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Rapid Fire 07/31/06
(Hat tips: RP, JS, CM, JK)
-- Eric Hundman
Nukes on Ice?
 Picture floating nuclear reactors sailing the seven seas—generating emergency power at disaster sites, providing fresh water during droughts, and warming the shivering citizens of Siberia.
Now, add indomitable ice floes, highly enriched uranium, hellacious weather, and terrorists slavering over lightly guarded nuclear fuel. Apply a "Made in Russia" stamp and file these titans under Technological Terrors.
On June 14 the Severnoye Mashinostroitelnoe Predpriyatie (more commonly known as Sevmashpredpriyatie, or Sevmash shipyard, one of many Russian sites bursting with nuclear waste, signed a contract to construct a floating nuclear power plant. Sevmash will install pairs of KLT-40S reactors (also sometimes called KLT-40C because of transliteration errors, or just KLT-40) on barges. The Russian icebreaker fleet uses the same KLT-40 reactor type, fueled by high-enriched uranium (roughly 40% enriched). However, according to the Uranium Information Center, the floating reactors have been modified to use low-enriched fuel. Other specific differences between the reactors on the icebreaker fleet and those on the floating plants remain unclear.
(Note: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a short blurb [titled "Russia’s Sea Change"] about these floating plants in its latest issue. However, their piece asserts the reactor design will tentatively be a VBER-300. My sources almost uniformly say that the KLT-40S will definitely be the reactor for this initial, pilot project. The VBER-300 is being discussed for use in a proposed larger floating reactor, but the larger version is, as of now, only hypothetical.)
At full capacity, the two reactors together will provide up to 70 megawatts of power. They are also capable of desalinating water, though it is unclear whether this can be done at the same time as power production. There are 11 other possible sites for these plants in Russia, but very few regional leaders have expressed interest. Rosatom, the Russian civilian nuclear power agency, now hopes to sell them to interested countries in Asia once the design has been successfully demonstrated. China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines have already expressed interest.
On the surface, this may not seem such a bad idea. Proposals for mobile nuclear plants as desalinators have a long history — they don’t produce greenhouse gases and they could get to remote locations easily. Such a humanitarian sheen takes the edge off nuclear jitters, too. Fuel will be stored onboard and, to assuage proliferation concerns, the Russians claim that the barges will come back to Russia every 4-12 years for fuel disposal.
All indications, though, point to (dare I say typically Russian?) poor planning, with potential for serious problems.
The most glaring problem: the barges won’t be able to move without help. According to a Russian general cited in Pravda Online, a small squadron of tugboats (likely 8-10) will move the plants around. For most of their lives, these plants will sit, barnacle-like, in shallow waters, and their emergency usefulness will be nil.
Barnacled behavior also makes for a precarious security situation: in a civil war, for example, the plants would be prime, immobile targets for rebels or terrorists. No one knows whether Russia’s overstretched navy or the host country—whatever it may be—will provide security.
It also seems that no plans exist to harden the barges against ice, even though the first dozen or so will be used off the often-icebound northern coast of Russia. Perhaps officials figure a couple more drowned reactor cores will be mere drops in the ocean of radioactive waste already dumped in the region.
And while the fuel, which will formally remain in Russian custody, is supposed to be low-enriched uranium, it could be switched out for highly enriched—even weapons grade—fuel with relatively minor changes to the reactor. The use of a design that originally used HEU makes this possibility even more worrisome. Russia already has massive stocks of HEU, which, if used, would let the reactor run longer without refueling. Though HEU is admittedly easy to blend down, if Russia runs out of money, or gets lazy, using the HEU as is might be an attractive alternative to tugging the barges back to the motherland for more fuel every few years.
China has offered funding in exchange for a role in building the barges, but Russian officials declined because of technology transfer concerns. They were probably concerned that China would learn enough to build its own plants and steal market share from the Russian project.
Interestingly, Rosatom decided not to capitalize strongly on the need for desalination capacity, but rather to focus on the much more emotionally charged nuclear power generation capability of their plants. I’m at a loss for why this might be. Focusing on the humanitarian aspects of these plants would improve their marketability for buyers abroad.
Moscow will fund the first few plants—to be sited in the frigid, poor northern states of Russia, who scarcely need convincing—but the viability of the project depends on finding foreign buyers. Since Russian experts believe the desalination market alone will reach $12 billion by 2015, the focus on power production is baffling. Perhaps there is more to the project, but it is hard to tell for now.
Scanty reliable information on these plants exists, but we know they are being built. Rosatom officials have so far only offered broad, vaguely condescending platitudes as reassurance that these plants will be safe. Some claim that security will not be a problem because Sevmash is located in a high-security zone, but Pravda Online reports the plant will actually be open to the public. Others say the plant will have "five independent safety barriers," and that "[l]eakage won’t occur even if a plane or a helicopter crashes into the floating block." The Russians will perhaps forgive me if I don’t find these reassurances effective, especially in light of their usual utter frankness.
Rosatom acting director Sergey Obozov stated that "the reliability of offshore NPP [nuclear power plants] will be the same with the Kalishnikov gun." Even if reliability is not an issue, the comparison to AK-47s is unfortunate. Do we really want cheap floating nuclear plants proliferating into volatile regions, used indiscriminately by terrorists and despots?
-- Eric Hundman
(Eric Hundman is a research assistant at the World Security Institute's Center for Defense Information in Washington, DC. He graduated from Yale University in 2006 with degrees in physics and political science.)
Sim Victory in Sim Iraq
Ft. Irwin, California -- It's 110 degrees here on the southern edge of Death Valley when Alpha Company storms Medina Jabal. On July 27, twelve days into their two-week exercise at the National Training Center, the Soldiers of Alpha Company are resigned to the heat, if not accustomed to it. After just a few minutes exposed to the blazing sun, sweat soaks their gray and tan combat uniforms and leaves salty white deposits on their 25-pound armor vests. They drink water religiously and, whenever there's a lull in operations, seek the nearest shade.
Alpha's tribulations at NTC are shared by all the 10 5,000-soldier brigades annually that train here before deploying to Iraq. Their trials are part of a accelerating trend across the U.S. military services of providing ultra-realistic training to its troops.
 For Alpha, right now there's no time for rest. The commander of the 2nd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade, Col. Jeffrey Bannister, has ordered Alpha -- from the 1st battalion of the 9th Infantry -- to secure Medina Jabal in advance of his July 28 meeting with the regional governor. All over the Rhode Island-size desert range, 2nd Brigade units are engaged in mock combat with "insurgents" from the resident 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, but the most important fight is here at this tiny, shambling village of concrete and plywood buildings. Victory in this simulated Iraq, just like in the real Iraq, hinges on hearts and minds. If Bannister is going to win over the local populace, it's going to happen here when he stands up with the governor (portrayed by a Kurdish Iraqi national) and promises a better future for the residents of Medina Jabal (played by Iraqi nationals and local actors).
But the insurgents know that, and they will focus all their efforts on wrecking Bannister's carefully orchestrated event. Down at the 11th ACR's operations center in the heart of Ft. Irwin, staff officers plot 2nd Brigade's movements on a map and consider their options. With Alpha moving into Medina Jabal, it's going to be hard to slip in fighters. Someone proposes an Improvised Explosive Device smuggled in a truck. Another pitches mortar barrages. Snipers are an option too. And if Alpha interdicts all these efforts, then the 11th ACR -- the so-called "Opposing Force," or Opfor -- can send teams to harass the brigade's Forward Operating Bases, including its vulnerable helicopter base at FOB Miami, in an effort to draw Bannister's attention away from Medina Jabal.
But Alpha seems to know exactly what the Opfor is up to.
Read the exciting conclusion at Military.com. And check out my NTC photo-essay at Flickr.
--David Axe
The MiTEx Mystery: Mobile microsats make nerds nervous
Right now, a pair of mysterious, highly mobile microsatellites dubbed MiTEx are roaming about in geostationary orbit (GEO). Their mission and their capabilities are unknown; even their orbital position is classified. Lockheed Martin and Orbital Sciences each built one of the 225kg microsatellites for DARPA, and the Naval Research Lab built the propulsive upper stage.
 Information on the microsatellites themselves is virtually nonexistent. Calls by this office to DARPA were quickly met with “no comment”, and Space News writer Jeremy Singer’s inquiries also went unanswered. DARPA has already run the controversial DART and XSS-11 missions, both of which tested technology with anti-satellite applications. Since these missions were conducted largely within the public eye, one has to wonder what MiTEx is up to that must remain so secret.
The MiTEx launch, on June 18, was heralded by a press release touting its upper stage as a “technology demonstrator,” but this is where the story gets interesting. The upper stage is equipped with lightweight, high-capacity propellant tanks and with thrusters that use a platinum/rhodium alloy, which should be able to fire tens of thousands of times. It has solar panels and lithium-ion batteries to provide electrical power, as well as a star tracker. Compared to traditional upper stages – which consist of an unadorned solid-fuel rocket motor - this elaborate contraption of an upper stage is quite novel and is certainly designed to do a lot more than transfer the microsatellites from their transfer orbit to GEO.
But while such a tricked-out upper stage is unusual – only one other known upper stage, the Integrated Apogee Boost Subsystem (IABS), has even carried solar panels – every one of the individual technologies listed above is in itself tested and well-established. So what exactly are the technologies which this technology demonstrator is demonstrating?
The MiTEx satellites – about which no information is available - are freely traversing GEO with a robust upper stage that, based on launch vehicle performance, probably has plenty of fuel to spare for significant maneuvers. What exactly will they be doing in what has become the most economically viable and strategically important locale in space?
That is the million-dollar question. The high level of secrecy surrounding the satellites themselves, as well as the unusual upper stage, suggests that MiTEx might be more than a technology demonstrator. The fact that MiTEx effectively has stealth capability (only the U.S. Space Surveillance Network has a chance of detecting it) doesn’t help calm the nerves.
Close proximity operations around other satellites – as demonstrated by DART and XSS-11 – are certainly possible and would allow for a wide range of activities. For example, proximity operations would enable detailed reconnaissance of a satellite, identifying weaknesses, taking photographs, and collecting all the satellite’s incoming and outgoing radio traffic. More hostile acts, such as denying ground communications, depleting propellant reserves, and even causing permanent damage to the satellite, cannot be ruled out.
MiTEx could merely be demonstrating technologies that haven’t been tried before in the harsher GEO environment. Or it could indeed be operational, performing any number of possible clandestine missions. We simply do not know.
More information on MiTEx can be found at the World Security Institute's Center for Defense Information. Ryan Caron is a research assistant for the space security project at the World Security Institute’s Center for Defense Information. He studies aerospace engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
See Ya!
I'm getting married next week. Then, it's off to Italy for the honeymoon. Which means no blogging for me until late August -- my biggest break, I think, since the site started.
But Defense Tech will be in good hands, never fear. An A-team of guest bloggers is lined up to take over while I'm in the Mediterranean.
Week of 7/31: Haninah Levine and his wonkalicious buddies from the Center for Defense Information.
Week of 8/7: The legendary David Axe.
Week of 8/14: Bad science's bete noire, Sharon Weinberger.
Week of 8/21: Inside Defense (and Inside Green Business) editor Dan Dupont.
You can contact any of 'em through the regular e-mail address, defense-AT- defensetech-DOT-org.
Wish me and Elizabeth luck. And if you're looking to send us a wedding present, you can make a donation to fine charities like Soldiers' Angels, through this website right here.
Hezbollah, Deadly Hybrid
We've hinted at this a couple of times since the fight between Israel and Hezbollah began. But the terror group, "with the sophistication of a national army... and the lethal invisibility of a guerrilla army" is a new breed of military animal. "A hybrid," Thom Shanker writes. "Old labels, and old planning, do not apply."
Hezbollah still possesses the most dangerous aspects of a shadowy terror network. It abides by no laws of war as it attacks civilians indiscriminately. Attacks on its positions carry a high risk of killing innocents. At the same time, it has attained military capabilities and other significant attributes of a nation-state. It holds territory and seats in the Lebanese government. It fields high-tech weapons and possesses the firepower to threaten the entire population of a regional superpower, or at least those in the northern half of Israel....
"We are in a world today where we have a non-state actor using all the tools of weaponry," from drone aircraft to rockets to computer hacking, said P.W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in the impact of new technologies on national security.
But John Robb, who's been examining this kind of "open source warfare" for years, says that "the central secret to Hezbollah's success" isn't in its weaponry. It's in the terrorists' ability to have its "guerrillas to make decisions autonomously... at the small group level."
In every area -- from firing rockets to defending prepared positions... -- we have examples of Hezbollah teams deciding, adapting, innovating, and collaborating without reference to any central authority. The result of this decentralization is that Hezbollah's aggregate decision cycles are faster and qualitatively better than those of their Israeli counterparts... the continued success of its efforts has put the Israelis on the horns of a dilemma: either request a ceasefire or push for a full invasion of southern Lebanon (each fraught with disastrous consequences).
And not just for Israel. "Other terrorists are learning from Hezbollah’s successes," Shanker notes. Iraqi insurgents are showing a similar blend of operational flexibility and modern technology. To beat these groups, the U.S. is going to have to learn that it "takes a network to fight a network."
American intelligence agencies and the military proved it can fight this kind of war, as it did in Afghanistan to rout Al Qaeda, when intelligence officers and small groups of Army Special Forces worked with local fighters to call in devastating air strikes and drive the Taliban from power.
Within the Bush administration and across the military, a clearer view is emerging out of the chaos in southern Lebanon. It is that nation-states know they cannot directly take on superpowers — either regional or global — without getting their clocks cleaned, and so they use proxies they train and support to take the fight to those superpowers. The fight against groups like Hezbollah requires a strategy for dealing with their sponsors. These networks, Hezbollah included, don’t float around in the ether like free electrons bumping into each other. They alight. They attach themselves to territory. In Afghanistan it was with the full support of the Taliban. In Pakistan, it’s an ungoverned space. In Lebanon, it’s a state within a state. Cut off state support, or eliminate the ability of the networks to survive in ungoverned areas, and they collapse on themselves.
No solution has been written. But it would include military force along with diplomacy, economic assistance, intelligence and information campaigns.
"Most critically, we have to get better at — it’s such a cliché — winning hearts and minds," said a military officer working on counterinsurgency issues. "That is influencing neutral populations toward supporting us and not supporting our terrorist and insurgent enemies."
And so the zillion-dollar question becomes: Do big air campaigns and large-scale invasions really influence those opinions in a positive way? Or do they just play into the terrorists' hands?
UPDATE 07/31/06 4:07 PM: Anthony Cordesman's answer: The U.S. -- and Israel's -- current course is "stupid, incompetent, and obsolete." Youch.
Rapid Fire 07/30/06
* Counter-IED: no silver bullets (background here and here)
* Ivy League vs. military
* Secrecy vs. biodefense
* Pentagon eyes YouTube
* US AID's Iraq shell game
* "Why the Mid-East Ain't About Terror"
* Condi: quick cease-fire
* Army wants microwave cannon
* Looking back at Israel's laser defense (background here)
Diesel boats beware
Diesel subs, diesel subs, everyone's worried about diesel subs. With the advent of Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) and the proliferation of German- and Russian-made diesel designs -- including to our favorite bugaboo Iran -- a lot of folks in the U.S. Navy are working really hard on ways to find and kill these quiet, lethal boats.
 Enter the Sikorsky/Lockheed Martin MH-60R Seahawk helicopter. This new bird will boost the Navy's ability to root out pesky diesels and make the littorals safe for $5-billion carriers.
The so-called "Romeo" is a major driver behind a massive overhaul of the Navy's helicopter fleet. Five years ago the Navy flew seven helo models each in relatively stovepiped missions. SH-60B Seahawks droned along the outer edges of a battlegroup sensing for magnetic disturbances caused by large submarines. SH-60Fs dipped sonars into the middle zone of a carrier group to spot infiltrating submarines. HH-60Hs rescued downed pilots. MH-53E Sea Dragons towed mine-detecting gear. CH-46 Sea Knights hauled supplies. What the Navy needed was a larger helo force that it could swing between missions -- say, to swarm an enemy coast on day one clearing out the diesel subs then switch to fighting small suicide boats on day two while retaining the ability to do urgent resupply, noncombatant evacuation or search and rescue.
The Romeo model of the Seahawk will perform all these missions and more -- and do them better than earlier choppers thanks to better equipment and aircrew training. The key to the latter is a new simulator built by firm Manned Flight Simulators that can replicate the tricky acoustics of littoral waters.
The first four Romeos have been fielded by San Diego-based training squadron HSM-41. As many as 300 more worth $3 billion will follow in the next decade. Alongside the transport- and cargo-optimized MH-60S, which shares an airframe and cockpit with the Romeo, the MH-60R will provide the Navy a large, flexible and lethal helo force capable of taking out quiet diesel subs and blazing a trail for vulnerable carriers in coastal waters.
Read on at Military.com. And check out my Flickr for pics.
--David Axe
Hez's 30-Mile Missile
Here's some more on those longer-range Hezbollah rockets mentioned in today's Rapid Fire:
Hezbollah called the rockets the Khaibar-1. They fell more than 30 miles south of the Lebanese border. A few other rockets have traveled this far, but it was still unusual, according to the Israeli military and police.
The rockets are capable of carrying more than 200 pounds of explosives, making them much more powerful than the Katyusha rockets that Hezbollah has been firing most of the time, Israeli authorities said.
American and Israeli officials believe that the rocket Hezbollah referred to as a "Khaibar-1" appears to be an upgraded version of the Fajr-3, a rocket that Iran has supplied to the terrorist network and that Hezbollah has used often during the conflict. The rocket fired today has an estimated range of 90 kilometers, which makes it the longest range rocket fired thus far. Officials said that it is still unclear whether the rocket is actually a Fajr-5 — which Iran has also given to Hezbollah — or a new model altogether. [The Jerusalem Post and Ynetnews both argue differently -- ed.] Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said earlier in the week that his Shiite group would strike beyond Haifa, about 20 miles inside Israel, which has been the southernmost city to come under regular attack.
One thing the weapon was not, according to Israeli authorities, was "an Iranian-made 'Zilzal' rocket, which has a range of about 210 km (130 miles) and would have put the Israeli commercial capital Tel Aviv within reach."
That honeymoon is looking less and less likely, all of the time...
(Big ups: SOI)
Rapid Fire 07/28/06
* Hez missile command taken out?
* Israel backed by cyber-soldiers
* Hez fires off long-range weapons
* Congress pushes alt energy for defense
* Spam king gets whacked
* Brit spy cams = peeping toms
* Pak's bomb factory
* NSA whistleblower subpoenaed
* Senate smushes conventional Tridents
* Return of supersonic jets?
* Bunker, busted
* "Can we ever fly faster than sound?" (1944)
* Watch those Gs, Steve!
* Dior, Gucci... Blackwater?!?!?
* NORAD leaving Cheyenne Mountain
(Big ups: EH, TPMM, WH, DS)
Old School Middle East
I haven't been much of a fan of Tom Friedman, ever since he started using his column to endless hawk his books and cheerlead for the Iraq war. But this dispatch from Damascus is one of the best things he's written in years. I'm quoting it at length, for those of you without TimesSelect.
Condoleezza Rice must have been severely jet-lagged when she said that what’s going on in Lebanon and Iraq today were the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Oh, I wish it were so. What we are actually seeing are the rebirth pangs of the old Middle East, only fueled now by oil and more destructive weaponry.
Some of the most primordial, tribal passions, which always lurk beneath the surface here — Sunnis versus Shiites, Jews versus Muslims, Lebanese versus Syrians — but are usually held in check by modern states or bonds of civilization, are exploding to the top.
There is nothing that you can’t do to someone in the Middle East today, and there is no leader or movement — no Nelson Mandela and no million-mom march — coming out of this region, or into this region, to put a stop to the madness.
And I mean madness. We’ve seen Sunni Muslims in Iraq suicide-bomb a Shiite mosque on Ramadan; we’ve seen Shiite militiamen torture Sunnis in Iraq by drilling holes in their heads with power tools; we’ve seen Jordanian Islamist parliamentarians mourning the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, even though he once blew up a Jordanian wedding; we’ve seen hundreds of Palestinian suicide bombings of Israeli cafes and buses; and we’ve seen Israel retaliating by, at times, leveling whole buildings, with the guilty and the innocent inside.
Now we’ve seen the Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, take all of Lebanon into a devastating, unprovoked war with Israel, just to improve his political standing and take pressure off Iran.
America should be galvanizing the forces of order — Europe, Russia, China and India — into a coalition against these trends. But we can’t. Why? In part, it’s because our president and secretary of state, although they speak with great moral clarity, have no moral authority. That’s been shattered by their performance in Iraq.
The world hates George Bush more than any U.S. president in my lifetime. He is radioactive — and so caught up in his own ideological bubble that he is incapable of imagining or forging alternative strategies.
In part, it is also because China, Europe and Russia have become freeloaders off U.S. power. They reap enormous profits from the post-cold-war order that America has shaped, but rather than become real stakeholders in that order, helping to draw and defend redlines, they duck, mumble, waffle or cut their own deals.
This does not bode well for global stability. A religious militia that calls itself “the party of God” takes over a state and drags it into war, using high-tech rockets — mullahs with drones — and the world is paralyzed. Those who ignore this madness will one day see it come to a theater near them.
In part, though, this madness is home-grown. I sat at a swank rooftop restaurant the other night with some young Syrian writers and listened to a discussion between a young woman dressed in trendy clothes, talking about how she would prefer to see Israel disappear, another writer who argued that Nasrallah was an Arab disaster, and an Arab journalist who described the “pride” and “dignity” every Arab felt at seeing Hezbollah fight Israel to a standstill. [Apparently, he's not the only one; Arabs that were cool to Hezbollah early in this conflict have now warmed to the terrorist group -- ed.]
When will the Arab-Muslim world stop getting its “pride” from fighting Israel and start getting it from constructing a society that others would envy, an economy others would respect, and inventions and medical breakthroughs from which others would benefit?
There will be no new Middle East — not as long as the New Middle Easterners, like Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, get gunned down; not as long as Old Middle Easterners, like Nasrallah, use all their wits and resources to start a new Arab-Israeli war rather than build a new Arab university; and not as long as Arab media and intellectuals refuse to speak out clearly against those who encourage their youth to embrace martyrdom with religious zeal rather than meld modernity with Arab culture.
Without that, we are wasting our time and the Arab world is wasting its future.
It's Still Not Chemical Warfare - Israeli Edition
 Back in November, a good-sized chunk of the press and blogosphere got all a-twitter about the American use of "chemical weapons" -- never mind that the munitions the Army used were anything but.
Now, we've got ourselves a new variation on the argument. This one comes from Wayne Madsen, who blogged his belief that Israeli military forces are using a dual-purpose fuel-air explosive/chemical munition in Lebanon (see his entry on July 23). Seems he's sold on the fact that one man can pick up the munition, clearly demonstrating that it is filled with a gas and not a liquid (plus some gruesome corpse photos).
The claim was all too easy to shoot down on general chem warfare principles. But it has been joined by other news sources (see here, here, and here). Most of the reports mistakenly believe that these are phosphorus munitions, similar to the stories of U.S. forces' use in Fallujah, mostly because of the blackened nature of the casualties' skin. Sadly, these reports are mistaken; the munitions aren't even phosphorus-filled.
The Defense Update has the story on this military system. It is indeed a minefield breaching system, called "Carpet," currently in use by the Israeli army and will be fielded with the French army next year. Not much imagination as to the name and its function: the armored vehicle that is the weapon platform can fire up to 20 rockets in a rapid squence for minefield breaching. The force of the FAE blast clears nearly all mines, regardless of terrain, foliage or man-made obstacles.
Pre-programmed for automatic, semi-automatic or manual operation, Carpet is operated remotely from inside the vehicle’s compartment, under cover from enemy fire. The system can also be reloaded rapidly in the forward area. Unlike the Vipers, firing line charges across the minefields, Carpet rockets contain only liquid fuel which is flammable but not explosive in regular operating conditions. Therefore, if Carpet rockets are hit in their canisters, they do not cause any danger to the system, vehicle or nearby troops.
Fully loaded, the Carpet launcher weighs only 3.5 tons. It can carry up to 20 x 265 mm rockets, each weighing 46 kg. Fully functional training rockets can also be fired with the system for training exercises, safely simulating the entire operation (without fuel-air explosion). The system can be towed, mounted on the rear of the armored fighting vehicle (as shown on the IDF Puma AFV at EuroSatory 2002) or installed inside an APC. The IDF used the Carpet during the war in Lebanon, neutralizing and clearing Hezbollah strongholds near the Israeli- Lebanese border. (See video here)
Only one newspaper I found - South Africa's Star - correctly identified the one potential violation of the international law banning the use of incendiaries against noncombatants, rather than the more popular accusation that Israel was using "chemical weapons" in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (to which Israel isn't a party, anyway). Comment from the Israeli army? "We use only weapons and ammunition which will best hit our targets and cause least collateral damage," said army spokesman Captain Jacob Dallal. Yep. FAEs are very powerful conventional weapons, but they aren't toxic chemical weapons.
-- Jason Sigger, Armchair Generalist
Rapid Fire 7/27/06 (Updated)
* Ward, Ricks talk "Fiasco"
* Hez "ambush" was "Hell on Earth"; "best Arab troops we've ever faced"
* Israel nixes big ground op - for now
* * Iran has the processor
* U.S. gives up Net control (or maybe not)
* Osama chills out?
* Army's big gear lack
* FBI hunts WMD
* Plants vs. explosives
* Drones vs. wildfires
* Rocket racers face reality
* Japan's new eye in the sky
* Real-life Spider Men?
* Self-healing spacesuits?
* Trashing wikipedia
* Brits' bunker-buster snit
* Soviet sub base explored
* Italy's Watergate
* Global warming skeptics on the take
* $1,318 a second for Exxon
* GM still clueless
* X-Prize for green cars
(Big ups: RC, SC, EH, BB, Glenn, HuffPo)
Nukes: Betcha Can't Make Just One!
Remember those commercials for Lay's potato chips where the announcer says that Lay's are so good that you can't eat just one? Well, with a slight modification that slogan now applies equally well to the nuclear bureaucrats at the DOD, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, weapons designers at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, and their patrons in Congress.
 Kudos to Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists for discovering that the ambitious Reliable Replacement Warhead program (see my previous post on that subject here) isn't just about developing one new, more robust, standardized design to eventually replace every weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which was its original purpose when proposed by Congress in late 2004. According to a chart on the web site of the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, DOD's long-term vision is that in about 14 years there will be as many as four RRWs in the arsenal, along with up to four types of "refurbished, legacy warheads" from the existing stockpile. There are presently nine operational warhead types in the arsenal.
Teams from Los Alamos and Livermore each submitted their proposed designs for a replacement for the 100 kiloton W76 warhead (some 1,600 of which are currently deployed on Trident II D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles) to the NNSA earlier this year. One proposal alone reportedly ran to more than one thousand pages. As early as November, the NNSA will select the winning design, sending the program into its next phase.
Even before today's revelation, however, others were working to expand the scope of the RRW. In a revealing interview with the San Francisco Chronicle last January, NNSA administrator Linton Brooks indicated that new weapons--most likely with new or enhanced capabilities--would be the probable outcome of the RRW program. "I don't want to mislead you," said Brooks. "I will personally be very surprised if we can get the advantages we want without redesigning the physics package [the explosive components of the warhead]."
In late June, Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee with responsibility for nuclear weapons funding, added $35 million to the administration's $27 million request for the RRW to accelerate the program, including $10 million for the specific purpose of initiating a second warhead design competition.
It remains to be see whether this extra funding survives a House-Senate conference on the fiscal 2007 spending bill. But it is noteworthy that longtime critic of the NNSA, supporter of the RRW, and Domenici's House counterpart, Rep. David Hobson (R-OH), bluntly warned administration officials last March against using the RRW to develop new nuclear weapons. Said Hobson, "This is not an opportunity to run off and develop a whole bunch of new capabilities and and new weapons.... We're not going out and expanding a whole new world of nuclear weapons as we get in[to] this Reliable Replacement Warhead situation."
-- Stephen I. Schwartz
Who Killed the Killer Drone? (Redux)
Lockheed Martin's recent unveiling of its Polecat UAV might be related to the nascent Air Force program to field a new bomber by 2018. But then, it might not. Some industry insiders believe the Air Force is bent on keeping pilots in bomber cockpits, no matter what.
 After years of steady growth in funding, development and operational use, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have begun to rival — and, in some cases, exceed — the capability of manned aircraft.
The rapid maturing of military UAVs into armed unmanned combat aerial vehicles was seen in one of the most promising armed drone programs, the joint unmanned air combat system, or J-UCAS.
J-UCAS began its life at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1998. Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman built jet-powered demonstrators: the X-45C and the X-47B, respectively. The X-45 was equipped for in-flight refueling and optimized for Air Force missions that demanded a high degree of stealth. The X-47 was less stealthy, but longer-ranged and designed to operate from Navy aircraft carrier decks.
After seven years of successful design and testing, in November 2005, the Defense Department transferred J-UCAS to a joint Air Force and Navy office and scheduled a fly-off between the demonstrators.
But then, in February 2006, the Pentagon ordered the Navy to take over J-UCAS. Air Force killer drone funding was redirected to a new, vaguely defined, "next-generation long-range strike" development program that, according to observers, is likely to include a mix of unmanned and manned bomber aircraft.
Just months after its graduation from fringe research status to major procurement program, J-UCAS had been downgraded to Navy UCAS, or N-UCAS. The X-47 was largely unaffected, but the X-45 had lost its sponsor and, it seemed at first, any hope of ever reaching production.
One Boeing employee who worked on the X-45 program said the Air Force’s about-face was a long time coming. He asked to not be quoted by name because his views do not reflect the company’s official stance.
"We knew even from early 1999 and the original X-45A UCAV contract that we were fighting a political, cultural and budget prejudice that could kill us," said the employee. Many of the Boeing workers from the X-45 program, he said, were angered by the abrupt cancellation of J-UCAS just when they were nearly "on the cusp of making history in the aviation world."
He speculated that the Air Force’s decision to withdraw from the program was partly financial — mostly to ensure that the J-UCAS would not drain any procurement funds from high-profile manned aviation programs such as the F-22 and the F-35 fighter jets. Another possible explanation for the Air Force backing away from J-UCAS, the Boeing employee said, is that the X-45 was running headlong against the Air Force’s pilot culture that prefers dropping bombs from cockpits, rather than from ground control centers.
Read more in my feature on the late J-UCAS in this month's National Defense Magazine. The piece is co-written with National Defense editor Sandra Erwin.
--David Axe
P.S. -- Big thanks to the Defense Tech readers who stopped by the San Diego Comic Con last weekend to save me from hours of talking about Spiderman's new costume with sweaty geeks in weird hats.
Air War Debate Flairs Again
Since World War II (at least), air forces have been saying that they can win wars all by themselves -- and ground-pounders have told the flyboys no way.
 With Katyushas continuing to fly in big numbers, U.N. observers hit by Israeli bombs, civilian casualties mounting, and Hezbollah guerrillas inflicting serious harm along the border, that argument is flaring hot in Israel.
After all, as Stratfor notes, "rather than pursuing a more traditional IDF course of coordinating airstrikes with intense mobile operations on the ground, the Israelis have chosen a strategy that has focused on an intense air campaign."
The argument is that at this point, the air force has done all it will be able to do and is reaching the point of diminishing returns. The cost of waiting is that international opinion is turning against an air campaign that inevitably hits unacceptable targets; that the pressure for a cease-fire will build; and that when the ground campaign is finally launched, it will be under a time pressure it need not have, which will cause greater risk-taking and casualties. It would be nice for the Israelis if the air campaign could do the job itself, as it would mean fewer Israeli casualties, but the air force is operating without a criterion of failure -- it asserts that the strategy will work over time, but gives no indication when...
[IDF chief of staff Gen Dan] Halutz wants to continue the air campaign and hold the army, and the army is demanding to be cut loose. It does not want to do attritional, small-unit warfare in south Lebanon. We do not know how this argument is playing out, but there is a decision that ultimately will have to be made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Rapid Fire 07/26/06
* MySpace spooks USAF
* Condi can't conjure cease-fire
* More troops to Baghdad
* IDF intel dissed
* Allbritton on the front lines
* Airbus' anti-hijacking software
* DIY ESP
* China's Google Earth mystery
* Saudi military shopping spree
* Innocents fill watch list quotas
* More Raptor shenanigans
* Pentagon's deception handbook
* "State secrets" win in Illinois
* Q-tip gun
* Tampon gun
* Micro-bots to Mars? (background here)
(Big ups: ER, EH, AT, Axe, Make)
Israeli Drone Attacks Own Troops
 The Israeli Air Force "revealed on Tuesday that it had prevented a severe disaster" when it stopped an armed drone that was "shooting at Israeli troops."
"A senior Air Force officer said that the UAV opened fire on ground troops operating in Bint Jbeil after receiving the coordinates from the Golani Brigade," according to the Jerusalem Post. "The fire was stopped when the IAF realized the mistake. No one was wounded in the incident."
This is the first time I've heard of a UAV attacking friendly forces. There's no word on what kind of drone was being used. But I've seen at least one Israeli-designed unmanned plane -- the Hunter -- rigged up with high explosive Viper Strike anti-tank rounds.
I Spy Hezbollah
Jeff Stein's CQ story is packed tight with fascinating tidbits about what the West's intelligence services know about Hezbollah -- and why they're not saying more. So make sure to read the whole thing. Here's a snippet.
Iran’s role as quartermaster to Hezbollah missileers in Lebanon is beyond dispute...
"Lots of photographs exist" of the Iranian supply operations, Reynolds says... "The IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] are well aware of the location of rockets..."
"The transfers are also detectable by U.N. peacekeepers," Reynolds added, who are headquartered "near the airport, and [by] foreign military attaches in Damascus. These weapons are then followed into Lebanon by human and technical means..."
"The Israelis are very hesitant to reveal photographic electro-optical evidence from Mt. Hermon," Reynolds says, "because it would reveal to the Syrians some Israeli [surveillance] capabilities and the Syrians would then use that knowledge to counter them."
Washington, Reynolds says, resists "revealing them for the same reason" — so as not to disclose the quality of its technical collection capabilities, which include satellites and ground-station intercepts of Iranian and Syrian electronic communications.
But pretty good pictures of the Hezbollah positions are available to anybody with a laptop, via Google Earth.
Reynolds even e-mailed me a couple of photos of the Lebanon-Israel-Syria border region that he had downloaded from Google arth and marked up around the Hezbollah sites.
Insta-Blood for Israeli Troops
 "In about two years' time, Israel Defense Forces soldiers may carry with them to the battlefield packets with their own powdered blood," says Ha'Aretz.
"The idea is to take a soldier's blood, freeze it in laboratory conditions, take out the ice crystals leaving only the blood components. It will look like freeze-dried coffee in a little bag," said Lieutenant colonel Amir Blumenfeld, head of the IDF medical corps' trauma unit.
Every soldier going to battle will receive a packet with his own freeze-dried blood as part of his mandatory personal kit, much like the staple personal bandage.
When necessary, if the soldier is wounded in battle and needs blood, a medic or doctor could take out the dried blood bag, mix it with physiological water and inject the soldier with a transfusion of his own blood.
Hey doctors: is this even possible? Weigh in here...
Army's Chopper Buying Spree
Two years after the Army canceled its high-tech, $42-billion RAH-66 Comanche attack helicopter, the service is putting together a new fleet of choppers that it claims are more affordable and better-suited to real-world missions than the Cold War Comanche ever was.
 In recent months, the Army has let contracts for new light utility helicopters and new armed reconnaissance helicopters and has agreed to cooperate with the Air Force on a new light cargo aircraft. Meanwhile, new models of the venerable Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk, Boeing CH-47 Chinook and Boeing AH-64 Apache are in development or production. In all, the Army will buy as many as 2,000 helicopters in the next 15 years.
"Overall, we're doing exceptionally well," says Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, chief of the Pentagon's Army Aviation Task Force.
That wasn't always the case.
In early 2004, Army Aviation's future appeared bleak. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan had demonstrated helicopters' vulnerability to small arms and rocket-propelled grenades (more than 120 have been lost so far) and had proved that most Army aircraft were under-powered for hot weather and high-altitude flying. The aircraft fleet's average age was around 20 years and climbing. The rising cost of the Comanche threatened to bankrupt the force while delivering only a fraction of the new aircraft needed to recapitalize the Army's 4,000-strong rotary-wing fleet.
"We needed to meet the Army's vision for modularity and sustainability," Mundt says. Killing Comanche was the only way.
Read more at Military.com.
--David Axe
UPDATE 12:43 PM: The Army has been able to go on this shopping spree because it kept the money for the Comanche to buy new aircraft. Now, Congress is threatening to cut those funds, Inside Defense notes. And Army aviation chiefs are having a fit.
Lebanon: Catamaran to the Rescue
The U.S. Navy's evacuation of Lebanon is done. Now, the focus is on delivering humanitarian aid to the Lebanese. At the center of the effort: the Navy's giant, super-quick catamaran.
 Until recently, the experimental, Australian-built HSV-2 Swift was working as a mine warfare command and control ship. But with "its enormous 28,000 square foot mission deck, the ability to traverse littoral waters, the capability of handling speeds in excess of 40 knots, and maneuverability that doesn't require tugboat assistance," as Navy Newsstand notes, the catamaran was a natural for the Lebanese operation. "The vessel has the cargo space of about 17 C-17 aircraft and the access of a Cyclone-class patrol boat," said Lt. Cmdr. Phillip Pournelle, executive officer of Swift's Gold Crew.
And it's not the 318-foot catamaran's first humanitarian mission. Back in January, 2005, the Swift sped to Southeast Asia, to deliver aid to tsunami victims. In September, it brought supplies to the Gulf Coast in the wake of hurricane Katrina. The Swift's predecessor helped sneak SEAL teams into southern Iraq during the 2003 invasion.
The "wave-piercing, aluminum-hulled catamaran," originally designed as a commercial vessel, now comes with military enhancements, "such as a helicopter flight deck, small boat and unmanned vehicle launch and recovery capability, and an enhanced communications suite," the Navy says.
But it's the catamaran's ability to quickly get to an from ports -- without help -- that Navy leaders seem to find most attractive.
[Just before the Lebanese mission] "on the afternoon of July 11, Swift left Bahrain's Mina Salman pier with a shipload of cargo destined for USNS Supply (T-AOE 6) moored at Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates. Twelve hours later, the Navy-leased catamaran arrived alongside Supply, ready to off-load.
"The cargo was only touched twice," said Swift's Commanding Officer, Cmdr. Rob Morrison. "[Normally] we'd have to load a truck with the cargo, off-load it at the airport, load it back onto an aircraft, fly it to its destination, off-load it, and move it by truck to the ship, where it's delivered to the ship and finally loaded aboard..."
Upon arrival, Swift's crew had the cargo loaded onto the flight deck, thus allowing Supply's crane immediate access to the palleted goods. Within an hour, the transfer was complete.
UPDATE 07/25/06 9:35 PM: HSV-maker Incat is also working on a funky heavyweight elevator for the catamaran. It's designed to take copters up to the flight deck, or lower amphibious vehicles straight in the water, between the ship's twin hulls. "Sounds like a perfect way to
deploy a Marine platoon or company for quick-response missions like
embassy evacuations and small raids," reader JG says.
Ooo-rah, MySpace!
AP: "Teens looking to hook up with a friend on the popular web community MySpace may bump into an unexpected buddy: the U.S. Marine Corps."
 So far, over 12,000 web surfers have signed on as friends of the Corps in response to the latest military recruiting tactic...
The Marine Corps MySpace profile... featur[es] streaming video of barking drill sergeants, fresh recruits enduring boot camp and Marines storming beaches...
So far over 430 people have asked to contact a Marine recruiter through the site in the five months since the page went up, including some 170 who are considered "leads" or prospective Marine recruits.
Rapid Fire 07/24/06
* NSA calls in the plumbers
* Hez running out of rockets?
* Peacekeepers: Israel's about-face
* Way more Pak nukes
* More delays for laser jet
* Blame 4th ID for Iraq war woes?
* Ospreys over London
* Jezz Bezos' private spaceport
* Norway's robotic firefighter
* Pentagon's new intel-net
* How do you aim a rocket?
* Missile-watching radar, stuck in Hawaii
* Tomahawk on I-95
* Next-gen bomber: manned?
* Nanotech + superconductors = big power?
(Big ups: KL, RC)
Inside Israel, Hez Ground War Strategies
"The ground war has begun," says Stratfor. "Several Israeli brigades now appear to be operating between the Lebanese border and the Litani River. According to reports, Hezbollah forces are dispersed in multiple bunker complexes and are launching rockets from these and other locations."
Hezbollah's strategy appears to be threefold. First, force Israel into costly attacks against prepared fortifications. Second, draw Israeli troops as deeply into Lebanon as possible, forcing them to fight on extended supply lines. Third, move into an Iraqi-style insurgency from which Israel -- out of fear of a resumption of rocket attacks -- cannot withdraw, but which the Israelis also cannot endure because of extended long-term casualties. This appears to have been a carefully planned strategy, built around a threat to Israeli cities that Israel can't afford. The war has begun at Hezbollah's time and choosing...
Hezbollah has implemented its strategy by turning southern Lebanon into a military stronghold, consisting of well-designed bunkers that serve both as fire bases and launch facilities for rockets. The militants appear to be armed with anti-tank weapons and probably anti-aircraft weapons, some of which appear to be of American origin, raising the question of how they were acquired. Hezbollah wants to draw Israel into protracted fighting in this area in order to inflict maximum casualties and to change the psychological equation for both military and political reasons...
Israel is caught between three strategic imperatives. First, it must end the threat to Israeli cities, which must involve the destruction of Hezbollah's launch capabilities south of the Litani River. Second, it must try to destroy Hezbollah's infrastructure, which means it must move into the Bekaa Valley and as far as the southern suburbs of Beirut. Third, it must do so in such a way that it is not dragged into a long-term, unsustainable occupation against a capable insurgency....
Simply occupying the border-Litani area will not achieve any of Israel's strategic goals. Hezbollah still would be able to use rockets against Israel. And even if, for Hezbollah, this area is lost, its capabilities in the Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut will remain intact. Therefore, a battle that focuses solely on the south is not an option for Israel, unless the Israelis feel a defeat here will sap Hezbollah's will to resist. We doubt this to be the case...
An extended engagement in southern Lebanon is the least likely path, in our opinion. More likely -- and this is a guess -- is a five-part strategy:
1. Insert airmobile and airborne forces north of the Litani to seal the rear of Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. Apply air power and engineering forces to reduce the fortifications, and infantry to attack forces not in fortified positions. Bottle them up, and systematically reduce the force with limited exposure to the attackers.
2. Secure roads along the eastern flank for an armored thrust deep into the Bekaa Valley to engage the main Hezbollah force and infrastructure there. This would involve a move from Qiryat Shimona north into the Bekaa, bypassing the Litani to the west, and would probably require sending airmobile and special forces to secure the high ground. It also would leave the right flank exposed to Syria.
3. Use air power and special forces to undermine Hezbollah capabilities in the southern Beirut area. The Israelis would consider a move into this area after roads through southern Lebanon are cleared and Bekaa relatively secured, moving into the area, only if absolutely necessary, on two axes of attack.
4. Having defeated Hezbollah in detail, withdraw under a political settlement shifting defense responsibility to the Lebanese government.
5. Do all of this while the United States is still able to provide top cover against diplomatic initiatives that will create an increasingly difficult international environment.
Sounds tough to pull off, even under ideal circumstances. And what happens if the Sabras have to do all this, while fighting the Lebanese army, too?
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