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.
