 |
Rapid Fire 01/31/06 PM
* AT&T sued over domestic spying
* Iran caught with nuke weapons plans
* Daley: Every biz must have spycams (background here)
* Panamanians "run black-ops in Haiti"
* Are we at war, really?
* Dead drops go high-tech
* Inside the Syrian blogosphere
* US "unaware" of emerging bio-threats
* Good luck detecting border tunnels
(Big ups: Drudge, Kathryn, BC, Boing Boing)
Robo-Butterfly, Nuke Sniffer?
 Clark read the nuke-detection story in today's Times, and spotted this little tidbit:
The experts discussed a range of potential tools, including... robotic butterflies that can monitor an atomic site while appearing to flutter by innocuously.
So naturally, Clark wanted to know what was up with these mechanical insects. I haven't heard of this project specifically. But I'm guessing that the Times' lepidopterans are metaphorical -- flying contraptions about the size of a butterfly (and yeah, before you ask, I looked up the word up).
Pentagon fringe science arm Darpa has a program, of course, for these "Nano Air Vehicles," or NAVs. The idea is to make a drone smaller than a monarch butterfly -- 7.5 centimeters and less than 10 grams -- that can carry an itty-bitty sensor.
Monitoring... often requires that the sensors be placed in locations that are not readily accessible: on buildings, walls (exterior or interior, e.g., in tunnels), windows, bridges, caves, tunnels, towers, rocks, and other vertical or steeply angled surfaces. Emplacing unobtrusive reconnaissance/surveillance sensors in remote or special high-security areas also demands sophisticated means for delivery. [NAVs] may provide an effective means for precision delivery and emplacement of small, multi-element sensor packages to locations of interest.
Now, these drones don't have to be insect-shaped to get the job done. "Monolithic 1 to 7.5 cm wings or rotors," are okay too, Darpa says. But it is strongly suggested. "Fortunately, biology offers some hints, e.g., insects and hummingbirds have evolved the ability to fly at this scale." As the Red Herring notes, the presentation Darpa gave to industry on NAVs in late September "is full of images of dragonflies and cicadas."
Flying 'bots just a bit bigger than NAVs are already being tested out. Earlier this year, sailors aboard the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group starting using a bunch of 7-ounce, 13-inch planes to act as teen-tiny eyes in the sky.
Now, the Times article talks about a whole bunch of other nuke-detection technologies, too -- things that can pick up everything from centrifuges' acoustic signals to the power surges needed for uranium enrichment. I'll leave it to the Arms Control Wonk to explain those gadgets. But I know the Wonk hasn't been happy with the reporters, David Sanger and Bill Broad. Not too long ago, he basically accused the pair of blowing big parts of both the Iranian and the North Korean nuke stories.
UPDATE 12:48 PM: "Look closely, and you still can't see it. But it can see you. Cameras with lenses as small as the point of a pen have put video surveillance at the fingertips of just about anyone," Knight-Ridder notes.
Cheaper and smaller than ever, the cameras increasingly are being used to monitor property, watch wildlife, keep an eye on baby sitters or children -- and spy on people, raising privacy issues.
``A few years ago all this wireless stuff was pretty much reserved for government or covert agencies,'' said Stephen Barnhart, owner of Barnhart Security & Alarm in Grandview, Mo. ``Now anyone can buy a wireless, they can pop it somewhere and put it anywhere from 50 feet to 50 miles away and they've got transmission.''
(Big ups: JQP)
Rapid Fire 01/31/06 AM
* NSA's revolving door
* Army's civil war over troop cuts
* New sub's 1st mission: spy on cell phones
* Psyops showing up in US?
* DoD's laser-sats: everything you wanted to know
* Captains' 97% promotion rate
* Mine buster targets cancer (background here)
* Chris is back in Iraq... and he ain't happy
* NMS + IED = CSM
(Big ups: JQP, RC)
Airplanes are People, Too
It's funny the way aviators talk about their airplanes. Every flier's got his favorite jet, the one he's most comfortable in and which behaves best for him. "Every airplane is different," explains one maintenance sergeant here at Al Asad air base in western Iraq.
 Each of Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332’s dozen F/A-18D Hornets has a slightly different combination of sensors and systems, which partially explains their unique personalities. But even jets with the same equipment tend to have different temperaments.
In any squadron, the maintainers know the airplanes in ways the fliers don't. After all, they're the ones turning wrenches, pumping lubes and banging their shins on panels 12 hours at a time to keep the birds in the air for three or four hours every other day. And maintainers will tell you: sometimes there are jets that just refuse to cooperate. "Hangar queens", they're called.
332 is lucky. It doesn't really have any hangar queens. And the hard work of successive generations of maintainers, plus a careful cadre of pilots, has achieved a notable distinction: in early 2005 the squadron marked 100,000 hours without crashing a jet, one of the best safety records of any Marine Corps jet squadron. This long streak of good fortune has made everyone a little superstitious, and the last jet that crashed, A-6E Intruder no. 05 back in 1978, haunts the ready room like a ghost. "Nobody talks about 05," says one officer.
Jets are like diesel engines: the more you work them, they more reliable they are -- to a point. 332 is wringing more flight hours out of its jets than ever, thanks to the relentless pace of operations in Al Anbar province. At some point in the near future, there will be a reckoning. The flying here is not terribly taxing, just a lot of medium-altitude cruising, but still... most fast jets are good for only around 8,000 hours, and the Hornets here have eaten up just under ten percent of that total in the past seven months alone. Worse, the Marine Corps' single-seat birds will be swapped out for Joint Strike Fighters sometime after 2012, but no one's postulated a replacement for the hardworking F/A-18Ds.
--David Axe
Pain Ray, Sonic Blaster, Laser Dazzler - All in One
For a while, now, I've been hearing about the Defense Department's plans to outfit a fighting vehicle with a pain ray, a sonic blaster, and a laser dazzler, too. I never figured they'd actually send the thing to Iraq, though. Project Sheriff, I assumed, would just be the military equivalent of a concept car -- a chance to see if some whiz-bang gear really worked together.
 But the Pentagon may wind up deploying this straight-outta-sci-fi jalopy, after all. The Army just got the OK to spend $31.3 million on three deployable Project Sheriff vehicles, Inside Defense is reporting.
Right now, a "non-deployable Spiral 0 prototype" [Sheriff] is "undergoing environmental testing," according to the newsletter -- and waiting for one of the armed services to adopt the program as its own. That looks like it's happened, now. The "Spiral 1" Sheriff will equip either a Stryker fighting vehicle or a Cougar mine-fighter with the dazzler, the blaster, and the like. Oh, and it'll still have guns, too.
By combining the lethal and nonlethal technologies on a vehicle, [Marine Corps Col. Wade] Hall said a warfighter would be able to discriminate the noncombatants from insurgents by first employing the nonlethal capabilities and then progressing to the use of lethal force.
For example, if a convoy led by a Project Sheriff vehicle was moving through an urban area, a crowd may form to divert the convoy into an “ambush zone,” according to Hall.
If this were to happen, the first thing the crowd would hear is the Long Range Acoustic Device either telling the crowd to move or giving off a noise that would “bother their hearing.” Next, the Lazzer Dazzler would scan the crowd looking for a flicker from the scope of a possible sniper.
If the crowd was still in place, troops would employ the active denial technology [AKA the pain ray].
“If they try and deflect beams then we will kill them because we know what their intentions are,” Hall said. “Now I know what your intent is. I just told you to move, I just flashed some light in you that said ‘hey get away from me.’ I just put some effect on you that said ‘please move or its going to get worse’ and you continue to tell me that you have an ill intent for me and my fellow Marines. So now I will bring some lethal force to bear if it satisfies my [rules of engagement].”
In an April 7, 2005, memo, Army Brig. Gen. James Huggings, the chief of staff for the Multi-National Corps-Iraq, asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to approve funding for the “time critical” material release, fielding and sustainment of the “Full-Spectrum Effects Weapon Systems,” the technical name for Project Sheriff vehicles.
“This will allow operating forces to exploit the psychological dilemma of adversaries who are faced with advanced precision capabilities having multiple effects mechanism that are collectively more challenging to protect against,” Huggins wrote. “This will serve to transfer the difficulties of operational complexity to the enemy, helping to allow MNC-I forces to regain the initiative in fourth generation warfare.”
Huggins proposes the Army receive eight vehicles -- four for the 18th Military Police Brigade and four for the 42nd Military Police Brigade -- and the Marines receive six.
In an April 19, 2005, response to Huggins, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Castellaw, chief of staff for U.S. Central Command, said the request for 14 Project Sheriff vehicles was fully supported by CENTCOM.
Hercules' Newest Labor
The war in Iraq requires a lot of aerial refuelling and moving a lot of stuff between crappy little airstrips. No airplane is better at both tasks than the venerable C-130.
 After 40 years of building first-generation Hercules for dozens of customers all over the world, in the mid-1990s, Lockheed Martin switched to the new J model, which was supposed to be faster, longer-ranged and capable of carrying more cargo and fuel. But J customers have complained that new plane just isn't as capable or reliable as the older models. The Air Force took almost a decade getting its Js into battle, and now the Marines are following suit. Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 252 has deployed its KC-130J tanker-transports to Al Asad airbase in Iraq's Al Anbar province, the type's first foreign mission in Marine Corps service, and the news is good.
The fighter pilots of Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332 rely on the KC-130s to extend their legs over western Iraq. So far, 332 has no complaints. The refuelers has been on time with the gas, which is more complicated than it sounds. Tanker crews have to be flexible and efficient to meet the fast-movers when and where they can -- and in unpredictable weather.
Still, the C-130J was threatened with shutdown when the Defense Department went cost-cutting last December. Congress came to the rescue, but the Pentagon's classified Mobility Study might try again to cancel future buys. Meanwhile, the market for second-hand first-gen Hercules is white hot, and the Lockheed Martin facility in Greenville, S.C. is working full-time to recondition retired C-130s for resale to customers like Poland and Pakistan. Only time will tell if the J model wins the same loyalty.
--David Axe
Stealth Ship Chief Speaks
On Thursday, we took a look at the Stiletto, a wild new stealth ship that the Defense Department has built to sneak special forces onto shore.
 On Sunday night, Stiletto program manager Greg Glaros paid us a visit, answering some reader comments and questions about the ship.
Thanks for your comments - Stiletto was constructed in 15 months starting Oct 04. She is made completely out of carbon fiber. Her purpose is to insert emerging technology at little cost [...] and to provide a venue for operational experimentation. It is not perfect, nor is she designed to solve everyone's needs (no she does not submerge - we left that to the billion $ club). What she is designed to do is expand our technical competence against an elusive adversary and learn operationally in a very short period of time.
With regards to its survivability or operational relevancy we will all learn by her mere existence. [One reader said the ship might be "easy to kill."] Easy to kill??? We seem to easily lose sight that most military systems are all easy to destroy by a willing enemy. Our objectives should be focused on matching our adversaries at scale with an ability to cope and adapt – surely the Stark, Cole, M-1 Abrams, and Hummers have taught us how easy it is to kill systems designed to survive everything our engineering imagined – unfortunately what our engineer imagine often do not align with what our enemy intends…
During the last two weeks Stiletto out performed our expectations – with advanced speeds in calm waters and not so calm...and out performing in other areas in a time frame and within a cost that seems to be out of the reach of our requirements procss and acquisition system.
Time to operational market matters...
Rapid Fire 01/29/06
* CIA pumps up killer drone ops
* NYT channels Gore on wiretaps
* CSI: Murderers' best friend?
* Anti-NSA "palace revolt"
* Kids just wanna have fun (with guns)
* Spook stumps, eavesdropping poo, and other spy gear
* Sea Kings' final flight
* Peters: "There is, in short, not a single enemy in existence or on the horizon willing to play the victim to the military we continue to build."
(Big ups: NOSI)
Prowling Over Al Anbar
At noisy Al Asad air base, the noisiest jets belong to Marine Electronic Attack Squadron 1. It's hard not to notice the squadron's EA-6B Prowlers, but don't get caught looking. While touring the hangars of Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332, my escort and I walked past the Prowlers and caught the evil eye from some aircrew returning from a mission.
 What exactly the Prowlers are doing in Iraq is classified -- and even 332's fliers don't know for sure. My feeling is that it's got something to do with improvised explosive devices or communications intelligence. The Prowlers are packed with sensitive radio receivers and carry electronic noise jammers under their wings.
If the EA-6Bs are indeed jamming IEDs, they wouldn't be the only U.S. aircraft doing so. The EC-130 Compass Call has also been pressed into fight against IEDs. On one March patrol with the 25th Infantry Division in Qayyarah, I watched the Compass Call make a pass overhead, wiping out all radio reception in its path.
Replacement of the 30-year-old Prowlers -- the only fast EW platforms in the U.S. inventory -- is a top priority. The Navy has picked the EA-18G Growler, a development of the F/A-18F Super Hornet to replace its EA-6Bs, but the Marines have yet to name a successor. There have been rumors [ confirmed – ed.] of an electronic warfare suite in the Marines' version of the Joint Strike Fighter, the vertical-landing F-35B . But it might prove hard adapting a single-seat jet to a mission currently performed by a jet seating four.
-- David Axe
IED Answer: Foot Patrols?
Everybody seems to have an answer to the homemade bomb problem: more cargo flights, more radio frequency jammers, even explosive-spotting lasers.
 This story in the current Atlantic has a solution I hadn't seen before. The idea, from Gen. Joseph Votel, who headed the IED task force until recently, is to have troops stop riding through Baghdad or Ramadi on Humvees, and start walking the streets.
The growing use of IEDs is forcing America's military strategists to rethink centuries of military doctrine holding that in warfare, mobility equals dominance. Votel told me that given the success that IEDs have had against America's fleet of motor vehicles, the Pentagon may need to switch to more foot patrols. An intelligence analyst working on the IED problem agreed, saying, "The answer to the IEDs is to leave the vehicles. It's obvious. It's the only choice."
Really? I don't know much about infantry tactics. But I do know a soldier who was killed by a jury-rigged bomb. He was one his feet, not in a Humvee. Same goes for the British explosives specialist who lost limbs to an IED.
But the vulnerability isn't even the big issue. Coverage is. The Army equivalent on the cop walking the beat works fine, if you've got lots and lots of cops in a very small area. In Iraq, there are 150,000 or so soldiers and marines trying to control a place the size of California. That means each patrol has to cover a really wide area -- too wide, really, to walk. Driving is the only way.
Besides, as the Atlantic notes, more foot patrols "would expose U.S. soldiers to other risks, including snipers. And the December detonation of an IED in Fallujah, killing ten Marines on foot patrol, shows that soldiers will remain vulnerable to IEDs whether on foot or behind the wheel."
Next...
"What Else You Got?"
"We're here to support the guys on the ground," says 1st Lt. Kevin "Ace" Lampinen, a back-seater in Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332 "Moonlighters", deployed to Al Asad air base in cold, muddy western Iraq.
 In Ar Ramadi, Hit, Fallujah and other contested cities in Al Anbar province, Marines and soldiers fight daily battles with Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters slipping across the porous Syrian border. When the going gets tough, the tough call in air support. On one memorable November mission, Ace, his pilot and another crew in their two-seat F/A-18D Hornets dropped below some low clouds to drop 500-pound satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack munitions and laser-guided bombs on insurgents laying siege to some Marine snipers.
"What else you got?" asked the forward air controller.
With their bombs expended, Ace's flight fired their 20-millimeter cannons until they were out of ammo. They handed off to another flight, zoomed home to Al Asad, refueled, rearmed then headed right back to the fight.
But it's not all bombing and gunfighting, and in six months of daily flying, the Moonlighters have dropped only a hundred thousand pounds of ordnance. Their bread and butter is surveillance using their new Litening AT targeting pods and reconnaissance with the Advanced Tactical Aerial Reconnaissance System, or ATARS. ATARS provides high-res targeting-quality imagery on magnetic tape that's analyzed post-flight, while the Litening pod can send lower-res imagery realtime to forces on the ground. Their capabilities overlap some, but between the two systems, the Moonlighters can perform the full range of tactical recon tasks, making them essential to the urban fighting in Al Anbar, where the bad guys hide among innocents.
The sky over western Iraq is crowded with Marine air. The entire southern side of Al Asad is packed with F/A-18Ds, EA-6Bs, AV-8Bs, KC-130Js, CH-53Es and UH-1Ns. I'm embedded with the Moonlighters for the next week. More to come.
--David Axe
Rapid Fire 01/27/06
* Nasty meals, one-third smaller
* "Vomit as a weapon"
* Moscow's lunar mine
* NSA legal defense falls apart; technology explained?
* More probes for Q branch
* Saddam's WMDs in Syria?
* Rummy on Iraq: mission accomplished
* Waffle iron: $1,781.90
* Space suit = satellite
* Malaysia wants Bigfoot
(Big ups: PW, RC, TS, Geek Press, /.)
Radio, Radio -- Oh, and TV, too!
I don't think the panda comments made it into the segment -- they were still adjusting the microphone. And the Bible joke kind of fell on its ass. But I think my interview went well with BBC/public radio's "The World," regardless. The topic is the Pentagon's big review. And you can hear it Friday afternoon.
UPDATE 9:33 AM: Silly me. I forgot that I'm also going to be in a Discovery Military Channel documentary, which airs tonight. So tune in to "Warbots" at 8pm eastern and watch me make a fool of myself!
UPDATE 5:21 pm: The radio interview is online.
DTRA's New Digs
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency formally opened its new facility on Fort Belvoir: the Defense Threat Reduction Center (DTRC). VIPs in attendance for the ribbon-cutting included Dr. Dale Klein, the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Chemical and Biological Defense (DTRA’s boss); General James Cartwright, U.S. Strategic Command’s (STRATCOM) commander (overseeing the DoD combating WMD efforts); Mr. Ken Krieg, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics; and Senator Richard Lugar. Since Lugar practically funds half of DTRA through the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) effort, it was a nice touch to see the godfather of arms control there.
 Most of the speeches were your typical political, generic statements: “WMD reduction is important, DTRA is a vital source of resources and people, it’s a big challenge but you’re well-positioned to meet the threat, blah blah blah.” Lugar of course was much smoother and had more time as the keynote speaker. He noted the strong success of the CTR in reducing the former Soviet Union’s ballistic missiles, silos, launchers, and bombers, and a little work in the chem-bio weapons side, too. “It’s critical to ensure the world’s most dangerous weapons are kept out of the hands of the world’s most dangerous people.” I think he meant the radical Christian evangelists, but I’m not sure. He made a strong pitch to increase the scope of Nunn-Lugar to nations outside the former Soviet Union, pointing out the success of U.S. efforts to assist Albania in disposing of sixteen tons of mustard agent it had picked up from the Chinese in the 1970s. He had an amendment to this year’s defense appropriations bill, but it was unfortunately killed in conference. He noted wryly that this expansion was necessary – who knows whether North Korea and Iran might someday ask for U.S. assistance in getting rid of their WMD arsenal.
The $78 million dollar DTRC facility is a real piece of work – construction started four years ago with the aim of bringing most of the disparate parts of DTRA to one office location. A primary factor was the desire to increase its force protection standards and to get off of Telegraph Road, where the building was maybe 30 yards from the road. DTRA reorganized within the last year to realign its research and development offices into one main directorate and all of its combating WMD operations support into another directorate. It has a collaboration center that “provides a core infrastructure and management architecture that translates operational requirements into decision support, situational awareness, and a unique support capability” for interagency work in combating WMD efforts.
The new third directorate is the STRATCOM Center for Combating WMD (SCC-WMD). Under STRATCOM’s responsibility to integrate and synchronize all DoD combating WMD requirements, this SCC-WMD represents the agency that will execute the day-to-day responsibilities such as advocating and advising the combatant commands on all WMD-related matters, providing recommendations on combating WMD operations and acquisition efforts, and maintaining 24/7 situational awareness of worldwide WMD and related activities through DTRA’s operations center. It won’t be until October that the SCC-WMD is fully staffed and operational, but expect its players to be actively involved in the interpretation of the Quadrennial Defense Review and the building of the FY08-13 Program Objective Memorandum this spring.
UPDATE: DefenseLink article on the ribbon-cutting ceremony is online here.
-- Jason Sigger, Armchair Generalist
Laugh Off Those Bombs
I convoyed to Ramadi with the Army's 46th Engineer Battalion. My driver was a young soldier who'd fought the Mahdi Army in Al Kut two years ago and was back for his second tour. Before SP-ing ("Start Point"), a lieutenant briefed everyone on the latest Improvised Explosive Device threat.
 It seems an insurgent cell out here in Al Anbar has been building sophisticated IR tripwire-activated IEDs disguised as rocks and apparently employing shaped-charge warheads -- hardly improvised at all, if you ask me. Three or four of these things have gone off in the last month, inflicting a number of casualties. Normally in a briefing like this the presenter would detail any countermeasures, but this time he just went, "Umm ... " since there are no countermeasures to an IED like that. You can't tell it from another rock and you can't jam it.
This wasn't my first convoy. Nor was it the first time I've heard scary briefings on insurgent super-weapons. Still, I admit I was a little unnerved. But the 46th troopers just grimaced and shrugged. What are you gonna do?
We rolled out two hours late due to a broken-down Humvee. It was a two-hour drive to Ramadi, and my driver and his crew passed the time munching Chips Ahoy cookies and joking on the intercom. They run these missions almost every day against an evolving range of threats. There are only so many precautions they can take; after that's it's up to God. "Inshalla," my Arab friends would say: "God willing." The non-believers in the crowd can take comfort in the knowledge that, statistically, they're highly likely to survive any given mission.
Still – shaped-charge IEDs disguised as rocks?!
--David Axe
SEAL Ship: Silent But Deadly
 Every shipbuilder in the Navy these days talks about how his hulking destroyer or Cold War sub is now going to sneak SEALs onto shore. A couple of weeks back, Military.com overlord Chris Michel was down in San Diego, and saw a pretty cool new prototype ship that's been designed from scratch to handle the mission.
The 89-foot, 60-ton Stiletto will be one of the quickest ships in the fleet, using four Caterpillar C32 engines to cruise at 50 knots or more. It'll also be one of the sneakiest, according to New Scientist.
Stiletto's hull has a double-M shape that channels the wake under the craft. There it mixes with oncoming air to produce froth that lifts the ship part-way out of the water, reducing drag and increasing stability, says Greg Glaros, the programme's leader at the defence department's Office of Force Transformation.
While a crew of three runs the Stiletto, a dozen SEALs can slip off the back of the ship, in an 11-meter rigid inflatable boat -- or they can send a set of flying drones out on spy missions from the upper deck. The ship can stay on station for eight hours while the robots or the special forces are out on their operations. And the Stiletto can keep an even keel while it waits; it's cleared to operate in Sea State 5 -- waves twelve feet high and 157 feet long.
 If the Stiletto works out as planned, it'll be good news for special forces. Because while every ship-maker says they've come up with the ideal commando-delivery system, several of the options haven't worked out as planned.
Take the Advanced SEAL Delivery System. "The subs were originally expected to cost $80 million each; the first one alone has cost $446 million," notes the Times-Dispatch. "The vessel was noisier than planned -- bad news for a submarine. Designs were changed to muffle the sound, and now the mini-sub vibrates too much." Which is defnitely not how commandos like to travel.
UPDATE 1:28 PM: Of course, Inside Defense had details on the ship months ago. A few:
* One reason for the unique shape is the ship was designed like an aircraft... OFT’s first director, Arthur Cebrowski, who died last month, was “very firm that we’re going to build an aircraft on the sea"... The hull has four distinct arches, which look like wings, that utilize air pressure to funnel water and glide along the surface.
* Through its “maritime data bus,” or on-board computer, the vessel will have the ability to “plug and play” with different sensors, linking with unmanned vehicles and other crafts of varying sizes, he said. With only one panel of windows for looking ahead, Stiletto will use deck cameras to give the crew a sense of what is happening around the ship.
* Production of the Stiletto prototype began in October 2004, costing $6 million in funds from OFT. Nearly the same amount has been earmarked by OFT and SOCOM combined for experimentation and testing.
UPDATE 2:37 pm: As C-Low notes in the comments, the latest issue of Defense Technology International has the Stiletto on the cover.
Japan's Robo-Copter Bust
What does a company with close ties to the Chinese military want with a robotic, crop-dusting, mini-helicopter? And why was Yamaha willing to sell nine of the things, in violation of export control laws?
 Those are some of the questions being asked in Asia this week, after more than 200 Japanese police raided Yamaha offices on Monday.
"Investigators seized the helicopter, a manually controlled RMAX L181 type, after Nagoya customs last month halted the shipment, citing insufficient documentation," the Asahi Shimbun reports.
They said the helicopter... has GPS and an autopilot device... As long as it is programmed beforehand with flight routes and other data and by activating the GPS, the unmanned craft can continue to fly even when it is outside radio control.
While the helicopter was designed for crop-dusting, these features allow it to be used for military reconnaissance as well as spreading biochemical weapons, officials say.
Yamaha officials admitted to investigators that the helicopter was equipped with functions restricted by the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law.
In Japan, more than 1600 of the robo-copters are used to spray crops. Here in the States, the RMAXs are equipped with cameras, to shoot movies and TV commercials. That's what Yamaha says the nine China-bound drones are for.
I have no idea whether or not to believe the company. I'm sure Yamaha didn't intend to give robotic bioweapons-sprayers to China's military. (For that matter, I have a hard time believing Beijing would want to add robotic bioweapons-sprayers to its arsenal.) But a little unmanned, hovering scout? The People's Liberation Army could find some way to use that, I'm sure.
(Big ups: CS)
These Cameras Don't Forget a Face
I've got a story in today's New York Times. Here's how it starts:
Management at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco had been suspicious for weeks. James, a houseman on the graveyard shift was not the most productive worker, and trying to reach him on his walkie-talkie was usually a lost cause. So when James (not his real name) could not be found one summer night, his bosses went to their new video surveillance system.
 The camera network - using software from 3VR Security Inc., a San Francisco company that makes surveillance technology - already knew what James looked like; facial recognition algorithms had built a profile of him over time. With a couple of mouse clicks, managers combed through hours of videotape taken that night by the hotel's 16 cameras, and found every place he had been - including the back entrance he slipped out of, three hours into his shift. He never came back to work; the next day, James became one of 10 employees dismissed from the hotel since 3VR's surveillance package was installed last June.
Until recently, the only place where an employee could have been caught that easily was in a Hollywood script. Digital spy cameras can instantly pick people out of crowds on "24." Real-world video surveillance was stuck in the VCR age, taking countless hours to sift through blurry black-and-white tapes. Stopping a problem in progress was nearly impossible, unless a guard just happened to be staring at the right video monitor.
But surveillance companies, using networks of cheap Web-connected cameras and powerful new video-analysis software, are starting to turn the Hollywood model into reality. Faces and license plates can now be spotted, in almost real time, at ports, military bases and companies. Security perimeters can be changed or strengthened with a mouse click. Feeds from hundreds of cameras can be combined into a single desktop view. And videotape that used to take hours, even days, to scour is searched in minutes.
Some experts question the effectiveness of such "intelligent video" systems, which are sold by ObjectVideo, Verint and VistaScape as well, and worry about the privacy implications. But Brian Russell, chief of the Drake's engineering and maintenance departments, is happy with the results. "People know we're watching," he said. "Word travels fast. Fear travels as well."
Click on over here to read the rest of the piece -- it's part of a big package in today's Circuits section on surveillance. Johnathan Glater writes about surfing anonymously. Katie Hafner talks about getting spooked by searches. And David Shenk takes a broad look at the erosion of privacy.
Today's story is one of a bunch I've written on video surveillance, over the years. Check out London's cracking panopticon, Chicago's spycam police force, and the Pentagon's simple plan to track everything that moves.
The Meanest Little Chow Hall in Al Anbar
 Back in late 2004, an attack on a chow hall at a U.S. base in Mosul killed 22 people, including Seabee Joel Baldwin. More than a year later, the attack still keeps U.S. commanders awake at night. At Ramadi, where mortar attacks are a weekly affair, the Seabees of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 133 are putting the finishing touches on a fortified chow hall that Chief Michael Romero says is intended to make sure the Mosul tragedy never happens again. For Romero, a friend of Baldwin's, it's personal.
I had breakfast in the new chow hall this morning. It's weird. Rather than the wide open bays of chow halls in less dangerous areas, this one has several narrow hallways criss-crossing each other. The walls are wood. Behind the walls are several feet of wire mesh and dirt -- enough to keep out all but the biggest mortars. The ceilings are earthen too, and capped with concrete to keep out water and rats. The place bears an eerie resemblance to pictures I've seen of the Maginot Line, that doomed underground defensive network meant to keep the Germans out of France.
The food, by the way, was pretty good: eggs, ham, toast and black-sludge coffee that'll kick you right in the head. I always eat better in Iraq than I do at home.
-- David Axe
Iran's Reactors: How Vulnerable?
Arms Control Wonk Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is wrapping up his blog trilogy on the Iranian nuclear threat. And he's doing it with a bang. Or, rather, a series of precision-guided bangs. The last post is on whether the U.S. (or its allies) could take out Tehran's atomic program, if they needed to.
Conventional wisdom states that Iran’s facilities are too dispersed to permit a strike like the one Israel conducted against Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981...
Iran’s facilities are more dispersed, but some key assets are probably quite vulnerable to an airstrike... Overall, I think the prospects for a strike are mixed — a properly timed strike might delay Iran’s program by a few years, although there are good reasons to think that the long-term result of a strike would be to worsen America’s security...
There is certainly no reason to launch a strike now, with Iran’s program several years off and many facilities not yet complete. As the cases of Natanz and Esfahan illustrate, a strike now would be conducted with more uncertainty than I would like.
That might buy some additional time — but for what?
The result will likely be an Iranian nuclear program outside of IAEA safeguards. An Iranian bomb is not, yet, a foregone conclusion. The degree to which Iran’s nuclear program has become an element of the country’s domestic politics suggests that fissures exist within Iranian elites that create space for negotiations... If that’s true, an airstrike now would probably unite Iranians, galvanizing support for a bomb program... Newsweek reports that participants have not been pleased with the outcome of airstrikes in IC sponsored wargames. An Air Force source told Newsweek that “The war games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating...”
All and all, at least for now, I think it’s best to keep talking.
"Q Branch's" Stock Market Shenanigans
This post has everything, folks:
* Killer robots!
* Cheeky Brits!
* Cute marine mammals!
* Shady government officials!
* Insider trading!
* Those Trilateral Freemasons over at the Carlyle Group!
* Plus, a gratuitous reference to James Bond!
Here's the scoop: Back in 2001, the UK Ministry of Defence decided to split its research and development division into two parts. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, (Dstl) would remain as the British military's in-house tinkerers and geeks. The other half, dubbed Qinetiq, would become a private company, focusing on technologies that could be used both by the commercial and the government markets -- the war-makers, as well as the money-makers. It's as if James Bond's "Q Branch" decided to start selling jet packs to Silicon Valley, as well as 007.
 But one doesn't simply move from the civil service to the boardroom. To help with the transition, Her Majesty's government picked a pack of corporate financiers. Not just any pack, mind you. But the boogeyman of the conspiracy-minded everywhere: the Carlyle Group. That's right, the former (?) professional lair of illuminati like James Baker and John Major and George H.W. Bush. It bought about a third of the new company.
Under Carlyle's wing, Qinetiq went on a buying spree. One acquisition in particular should be familiar to Defense Techies: Foster-Miller, maker of the Talon robot. That's the squat, treaded machine used by U.S. bomb squads throughout Iraq. The Army now is trying to strap a machine gun or a grenade launcher onto the 3-foot tall 'bot, and send it into the warzone. The armed Talon would probably be in Iraq by now -- if only it could have pass its safety tests.
Qinetiq's purchase meant that, in a sense, the British Ministry of Defence now owned a part of America's robot arsenal. That's because "the MoD retains a Special Share in QinetiQ to ensure that the UK's defence and security interests are protected," according to the company's website. "Robust safeguards also exist to prevent conflicts of interest and to ensure that the Government procurement process' integrity is not compromised."
Those safeguards are being put to the test, now that the Carlyle Group has decided to take Qinetiq public, on the London Stock Exchange. The estimated price: £1.1billion. But the February 15th. event won't be some traditional IPO. Qinetiq shares won't be available to individual investors. Instead, the firm will only be selling stock to the biggest of the big financial firms.
More than a few small investors are pissed. They figure, as taxpayers, they've indirectly poured money into Qinetiq. Why shouldn't they be able to reap the benefits? Spurred on by the Daily Telegraph, over a thousand investors are demanding to buy in. Leaders of the London Stock Exchange are backing the effort. So is the white collar union representing 10,000 QinetiQ employees.
That's not surprising, considering more than 99 percent of the staff can't get in on the IPO. But a few on the tippity-top can. And they are slated to cash in, big. Qinetiq finance director Graham Love is supposed to make off with £18 million, "on an initial outlay of just over £100,000," according to IT Week. "Sir John Chisholm, executive chairman and former chief executive, is set to make more than £20 million from his stake, for which he paid £129,000," notes the Times of London.
That is, if the deal survives. It may not. The government has launched at investigation into the Qinetiq offering. Ministry of Defence finance boss Trevor Woolley is being eyed for violating conflicts of interest. So is Qinetiq director Noreen Doyle, who also happens to be on the board of Credit Suisse, the bank which is jointly running the IPO. There's talk that Chisholm and Love may even pass up their options.
 Amazing, though, the talk of financial shenanigans isn't the worst of Qinetiq's press in recent days. Remember that cute little whale that swam up the Thames River, and then tragically died? Well, folks are accusing Qinetiq of killing it.
Marine scientists and animal welfare groups believe that navy sonar may have disorientated the whale. Marine acoustics experts supported local residents on the north coast of Kent in blaming huge explosions from a site operated by the defence contractor QinetiQ.
That's gotta hurt.
UPDATE 10:50 AM: Speaking of zany British security-types, what the heck is up with the UK's Russian spooks and their spy rock?!?!?
The Dead Bombers of Halabja
In the 1980s, the city of Habbaniyah in western Iraq was the site of one of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons plants. With the Kurds in northern Iraq in uprising, in 1988 Saddam ordered Iraqi Air Force units to drop chemical weapons on the rebel town of Halabja. Weapons were trucked from Habbaniyah to nearby Al Taqaddum air base. The subsequent gas bombing of Halabja killed 5,000 people.
 I've been to Halabja. I've seen the massive cemetery and the recently-built memorial and I've talked to attack survivors and people who lost friends and family there. Now I've seen Habbaniyah, from a distance, and Al Taqaddum close-up. In a remote corner of the air base, now a Marine Corps logistics hub, there is a row of derelict Soviet-built Il-28 Beagle bombers from the former Iraqi Air Force, quite possibly the very bombers that attacked Halabja 18 years ago.
I'm a huge aviation buff, and the Il-28 with its clean lines and anachronistic rear turret is one of my favorite Cold War aircraft. Under any other circumstances, I'd be thrilled to see these museum pieces and appalled at their neglect. But with Halabja on my mind, I feel only a sense of justice -- and anger -- entirely misdirected at these lifeless pieces of metal.
In the first Gulf War we bombed the snot out of Habbaniyah and Al Taqaddum. Twelve years later we occupied the air base and found its resident aircraft either buried in sand or, like the Beagles, abandoned. Their pilots were dead or, at the very least, no longer pilots. Their engines were rusted out. Their windscreens were clouded over. Their turret guns drooped.
The machines that killed Halabja were dead.
--David Axe
Rapid Fire 01/23/06
* Navy nabs Somali pirates
* KBR gave troops contaminated water
* Courts hack Los Alamos blogger
* Electric "sea jet" ship sets sail
* Backyard, near-space balloons
* 240,000 rounds per minute, anyone?
* Now that's an explosion!
* America's nuclear fumble
* 13,280 "Cans of Whup-Ass"
(Big ups: RC, JQP, OSU, Digg)
Iran's Missiles: How Far Do They Go?
So let's assume Iran does get the Bomb. How big of a threat is that, really? Could the mullahs hook it up to a missile, for instance, and fire that sucker off at Tel Aviv?
 Arms Control Wonk Dr. Jeffrey Lewis tackles those questions in the second part of his trilogy on the Iran's nuclear capacity.
The bottom line: Iran might, might, be able to deliver a nuclear weapon against an Israeli city, but that would be at the extreme edge of their capabilities.
Much more worrisome, I would think, would be the weapon delivered by terrorists, perhaps on a ship...
Iran’s missiles aren’t that big, and its warheads aren’t that small. Without more testing of both, I think Iran would be hard pressed to deliver a missile to Israel, let alone Europe or the United States.
That said, Iran—with low confidence—might be able to build a 500-1000 kg warhead could hit targets thoughout the Middle East, including Israel if mated to its Shahab 3 IRBM...
This is, I think, the very edge of Tehran’s capabilities and they would have very low confidence in either system.
"Aerial IED," Part Three
Are insurgents in Iraq making homemade explosives that can "leap into the air" and hit helicopters? A leading general says yes. The Pentagon's anti-IED (improvised explosive device) task force disagrees. And the Secretary of the Army -- well, he's not quite sure either way.
 Now, an intelligence source weighs in, telling Defense Tech that the "aerial IED" threat is all hype -- no matter what the general said. "Honest to God, there hasn't been a single anti-helo IED discovered anywhere in Southwest Asia," the source notes. "The bad guys are so successful at downing them with small arms fire they have no incentive to adopt needlessly complex anti-helo mines or IEDs. There might be one or two out there, but we haven't heard anything about it."
I don't know about you, but I had no one idea there were anti-helicopter mines until this whole flap started. Defense Update helps educate me, with a description of this one Bulgarian-made helo-hunter. There are many others.
AHM-200-1... is activated by... acoustic and radar Doppler shift signatures... at a distance of of 100 m... The mine uses two warheads, an explosive formed projectile and augmented by a second TNT bar charge distributing 17kg of steel ball fragments. The mine can be activated for periods up to 30 days. The mine is placed on a stand permitting general orientation of the sensors and charges in the direction of potential threat. The control unit uses a signal processor to process the acoustic signals and determine activation parameters. Activation, neutralization and explosion by Radio control from a range of up to 2,000 meters is optional in model AHM-200-1RC. The mine will explode when attempts for moving, tampering or disassembly during its activation phase.
Machines, Ancient and New
The decades-old Sea Knight helicopter has a few new tricks, these days: infra-red countermeasures, night-vision-goggle-compatible cockpit lighting and uprated engines. But it still looks and feels like a Vietnam-era machine.
 The copter is so slow that the Marines fly routine passenger flights only at night. The Sea Knight's ramp doesn't fully close, so flying low over Baghdad at night, the cold wind sweeps in and chills my feet blue. Wobbling towards the Al Taqqadum air base, I can look out the back over the million lights and red gas flares of the hellish city.
The helicopters aren't much to look at, either -- like anemic gray Chinooks is the best description -- but the 200 Sea Knights made for the Marines have performed well, lately. Attentive maintenance and prudent upgrades mean their reliability rates are better than ever. They've even been pressed into service as medical evacuation choppers, contributing to the multi-service medevac plan in battles like that for Fallujah. With their replacement, the troubled V-22 Osprey, due for a big budget cut, some Sea Knights might very well see 50 -- making them among the longest-serving helicopters ever.
The Marines are infamous for using weapon-of-yesteryear, and the Sea Knights are among the most ancient. But on the ground at Al Taqqadum, the Corps' newest machines are on display. Outside a rec center I spotted an immaculate Buffalo IED-clearing vehicle parked next to a brand-new Cougar, one of at least two potential Humvee replacements alongside the Ultra AP. Marines swear by the Cougar. One story circulating Al Taqaddum is that one of the Cougar got blown up a few weeks ago by an IED big enough to take out an up-armored Humvee. While the Cougar took some damage and eventually got shipped out for study and repair, all four Marines inside survived.
Just goes to show you: old weapons are adequate if you take care of them, but sometimes new ones are better than adequate. Sometimes they even save lives.
-- David Axe
Iran's Bomb: How Close?
A cabal of terrorist-funding, virulently anti-Semitic, nuclear-armed mullahs is bad, no question. Really bad. But just how awful is the awful situation in Iran?
 Those conflicting, confusing reports in the press are no help. So I begged the Arms Control Wonk, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, to give us some straight answers on three-and-a-half basic questions about Iran:
1. How far is Tehran from getting the Bomb?
2. How easily could that Bomb be attached to missile, and how far can that missile go?
3. How hard would it be for the U.S. or Israel to knock out Iran's nuclear facilities?
Today, the Wonk takes on the first question. The quick answer is that we've probably a little less than a decade until the shit hits the fan, atomically-speaking. Unless the mullahs get really, really lucky. And then it's more like three years until the big showdown.
But don't take my word for it. Go read the whole thing for yourself. Even the math. Even the bit about cascading centrifuges. You'll be a little less unnerved, once you know more about the engineering and the science behind Tehran's nuclear push.
UPDATE 6:22 PM: If the Wonk's analysis made you feel slightly better, this Joe Katzman post should take care of that, quick.
(Big ups: Glenn)
"Aerial IED" Denied... Kinda, Sorta
It's not every day that the Defense Department goes out of its way to say publicly that a general is full of it. But that's what appears to be going on now.
 On Monday, Defense News ran a story by Greg Grant which said that "insurgents are attacking U.S. helicopters in Iraq with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that leap into the air and detonate when an aircraft passes nearby."
The source: Brig. Gen. Edward Sinclair, commander of the Army’s Aviation Center at Fort Rucker, Ala.
Almost immediately, there was pushback to Grant's piece. But not to the substance of what he -- and, by extension, Gen. Sinclair -- said. To the fact that such sensitive info was being disclosed. (That kind of thing tends to happen when you're writing about IEDs. I was accused of being an agent of the Iraqi insurgency for this Wired News article on bomb-stopping technologies.)
Now, however, the military is saying those "aerial IEDs" don't exist. That Grant and Gen. Sinclair were basically wrong.
“At this time, we do not know of any incidences of insurgents employing aerial IEDs against U.S. helicopters. No aircraft have been lost to this type of device,” a spokeswoman for the Defense Department task force working to defeat IEDs told Stars and Stripes.
But that attempt to clarify things was almost instantly muddied by Army Secretary Francis Harvey, in an interview with Voice of America.
To my knowledge we, we have not, I don't know if we've seen, we may have seen one of those. But to my knowledge we have not seen a lot of those so far, jumping IEDs.
(Big ups: Haninah Levine)
Combat vs. Construction
Western Iraq is tougher than the rest of the country. Desolate Al Anbar province is poor, sparsely populated and, this time of year, bitterly cold. Not to mention dangerous, with native malcontents and foreign fighters taking potshots, planting bombs and periodically getting organized into honest-to-god small units for street firefights.
 The Seabees of Mobile Construction Battalion 133 know all about this. They got detachments all over the province, at Al Taqaddum, Ramadi, Fallujah and a God-forsaken border outpost called Rawa. Most of the Seabees stay on the bases doing construction work and dodging the occasional mortar round, but some run dangerous convoy escort mi
| |
