriol, and the consensus is pretty good. National Defense Magazine quoted an observer in October:
The vehicle, designed to carry a nine-man squad and two-man crew, has shown that its survivability, agility, mobility and technology is effective in an urban combat zone where the enemy strikes at any time in numerous ways, said [Ft. Lewis general staffer Col. Michael] Peppers.
Having accompanied the 25th ID's Strykers on several combat missions in the town of Qayyarah, I'd like to add "adaptibility" to Peppers' praise. Soldiers are learning to use the Stryker to do things it was never designed for.
Take for example the TOW-missile variant of the Stryker, which was meant to take out tanks but finds itself in Iraq with no tanks to fight. So soldiers have been using its TOW sights as a surveillance device, parking the Stryker on hilltops at night. The TOW Strykers can spot insurgent trucks from miles away.
As for the Stryker's other amenities ... riding in the back of a rattling, cramped M-2 Bradley always makes me sick to my stomach. But on one quiet night mission in a Stryker, I fell fast asleep.
There is some talk in Marine Corps circles about buying the Stryker to fill the gap between the new Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and trucks. (Marine Maj. Craig Wonson advocates the Stryker in an excellent piece in this month's Proceedings, which is not yet on-line.) The Air Force and the Canadian Army have already gotten into the Stryker game with small purchases in recent years.
-- David Axe
Whaaaaat?!?!?
Can this be right? If so, there's something very fishy going on here.
A man once considered a top al-Qaida operative escaped from a U.S.-run detention facility in Afghanistan and cannot testify against the soldier who allegedly mistreated him...
Omar al-Farouq was one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants in Southeast Asia until Indonesian authorities captured him in the summer of 2002 and turned him over to the United States.
A Pentagon official in Washington confirmed Tuesday evening that al-Farouq escaped from a U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, on July 10...
An Army lawyer for Sgt. Alan J. Driver, a reservist accused of abusing Bagram detainees, asked Tuesday where al-Farouq was and what the Army had done to find him in time for Driver's court proceedings.
Capt. John B. Parker, a prosecutor, said al-Farouq and three others escaped from the Bagram detention center and have not been found. "If we find him ... we will make him available," Parker said.
Close Call
Somehow, in the middle of my manic day with Team Mayhem, I managed to sneak in a ride on a Blackhawk helicopter. The 717th’s commanding officer, Capt. Greg Hirschey, had to deliver a shipment of robots to one of his bomb squads in the town of Mahmudiya, about twenty-five miles to the south. I wanted to see Iraq from the sky. Hirschey needed an extra set of hands. So I helped out with the delivery.
Johnnie Mason, who was waiting in Mahmudiya when we lug the robots off of the copter, was particularly glad to see us – and the machines – when we land. Four days earlier, he had come within inches of losing his life because he didn't have a robot handy.
The first bot, nicknamed “Layla,” was “flambéed” after it dropped some thermite grenades in a suspected car bomb, and couldn’t get its spindly arms out of the window. The second lost its video feed, before Mason could send it to look a row of human corpses, rotting by a canal in the 118 degree heat. So Mason had to see for himself to whether there really were wires and artillery shells stuffed underneath one of the bodies.
"Figures," Mason muttered. "I've had a bad feeling all day long that today was really gonna suck." It took him an hour to just to find the access road where the corpses were. Ordinarily, the bomb squads use GPS trackers, to plot out their routes – and to make sure they're not following the same path every time. But this road wasn't on any of the maps.
Mason -- a lanky, 31 year-old Texan with big brown eyes and a goofy smile -- was strapped into an 80-pound, sumo-esque Kevlar "bomb suit." He grabbed a long metal pole with a hook on one end. And then he began to march through the tall grass to the right of the bodies, looking for wires. Mason made a wide sweep – maybe 200 meters – to avoid potential landmines on the way. He found the detonation cord when he reached the far side of the bodies. It was coming from underneath the corpses, attached to a 122 mm shell. Mason fought back an urge to puke. “The dead bodies, they smelled like catfish bait.”
But there was no time to heave. Mason figured he only had a moment or two to act before a bomber detonated his device. So he ducked behind a three-foot berm, reached out with his pole, and pulled.
Mason was less than 20 feet away when the shells went off. But he still had time to crouch into a fetal position before the shock wave hit him. And to be terrified. "It was too fast for me to think, 'Oh God, I'm gonna die,'" Mason says. "It was just instant fear."
Dirt flew up. Shard of bomb zipped through the air. The shockwave knocked Mason over. But he was intact, somehow. “I stood up, and all this dust and dirt and rocks fall off of me. I looked like the Hulk, in that big green suit,” he smiled.
Mason’s partner, Pfc. Brian James, ran over. “Are you alright?” he yelled. “Where you at?”
“I’m in Iraq, Brooke!” Mason shouted back. That was his wife’s name.
Mason sat down for fifteen minutes, drank some water. And then he went right back to the bodies. Before the handmade bomb had gone off, he noticed a second shell, 20 meters away. So Mason took a couple pounds of C4 plastic explosive, and set the thing off. “I still had a job to do,” he told me, as he picked up the cordless phone than nearly killed him. He keeps it as a souvenir.
Rapid Fire 11/02/05
* Handheld drones win "commando olympics"
* Marines get their own special forces
* CIA's secret prisons
* Colorado Springs, spooked by nukes
* Nex-gen rifle on hold?
* Osprey fight, round three
(Big ups: RC, JQP, FB)
Inside the "Baghdad Bomb Squad"
After months of preparation, and three weeks in a warzone, my entire trip to Iraq has been boiled down to 29 hours. But that day-and-a-smidge shift with “Team Mayhem,” a U.S. Army bomb squad, winds up being pretty damn action-packed.
Booby traps, smoking mortars, rooftop gunfire, suspected truck bombs, roadside explosives, and an idiosyncratic little robot named “Rainman” all figure prominently in the story, which appears in this month’s Wired magazine. Mostly, though, the article is about the battle of wits that’s being fought between high-tech U.S. military squads and low-tech insurgent bombers. Improvised explosives have become the deadliest threat to soldiers and civilians alike in Iraq. So the winner of this fight largely determines the fate of the counterinsurgency.
But getting a clear picture of this tangle has been tough; military bomb squads, or "explosive ordnance disposal" units, are ordinarily shrouded in secrecy, operating in shadows. This is one of the first times they’ve allowed a reporter in for an extended stay.
So click here for a look inside “The Baghdad Bomb Squad.” Once you’re done, you can take a look at 140 pictures I shot during my time in Iraq. And here are some reports on American troops’ morale, and my online diaries from Iraq. Enjoy…
THERE'S MORE: Capt. Greg Hirschey, the commanding officer of the 717th Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Company (which inlcludes Team Mayhem), just dropped me a line. Two of his sergeants, he said, "were hit with an IED yesterday with injuries to their security element. I just walked into the shop from an incident and received word that our Air Force augmentation team was hit with an IED just minutes ago... It is hectic right now once again. Seems like it never stops. Here is a photo of my shot from this morn."
BBC Bombers
You can hear me on today's edition of BBC/public radio's "The World," blabbing about the Baghdad bomb squad.
THERE'S MORE: The interview is now online, here.
Rapid Fire 11/01/05
* Robots patrol Brussels
* Indian space plan: hoax response
* Nuke smuggling plan way late
* Osprey "ice" report all wet?
* Flunked nuke tests no biggie
* Pepper-sraying pseudo-cellie
* USAF wants weather control (lotsa luck. background here.)
(Big ups: HuffPo)
