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Laser Planes' Pains
Jane's has a good overview of the ray gun world's state of play. The bits about the problems facing the beam-firing 747, the Airborne Laser, and the blaster-equipped cargo plane, the Advanced Tactical Laser, are particularly juicy.
 Full-on flight tests of the Airborne Laser, or ABL, have been pushed back to 2008. But "some aspects of the system cannot be demonstrated on the ground," Jane's notes. "Laser performance in real high-altitude conditions and the performance of the entire system at high altitudes. As in a rocket, the chemical systems in the COIL [chemical oxygen iodine laser, the ABL's weapon] are affected by atmospheric pressure at the exhaust outlet, which creates back pressure in the flow path."
Another issue is logistics: hydrogen peroxide is corrosive and a powerful solvent of organic materials (including people) and potassium hydroxide is a toxic material used as a drain cleaner and (by Norwegians) to preserve codfish. Neither is used by any other military system, so the chemicals require new storage and transport facilities and special training and handling procedures...
The USAF's other airborne COIL project is the ATL [Advanced Tactical Laser], which has a budget of $200 million [and] is due for high-power flight tests in mid-2007, aboard an C-130H platform.
ATL has a much lower power goal than the ABL - in the tens of kilowatts rather than megawatts - and is intended to disable rather than kill its targets, demonstrating the ability of lasers to achieve specific, ultra-precise effects. The design reference missions for ATL are to stop a moving vehicle and disable a communications node from 10,000 ft.
Stopping a vehicle does not necessarily mean destroying it or killing its occupants. If the laser can penetrate the engine cover, for example, the temperature within the engine compartment is likely to get higher than is mechanically optimal. The laser could penetrate the fuel tank and start a fire. In the case of a communications target, cables and antennas could be the weak spots.
Delivery of hardware for the ATL... started during 2005 and the C-130 platform was delivered to Boeing in January this year... Unlike the ABL, the ATL does not vent harmful gases into the atmosphere: the exhaust is ducted into a container of activated carbon, which absorbs and neutralises it.
While ATL presents less risk than ABL, it is more likely to be overtaken by other developments: primarily, the development of more powerful solid-state lasers. The attractions of a solid-state laser - which uses a solid transmissive material as the lasing medium - are clear, notes AFRL's Hamil: the 'magazine' can be as deep as the aircraft's fuel tanks (which can be replenished in flight) and there are no exotic fuels to handle and no chemical exhaust. The disadvantage is that solid-state lasers today do not have the power to do anything other than illuminate. At high powers, 'thermal lensing' - the change in optical qualities with heat - becomes what Hamil calls "horrific", making it difficult to produce a high-quality beam.
(Big ups: Eric)
Stop Training Iraqi Troops?
What if we’re fighting the wrong kind of war? Some of America’s better military minds have been making a transition in Iraq, from waging traditional battles to clamping down on insurgents. A major part of this shift: training Iraq forces to take over from American troops. Stephen Biddle, with the Council on Foreign Relations, says they’re making a huge mistake.
 The problem is that “Iraqization” is a Vietnam-era solution. And “the current struggle is not a Maoist 'people's war' of national liberation [like Vietnam]; it is a communal civil war with very different dynamics,” Biddle writes in an amazingly timely article for the new issue of Foreign Affairs. "Turning over the responsibility for fighting the insurgents to local forces, in particular, is likely to make matters worse."
Such a policy might have made sense in Vietnam, but in Iraq it threatens to exacerbate the communal tensions that underlie the conflict and undermine the power-sharing negotiations needed to end it. Washington must stop shifting the responsibility for the country's security to others and instead threaten to manipulate the military balance of power among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds in order to force them to come to a durable compromise. Only once an agreement is reached should Washington consider devolving significant military power and authority to local forces…
In a people's war, handing the fighting off to local forces makes sense because it undermines the nationalist component of insurgent resistance, improves the quality of local intelligence, and boosts troop strength. But in a communal civil war, it throws gasoline on the fire. Iraq's Sunnis perceive the "national" army and police force as a Shiite-Kurdish militia on steroids… to them, the defense forces look like agents of a hostile occupation. And the more threatened the Sunnis feel, the more likely they are to fight back even harder. The bigger, stronger, better trained, and better equipped the Iraqi forces become, the worse the communal tensions that underlie the whole conflict will get.
The creation of powerful Shiite-Kurdish security forces will also reduce the chances of reaching the only serious long-term solution to the country's communal conflict: a compromise based on a constitutional deal with ironclad power-sharing arrangements protecting all parties. A national army that effectively excluded Sunnis would make any such constitutional deal irrelevant, because the Shiite-Kurdish alliance would hold the real power regardless of what the constitution said. Increasing evidence that Iraq's military and police have already committed atrocities against Sunnis only confirms the dangers of transferring responsibility for fighting the insurgents to local forces before an acceptable ethnic compromise has been brokered.
On the other hand, the harder the United States works to integrate Sunnis into the security forces, the less effective those forces are likely to become. The inclusion of Sunnis will inevitably entail penetration by insurgents, and it will be difficult to establish trust between members of mixed units whose respective ethnic groups are at one another's throats. Segregating Sunnis in their own battalions is no solution either. Doing so would merely strengthen all sides simultaneously by providing each with direct U.S. assistance and could trigger an unstable, unofficial partition of the country into separate Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish enclaves, each defended by its own military force…
What, then, is to be done?... First, Washington must slow down the expansion of the Iraqi national military and police. Iraq will eventually need capable indigenous security forces, but their buildup must follow a broad communal compromise, not the other way around…
Second, the United States must bring more pressure to bear on the parties in the constitutional negotiations. And the strongest pressure available is military: the United States must threaten to manipulate the military balance of power among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to coerce them to negotiate. Washington should use the prospect of a U.S.-trained and U.S.-supported Shiite-Kurdish force to compel the Sunnis to come to the negotiating table. At the same time, in order to get the Shiites and the Kurds to negotiate too, it should threaten either to withdraw prematurely, a move that would throw the country into disarray, or to back the Sunnis…
The only way to break the logjam is to change the parties' relative comfort with the status quo by drastically raising the costs of their failure to negotiate. The U.S. presence now caps the war's intensity, and U.S. aid could give any side an enormous military advantage. Thus Washington should threaten to use its influence to alter the balance of power depending on the parties' behavior. By doing so, it could make stubbornness look worse than cooperation and compel all sides to compromise.
Rapid Fire 02/27/06
* Coasties spooked by port deal
* New crooks: keyloggers
* SETI@home meets Nazi code-breakers
* "Q branch" IPO tanks (background here)
* Quantum crypto grows up
* Harvard nabs the Wonk
* Signs of hope in Iraq: "Current U.S. military commanders say they have come to understand that they are fighting within a political context, which means the results must first be judged politically. The pace and shape of the war also have changed, with U.S. forces trying to exercise tactical patience and shift responsibilities to Iraqi forces, even as they worry that the American public's patience may be dwindling."
Be Mickey Mouse's Spy
Some of you may have felt a little underqualified to become a manhunter for Special Operations Command. Never fear. An anonymous pal has found a job almost as good: "Intelligence Analyst" for the Walt Disney Company. Yeah, you read that right: a spook for the Mouse... "highly developed Internet skills" and "US Government security clearance (at least Secret-level) desirable."
 Employer: The Walt Disney Company
Sector: Public
Type: Job
Status: Full-time
Location: Burbank, CA
Title: Intelligence Analyst
THE SITUATION: Basic Purpose and Objective of the Position: The Intelligence Analyst anticipates and assesses threats that could harm, or make vulnerable, The Walt Disney Company (TWDC), its employees, guests, or assets.
THE POSITION: The analyst thoroughly reviews information from open/public sources, official sources, and professional contacts, and conducts regular assessments of world events, regional/national security climates, and suspect individuals and groups. The analyst produces a range of written and verbal analyses for employees and management of the Company and provides tactical intelligence support to the Company's security and crisis management operators...
% of Total Duties and Responsibilities
45 [%] Monitors open source media, homeland security and law enforcement bulletins, and information from professional contacts, for international, national, and local news and intelligence that may affect the security and safety of TWDC. Maintains comprehensive files of intelligence on key issues and parts of the world; maintains record of threats received, assessments, and their disposition. Plays key information processing role in the Corporate-level Emergency Operations Center, when activated.
35 [%] Anticipates scenarios, analyzes information, and produces written or verbal assessments and warning forecasts for Global Security management and other appropriate TWDC consumers. Assessments will be assigned or self-initiated. Recommends strategies to mitigate security risks as appropriate or required.
10 [%] Develops and maintains regular liaison with local, national, and international law enforcement and intelligence community partners. Maintains and broadens professional skills and contacts through external training and attendance at conferences.
5 [%] Becomes subject matter expert on issues such as counterterrorism, travel security, and international affairs.
5 [%] Finds and coordinates training opportunities and intelligence production of analytic cadre throughout TWDC...
Education Level: BA/BS Required AND 4-6 Years of Experience
Field of Study/Area of Experience: Political science, international relations, national security studies, or related field preferred Other
Training/Technical Skills/Knowledge:
* Highly developed Internet skills and knowledge of Microsoft Office-based applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access
* Foreign area knowledge and understanding of contemporary affairs gained through study, travel, or work abroad " Knowledge and understanding of analysis on security issues, especially though not exclusively related to terrorism
* Familiarity with information resources and data-mining techniques " Analytic experience and formal training with an intelligence agency, law enforcement organization, the military, or the private sector required
* US Government security clearance (at least Secret-level) desirable.
Abilities & Behaviors
* Strong research and critical thinking skills to identify, collect, and evaluate data; to absorb and synthesize large amounts of information; and to draw logical, interpretable, and potentially actionable conclusions.
* Strong written and verbal English presentation skills.
* Solid interpersonal, teambuilding, and networking skills
* Ability to work under pressure of tight deadlines and high, exacting standards
* High motivation, desire for professional growth and continuous improvement, and a sincere willingness to learn
* Ability to interface with and represent Disney Global Security to all levels of management, executives, and external partners
* Ability to organize, balance, and prioritize multiple projects
* Exhibits creativity and innovativeness " Willingness and ability to train others " Strong professional ethics and ability to maintain absolute discretion, confidentiality, and trust.
Boing Boing vs. U.A.E.
Superblog Boing Boing is being "blocked by entire countries including the United Arab Emirates, and by many library systems, schools, US government and military sites, and corporations," Xeni says. The reason: a silly little program called Smart Filter, which classified 25,000 BB posts as "nudity."
 The problem is, most of these posts don't have any boobies at all. "They're stories about Hurricane Katrina, kidnapped journalists in Iraq, book reviews, ukelele casemods, phonecam video of Bigfoot sightings (come to think of it, he doesn't wear clothes either), or pictures of astonishing Lego constructions..."
[Smart Filter maker] Secure Computing offered us a devil's bargain: if we'd change the URLs of images with "nudity" (which, they assured us, included photos of Michaelangelo's David) to something they could detect and block, they'd let the rest of the world see us again. That guy in the UAE who was worried he'd be imprisoned for trying to read BoingBoing would be OK again.
[I]nstead we've decided to help put Secure Computing out of business... We're publishing a guide to evading the SmartFilter censorware. There are hundreds of ways to defeat these censorware apps, and we're going to catalog as many of them as possible. (We'll publish this tutorial shortly, and update the post you're reading with a link to the permanent page).
I.E.D. Answer: New Roads?
I've spoken to a couple of company commanders in Iraq who say they don't have much of a problem with roadside bombs. The big reason why: they avoid the main streets in their neighborhoods, travelling where their enemies aren't.
 Now, the Pentagon is looking to use that technique all over Iraq, according to Inside Defense. "Rather than trying to defeat improvised explosive devices (IEDs) head-on with new technologies and tactics, the Defense Department is looking to... construct new roads for supply convoys that simply bypass densely populated, high-threat areas."
The Army is seeking $167 million in military construction funds as part of the Pentagon's soon-to-be detailed $65.3 billion supplemental spending request for fiscal year 2006 to pave roads capable of supporting two-way traffic, complete with shoulders, drainage structures and interchanges to connect with existing supply routes, according to a draft version of the request.
“Failure to provide these routes will result in continued exposure of U.S. and coalition forces as well as Iraqi non-combatants to unacceptable insurgent threats to include IED and vehicle borne IED and direct fire exposure,” states the draft budget document obtained by InsideDefense.com and set to be delivered to Congress soon....
There have been approximately 28,000 IED incidents in Iraq between April 2003 and November 2005, according to Jan. 24 briefing slides prepared by Multi-National Force-Iraq.
Iraq Rebuild More Cash than Marshall Plan?
Adam Rogers is right: "IEEE Spectrum this month has an awesome, awesome article on why we can’t get the electricity on in Iraq."
 He pulls out some of the story's juicier tidibits. Stuff like:
* Shortage of power nationwide: 4000 megawatts.
* Amount of power you could generate from the natural gas that gets “flamed off” -- vented and burned — from working oil wells instead of captured: 4000 megawatts.
* Kind of fuel the Iraqis have easy access to: crude oil.
* Kind of fuel the persnickety GE dual-fuel combustion turbines we bought use: diesel or natural gas.
* Cost of bringing high quality diesel, by truck, from the nearest source (Turkey): $85 a barrel.
* Amount of diesel all the fancy new combustion turbines in the country would use if they were up and running, which they aren’t: one tanker-truckful every 45 minutes.
But to me, that most amazing statistic in this numbers-rich article is that "the final [reconstruction] tally might be as high as $100 billion."
As of fall 2005, the United States had spent or committed more than US $20 billion to the effort, other countries had pledged $13.6 billion, and Iraq itself had contributed about $24 billion, including seized assets of Saddam Hussein.... For comparison, in the first two years of their reconstruction after being devastated in wars, Germany, Japan, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan together received a total of $25.6 billion, in 2003 dollars, according to the United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally created organization devoted to conflict resolution. The first European Recovery Program, known as the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt much of Western Europe after World War II, spent the equivalent of about $90 billion in today's dollars between 1948 and 1951.
Rapid Fire 02/26/06
 *Catch o' the day: nuclear sub
* Israel's big-ass drone
* Navy's swimming spy plane (background here)
* "TIA lives on"
* Data mining everywhere
* Gunny B got blown up... and lived to tell about it
* Now that is a lot of bombs
(Big ups: RC, JQP, RN, HLS Watch)
Happy Birthday to Me
I called my Mom one day when I was twenty-two, to complain about how totally sucky my life was. I don't remember exactly what was so awful -- I think maybe I was frustrated with a new boss or something. Whatever. I had just graduated college, spent a year on the Clinton campaign, and was sharing a 2,000 square foot apartment/recording studio in Georgetown. My job was fun, my circle of frineds was huge, my bank account wasn't over-drawn, and I had recently spent a half-hour, solo, with Nelson Mandela. In short, I had absolutely zero to whine about.
In her polite, rosy way, Mom told me told shut the fuck up, and enjoy what I had. Great moments don't last forever, she said, and you better enjoy them while they're going on.
I still struggle to remember that simplest of lessons. But birthdays have a way of forcing you to stop and take an inventory of your life -- especially milestone birthdays, like number 35.
So with Mom's advice in mind, here's a list of some of the things I've done since I turned 34.
- Hung backstage with Snoop
- Shot guns with Xeni
- Got shot at by Iraqis
- Climbed Chichen Itza
- Caught the dunk by Iguodala (and Knicks/Sixers with Uncle Steve)
- Rode the rapids upstate
- Got choked in Krav Maga
- Tested a killer robot
- Blew up an IED
- Threw parties
- Threw up at parties
- Rode a Black Hawk and a C-130
- Flew a Joint Strike Fighter sim
- Fasted
- Gorged
- Snowshoed
- Snorkled
- Hiked
- Spellunked
- Sinned
- Atoned
- Prayed
- Cursed
- Cried
- Comforted
- Visited:
* Brooklyn
* San Fran
* L.A.
* London
* Leeds
* Chi-town
* H-town
* Tulum
* Cozumel
* Philly
* Baghdad
* Kuwait City
* Deadwood
* DC
* Sedona
* Manchester, VT
* Norfolk
* The 'burgh
* Ft. Irwin, CA
* Ft. Monmouth, NJ
* Ft. Huachuca, AZ
* Picatinny Arsenal, NJ
* Eglin AFB, FL
* Pentagon, VA
* And THREE laser weapon labs
- Chased crooks (A few weeks before the 34th, technically. Still counts.)
- Filed about 750 blog posts
- Wrote for Wired, Newsweek, the Times, the Forward, Pop Sci, Pop Mech, Wired News, the Times mag, the National Post, and Fast Company.
- Blabbed on CNN, NPR, and the BBC
- Had four albums come out with my name on 'em
- Learned a nice chunk of Hebrew
- Reconnected with my brother
- Raised some Katrina cash
- And, of course, got engaged
You know what? That seems like a pretty good year to me. Thanks, Mom. You were right.
Axe, Out of Iraq, Explains
As many of you know, David Axe spent the last few months reporting regularly from Iraq for Defense Tech and other publications. Then, two weeks ago, those reports abruptly stopped.
In the online edition of Editor & Publisher, David explains why:
In early February, I was embedded at a remote Iraqi Army training base, and interviewing a U.S. officer about the development of Iraqi security forces when a sour-faced U.S. Army sergeant pulled up in a Humvee. He ordered me to put away my cameras and get in.
"You're in violation of regulations," he said. I thought it was a joke. So did the officer. But the sergeant persisted. So I apologized to my interviewee, stowed my gear and climbed into the Humvee.
Over the next 36 hours, I was shuttled from base to base and finally to Kuwait -- under armed guard for all but the final leg. I never got an official explanation for what was happening. From my guards and others, I gleaned that I had published supposedly sensitive information on my blog at www.defensetech.org, thus allegedly endangering U.S. forces and disqualifying me for a military embed.
PTSD Sensors for Returning Troops
The Pentagon wants to know how its soldiers are handling the transition from wartime to regular life. But getting them to see a counselor isn't easy, even in the age of Oprah. So the Defense Department's fringe science division is funding development of wireless sensors (scroll down) to tell whether a veteran is stressed or hitting the bottle too hard after coming home from deployment.
 AFrame Digital and Barron Associates, both based in Virginia, are focusing on veterans recovering from battlefield injuries. They both are investigating a "low-cost, noninvasive 'trip-wire' system [that] required that functions as a safety net, detecting when assistance or intervention is needed and issuing advisories to health care providers concerning significant changes in important medical indicators." These monitors will "collect and analyze real time data of vital signs, patient activity, fall acceleration and location parameters to detect deviations." AFrame already makes a version for seniors, that picks up "pulse, temperature, and mobility" and comes with a "panic button and fall detection."
Massachusetts' Erallo Technologies is focusing on whether a vet falls down from drink or stress, instead. According to the Associated Press, one in eight returning troops has PTSD symptoms. CNN puts it at one in five. Its "Intelligent, Wireless, Agent-based Health Monitoring Network for PTSD and Alcohol" will include "a wireless transdermal alcohol sensor, heart rate monitor and accelerometer."
Presumably, like AFrame, Erallo is expecting its system will incorporate "socially acceptable form factors, secure wireless networks, intelligent analysis software, displays for medical personnel, and interfaces to medical record systems."
But those form factors better be pretty dammn small. Because if a soldier feels shy about paying a private visit to a therapist, how eager is he going to be to walk around with some clunky armband?
Grandad's Jet-Pack
I think its in the bylaws of Popular Science, somewhere, that the magazine has to feature a flying car or a jet-pack every couple of issues. This time, however, PopSci has a particularly fun take on an old stand-by -- one I wish I had thought to write, frankly. Check of this lovingly silly portrait of one of the guys who actually flies a jet-pack in his back yard.
Despite the great optimism of the early ’60s, in the rocket belt’s brief history, only 12 souls have flown one. More people have walked on the moon. But Juan Manuel Lozano didn’t want to go to the moon...
Lozano is not a rocket scientist. He is not a stuntman. He is an animated, often goofy granddad who is afraid of the sight of blood. When he’s all dressed up in his rocket suit, Lozano looks more like Andy Kaufman pulling one of his famous stunts than he does James Bond. His highest diploma is a high school degree, although he did attend pilot school in Mexico City and took courses at an aerobatic-flight shop in Houston so he could fly the plane he was designing at the time.
For the past 40 years, Lozano has been a constant tinkerer and rocket hobbyist, and evidence of his obsession is all around his home. He shows me an in-progress rocket-propelled motorcycle that he predicts will go from 0 to 250 in five seconds. Around the back of the house is a rocket engine for a car that Lozano says will have 22,000 horse-power and a shot at breaking the land speed record. His daughter recounts stories of the go-karts dad made for her and her sister. And the high school science fairs? Guess whose kids always won.
(Big ups: Aliray)
Laser Mirrors May Get Testy
Laser weapons have a serious shortcoming, in the minds of some Pentagon thinkers. No, it's not the fact that it takes giant vats of chemicals or a gazillion watts of power to get the beam machines to work. Or that a fair-sized rainstorm pretty much renders them useless. It's that lasers can only zap as far as the eye can see. The beams don't curve, so ray guns can't reach over the horizon.
 The Defense Department's Office of Force Transformation wants to change that, however, with a world-wide ring of giant mirrors, that would bounce laser light to wherever the Pentagon saw fit.
The transformation shop has been talking about this Tactical Relay Mirror System, or TRMS, for several years. Now, they may be ready to start some early-stage testing, Inside Defense reports.
“Some of the work that we’re doing on this is very advanced, and [has] come along very well,” Col. Craig Hughes said. “And certainly the test of the laboratory-sized aerospace relay mirror come this spring will be a significant development for us.”
Maybe the mirrors would be connected to a set of giant blimps, some have suggested. Maybe they'd be strapped onto robotic planes. But, strangely, Inside Defense notes, Hughes and his fellow mirror men seem to be tying their program to the star-crossed Airborne Laser, or ABL. That's the 747, modified for ray gunning, that's been sinking rather rapidly in the military's estimation. Flight tests for the thing are now six years behind schedule, and the project was recently demoted down to a technology demonstrator,
“If you put [a mirror] on an airship right above ABL, you instantly double the range of ABL and eventually maybe these things can go into space.”
Considering that the ABL is the only part of this little scenario that's anything more than a PowerPoint slide, however, I guess Hughes and Co. don't really have a choice. Keep on blasting, boys.
Fake Soldier Saves Real Cash
 Meet Santos. He's a simulated soldier, being developed at the University of Iowa. And he's so true-to-life, Wired News reports, that engineers are using him to test out equipment before it ever leaves the desktop.
Santos is programmed with extensive modeling data, the result of research on the human body. As he moves in response to commands, he sends back information on his comfort level and joint angles. And, if Santos has difficulty completing a task, project engineers will have the correct information to make modifications before the first stage of production begins.
When the U.S. Army needs new designs of combat-ready body armor and other protective gear, it, too, turns to digital human technology. Santos can model the new duds and advise if they are too restrictive, or if the material doesn't have enough give to be useful in the field.
In a demonstration, Santos appeared on a monitor, dressed in desert camouflage. Darkness enveloped an overturned Humvee, and Santos struggled to escape through a narrow hatch opening. After removing his vest and holster, he easily slid through to safety.
Rapid Fire 02/22/06
* "If this doesn’t spark a much-feared civil war, we’ll be lucky."
* School bus drivers vs. Al Qaeda
* Explosive-eating fungus
* Russian propaganda, US battleship
* Welcome home, Global Hawk
* UK's Afghan base
* Israel's traffic-watching UAVs
* Inside Counter-insurgency U.
* Robo-Stryker in convoy tests
(Big ups: JQP, PA)
US vs. Protoss
I've been into video games since the Atari 2600. And I've played all kinds -- shooters, sports, role-players, what have you. But, for the last decade or so, my real weakness has been real-time strategy (RTS) games. Back in '98, my bandmates and I were so addicted to Starcraft, we put a Zerg hydralisk on one of our posters. Even today, my fiancee, much to her annoyance, has the catchphrases from Age of Empires III memorized, she's heard 'em so many times coming from my laptop.
 But, as awesome and as challenging as these war simulations can be, they're not particularly realistic. David Wong wants to change all that. So he's developed his 20-point checklist for the "ultimate" RTS... one that'll give experienced players "Thousand-Yard Stares."
3. Every War Sim has a "Fog of War" that obscures the map in darkness until units scout the landscape. Well, I want a hazy, brown "Fog of Bullshit" layer below that. I want it to make a village of farmers look like a secret armed militia, I want it to show me a massive enemy fortress where there is actually an Aspirin factory. I want to never know for sure which it was, even after the game is over...
5. I want that "Public Support" meter to rise and fall according to Troops Lost, Length of Conflict, Innocents Killed and Whether or Not There is Anything Else On TV That Week. I want to lose 200 Public Support points because, in a war where 8,000 units have been lost, one of my Mutalisks happened to be caught on video accidentally eating one clergyman. Then, later, my destruction of an entire enemy city goes unnoticed because the Nude Zero-Gravity Futureball championship went into overtime....
7. I want my Mission Objectives to change every 30 seconds, without anyone letting me know. I want little talking heads to pop up on my screen - commanders, politicians, allies, military intelligence - each giving me different sets of victory parameters, all of them conflicting and many of them written in bullshit ass-covering doublespeak.
(Big ups: Kris)
Net is Military's "Weakest Link"
 I've always been pretty skeptical about so-called "cyber-terrorism" -- the idea that an Al-Qaeda type is going to logic bomb a server, rather send a truck bomb into a building; for a group trying to sew fear, that electronic attack just doesn't seem visceral enough. Cyber-warfare, on the other hand, sounds plenty likely. Every day, American armed forces grow increasingly reliant on their communications networks -- to relay orders, transmit reconnaissance footage, and plan attacks. Which means those networks become juicier targets, all the time. Unfortunately, they're also the U.S. military's "weakest link," according to National Defense magazine.
The U.S. military is comfortable facing enemies on traditional battlefields, but facing them in the virtual world is a new challenge, said Army Brig. Gen. Susan Lawrence, Joint Staff chief information officer and director of command, control, communications and computers. Until the military figures out how to defeat its adversaries in this battle space, “we’re not going to win the global war on terrorism,” she said at a military communications conference.
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Robert Shea, director of command, control, communications and computer systems on the Joint Staff, said at the conference that “the network is our center of gravity, and our ability to defend it is our Achilles’ heel.”
Army Col. Carl Hunt, director of technology for the joint task force for global network operations, said those who attack the Pentagon’s network are often “a half step ahead of us.”
“We’ve gone to great lengths to build complementary capabilities in the kinetic battlefield,” but not in the virtual battlefield, he told military writers at a briefing. “We have a very thin, fragile communications capability basically in the global information grid and the Internet.”
Rapid Fire 02/21/06
* Bushies pummeled on port deal
* Google cooperating with DHS?
* First F-35 leaves factory
* Body language trainer
* "Biowar for Dummies"
* Llama commandos
* Reward for recovered UAV
* X-ray vision, for real
* "Blimp City"
* Rummy "thinks like a futurist and acts like a Neanderthal"
* "God is my intel"
(Big ups: Bryan, Haninah, RC, JQP, Xeni, Wonk)
Decades-Old Docs Reclassified
Phew. I was worried there, for a second, that some evil-doer might learn our country's most sensitive secrets. Like the CIA's 1948 plan to drop leaflets behind the Iron Curtain. Or an English translation of a newspaper article on China's nukes -- from Belgrade, 1962.
 Luckily, we won't have to worry about those breaches in security any more. Thanks to some intrepid intelligence agency bureaucrats, the New York Times reports, 55,000 "historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians... have been remov[ed] from public access."
The [program] began in 1999... But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.
Mr. Aid [who has put his version of the whole affair online, and posted some of the reclassified papers] was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents — mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."
"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."
After Mr. Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government classification, began an audit of the reclassification program, said J. William Leonard, director of the office.
Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.
"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."
"It is important to understand that there is no rigorous, consensual definition of what constitutes classified information," Steven Aftergood notes in today's Secrecy News. "Instead, in a practical sense, classified information is whatever the executive branch says it is."
In 1997, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified the total intelligence budget for that year ($26.6 billion). But intelligence budget figures from three, four and five decades earlier remain classified. Why? Because the CIA says so!
One might argue that it should be the other way around -- budget figures from the remote past should be declassified while more recent figures should perhaps be classified. But such logic is foreign to CIA classification policy, and to the classification system as a whole.
"90 percent" of what's currently classified is being wrongly kept from the public, Rep. Chris Shays, chairman the national security panel of the House Committee on Government Reform, once told me. "I've read supposedly classified documents where page after page after page didn't tell me anything I didn't already know."
Now, some might argue that it's still better to err on the side of keeping things clandestine -- that the risk of releasing one important secret is so great, it outweighs any potential benefit of making the information free.
Those people would not include some of the country's top current and former spies, however. They argue that, by keeping a gazillion documents under wraps, spooks and cops and soldiers are prevented from sharing information. And that's not a good thing, when you're trying to track down terrorists.
"Our secrecy system is all about protecting secrecy officers, and has nothing to do with protecting secrets. It's a self-licking ice-cream cone," said Rich Haver, Donald Rumsfeld's former special assistant for intelligence. "We're compartmentalizing the shit out of things. It's causing a total meltdown of our intelligence processes."
UPDATE 4:08 PM: Shays is going to hold a hearing on this next month. "Secrets are kept to protect the national security," he said in news release, "not to prevent embarrassment or protect Cold War bureaucrats from history's judgment. When many knowledgeable voices, including the 9/11 Commission, have called for greater openness and information sharing, our policies on creation and handling of sensitive information are moving in exactly the opposite direction. That threatens national security."
UPDATE 4:15 PM: 1442 days ago, when the bioweapons-watchers Sunshine Project filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the National Academies of Science about some supposedly "non-lethal" weapons research, the group figured it would get a speedy response. After all, there's a law that "when NAS does a study for the government, documents that are deposited in the Public Access Records File are public." The Sunshine Project is still waiting. It's one of the group's "Top 10 Freedom of Information Failures," published today.
(Big Ups: Nick)
Breaking Rocks - Lots of Rocks
This is the second in a two part series by Weapons Grade author David Hambling on weapons that drill and scrape their way through targets. Check out part one here.
The Pentagon is developing a bunker buster that can burrow into the ground and break up rock far more efficiently than existing rounds. But hitting underground lairs isn't the only thing the technology can do.
 David Burns, program manager of this "Deep Digger" bunker buster, mentioned that a breaching device based on his weapon was already being investigated. Like the Deep Digger, this will fire a volley of projectiles, creating a man-sized hole in walls. Today, you need hand-emplaced explosives or heavy weapons to get the job done. The Deep Digger-ish breaching device would have more fine control -- cutting progressively through the several feet of concrete, or breaking through a single layer of brick without demolishing the building.
Another option would be to combine the special projectile with a million-round-a-minute MetalStorm launcher for a lightweight, rapid-fire mobile system. Burns believes that this could be a distinct possibility if MetalStorm can handle the rounds. Such a weapon would be able to reduce pillboxes and strongpoints into gravel almost instantly.
The special projectiles would also be useful for the traditional combat engineering tasks of demolition and creating field fortifications. And they could have humanitarian uses, too – Burns suggested that a mobile Deep Digger would provide the fastest way of getting to rescuing victims buried under rubble or in mine collapses.
Larger projectiles already exist. BAE Systems Advanced Technologies, Inc. (ATI), who were involved in creating Deep Digger have looked at a larger-caliber cheap version of the round for quarrying and similar uses. They have already tested a 60mm round which can pulverise 0.4 cubic metres of rock with one shot - see the picture above - and they believe that a cubic meter per shot is possible. This represents an awesomely fast and efficient means of mining and tunnelling.
To bring the cost-per-shot down from dollars to pennies, ATI are talking about firing concrete projectiles from an electrothermal launch system. What this really means is a steam gun - a sort of retro-future technology not seen for a while. This seemed to be the future back in 1824 when Mr Perkins’ steam gun was firing 900 rounds a minute; a bit later on the Confederacy had one in the Civil War which was supposed to fire twenty-four pound projectiles and scythe down opposing ranks, but was captured without a fight. The ATI proposal should be more practical. Given an unlimited supply of cheap projectiles and the possibilities multiply for both military and civilian applications. If you want to build a new metro much faster than standard tunnel boring machines, or dig an underground bunker complex in a hurry, this could be for you.
 Of course, if such digging device proliferate, they could end up in the wrong hands. I'm thinking of Clint Eastwood in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, where he plays a robber whose signature is using a 20mm Oerlikon cannon to break into bank vaults. With projectile-based excavation, Thunderbolt could try his luck with Fort Knox.
More seriously, this technology means that reinforced concrete cannot necessarily be relied on to protect strategic assets in the long term. Conventional weapons will be able to even threaten facilities that were built to withstand nuclear attack.
-- David Hambling
New Bomb Drills for Bunkers
 Weapons Grade author David Hambling has another fascinating two-part series for Defense Tech, on weapons that drill and scrape their way through targets.
Meet Deep Digger, first of a revolutionary new generation of bunker-busting weapons, described in this week’s New Scientist. This is literally ground-breaking new technology which uses cannon to tunnel through solid rock, drilling a channel for the bomb.
Existing weapons for attacking hard targets are kinetic, relying on sheer momentum to break through rock and concrete. To get much improvement you have to make them much bigger - like the outsize 30,000 lb Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or much faster - like the proposed conventional version of the D5 Trident ballistic missile, or denser - like the heavy BLU-109 with its ballast of dense metal. But you can’t get around the laws of physics. As Princeton's Robert Nelson points out in a very thorough analysis, even if the penetrator is a hypersonic projectile made of solid depleted uranium:
“…no Earth Penetrating Weapon can penetrate reinforced concrete deeper than four times the length of the missile.”
So this approach really isn’t going to get you more than a hundred feet through rock at best, and the practical limit is much less.
The supercavitating bunker-buster I revealed last year looks neat, but the jury is still out on whether it works. A lot of people in the industry simply don’t believe that it can. The Broach is an interesting idea but limited to a few metres.
Deep Digger is different. It does not depend on the kinetic energy of the warhead at all – in fact, it parachutes down. Then it stars drilling. The weapon is limited only by how deep the drilling process can go, which is a matter of how deep it can ‘muck’ (clear debris from the shaft). And although the details are classified, that is much, much deeper than any kinetic weapon will ever go. In the tests last year, it demonstrated a tunneled down ten meters -- about 50% more than the BLU-113, which is the current record holder.
 It has numerous other advantages. One is a thinner casing which means more payload. Another is that it does not undergo a shattering 10,000g impact. Other penetrating bombs need special insensitive explosives; Deep Digger can carry a range of warheads, as well as sensors and communications. It can stay in touch with the launch aircraft and report its progress; multiple Deep Diggers could be co-ordinated to detonate simultaneously producing a combined shockwave.
Part of the secret is the rock-breaking projectile, developed like the cannon at ARDEC, the US Army’s Armament Research Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny. David Burns, the Program Manager, describes it as being a special .75 calibre round, a monolithic design which is more robust and performs better than earlier projectiles. In place of the blasting gel used earlier it now employs a solid high explosive called PAX-11, one of Picatinny’s own special recipes.
Deep Digger has already moved on from the version described in this presentation. Burns is confident that it’s proven ability to drill consistently through rock will make Deep Digger the leader in its field.
It doesn’t stop with bombs either. There are some other interesting applications for Deep Digger technology too, which we’ll be looking at in part two of this little series, starting with a breaching cannon that cuts through brick walls like a chainsaw through plywood.
-- David Hambling
Rapid Fire 02/16/05
* Predicting the next attack
* 3rd Cav, counterinsurgency specialists
* Navy $7B short, already
* ISR evolves
* UAE runs NYC's port - WTF?
* Darpa wants super-translation machines
(Big ups: KR, CA)
Manhunters: Apply Here
 Wanna track the world's most dangerous game? Ready to move to Tampa? Then defense contractor SAIC has a job for you.
Special Operations Manhunting Program Analyst
Job Description:
Performs as the USSOCOM lead for the development and implementation of CT [counter-terror] manhunting operations in support of DOD GWOT [Department of Defense global war on terror] efforts. Individual will research and incorporate current manhunting experiences and procedures in order to provide an educational forum for manhunting issues. Supports development of innovative curriculum targeted at manhunting education throughout DOD and the interagency environment, especially for those who enable and support manhunting. Will coordinate staff actions in support of manhunting issues within the JSOU, USSOCOM, DOD and other agencies.
Upon completion of concept and doctrine development, the chosen candidate may assist with the development of CONOPS [concept of operations] and JTTP’s [joint tactics, techniques, and procedures] for manhunting operations. , Position is located at USSOCOM [U.S. Special Forces Command], on MacDill AFB, in Tampa, FL. The successful candidates will represent Joint Special Operations University and educational issues associated with manhunting to USSOCOM.
Education:
Bachelors Degree in related field of study.
Required Skills:
Must possess a SECRET level clearance and be able to obtain a TOP SECRET/SCI security clearance. Must have articulate speaking, writing, and organizational skills. Demonstrated ability to develop and advance innovative concepts with limited oversight. Knowledge of how SOF and interagency cooperation in the GWOT environment. Attended Intermediate Service School and Joint PME II.
Desired Skills:
Comprehensive understanding of DOD and IA GWOT and CT operations. Attended Senior Service School. Related duties in a joint, interagency, or special mission unit assignment.
(Big ups: A)
Laser Jet Demoted
Some readers got all bent out of shape last month, when I dared to suggest that laser weapons -- especially the modified 747 Airborne Laser -- weren't ready to move beyond science fiction. (They didn't like how I used the words "whiz-bang" and "shit," either.)
 Those people are going to be double-mad now, I suppose. Because "the multibillion-dollar Airborne Laser (ABL) program, considered the Pentagon's best chance to develop a weapon to defeat ballistic missiles in their early, boost phase of flight, is being relegated to a technology demonstration status while a planned five-aircraft purchase by the Air Force is put on hold."
The ABL was supposed to start zapping missiles in 2002. Then it was pushed back to 2005. Now, the test is scheduled for 2008. Maybe. Until then, Pentagon's approach to the program is wait and see. Only after that will it be "serious time," a senior Defense Department official says. Originally slated to cost a billion dollars, the ABL has grown into a $7.3 billion behemoth.
Despite all this, the ABL remains the Pentagon's "primary" efort to wack ballistic missiles in their early, "boost" phase. The other big project in the area, the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (a projectile which slams into the missile, basically), had its budget cut by $5 billion over 5 years.
The DOD official said last week the agency is “not committing the funding to complete the program” until KEI successfully demonstrates [its] propulsion system in 2008. “So in 2008 there are two knowledge points,” he said. “For ABL it is the shoot-down. For KEI it is a test of the propulsion stack. We will not flesh out the funding until then.”
Rapid Fire 02/15/06
* Skiers get body armor
* Killer drone, tres chic
* 325,000 watch list names
* Whistleblower: NSA scandal only the start
* Awful new Abu Ghraib pics emerge
* Next "grand challenge": California traffic
* Dems spooked by wiretaps
* Iraq bases here to stay
* We're all spies
* Airstrikes on Baghdad
(Big ups: RN, JQP, Sploid, Giz, Umansky)
Shocking Shotgun: Stuns Quail, Too?
Don't tell Dick Cheney; it'll only make him angrier. But Taser International has just wrapped up tests on a less-lethal shotgun. Even if you nail someone in the face with this thing, the chances of putting him or her is the ICU are pretty low.
 Today's standard-issue stun guns work fairly well. But because the Taser uses a pair of tethered darts to deliver its electric shock, range is limited to 7 meters or less. Only one person can be targeted at a time.
This new "Extended Range Electro-Muscular Projectile" works out to 30 meters, according to News.com. And unlike Cheney's birdshot, this ammo fits into a diesel 12-gauge, not a wimpy 28. But testers said it could be "powerful enough for crowd control."
It's one of a bunch of long-range stun guns that that researchers in America and in Europe are investigating, Defense Update observes.
A different concept is the Sticky Shocker, developed by Titan, with DARPA's support... Sticky Shocker clings to a human target inflicting an electrical stun. Effective at up to 10 meters, the projectile contains a battery which excites several short high voltage pulses (50KV) per second... Different method of wireless stun weapon application is "laser induced plasma" weapon [kinda like this one], which uses artificial lightning effects to stun and incapacitate a target. Initial applications of such technology include the StunStrike, which [is] currently maturing into [an] operational system.
A German arms-maker is working on a "plasma taser" that squirts out an aerosol spray at the target, creating a conductive channel for a shock current, David Hambling noted in New Scientist. Meanwhile, Texas-based Lynntech, Inc. is using a grant from HSARPA (DARPA's homeland security clone) to build a shock grenade. (Here's Hambling's take.) And Taser International is toying around with a less-lethal landmine, based on its original stun gun.
There's no word, yet, on what the weapon does to quail.
(Big ups: RC)
UPDATE 2:04 PM: "Eagle Eye Body Armor sent us a release today noting that "Hunting accidents can be prevented carrying special hunting body armor,'" Defense Industry Daily noes. "'The Eagle Eye hunter's jacket that allows free movement with light weight is specially designed for the protection of individuals during the hunt.'"
Rapid Fire 02/14/06
* Moon plans move ahead
* Giant blimps go luxury
* China web censor hearts Bushies
* Training goal: "clone" great officers
* DOD budget: "new high for defense spending... new lows in the quantity of Army divisions, Navy combat ships, and Air Force wings."
(Big ups: JF, Victor, Haninah)
Moscow's Remote-Controlled Heart Attacks
This is the second of David Hambling's two-part series on plasma and electromagnetic weapons. Check out part one here.
 The American military may want to attack the nervous system, with pain rays and laser plasma pulses. But they're not the only ones. The Russians have long studied such systems, too -- including one weapon that could, in theory, remotely trigger heart attacks.
In 2003, at the 2nd European Symposium on Non-Lethal Weapons, Anatoly Korolev and his colleagues from Moscow State University presented a paper with the snappy title "Bioelectrodynamic Criterion of the NLW Effectiveness Estimation and the Interaction mechanisms of the multilayer Skin Tissues with electromagnetic Radiation." This is a study of how radio-frequency weapons -- like the American Active Denial System -- affect the skin. After wading through a mass of technical data showing how complex the interactions are we reach the punch line:
The sensations modality (pricking, touch, pressure, gooseflesh, touch, burning pain etc) depends on the field parameters and individual concrete human being factors. As a matter of fact, we can really choose the non-lethal bioeffect.
The effects include sensations similar to those discussed previously, and more besides. The paper discusses effects on cell membranes and affecting the body’s normal function, including "information transfer to the organs of control."
At the same conference, V Makukhin of the Trymas Engineering Center in Moscow described "Electronic equipment for complex influence on biological objects." And when he says "biological objects," he means you and me.
His laboratory apparatus uses a modulated beam of radio waves to produce what he terms "disorder of autonomic nervous system," put forward as a possible non-lethal weapon. Makhunin notes that there is no general agreement on how EM waves disrupt nerves - he mentions ion channels similar to those in the plasma paper - but he certainly seems to be seeing the same effects as American researchers.
But it need not be a non-lethal weapon. Makhunin also mentions the effects of "change of electrocardiogram" and what he calls "function break of heart muscle."
The vulnerability of the heart to electrical stimulation (including that produced by EM waves) is well documented. A lethal device would interfere with the electrical potentials that keep the chambers of the heart synchronized, producing fibrillation and rapid death. A death ray doesn’t need to be a truck-sized laser that reduces the target to smoking heap; a small device that stops the heart will do the job.
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