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.

Rapid Fire 05/25/06 (UPDATED)

* Another strong anti-missile test at sea

* Israelis unveil new RPG-stopper

* Europe's killer drone inches ahead

* Chemical security getting gassed

* Ex-NSAer: spying hurts security

* Senators propose snoop cash cut

* "America's China War Plan"

* Iraqi EOD trains up

* Surveillance court's new judge

* "Black budget bonanza"

* "Your money or your site"

* Justice Department kills own surveillance probe

(Big ups: Bruce)

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 to theirs at Twentynine Palms.

To be fair, CGSC's command-post exercises are cheaper and simpler than the sprawling kinetic tactical exercises. It's easier to bring sister-service and foreign participants into a sim that mostly involves sitting around a computer talking out problems.

And besides, the stovepiped nature of the tactical exercises reflects a battlefield reality: despite integration on the strategic and high-operational levels, at the level of companies and battalions, the U.S. services keep mostly to themselves. Marine battalions are lifted into the fight by Marine helos and get their air support from Marine jets refueled by Marine tankers. Army battalions are supported mostly by other Army assets.

But even this DIY age, the military works in a top-down fashion. Expect the jointness we see at CGSC to keep trickling down to the grunts on the ground. More on that later.

-- David Axe

P.S. -- I've inked a deal to write breaking news for Military.com. Check out the very first, on the Army deployment cycle, here.

Border Tech Upgrade?

When I drove into Ft. Huachuca, Arizona last year, one of the first things I noticed was the aerostat lingering above the horizon, keeping track of the Mexican border, just a few miles away. A couple of days later, I visited with a pair of Border Patrol agents, who showed me how their new flying drone had helped them catch illegals crossing into the country. They couldn't wait to get another.

Now, the Times tells us, the Bush administration wants to expand the use of techno-goodies like these along the border -- at a cost of $2 billion.

Lawmakers are skeptical. "We've been presented with expensive proposals for elaborate border technology that eventually have proven to be ineffective and wasteful," Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, said. So are some of my favorite homeland security analysts, like Christian Beckner. He notes that the Border Patrol's Predator B robotic spy plane, which crashed last month, sucked up about $7,808 per apprehension -- compared to a $1,166 per-catch average cost for the rest of the Patrol's budget.

So, clearly, there needs to be big-time oversight of this "Secure Border Initiative" -- especially if companies like Northrop are going to come up with hare-brained schemes like watching for coyotes from 65,000 feet. And, obviously, no technology is going to beat boots on the ground -- trained boots, that is.

But still, I'm inclined to give the administration the benefit of the doubt here. The Border Patrol -- especially in the Tuscon sector, around Ft. Huachuca -- has a nearly impossible job, trying to catch millions of illegals with just a few thousand agents. The least we can do is equip 'em right.

Holy Controlled Roof Ascent!

The geniuses at Darpa have had another brainstorm: a high-powered ejector seat designed to forcibly shoot an unfortunate soul onto a roof, instantly. It should wow onlooking crowds at house fires and hostage situations alike.

An inclined (ha) member of the military or emergency services simply seats themselves -- and in around two seconds experiences what can only be described as being 'sneezed' to a height of five stories.

Existing circus cannons fall outside the FCS framework, so once again the Pentagon has turned to Darpa to pick up the slack. Of course, Darpa were happy to provide their inspiration in the patent:

"Circuses have amused crowds by shooting performers out of cannons. For recreational enjoyment, certain traditional devices for launching subjects catapult subjects to experience a free-fall sensation similar to the sensation of bungee jumping or skydiving. Aircraft ejection seat technology and aircraft carrier launching systems, such as catapults, are also capable of launching payloads, however, most of these designs have unpredictable and uncontrollable trajectories and/or cannot be immediately reset and reused."

I'm glad to see they did their research; it's been a tough year since 'Captain Crazy Clowns Emergency Roof Cannons' filed for bankruptcy - all those burnt cats...

"What is therefore needed is a launcher that is controllable, and able to launch payloads through a repeatable and predictable trajectory. Furthermore, the launcher should have a substantially short recycle time thus a user can launch another payload in a relatively short time after the previous launch."

And consider his life insurance plans, while he's at it.

Unfortunately this "man-cannon" is a rather bulky device requiring multiple hands get around and construct. Plus, I think it looks like a contraption from Hustler, patiently waiting for a C-list celebrity to straddle it on the The Howard Stern Show.

For regular folk (and members of Voltron Force), there is an alternative on the market: the 'Rescue Rocket' line, comprised of compressed-air launched grappling hooks, should handle the needs of most Batmen. The new-fangled devices known as 'ladders' should take care of the rest.

-- Steven Snell

Taking On Iran's Air Force

The stand-off with Iran over its nuclear ambitions was just beginning while I was embedded with Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 332 at Al Asad air base in Iraq. More than once the fliers lamented that they'd probably be back in the States by the time the "inevitable" bombing of Iran got underway. One conversation went something like this:

Me: Oh God. We can't afford a war with Iran

Aviator #1: Whatever. We'd kick their asses.

Aviator #2: No, they've got F-14s!

Aviator #3: Yeah, my wife [deployed to northern Iraq] saw one!

Aviator #1: We'd still kick their asses.

Me: Oh God.

If, God help us, the stand-off does turn violent, U.S. air power will play a critical role. For months pundits have predicted a massive bombing campaign to target Iran's nuclear facilities, and perhaps even to attempt regime change.

But don't expect Iran's air force to roll over like Iraq's did in 1991 and again in 2003. Unlike the Iraqi air force, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) appears to be well-armed, well-trained and eager for a fight. Besides the aforementioned F-14 Tomcats, 79 of which the U.S. sold to the country before the Shah was deposed, the air force operates several dozen of each of the following types:

J-7 (Chinese-built MiG-21 derivative)
MiG-29
Su-24
F-5E
F-4E Phantom
Mirage F1

All told, the IRIAF flies as many as 300 fighters. All are older designs, but have been maintained and, in many cases, upgraded by the indigenous aerospace industry, which has become proficient in reverse-engineering weapons and spare parts -- and perhaps even engines. And the IRIAF has aerial tankers too -- a force multiplier only the most advanced air forces maintain.

Veteran aviation correspondent Tom Cooper and his co-writer Liam Devlin have a fascinating feature in the current issue of Combat Aircraft Magazine, profiling the IRIAF. The authors have interviewed IRIAF defectors and U.S. Navy aircrew that have tangled with Iranian fliers over the Arabian Gulf. The feature cautions against the Western habit of underestimating the IRIAF:

In November 2003, a USAF E-3 Sentry flying a patrol over Iraq tracked a formation of no less than 16 IRIAF F-14As ... This was the largest group of Iranian F-14s detected in flight by the U.S. military since 1997, when nine IRIAF Tomcats were tracked over the southern Persian Gulf by the U.S. Navy. ... During the summer of 2005, several Su-24s were observed operating over the Persian Gulf, armed with Chinese-made C802K-2 anti-ship missiles. ... Iranian Phantoms were sighted as well, usually carrying AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder [air-to-air missiles].

Now that the 1st Fighter Wing has its first F-22 squadron combat-ready, and with the Navy's Super Hornets equipped with electronically-scanned radars, we have the capability to beat the IRIAF. But it wouldn't necessarily be an easy fight. Throw in Iran's SA-15 surface-to-air missiles and you've got a tough air-defense nut to crack. And remember ... an air campaign might be just a prelude to a ground invasion. Last year I stood on the Iraq-Iran border and listened to Iranian armored divisions throw down practice artillery barrages. The Tennessee National Guardsmen I was with (the 278th cavalry regiment equipped with M-1 Abrams tanks) admitted that they couldn't punch through that border if they wanted to.

We must find a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions.

--David Axe

P.S. -- This discussion of Cooper's article includes some interesting insights.

NBA: Nothing but 'Net

I'm often accused of posting stuff on this site that has nothing to do with defense technnology. For once, I'll plead guilty as charged.

In February, Fast Company magazine was kind enough to send me to the NBA All-Star Game, to report on the league's forays into digital media. Along the way, I caught the slam dunk contest and hung backstage with Snoop -- officially making this The Coolest Assignment Ever.

The article, however, wound up being all business. Here's how it starts:

A thousand things are happening on the basketball court at the Toyota Center, Houston's 18,000-seat arena: Technicians are scrambling. Radio announcers are practicing their game-voice baritones. The pitter-patter of balls on hardwood sounds like a quickening heartbeat. Sitting two rows back, on the second night of the NBA's All-Star Weekend, Brenda Spoonemore takes it all in with ice-blue eyes and a wide grin. Long before she began working for the NBA six years ago, she was the kind of kid who named her pet gerbils after Seattle SuperSonics stars. Now she's the kind of grown-up who spends her vacations in skyboxes, catching games with her family. "How cool is this?" she asks.

As the NBA's senior vice president of interactive services, Spoonemore must get a whole new generation of fans hooked on hoops. Ironically, that means changing how the sport she fell in love with is presented. Showing two-and-a-half-hour games helped the NBA grow into a $3 billion-a-year monster. But the majority of that growth came before most Internet connections went broadband, and before wireless networks got beefy enough for video. Now, many fans don't want to watch a whole game, especially on a PC or a 2-inch cell screen. So it's up to a team of dozens at the NBA to digitally repackage the league's offerings around individual plays and players. "Full games, that's this much of what we do," Spoonemore says, her fingers half an inch apart.

Telcos Deny NSA Ties - And Allowed to Lie?

Verizon and BellSouth are denying the charges, that they've helped out the NSA. AT&T, on the other hand, finds itself back in court this morning, over its alleged cooperation with the spooks. The issue: Company whistleblower Mark Klein's notes about the 24-by-48 feet "secret room... [that] only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter."

Ryan Singel, as usual, has the scoop.

Meanwhile, Eric Umansky sees some "exquisitely crafted spin going on."

As the NYT puts it, a "senior government official confirmed" that the NSA has "access to records of most telephone calls in the United States." The Times hints at a possible explanation for the discrepancy: The spooks are tracking only long-distance calls, and Verizon and BellSouth hand those calls off to other providers, such as, say, AT&T, which is the one company named that has stayed mum.

Sounds possible. But that BellSouth denial, at least, was about as unequivocal as you could imagine: "We have provided no customer information whatsoever to the NSA."

UPDATE 11:38 AM: This William Arkin post is well worth a read:

I spoke to a friend in the business yesterday, a retired military intelligence officer who works at some beltway corporation that contracts big time with NSA.

He cautions that I shouldn't get ahead of themselves worrying about an all-seeing government and a seamless surveillance culture. Billions are being secretly spent annually for software development, network infrastructure, database management, etc., to build a dreamed for system that will be able to autonomously connect the dots and detect terrorists before they strike. But a seamless system, my always reliable and level headed friend assures, is still far away.

So that got me thinking: a fantastic system costing billions of dollars roping in scores of companies butting up against orthodoxy and even legality with the dreamed for end result of autonomous and perfect defense.

Data mining is the Bush administration's Star Wars.

UPDATE 12:18 PM: Back at Wired News, there's a look at "The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool" -- Narus' Semantic Traffic Analyzer installed at AT&T, allegedly at the NSA's behest.

UPDATE 3:17 PM: Eric has dug up another plausible explanation for the telcos' denials: they outsource all the data-mineable info to Israel. He pulls up this Fox News transcript as evidence:

BellSouth subcontracts with an Israeli company known as Amdocs to handle its billing, as do several other U.S. phone companies. In 2001, U.S. intelligence officials were on record as saying that the information that Amdocs handled was so valuable that a great deal could be learned if sophisticated data-mining techniques were used against that information.

UPDATE 3:20 PM: Oh, this is rich. "Ordinarily, a company that conceals their transactions and activities from the public would violate securities law," ThinkProgess notes. "But an presidential memorandum signed by the President on May 5 allows the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to authorize a company to conceal activities related to national security. (See 15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A))"

There is no evidence that this executive order has been used by John Negroponte with respect to the telcos. Of course, if it was used, we wouldn’t know about it.

(Big ups: TP)

Senators Love Robots

The Senate Armed Service Committee loves drones. They're so smitten, in fact, that they're trying to force the Pentagon to prove why any new weapons system should be manned at all. Check out this snippet from the Committee's version of the 2007 Defense budget:

The Secretary of Defense shall... develop a policy applicable throughout the Department of Defense on research, development, test, and evaluation, procurement, and operation of unmanned systems [which] shall include the... preference for joint unmanned systems in acquisition programs for new systems, including a requirement under any such program for the development of a manned system for a certification that an unmanned system is incapable of meeting program requirements. (emphasis mine)

Now, this unmanned romance began a long time ago. Six years back, SASC Chairman John Warner called for one third of all military vehicles -- both in the air and on the ground -- to be robotic by 2015. Nobody expected it to happen, literally. But, as National Journal noted at the time, "Warner has already achieved his first objective. He has fired his shotgun into the heavens and gotten everybody's attention."

LifeLog Trials Begin

Those kooky, possibly-creepy defense programs are awfully hard to kill. Take LifeLog, Darpa's controversial project to archive almost everything about people -- where they've gone, what they've said, how they're feeling. The agency seemed to pull the plug on the program, after some pesky reporters started looking into it. But seven months later, large portions of the electronic diary effort were back, under a new name: Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology, or ASSIST.

Now, Darpa is showing its LifeLog ASSIST handywork off, at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Soldiers there, wearing a ton of cameras and sensors, are going on mock-patrol through a simulated Iraqi village -- and recording the whole thing.

The sensors are expected to capture, classify and store such data as the sound of acceleration and deceleration of vehicles, images of people (including suspicious movements that might not be seen by the soldiers), speech and specific types of weapon fire.

A capacity to give GPS locations, an ability to translate Arabic signs and text into English, as well as on-command video recording also are being demonstrated in Aberdeen. Sensor system software is expected to extract keywords and create an indexed multimedia representation of information collected by different soldiers. For comparison purposes, the soldiers wearing the sensors will make an after-action report based on memory and then supplement that after-action report with information learned from the sensor data.

(Big ups: Boing Boing)

Careful with the Call-Chains, NSA

More experts are stepping up to tell us what Valdis Krebs said here last week: be careful with those call-chains, NSA.

"Not every link is as useful as the next," notes Jeff Jonas, who data-mined for both Washington and Las Vegas heavyweights. "Not only must one start with a bad guy but also pursue relationships in a very narrow manner."

Employees who handle cash who are roommates with gaming felons present some risk. Employees would be expected to disclose such. Is this a telltale sign of a criminal intent or a crime? Not in the least! Is this something worth a little more attention than my mom? Well when it comes to casinos, and their expected levels of due diligence, the answer is yes.

What kind of data proves useful in expressing a close personal relationship? Well this generally involves either shared resources (homes, cars, phones) or personal communications (e.g., calls, emails, care packages, money wires). There are a few others, but I will have to let your mind wander as I would hate to tip off any evil doers.

Even when starting with a bad guy, and following only close, personal relationships, the usefulness of the trail still degrades very quickly. That is unless the trail leads to another previously known bad guy … then of course, those in between are certainly a bit more interesting.

Meanwhile, over at the Times, Jonathan David Farley notes "a second problem with the spy agency's apparent methodology." It's "in the way terrorist groups operate and what scientists call the 'strength of weak ties.'"

As the military scientist Robert Spulak has described it to me, you might not see your college roommate for 10 years, but if he were to call you up and ask to stay in your apartment, you'd let him. This is the principle under which sleeper cells operate: there is no communication for years. Thus for the most dangerous threats, the links between nodes that the agency is looking for simply might not exist.

If our intelligence agencies are determined to use mathematics in rooting out terrorists, they may consider a profiling technique called formal concept analysis, a branch of lattice theory. The idea, in a nutshell, is that people who share many of the same characteristics are grouped together as one node, and links between nodes in this picture — called a "concept lattice" — indicate that all the members of a certain subgroup, with certain attributes, must also have other attributes.

For formal concept analysis to be helpful, you need much more than phone records. For instance, you might group together people based on what cafes, bookstores and mosques they visit, and then find out that all the people who go to a certain cafe also attend the same mosque (but maybe not vice versa).

Duncan Hearts JFK, Hates Cash

No one, it seems, is ready to let JFK die. Certainly not U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who has proposed that NATO take ownership of the soon-to-be-mothballed U.S. aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy. Not that they can afford the thing. Or have the aircraft to fly off of it.

Read the hilarious details in Aerospace Daily.

Hunter apparently envisions NATO operating helicopters and "vertical-lift aircraft" (ie, tilt-rotors, which no NATO nation besides the U.S. owns). While NATO has successfully pooled its resources to operate a small fleet of E-3 AWACS, and will probably do the same with future fleets of ground-surveillance aircraft and airlifters, it neither needs an aircraft carrier nor has the $200 million per year it would take to keep one in service. For the record, NATO's annual budget is just $1.5 billion, a third of which comes from the U.S.

This is the latest -- but not wackiest! -- scheme to keep the JFK in service. Last year, when the Navy proposed axing the Kennedy to fund new shipbuilding, Rep. John Warner (R-Vir.) and his allies with economic ties to big naval facilities tried a million and one things to save the old ship. The loopiest scheme involved foisting the flattop on the Coast Guard -- yes, that Coast Guard -- for use as a mobile disaster-relief base.

Madness.

For the record: while cost-effective in terms of their ability to persist in hostile environments and put lots of bombs on targets, carriers are enormously expensive and manpower-intensive. Except for long-term, high-intensity operations, they're not worth the hundreds of millions of dollars annually it takes just to keep them afloat. That's why only the U.S. Navy (and soon the Royal Navy) operates large carriers. If the Coast Guard were to take on a carrier, it would have to abandon its long-overdue Deepwater shipbuilding plan.

Besides, disaster relief is a secondary role that carriers in Navy service can undertake while working up for or winding down from combat deployments. Keeping a carrier on Coast Guard retainer would mean a very expensive vessel doing nothing for 11 months out of the year.

NATO cannot afford a carrier any more than the Coast Guard can. Nor does NATO need a carrier when member states such as the U.S., Great Britain, France, Spain and Italy already contribute large and small carriers to NATO operations.

But this isn't really about giving NATO carrier capability. This is about sour grapes. Hunter: "Typically the United States brings the T-bone steaks and some of our allies bring the plastic forks. The John F. Kennedy might be a center for ... inspiring our allies to do more with respect to defense."

Yes, it's true that most of our NATO allies spend less of their GDP on defense than we and the Brits do. A serious commitment to collective defense is in order. But saddling the cash-strapped alliance with an old, redundant aircraft carrier is not going to help.

In fact, it would only hurt.

The JFK's ship has sailed (ha ha). Let her go.

--David Axe

Noah & Axe vs. "The World"

The talented Mr. Axe and I have a long interview airing on today's edition of BBC/public radio's "The World." It's about how the Pentagon's dreams of network-centric warfare are playing out on the front lines. Not coincidentally, that's also the topic of the big feature we co-wrote in the upcoming issue of Popular Science.

UPDATE 05/17/06 9:27 AM: The full, eight-and-a-half minute interview is here. And if that's not enough for you Defense Tech junkies, check out all fifteen-and-a-half minutes of this extended segment.

Military.com's Voltron Force

It's a little like Voltron, really. You remember, the 80s cartoon, where five kids, piloting robotic lions, teamed up to form a super mecha-warrior? Well, the same principle applies to MilitaryBlog.com. The Overlords at Military.com have brought together ten of the cooler defense-related blogs -- sites like Blackfive, Op-For, and Midnight in Iraq. And the whole is greater than the sum of the parts: an easy way to get your milblog fix, all in one click. Check it out. And don't forget your sword.

Bush's Border Security Theater

Pres. Bush gave a primetime speech tonight on immigration and border security (here's the full text of the speech, and here's the fact sheet on it). A lot of the speech covered familiar ground for those who have followed the immigration and border security debate closely; but he did provide some new specifics on his plan for border security, the most newsworthy element of which is the proposal to deploy up to 6,000 members of the National Guard on the southern border as a stopgap measure.

Bush discussed this plan in the context of a proposal to increase the number of Border Patrol agents to 18,000 by the end of 2008, from a current level of 12,000. In essence, this proposal is simply fulfilling existing law in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004 which mandated a doubling of the size of the Border Patrol over five years. As a stopgap measure leading up to 2008, Bush would deploy a rotation of 6,000 National Guard troops as a temporary measure, commenting in his speech:

One way to help during this transition is to use the National Guard. So in coordination with governors, up to 6,000 guard members will be deployed to our southern border. The Border Patrol will remain in the lead. The guard will assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing fences and vehicle barriers, building patrol roads, and providing training. Guard units will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities -- that duty will be done by the Border Patrol.

This initial commitment of guard members would last for a period of one year. After that, the number of guard forces will be reduced as new Border Patrol agents and new technologies come online. It is important for Americans to know that we have enough guard forces to win the war on terror, to respond to natural disasters, and to help secure our border.

To paraphrase Bruce Schneier, this idea is "border security theater" - a political proposal designed to grease the legislative skids in Congress, but one that will have little impact on border security, and even worse, is operationally flawed and quite likely to be a costly diversion from other border security priorities. Consider the following questions:

1. How are these Guardsmen going to be trained? Guarding and patrolling the border requires many types of specialized training: language skills, driving skills, legal knowledge, cultural training, etc. The Border Patrol currently spends about $160 million per year on training to develop and maintain its skilled workforce. Members of the National Guard have not been trained in many of these areas, nor will they immediately possess the skills needed to conduct the activities outlined in the speech - intelligence, surveillance - in a domestic context. Does it really make sense to train them, and then throw away all of this knowledge after a year?

2. Where are they going to live? Unlike with Border Patrol agents, the federal government will be responsibility for providing temporary housing for members of the National Guard deployed at the border. How much is this going to cost? (Although on the other hand, perhaps we've just found a use for the 11,000 FEMA trailers that are sitting in Hope, Arkansas).

3. Can they communicate with each other? Do the National Guard units and the Border Patrol have the same types of radios and other communications devices? If not, does that mean that this decision requires a massive new investment in equipment that will have short-term value?

4. How do the Border Patrol and National Guard work together? Can two very different organizations be integrated? What is going to be done to prevent organizational clashes between the National Guard and the Border Patrol? How will questions of decision-making and resource allocation be handled?

Overall, this proposal has all the marks of being costly and ineffective. And this analysis doesn't even cover the issue of the National Guard already being overstretched as a result of the war in Iraq and the Guard's disaster management responsibilities, which is also a concern. If border states want to spend their own money sending their National Guard forces to the border, fine. But the federal government shouldn't pay for it. Instead of wasting money on stopgap measures, we should accelerate the increase in Border Patrol agents, technology investment, or what is probably the best bet strictly from a cost standpoint (although detestable for symbolic reasons), building a complete border fence.

UPDATE 05/16/06 12:45 AM: Below are remarks by Sec. Chertoff last December from an interview with Bill O'Reilly on the idea of sending the National Guard to the border:

Chertoff: Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission. I mean, the fact of the matter is the border is a special place. There are special challenges that are faced there....

Chertoff: I think it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem.

He was exactly right, and still is.

-- Christian Beckner (crossposted from Homeland Security Watch).

UPDATE 05/17/06 9:52 AM: Here's a handy stat, courtesy of the National Security Round Table: 6,000 guardsmen "comes out to one soldier for every mile of border broken down into three 8 hour shifts."

Gunners Train with Army Game

The Army sure is getting their money's worth out of America's Army, a first-person shoot-em-up computer game developed as an innovative new military recruitment tool.

Now the Pentagon is planning to use America's Army's gaming platform as a basic skills trainer on the new Common Remotely Operated Weapons Station (CROWS). And why not? Use a video game to train troops on...well, a video game. CROWS is a system that allows soldiers to manipulate a Humvee mounted variety of medium to heavy weaponary from the relative safety of inside the vehicle. It's just one of many Pentagon solutions aimed at combating the IED and sniper threat in Iraq. And it's already popular with the troops. "The primary purpose of the CROWS is to get the gunner out of the turret where he is exposed to enemy fire and fragmentation and get him down inside the vehicle for protection," Sergeant First Class Sam Cottrell said of the new weapon station, "The CROWS system is an excellent tool. The advantages are obviously its optics, zoom and thermal capabilities."

On display at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, members of the Army Games Project boasted that CROWS will also be available in the newest version of America's Army, titled Overmatch. Players will be allowed to operate the system precisely how it was intended to be used in real-life, with a team of up to 4 soldiers using the weapon station to engaged the enemy while stationary or on the move, using daytime or thermal imaging, and employing the M-2 machine gun or MK-19 grenade launcher. True to life, gamers will even have to deploy a team member to reload the weapon ouside the vehicle.

Bad puns aside, talk about getting more bang for your buck. Not only has America's Army become a hyper-effective recruiting device, the Army is now squeezing realistic training uses out of the game as well. I don't know if the Army is working on any more two-for-one specials, but somebody should send the Air Force the memo.

-- John Noonan

Galloway Goes for the Throat

One of the nice things about being one of the most repected war correspondents ever is that you get to tell Pentagon bigwigs to shove it where the sun don't shine. Check out this e-mail slugfest between We Were Soldiers Once... And Young author Joe Galloway, and departing Defense Department flack-in-chief Larry DiRita.

The whole thing started over Galloway's recent profile of Paul Van Riper, the iconoclastic Marine retired general. But it wound up hitting on just about every major issue facing the Pentagon today, from where to station forces to what kind of gear to buy. Along the way, DiRita and Galloway call each other lots of nasty things. Here's an excerpt, from Galloway's third response to DiRita. Check out the whole thing after the jump.

...this is not an army on the way up but one on the way to a disaster... so far it is the willingness of these young men and women to serve, and to deploy multiple times, and to work grueling and dangerous 18 hour days 7 days a week that is the glue holding things together.

all the cheap fixes have been used; all the one-time-only gains so beloved of legislators trying to balance a budget and get out of town.

the question is what sort of an army are your bosses going to leave behind as their legacy in 2009? one that is trained, ready and well equipped to fight the hundred-year war with islam that seems to have begun with a vengeance on your watch? or will they leave town and head into a golden retirement as that army collapses for lack of manpower, lack of money to repair and replace all the equipment chewed up by iraq and afghanistan, lack of money to apply to fixing those problems because billions were squandered on weapons systems that are a ridiculous legacy of a Cold War era long gone (viz. the f/22, the osprey, the navy's gold plated destroyers and aircraft carriers and, yes, nuclear submarines whose seeming future purpose is to replace rubber zodiac boats as the favorite landing craft of Spec Ops teams, at a cost of billions). meanwhile, the pentagon, at the direction of your boss, marches rapidly ahead with deployment of an anti-missile system whose rockets have yet to actually get out of the launch tubes. at a cost of yet more multiple billions.

you say i blame your boss for things 3 or 4 levels below him that he can't possibly be controlling and quote accusations from present and former flag officers who he has never eyeballed personally. well the above items are things that he directly controls, or should; things he came into office vowing he was going to fix or change drastically. and in the latest QDR, his last, he made none of the hard choices about wasted money on high dollar weapons systems that make no sense in the real world today. the same QDR quite correctly identifies an urgent need for MORE psyops and civil affairs and military police and far more troops who have foreign language training appropriate to where we fight. and we budget a paltry 191 million, i say MILLION, bucks to do all that. not even the cost of the periscopes on those oh-so-necessary submarines, or the instruments on one of those f22s.

this is what has my attention; this is what has me in a mood to question over and over and over, waiting for answers that never come, change that never comes, course corrections that never come. you wanted some specifics. there are some specifics.

joe galloway

PS: those [tens of thousands of soldiers in fixed garrisons in germany who could not deploy] were called VII Corps in the Persian Gulf War. they deployed. they formed the armored spear that penetrated kuwait and broke the republican guard. the garrisons were guarded, while they were gone, by the german army and police. they would have been so guarded in OIF too had we tried a bit of diplomacy instead of bitch-slapping Old Europe as your boss did at a crucial moment.

DaRita No. 1:

From: Di Rita, Larry, CIV, OSD
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 6:58 AM
To: Galloway, Joe
Subject:

Your column about gen van riper is just silly, joe. To tag the secretary of defense with being responsible for every sparrow that falls out of every tree is just ludicrous.

General Kernan, who was commander of the Joint Forces Command when van riper's wargame occurred, had very pointed things to say about van riper when van riper made his first notoriety on this whole thing.

To tag rumsfeld with a wargame when there were about three or four layers of the chain of command between rumsfeld and the wargamers just misunderstands the way the world works.

Let's at least be honest about this: there is a lot of change taking place, and that change forces people to re-examine the way we have always done things. That is bumpy, and that can make people anxious.

I don't have any idea what might have happened in van riper's experience with this wargame, but to blame the secretary of defense for it just sounds crazy.

You talk about "rumsfeld's fondest ideas and theories" as if you have the first clue as to what those are. I have worked with him side-by-side for five years, and I wouldn't even try to divine what his fondest ideas and theories are.

The debate about defense transformation was going on long before rumsfeld showed up at the pentagon. I'd wager that the war game van riper was so offended by probably began in planning before rumsfeld showed up.

Van riper has never even met the secretary to my knowledge. For him to make such sweeping comments as he did in your piece is just irresponsible.

As a journalist, don't you think you owe it to your readers to challenge when people say things like that as though they have firsthand knowledge.

Also, you ought to talk with Buck Kernan, who commanded JFCOM at the time.

You're just becoming a johnny one-note and it's only a couple of steps from that to curmudgeon!!

Best....

]From galloway in response to DaRita No. 1:

larry:
i am delighted that folks over in OSD continue to read my columns with great attention. Who knows, it might make a difference one day.

i've always understood that the guy in charge takes the fall for everything that goes wrong on his watch. this is why the u.s. navy court martials the captain of any ship that is involved in an accident or is sunk for whatever reason.

this is why a President, Harry Truman, always kept a sign on his desk in the oval office that said simply: The Buck Stops Here.

trouble with this administration is the buck never stops anywhere, on anybody's desk.

"victory has many fathers; defeat is an orphan"
--Count Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law in 1945

Last I knew Mr. Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense. His is the ultimate responsibility. And I am damned if I can understand how you could work for the man for as long as you have without knowing what he likes and doesn't like in the way of strategy and tactics and fighting wars.

In the meantime, I hope you will take note of the fact that throughout the discussion of this and other columns with you I have never once implied that you were "silly" or "crazy" or "ludicrous" or even a "johnny one-note."

I will be leaving this town in three weeks, Larry, and there's a lot of people and places I will miss. You aren't exactly at the top of that list….

Joe Galloway

Darita No. 2:

That's not what you're describing, though, in your van riper piece.

I also served long enough to know that officers who hide behind anonymity and complain to you and other journalists about what they don't like are causing great harm to the institutions they serve and to the country.

Anyway, I think your columns have been representative of a school of thought within military circles that I don't believe is particularly widespread.

The army is so much more capable and suitable for the nation's needs that it was 5 or 10 years ago. To my mind, the voices your columns represent missed the forest for the trees.

I regret you took offense at our exchanges. Apparently people can tell a journalist the most damnable things about rumsfeld or myers or franks or the president and it's okay, but a little feisty email exchange in response you find offensive!!

Best wishes.

Galloway Response to DaRita No. 2:

Subj: Re:
Date: 5/3/2006 4:56:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From:
To:

larry:
the army you describe as "so much more capable" than it was 5 or 10 years ago is, in fact, very nearly broken. another three years of the careful attention of your boss ought to just about finish it off. this is not the word from your anonymous officers; this is from my own observations in the field in iraq and at home on our bases and in the military schools and colleges.

you can sit there all day telling me that pigs can fly, with or without lipstick, and i am not going to believe it.

seemingly the reverse is also true.

one of us is dead wrong and i have a good hunch that it would be you.

you go flying blind through that forest and you are going to find those trees for sure. whether or not paul van riper has ever met Secretary Rumsfeld is not at issue. one does not have to be a personal acquaintance to find that a public figure's policies and conduct of his office are wanting.

Secretary Rumsfeld spent a good number of years as the CEO of various large corporations. He knows about being responsible for the bottom line in that line of work. So too is he responsible in his current line of work; actually even more so given the stakes involved.

So grasp that concept harder, friend Larry. Urge your boss to step up to the plate and admit it when he's gotten it wrong at least as quickly as he steps up to run those famous victory laps with Gen Meyer back in thespring of '03.
best

joe galloway

DaRita No. 3:

Subj: Re:
Date: 5/3/2006 5:09:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From:
To:
Time will tell. The army is faster, more agile, more deployable, more lethals. At least that's what schoomaker thinks. The army of 2000 could not have sustained rotational deployments indefinitely.

Retention is above 100 percent in units that have frequently deployed. Would all those soldiers be rushing to join a "broken" army. Do you really believe we were better off with tens of thousands of soldiers in fixed garrisons, essentially non-deployable, in germany and korea?

I appreciate your depth of feeling. What bugs me though is your implication that rumsfeld doesn't care about it as much as you do.

Also, if van riper et al confined their "analysis" to the issue at hand, your comment would be valid. Their comments were ad hominem, and that is a neat trick for someone they never met.

Anyway, time will tell. Best..
--------------------------

Galloway response to DaRita No. 3:

larry:
[You say][the army of 2000 could not have sustained indefinite
deployments]

my response: neither can the army of 2003 or the army of 2005 or 2006. it is grinding up the equipment and the troops inexorably. recruiting can barely, or hardly, or not, bring in the 80,000 a year needed to maintain a steady state in the active army enlisted ranks....and that is WITH the high retention rates in the brigades. and neither figure addresses the hemorraging of captains and majors who are voting with their feet in order to maintain some semblance of a family life and a future without war in it. and what do we do about a year when average 93 percent of majors are selected for Lt Col in all
MOSs....and 100 plus percent in critical MOSs.

the army is scraping the barrel.

then there is the matter of 14 pc Cat IV recruits admitted in Oct 05 and 19pc in Nov....against an annual ceiling of 4 percent??? the returning divisions, which leave all their equipment behind in iraq, come home and almost immediately lose 2,000 to 3,000 stop-loss personnel. then tradoc goes in and cherry picks the best NCOs for DI and schoolhouse jobs. leaving a division with about 65 percent of authorized strength, no equipment to train on, sitting around for eight or nine months painting rocks. if they are lucky 90 days before re-deploying the army begins to refill them with green kids straight out of AIT or advanced armor training. if they are even luckier they have time to get in a rotation to JROTC or NTC and get some realistic training for those new arrivals. if not so lucky they just take them off to combat and let em sink or swim.

this is not healthy. this is not an army on the way up but one on the way to a disaster. we need more and smarter soldiers. not more Cat IVs.

so far it is the willingness of these young men and women to serve, and to deploy multiple times, and to work grueling and dangerous 18 hour days 7 days a week that is the glue holding things together.

all the cheap fixes have been used; all the one-time-only gains so beloved of legislators trying to balance a budget and get out of town.

the question is what sort of an army are your bosses going to leave behind as their legacy in 2009? one that is trained, ready and well equipped to fight the hundred-year war with islam that seems to have begun with a vengeance on your watch? or will they leave town and head into a golden retirement as that army collapses for lack of manpower, lack of money to repair and replace all the equipment chewed up by iraq and afghanistan, lack of money to apply to fixing those problems because billions were squandered on weapons systems that are a ridiculous legacy of a Cold War era long gone (viz. the f/22, the osprey, the navy's gold plated destroyers and aircraft carriers and, yes, nuclear submarines whose seeming future purpose is to replace rubber zodiac boats as the favorite landing craft of Spec Ops teams, at a cost of billions) meanwhile the pentagon, at the direction of your boss, marches rapidly ahead with deployment of an anti-missile system whose rockets have yet to actually get out of the launch tubes. at a cost of yet more multiple billions.

you say i blame your boss for things 3 or 4 levels below him that he can't possibly be controlling and quote accusations from present and former flag officers who he has never eyeballed personally. well the above items are things that he directly controls, or should; things he came into office vowing he was going to fix or change drastically. and in the latest QDR, his last, he made none of the hard choices about wasted money on high dollar weapons systems that make no sense in the real world today. the same QDR quite correctly identifies an urgent need for MORE psyops and civil affairs and military police and far more troops who have foreign language training appropriate to where we fight. and we budget a paltry 191 million, i say MILLION, bucks to do all that. not even the cost of the periscopes on those oh-so-necessary submarines, or the instruments on one of those f22s.

this is what has my attention; this is what has me in a mood to question over and over and over, waiting for answers that never come, change that never comes, course corrections that never come. you wanted some specifics. there are some specifics.

joe galloway

PS: those [tens of thousands of soldiers in fixed garrisons in germany who could not deploy] were called VII Corps in the Persian Gulf War. they deployed. they formed the armored spear that penetrated kuwait and broke the republican guard. the garrisons were guarded, while they were gone, by the german army and police. they would have been so guarded in OIF too had we tried a bit of diplomacy instead of bitch-slapping Old Europe as your boss did at a crucial moment.

those bases in germany were paid for by germany; still are. and they are a good deal closer to the action at present and in the foreseeable future than fort riley, kansas. now we envision counting on rough and crude forward bases, occupied only occasionally, in places where we have such good friends and allies like the fellow who just ordered us to get out because we harumphed when he slaughtered a few hundred or thousand peaceful demonstrators against his theft of yet another democratic election.

you say that by doing this we are positioning ourselves better for the wars of the future. but what if, once again, a curtain of iron descends across Europe and once again the Fulda Gap must be guarded against the new Red Army of our good friend and ally Putin.

your boss is fond of saying that this or that thing is "unknowable." The most unknowable thing of all is who your enemy is going to be next time and where you are going to need allies and bases from which to attack or defend.

pulling out of europe and south korea may be one of the larger mistakes charged off against your boss five years from now or ten, if we are lucky enough to have a whole decade to repair some of the damage he has done while congress turned a blind eye, too busy doing earmarks for flea circus museums in dubuque and bridges to nowhere, alaska, to do the necessary oversight and questioning of cockamamy ideas with even more
dubious estimates of future savings of billions that begin dropping like a rock before the ink is even dry on the report.

all i can say is what the hell are you doing questioning my columns when you ought to be in there at the elbow of your boss reading those columns aloud to him every wednesday afternoon and urging him to pay attention to them.

best wishes

joe galloway

DaRita No. 4:

Thanks for these insights, joe. none of this is easy. Your perspective seems pretty fixed but I do appreciate the experience you bring to it.

Again, what bothers me most about your coverage is your implication that the people involved in all of this are dumb or have ill-intent or are so sure of what they know that they don't brook discussion. That's the part you're just way off on, friend.

This is tough stuff, and we're all hard at it, trying to do what's best for the country.

Best wishes.

Galloway response to DaRita No. 4:

i like to think that is what i am doing also, and it is a struggle that grows out of my obligation to and love for america's warriors going back 41 years as of last month.
there are many things we all could wish had happened.

i can wish that your boss had surrounded himself with close advisers who had, once at least, held a dying boy in their arms and watched the life run out of his eyes while they lied to him and told him, over and over, "You are going to be all right. Hang on! Help is coming. Don't quit now..."

Such men in place of those who had never known service or combat or the true cost of war, and who pays that price, and had never sent their children off to do that hard and unending duty.

i could wish for so much.

i could wish that in january of this year i had not stood in a garbage-strewn pit, in deep mud, and watched soldiers tear apart the wreckage of a kiowa warrior shot down just minutes before and tenderly remove the barely alive body of WO Kyle Jackson and the lifeless body of his fellow pilot. they died flying overhead cover for a little three-vehicle Stryker patrol with which i was riding at the time.

i could wish that Jackson's widow Betsy had not found, among the possessions of her late husband, a copy of my book, carefully earmarked at a chapter titled Brave Aviators, which Kyle was reading at the time of his death. That she had not enclosed a photo of her husband, herself and a 3 year old baby girl.

those things i received in the mail yesterday and they brought back the tears that i wept standing there in that pit, feeling the same shards in my heart that i felt the first time i looked into the face of a fallen american soldier 41 years ago on a barren hill in Quang Ngai Province in another time, another war.

someone once asked me if i had learned anything from going to war so many times. my reply: yes, i learned how to cry.

Jg

DaRita No. 5:
I appreciate what you are saying but your continued implication that rumsfeld does not understand all that is at stake is wrong and offensive.
--------------------------

NSA: Not So Tough?

Tomorrow's editions of Time and Newsweek put the NSA's phone database on their covers. Time's story is emminently skippable, if you've been following the story at all. Newsweek does a much smarter job, offering a neat history of the NSA, and providing a needed antidote to the myth of the agency's omnipotence.

But increasingly, there has been talk of the agency's "going deaf." The NSA had its best luck monitoring Soviet lines of communication—for example, a microwave transmission from Moscow to a missile base in Siberia. But the new enemy is more shadowy and elusive. In 2002, General Hayden told NEWSWEEK, "We've gone from chasing the telecommunications structure of a slow-moving, technologically inferior, resource-poor nation-state—and we could do that pretty well—to chasing a communications structure in which an Al Qaeda member can go into a storefront in Istanbul and buy for $100 a communications device that is absolutely cutting edge, and for which he has had to make no investment for development."

According to most accounts, the NSA remains behind the telecommunications curve. A December 2002 report by the Senate intelligence committee noted that only a "tiny fraction" of the NSA's 650 million daily intercepts worldwide "are actually ever reviewed by humans, and much of what is collected gets lost in the deluge of data." Hayden told NEWSEEK that year that the NSA had been slow to catch up to new technology, and that he was obsessed with turning the enemy's "beeps and squeaks into something intelligible."

One of Hayden's most ambitious initiatives was called Trailblazer. It was a program aimed at helping the NSA make sense of its many databases—to put them to use. By more efficiently locating and retrieving messages, Trailblazer could help the NSA "data-mine," to find patterns in the huge volume of electronic traffic that might help lead sleuths to a terror suspect. Instead, the program has produced nearly a billion dollars' worth of junk hardware and software. "It's a complete and abject failure," says Robert D. Steele, a CIA veteran who is familiar with the program. Adds Ed Giorgio, who was the chief code breaker for the NSA for 30 years: "Everybody's eyes rolled when you mentioned Trailblazer."

What went wrong? The NSA apparently tried a clunky top-down approach, trying to satisfy too many requirements with one grand solution, rather than taking a more Silicon Valley-like tack of letting small entrepreneurs compete for ideas. John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, Calif., a renowned "network" intelligence expert, says: "The real problem Big Brother is having is he's not making enough use of the Little Brothers"—the corporations that have become expert at manipulating databases for commercial use.

"Data mining" has been a boon to credit-card companies that can match customers and products. It has also helped the Feds track drug dealers who constantly buy and throw away cell phones (the technology can monitor frequent phone-number changes). Identifying and tracking terrorists may be a taller order. For one thing, terrorists have learned not to even use phones. A computer disk or message between, say, Osama bin Laden and Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi is hand-delivered. Some terrorists have learned to leave messages hidden in Web sites. Others are given passwords to go on the Web sites and find the messages. Since that process involves no electronic communication—no e-mail or phone call—the NSA is kept in the dark.

Meanwhile, Newsweek's technologist, Steven Levy, takes a page out of the Defense Tech playbook and chats with our pal Valdis Krebs. The Times gets proof for what Bobby Ray Inman told us on Monday: that Dick Cheney is the driving force behind the CIA program. The Washington Post catches DNI John Negroponte in an eavesdropping fib. The AP wraps a rather-hysterical headline ("Spy Agency Watching Americans From Space") around a fairly sober look at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. And News.com has a handy FAQ on the call record brouhaha. But my favorite NSA-related article from the weekend comes from the Chicago Trib's technology ace, John Van, who talks to researchers about just how helpful all this link analysis and data mining might be.

The likelihood of success, Northwestern University's Kris Hammond said, is higher if agents have specific questions, such as hypothetically what mobile phones in Washington, D.C., made calls to Tehran during a given period, and whether calls were made from those phones to San Francisco during another period.

But if officials don't know what they're looking for, they can't expect a data mining program to connect all the dots.

"If you approach the data without specific questions and just look for patterns, you can find hundreds of millions of patterns," Hammond said.

Despite advances in artificial intelligence, computers aren't like human detectives who can make inferences and shift assumptions on the fly, said Yali Amit, a University of Chicago professor of statistics and computer science.

Government agents may not understand this, he said.

"They have records from millions of innocent people and perhaps a few thousand terrorists who might make phone calls," said Amit. "The size of the data set of interest--the terrorists--is too small. You get reliability rates that make the whole endeavor pretty ridiculous."

The White House hasn't confirmed the NSA program, but in December, an official of DARPA, a Defense Department agency that funds advanced research, published a paper in an academic journal that suggests an ambitious role for link mining.

"Metaphorically, link mining offers the potential not only for connecting the dots, but for determining which dots to connect, a far more difficult task," wrote Ted Senator, who stipulated he was expressing his own views, not those of DARPA or the government.

UPDATE 11:28 PM: Defense Tech pal Kim Zetter has a dynamite interview with intelligence historian Matthew Aid:

I'll tell you where this story probably will go next. Notice the USA Today article doesn't mention whether the Internet service providers or cellphone providers or companies operating transatlantic cables like Global Crossing cooperated with the NSA. That's the next round of revelations. The real vulnerabilities for the NSA are the companies. Sooner or later one of these companies, fearing the inevitable lawsuit from the ACLU, is going to admit what it did, and the whole thing is going to come tumbling down...

The newest system being added to the NSA infrastructure, by the way, is called Project Trailblazer, which was initiated in 2002 and which was supposed to go online about now but is fantastically over budget and way behind schedule. Trailblazer is designed to copy the new forms of telecommunications -- fiber optic cable traffic, cellphone communication, BlackBerry and Internet e-mail traffic.

How Does That Grab Ya?

Ever tried one of those mechanical cranes where you try to pick up a teddy bear? They look easy but they’re next to impossible because mechanical manipulators are so awkward at handling irregular objects. But this week in New Scientist I report on a new DARPA development which will make robots a lot more dextrous.

DARPA’s OCTOR (sOft robotiC manipulaTORs) program is building a new type of robot limb patterned after an elephant’s trunk or octopus arm. It’s flexible, fast, and can handle fragile objects and reach into narrow spaces, as well as coping with a range of different sizes, as this 55 Mb video shows The current Octarms use an industrial Pentium processor board and a 24-volt electro-pneumatic pressure system. They are mainly built with off-the-shelf components, with much of the work going into modelling the behaviour of the system and designing software for kinematics (movement control), and the operator interface.

The strength of the arm is governed by actuator pressure and diameter. The current Octarm is pneumatic and works at 60 psi, but in principle a 2000 psi hydraulic system would be possible which would be far more powerful. The design is scaleable; small six-inch Octarms have been built, and a 20-foot tentacle is certainly possible - all it would take is funding. A vehicle-mounted Octarm capable of tearing down walls or shifting rubble would be worth seeing…

A team including Bill Kier from the University of North Carolina and Roger Hanlon from the Marine Biological Laboratory provided the biological research behind the Octarm. They found that octopus arms in nature have transverse and longitudinal muscles as well as two sets of helically-wound muscles which spiral around the arm, giving the ability to shorten, lengthen, rotate or bend at nearly any angle.

The taper – also borrowed from the octopus - means it can reach into narrow spaces, and helps with handling objects of many sizes. Small objects can be grasped with the thin end section of the Octarm, with larger and heavier objects the thicker and more powerful base sections come into play. Existing manipulators tend to me limited in the range of sizes they can deal with because their grippers can only open to a certain width.

Hanlon and colleagues are working on further improvements to the Octarm, using a range of biological models for inspiration, so later versions may take advantage of refinements observed in animal systems.

The latest demonstration featured an Octarm mounted on a Talon robot carrying out a variety of tasks, including retrieving a dummy and working underwater. Military applications may include reconnaissance (there’s a camera at the end of the Octarm) and IED disposal, but there are host of civil applications where Octarms should be able to outperform existing designs.

The Octarm project is another one of DARPA’s Biodynotics – biologically-inspired robotics – programs, and it’s interesting to see how leveraging techniques perfected in nature brings rapid improvements in robotics. It’s also interesting to see how much of this is led by the military. This follows the same path as early computing described in my book Weapons Grade, which shows how the military were responsible for introducing major innovations in both hardware and software including digital electronic computing and the silicon chip.

Octarm joins other well-publicized creations like the BigDog prototype for a robotic mule , Carnegie Mellon’s snakebot and DARPA’s robot flying insects and RoboLobster - and I can guarantee more some even more surprising innovations where these came from. Stay tuned!

-- David Hambling.

Rapid Fire 05/12/06 (Updated)

* Why the NSA story matters: "it's all about the architecture"

* Phone records "just the tip of the iceberg"

* Customers consented to NSA sweeps?

* Telcos liable?

* Gingrich: "I'm not going to defend the indefensible"

* GOP House leader: "I am not sure why it would be necessary"

* Scarborough: "You should be very afraid"

* Feinstein: "major constitutional confrontation"

* LAT: "Never has it been so easy to know so much about so many"

* Initial poll: yaawwwwwnn

* Why Qwest dissed the NSA

* Ryan, Patrick, and William Gibson!

* Tice ready to spill

Vote: Fortune 500, or Al-Qaeda?

People working together on projects tend to interact in fairly predictable ways -- whether that project is installing a new computer system, or blowing up a building. So looking only at the links between people won't tell you much about what those folks are up to. At times, the links can be rather deceptive, in fact. Especially if your data set is huge, like the NSA's ginormous database of phone records. Other information is needed, to fill in the gaps.

Here's an example, below. Can you tell which cluster is from a Fortune 500 company, and which one is from Al-Qaeda? Network analysis guru Valdis Krebs shows this slide to corporate and government audiences. Their answers are usually pretty scattershot. Take your guesses in the comments section. Valdis will be back later on with the right answer.

Bomb-Zapper, Back to Drawing Board

Now we know why ray gun maker Ionatron hasn't been talking up their bomb-frying, electricity-spewing Joint IED Neutralizer, lately. It turns out the Defense Department has turned down the machines. Ionatron's going back to the drawing board.

The company cranked out a dozen of the golf cart-esque JINs last year. Ionatron execs said the machines, which use laser pulses and electrical bursts to zap bombs, would be sent out to Iraq, pronto. But the JINs never made it.

"The U.S. government customer concluded that the JIN counter-IED technology performed well and offers great promise, but determined that the current vehicle platform should be changed," the company said in a statement, picked up by the Arizona Daily Star.

Ionatron CEO Thomas Dearmin, in a conference call with financial analysts, expressed some disappointment that the company did not receive a production contract after months of testing of the JIN system.

"We expected to be in production at this point in time," Dearmin told analysts. "All I can say is, it's more complicated than you or I thought it could be."

Dearmin said the vehicles used as platforms for the JIN test units were by necessity off-the-shelf because of the time constraints involved. Ionatron said it produced the 12 test JIN units in nine months.

Ionatron will work to adapt the system to other vehicles, possibly including existing military vehicles, he said.

"There needs to be parts and spares available, and it's a big system," Dearmin said. "We've engineered to put these on other platforms — I think there are other platforms out there that the military is comfortable with."

NSA Sweep "Waste of Time," Analyst Says

It'd be one thing if the NSA's massive sweep of our phone records was actually helping catch terrorists. But what if it's not working at all? A leading practitioner of the kind of analysis the NSA is supposedly performing in this surveillance program says that "it's a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free."

Re-reading the USA Today piece, one paragraph jumped out:

This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for 'social network analysis,' the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

So I called Valdis Krebs, who's considered by many to be the leading authority on social network analysis -- the art and science of finding the important connections in a seemingly-impenetrable mass of data. His analysis of the social network surrounding the 9/11 hijackers is a classic in the field.

Here's what Krebs had to say about the newly-revealed NSA program that aims to track "every call ever made": "If you're looking for a needle, making the haystack bigger is counterintuitive. It just doesn't make sense."

"Certain people are more suspicious than others," he adds. They make frequent trips back-and-forth to Afghanistan, for instance. "So you start with them. And you work two steps out. If none of those people are connected, you don't have a cell. Because if one was there, you'd find some clustering. You don't have to collect all the data in the world to do that."

The right thing to do is to look for the best haystack, not the biggest haystack. We knew exactly which haystack to look at in the year 2000 [before the 9/11 attacks]. We just didn't do it...

The worst part -- the thing that's most disappointing to me -- is that this is not the right way to do this. It's a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free.

UPDATE 2:30 PM: Shane Harris broke this story, in broad strokes, back in March, Patrick reminds us. Harris also offers a possible explanation for some of the NSA program's massive size:

To find meaningful patterns in transactional data, analysts need a lot of it. They must set baselines about what constitutes "normal" behavior versus "suspicious" activity. Administration officials have said that the NSA doesn't intercept the contents of a communication unless officials have a "reasonable" basis to conclude that at least one party is linked to a terrorist organization.

To make any reasonable determination like that, the agency needs hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of call records, preferably as soon as they are created, said a senior person in the defense industry who is familiar with the NSA program and is an expert in the analytical tools used to find patterns and connections. Asked if this means that the NSA program is much broader and less targeted than administration officials have described, the expert replied, "I think that's correct."

Harris also fingers a likely program set of research efforts to help the NSA better comb through all this data: "Novel Intelligence from Massive Data," or NIMD. Its goal is to develop "techniques and tools that assist analysts not only in dealing with massive data, but also in interactively making explicit - and modifying and updating - their current analytic (cognitive) state, which includes not only their hypotheses, but also their knowledge, interests, and biases."

You'll be shocked to hear that NIMD's website has been taken offline. But you can find Goggle caches about the program here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE 5:19 PM: "To me, it's pretty clear that the people working on this program aren't as smart as they think they are," says former Air Force counter-terrorist specialist John Robb. "Some top level thinking indicates that this will quickly become a rat hole for federal funds (due to wasted effort) and a major source of infringement of personal freedom." John gives a bunch of reasons why. Here's just one:

It will generate oodles of false positives. Al Qaeda is now in a phase where most domestic attacks will be generated by people not currently connected to the movement (like we saw in the London bombings). This means that in many respects they will look like you and me until they act. The large volume of false positives generated will not only be hugely inefficient, it will be a major infringement on US liberties. For example, a false positive will likely get you automatically added to a no-fly list, your boss may be visited (which will cause you to lose your job), etc.

UPDATE 6:23 PM: And now, the rebuttal. I just got off the phone with a source who has extensive experience in these matters. And he disagrees, strongly, with Krebs and Robb.

Really, the source said, there are two approaches to whittling down massive amounts of information: limiting what you search from the beginning -- or taking absolutely everything in, and sifting through it afterwards. In his experience, the source said, the approach of using "brute force... not optimally, not smartly" on the front end, and "cleaning [the data] up later" worked the best. Often times, other people don't know what you're searching for (or they don't have the same super-slick data-mining algorithms you've got). Better just to get it all.

In everything from speech analysis to sensor fusion, he argued, when you've got a weak signal masked by a lot of noise, "more data seems to be the answer... More data is what's going to allow you to get to ground truth."

Of course, there's a price to pay with this approach: a ton of false alarms. Several stages of filtering should fix that, he argued. Besides, "it's not like you call the FBI every time you get a hit."

Think of it as the Google approach. Wouldn't you rather have everything available on the search engine, and then do queries yourself?

UPDATE 05/12/06 8:52 AM: The rebuttal gets rebutted.

"I find it almost impossible to believe that the NSA has a system good enough to beat human int[elligence], selective tapping, and the kind of progressive extension that Krebs cites," an MIT professor says, who also passes along this handy graphic.

You need to have a good understanding of the "classifiers" and functions appropriate for your data set -- developing the knowledge and techniques around finding those classifiers has taken [computer] vision [research] 30 years to get where it is (able to drive a car through a pre-set path in a desert, recognize one face out of a thousand with good rejection but many, many false positives)... Meaning fine, but not great... We have almost no idea how complex this issue is, but it's probably similar.

One thing about your "extensive experience" source is that he doesn't really specify what kind of search he was doing. People doing data mining may be looking in many different ways. For instance, if you have six million examples of successful stock price changes and six million examples of unsuccessful ones, you might look for other variables (past performance, location, etc.) that signal a difference -- any difference. Large data sets are definitely helpful for this. Getting machine learning to discover a specific thing -- like a familial bond based on telephone calls -- may or may not work at all. If all you have is frequency, there may be a half dozen other types of relationships that lead to numerous calls. There may never be a way of discerning relationship based on a single modality of communication. That's why most of the people I know are using millions of other sensors, like GPS, accelerometers, recording the voice, reading heart rate, etc. Then they may be able to say with moderate certainty that they can tell something from phone calls. The NSA can't do that with what USA Today says they're collecting.

UPDATE 05/12/06 11:48 AM: Click here to see if you can spot the difference between an Al-Qaeda cluster, and on from a Fortune 500 firm.

"Every Call Ever Made" in NSA Database

We've known for years that the NSA sits on Himayalan storehouses of information - untold millions of phone calls and e-mails, both inside the United States and out.

But, until recently, those databases didn't seem particularly intimidating, because NSA snoops were sworn to purge the identities of American citizens, as soon as they got caught in the surveillance net. As one former signal intelligence specialist told me a few months back:

"It's drilled into you from minute one that you should not ever, ever, ever, under any fucking circumstances turn this massive apparatus on an American citizen," one source says. "You do a lot of weird shit. But at least you don't fuck with your own people."

Now we know different. And that's one major reason why this USA Today revelation so unnerving.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY. [Qwest turned 'em down, Glenn Greenwald notes.]

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added...

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case.

No wonder former NSA chief Bobby Ray Inman says the program was "not authorized."

Now, some people might find some small measure of comfort in the fact that this particular NSA effort is only looking at calling patterns -- not the contents of the calls themselves. Don't be. Back in January, we learned that this data-mining is directly leading to a "flood" of tips, given to the FBI, virtually all of which have led "to dead ends or innocent Americans."

UPDATE 11:08 AM: Slashdot has a great little primer on "trap and trace" systems, like the on the NSA is using here. The site also points out that the NSA has effectively squashed a Justice Department inquiry into its eavesdropping.

UPDATE 12:30 AM: Sen. Arlen Specter has a history of talking tough -- and then getting rolled by the White House. Let's see if this time is any different. "Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said today that he would call telephone executives to testify about a newspaper report describing a massive effort by the National Security Agency to compile records of phone calls." Other lawmakers are pissed, too.

More Body Armor. Ugh.

The seemingly endless drive to encase soldiers and marines in more and more armor continues -- whether the troops want it or not. The lastest, Inside Defense tells us, is "QuadGuard," a full body suit that's been shipped out to about 5,000 marines in Iraq. There's no mention of how many of 'em are actually using the things.

QuadGuard is made out of "Dyneema," supposedly "15 times stronger than steel." Worn with the standard Interceptor body armor, it comes in two models: QuadGuard IV is a one-piece. QuadGuard V is more modular, "allowing marines to remove some parts of the equipment if they are not necessary." Total weight: about nine and a half pounds. That's on top of the approximately 42 pounds taken up by fully-loaded Interceptor gear, and the 5-6 pounds for the newly-required, side and shoulder guards. (Let's not even get into that crazy facial armor or the moon suit.)

Designed by researchers at Oklahoma State University, with some Naval Research Lab cash, QuadGuard has the potential to "reduce fatalities by 10% and serious injuries by 30-40%," its backers claim. Of course, there's mention of how many of those benefits will be given back, with the additional heat, weight, and loss of mobility that comes with all that extra gear. Could this help some ultra-exposed troops? Sure. Let's just hope the higher-ups don't start forcing everyone on patrol to stop wearing 'em. Especially not when the Iraqi summer is starting to kick in, and temperatures start climbing into the high 130's. As Sgt. Eric Daniel noted a few months back:

Something folks don't take into consideration is the tradeoffs associated with wearing additional armor. Just before I rotated out, we were getting issued the DAPS (deltoid auxiliary something-or-other...) and the "space marine" shoulder pads. While these offered additional protection to the side of the chest and shoulders (from small arms fire and small fragments) they were so cumbersome to wear that you were effectively immobile while wearing them. In fact, it was so bulky that I could not put it on and then climb through the turrets on the LMTVs and HUMVEES; I had to put the armor on top of the vehicle, get in the turret, and then suit up. Furthermore, while my small arms protection may have gone up, I was a dead man when it came to vehicle roll overs or surviving an IED/VBIED blast. This is just with the DAPS/ shoulder armor, mind you. Now they're talking about equipping gunners with entire ensembles of kevlar armor (complete with portable AC systems). That's just insane.

UPDATE 7:42 AM: Inside Defense also passes along another interesting tidbit. Just six weeks ago, the Army said that any soldier caught wearing Dragon Skin body armor "would have to turn it in and have it replaced with authorized gear." Now, service officials are going to put the ballyhooed protective equipment through a weeklong series of tests, "to help the Army determine if the body armor meets the Army’s standards."

UPDATE 9:36 AM: Murdoc has more on the moon suit.

Rapid Fire 05/10/06

* Border Patrol hiding virus attack

* Tentacle-bot reaches out

* Time out for "Strakes on a Plane"

* Private space race's final heat

* Stun-gun heels

* Big bucks for drone maker

* "Pentagon hacker" headed to States?

* Tomorrow's wars, previewed today

(Big ups: MN)

Ray Gunners Make Deals

Things are looking up for real-life ray gun firm Ionatron, Gene Inger and Defense Industry Daily both say.

The Tuscon company has linked up with DRS Technologies, which, among other things, is handling some of the big power and battle management systems on the Army's next generation of combat vehicles. Gene sees this as a "major door opener" to get Ionatron's man-made lightning bolts aboard the Army's tanks and fighting vehicles of the future.

But as is often the case with Ionatron, there's something not quite right here. The company has been attracting attention recently for its "Joint IED Neutralizer," a golf cart-type contraption which uses lasers and electrical bursts to blow up improvised bombs. Several JINs have been ordered up for Iraq.

But the DRS/Ionatron announcement makes no mention of this. Instead, it talks about using Ionatron's technology as a "directed-energy weapon" -- one that could be used in "defense applications relating to shipping ports and dockside protection." Similarly, the anti-bomb mission got a short shrift during a recent segment on Al Haig's infomercial program. All the talk by Ionatron execs and their cohorts was about how they could "taser people at a distance" and "disable terrorists" -- oh, and how Congress needed to cook up "legislation that authorizes" more funds for Ionatron-esque technologies.

UPDATE 12:15 PM: Gene writes in to remind us that "the JIN product (which may come along) is not [Ionatron's] core technology; as [CEO] Tom Dearmin has frequently stated... He has said JIN was a spin-off in no way contemplated by the company, but done at the behest of the" Pentagon.

Cargo Chaos: Key West's Revenge

The military is supposed to be one big, happy family these days. But in The Hill, Roxana Tiron reports on yet another episode of inter-service rivalry that's costing the Defense Department big bucks and compromising capabilities.

Today in Iraq, the military is minimizing its convoy presence by moving the materiel and people through the air instead. In many situations, such as flying mail between FOBs, it is not efficient to use Air Force's C-130. That's why the military is relying heavily on its fleet of intra-theater cargo airplanes, like the Army's C-23 Sherpa and C-12 Huron. [The Air Force left the intra-theater business when it retired the C-27 Spartans after Panama Canal handover.] However, the C-23s and C-12s are rapidly wearing out. So the Army went looking for the replacement Future Cargo Aircraft, to be fielded in 2008.

Because the Air Force had similar requirements, DoD merged the two into the now Joint Cargo Aircraft. However, there is a mismatch in institutional priorities. The Army needs the aircraft in 2008, but the Air Force, having C-130s, is waiting until 2010. So for the 2007 budget request, the Army requested $113m for the JCA, while the Air Force $15m. The Airland Subcommittee asked the Air Force about the status of the JCA program, and the Air Force responded that "it is nowhere near buying the aircraft." Thus the subcommittee cut $109m from the Army budget. (Huh? It doesn't make sense to me either.) Fortunately, the House did not make the same mistake. Hopefully they'll fix the problem in conference.

This entire screwup is another sad legacy of the Key West Agreement, which divided up the skies between the Army, Air Force, and Navy. It's time we scrap it, and start over again.

Because of the Key West Agreement, the Army and Air Force shares the air lift function, the Army intra-theater, and the Air Force inter-theater. However, in today's non-linear battlefield, it's difficult to tell where to draw the "theater" line. So when the Army initiated the FCA, the Air Force felt compelled to protect its turf in the air lift business by joining the program, and then delayed the program by dragging its feet on its portion of the joint requirement. I think it was instructive to note that, only after the Army has announced the request for proposal for the FCA, did the Air Force start making noise about its similar requirements, yet did not have its set of requirement ready right away. What was the Air Force rep on the JROC doing? Isn't it his job to tell the Air Force before the Army announces its RFP?

In the 1960s, the Air Force did the same thing by appropriating the intra-theater C-123s from the Army using the same arguments, and then promptly retired the fleet. Similarly, the Air Force took over the CAS function from the Army, and has let it atrophy ever since. Just look at the ongoing attempts to sandbag the A-10 fleet. Today the Air Force flies F-16s to conduct the CAS surveillance mission for convoys in Iraq. As David Axe noted earlier, the Air Force is moving its focus toward the deep strike arena and moving away from CAS as it recasts the AF J-UCAS into a deep strike platform.

We need to abolish the Key West Agreement. Obviously, the Air Force has no institutional interest in either the CAS nor intra-theater lift functions. The Air Force needs to get out of the way and give A-10s to the Army. The Air Force needs to stop stalling JCA and let the Army buy as soon as possible. The Air Force can get in on the order later after it has completed its requirement process. Afterall, the AF is already using the C-130 to fulfill most of its intra-theater requirements anyway. The Army has a war to fight and the institutional Air Force needs to understand that.

-- Jimmy Wu

Contact Bombs in Iraq

Iraqi insurgents are trying out a new tactic. "The newest method of triggering [an improvised explosive] is a contact strip laid across part of the pavement," says Fox News' Rick Leventhal, who's in Iraq.

"It can be inside plastic tubing. When a tire hits it and the wires inside make contact — boom. This method doesn't require the cowards to be on scene, but it's totally random. Any local on the road could be the next victim."

Ex-NSA Chief Blasts Taps, Calls for CIA Breakup

Former NSA director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman lashed out at the Bush administration Monday night over its continued use of warrantless domestic wiretaps – and called for the CIA to be broken up in two. It's one of the first times a former high-ranking intelligence official has criticized the program in public, analysts say.

"This activity is not authorized," Inman said, as part of a panel discussion on eavesdropping, sponsored by the New York Public Library. The Bush administration "need[s] to get away from the idea that they can continue doing it."

Since the NSA eavesdropping program was unveiled in December, Inman – like other senior members of the intelligence community – has been measured in the public statements he's made about the agency he headed under President Jimmy Carter. He maintained that his former analysts "only act in accordance with law." When asked whether the president had the legal authority to order the wiretaps, Inman replied, "someone else would have to give you the good answer."

But sitting in a brightly-lit, basement auditorium at the Library, next to James Risen, the New York Times reporter who broke the surveillance story, Inman's tone changed. He called on the President to "walk into the modern world" and change the law governing the wiretaps – or abandon the program altogether.

"The program has drawn a lot of criticism, but thus far former military and intelligence officials have not spoken up. To have Admiral Inman – the former head of the NSA -- come forward with this critique is significant," said Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping, who sat on the panel with Inman and Risen. "Because of the secrecy surrounding this type of activity, much of the criticism has come from outsiders who don't have a firm grasp of the mechanics and the utility of electronic intelligence. Inman knows whereof he speaks."

My Wired News article has details.

UPDATE 5:02 PM: While Inman was generally supportive of General Michael Hayden, George Bush's pick for CIA director, and Inman's NSA successor -- despite the fact that the Hayden was the guy running the questionable domestic surveillance project. Even his critics, Inman said, have given Hayden "high marks" for refocusing the agency on terrorism.

Most of 'em, anyway. NSA whistleblower Russ Tice, to put it mildly, hates Hayden's guts. Echoing TPM Muckraker allegations that "between 1999 and 2005, the NSA bungled two key technology programs and... has been burning through billions -- billions -- of dollars," Tice tells Defense Tech:

Through his mismanagement, many critical SIGINT missions were not funded and the intelligence needed and depended on was not collected. Perhaps 911 could have been avoided if NSA had those assets in place and did not waste all that money...

He lied about the NSA being involved in domestic spying and continues to lie about the enormous scope of those programs. He stated NSAer know about the Forth Amendment to the Constitution and in the same breath proved that he did not have a clue about it hinging on "probable cause" not reasonableness. He forgot to mention that he also violated the FISA Act and NSA's own policy on domestic Spying (USSID-18).

To be frank, he is a self promoter, an ass-kisser, an accomplished liar, an oath breaker, an extremely poor manager, a sadist, a criminal, and a proven domestic enemy of the Constitution of the United States. Oh, and a piss-poor all-source intelligence officer to boot. He should have remained an air opps officer restricted to the flight ready-room.

To sum Hayden up in a few words, he is dishonorable and without integrity.

In would appear that the president will not tolerate a lap-dog like Porter Goss that barks now and again. Hayden will lift his leg and squat all over the constitutional carpet, but while in the lap of the man who sits the newly erected thrown, Hayden will wag his tail and only open his mouth to lick his master's face.

Lord help us!

UPDATE 6:35 PM: Inman also emphasized something Defense Tech has been saying since the start of this scandal: that your average spook finds the idea of spying on Americans downright revolting.

One of Inman's "proudest moments" as NSA director was when senior employees told him not to pursue a legally fishy operation, he noted. "It's deeply ingrained in you that you operate within the law."

UPDATE 6:40 PM: In addition, Inman put to bed the notion that the NSA's domestic eavesdropping program only examined the links between terror suspects -- not the contents of the conversations themselves. Is this all about who-called-who? "No, it isn't," he answered, on his way out the door (he had to leave quick, because of a bout of food poisoning). For voice communications, which are tough to search, that might be the case, he added. But with e-mail? No way.

Rapid Fire 05/09/06

* New armor "too goofy" for troops

* Buh-bye, Larry

* You too, Dusty!

* Military made San Fran gay

* "Kosher Cures for the CIA"

* "Cloaking device," for real?

* Thank God for Playstation

* Bots clone themselves

* Globak Hawks soaring, in every way

* Autistic recruit OK

(Big ups: GeekPress, Drudge, Nick)

TSA Wants to Pump (Clap) You Up

The Transportation Security Administration is looking for managers to supervise the fitness center in its Pentagon City headuqarters. The request notes that the fitness center currently has only 220 dues-paying members; the annual membership fee is $312/year, which implies that total annual revenue is $68,640. Nevertheless, the request notes that TSA's goal is for the fitness center "to be self-sustaining"...something that won't be easy at that revenue level.

According to this DHS Inspector General report, the initial cost of this fitness center was $650,000. At least that expense was fully vetted by DHS -- as opposed to the contrast with the gym at the Transportation Security Operations Center (TSOC) in Herndon, which, the Washington Post notes, was chastised in the same IG report.

I don't have any objection in principle to government offices having their own fitness centers; it's a good investment to the extent that it increases employee productivity and allows them to utilize their time effectively. But with only 220 dues-paying members at the TSA gym, it needs to be asked: might couldn't they use the Bally's Total Fitness, a block-and-a-half from TSA headquarters, instead?

- Christian Beckner

Giant Slingshot: New Way to Space?

All space projects get into orbit pretty much the same way – by burning lots of rocket fuel, a spaceship powers itself past the sky. But what if there was a different approach? What if we could throw something so hard, it would wind up in space? At NASA's behest, Ed Schmidt and Mark Bundy of the Army Research Lab are looking at ways of firing projectiles into orbit.

The notion has a very long pedigree. Back in 1687 when Isaac Newton first came up with the theory of gravity he also introduced the concept of an orbital cannon which could fire a cannonball so fast that it would never come down. The first serious attempt to shoot into space was the High Altitude Research Program (HARP)
carried out in the US in the 60’s (not to be confused with HAARP High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program so beloved of the tinfoil hat brigade). HARP used a modified 16-inch naval gun to loft projectiles to the incredible altitude of 112 miles before being cancelled in 1967.

The ARL study looks at more sophisticated approaches than your basic cannon, including a blast wave accelerator, and electro-magnetic rail gun, and an EM coil gun. But the wildest idea may be the Slingatron: a giant, hypervelocity, rapid-fire slingshot. The machine would spin a projectile faster and faster through a spiral-shaped tube, building up increasing amounts of centripetal force along the way – just like a discus-thrower, spinning himself around before a toss, or like a latter-day King David, winding up his weapon before he whacks Goliath.

Schmidt and Bundy are cautiously positive about Slingatron and the other launch concepts:

- Achieving an 8 km/s muzzle velocity did not violate any laws of physics

- All had serious engineering and materials issues

- Significant research is required

- Facilitization costs would be high

- All are high risk

So it’s a big project which will take some development, but the benefits would be phenomenal. If we can spend $7 billion+ on an airborne laser which is frankly unimpressive, why not put a billion into each of these concepts - then use the rest to build whichever looks best?

An orbital launcher would bring the cost of putting a payload into orbit from around $10,000 a pound to a few hundred dollars. (The G-forces are so huge, astronauts still have to go up the hard way). The main problem as far as I can see would be fights breaking out in the queue to use it. [OK, not exactly. But Hambling's on a roll here. Let him go with it. -- ed.]

NASA wants it to send up components of the ISS or future lunar of Mars missions. Send up the pieces and it could all be assembled in Earth orbit before moving on go where no man has gone before. Or they could use it as a first-stage, putting rockets into orbit which could then boost small probes to the rest of the solar system.

Or it could be used to put up new nano-satellites by the score, at short notice and without the need for scarce and expensive rockets.

But for the Pentagon it could be a candidate for the ideal Global Strike tool: capable delivering a one-ton bunker-busting tungsten supercavitating penetrator at orbital speed. [Not that we're encouraging this sort of thing.] That’s real Shock & Awe, which could arrive anywhere in the world with no warning before bombers could get off the runway. (Anyone remember Saddam Hussein’s Project Babylon Supergun , or the Nazi’s V3 plans?)

Alternatively, an aeroballistic pod could be launched which would break open at high altitude to release a dozen Dominators or similar craft to find and attack precision targets, catching fleeing terrorists in less time than it takes to get a Predator into the area.

Then again, the anti-satellite people might want to have a go too. [Not that we're looking to encourage them, either.] It would make a neat anti-aircraft gun, firing small guided projectiles, and might offer some interesting options for kinetic ballistic missile defense.

Maybe SOCOM might want a look for about instant re-supply anywhere, for when it absolutely, positively has to be there within the hour, regardless of weather conditions?

If you take a look at my book Weapons Grade, you’ll find a chapter with an unusual history of the Space Race. It shows how the space program for both East and West originated with the German military V-2 program, and progressed on the back of post-war ballistic missile programs. The launchers on both sides were modified versions of rockets originally designed to carry warheads. The idea of space travel had been around for years, but it took military interest to make it happen.

We may now again be in a situation where the next major breakthrough in space technology is just waiting for the military to take the lead again.

The possibilities are endless…but, I think I hear Monsieur Verne’s lawyers at the door, something about stealing his idea of going From The Earth To The Moon…

-- David Hambling

UPDATE 05/10/06 12:23PM: Not only is physicist a fan of the Slingatron, but, apparently, Google co-founder Larry Page is, too.

Rapid Fire 05/08/06

* Marines escort body, get strip-searched (background here)

* SpySat delays = LockMart billions

* Freak weather behind UFOs?

* Rutan blasts NASA

* Fly-by-wire copter

* Shocking lie detector

* House, Army battle over "Future Combat" (background here)

* "FEMA reform: stop blaming the org chart"

* Don't bother mapping terror nets?

* CIA's "existential crisis"

* Domestic wiretap report rescued

* Crooked mercs investigation deepens

"The ballad of ABomb and GDub"

(Big ups: SS, AT, EG, MP)

Hello, Hayden

It's official: General Mike Hayden has been nominated to head the CIA. Republican lawmakers are already spooked by the choice -- and not just because of his domestic wiretap project, or his shaky grip on the 4th amendment says. But one military intelligence specialist tells Defense Tech that he likes Mike:

If we leave aside the obvious political arguments over the NSA program which are sure to come up at any confirmation hearings, Hayden is a great pick. One of the big talking points on both sides of the aisle is how CIA needs to be fixed... Hayden did the same thing at NSA, dragging it kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He overcame a lot of bureaucratic inertia to accomplish that. I would say he is the best candidate to do just the same at CIA. Additionally, being a in the military might afford him a little extra protection from some of the political sniping that comes with a regular political appointee. Time will tell, but if we are serious as a nation about our security and having competent intelligence services to help provide that security, I don't think we could fins anyone better for this job at this time. If certain Senators want to play politics and kill this nomination (if it comes) to make some partisan points, what we will inevitably end up with running the CIA is a milquetoast, non-threatening figurehead who is acceptable to everyone, and such a person will have no leverage to produce any reforms in the Agency. That result would be the intelligence equivalent of FEMA/Michael Brown. That should be unacceptable to us all.

I'll be curious to hear what guys like Bobby Ray Inman, Patrick Keefe, and James Risen say tonight during their New York Public Library talk. If there are any truly juicy tidbits, I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, check it constantly with Laura Rozen and TPM Muckraker, who are all over the CIA transition story.

UPDATE 12:14 PM: I've been away for a few days (more on that in a bit), so I didn't get a chance to comment on the downright hilarious spin whizzing around Porter Goss' departure from the CIA. I didn't work in Washington all that long. But I was there long enough to know that top-level guys like him do not get fired suddenly over long-standing turf battles or routine staff shake-ups. Frankly, the poker-and-hooker theory makes a whole lot more sense.

Who Killed the Killer Drone - and Why?

In November, with great fanfare, the U.S. Navy and Air Force took over Darpa's biggest, most promising killer drone program, Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems, or J-UCAS. The idea was to develop a single family of weaponized drones operating from land and from carrier decks, backing up and ultimately replacing manned fighter jets. According to Dr. Michael S. Francis, J-UCAS Director, the program promised "a transformational shift in the operational application of airpower in the 21st century combat environment."

Two months later, the 2007 defense budget split the program into separate Air Force and Navy programs. J-UCAS was dead. "We start joint, but we never carry it across the goal line for some reason," Rear Adm. Timothy Heely told Aviation Week after the decision was announced.

I'm on the UAV beat for National Defense. In recent weeks I've spoken to many Air Force and Navy UAV program managers and operators -- and none have given me a straight answer on why J-UCAS went extinct.

Janes has an idea: The Air Force and Navy drifted further and further apart on what their unmanned combat planes (the X-45 and X-47, respectively) should do. The gap got so wide, the one-size-fits-all approach stopped making sense.

[The] USAF decided that its present conception no longer met that service's long-term needs. USAF ambitions are for a long-range strike aircraft embracing stealth, endurance, ISR [or Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] and attack capabilities, and, while the projected [J-UCAS vehicle] clearly offered the first and last of these, there was seen to be a mismatch between the aircraft's range/endurance and its modest 4,500 lb weapon load.

Janes is on to something. A few weeks ago, somebody leaked Air Force plans to fold its half of the former J-UCAS program into its Long-Range Strike study, which is looking at ways to replace B-1s, B-2s and B-52s. Air Force Magazine explains:

[Long-Range Strike] would replace the Joint Unmanned Combat Aircraft System--slated for termination--with a larger, faster unmanned bomber. The aircraft would have to cover very long distances and be able to loiter in the target area with a good-sized bomb load.

Note that "good-sized bomb load" part. Last week, Navy Capt. Steven Wright told me that the Navy wanted J-UCAS not for strategic bombing, but initially for penetrating ISR and, later, for close air support -- both missions that require smallish, fast, medium-range aircraft like today's manned F/A-18s.

Air Force again:

The qualities the Air Force wanted in a next-generation strike aircraft were trending toward a larger and larger platform, equipped with a sizable bomb load and able to loiter in enemy territory for long periods, with periodic refuelings from a tanker. The size of the objective Air Force version of J-UCAS had been upped several times, and likely would have been enlarged again.

And that meant parting ways with the Navy and its smaller, tactical armed drone.

Defense Tech sources have another theory: that the Air Force killed its combat drone, Boeing's X-45, to keep it from competing with its manned fighter jet of the future, the Joint Strike Fighter.

The reason that was given (strictly off the record) [by Air Force officials] was that we were expected to be simply too good in key areas and that we would have caused massive disruption to the efforts to "keep… JSF sold." If we had flown and things like survivability had been evenly assessed on a small scale and Congress had gotten ahold of the data, JSF would have been in serious trouble.

And what was this shocking data?

Say the mission is to take out a SAM [surface-to-air missile] site using a Small Diameter Bomb. That SDB has the same standoff launch max range regardless of the platform releasing it. Given that the state of the art for Low Observable (LO) design and material is much the same between the qualified aircraft designers in the U.S., how LO your system is largely a function of shape and cross section. Compare the shapes and profiles of the F-35 [JSF] and the X-45C. Who do you think is going to have the higher probably of being killed? Of course that "kill" in the JSF case means body bags and in the case of a X-45C, just the lost aircraft and far fewer of them.

The Navy's Capt. Wright says that both the X-45 and X-47 J-UCAS demonstrators will continue development under the Navy UCAS program. Carrier trials are expected in 2011. Meanwhile, the Air Force will start from scratch or piggyback its UCAS/Long-Range Strike vehicle on an existing classified platform, perhaps the one mentioned by David Hambling here a few weeks back.

For more, check out Noah's January post on how the killer drone program got bumped off.

-- David Axe

UPDATE 5:40 PM: Not everyone in the Defense Department is sold on the idea of turning J-UCAS into a strike plane -- or on the idea of the new aircract, period. As Inside Defense notes, "Internal squabbling between two camps within the Pentagon is delaying the formal start of a study aimed at helping the Air Force shape its effort to field a new long-range bomber."

Home, Sweet, Impregnable Fortress Home

Zhang Cheng and his 1,300 mile-per-hour choice of office decor has reignited my long forgotten desire to create my own fortress of doom.

Decade old changes in military purchasing habits have opened avenues for regular folk and paranoid fruitcakes alike. In the age of 'global' terror, your puny house alarm is only likely give provide sample-fodder for super-burglars mixing beats in their stolen iPod Nanos. So what could I do to protect my junk from techno-pirates and annoying little sh*ts that may or may not live down my street?

(For the benefit of those waiting for the missile-silo bubble to burst, we'll pretend I've got a fully-loaded island in the sun, complete with volcano).

Starting outside, the perimeter of mi casa should be free of all surveillance platforms and rival gangs. Advanced optics and specialized audio equipment placed around the gaff should provide me with ample warning of approaching homemade UAVs. Of course, you could also create your own air coverage like Bin Laden, or just buy real time satellite imagery if you're lazy.

Walls don't really go with the volcano, so Isla Snell features laser fencing to detect any possible intruder. Guard dogs are too low-tech, so in the age of genetic modification I've created my own protection: glow-in-the-dark guard pigs. Depending on my set up, speakers/sirens could also nauseate the intruder with my rendition of "I Fought the Law" whilst riot-slime causes hilarious slip'n'slide movements.

Surplus light armour is available to move from one side of the yard to the other and the spy car will patrol the areas my guard pigs don't. If you're lucky enough to survive the pigs/slime, please feel free to ring the buzzer. Biometrics would secure all doors and windows but I've opted for the alternative, of course.

For today's wealthy agoraphobes, a modest $10,000 could provide features such as candle-stick activating doorways and revolving fireplaces. Naturally all electrics are connected by a central system, but my modesty shots are kept off-site. Robotic agents patrol the corridors feeding video to the Tablet PC alerting me to any food delivery. A thermal camera would help me avoid creditors meaning I could make a quick getaway in my submarine. Any attempt to gain underwater access would be detected by the robo-fish, of course.

Some among you may argue that fear has clouded reason and that paranoia has led to the 21st century version of bomb shelter hysteria, that we don't actually need used military equipment and high-tech 'home-alone' protection. But with the balls/idiocy of todays 'crim-orrists' (or terr-inals), now might be the time to spruce up the old homestead and -- let's face it -- play with some of the coolest inventions since Porno Pez.

Now, if I only had room in the tub...

-- Steven Snell

Defense Tech Drops Beats

Before I got deep into death rays and flying drones, I played bass and made beats for a living. This new album from Subatomic Sound System, a dub-meets-dancehall-meets- hip-hop-meets-who-the-fuck-knows-what collective operating out of Defense Tech's former East Village headquarters, features a couple of my favorite tunes. (Although, really, I'm a bit player in this superstar crew. Subatomic mastermind Emch and his army of MCs do the real heavy lifting.)

Check out the record, "On All Frequencies," on DJMR, iTunes, and eMusic.

Rapid Fire 05/04/06

* "Net Neutrality," major deal

* Contractors love "flexible" Senator

* $1M DHS shuttle bus costs $21M

* House whacks missile defense, space weapons

* Marines get more Cougars

* Senate blocks Iraq permanent bases

* Darpa goal: regrow limbs

* Flu plan full of holes

* Nuke retirement shenanigans?

* Homeless Iraq heroes

* Ender's Game alert! "Australia to Train Kids for Cyber Warfare"

(Big ups: Adam)

Watch List Snags Fellow Feds

How bad are the feds' enemy-of-the-state databases? So bad, they can't even keep fellow terror-hunters off their blacklists, Ryan Singel reports.

The Transportation Security Administration's airline screening system "tends to mistake government employees and U.S. servicemen for foreign terrorists," he writes in today's Wired News. "Newly released government documents show that even having a high-level security clearance won't keep you off the Transportation Security Administration's Kafkaesque terrorist watch list, where you'll suffer missed flights and bureaucratic nightmares."

According to logs from the TSA's call center from late 2004 -- which black out the names of individuals to protect their privacy -- the watch list has snagged...

* A high-ranking government employee with a better-than-top-secret clearance who is also a U.S. Army Reserve major...

* An active-duty Army officer who had served four combat tours (including one in Afghanistan) and who holds a top-secret clearance.

* A retired U.S. Army officer and antiterrorism/force-protection officer with expertise on weapons of mass destruction who was snared when he was put back on active-duty status while flying on a ticket paid for by the Army.

Now, I'm sure there have been improvements to the watch lists since 2004. But, as
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine told Congress earlier this week, database managers still "had not ensured that the information in that database is complete and accurate. For example, the OIG found instances where the consolidated database did not contain names that should have been included on the watch list and inaccurate or inconsistent information related to persons included in the database."

The OIG's June 2005 report offered 40 recommendations to the TSC [Terrorist Screening Center] to address areas such as database improvements, data accuracy and completeness, call center management, and staffing. The TSC generally agreed with the recommendations and in some cases provided evidence that it has taken action to correct the weaknesses that the audit identified.

Since issuance of the audit, the TSC has initiated a record-by-record review of the terrorist screening database to ensure accuracy, completeness, and consistency of the records. TSC staff informed the OIG it is focusing first on the records deemed most important. According to the TSC, review of the entire database, which contains more than 235,000 [uh, make that 325,000] records, will take several years.

UPDATE 9:57 AM: Slashdot sez, "The Guardian newspaper has a great story about how the gathering of information for 'anti-terrorist' passenger screening databases allowed a reporter and security guru Adam Laurie to lay the groundwork for stealing the identity of a business traveller by using his discarded boarding-pass stub."

Hybrid reality check

Despite 15 years development that has produced more than 30 different demonstrators and despite a lot of hype lately, military diesel-electric hybrids are no closer to mass production than they were five years ago. "Right now we don't have a hybrid-electric vehicle targeting fielding," says Gus Khalil, director of the Army's hybrid research.

The reasons are many. Despite advantages including modest fuel savings, power export capability, design scalability and flexible internal layout, hybrids are simply too expensive, too heavy and too fragile for military service. Batteries -- or, alternately, capacitors -- are particularly problematic: they're unstable, finnicky in extreme weather and present enormous safety and logistical challenges.

In recent weeks, I've talked to hybrid programs managers at all the major U.S. military vehicle manufacturers. They all maintain the same line: hybrids are very promising, they say, but more work is needed.

Khalil says that the first mass-produced military hybrids will most likely be vehicles in the Future Combat Systems family, which should enter production around 2010. In the meantime, expect demonstrators like the HEMTT A3, RST-V (pictured) and hybrid Humvee to remain just that -- demonstrators.

--David Axe

P.S. Publishers Weekly just reviewed my graphic novel War Fix!

UPDATE 8:58 AM: Noah here. I've been told by a high-level Army general who worked the hybrid problem for years that the problems which Axe details above can be overcome. But there's an even bigger barrier to the new vehicles: Detroit. American auto- and truck-makers still aren't committed to mass-producing hybrids on the level that the Army needs, the General said. (Look at their reluctance to make commercial hybrids.) Without their buy-in, the Army won't have hybrids for a long, long time.

Rapid Fire 05/03/06

* Feds' spy defense: "magic ring"

* Camera sees through clothes

* Secure WLANs deployed

* "Using laptops to steal cars"

* The riot slimer

* CIA's "analytic pathologies"

* Combat SkySat takes off

* Everything you wanted to know about guns-for-hire in Iraq

(Big ups: /., Sploid)

Death Ray -- or Accounting Shift?

The headline is pretty spooky: "Administration Conducting Research Into Laser Weapon." And the meat of the story, on the Starfire Optical Range's plan to start lighting up satellites, can probably best be described as:

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! DEATH RAY!!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!

Check it out:

The Bush administration is seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.

The largely secret project, parts of which have been made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive…

The laser research… would take advantage of an optical technique that uses sensors, computers and flexible mirrors to counteract the atmospheric turbulence that seems to make stars twinkle.

The weapon would essentially reverse that process, shooting focused beams of light upward with great clarity and force.

Which is all true – to a point. Gimme a sec to explain.

The Starfire range relies on some of the only useful technology to emerge from the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or Star Wars. As Ann Finkbeiner tells the story, in the early 1980s, Air Force scientists looked into the question of correcting for atmospheric turbulence to image Soviet spy satellites. They had the idea that to shine a laser against a layer of sodium in the mesosphere (essentially the last layer of the earth's atmosphere) in order to measure the distortion from the ground up.

Measuring the atmospheric distortion allows a scientist to deform her telescope producing a clear picture. It's called adaptive optics. Think of it as looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror with glasses that are just as screwy, but precisely so in order to offset the effect of the mirror. (The pretty picture accompanying the NYT story does a good job of explaining.)

The Starfire Optical Range uses adaptive optics, mostly, to take pretty pictures of stars and the like (click here for a little astro-porn from SOR). But the same skill-set is also damn handy if you want to fire a laser through the atmosphere to fry a satellite or ballistic missile.

Hence, our little problem here.

So, am I little bothered that the Air Force is funding "atmospheric compensation/beam control experiments for application including antisatellite weapons"? Yup. "Precision aimpoint stabilization through turbulence"? That can't be good. Ditto placing the whole thing under "Advanced Weapons Technology." Unless UBL is hanging out on a space station, I can think of better ways to use the cash.

On the other hand, the NYT's science scribe, Bill Broad, isn't being fair when he calls the research a "largely secret project", accuses the Bush Administration of "seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit" or relegates the useful applications of adaptive optics to a couple of paragraphs near the end of the story.

This is important technology research, largely conducted in the open. As Broad notes, "previously, the laser work resided in a budget category that paid for a wide variety of space efforts." What's happened here, mostly, is an accounting shift. Adaptive optics can be used for good or ill, depending on our collective wisdom as a people. There is no policy fix for stupid.

Broad is being particularly unfair to both the Air Force and critics of this particular experiment, like me, by giving the last word to an activist group warning that, if the experiment is conducted, "the barrier to weapons in space will have been destroyed."

I'd rather the Air Force not do the experiment, but this is not a death ray. In fact, other than some vague, unfocused research, the military isn't really in the death ray business anymore. Well, there is the Airborne Laser, but that is a whole other story.

-- Jeffrey Lewis

UPDATE 4:01 PM: You wanna talk real laser weapons? some of the most interesting directed energy work was outlined in Noah's article in Popular Science, "Attack at the Speed of Light," which showcases efforts by two erstwhile SDI scientsists, now competing to build much smaller lasers to tackle practical missions like shooting down mortars.

UPDATE 6:24 PM: For a completely different take, check out this paper from the Center for Defense Information.

UPDATE 05/04/06 10:42 AM: John Fleck has a great follow-up to the Starfire flap in today's Albuquerque Journal.

Hitchens explained that there long has been a sort of "gentleman's agreement" among nations not to mess with one another's satellites.

The reason is rooted in the complex calculus of nuclear deterrence. A nation with the ability to watch for enemy missile launches is less likely to accidentally start a nuclear war, she explained...

Vansuch said next year's proposed test would be the first time the Starfire technology has been used to focus an outgoing laser.

The test would be no death ray, but rather a very low power experiment. "The basic physics is what we're after," Vansuch said.

(Big ups: Larry Ahrens)

Cell Phones Full of Clues

I've got a story in today's New York Times. Here's how it starts:

The case against Dan Kincaid was strong. A homeowner in northern Boise, Idaho, had identified Mr. Kincaid, 44, as the person who had broken into his suburban house. But eyewitness testimony isn't always rock solid, and Mr. Kincaid was refusing to talk. The police wanted more. So they searched Mr. Kincaid's BlackBerry e-mail-capable phone electronically, and found all the evidence they needed.

"Just trying to find a way out of this neighborhood without getting caught," Mr. Kincaid wrote to his girlfriend on Aug. 1, 2005, shortly after he had been spotted. "Dogs bark if I'm between or behind houses. ... "

"Cops know I have a blue shirt on," he continued. "I need to get out of here before they find me."

Faced with his e-mailed admission, Mr. Kincaid agreed to a deal with prosecutors over that crime and a string of others. In February, he pleaded guilty to five counts of grand theft, resisting arrest and burglary.

"We seized his phone," said Detective Jeff Dustin of the Boise Police Department, "and instead of a jump shot, this case is a slam dunk."

Cellphones are everywhere: 825 million were sold last year, according to the market research firm IDC. And the phones do more than just dial numbers. With expanded memories, increasingly sophisticated organizer tools and sharper cameras, they are playing ever larger roles in the lives of almost everyone — including criminals. Drug dealers, rapists and murderers across the country have been caught based, at least partly, on the electronic gadgets they carry around.

But extracting clues and leads from mobile electronics is no cakewalk. Unlike personal computers, 90 percent or more of which use the Windows operating system, cellphones rely on a confusing jumble of software that varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and even phone to phone. Data is often hidden or encrypted. And as long as a phone is connected to its cellular network, there is always a chance that its call histories and text messages will be erased, deliberately or otherwise.

Read the rest here.

Axe does Hedgecock

Hey all, I'll be on the Roger Hedgecock radio show at 4:00 Pacific time on Wednesday, talking about Iraq, I think. For those of you who don't know, Hedgecock is a big-time conservative host in San Diego and a regular sub on Rush Limbaugh. Well, Hedgecock is out for a while and some guy named Valentine is filling in. I'll be sure to hit him with some of my trademark political ambivalence. Go to the show's site to listen live.

--David Axe

Top G-Men: Terror Ignorance is Bliss

A few weeks back, I wrote about the seemingly unshakeable culture of technophobia at the FBI -- and how nearly a third of Bureau employees still don't have e-mail accounts, as a result.

But that's not the only bad habit that the G-Men are having trouble breaking. As Jeff Stein reports in his must-read CQ Weekly cover story, there's still a willful ignorance about terrorists and their methods -- even at the FBI's highest levels.

Now listen to the testimony of Gary M. Bald, the FBI’s top counterterrorism and counterintelligence official, in a legal deposition last year. Questioned under oath in a whistleblower lawsuit brought by an Arab- American FBI agent, Bald was asked whether he knew the difference between Sunni and Shia, the two strains of Islam at war with each other as much as with the United States.

Bald waved off the question. “You don’t need subject matter expertise,” he said. “The subject matter expertise is helpful, but it isn’t a prerequisite. It is certainly not what I look for in selecting an official for a position in the counterterrorism [program].” In other words, he didn’t know the answer: that a 1,400-year-long schism over who should lead Islam, originating in fierce succession battles after the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D., is still being played out between nuclear aspirant and Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, not to mention the armed factions battling for control of U.S.-occupied Iraq. The religious passions that drive the different branches of the Islamic world — and the fervor that leads some to violence against the West — was not on his radar screen.

Nor could Bald, or other top FBI counterterrorism officials questioned last summer, explain the web of relationships of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization with other key fundamentalist figures and groups…

hat its techniques for recruiting informants change on the basis of a person’s ethnic background, culture or language, according to testimony by John E. Lewis, another top counterterrorism official at the bureau. “It doesn’t make any difference whether somebody’s from the Middle East or a white supremacist or from Australia,” Lewis said, meaning that Middle Eastern terrorists rat out their brethren for the same reason Klansmen do: for money, revenge and disenchantment with the cause.

That the FBI’s American recruits spoke the Klan’s language in Mississippi and understood its culture and politics was not seen as any kind of special advantage that’s being lost in the battle against foreign terrorists. Under further questioning, Lewis also admitted that he had no previous counterterrorism experience himself.

UPDATE 1:48 PM: "The salient fact is that, approaching five years after 9/11, we still do not have a domestic intelligence service that can collect effectively against the terrorist threat to the homeland or provide authoritative analysis of that threat," John Gannon, a former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today. "It is not enough to say these things take time. It could not be clearer from the Intelligence Community’s experience over the past 25 years that it is extraordinarily difficult to blend the families of intelligence and law enforcement, and that the Bureau’s organizational bias toward the latter—for deep-seated historic reasons--is powerful and persistent."

Read more testimony here.

Sunny, With a 75% Chance of Air Superiority

Some Air Force weapons simulators act like our biggest enemies just don't exist. Why? Because the programs get their data from friendly ground weather-monitoring stations. And when there aren't any stations in a particular country, you get "an inconvenient Iran-shaped blank on the map."

That may be about to change, thanks to some collaboration between a civilian space program and the Department of Defense.

On Friday, a NASA satellite named CloudSat took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Unlike traditional radar weather satellites, which can only take two-dimensional snapshots of clouds (think Weather Channel radar maps), CloudSat can take three-dimensional profiles of the atmosphere, measuring how clouds, aerosol particles and precipitation are distributed vertically.

This atmospheric data has lots of scientific uses, which is why scientists are pretty excited about the new satellite.

But the goods that CloudSat will deliver also sound like exactly what the Air Force needs in order to take the next step with HELEEOS -- its realistic, operational simulation of high-energy laser weapons. Maybe that’s why CloudSat’s Advisory Group, charged with "expand[ing] the usefulness and future application of CloudSat data," includes representatives from both the Naval Research Lab and the Airborne Laser Program Office – the DOD’s leading laser weapons program.

While CloudSat seems to be a good model for civilian-military collaboration on space assets, resource-sharing in space doesn’t always work out so smoothly. A recent case demonstrates where this type of sharing can create annoying conflicts of interest.

For over a decade now, the DOD has been working to merge its meteorological assets with the civilian National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (the folks who give you the National Weather Service); at the same time, NOAA is working more and more closely with EUMETSAT, the European civilian weather-satellite agency.

While this little love triangle is reducing a lot of expensive redundancy, it also raises a hairy conflict of interest: EUMETSAT’s mission is to "ensure that citizens of every country of our remarkable planet will continue to benefit from the most accurate, safe and reliable operational Earth observations" (read: to hand out its data to everyone), while the DOD’s goal is, obviously, to make sure that our guys have better data than the bad guys.

The DOD seems to have won the first round of fighting that resulted from this conflict of interests. The upcoming European MetOp-1 satellite will include a few instruments provided by the two US agencies, and the Department of Defense therefore wants to be able to block third-party access to weather data from the system in an emergency. After negotiations went down to the eleventh hour, the Europeans finally agreed to a compromise that will allow the DOD to decide when to push the data-denial button, but allow EUMETSAT to do the actual button-pushing.

Back in 2004, the Department of Defense prevailed in another confrontation with the European Union, this one over Galileo, the EU’s answer to the DOD’s Global positioning System. In the Galileo flap, the US’s demands were even higher than in the back-and-forth over MetOp: not only did we insist on the right to jam Galileo’s signal in case of an emergency, we demanded that the EU design Galileo in such a way that we could jam it without affecting GPS.

All of these disputes were resolved successfully, and with the US military getting its way. This happened in part because the US military also represented NATO –- which made it a lot easier for us to argue that what’s best for us is best for the Europeans, too.

But as both militaries and civilian economies become more dependent on space, and as the US government continues to merge its military and civilian orbital resources, look for more of these turf wars to crop up. The two sides that won’t always come round to seeing eye to eye as easily as they did in these cases. Let’s just hope this won’t lead to any shootouts on the final frontier.

-- Haninah Levine

Stealth Fighter's Costs Soar

The Pentagon has a motto for its next-generation attack jet, the Joint Strike Fighter: "Lethal, Survivable, Supportable, Affordable." But the military may want to think about modifying that a bit, now that each JSF is going to cost $82.1 million, according to Defense News. Just a few months ago, the head of the JSF program, Rear Admiral Steven Enewold, told me that the most expensive variant of the plane would come in at about $60 million.

The JSF is designed to replace everything from Harrier jump jets to F-16s to Super Hornets with a single class of fighter. At a projected $256 billion, it's already the most expensive weapons program in Pentagon history.

But the fighter makes sense in today's increasingly-tight budgets, RADM Enewold said, because the stealthy JSF not only could beat the air defenses of the future -- it could knock out guerilla hideouts, too.

But that fiscal logic, he acknowledged, hinged on keeping the cost per plane down. Otherwise, sending this high-performance jet after insurgents would be like putting out a fire with Dom Perignon. Even before the latest price jump, the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigational arm, called the JSF’s original business plan "unexecutable." Wonder what they'll say about the program now?

UPDATE 9:10 AM: Here's some more budget news, all courtesy of Inside Defense:

* Army committed to troop cuts
* Operating costs could ground laser jet
* Rail gun not ready 'til 2020
* 2008 deadline for Future Combat Systems?

UPDATE 2:05 PM: This is huge, if it holds up. I'm guessing it won't. A House subcommittee has passed legislation to limit the DD(X) destroyer program "to just two ships," Defense News says.

Rising DD(X) costs have prompted Congress to cut the program repeatedly, from as many as 30 ships planned in the late 1990s to just seven this year. Originally, the ships were supposed to cost about $1 billion each. Last year, the Navy said it could build them for $3.3 billion apiece, but independent estimates put the price at $4 billion or more per ship.

The plan to halt the DD(X) buy at two would leave the Navy with a pair of ships that would serve mainly as demonstration models for a new generation of guided missile cruisers that would be built using the same hull.

It's On: Grand Challenge 3

"Just months after awarding $2 million for a sport utility vehicle that drove itself over more than 100 miles of open road, the Pentagon on Monday unveiled a bigger, richer challenge for self-driving vehicles that can negotiate city traffic," MSNBC's Alan Boyle reports.

This time around, [DARPA Grand Challenge] autonomous vehicles would run a simulated military supply mission in a mock urban area. To succeed, the vehicles would have to complete a 60-mile course safely in less than six hours, obeying traffic laws and avoiding obstacles while they merge with moving traffic, negotiate intersections and even pull into and back out of parking spaces...

The top prize would be $2 million once again, but DARPA would also offer a second prize of $500,000 and a third prize of $250,000. DARPA also will make funding available for contenders before the finals, through two tracks:

* Teams could submit detailed proposals for up to $1 million in technology development funds, with the government obtaining limited licensing rights to the resulting technologies. The selected teams would proceed to a semifinal known as the National Qualification Event.

* Teams could participate in a series of qualifying tests, just as competitors did in the 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand Challenges. The teams selected for the National Qualification Event would get $50,000, and the teams that are successful at that event will get $100,000 and a spot in the November 2007 finals.

Terrorists' Unmanned Air Force

The bad guys can use drones too. While billions have been spent on ballistic missile defense, little attention has been given to the more imminent threat posed by unmanned air vehicles in the hands of terrorists or rogue states.

Building a ballistic missile is a big deal. They take a lot of development – it really is rocket science – which is expensive and hard to keep secret. At best, you’ll end up with something like a Scud missile with a range of a few hundred miles and limited accuracy. You would not be able to aim at an individual building.

Unmanned air vehicles are another matter. They are small, cheap and you could buy one tomorrow. Short-range versions with video cameras are common, but thanks to GPS and Google Earth you can also put one to within a few yards of your aim point from long range. Very long range – in 2003 a TAM-5 UAV with a six-foot wingspan was flown over 1880 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. One scenario features a mass drone attack launched from a tanker or freighter well out in international waters.

Eugene Miasnikov of the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at MIPT, calls the UAV a suicide bomber on steroids, basically. Unlike a suicide bomber, a drone can easily penetrate security and threaten otherwise safe areas (eg the Green Zone) or reach crowded public places like spots stadiums. Dense crowds would lead to large numbers of casualties from fragmentation bombs, and an attack by multiple UAVs could cause panic and further injuries in the crowd. And don't even get us started about chemical, biological or ‘dirty bomb’ radioactive payloads.

Already, there have been a number of terrorists using (or, at least, intending on using) UAVs. Bin Laden had a plan to assassinate President Bush at the G8 summit, the FARC in Colombia bought drones. Hezbollah flew a "Mirsad-1" drone over Israeli territory in 2004.

Another paper by Dennis M. Gormley, on UAVs and Cruise Missiles as Possible Terrorist Weapons draws similar conclusions about the ease with which such weapons can be used and the difficulty of intercepting small, slow aircraft. He notes a significant incident in Iraq:

Moreover, two Iraqi ultra-light aircraft managed to fly directly over the 3rd Infantry Division’s logistical encampment and disappeared before orders could be arranged to fire at them. Even the use of expensive airborne reconnaissance systems such as AWACS would not help. Their radars intentionally eliminate slow-flying targets on or near the ground to prevent their data processing and display systems from being overtaxed.

One solution to the threat of hostile UAVs is DARPA’s Peregrine. This is a drone-killing drone, designed with dual propulsion mode to combine long loiter time on patrol with a dash capability for intercept. Spending on Peregrine has gone up from nothing in 2004 to $1.4m in ‘05 and $5m in the coming year. In Popular Mechanics, Noah and friends tried designing one of the drone-fighters. The one here was provided by The Mad Planeman whose blog tinkers with aircraft design.

But killing drones isn't the hard part, really. It's detecting and identifying before they can do damage that poses the biggest challenge. As Miasnikov points out if they are launched a few miles from their target there may be only minutes to react.

Those with long memories or an interest in esoteric weapons will recall that we have been here before. During WWII the US came under attack from thousands of small, long-range unmanned aircraft – Japanese ‘Fugo’ balloon bombs. Thirty feet across and made of mulberry paper, each carried three incendiary bombs to the US mainland all the way from Japan. Although they were dismissed at the time, tremendous resources were put into countering them. And although they did little damage, the Fugos were originally intended to carry biological agents, which would have made them a far more serious threat.

How great the threat is this time remains to be seen.

-- David Hambling

UPDATE 2:46 PM: There is no doubt that cheap and plentiful drones will be everywhere in future, used for everything from newsgathering to traffic control and fighting forest fires. The way will be led, as usual, by military...There’s a section on them in my book, Weapons Grade.

UPDATE 05/02/06 8:56 AM: Just how cheap and easy are these UAVs to build? Well, as CF points out, the Society of Automotive Engineers holds a drone-making contest every year for students. The machines cost anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 to build, he says. And the winning plane can generally haul between 30 and 40 pounds -- with just a 1.5 horsepower engine.

G.I. Journos' Killer War Doc

A little more than two years ago, filmmaker Deborah Scranton got an offer to embed with the New Hampshire National Guard as they headed to Iraq. She turned it down. Instead, Scranton gave cameras to ten soldiers -- and let them shoot the movie. The result, The War Tapes, premiered this weekend in New York, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It's not only the best documentary to date about the conflict in Iraq. But it just might change the face of journalism in the process.

Most movies about Iraq, so far, have been pretty thin, with little insight into the guys fighting this war, and minimal combat footage. That's largely because the filmmakers didn't have the acess -- or the patience -- to get to the war's meatiest material.

Scranton leapfrogged that problem by letting the soldiers become her cameramen. Shooting over a thousand hours, in the field and back at home, they took the time to cpature their unit's unguarded moments, both literal and metaphorical. The laugh-out-loud moments come almost as often as the IED attacks: the ode to guarding septic trucks; the Tarantino-esque debate over whether a severed limb "resembles hamburger, ground up but uncooked.. [or] like a raw pot roast"; the scorpion-spider cage match; the verge-of-breakup moments with girlfriends; the young Iraqi, who stepped into an American convoy a moment too soon.

The War Tapes benefits from a strong dose of luck. Scranton could've cast a thousand GIs, and not gotten three soldiers as sharp, as articulate, and as funny as Stephen Pink, Zack Bazzi, and Mike Moriarty, the movie's main characters. And she couldn't have known how much action these guys would see -- Al-Anbar province in 2004 saw some of the most ferocious fighting of the counterinsurgency.

But an even larger helping of editorial prowess makes The War Tapes a success. Condensing a thousand hours into two hours is tough. Condensing into two hours with a narrative and emotional arc this strong is damn-near-impossible.

In recent years, there's been a ridiculously cantankerous debate over the benefits of professional journalists versus citizen-reporters. The pros are seen as biased and clueless; the amateurs as, well, amateurish, without the seasoned eye to pick the truly telling moments from the torrent of experience. Take the blogs from frontline troops, for example. The views are a refreshing alternative to what you read in the mainstream press; their anecdotes vital. But getting to that good stuff, sorting out the proverbial wheat from blogosphere chaff, takes forever. Most readers, I've found, just give up.

Documentaries like The War Tapes -- and Grizzly Man, and, to a lesser extent, Capturing the Friedmans -- have found the happy medium between the old- and new-school approaches to news. The citizen-journos collect the facts. The pros craft a story from 'em. The result may not be what the news-gathers expected -- Zack Bazzi was surprised how much of his political views wound up in The War Tapes' final cut. But, in this case at least, it's satisfying and truthful and raw. And it's the kind of journalism we ought to have. With some luck, it may be the kind we get, moving ahead.

Links Galore in Transformation Motherlode

Wanna get caught up in a hurry on how the world's militaries are changing? Then check out the "Military Transformation Uplink," from Defense Tech pals Murdoc and Joe Katzman. They've culled some of the best stuff from Winds of Change, Defense Industry Daily, eDefense Online, and yours truly for a monthly motherlode of material on how armies everywhere are "transform[ing] themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century." Click the links below to check out the Uplink's take on...

• Military Transformation Uplink full briefing
• Air & Space Sector
• C4SI Dimension
• Land Sector
• Maritime Sector
• Strategic Weapons & Missile Defense
• Supply & Support
• Transformation: Policy & Doctrine

Some of This Month's Targets of Opportunity Include: UAV plans; killer drone swarms; WALRUS mega-blimp extict?; Russian airlift for NATO; Hydras and Hellfire; space challenges; Secret weapon - two-way radios; Nano-sensors; Fighter jets as battlefield surveillance - brilliant or dumb?; money-saving supercarriers; Littoral Combat Ships; missile defense updates; Algeria's big buy, energy conservation now a Pentagon issue... and much more.

Rapid Fire 05/01/06

* Mystery cloaks Predator crash

* Giant laser leaks cash

* Brazil drafts buffalo

* Raptor pilot gets stuck

* Iranians, Kurds tangle

* NASA chief: industry greed risks space program

* Robo-copters, ground 'bots team up

* Latin Kings inflitrate Army

* Europe's mini-drones

* Laser relays wrap up tests (background here)

* New gear for all-seeing blimp (background here)

(Big ups: RC, GG, BB)