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Homeland Security Cuts for NYC, DC
Just when you thought the Homeland Security department couldn't possibly get any dumber...
The two cities attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, will receive far less antiterrorism money under plans unveiled today by the Department of Homeland Security, which has designated more money for many smaller cities throughout the country.
Washington and New York will receive 40 percent less in urban grant money compared to last year, with Washington dropping from $77 million to $46 million and New York falling from $207 million to $124 million, DHS officials said. The combined total means that the two areas bear almost the entire brunt of a $120 million cut in the overall budget for the program, the statistics show.
Chris Beckner has a more charitable view. But I'm with House Homeland Security Committee chairman Peter King on this one: "This is indefensible."
Army's Contrived Cash Crunch
 Times are tight at the Army -- sorta kinda, at least for the moment. Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody has ordered the service to stop buying "non-critical" spare parts and supplies last week, Inside Defense reports. And if the Army doesn't get some extra money from Congress soon, it'll have to stop hiring new civilian workers, "freeze" all new contracts, and "release service contract employees, [including] recruiters," according to a May 26th memo from Cody.
Sure sounds like a crisis. But it's actually one Cody & Co. cooked up themselves. For years, the Army has been relying more and more on "supplemental" spending bills -- extra cash from Congress, earmarked for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, that's supposed to be provided on an emergency basis.
Except now, the emergencies are routine. Every year, the Army busts through its approximately $160 billion budget. Every year, the service asks for more money -- to cover war costs, sure. But also to pay for stuff like the Joint Network Node, a kind of wi-fi hotspot for the battlefield. And to reconfigure the Army into smaller brigades. It's a form of blackmail, more or less: give us our money, Congress. Or risk being nailed as "anti-soldier."
"I always tell people, thank God for the supplemental. We would not be able to do anything... without them," Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac told an Association of the United States Army conference in 2004. "If those don’t happen, we’re in a world of hurt."
This year is no different. Hence Cody's plea for belt-tightening. But wouldn't it be better -- and smarter, and more honest -- to be upfront about all these costs, instead of blackmailing the Hill into action?
Rapid Fire 05/31/06
* Supremes dis whistle-blowers
* Border fence, for real
* Russia's Space Ship One
* FBI's biowar file
* "Satellite could open door on extra dimension"
* De-nuke every Trident?
* It's pretty easy being green (especially in New York)
(Big ups: HLS Watch)
Chicago Cops Crack Heads, Ride Scooters
Chicago cops have a well-deserved reputation for being the toughest guys in a tough town. But you've got to wonder how many heads they are going to have to crack to keep that reputation up, now that more and more officers are riding around the Windy City on Segway scooters.
 The CPD is spending about a half-million dollars to buy up 100 scooters and parts. That's on top of the 50 Segways already in use at O'Hare and Midway airports, and around the lakefront.
Cops have become a key market for the scooter-maker, after the machines failed to catch on with the general public. Around the country, 125 law enforcement agencies now use Segways, the company claims.
In Los Angeles County... officers prize it because it allows them to stand a head taller than they would on foot, so they can see over crowds and cars and project a more prominent presence at events like the Rose Bowl parade.
The scooters, which travel as fast as 12.5 mph, also allow an officer on patrol to cover a much greater distance than on foot, and go indoors, onto elevators and other places bigger vehicles can't. Blair said the added efficiency allows a force to cut down on the number of patrol officers on each shift and recoup the Segway's cost in as quickly as a month.
Several bomb squads such as those in Ventura County, Calif., and Little Rock, Ark., use Segways to transport officers in bulky bombproof and hazardous-material suits that can weigh as much as 100 pounds. The Segway allows them to scoot in and out of a scene quickly, without having to waddle in on foot.
Last year, Segway came out with its i80 police model, which features a longer battery life, giving the scooter the an energy efficiency equivalent of 450 miles per hour gallon -- with no emissions. The machine also boasts "Reflective Trim [that] helps establish your presence and enhance officer visibility" and a "Comfort Mat [that] alleviates fatigue that can occur when standing for long periods." Not that Chicago cops get tired. Ever.
(Big ups: Gizmag)
It Plays the New DVDs, Too
The June edition of National Defense has this short tech talk article about a new chem-bio detector produced by Purdue University. If successful, it could be a useful tool for people searching bags or containers for chem-bio agents or as a quick forensic tool at a terrorist chem-bio incident.
Miniature chemical-biological detection devices, that in the future could be deployed in wireless networks to protect buildings, subways and airports, have been perfected by scientists from Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind.
Prototypes of the handheld mass spectrometers — called Mini 10s — are able to quickly identify traces of the triacetone triperoxide that was used in the London subway bombing and is found in many improvised explosive devices. Many other materials, including TNT and plastic explosives, have been tagged.
Test results are produced in seconds, which compares to the current method of collecting samples and then dispatching them to a laboratory for identification.
It may be slightly premature to run out and place stocks into this product's future manufacturer, though. What the National Defense article didn't mention, but the researchers admit, is that this is just a prototype design that could use a few more years of testing and design work.
Sampling is done with a long, tubelike wand that both delivers the gas and sucks up the resulting ionized compound. It is this wand that the team likens to their bloodhound’s new nose. The wand’s tip must come within 5 millimeters of the sample to be effective, but the group has also found a way to build a mass spectrometer that weighs about 18 kilograms (40 pounds), which means it can be carried to the sample, rather than forcing investigators to bring the sample to it.
"This backpack-size device will be useful for field analysis of chemicals, filling a need in airport baggage security and drug detection," said Wiseman, a graduate student working on the project. "While the technique obviously cannot look inside packages to see what is inside, residue from explosives and drugs often remains on the hands of whoever packed it, and some is transferred during handling to the package’s surface. That remaining residue is what this device will be good for detecting."
While the team is optimistic about the device’s potential for application in the lab and on the street, Gologan cautioned that a better understanding of its functioning was still needed.
Still, it's an interesting concept. I would hazard a guess that the military's laboratories are too focused on developing future gear for military combat operations - not that anything new has come out of the DOD's Chemical-Biological Defense Program for a few years now - and DHS's laboratories have relied too much on unrealistic R&D projects from the National Labs to have any new equipment, either. Good to see that we have universities and industry to rely on for future combating terrorist WMD tools.
-- Jason Sigger, Armchair Generalist
Rapid Fire 05/29/06 (UPDATED)
* Drone video = Haditha key?
* Air-charter's rocket stockpile
* Darpa goal: bionic arm by '09
* Fewer secrets in '05
* Nanotech means smaller ships?
* Lasers enrich uranium?
* Kiwi crystals of death
* Ft. Hood turns out the lights
* Wings could let paratroopers fly 200 km
* Owen West: Get over 2003, already
* Michel: Haditha "shows the warning signs of infamy... [But] we will not be party to generalizations and naïve oversimplifications about... conduct in battle."
* Pantano: don't rush to judge Haditha
(Big ups: CC, RC, DS, Winds, AT)
UPDATE 4:19 PM: Haninah is calling BS on the laser enrichment story.
Beijing Feeds the Hype
In the last few days, China has voiced its disapproval of the new Pentagon report evaluating China’s military. The comments have been about what you’d expect, along the lines of the Foreign Ministry spokesman that accused the Pentagon of a "Cold War mentality."
But that didn't stop Beijing from feeding the hype by unveiling an ambitious new program to “enhance its capability to innovate, develop and rapidly supply new-generation weaponry” on the same day it was criticizing the US for "continuing to peddle the so-called 'China threat.'"
 The 15-year endeavor will include “new and high-technologies for the space industry, aviation, ship and marine engineering, nuclear energy and fuel, and information technology for both military and civilian purposes,” with a “focus on development of new and high-tech weaponry.”
The effort to develop new technologies may run up against China’s continuing difficulties with fraud in its scientific and R&D communities, although the government is also introducing initiatives to confront these problems.
In truth, the new military technology plan doesn’t appear to mark any actual departure from the trends the Pentagon report already noted – this is new PR and packaging, not new policy. But you’d think someone would realize that it’s difficult to protect your international image as a peaceful, stabilizing presence the same day you’re trying to instill national pride in your new, powerful, high-tech military. Maybe they should divert a few yuan to modernizing their media operation.
It’s actually been a rough couple of weeks for Chinese spokesmen addressing security relations with the US. Last week, they had to deal with a Taiwanese sales rep for Lockheed who pled guilty to spying for China and attempting to purchase US military technology for shipment to China. A few days later, they were criticizing a State Dept announcement that none of the Department’s thousands of new Lenovo computers would be used on classified networks, out of security concerns with the Chinese company’s systems. The FBI’s Chinese spy is still in the news as well.
So it looks to be a trend of hawks and pessimists steering the technology/security policies of both countries lately. Not to worry – our China policy remains as muddled as ever: In developments that are apparently completely unrelated, this month China (and the American Chamber of Commerce in China) asked the US to relax export controls of high-tech goods, and apparently that won’t be a problem.
-- Matthew Tompkins
What do you do?
On November 19, Marines from Kilo Co., 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines were patrolling the town of Haditha in western Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded. Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, was killed.
"Everybody agrees agrees that this was the triggering event," lawyer Paul Hackett told The Washington Post. "The question is, what happened afterward?"
 The Marine Corps reported that one Marine and 15 civilians were killed in the bombing. The Post and The New York Times quote witnesses saying that only Terrazas died in the bombing, and that enraged Marines stormed several houses and killed as many as two dozen innocent Iraqi civilians in retaliation. Sen. John Warner (R-Vir.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, which is investigating the incident, insists there was no cover-up.
I don't know what happened in Haditha that day. But I do know this: the U.S. Marine Corps trains its people to respect rules of engagement and to protect innocent lives on the battlefield.
"In a counter-insurgency, you don't have a clear delineation of boundaries [between civilians and combatants], so the rules of engagement and the escalation of force a Marine needs to take ... we're emphasizing those more," Lt. Col. Tracy Tafolla, head of Marine Air-Ground Task Force Training Branch, U.S. Marine Corps Training and Education Command, told me recently. He continued:
One of our most important lessons is [regarding] cultural training. We've incorporated [cultural] training across our training continuum. Marines are receiving that all the way from the School of Infantry to service-level exercises, to the point where we have Arabic-speakers as role-players [in exercises], giving us good feedback. The role-players’ responses to the Marines and their actions -- that is something that we've tried to make sure our Marines understand. Something we as Marines don't think twice about may be an offense to people over there [in Iraq]. We try to make sure we treat Iraqis fairly and with respect. We don't want to do anything to disrespect those who might be friendly to us. You must understand who you're dealing with, what are their ways. You keep those who are friendly, friendly.
There has been no resistance to the training. As a matter of fact, the information we get back [from Marines] is good. If we're missing the mark, it’s critical that the Marines tell us what we need to do. Across the board, Marines are glad to get the training.
Maj. Gen. Keith Stalder, chief of Training and Education Command chimed in too:
How to get along with the civilian population is at the core of [our cultural training]. Marines get enough language training to be conversational, to be polite, sensitive and in fact to operate in a more coherent way in an insurgency environment. We stress the cultural interaction. We use what we call vignettes where we challenge units to react properly given a very very challenging problem.
Consider Haditha the most challenging problem ever. You've just been blown up. Your buddy is dead. You're angry. You feel vulnerable. You have great power at the end of your trigger finger, power to lash out, punish someone -- anyone -- for the pain you've suffered.
What do you do?
What do you do?
These Haditha allegations have the potential to cause great harm to the U.S. war effort and to the U.S. Marine Corps. We should not shrug from the truth. Nor should we forget that a few bad Marines do not represent the entire Marine Corps or the entire U.S. military.
I'll be covering Haditha for Military.com. Anyone with any tips or thoughts on the subject, please email me ASAP.
--David Axe
Take Back Memorial Day
This morning I opened the paper and a series of circulars spilled onto my lap – bright, colored pages with bold fonts and frenetic language: “Now through Memorial Day only!” and “A Don’t Miss Memorial Day Sales Event!” As I took a deep breath and gathered up the pages that had spilled to the floor, at once it struck me: We owe more than commerce to those who sacrificed the balance of their lives for their country. It's time to take back Memorial Day.
Memorial Day is meant to be a solemn occasion, a uniquely military holiday—the only one that honors fallen soldiers. But since the first one on May 30, 1868, a little after the Civil War (then known as “Decoration Day”) when flowers were placed on the graves of soldiers from both the North and the South, Memorial Day’s quiet reverence has slowly been lost to the noise of commerce and the American pursuit of recreation. This didn’t happen overnight; it snuck up on us. And it’s not necessarily the fault of the American people who time and again have proved themselves patriots.
Even more surprising is that this disappointing trend hasn’t ebbed since the Long War began more than four years ago. Today the solemnity once associated with this day should be closer to the surface. Our nation is at war, which is to say our friends, family, and neighbors are fighting. Some of them do not make it home. In recent years, too many Americans have been personally touched by the sacrifice of battle. But the unfortunate reality is that for most people, the war remains a distant concept, something that happens on TV.
Losing brave Americans on fields of strife is not a new phenomenon. It’s part of our heritage. For over two hundred and twenty five years, our troops have made the ultimate sacrifice for what they believed was worth more than their own lives: Freedom. Not just the notion of freedom or the sound bite called forth in politically expedient ways, but freedom practiced by Americans every day.
This freedom is a gift across time, given most often anonymously. And now it is Memorial Day. How can Americans take it back and do right by the valor that created this day?
By action. For starters, the National Moment of Remembrance resolution asks that at 3 PM local time on Memorial Day all Americans should “voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence.”
Beyond that, Americans can honor the dead by supporting the living, especially those who serve. Send a note or visit the family of a servicemember who has died. Visit a veteran who is convalescing. Make a donation to the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, Armed Forces Relief Trust, or the Armed Services YMCA. Volunteer to work with local veterans’ groups. Encourage your employer to publicly recognize the veterans who work with you. Better yet, commit to hire veterans or military spouses in the coming year.
Visit the graves of fallen soldiers. Leave a flower on the stone. Consider the grave and behold the cost of freedom.
Or simply shake a Soldier’s hand. Support for the troops is more than a sticker on an SUV. Whatever we do, let’s make it personal, not commercial.
Let us take back Memorial Day, not for abstract ideas or guilt for having forgotten, but to pay a debt. To remember—and to act on the memory—is the least we can do for the men and women who said, “I will die so strangers’ lives will be better.” Make Memorial Day a personal reflection of a stranger’s costly gift.
-- Chris Michel
Stop Funding America's Enemies
Imagine if, in the middle of World War II, the U.S. government and its people gave Hitler billions of dollars, to train troops and build new weapons. Sounds impossible, right? But that's more or less the situation we find ourselves in today, former CIA director Jim Woolsey recently told the Naval Postgraduate School.
 The U.S. is in the opening stages of a "Long War" with Islamic extremists. And these adversaries -- whether they're found in madrassas in Riyadh or the government in Tehran -- are funded, in so small part, by oil revenue. Petrodollars go, more or less directly, to training radicals. Petrodollars get funneled to those who make and plant bombs.
"Except for our own Civil War," Woolsey notes, "this is the only war that we have fought where we are paying for both sides. We pay Saudi Arabia $160 billion for its oil, and $3 or $4 billion of that goes to the Wahhabis, who teach children to hate. We are paying for these terrorists with our SUVs."
And we are paying for them with our tanks, our Bradleys, and our fighter jets, observes Defense Technology International, which has a special issue out on "The Military and the End of Oil." In 2004, the U.S. military gobbled up 400,000 barrel of fuel a day, at cost of $6.7 billion. A year later, those costs had climbed to $8.8 billion. In 2006, the price tag is expect to total $10 billion.
"Meanwhile, advanced green technologies like hybrid drive vehicles [despite their limitations] offer both fuel economy and stealth benefits in combat, a significant plus in the urban warfare scenarios that appear to be such a big part of future wars," writes Joe Katzman, who's been all over this issue.
The truth is that the military can't live without fuel, but every gallon of it is both a logistics burden and a financial burden... Now add the fact that diversified "green infrastructure" lowers vulnerability to the kind of "system disruption" attacks one sees in Iraq, and the military/security benefits become compelling.
It sure does. Throughout the military today, there are lots and lots of individual R&D efforts underway to find alternatives to funding our enemies. But a collection of engineering projects is not enough. If we're serious about fighting this Long War, breaking the military's addiction to oil has to become a top priority.
Defense Tech Goes Canuck
Tune in, Canada. I'm going to be on CBC Television's "The Hour," tonight at 8pm.
It's "an irreverent, 'round-the-world, mile-a-minute look at news and current affairs that's actually fun to watch," the show's website promises. Even when they have jerks like me, flapping their gums.
"Our host is named George Stroumboulopoulos," adds a producer. "[K]ind of like Stephanopoulos, but with Strombo at the front of it."
Axe Needs Your Help
I'm working on a story on veterans and ID theft for our evil overlords at Military.com. Any vets out there with a tip or a personal anecdote about ID theft ... email me at david_axe@hotmail.com. Confidentiality available on request.
Thanks.
-- David Axe
Sea Swap = More Bang for Your Buck
For decades, the Navy has assigned two crews apiece to its ballistic missile subs, or "boomers". One crew is out at sea in the sub while the other is training and resting back home. The idea is that double crews let you squeeze more sailing days out of your ships. Boomers are ideally suited because they sail on rigid schedules that let you plan rotations far in advance.
In 2004, with the fleet shrinking and ships in high demand on the Pacific and in the Persian Gulf, the Navy launched a program to double-crew several destroyers. The ships stayed at sea while crews flew out to man them on six-month rotations. This saved months of sailing time by eliminating the need to bring a ship home just so the crew could rest.
The program, called Sea Swap, was a qualified success. Crews bitched about losing that sense of ownership that comes with being a ship's sole crew. Morale was an issue. But in operational terms, Sea Swap worked: three destroyers could do the work of five by staying on station longer, avoiding long ocean transits and saving on wear and tear.
The Navy announced two weeks ago that it is ending Sea Swap as an experiment. It will study the results and decide whether and how to apply the lessons learned to future classes of ships like the LCS and DDG-1000 (formerly DD(X)).
 In the meantime, the Navy's smallest fighting ships have permanently adopted a Sea Swap model. Once upon a time, the eight-ship class of coastal patrol boats (PCs) was scheduled for disposal, but now they're in high demand in shallow "green" waters like those of the Persian Gulf, as I write in the current National Defense Magazine:
Last year, recognizing the utility of these craft in green waters, the Navy halted all efforts to dispose of the remaining boats and even began negotiations with the Coast Guard to take back transferred PCs. The Navy moved two West Coast-based boats to Little Creek, a move that consolidated all operations and training at the Virginia base. At any given time, three boats are at Little Creek for drydocking and training while the rest remain forward deployed. Thirteen 30-person PC crews that are based at Little Creek fly out to the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf, on six-month rotations.
Sea swapping effectively nearly doubles the size of your fleet without adding any new hulls. Expect the future Navy to do with all its ships what it has done with boomers, destroyers and PCs, cheaply turning 300 ships into 500.
Check out some of my patrol boat pictures at Flickr.
--David Axe
P.S. -- Check out one of several recent reviews of my graphic novel WAR FIX!
Yellow Peril's Annual Comeback
 Did you miss it? I’m a little out of the loop on the far side of the Pacific, so I did. But yesterday was the annual CHINA IS COMING TO GET US!! day. I’m always stumped on an appropriate gift for the special occasion... Flowers? A card? The most expensive weapons system ever?
That’s right folks, it's time for the Pentagon's yearly report on China’s military power. Get ready for the big headlines and what are sure to be some choice quotes from the SecDef and your talking-head of choice.
In the coming weeks and months, the usual China-hawks are sure to mine the report for every quote that might make China look like the next evil empire. From the opposite extreme, habitual critics of the Pentagon will likely dig up the same excerpts to paint a department full of Sino-phobes. This AFP piece makes a good start at finding the choicest of these quotes, although with the good form (or indecision) of allowing you, the reader, to decide whether you’re anti-Pentagon or anti-China. But the full study itself is actually much more balanced than these quotes would imply.
The report accurately recounts the undeniable fact that China’s military is going through tremendous amounts of modernization and improvement. It will undoubtedly become a global force that solidifies the greater influence that China has in world affairs. The study also notes, however, that politically and strategically, China has not been making moves that indicate a nation looking to throw its weight around militarily: showing continually increasing interest in effective international organizations; contributing to UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and the Caribbean; making efforts to resolve border tensions with India and be a moderating force in Indo-Pakistani tensions; playing a pivotal role in seeking a diplomatic solution to the North Korea nuclear issue. All seem to illustrate a China interested in becoming “a responsible international stakeholder by taking on a greater share of responsibility for the health and success of the global system.”
Taiwan is, of course, the fundamental exception to China not throwing its weight around. The report discusses in detail China’s continuing efforts to gain the upper-hand in a potential military conflict in the Taiwan Strait, with a particular emphasis on deterring or counteracting foreign intervention (including China’s likely long-term goal of acquiring or developing a carrier-force in support of broader efforts towards sea-denial). There is little room for doubt or question as to how seriously China considers the Taiwan issue – it is the exception to China’s otherwise very pragmatic foreign and security policy. Even here, though, the DOD study points out that in recent years and in the likely future, China has been interested in pursuing all means that may resolve the Taiwan issue: “political, economic, cultural, legal, diplomatic, and military.” For example, it draws particular attention to Beijing’s “posture of restraint following President Chen [Shui-bian]’s decision to suspend the National Unification Council and National Unification Guidelines.”
The best doomsday scenario, of course, is of a China-US confrontation – Taiwan is just a possible flashpoint. In this vein, much can be made of the report’s repeated mention of China’s efforts to observe US military forces in action and apply lessons learned. (A recent RAND report made the same observations.) The big thing to notice, though, is that almost every example of this watchfulness has as much to do with China wanting to emulate US military tactics and equipment, as wanting to counter them. A particularly ironic example of these “lessons learned” can be found in the Pentagon’s analysis of why China will be deterred from military action against Taiwan in any but the most extreme situations: high monetary costs of war at home, an expensive reconstruction program in Taiwan, political condemnation and repercussions within the international community and the possibility that “an insurgency against the occupation could tie up substantial forces for years.”
Hmm… It’s been a long time since I took a psychology classes, but that’s called projecting, right?
The report isn’t without a few oddities, though. My particular favorite is when it notes a “resurgence in the study of ancient Chinese statecraft within the PLA,” apparently catching the crucial development of a new edition of Sun Zi’s Art of War on the PLA's reading list.
The bottom line of the report is that China’s military modernization has more do with seeking the trappings of a world-class power than pursuing a particular, military-minded agenda. Ultimately, the primary motivation for these rapid expenditures can be found in the fact that “the PLA is transforming from a mass infantry army designed to fight a protracted war of attrition within its territory to a modern, professional force.”
The Pentagon actually mentions little, if anything, that’s new from last year’s report. Nonetheless, if the last few years are any indication, we’re now in for a few months of reciprocal criticisms and “no, you’re the long-term threat to international peace and security.” There had been reasons for hope of improved military relations between China and the US, with recent China visits from National Defense University and the Combat Commander for the Pacific that culminated in an invitation to China to view US exercises near Guam. Now, we’ll have to see what, if anything, comes of these overtures.
If, rather than requiring annual reports on China’s military, Congress had required reports whenever there were significant developments or changes, it seems unlikely there would have been a report at all this year. This requirement has largely become today what the annual review of China’s Most Favored Nation status was in the 90’s: a yearly exercise in bilateral nipple-twisters that does little but restate trends that haven’t changed much from the last year and aren’t likely to change much in the next.
-- Matthew Tompkins
Anybody Got a Decent Explanation...
... for this?
The Veterans Affairs Department learned about the theft of electronic data on 26.5 million veterans shortly after it occurred, on May 3, but waited two weeks before telling law enforcement agencies, officials said Tuesday.
The officials said investigators in the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were furious with the leaders of the veterans agency for initially trying to handle the loss of the data [possibly the largest data theft ever] s an internal problem through the agency's inspector general before coming forward.
Officials said the investigators in the Justice Department and F.B.I. had complained that the delay might have cost them clues to the whereabouts of the data, stored on computer disks that were stolen in a burglary on May 3 at the home of an agency employee in Maryland.
UPDATE 3:09 PM: This gets even better. VA Secretary Jim Nicholson "was not told about the missing data until the night of May 16, or 13 days after the discs containing the data were stolen in a burglary at the residence of a department employee who had taken them home without authorization... [T]he secretary called the Federal Bureau of Investigation once he learned of the theft."
UPDATE 4:40 PM: Axe has a killer piece for Military.com today on Iraq vets' struggle to adjust to post-war life.
Double Cash for Less-Lethals
 Good news for makers and promoters of slime guns, sticky foam, and pain rays. Your days of being the Pentagon's equivalent of the kooky aunt, locked in the attic, may be coming to an end. It looks like Uncle Rummy wants you to start having supper with the family, after all.
The Donald "has directed the Defense Department to prepare a new investment plan that significantly increases spending on non-lethal weapons, laying the groundwork for their wider use," Inside Defense says.
Sources said the resulting investment plan, which covers fiscal years 2008 to 2013, could double spending on nonlethal technologies...
Last summer, the Defense Department issued its first Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support and directed U.S. forces to draw up plans to use non-lethal technologies in domestic missions, including those involving the protection of nuclear power plants and stopping suspicious ships in American waterways.
U.S. Northern Command, which oversees homeland defense in the continental United States and Alaska, and U.S. Pacific Command, which is responsible for the defense of Hawaii and U.S. protectorates in the Western Pacific, have incorporated non-lethal weapons into their operational planning documents and concepts of operation.
"TIA" Techniques in NSA Sweeps
It's not just about who calls who. The NSA phone-monitoring project looks at how terrorists place their calls – and then applies that model to everyone, to see who else might be a suspect. It's a form of predictive data mining made famous by the notorious Total Information Awareness project.
 "Armed with details of billions of telephone calls, the National Security Agency used phone records linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to create a template of how phone activity among terrorists looks," according to USA Today. "The template, officials say, was created from a secret database of phone call records collected by the spy agency. It has been used since 9/11 to identify calling patterns that indicate possible terrorist activity. Among the patterns examined: flurries of calls to U.S. numbers placed immediately after the domestic caller received a call from Pakistan or Afghanistan."
That's new. When the NSA's phone-monitoring programs came to light – first in December, then again two weeks ago – the projects were said to focus on "social network analysis." Who knows who, in other words. If Osama calls your friend, and he turns around and calls you, the logic goes, you and Osama and probably linked in a common plot. If you don't share anyone in common, you're in the clear.
But, for prominent social network analysts, something didn't quite add up. Building a database of "every call ever made" didn't really help find those personal connections. If anything, the additional records made things even harder.
Today, we learn why everyone's calls had to be in the target set. The NSA wasn't just conducting social network analysis. It was using a more controversial data mining technique, dragged into the popular imagination by Darpa's Total Information Awareness project. It focuses on prediction, not connections.
Under this approach, sophisticated algorithms hunt for patterns of terrorist behavior in information-trails, and then apply those patterns to average citizens, seeing which ones fit. It doesn't matter who you know. It's what you do that gets you in trouble. If you spend money and buy plane tickets like Mohammed Atta did, then maybe you're a terrorist, too. Same goes for the kind, and frequency, of phone calls you make.
Using computer programs, the NSA searches through the database looking for suspicious calling patterns, the officials say. Because of the size of the database, virtually all the analysis is done by computer. Calls coming into the country from Pakistan, Afghanistan or the Middle East, for example, are flagged by NSA computers if they are followed by a flood of calls from the number that received the call to other U.S. numbers.
The spy agency then checks the numbers against databases of phone numbers linked to terrorism, the officials say. Those include numbers found during searches of computers or cellphones that belonged to terrorists.
It is not clear how much terrorist activity, if any, the data collection has helped to find.
(Big ups: Eric)
UPDATE 12:57 PM: "The NSA spying program... is fundamentally a system for identifying criminals by statistical analysis. Americans need to come to grips with whether they approve of this," says Kevin Drum.
Take a different, but equally incendiary example. Suppose that we could semi-reliably create a statistical portrait of child molesters: their age, geographical location, gender, and calling and buying patterns...
Needless to say, the FBI could track these patterns using the same methods as the NSA and then exploit the results to create lists of "possible child molesters." And it might work. But would we be OK with the FBI tapping someone's phone just because they fit a statistical profile? Or staking out their house? Or investigating their friends?
And if we can do it for suspected terrorists and child molesters, how about tax evaders and unlicensed gun owners? ... And if not, why not? After all, if you're not doing anything wrong, why would you object to being investigated?
UPDATE 3:26 PM: Eric makes another great catch, unearthing these nuggets from an interview that First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams did on Charlie Rose's show the other night. Abrams, it turns out, was on a privacy panel overseeing TIA:
We basically said if you want to engage in data mining, which we said was a very good way to gather information to fight terrorism, you should go to the FISA court to get permission...
The panel presented its conclusions to Secretary Rumsfeld--who, it might be noted, is also a boss the NSA, since it's a military agency. Rummy thanked them, got some good P.R. and sent them on their way.
Asked by guest host Brian Ross, "Do you feel used?" Floyd said:
[I]t's one thing to be on a commission and then be ignored. That's --that's life. But not even to be told that the government was then engaged in the very activities that we were writing about does seem as if we were being used, yes.
Rapid Fire 05/23/06
* Vets' data snatched
* Afghan fighting "most intense since 2001"
* Israel nabbed; sold drones to China
* DHS, NSA: BFF?
* Bomb parts in snack plants
* Health hazards for Area 51 workers
* Student arrested for food fight
* UAVs learning to fly in crowds
* Bing West, back in Fallujah
* Hot Stiletto pics
* Judy Miller, busted again
(Big ups: TP, RC)
Army's Psychic Animal Pals
 In 1953 the U.S. Army commissioned a report by Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine to ascertain "whether dogs could, as claimed, locate buried landmines under conditions that gave no normal sensory cues." The conclusions of this report were considered so dangerous embarrassing they remained classified until today.
The Memory Hole has been hard at work obtaining a copy of Rhine's "Final Report for Contract DA-44-009-ENG-1039" -- codename "Animal E.S.P."
According to Dr Rhine, "an investigation of the available reports, and visits to England to learn what the British Army had found, led to a serious question as to whether the claim was well founded". Dr Rhine's experiments focused on German Schu mines buried in a few inches of moist sand. A tough nut to crack, you'll agree. Only 2 years and 15 grueling typed pages later, Dr Rhine concluded "dogs can be trained to locate mines...and there can be no doubt but that, for the most part, this is a sensory function, olefactory in type". Stop the presses.
That didn't end the Pentagon's fascination with E.S.P., author Jon Ronson notes in his book The Men who Stare At Goats. He explains, "In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known accepted military practice - and indeed, the laws of physics - they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them." However, it's not entirely clear from Mr. Ronson's work whether the classic 'crook' or more painful 'stink eye'was used.
Unfortunately the affects of Dr Rhine's work penetrated deep within the Army psyche altering the course of 'black' operations for years to come. Disasters associated with programmes such as pSychic Warfighter Insertion/Nautical Extraction, or the "Bay of Pigs" as it was known, forced many subjects underground and left the rest of us with memories of psychic animals we'd rather forget.
-- Steven Snell
Pain Ray Too Slow for Iraq?
For quite a while, now, we've heard promises that a microwave-like pain ray, the Active Denial System, was on its way to Iraq. But, so far, no Iraqis have been zapped. What gives?
 According to Bloomberg News, "Raytheon's new weapon, which is intended to repel hostile forces by creating a sensation of intense heat on skin, doesn't act quickly enough to be effective, said U.S. Marine Corps Col. Wade Hall, who directs the program that would test the device."
The device is scheduled to be installed on three Stryker transports headed to Iraq next year as part of a test of a range of new technologies [including sonic blasters and laser dazzlers]. If the problem isn't fixed, the Pentagon will have to decide in the next few months whether to include it...
"The primary quality I'm concerned with is timeliness," Hall said. "We need to get these capabilities to the war fighter as quickly and safely as possible. I set some pretty hard timelines. I don't let things drag out for many months."
(Big ups: Milblogs)
NSA: "Total Access," or Info Overload?
Wired News has published the most definitive look yet at AT&T's secret room that supposedly let NSA spooks tap domestic phone calls. The info comes out of excerpts from internal Ma Bell documents, currently under court seal.
 It's not the only news on the NSA's surveillance efforts that trickling out today. Seymour Hersh spoke with a "security consultant " who helped set up "a top-secret high-speed circuit between its main computer complex and Quantico, Virginia, the site of a government-intelligence computer center."
This link provided direct access to the carrier’s network core—the critical area of its system, where all its data are stored. “What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records,” the consultant said. “They’re providing total access to all the data...."
Theoretically, [the agency could have gone] to the FISA court for a warrant to listen in. One problem, however, was the volume and the ambiguity of the data that had already been generated. (“There’s too many calls and not enough judges in the world,” the former senior intelligence official said.) The agency would also have had to reveal how far it had gone, and how many Americans were involved. And there was a risk that the court could shut down the program.
Instead, the N.S.A. began, in some cases, to eavesdrop on callers (often using computers to listen for key words) or to investigate them using traditional police methods. A government consultant told me that tens of thousands of Americans had had their calls monitored in one way or the other.
"Still, it's questionable how successful the NSA could be mining data on just some of the calls made within the United States," Information Week notes.
More than 1,000 wireless carriers, Internet service providers, rural phone companies, voice-over-IP service providers, and long distance companies handle phone calls. For a complete picture, the NSA would need to draw in much of that data, and the more data, the bigger the task. "The history of the intelligence community is information glut," says Mark Pollitt, a former FBI agent and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins' School of Professional Studies in Business and Education. "We're good at collecting stuff, but how do you figure out if any of it is any good? This is perhaps the toughest issue with regard to counterterrorism."
(Big ups: Laura, Kim)
UPDATE 12:42 PM: Also, be sure to check out this fascinating New Republic story by ever-intrepid Spencer Ackerman. "Is U.S. intelligence getting dumber?" he asks.
Negroponte isn't just moving analysts from one office to another. He's also changing how they work. Analysis, say veterans, is becoming the study of the day's events rather than of the broader trend--the trees instead of the forest. "Their time horizons are very short," says Greg Treverton, a former NIC [National Intelligence Council] vice-chairman now at the Rand Corporation. "[Y]ou ask them, 'What about these longer-term questions, like how Al Qaeda is morphing?' They say, 'That's a great question. I wish we could do something on it, but we just don't have time.'" The CIA, apparently with Negroponte's approval, even eliminated the agency's premier center for long-range forecasting, the Strategic Assessments Group. While CIA spokesman Tom Crispell says there has been "no analytic capability lost," Robert Hutchings, the NIC chairman from 2003 to 2005, calls it "a retrograde step," noting that the group "did some of the most imaginative and strategic thinking in all of government."…
And, for Hutchings, the correlation between short-term analysis and the recent U.S. strategic blunders is unmistakable. "This administration has really undermined strategic analysis and strategic policy-making," he says. "You look at the course of our involvement in Iraq. It has just been adlibbing from almost the time main combat stopped." Nor is that happening by accident, he continues: "The administration has allowed strategic analytic capacity to erode because it doesn't want strategic analysis. It wants isolated facts and narrow analysis that it can draw upon to support its preferred policies."
UPDATE 2:07 PM: Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen pull out some of the best Slashdot reacts to the AT&T documents' release.
UPDATE 5:58: As Business Week reminds us, "the phone giants represent only one of many commercial sources of personal data that the government seeks to 'mine' for evidence of terrorist plots and other threats."
The Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security spend millions annually to buy commercial databases that track Americans' finances, phone numbers, and biographical information, according to a report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Often, the agencies and their contractors don't ensure the data's accuracy, the GAO found.
Buying commercially collected data allows the government to dodge certain privacy rules. The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies may use such information and requires disclosure of what the government is doing with it. But the law applies only when the government is doing the data collecting.
"Grabbing data wholesale from the private sector is the way agencies are getting around the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment," says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and a member of the Homeland Security Dept.'s Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee.
(Big ups: JE)
Cancer Worries for New U.S. Bombs
The U.S. military is working on a small, precise bomb that could hit targets "previously off limits to the warfighter." The problem is, it might cause cancer.
Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) is one of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s responses to the challenge of fighting in an urban environment without hurting innocent bystanders in the process.
Recent news about an airstrike which may have killed civilians, as well as Taliban fighters, highlights the problem. Similar situations have occurred repeatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan; sometimes targets could not be engaged, because of the risk of harming nearby civilians. One option is to use smaller weapons. Another is dropping inert bombs, filled with concrete rather than explosives, to minimize collateral damage.
 But what's really required is something which is just as lethal as a standard bomb, but keeps its lethal zone to a minimum. This is exactly what DIME delivers.
DIME is used in the Low Collateral Damage version of the Small Diameter Bomb currently under development. This has a carbon fiber casing which turns into dust rather than creating dangerous fragments. The bomb is filled with explosive mixed with tungsten powder, which becomes micro-shrapnel. The small-sized tungsten particles drag to a halt at about 40 charge diameters. In the case of the SDB, that gives a destructive radius of about 25 feet.
The result is an incredibly destructive blast in a small area, what the Air Force Term "Focused Lethality." The AFRL Munitions Directorate provided this picture of a DIME test, but were unable to discuss the topic. However, I talked to others who have worked in this area. They were consistently awed by the destructive power of the mixture, which causes far more damage than pure explosive within the near field. The impact of the micro-shrapnel seems to cause a similar but more powerful effect than a shockwave.
Early blasts even destroyed test instruments:
Unfortunately, the high-velocity, high temperature inert metal particles found in DIME fills have proved to be extremely damaging to traditional pressure measurement instruments. Hence, new measurement diagnostics had to be developed to investigate DIME formulations.
Because there are no large fragments, Focused Lethality Munitions should not cause a hazard at any great distance. The standard Small Diameter Bomb is claimed to be lethal out to 2,000 feet or more, the Focused Lethality version will have a smaller but deadlier footprint - a 12-gauge compared to a rifle.
 Little has been released on the exact effects of DIME explosives, but it’s interesting that a presentation on future munitions illustrates focused lethality with a tank which had been turned on its side by blast. Aimed accurately, it looks like it would be capable of destroying a building completely without damaging the rest of the neighborhood.
Metal powders -- typically aluminum -- have been added to explosives for many years. But those are reactive metals, making the blast even stronger. Tungsten, on the other hand, is inert. So it remains in metallic form and absorbs some of the energy of the explosion. DIME originated in work to increase the density of the explosive mixture, improving the penetrating power of bunker busting bombs. But the bonus effect of the micro-shrapnel proved to be more significant than the increased density.
The Air Force's focused lethality munition had an enthusiastic write-up in the Wall Street Journal. The US Navy's Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren is also working on DIME munitions.
According to the Air Force’s FY 2007 Unfunded Priority List, the focused lethality munitions "will be able to prosecute targets previously off limits to the warfighter."
This suggests that they will be used in close proximity to civilians or friendly forces. The only collateral damage may be stray tungsten particles – clumping, or larger particles in the mix might mean some effect outside the focused zone. Would grains of inert tungsten present a problem? According to New Scientist magazine:
In a study designed to simulate shrapnel injuries, pellets of weapons-grade tungsten alloy were implanted in 92 rats. Within five months all the animals developed a rare cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, according to John Kalinich's team at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Maryland.
92 out of 92 - "tumor yield was 100%" - is a significant result. The full report is here.
I checked with University of Arizona cancer researcher Dr. Mark Witten, quoted in the New Scientist story, to see how things have developed. Dr. Witten is investigating links between tungsten and leukemia, and is concerned about its possible use DIME or other munitions:
"My opinion is that there needs to be much more research on the health effects of tungsten before the military increases its usage."
We don’t know whether a Focused Lethality Munition is likely to result in tungsten particles striking anyone outside the lethal area. Nor do we know the possible environmental impact tungsten powder left afterwards. But given that the Focused Lethality munition will be used in situations which are likely to produce media attention and political repercussions, these should be addressed.
The aims of the Low Collateral Damage program are worthwhile. But unless the issues around tungsten are resolved we could see a repeat of the depleted uranium story. Instead of decreasing controversy, the new weapon might create even more.
-- David Hambling
UPDATE 05/22/06 1:45PM: Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch comments:
While Human Rights Watch is supportive of the US military's commitment to reducing civilian casualties, collateral damage as they call it, it is unfortunate that these weapons are being developed specifically for use in densely populated areas which may negate the intended effect.
Rapid Fire 05/20/06
* Dragon Skin armor flunks tests (background here)
* Sat snoops, Microsoft team up
* Telcos' eavesdropping "scapegoat"?
* Details leak on Grand Challenge 3
* Stark anniversary
* Cops, spooks ask for AOL data 12,000 times/year
* Spaceport fever!
* Dear NSA: What should I get my wife for her birthday?
(Big ups: ABC, EG, /.)
Winning (and Losing) the First Wired War
This war in Iraq was launched on a theory: That, with the right communication and reconnaissance gear, American armed forces would be quicksilver-fast and supremely lethal. A country could be conquered with only a fraction of the soldiers needed in the past.
 During the initial invasion in March 2003, this idea of "network-centric warfare" worked more or less as promised -- even though most of the frontline troops weren't wired up. It was enough that the commanders were connected.
But now, more than three years into the Iraq conflict, the network is still largely incomplete. Local command centers have a torrent of information pouring in. For soldiers and marines on the ground, this war isn't any more wired that the last one. "There is a connectivity gap," a draft Army War College report notes. "Information is not reaching the lowest levels."
And that's a problem, because the insurgents are stitching together a newtwork of their own. Using throwaway cellphones and anonymous e-mail accounts, these guerrillas rely on a loose web of connections, not a top-down command structure. And they don't fight in large groups that can be easily tracked by high-tech command posts. They have to be hunted down in dark neighborhoods, found amid thousands of civilians, and taken out one by one.
David Axe -- recently back from his 6th trip to Iraq -- and I have a special report in this month's Popular Science, on "Winning (and Losing) the First Wired War." Give it a read. And see how this network-centric ideal is playing out, for real.
Axe Grades Iraq Tech
 David Axe has been to Iraq six times, now. So, as part of our big Popular Science feature on the technology of the Iraq war (more on that in a sec), he put together a report card on the U.S. military's ten most important systems in the combat zone.
Check out his grades for everything from the Apache Longbow helicopter ("C") to the M-14 sniper rifle ("A") to the M1A2 Abrams tank (another "C"). And leave your own reviews down below.
War in Kansas!
There's a war on at the Army's Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. At CGSC, a thousand mid-grade officers from the Army, the other U.S. services and a dozens of foreign militaries study history, strategy and languages in freewheeling seminars of 16 people. And between classes, at computer stations scattered around this lush green campus, they command coalition forces in computer simulations modeled on Iraq and Afghanistan.
I profiled CGSC for Military.com's Warfighter's Forum:
 “It's interesting to watch the class dynamics," says Brig. Gen. Jim Warner, the deputy commandant in charge of curriculum and faculty. "Typically, the first thing that happens is the infantry folks jump in and give a relatively direct authoritarian solution to the problem, which then broadens to include logistics and other assets. Then, typically, the sister services come in and talk about contributions everyone forgot could be played by them. The international officers are usually relatively reserved until the last few minutes, then they casually mention they've been working on this problem in their home country for 10 years ... and this is how they think we should tackle the problem.”
CGSC's joint and international approach to warfighting reflects a real-world trend and puts the school's sims years ahead of other realistic training in the U.S. military. Both the Army and Marine Corps have created elaborate simulated Iraq exercises, at Ft. Polk and Twentynine Palms respectively, but these tactical and operational exercises remain mostly stovepiped for single services. The Army keeps to their sandbox at Polk, the Marines
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