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The Fake Boarding Pass Saga
 Last week Christopher Soghoian, a 24 year-old Ph.D. student in information security at Indiana University, whipped together a website that allowed anyone to create a fake Northwest Airlines boarding pass. He hoped to bring attention to a security hole that allows anyone, including someone on the No-Fly list, to enter the security line with a fake document. Instead he got another kind of attention.
For those unfamiliar with the story, it's one I've been following in my blog and in a proper news story for Wired News since Soghoian told me about his site Wednesday night.
Soghoian, a security researcher who has done work at Google, Apple and IBM, told me the site's purpose was to demonstrate the futility of the No-Fly list:
I want Congress to see how stupid the TSA's watch lists are. Now even the most technically incompetent user can click and generate a boarding pass. By doing this, I'm hoping [Congress] will see how silly the security rules are. I don't want bad guys to board airplanes but I don't think the system we have right now works and I think it is giving us a false sense of security.
Even without his generator, the No-Fly list can be avoided:
If you can purchase a ticket over the internet with a pre-paid debit card and can fly without I.D., then for domestic flights the No-Fly list doesn't work.
On Friday, Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass) called for the site to be shut down and arrested, and later that day, the FBI shuttered the site and met with Soghoian. Whatever he said must not have been convincing, since the FBI raided his house with a search warrant signed by a judge at 2 a.m. Saturday morning and seized his computers, though they didn't arrest him. Markey then retracted his call for Soghoian's arrest on Sunday and in fact, suggested the government hire him instead (though Markey called the site a 'lousy way' of publicizing the problem).
Since Sunday, the story has slowed considerably. Soghoian has lawyers now and isn't talking to reporters, though is occasionally updating his blog.
Soghoian's site exploited a well-known security hole, one first publicized by security expert Bruce Schneier in 2003, given the full-on Slate treatment in 2005, and, according to security blogger Adam Shostack, was explained to high-level Homeland Security officials in 2004.
That doesn't mean all security researchers applaud Soghoian's method. Indeed, Avi Rubin, who's best known for his voting security work, told Xeni Jardin that his former teaching assistant should have shown this to the government privately.
So what's the upshot? Will the government ban boarding passes ticketed at home? Will they prosecute Soghoian for building this site? Won't other hackers put their own version online? Will this prompt reconsideration of the use of notoriously ineffective watch lists for domestic travel?
The short anwsers, in my opinion, are No, No, Maybe but not as many as you'd expect, Definitely Not.
The long answers are here at 27BStroke6, which despite Noah's dig, is a great name for a blog. (Think Brazil).
- Ryan Singel
Photo: VeganStraightEdge
WaPo Digs for Bombs
This Washington Post Magazine story, on "The Bomb Squad," is one of the best reads you'll get in the mainstream press on the reality of the counter-bomb fight in Iraq.
 There's only one, teeny-tiny problem with the piece: It's not really about a "bomb squad," or explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit, at all. Nobody is asked to defuse any bombs. Instead, the story centers around what appears to be a group of combat engineers -- EOD's blood rivals. These guys go combing roads for improvised explosives and, if they have any brains at all, call in EOD once the bombs are found.
In either case, the story is well worth checking out. Here's a snippet:
And this is where the whole expedition turns . . . well, into a "Wizard of Oz" moment for me. Because as I peer through the haze of the Iraqi noon, the Buffalo's claw ponderously raking the grass beside the road, I realize that the heart of the Pentagon's program for defeating IEDs [improvised explosive devices] is: 1) buy some armored trucks with big windows; 2) send young soldiers out to drive up next to bombs; 3) investigate with a phone truck [which is what the author says the Buffalo reminds him of].
As Tate points out later: "I've seen tanks destroyed. I've seen Bradleys destroyed . . . There's only so much armor can do."
Fortunately, this particular wired rock turns out to be an irrigation pump. After another hour or so, I'm dropped off at a nearby patrol base.
Fifteen minutes later, Tate's RG-31 nearly runs over an IED.
McGorvin -- dubbed "the Jedi master" by his fellow soldiers for his ability to, as they put it, "detect ordnance" -- tells me about it the next day as he fidgets on a torn couch behind the TOC. He explains that he sensed the bomb a mile before he reached it -- noticing first the grinning face of a taxi driver who squatted down behind his cab to key a Motorola phone. A few minutes later as the convoy rumbled through a small town, McGorvin felt it again outside a cluster of mud wattle shacks, their yards suspiciously empty.
Then, all at once, his RG-31 passed a mound of dirt with a cone of rusty metal showing through its side. McGorvin's gaze locked on a sliver of blue plastic tucked behind the mound. "I got something!" he yelled. "I don't know what it is, but it's got a cellphone on it!"
The RG-31's armor wouldn't protect McGorvin standing in his gunner's nest, so, as radios barked and the convoy scattered, he tucked his thighs against his chest and squatted.
"McGorvin -- good looking," Tate shouted as their truck finally jolted to a stop outside the bomb's blast radius.
Operation Vigilant Correction
The Pentagon's public affairs office admitted to reporters today that it had created the equivalent of a rapid reaction force to strike back at media coverage it considers inaccurate and to harness new technologies like "instant messaging" and "podcasting."
The Pentagon has been punching back at reporters and columnists recently with letters to the editor which have gotten prominent treatment in Early Bird, a daily clipping service intended to keep the military and contractors intended to keep them abreast of military news.
The first item in Monday's edition was an unpublished letter to the Washington Post, which read:
To the Editor:
Your article and the accompanying headline ("Rumsfeld Tells Iraq Critics to 'Back Off,'" October 26, 2006) said incorrectly that the Secretary’s comments in his Thursday press conference were aimed at "detractors" and "critics." In fact, the Secretary was referring specifically to journalists seeking to create a perception of major divisions between the positions of the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Secretary Rumsfeld was not referring to critics of the administration's Iraq policy.
Sincerely,
Dorrance Smith, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs
Riiiight. Well, glad that got cleared up. As Sharon Weinberger pointed out last week, this emphasis is becoming a trend.
From Agence France-Presse:
Eric Ruff, the Pentagon press secretary, insisted that the new public affairs program was not prompted by either the elections or polls showing that only about 37 percent believe the war is going well.
"What were looking at doing is, 'How can we get better, how can we get faster, how can we transform public affairs?'," he told reporters.
"And we're looking at being quicker to respond to breaking news. Being quicker to respond, frankly, to inaccurate statements," he said.
"And we're looking at this whole issue of new media -- podcasting, and IM-ing and all those kinds of things, where people are basically running circles inside us," he said.
Ruff disclosed the expanded operations after questions were raised about a wall being built in the Pentagon press operations center that will separate the new unit from Pentagon public affairs officials who deal with the media.
Hunh, and this has nothing to do with low poll numbers at all? Sorry, Ruff's denials don't pass the smell test.
Combine the news of this new nitpicking operation with the Pentagon's crackdown on milbloggers and its continued heavy-handed treatment of reporters embedded in Iraq, a death toll of 101 American soldiers so far this month, deteriorating relations with the Iraqi government, and a CNN poll registering domestic support for the war at 34%, and you have a stew with the rather unpleasant odor of desperation. Is this really what Rummy wanted when he begged public affairs to "adapt to today's media age?"
I expect my first missive from the Delta Force-esque PR flacks will be in my inbox pronto.
- Ryan Singel
60 Minutes Covers the "Golden Hour"
 It's no secret that the military's trauma units have saved the lives of thousands of injured service members and Iraqi civilians whose wounds would likely have killed them in earlier conflicts.
But last night, 60 Minutes ran a powerful 13 minute piece on the doctors, nurses and medics who operate in theater and on the field helicopters. The Hueys UH-60 Blackhawks are stationed around Iraq so that no casualty is more than 25 minutes from a helicopter, helping to ensure that injured soldiers are treated in a hospital within 60 minutes, known as the "Golden Hour."
The piece focuses on two American soliders, Kenny Lyon and Brad Fulks. Lyon was hit by a mortar while fixing his vehicle, and lost half his blood through three severed arteries before arriving the Air Force theater hospital on the Balad Air Base north of Baghdad.
Fulks was hit by a roadside bomb, which burned the skin over half his body and destroyed one of his lungs.
The Balad Air Base trauma center sees 300 trauma cases a month, but sends many via C-17s transformed into airborne medical centers to Germany. In the Vietnam war, it took an average of 40 days to get wounded soldiers back to the States; in the Iraq war, it now averages three days.
You can read a transcript of the piece here, but I highly recommend watching the video, even if you already know the extraordinary efforts of the military's trauma teams.
- Ryan Singel
Citizen's Guide to Getting the Goods
The Freedom of Information Act isn't just for journalists or activist groups -- citizens (with and without blogs) can also petition the federal government to turn over documents. While it's rather simple to file a request, it's a bit more complicated to file one that actually gets you information.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which hired two of the best FOIA filers in the country this summer, just updated its legal guide for bloggers with a FOIA primer.
How do I know what to ask for?
News articles, government reports, press releases, and Congressional hearings are good starting points for thinking up FOIA request ideas.
How do I make a FOIA request?
You can make a FOIA request by mailing or faxing a letter to the agency. You may also be able to submit your request by email. Check the agency's web site for information about how and where to send requests.
Are there any step-by-step guides for writing and submitting FOIA requests?
Yes. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has published a guide called How To Use the Federal FOI Act, and also has a FOI Letter Generator. The National Security Archive also has helpful guidance for FOIA requesters.
It's a bit simplified since government agencies vary widely in their attitude towards requests. The best advice is to make your request very narrow. Ask for a report by name (for instance, ask for the Pentagon's Inspector General's report on the Iraqi National Congress), instead of asking for all agency records about Chalabi and the INC. (BTW, there's a good possibility that report exists and hasn't been published).
Another fun place to start would be to follow on Michael Ravnitzky's FOIA work, which unearthed the indexes to four internal NSA publications, whose articles have tantalizing titles like "Was a Cryptologic Corporal." All you have to do is look through the indexes, find a title or two that interests you and ask for it. You just might get it.
Another place to get inspired is Russ Kick's The Memory Hole, a collection of documents he's built with FOIA requests he's filed after reading news articles. For instance, he's the one who got official pictures of the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq when they landed at Dover Air Force base, after the photography ban was debated in the news.
You could be charged a small amount, but generally if it's going to be more than $25 dollars or so in fees, the agency will let you know.
And if an agency stonewalls you or ignores you, well, you can either sue yourself (not a good idea and even if you win, you don't get attorney's fees) or ask a group like EPIC or the First Amendment Center or a public interest law clinic to help.
Think of it like a letter to the editor or your congress critter, it's something every citizen should try at least once.
On an unrelated note, I'm pretty honored that Noah handed me the keys and I'll likely be focusing mostly on anti-terrorism and government database stuff since that's my normal beat.
But keep the tips and comments coming and together we'll keep DefenseTech humming while Noah racks up speeding tickets in 10 different states.
-- Ryan Singel
Rapid Fire 10/30/06
* Airborne Anti-Missile Laser Actually a "Light Saber"
* From Barbary War II to Iraq War in 90 sec Flash
* Gov puts RFID in IDs, Despite Damning Report (shameless self-promotion)
* Letter From Iraq Goes Viral
* U.S.-provided Weapons Untraceable in Iraq
* Blair Outsourcing Iraq War?
* Ahmadinejad to Sanctions: Bring It On
* Pakistani Gunships Attack Radical Madrasa, Kill 80
- Ryan Singel
(Big ups: RC, Michael Wilde)
Singel Signs In
Ryan Singel has broken some of the biggest privacy and security stories of the last few years -- like AT&T's cheek-to-cheek cooperation with the NSA's domestic spying, and Jet Blue's fishy use of customer records, to test a federal passenger-screening database. These days, he heads up Wired News' horribly-named, must-read security blog, 27B Stroke 6. And he's still scooping folks on the regular; check out his coverage of the roll-your-own boarding pass generator.
So I am really fired up to have someone with this strong a track record blogging for Defense Tech. He'll be taking over the site this week, as I pack up for -- and drive out to -- Los Angeles, where I'll be spending the next few months.
Be good to my whiskey buddy Ryan. Send him tips. I'll see y'all on the other side.
Milblogger Clamp Down Blows Up (Updated)
 For the last couple of weeks, Defense Tech has been looking into the increasingly hostile atmosphere that soldier- journalists -- milbloggers -- have been facing. Now, a bunch of bigger outlets have picked up on the story -- and advanced it several steps.
Stars & Stripes:
The [Army's] August order [about blogs] specifically states that soldiers may not create or update their blogs during duty hours, and the sites must not 'contain information on military activities that is not available to the general public.'
That includes 'comments on daily military activities and operations, unit morale, results of operations, status of equipment, and other information that may be beneficial to adversaries.'
If soldiers are found violating those rules, both the servicemembers and their commanding officers are notified... leadership can decide what punishment, if any, the soldiers should face...
Noah Shachtman, editor of defensetech.org, said... "The fact that soldiers want to write about their experiences is something that should be embraced by the Army... They’re not looking to bad-mouth the military. They’re looking to talk proudly about their experiences."
AP:
"We are not a law enforcement or intelligence agency. Nor are we political correctness enforcers," Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, [head of the Virginia National Guard "Big Brother" website-monitoring unit] said. "We are simply trying to identify harmful Internet content and make the authors aware of the possible misuse of the information by groups who may want to damage United States interests."
Some bloggers say the guidelines are too ambiguous - a sentiment that has led others to pre-emptively shut down or alter their blogs.
"It's impossible to determine when something crosses the line from not a violation to a violation. It's like trying to define what pornography is or bad taste in music," said Spc. Jason Hartley, 32, who says he was demoted from sergeant and fined for reposting a blog he created while deployed to Iraq with the New York Army National Guard.
According to Hartley, the Army had forced him to stop the blog even before the oversight operation existed, citing pictures he had posted of Iraqi detainees and discussions of how he loaded a weapon and the route his unit took to get to Iraq.
Wired News' Xeni Jardin (who has the best story of the lot):
Blackfive's [Matt] Burden says soldiers are receiving mixed messages: some receive approval from their immediate commanders, only later to be rebuked by more senior officials. Burden says his site and another milblog, Armor Geddon, were once featured in an internal Army PowerPoint presentation which described both as serious operational security risks.
"That kind of message from the administration of the Army sends a chilling signal to a young soldier who was told by his commander that it was okay to do what he was doing," Burden told Wired News.
He and fellow milbloggers gathered this year in April for a first ever MilBlog Conference in Washington, DC. They plan to reconvene in May, 2007. Debate over how to address authorities' OPSEC concerns without creating a "chilling effect" among bloggers was a heated topic at the 2006 gathering.
"My advice would be to bring together active duty, reserve and veteran bloggers to take a look at this issue in a way that would help the military," Burden says, "There's a lot of positive information coming from these 1,200 or so military blogs, and if it's not positive, it's giving people a better understanding of what it's like to be a soldier or the family of a soldier fighting this war."
Active duty milblogger John Noonan co-edits OPFOR (military slang for "opposing force") and posts on such topics as "foreign policy, wargaming, grand strategy and hippy bashing."
Noonan is among those who believe the current flap is partly the result of a generation gap between younger, tech-savvy recruits for whom life online is second nature and older, more senior military officials who don't get the net and are accustomed to the military's long-established history of carefully monitoring release of information from the battlefield.
"They don't want to lose the traditional control they've had over information released from the battlefield to the American people," Noonan said. "It's counterintuitive for military guys who are used to total control over what information is released and what isn't, to all of a sudden having zero control."
Xeni also filed a story for NPR's Day to Day, which should air this afternoon.
UPDATE 3:01 PM: The NPR segment is up now.
UPDATE 10/31/06 4:20 PM: ABC News weighs in here, with some pretty bruising commentary from Blackfive. Note to self: Do not piss this guy off.
Iraqi Forces Don't Suck ... Entirely
Despite what you might have heard from other media, the Iraqi Army does not suck. In fact, by regional standards, it's a fine little army: well-armed, well-led and capable of defeating terrorists and insurgents in a stand-up fight. It wasn't always that way, but the coalition's clean-sheet approach and years of hard work by training teams has really paid off.
 But the Iraqi Army has two major weaknesses. First, its units are locally recruited, like the U.S. National Guard. This combined with Iraqis' overriding allegiance to tribe over nation means that most of them refuse to deploy when ordered to do so by Baghdad. Those units that have agreed to deploy, such as the highly disciplined Kurdish battalon sent to the Shiite town of Balad early this year, have been besieged in their forward operation bases by xenophobic locals.
But even if they were willing to deploy, most units are incapable of sustaining themselves far from their major bases for very long. This is the second major weakness. I go into detail in a new National Defense feature:
The [Iraqi] 10th Division is capable of planning and executing its own missions, but usually operates alongside British forces. The division, a light infantry formation, has four brigades each with two line battalions of 800 troops apiece, plus engineer and bomb disposal companies. Small divisional attachments including signals troops and military police are just now standing up with foreign assistance. There are currently no organic logistics troops.
This is consistent with the overall structure of the Iraqi Army. No more than 15 percent of Iraq’s 120,000 soldiers are involved in logistics, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Gerald Ostlund told the Associated Press. By contrast, Western armies feature more logisticians than combat troops.
"What you see is what you get," [British Army Lt. Col. Tim] Barrett says, referring to the 10th Division's infantry-heavy structure. While the battalions are adequately equipped with light arms and machine guns, there is a "desperate need" for vehicles, Lateef says. Currently, a handful of Russian-built medium trucks comprise the division’s major motor assets.
A dearth of vehicles plus a broader lack of logistical support means the 10th Division is incapable of sustaining operations away from its bases for more than a few hours, according to Barrett. This effectively limits it to urban operations in Basra and short sorties from a handful of rural installations.
What all this means is that the Iraqi Army will, for the time being, remain a local defense force. A good local defense force, mind you, but local nonetheless. So when Baghdad goes to shit, as it did a couple months back, the national government has few options for boosting the number of troops in the city. All it can do is try to recruit more troops locally ... and call for U.S. and British help.
--David Axe
Air Force Electronic Attacks Stymied
The situation isn't too bad right now, fighting a low-tech foe. But Air Force planners are deeply worried about the future, and the service's abilities to take out enemy radars. The flyboys' airborne electronic attack (AEA) efforts -- zapping opponents' air defenses, with big bursts of radar energy -- are in disarray, reports Air Force magazine.
 "Last year, the Air Force canceled its central AEA program, the B-52 Standoff Jammer." Then, the Air Force was taken off the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System killer drone project, which the Air Force was planning to use "as a radar jammer loitering directly over enemy air defenses. It is no exaggeration to say that the Air Force AEA roadmap, which was years in the making, virtually collapsed."
The Air Force faces a hard deadline for bringing on new operational AEA capability. Since 1999, it has been sharing the Navy’s four-seat EA-6B Prowler escort jammer aircraft, but the Prowler fleet begins retiring in 2009... For some time, plans have called for USAF by then to be out of the Navy’s program and fielding its own system.
The airborne electronic attack business comprises five primary disciplines, each taking the action progressively closer to the target... [From long-range, stand-off strikes to point-blank jamming to cyber attacks which] cause an enemy radar to think it’s a washing machine and go into the rinse cycle.
The problem is, these are all very different jobs. No single aircraft is going to be able to handle them all. Not a revamped B-52 or F-15E, not the Navy's Prowler $100 million-per-plane replacement, and not even the new F-22 fighters, equipped with next-gen radars.
So now the idea is patch together lots and lots of different types of aircraft, including the Joint Strike Fighter and "the Miniature Air-Launched Decoy... a smallish missile that emulates the radar signatures of other aircraft and, it is hoped, will draw the fire of enemy air defenses."
There are "so many different components and pieces and parts," one Air Force official tells the magazine. "It gets very complex. ... It’s just a matter of what we can afford and what kind of risk will we assume if we don’t have all the pieces together."
Army Reshuffles for Long War
"Pentagon records show one-fifth of the Army's active-duty troops have served multiple tours of war duty while more than 40% haven't been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan," reports USA Today.
 So the Army is "realign[ing] its forces to prevent a small slice of soldiers who are shouldering much of the fighting from wearing out."
The Army is moving soldiers from specialties such as artillery and air defense to high-demand roles: infantry, engineering, military police and intelligence, Special Forces, civil affairs and psychological operations, said Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for Army personnel.
Makes sense to me. What do you guys think? And if the Army is doing this, isn't the next logical step to ship more -- way more -- Navy and Air Force types to the Sandbox, too?
Rapid Fire 10/26/06
* OMB disses Army
* NASA launches Sun-spotters
* Net gambling vs. port security
* Border fence approved...
* ... or is it?
* Military e-voting FUBAR
* Brits test stims
* Nuke security worse than you think
* Russian missile flop
* When spy sats were young
* New views through drones' eyes
* Shallow water mine fighter
(Big ups: RC)
Red Teaming Tomorrow's Radars
Nicholas Weaver is a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in California. This is the first in an occasional series for Defense Tech.
 In the past, military technology might have consistently outpaced civilian gear. Not any more.
Civilian electronics, manufacturing, and development cycles have radically shortened and improved. The computer which runs the F-22 is an absolute design marvel for its time, for example: 700 MIPS (Millions of Instructions per Second), approximately 300 Megabytes of memory, and some 20 billion DSP [digital signal processing] style operations.
Yet its time was the late 80s and early 90s, when much of the hardware was finalized. Today, a Playstation 3 meets or exceeds this performance, for $600 instead of perhaps $30,000,000. (Of course, the F22's avionics are considerably more robust and presumably more reliable.)
So the question becomes, what happens if America's opponents start massively adopting commercial technology and commercial design styles? In Iraq, insurgents are already using commercial gear to build and trigger bombs. But it's not hard to imagine absorption on a much broader scale. After all, the weapon business is a business, there are brilliant engineers around the world, and the basic building blocks continue to grow more sophisticated.
This occasional series of speculations will attempt to predict that future, by technological "red-teaming," sketching out what an opponent could do. This first article attempts to postulate what the future of air defense radar will be, and how it will force radical changes in US military operations.
The United States enjoys pure air superiority. No other nation can hope to match the USAF, and no other country will likely try. But an opponent doesn't have to match our fighters, they only need ground based air defenses, which starts with radars.
Today, they don't have much of a hope. Between stealth aircraft and anti-radar missiles, an opponent's air defenses will be destroyed within minutes of a conflict. , or simply remains offline in an attempt to preserve some capabilities. {Which is what the Serbs did in the 90s – keeping their radars off, mostly, and using ballistic firing.)
But there is a technology which might change this balance. And it's got its roots in the commercial world. Multipath radar would provide a defender with a robust radar system, able to detect and track many stealth aircraft, counter anti-radar missiles, and enable the defender to track all radio emitters within the country.
In a conventional radar, a radio signal is broadcast. When a plane or other object is in the path of this beam, it may be reflected back towards the radar station. By using timing, direction, and the size and intensity of the reflected signal, the radar site can track and identify objects. Yet it is this very radar signal which anti-radar missiles target, making the stations vulnerable to attack.
Stealth aircraft avoid radar by being made of materials that are either transparent to, or absorbing of, the radar's signal. Or, the planes scatter the radio signal so that it bounces away from the radar station. That's why stealth aircraft have such unusual shapes.
But there is another way to build a radar. If you scatter a bunch of radio sources around the countryside, each of which are broadcasting, the signals will scatter off any aircraft in the area. With a group of distributed receivers, these scattered signals can be received and analyzed. This is called "multipath radar", as the signals traverse multiple paths to receivers.
There are a few prerequisites for multipath radar. The broadcasters, although simple, need to transmit an identifier as part of their signals, and be at known locations. The receivers, on the other hand, need to be very sophisticated. This requires sophisticated radio antennas and, more importantly, "serious DSP magic," which, when networked together, can compute a cohesive picture of the defender's airspace.
Yet the hardware to perform such DSP operations is becoming commonplace and commercially prevalent. GNU radar and other designs can receive the signals, and conventional computers and DSPs can then process the results, extract the features, and create an overall picture. There have been prototypes built in the United Kingdom, able to track commercial aircraft by observing the reflected signals from cell-phone towers.
Why do I believe multipath radar will be a case where civilian technology may have a huge military impact? Simply because the "serious DSP Magic", the signal processing components and programming skills needed to make everything work, are the same principles behind spread-spectrum cellular basestations, software radios, and even MIMO antennas for 802.11N basestations.
If multipath radar is deployed by adversaries or potential adversaries, it could greatly affect US operations. Stealth aircraft based on scattering the signal are simply not stealthy to multipath radar. Worse, the transmitters are no longer co-located with the receivers and electronics. Thus anti-SAM and anti-radar tactics will need to be restructured, as simply blowing up the transmitters destroys valueless targets and an adversary could simply build more $500 transmitters than the US has anti-radiation missiles.
Finally, the same DSP processing and antenna infrastructure which forms a multipath radar also enables the defender to track radio sources, by detecting unique sources and using timing to triangulate their locations. Simple traffic analysis, knowing where your opponents are, can be invaluable for military strategists. Radio silence protocols would need to be strictly enforced and enhanced, which could also affect proposed "system of systems" technologies.
A new technology can change the world. Multipath radar might change how the US military needs to operate, both in the air and on the ground. And the building blocks are in catalogs, now.
-- Nicholas Weaver
Yet Another Milblogger Forced Out
Tanker Brothers is a blog from a pair of Abrams operators, initially set up to "express their frustration at the lack of American support for the Iraq conflict and to pay tribute to their Military heritage of Patriotism and Honor." The site is one of the featured blogs at Military.com, and is in the top ten at BestMilitarySites.com.
 Despite all that, the site is about to go dark, come Veterans' Day.
Make no mistake, it has nothing to do with not wanting to Blog anymore: on the contrary, this has been a labor of love for me. I started this blog with one goal, and only one goal: to let the American Public know what was REALLY going on in Iraq... Unfortunately.... sometimes things don't always work out the way we want them to.
As my readers know, my little brother has already deployed to Iraq, and I'm literally on "the countdown" to when I get on a plane to join him. There was nothing more that I wanted to do than to continue this site, and even "kick it up a notch", since I would once again be on the ground.
With the new OPSEC paranoia, though, I don't think I would have the opportunity. The DoD is cracking down on MilBlogs, and I wouldn't be able to continue Blogging and still be compliant with AR 25-1, the Army's Regulation governing Personal Websites...
Now, unofficially speaking, I think the DoD is making a huge mistake crippling the MilBlog movement. MilBlogs have been instrumental at keeping the American Public informed, and getting the good news of the War on Terror out to people that would otherwise never hear it. And the American public is hungry for news like that. The American public is starving for news like that.
Isn't this exactly the kind of website that the Defense Department ought to be trying to keep online?
UPDATE 4:53 PM: "We're carried on [the official Army website] Stand To! pretty regularly...so we're good enough for the Army's senior leaders, but not good enough to keep blogging? It doesn't make sense," Tanker Brother Mike Gulf tells me.
I would never, ever compromise security, or put even one single Soldier's life in jeopardy. If there [is] even a small chance, I tank the story. Even CENTCOM tells me I'm "good to go", to which my response was: "Then show me how I can [comlly] AR 25-1, and show me a way to post!"
The DoD should be embracing the MilBlog Movement: we're the guys and gals actually getting the TRUTH out about the War, and encouraging support, and the American public to open thier eyes and get the view from guys on the ground.
(Big ups: OPFOR)
Rapid Fire 10/25/06 (Updated Again)
* Tenet becomes Q-branch chief; conspiracy theorists' heads explode (background here)
* $7 billion more for Army
* More troops to Baghdad?
* Iraqi army, still lame
* New cameras for spy sats?
* Return of the exoskeleton
* Joint Common Missile: unkillable
* FCS' new playground
* Secrecy vs. net-centric ops
* JSF's modelling career
* CIA can't retrain spies
* Face recognition: fake?
* Stanford's big-ass laser
* Robotic paint ball gun
* Waaaaahhhh!!
* Look out below!
* Chavez helping border-crossers?
* Iraq contractors sit on asses, collect checks
* Super-radar still stuck (background here)
(Big ups: EG, JQP, AT, JH, RC, Haninah, Kris, Xeni)
Lessons of the AK-47
Larry Kahaner is the author of the just-published AK-47: The Weapon That Changed the Face of War. This is his first post for Defense Tech.
In our quest for the latest and most sophisticated weaponry we sometimes tend to overlook a major success in low-tech arms. But there's a lot we can learn from them – especially the AK-47 assault rifle.
 The AK-47 is the world's most popular military weapon. At last count, there may be as many as 100 million of these uncomplicated but deadly rifles in use. That's one AK for every 60 people. It is used by about 50 legitimate armies as well as terrorists – Osama Bin Laden calls it the terrorist's most important weapon – insurgents, drug cartels, paramilitary groups and guerrillas.
The rifle, first produced in 1947 – hence the name AK-47 for Automatic Kalashnikov 1947 – has undergone very few changes since it was first produced by Soviet soldier Mikhail Kalashnikov. The furniture has been replaced with low weight plastics, and a few other mods here and there depending upon which of the 19 countries produced it, but it is essentially the same weapon it was 60 years ago.
What accounts for its success? Quite simply: it works. Despite its low price (as little as $10 and as much as $300) and often shoddy workmanship, this rifle rarely jams, is almost indestructible, and is easy to fire with no training. Overnight, it can transform paramilitary forces, thugs and street gangs into formidable armies.
It is not very accurate but can fire about 700 rounds per minute. Many western military experts consider it a piece of junk, but it's perfect for poorly-trained soldiers because they can 'spray and pray.' And indeed, it is a piece of junk compared to the M-16A2 now used in Iraq or the shorter barreled version M-4. These rifles are well built, accurate and engineered to close tolerances. They are technological things of beauty. The AK, on the other hand has loose tolerances, feels like it will shake apart (but doesn't) and won't make any friends at the marksmen club. These loose tolerances are the open secret to the AK's almost jam-free history. It's also why you can drag it through mud, leave it buried in the sand and take it out a year later, kick it with your boot, and it will fire like it was cleaned that morning. Again, because of its imprecision, the AK can fire poorly produced ammunition as well as ammo that has been sitting and deteriorating in the jungle or desert.
When the Defense Department offered M-16s to the Iraqi police and army, they refused. They wanted AKs which had to be bought from Jordan (the weapons actually were made in Germany). Indeed, like their brethren in Vietnam, many US soldiers are using AKs in Iraq despite official sanctions against the practice.
As the Pentagon planers ponder what's next for infantry firearms, they need to think in terms of simple instead of complex and practical instead of sophisticated. There's no reason why soldiers should be using M-4s that overheat or place condoms over their gun barrels to keep out the desert sands.
The solution has not come for lack of trying. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, the Army was developing a new assault rifle known as the XM8 project an outgrowth of the Objective Individual Combat Weapon program, which was to produce a new type of battle rifle. The main goal of the XM8 program was to find a replacement for the M-16 and M4.
However, by late 2005, the XM8 was scrapped partially because of politics; Congress was reluctant to spend billions to outfit soldiers with new rifles while the Iraq war was draining the treasury.
The real problem may be that as the program progressed, military planners kept adding bells and whistles to the rifle system -- even including an electronic bullet counter -- and it became too complex, heavy and unwieldy. Designers would have done better to simply aim for a new infantry rifle that works as well as the AK-47 and be just as simple.
The AK may not be the best rifle for the US but designers can learn from Kalashnikov's experience in building the AK-47. He often found himself guided by the words of arms designer Georgy Shpagin, who developed the successful PPSh41 submachine gun: "Complexity is easy; simplicity is difficult."
-- Larry Kahaner
Los Alamos Getting Sloppy (Updated)
Why should we bother putting radiological detectors in the ports when it's easier to get the stuff within the United States? The AP has this article on a drug raid at a New Mexico trailer park, which turned up classified documents from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
Local police found the documents while arresting a man suspected of domestic violence and dealing methamphetamine from his mobile home, said Sgt. Chuck Ney of the Los Alamos, N.M., Municipal Police Department. The documents were discovered during a search of the man's records for evidence of his drug business, Ney said.
Police alerted the FBI to the secret documents, which agents traced back to a woman linked to the drug dealer, officials said. The woman is a contract employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to an FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.
The official would not describe the documents except to say that they appeared to contain classified material and were stored on a computer file.
While the FBI won't comment, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has some insights.
According to unconfirmed sources, the information was classified as Secret Restricted Data which means it would involve nuclear weapons data and may have concerned detection of underground nuclear weapons testing. Also unconfirmed, the person in possession of the information worked either in Technical Area 55 where all of the Lab’s plutonium is stored or in the X Division which handles nuclear weapons design data for a maintenance subcontractor of the Lab.
POGO also notes six previous security incidents at LANL since 9/11. No wonder that many of the DHS exercises feature dirty bomb scenarios - they must be worried about domestic terrorists getting too much National Lab material...
-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist
UPDATED 10:20 AM: It should be noted that this isn't Los Alamos' first drug-related incident. Back in 2004, local authorities evicted a man who had lived for years in a cave on lab property. from a cave on Los Alamos National Laboratory land where they say he apparently lived for years with the comforts of home — a wood-burning stove, solar panels connected to car batteries for electricity and a satellite radio. Ten marijuana plants were found outside the cave, and the fellow inside was charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
UPDATED 4:15 PM: Whatever you do, be sure to check in regularly at the POGO blog, where they've got all kinds of fun rumors floating in. Police docs, too.
UPDATED 10-26: J. here - let me clarify that I believe the combination of classified LANL documents and potential theft of radioactive isotopes from domestic sources (universities, medical labs) is what ought to get people excited about this incident. Obviously we don't know what's in the documents that makes them classified, and I am not suggesting that LANL might be the source of loose plutonium material. But unless LANL tightens up their security procedures and trains/screens its employees and contract support better, its leadership ought to be on notice.
Deepwater Sinking?
 A couple months ago, Lockheed whistleblower Mike DeKort prophesied the imminent unraveling of the Coast Guard's $25-billion Deepwater modernization effort due to contractor failures. Looks like he might have been right. Defense News reports that the centerpiece Fast Response Cutter, a Northrop Grumman-led program to field around 60 patrol boats for coastal rescue, has been put on hold due to design flaws:
The Coast Guard wants to build a total of 58 FRC cutters, which are badly needed to replace worn-out 110-foot cutters now in service. A previous plan to rebuild the 110-foot cutter fleet ended after the first converted ships developed serious hull integrity problems.
Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Pascagoula, Miss., has strongly been pushing its composite design, to be built at its facility in Gulfport, Miss. The Coast Guard had earlier planned to order a prototype composite FRC cutter in 2006, but those plans are now on hold.
After two false starts, the Coast Guard "need[s] a patrol boat right away," says Rear Admiral Gary Blore, head of Deepwater. Defense News sketches some of the possibilities:
Blore noted that 19 international manufacturers with 27 different designs responded to a request for information put out in February to seek patrol boats that might meet Coast Guard requirements. None of the initial submissions met those requirements, Blore said, so the service modified some of its specifications. As a result, “five or six” of the designs show promise, Blore said.
The Coast Guard is looking for a vessel from 140 to 160 feet in length, Blore said — shorter than a number of the foreign designs. The FRC-B plan is based on a “parent-craft concept,” Blore explained, where the Coast Guard chooses a design, purchases construction rights, and builds the craft in the U.S. A similar approach, he noted, was used on the 110-foot Island-class cutters the FRC is intended to replace.
Under current plans, the Coast Guard could build 12 FRC-B cutters and 46 composite-hull FRC-A cutters, Blore said, although he allowed that those figures could change as composite craft are delivered and the program gains maturity.
-- David Axe
Axe Hearts Marines
 So I'm a tacair junkie. Sue me. And of all the U.S. tactical air forces, the Marines' small force flying Boeing F/A-18 Hornets and Boeing AV-8B Harriers is my favoritest. These guys pull off minor miracles every day with ancient airplanes, a tiny budget and operational commitments (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan and aboard Navy aircraft carriers) that keep them very very busy.
On top of this, the Marines must be ready for a wide range of contingencies, perhaps requiring forced entry against a conventional foe flying sophisticated fighters. To that end, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 312 "Checkerboards" based in Beaufort, South Carolina, is honing its dogfighting skills with live missile shoots, exercises against adversary fighters and by sending pilots to Topgun at Fallon, Nevada. I go into detail over at Military.com:
"Is there an air-to-air threat in Iraq? No. but if we start training just to fight right now, when that fight's over, something else pops up and we're unprepared," says Major Bruce "Flesh" Gordon, a 34-year-old Checkerboards pilot with more than 1,600 hours in the Hornet. He says the Marine Corps' small community of 14 Hornet squadrons -- each flying a dozen jets and half of which are based in Beaufort -- needs to be ready to deploy on 48 hours' notice to cover Marines storming some foreign shore to meet an unexpected threat.
"If a [Marine] commander wants to make a landing in, say, Bashir, Iran, he needs a secure beachhead. He won't have that if the Iranians are launching [Sukhoi Su-25] Frogfoot [attack planes] and [F-4] Phantom [fighters]," 34-year-old Captain Hank Thomas says by way of a hypothetical example.
Hopefully that example never becomes a reality. But if it does, the Marines will be ready.
-- David Axe
Cameras to Comb Crowds
Cameras have grown smarter in recent years -- better able to recognize faces at close distances, and pick up on strange behavior from a little farther out. Go in through an out door, or leave a suspicious package behind on a train platform, for example, and you'll be spotted, quick.
 But figuring out what a group of people is doing, or being able to ID a face within that group, that takes brains today's digital video software still doesn't have. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is hoping a new research grant can begin to change that.
SOCOM just gave Colorado Springs-based Securics, Inc. a $100,000 grant to start developing programs for "Monitoring of Crowd Activities." The idea is to train cameras to find faces from afar, and to "develop new algorithms explicitly for crowd management, rather than building on the traditional intelligent video surveillance algorithms that are focused on isolated targets." Oh, and by the way: this should all happen in a small, self-contained system that takes up barely any power at all -- 7 watts, maybe.
Securics will start small, looking at algorithms for a crowd's "vertical motion energy," like a group of people "pumping its fists, or raising signs," says company chief Terry Boult.
There will also be some comparisons to how much activity is usually in the area. "If normally, on Tuesdays, there are only three people on this corner, and now there are 50, maybe there's a problem," Boult adds.
In addition, Securics will build on the work it did for Darpa, as part of the agency's "Human ID at a Distance" program. Boult says the company developed for Darpa software to identify faces from 100 to 200 feet away. The SOCOM effort, he hopes, will far surpass that.
Goodbye 'Gee Whiz?'
During the Cold War, the U.S. military developed weapons and strategies to counter its Soviet adversaries, in a process known as "threat-based" planning. But, once America became the sole superpower, its armed forces slowly stopped making gear and plans to beat its enemies; there didn't seem to be any enemies strong enough to plan for. Instead, Pentagon chiefs began to let their imaginations roam free -- and look at what the American military of the future could do, rather than what it needed to do in order to win. "Capabilities-based" planning overtook the "threat-based" model. Defense officials cooked up wonder weapons, like the DD(X) destroyer, the F-22 stealth fighter, and the Future Combat Systems suite of ground vehicles -- even though the adversaries for these remained, at best, unclear.
 But with America mired in a pair of increasingly nasty guerrilla wars, some in the military and research establishment are looking to return to the "threat-based" approach. And that means coming up with gear ASAP that can make a difference in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Contractors" are beginning to "shift their focus from gee-whiz technologies to 'relevant' ones that can save lives and improve capabilities today," EE Times says.
Those requirements include four basic capabilities: "force protection" technologies needed, for example, to counter IEDs; command and control; "battle space awareness," or the ability to spot threats early and quickly counter them; and the all-encompassing concept of network-centric warfare, in which sensors can pick up and parse threat data, fuse it into useful information and deliver it via ground and space networks to commanders in the field...
[T]he Air Force is spending heavily on technologies like data links, data fusion and secure communications, Janos said... Meanwhile, the Navy is investing in power electronics and sensor technologies. A key research priority for the Army as it seeks to improve force protection is developing robots with greater autonomy. Janos said unmanned ground vehicles that require several operators won't cut it in a ground force that is already stretched to its limit.
All true. But still, from what I've seen, the changes in attitude are still only at the margins. Often, the military-funded researchers -- and their managers -- that I meet seem only dimly aware that there are wars going on at all. They might pay some lip service to fighting the counterterror fight. But the money, and the research projects, seem only tangentially connected to that struggle.
Take this story from National Defense magazine. "Far from being disconnected from the practical concerns of deployed forces, Navy scientists are making it their business to be attuned to the demands of sailors and Marines," it insists. But what that turns out to mean is that most of the 30% of the "future naval capabilities" research budget is actually producing... well, future naval capabilities, instead of science experiments. If that's an improvement, so be it. But isn't that setting the bar a little low?
Don't get me wrong. Everyone here at Defense Tech HQ loves big ideas and shoot-for-the-moon science. But when the country is losing two wars at once, it's time to get our priorities straight.
(Big ups: RC)
Policing the Iraqi police
 British-led forces in Basra are speeding up an effort to reform the city's troubled police force with a heightened awareness that they are running out of time, as I explain in yesterday's The Washington Times.
Operation Sinbad, begun in August, has seen as many as 1,000 British soldiers backed up by 2,000 Iraqi troops "surge into Iraqi police stations and raise standards," said Brig. James Everard, senior commander of coalition forces in southern Iraq.
To prepare the ground in this sweltering, hostile city, first British and Iraqi engineers launch small reconstruction projects in a target neighborhood. These, plus ongoing employment generation schemes managed by officers including Captain Steve Morte, are intended to win some short-term consent that should buy time for the police reformers to do their jobs.
Weeding out the most corrupt police and death-squad members means first conducting a census of a force that, in recent years, has eluded the oversight of outnumbered and overstretched coalition forces. Just 8,000 coalition troops, most of them British, are responsible for four southern provinces with a combined population of more than 5 million.
On the morning of Oct. 1, a small team led by Royal Military Police Cpl. Stacey Jackson, 27, visited a Basra police station to register 300 Iraqi officers and their weapons and to administer a written test intended to measure literacy and knowledge of basic policing.
Two Iraqi officers sat side by side on an exposed bed frame, openly reading each other's answers, their brows furrowed in confusion. A grinning Cpl. Jackson explained that, anticipating efforts to cheat, she had prepared 10 different versions of the exam.
Police reform has taken on greater urgency in the wake of recent events in nearby Al Amarah, where militia forces took on the corrupt police force, killing around a dozen people in a two-day battle -- and demonstrating that if Western forces can't reform the cops peacefully, militias will do it their way.
--David Axe
Rapid Fire 10/23/06 (Updated)
* Amputated arm moved to groin
* WH "rooting" for Nork nuke test?
* 18 grunts fed - no kitchen required
* "The mother of all heists"
* Hitler's cheap gas
* Return of the killer drone
* NYT's 180 on bank spying
* Real risk vs. fake
* Hez rearming?
* Bush: I use "the Google"
Airport Defense: Lasers, Microwaves
Cheap, low-tech, easy-to-use, and utterly lethal, shoulder-fired missiles have become a terrorist weapon of choice, killing more than 640 people in 35 attacks on civilian jets. And so far, countermeasures have proven too finicky and too expensive to widely deploy. So the Department of Homeland Security is trying out instead a pair of new defenses, seemingly straight of science fiction: laser guns and microwave blasters.
 The Department will spend $4.1 million to test out Raytheon's "Vigilant Eagle" system, which relies a series of microwave pulses to throw off a missile's guidance package. A series of passive infrared trackers, installed around an airport, would look out for missile exhaust. When these sensors detect a launch, data about the missile's trajectory is sent to a control center, which in turn tells a billboard-size microwave array where to blast.
How exactly this is done without disrupting a plane's avionics system has never been fully explained to me. Which may be why DHS is also sinking nearly $2 million into a study of Northrop Grumman's laser-based, "SkyGuard" defense, as well.
The system is a modification of the company's Tactical High Energy Laser, which successfully blasted dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars out of the air during military testing. The laser, powered by vats of toxic chemicals, was considered too cumbersome for battlefield use. A permanent set-up an airport might be a different story, however.
DHS has spent nearly four years and $239 million to adapt the military's series of countermeasures to civilian jets. But most commercial carriers have been unwilling to pay for the systems, which could cost $50 billion over ten years to install and maintain. So far, Fedex is the only big flier to invest heavily in the defenses, agreeing to outfit 11 of its planes with the countermeasures.
Ground-based systems -- even ones based on ray guns -- might prove more palatable to the airline industry. Sure, the technology is less proven than the jet-based defenses. But eventually, the microwave and laser blasters could prove "more reliable," Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, tells Bloomberg News. "It is easier to be on the ground where you can have an infinite power supply. Aircraft are only vulnerable below a certain altitude, when they are taking off and landing. For most airports you can place them on towers where you can cover landing and takeoff routes."
Raytheon and Northrop have 18 months to prove their futuristic systems are ready to handle the job.
UPDATE 4:18 PM: In case you're wondering -- no, this is not the 300-oven death ray.
(Big ups: CP)
NSA Targets 'Lost' Fans
The CIA aren't the only spooks with wacky recruiting stunts. The signals intelligence snoops over at the National Security Agency are trying out tricks of their own, to reel in potential employees. The latest, according to Defense Tech pal Siobhan Gorman: a first-ever series of TV ads, airing on episodes of "Lost" and "CSI."
![NSA Commercial_01[1].jpg](http://www.defensetech.org/images/NSA%20Commercial_01%5B1%5D.jpg)
"It was the demographic we were looking for," said NSA spokesman Donny Weber, who said the commercial was aimed at college students and professionals in the [Baltimore-Washington] region's high-tech co
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