The US military needs oil -- about 300,000 barrels a day -- to fight.
Lots of oil comes from the same places where the military actually is fighting today, or may be fighting sometime in the not so distant future. (Hello, Iran?)
Oh, the irony!
It should come as no surprise then that the Department of Defense is giving very serious thought to oil independence. The notion is that the nation -- and particularly the military -- must have assured access to energy, and oil isn't such a safe bet any more.
There's been some press about a highly-touted Air Force experiment using a synthentic base fuel (derived from natural gas pumped in from Oklahoma) to power one of the B-52's eight engines.
But that's just kid-stuff, really.
It's very clear that a much broader vision exists within DOD to really go ... all .. the ... way, and fast.
The vision can be found in this master's thesis by Air Force Lt Col Michael J. Hornitschek, who originally published the document for the Air University's Center for Strategy and Technology. It has since been republished in the Air Force Journal of Logistics. It's a thesis, but it often reads like a very good Popular Science article.
Here's a quick excerpt that explains the vision:
"A directed-energy based, highly-automated force, capable of generating a majority of its own power in a distributed fashion from local and environmental sources, could theoretically provide that future. The potential efficiency, environmental ubiquity, universality and convertibility from one form to another of this configuration, make strong arguments that the force of 2050 can be powered almost exclusively by electricity and hydrogen.
"Setting aside conventional paradigms allows one to imagine a conceptual 2050 force. All navy ships might employ nuclear-powered direct-electric drives, lightweight nanoengineered hulls, and directed energy armament. All army and marine corps future combat system land vehicles (many of which are unmanned) are designed for modular upgrades with plug-in electric hybrid or fuel-cell power, lightweight carbon nanotube-based armor and directed energy weaponry. Today's vulnerable tanker fuel trucks are replaced with smaller hybrid or fuel-cell powered trucks carrying stable, solid hydrate-based hydrogen batteries or combat safety-engineered liquid hydrogen containers. Individual soldiers are outfitted with pocket hydrogen fuel cells to power 10-15 onboard electric systems. Virtually all combat fighter aircraft are small, unmanned or single-seat, and powered by liquid or even nano-engineered solid hydrogen-based fuels. Ultra-efficient aircraft designs eliminate the need for tanker aircraft. All imagery (sic), surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms are either space-based or unmanned vehicles, orbiting for weeks at a time exclusively on solar-generated power while peering through weather from above."
NEW YORK (AP) -- Defense stocks tumbled Tuesday, dragged down by fears of a weakening global economy that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by more than 3 percent.
The defense sector selloff afflicted Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp., Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp., Falls Church, Va.-based General Dynamics Corp. and Providence, R.I.-based Textron Inc.
U.S. stock markets headed lower after a 9 percent slide in Chinese stocks, with the Dow briefly falling by more than 500 points before rebounding somewhat later in the day. The last time the Dow dropped more than 500 points was on Sept. 11, 2001.
Lockheed gained 4 cents to $97.61 in aftermarket trading, after dropping $3.55, or 3.5 percent, to close at $97.57 on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares traded between $69.87 to $103.50 over the last 52-week period.
Shares of Northrop gained 13 cents to $72.04 in aftermarket trading, after dropping $1.93, or 2.6 percent, to $71.91. Shares traded between $61.51 to $75.72 over the last 52-week period.
Textron shares gained 8 cents to $90.91 in aftermarket trading, after dipping $4.33, or 4.5 percent, to close at $90.83 on the Exchange. Shares traded between $80.46 to $98.96 over the last 52-week period.
Shares of General Dynamics dropped $2.76, or 3.5 percent, to close at $75.33 on the NYSE. The company traded between $61.20 and $81.28 over the last 52-week period.
God Slides Shuttle Launch to the Right
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (CNN) -- A scheduled March 15 launch has been delayed after the external fuel tank attached to the shuttle Atlantis and possibly the orbiter itself were damaged by a hailstorm at the launch pad Monday afternoon.
Workers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida are still assessing the extent of the damage, but NASA managers decided Atlantis must be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for thorough inspections and repairs.
The rollback means Atlantis will not launch in March as planned. Program officials hope repairs can be completed for a launch in late April or May.
A recent transpac crippled six F-22s as they made their way from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The culprit: The International Date Line.
When the fighters crossed the line, all of their computer systems went Tango Uniform - fuel subsystems, navigation, and some of the comms.
We turn to CNN's John Roberts and retired Maj. Gen. Don Shepperd for expert commentary on the matter:
ROBERTS: Twenty five years from development to deployment, the F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighting machine in the air. But it was no match for a computer glitch that left six of them high above the Pacific Ocean, deaf, dumb and blind as they headed to their first deployment. So what happened? We turn to a man who's at home in the cockpit, Retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. Don, let me set the scene. These F-22s, eight of them, were headed from Hickam Air Force base in Hawaii to an Air Force base in Japan. They were approaching the international date line, pick it up from there.
SHEPPERD: You got it right, John. You want everything to go right with your frontline fighter, $125, $135 million to copy. The F-22 Raptor is our frontline fighter, air defense, air superiority. It also can drop bombs. It is stealthy. It's fast and you want it all to go right on your first deployment to the Pacific and it didn't. At the international date line, whoops, all systems dumped and when I say all systems, I mean all systems, their navigation, part of their communications, their fuel systems. They were -- they could have been in real trouble. They were with their tankers. The tankers - they tried to reset their systems, couldn't get them reset. The tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad. It turned out OK. It was fixed in 48 hours. It was a computer glitch in the millions of lines of code, somebody made an error in a couple lines of the code and everything goes.
ROBERTS: This is almost like the feared Y2K problem that happened to these aircraft. We should point out that computers control almost every aspect of this aircraft, from their weapons systems, to the flight controls and the computers absolutely went haywire, became useless.
SHEPPERD: Absolutely. When you think of airplanes from the old days, with cables and that type of thing and direct connections between the sticks and the yolks and the controls, not that way anymore. Everything is by computer. When your computers go, your airplanes go. You have multiple systems. When they all dump at the same time, you can be in real trouble. Luckily this turned out OK.
ROBERTS: What would have happened General Shepperd if these brand-new $120 million F-22s had been going into battle?
SHEPPERD: You would have been in real trouble in the middle of combat. The good thing is that we found this out. Any time -- before, you know, before we get into combat with an airplane like this. Any time you introduce a new airplane, you are going to find glitches and you are going to find things that go wrong. It happens in our civilian airliners. You just don't hear much about it but these things absolutely happen. And luckily this time we found out about it before combat. We got it fixed with tiger teams in about 48 hours and the airplanes were flying again, completed their deployment. But this could have been real serious in combat.
ROBERTS: So basically you had these advanced air -- not just superiority but air supremacy fighters that were in there, up there in the air, above the Pacific Ocean, not much more sophisticated than a little Cessna 152 only with a jet engine.
SHEPPERD: You got it. They are on a 12 to 15-hour flight from Hawaii to Okinawa, but all their systems dumped. They needed help. Had they gotten separated from their tankers or had the weather been bad, they had no attitude reference. They had no communications or navigation. They would have turned around and probably could have found the Hawaiian Islands. But if the weather had been bad on approach, there could have been real trouble. Again, you get refueling from your tankers. You don't run -- you don't get yourself where you run out of fuel. You always have enough fuel and refueling nine, 10, 11, 12 times on a flight like this where you can get somewhere to land. But again, attitude reference and navigation are essential as is communication. In this case all of that was affected. It was a serious problem.
ROBERTS: So the fact the computers run so much of the systems on these aircraft, General Shepperd, is the -- is the military at risk of over engineering here so if they did have a problem like that when they were going into a hostile situation, they could be, as you said, repeatedly in real trouble?
SHEPPERD: Well, you have redundant systems but it's just a fact of life in the modern computer age. By the way John, you are going to have the same problem coming up on your laptop computer as we conferred from -- from standard time from daylight savings time to standard time. Your program -- your computer is programmed for one thing and we have changed the dates and you are going to have a problem. It's going to have to be dealt with.
ROBERTS: Do me a favor Don. Make sure I'm not on my laptop computer when I'm flying in an F-22 on that day.
SHEPPERD: Absolutely.
And make sure you don't try to conduct any strikes across the International Date Line. One side or the other, war planners; one side or the other.
The short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (STOVL) F-35B is either what makes the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program the stuff of genius -- or a sure bet for failure.
Think about it.
With the F-35B, the JSF program lays claim to an unprecedented aerodynamic hat trick: one common fighter design/three very, very different ways to take off and land. On the other hand, the F-35B is the biggest headache to develop and is already the leading cause for a two-year-delay and $5 billion cost overrun. And the aircraft still has yet to fly.
The F-35B also happens to be the diplomatic glue that attracts an international partnership to chip in one-tenth of the JSF's development cost. Only two of the eight JSF partners want the STOVL aircraft, but one of those is the UK. And if the JSF program loses the UK, you may say goodbye to the rest of the international partners and hello to Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 3. (Without international cover, the JSF also may look a lot more inviting to the increasingly rapacious budget-cutters in the Pentagon.)
So let's hope the F-35B's largest customer -- the US Marine Corps -- knows what it's doing.
It is in this context that I was so interested to read the new book, Harrier II: Validating V/STOL, by Lon O. Nordeen. Perhaps, by understanding why the USMC believes the Harrier -- and the F-35B -- are so necessary, we may understand the disporportionate influence it wields over the JSF program.
First, it has to be understood that, historically-speaking, V/STOL is an aerodynamic fetish. To understand this point, please check out the aptly-titled V/STOL Wheel of Misfortune. Of the 45 V/STOL projects attempted in history, only four -- the Harrier, the V-22, the CL-84, and F-35B --ventured much beyond the prototype stage. Three of them involve the Marines.
In his book, Nordeen unfortunately chooses not to analyze or comment but to straightforwardly present the USMC's obsession with the Harrier as a product of Vietnam. Close air support seemed to be quite a topic of discussion (imagine that?) at the time. To deal with the issue, the Air Force wanted to buy the A-10, the Army favored the Lockheed AH-56A Cheyenne and the USMC focused on the AV-8A Harrier. Asked by Congress to pick the best option, DOD (surprise!) backed all three. (The Cheyenne was later cancelled.)
It's clear from Nordeen's writing that the USMC likes V/STOL because of the obvious: its fighters don't need a long runway or an aircraft carrier to take off. In the Falklands War, Royal Air Force GR Mk. 3 Harriers arrived -- and operated -- in the South Atlantic war zone on board the container ship Atlantic Conveyor (until the ship was struck by an Argentine exocet missile). Such basing flexibility briefly appealed to the US Air Force, which in 2004 and 2005 flirted with the idea of buying a bunch of F-35Bs.
Whether that flexibility is really worth the price in reduced aerodynamic performance and increased maintenance burden is unfortunately not within the scope of Nordeen's book. Even within his chosen limits, however, it is negligent as a historian for him to omit any reference to the Harrier's tragically horrendous safety record.
While the V/STOL Harrier fleet were a potent force in the Falklands conflict, the advantage of basing flexibility alone hasn't proved pivotal in any modern engagement since. It is impressive to think of the devotion the Marines lavish on this one aerodynamic quality, perhaps to the detriment of all else.
(COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Feb 27, 2007 /PRNewswire) -- Denmark today became the ninth and final F-35 partner nation to join the production and support phase of the Joint Strike Fighter program.
In signing the F-35 Production, Sustainment and Follow-On Development Memorandum of Understanding, Denmark extends its cooperation in the program beyond the current System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase, and joins the family of partner nations that will cooperatively develop, produce, test, train and operate the F-35 Lightning II.
"Today's milestone is not the end of a process but rather the beginning of constructing the world's greatest airpower coalition," said Brig. Gen. C.R. Davis, F-35 Lightning II program executive officer. "Denmark's long history of active partnership with the U.S. and all F-35 partner nations reaches a new pinnacle today as the country signs this MOU. This is a really great moment for the entire F-35 Lightning II Team."
Denmark's work on the program includes advanced composites, communications software, control-surface components and weapons pylons.
"Lockheed Martin is proud to continue its longstanding alliance with Danish industry, which has repeatedly shown that it is fully competitive with the best in the world," said Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and general manager of F-35 Program Integration. "This is a day to celebrate the strong relationship between Denmark and the United States, and to recognize the Danish government, military and industry for their foresight and dedication."
Denmark joined the JSF program in 1997, and in 2002 was the first European nation to enter the program's SDD phase. Over the last four months, the United States and the other JSF partner nations -- the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia and Norway -- signed the F-35 production and sustainment memorandum.
The Lightning II is a stealthy, supersonic, multi-role, 5TH Generation jet designed to replace a wide range of existing aircraft, including AV-8B Harriers, A-10s, F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets and United Kingdom Harrier GR.7s and Sea Harriers. The first F-35 began its flight test program on Dec. 15, 2006.
Lockheed Martinis developing the F-35 Lightning II with its principal industrial partners, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems, along with a worldwide supplier network. Two separate, interchangeable F-35 engines are under development: the Pratt & Whitney F135 and the GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team F136, with either engine producing 40,000 pounds of thrust.
CSAR-X Protest Upheld
Boeing Co.'s $15 billion contract to build U.S. Air Force rescue helicopters should be put back out to bid, the Government Accountability Office said following protests by Lockheed Martin Corp. and United Technologies Corp.
The GAO said today in an e-mailed statement it recommended the Air Force reopen discussions and request revised proposals. If after reviewing the new bids, ``Boeing's proposal no longer represents the best value to the government, the agency should terminate its contract,'' the GAO said.
Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense company, and United Technologies' Sikorsky unit protested Boeing's Nov. 9 award, saying the Air Force didn't uniformly apply the criteria used to evaluate the three bids. Boeing's order for 141 HH-47 helicopters, a variant of its twin-rotor Chinook family, was picked to replace Sikorsky's Pave Hawk aircraft. The award was put on hold during the GAO review.
Not only is this tech in play in the GWOT, with prom season rapidly approaching, it also looks like a mandatory system for suburban households across the heartland.
"The Track Stick receives signals from twenty four satellites orbiting the earth. With this information, the Track Stick can precisely calculate its own position anywhere on the planet to within fifteen meters.
"The Track Stick will work anywhere on the planet Earth. Using the latest in GPS mapping technologies, your exact location can be shown on graphical maps and 3D satellite images.
"The Track Stick's micro computer contains special mathematical algorithms, that can calculate how long you have been indoors. While visiting family, friends or even shopping, the Track Stick can accurately time and map each and every place you have been."
Yes. That's why I need this device. Often I wake up and wonder, "Gee, where have I been and how long was I indoors before I wound up facedown on my neighbor's lawn?"
The company's website does mention an "oh, by the way" at the bottom of the homepage: "It is illegal to track someone without their {sic} permission."
Do our special forces and the CIA know that? They certainly don't want to get themselves into any more hot water.
The US Air Force has just issued a rather innocuous-looking notice for a new technology called "active combustion control." But this is quite a momentous development, and here's why.
Today, the Air Force has two kinds of warplanes that can survive in combat in which fighters and bombers have to compete with integrated air defenses as well as increasingly sophisticated enemy fighters.
One is the Northrop Grumman B-2A bomber. It's relatively slow, but super-stealthy. It can fly for a long time and drop a lot of weapons.
The other is the Lockheed Martin F-22A. It's extremely fast and also super-stealthy. But it doesn't fly for very long without refueling and can carry only a couple of strike weapons (okay, eight if your talking about the Small Diameter Bomb).
The missing link is a single aircraft as nimble as the F-22, as long-range as the B-2 and as at least as stealthy as both. In short, it's the dream warplane for every gadget-hearting Air Force general.
This melding is the basic concept for what the Air Force now calls the "Next Generation Long Range Strike Aircraft." It's supposed to be ready to enter service by 2018 to 2020.
The trick to meeting this schedule is for some company to come up with the next breakthrough in aircraft engine technology. The breakthrough is called "active combustion control," which is just a fancy name for integrating a fuel injector into an aircraft's propulsion system.
Aircraft engines using active combustion controls should be able to fly longer distances at a lower rate of fuel consumption.
With today's engine technology, the flow of gas into the combustion chamber is fairly unrestricted, which is not very efficient. Many years ago, the automotive industry fixed this problem with fuel injectors, and now the aerospace industry wants to make a similar leap -- although at a far greater level of sophistication, of course.
It's a new spin on an old concept. In the past, aircraft designers used variable-geometry wings (think: F-111, F-14, and B-1) to be more efficient in high-speed and cruise-speed. With active combustion controls, the goal is to reconfigure the engine instead of the airframe to be optimal in both states.
I was lucky enough to spend a large portion of my adult (if you can call it that) life in the rear cockpit of the F-14 Tomcat. As the DT audience knows, the Tomcat was retired once and for all last fall. Eleven former F-14 squadrons are now Super Hornet squadrons (8 F/A-18F squadrons and 3 F/A-18E squadrons).
Of all the "homemade" Tomcat retrospectives I've seen, I consider this one the best. It really captures the essence of life in a carrier-based fighter squadron: Great shipmates, hot wives, strong families, and one hell of a kick-ass airplane.
It's nice to know it didn't take a soggy-diapered, pepper-spraying astronut like which hell hath no fury for NASA to wonder, "Gee, what if one of the best-of-the-best loses it on orbit?"
This from the Associated Press today:
NASA PLAN FOR UNSTABLE ASTRONAUTS: DUCT TAPE, TRANQUILIZERS
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- What would happen if an astronaut became mentally unstable in space and, say, destroyed the ship's oxygen system or tried to open the hatch and kill everyone aboard?
That was the question after the apparent breakdown of Lisa Nowak, arrested this month on charges she tried to kidnap and kill a woman she regarded as her rival for another astronaut's affections.
It turns out NASA has detailed, written procedures for dealing with a suicidal or psychotic astronaut in space. The documents, obtained this week by The Associated Press, say the astronaut's crewmates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a bungee cord and inject him with tranquilizers if necessary.
Northrop Grumman is developing a “biometric” intelligence system to help U.S. troops keep tabs on suspected terrorists and insurgents. The system, which identifies people by their fingerprints, iris patterns or other biological metrics, is meant to meet a need identified by U.S. forces in Iraq.
On February 5, 2006, soldiers from the Texas-based 4th Infantry Division, deployed to north-central Iraq since the previous fall, sortied from their base to set up checkpoints outside the town of Balad. The town was so bad that the Iraqi army had sent one of its crack Kurdish units, normally based in the peaceful north of the country, into an outpost downtown. But snipers had kept the Kurdish troops from even leaving the base. Balad was desperately in need of some spring cleaning.
But standing at their checkpoint on a road outside Balad, the soldiers realized they lacked the necessary tools. Army intelligence had provided them with a list including names, descriptions and in some cases outdated photos of known bad guys. The soldiers carried fuzzy color copies of the list in their pockets and compared every passerby to the descriptions. But the photos too grainy and the descriptions too vague: pretty much every Iraqi man has a moustache, black hair and brown eyes. As for names? Besides sharing a small number of popular surnames, Iraqis have a habit of tacking their father’s and grandfather’s name onto their own or even going by nicknames that don’t match their photo IDs at all, assuming they even have photo IDs. There was just no way for the American soldiers to reliably know if they had happened to ensnare a bad guy in their net. And on that February afternoon, they returned to base empty-handed and frustrated.
Stinging from failures like those in Balad last year, in January the Army gave Los Angeles-based defense firm Northrop Grumman $20 million to develop a biometric solution. The idea, says Northrop Grumman vice president Larry Schneider, is to “ingest disparate sources of military information worldwide, to establish a central repository that can be queried. So if someone shows up at one place and says his name is one thing, then shows up somewhere else saying his name is another thing, that can be identified and can be passed back to tactical land forces.”
Soldiers might register detainees’ biometrics using a portable scanner. That info, combined with a brief history of the suspect, would be fed into a central database back in the States and analyzed by algorithms endlessly searching for connections between suspects. If, during a future operation, the soldiers happen across any of the same suspects as before, the system would alert them. Over time, the system might accumulate enough data on suspects’ movements to begin drawing conclusions about behavior patterns, allowing intelligence agents to predict suspects’ activities and, if necessary, thwart them.
“People talk about how we’re disadvantaged in asymmetric warfare,” Schneider says, using the military’s favorite term for big industrial armies fighting elusive, low-tech insurgents and terrorists. Biometrics, he adds, “are an example of how our technology advantages us.”
Think of how many new generations of fighters, naval combatants, and fighting vehicles have been deployed since the 1960s.
Contrast that record to the individual firearm -- the rifle, carbine or handgun carried and used by almost any one wearing a uniform. The same basic M16 rifle and M4 carbine first used in Vietnam -- with the same basic flaws still uncorrected -- remain the primary infantry weapons for the US military today.
Why?
Surely, a nation that can muster $250-$300 billion to develop and deliver the Joint Strike Fighter, $160 billion to build a new family of combat vehicles and $8 billion to develop and build a next-generation aircraft carrier can come up with some spare change to upgrade the infantry's arsenal of automatic weapons.
All the services are fond of promoting the concept of dominating any potential threat through superior technology. Yet the M16 and M4 remain matched -- if not inferior -- to the firepower provided by the weapon of choice for insurgents/terrorists/pirates worldwide: the even older AK-47 design and its antecedents.
A new generation of superior guns are available for purchase today, offering improved firepower and less of the reliability problems of the older generation. Examples include the Heckler & Koch 416 enhanced carbine and the FN Herstal Special Operations Combat Assault Rifle (SCAR).
Giving the Army more cash may not be the answer. Part of the problem is the way the Army manages small arms. Back in the 1950s, the Army was so loathe to develop an automatic rifle to compete with the AK-47 that some think it sabotaged tests on the M16. It fell upon Air Force General Curtis LeMay to rescue the M16 program and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to compel the Army to buy it. Even then, the Army sabotaged the M16 by initially filling the cartridge with the wrong gunpowder. (Read more here.)
More recently, the Army aborted its plan to replace the M16 with the XM29, which was cancelled in 2005 after a $100 million investment.
The good news is that the commercial marketplace has already solved the Army's problem. The question is whether the Army is willing to bring itself to make the change.
The web is packed with folks wondering what the recent rash of helicopter downings in Iraq means to the American war effort.
Basically, it means the enemy has simultaneously figured out how to use the gear stashed in sheds and burrows around the country and found the cojones to use it.
It also means that American helicopter routes had grown a bit too predicatable. After all, we'd flown thousands of sorties for years now without a single shoulder-fired SAM being lobbed skyward.
Those days are over.
Whether Stingers from the CIA by way of the Taliban or SA-18s from Russia by way of Iran, the bad guys have possession of weapons that can reach out and touch our rotary wing aircraft. That's a big eye-opener, considering that going by air was heretofore considered the safer alternative to traveling over IED-infested roads.
So whether or not one wants to consider the lessons learned by the Soviets in Afghanistan, the physics of the situation hasn't changed that much since the late '80s when Hips and Hinds were dropping left and right over and around the Hindu Kush. If you want to avoid small arms fire, fly above 5,000 feet or so; if you want to avoid SAMs, fly low.
So tactics and flying techniques have changed already and will continue to change. I'm sure all the "school house" experts from MAWTS and the other centers of excellence are already on the case.
At the same time the systems commands like NAVAIR (see photo of H-46 with new chaff and flare dispensers) will work their butts off performing rapid prototyping to get improved self-protect capability out to the field. (Don't even tell me that government employees don't work as hard as the private sector.)
What we're seeing here is the cycle of a protracted war. Fight, analyze, adjust . . . fight again.
In the meantime, helo drivers: Stay unpredictable.
DefenseLink has posted a Navy contract awarded to Remotec, Inc., Clinton, Tenn., for $45,000,000. This is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for robotic systems, accessories, spare parts, depot level repair support, and operator and technician training.
("Indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity"? And you make a cool $45 mil? Where do you sign up for that kind of work? No wonder the defense budget is so gynormous.)
Meanwhile over at National Defense, Stew Magnuson has a nice capture of the Navy's next gen bomb disposal robots.
Check it out.
And speaking of robots, here's a classic from a couple of years ago. (Not sure who "Gruntie the Knucklehead" is at the end):
(Editor's note: This no kidding is a press release that was sent to the Defense Tech offices.)
18DoughtyStreet.com, Britain’s first political web tv station, has launched a two minute viral campaign to combat growing anti-Americanism across Britain and Europe.
The two minute campaign that has been posted on YouTube and is being distributed across Britain via email paints a world that would be less free, less healthy and less prosperous if America had never existed.
Through five fictional news reports from the 1950s onwards it portrays a world dominated by Soviet Russia and warns that much of the world’s prosperity and medical advances would have been lost.
18DoughtyStreet.com is the initiative of internet entrepreneur Stephan Shakespeare and a number of Britain’s most-read bloggers who have come together to challenge the biases of establishment broadcasters and mainstream parties.
Tim Montgomerie, Director of 18DoughtyStreet.com, said, “For much of the last fifty years Europe has benefited from America’s security umbrella and from the dynamism of American enterprise and science. The advert ends by suggesting that if the US-led coalition had not intervened in Iraq the world could now be being held to ransom by a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein.”
The text of the advertisement is here:
Opening caption: “Imagine a world without America.”
SCENE 1: 1950s STUDIO WITH MAN IN DINNER SUIT
Caption: 1959
“You are watching the News from London. General Secretary Stalin was in France today to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Paris by the Red Army. Organised crowds of young people sang the Soviet anthem as troops marched down the Champs Elysees . . .”
Caption: A World Without America . . . Would Be A World With Less Freedom
SCENE 2: 1960s STUDIO WITH SAME PRESENTER IN FLOWER POWER SUIT
Caption: 1969
“Latest data from the British Department of Health show that deaths from polio rose again last year. The hunt for a vaccine continues. . .”
Caption: A World Without America… Would Be A World Without Many Medical Advances
SCENE 3: 1970s STUDIO WITH SAME PRESENTER IN LARGE LAPELED BROWN SUIT
Caption: 1979
“Tonight the Mediterranean Sea is full of boats of Jewish refugees fleeing for their lives. Earlier in the day the poorly-equipped and under-funded Israeli army was finally defeated and Arab combined forces – with Soviet air cover - entered Tel Aviv. . .”
Caption: A World Without America… Would Be A World Without Israel
SCENE 4: 1980s STUDIO WITH SAME PRESENTER IN SHOULDER-PADDED POWER SUIT
Caption: 1989
“Arriving at today’s hunger summit in her ministerial Lady Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher vowed to work with Austrian President Arnold Schwarzenegger in fighting increasing hunger across Asia. . .”
Caption: A World Without America. . . Would Be A Poorer World
SCENE 5: TURN-OF-THE CENTURY STUDIO WITH SAME PRESENTER IN NEWSROUND-TYPE OPEN SHIRT AND JEANS
Caption: 1999
“At a Downing Street press conference earlier today the British Prime Minister said that President Saddam Hussein was a man he could do business with. He was speaking after it was confirmed that the Revolutionary Republic of Iraq and Kuwait had acquired nuclear weapons. . .”
Caption: A World Without America. . . Would Be A World Held To Ransom By Tyrants
CLOSING SEQUENCE
In the final sequence a whole series of words and phrases appear on the screen and then disappear. . . at first slowly and then fast. . .
A free Afghanistan
40 percent of the world’s R&D
Free Taiwan
Nylon
Elvis Presley
Air conditioning
Marshall Plan
South Korea
Democratic Nicaragua
Typewriter
A free Japan
Protection of world trading routes
Jazz
50 percent of the world food programme
The motorcar
The liberation of the Falklands
Berlin Airlift
The bra
Frozen food
Dishwasher
Denim jeans
$15bn HIV/AIDS programme
FM radio
Coca Cola
Free Haiti
Supercomputer
26 percent of global aid spending
Final message on screen with atlas of world without USA as image:
A WORLD WITHOUT AMERICA
A world with more disease, more poverty, more danger.
Sponsored by BritainAndAmerica.com
(Editor's endnote: Wow, we'd better get on the step and make a list of things we should thank Europe for. I'll start:
1. Pissing off our forefathers so bad that they came to America.
That doggone liberal mainstream press is up to it again, labeling the plan Tony Blair introduced today as a "withdrawal." Thank goodness Vice President Cheney collared ABC's Jonathan Karl before the correspondent got to the airwaves and added to the proliferation of bad skinny.
"I look at it, and what I see is an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well," Cheney said.
According the Associated Press and thinkprogress.org, the Iraq-fueled tension in the Middle East is setting off a defense buying binge. Fears that sectarian violence could spill over into countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia has those countries looking at expanding their weapons programs.
But, it isn't just the Iraq violence that has nations reaching for their checkbooks:
If Iran were threatened or attacked by the United States or Israel, its ballistic missiles could hit land targets or ships, and its mines could block the narrow shipping lanes that carry oil from the Gulf.
That scenario is pushing Gulf defense ministers to consider missile defense systems like the Patriot, sold by U.S. manufacturer Raytheon Co. They also are eyeing warships, including mine sweepers, and early-warning radar, Hughes [an analyst for Jane's] said.
So much for bringing peace and prosperity to the greater Middle East. But then again, if I lived next door to Iraq, I'd be getting bigger guns too. The real bottom line here is the very real and very scary possibility that sectarian violence may expand from low-tech militia and terrorists groups to nation states with devastating consequences. After all, the Iran-Iraq war cost over a million casualties.
We would be well-served to find ways to de-escalate a Middle East Arms race before it begins in earnest and leads to something worse. But, in the interim it might be smart to buy some Raytheon stock.
Among NSRDEC's missions is the research, development, testing and engineering of "combat feeding systems." The command sums up this particular mission like this: "As long as there are wars, there will be boots on the ground; and where there are boots on the ground, there must be combat rations."
Roger that. So let's start with a quick bit of modern military gastronomic history, this from a recent Natick press release:
"The MRE replaced the Meal, Combat Individual, which some still refer to as the old 'C-Ration,' beginning in 1980.
"From its year of introduction to 1987, the MRE contained such memorable items as: Ham and Chicken Loaf, Smoky Franks (aka 'the Five Fingers of Death'), Chicken a la King (or Chicken 'a la Death') and the ever popular freeze dried pork, beef and potato patties. In 1988, eight of the original 12 entrees were replaced with entrees that were slightly more identifiable, to include spaghetti and meat sauce.
"The MRE had the opportunity to go to war in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
"Unfortunately, the initial feedback on the acceptance of the MRE wasn't pretty. It wasn't the four letter words we heard, but the combination of 4-letter words! Gerry Darsch, then chief of the Ration Systems Division, was called to the Pentagon. It was 'suggested' by the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, that we explore how to 'fix it!'"
In classic Army fashion the first step in carrying out General Powell's directive was to include hot sauce in every MRE. Other developmental milestones included the Flameless Ration Heater (1993), the end of freeze-dried fruit (1994). (It was too expensive. You think FCS is a defense budget buster? You should see the pricetag for dried apricots.)
Other highlights over the years of the MRE Improvement Program include the "hot beverage bag" (very popular in Iraq during the summer months, I'll bet) and the "ergonomically designed drink pouch for dairy shakes." (One wonders what part of the anatomy the pouch is shaped for.)
So what does the future hold for combat feeding systems? Well, even as I write this Combat Feeding Teams are in theater working with frontline units to enhance what Natick calls the "family of combat rations." Right now the teams are fine tuning two new "ration concepts": the First Strike Ration and the Unitized Group Ration-Express (UGR-E). Natick's release goes on to state that after these concepts are fielded they will enter the improvement programs "to insure {sic} . . . the inclusion of science and technology drop-ins to further enhance both rations."
True dat! S&T drop-ins . . . and sprinkles! And while I'm all about warfighters sounding like warfighters, may I suggest that the labels "First Strike" and "UGR-E" ("ughereee!") might need re-think by the PAO shop before they're introduced to the troops.
But there's a method to this dietary madness. According to Natick, "In the not too distant future, rations will contain naturally occurring constituents such as probiotics, which are beneficial bacteria such as those found in yogurt, and, nutraceuticals, which are small nutritional organic molecules. It is anticipated {love that passive voice} that these constituents will provide improved nutrition, cognitive and physical performance enhancement using novel nutrient delivery systems, e.g. buccal (between the cheek and gum) delivery of nutrients based on scientifically proven studies.
"Rations will be packaged using polymeric films relying on nanotechnology and contain enticing aroma emitting films. These will enhance consumption as well as protect and maintain extended shelf life to insure wholesomeness and safety. New food processing methods such as high pressure processing, pulsed electric field, and microwave sterilization will bring more variety and components with higher quality than those processed today via thermostabilization."
Probiotics? Aroma emitting films? Novel nutrient delivery systems? Mouth-watering, indeed. The future dinner bell will be a-ringing loud and clear. Get ready to come and get it, Soldier.
In the wake of the chlorine tanker truck bombing in Taji, Iraq today, domestic government agencies are taking another look at how easy it might be for terrorists to wreak stateside havoc. This from the Associated Press:
QUANTICO, Va. - Kirk Yeager makes bombs from the stuff found under kitchen sinks. He does it to help the FBI defend against what officials say is the next frontier for terrorists in the United States.
Ten years ago, peroxide-based bombs were mostly the work of young pranksters. But the easy-to-make yet deadly chemical cocktails were embraced in the late 1990s by Palestinian militants and suicide bombers bent on killing large groups of people.
Now, Yeager says, the "Mother of Satan" explosives are considered the most likely weapon that terrorists will use against the U.S., more so than a nuclear or radiological "dirty" bomb.
"Every serious terrorist group knows about them and knows how to make them," Yeager said. The forensic scientist heads the explosives unit at the FBI's laboratory in Quantico, Va., about 35 miles south of Washington.
"Bad guys are bombers. You don't have to have the level of sophistication to make a bomb that you need to get nuclear materials," Yeager said.
The bombs are made by mixing chemicals that are used in common household items, including hydrogen peroxide and paint thinner, and easily found at drug stores or hardware stores. Experts know them as TATP, short for triacetone triperoxide, and HMTD, or hexamethylene triperoxide diamine.
Recent cases of explosions or thwarted attacks with TATP or HMTD in the U.S. include:
-Millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam. He was carrying HMTD among the 124 pounds of explosives in the trunk of his car when he was arrested near the U.S.-Canadian border in December 1999.
-Richard Reid. The would-be British shoe bomber tried unsuccessfully to detonate 8 ounces of TATP hidden in his high-top sneaker during a Paris-to-Miami flight in 2001.
-University of Oklahoma suicide bomber Joel Henry Hinrichs III. He used TATP to blow himself up near a packed football stadium in October 2005.
-College student Matthew Rugo in Texas City, Texas. He was killed last July when a plastic storage container of TATP that was mixed in his apartment exploded. The FBI has not found any connection in the case to international terrorist groups, but the investigation continues.
Additionally, counterterrorist authorities say terrorists planned to mix a solution similar to TATP in last summer's thwarted attacks on as many as 10 London-to-U.S. flights - leading to the crackdown on bringing liquids aboard airlines.
Also, ecoterrorists and animal rights extremist groups such as Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front are believed by authorities to use peroxide-based explosives.
Yeager, 41, who helps the FBI solve bombing cases by investigating the crime scene debris, is the only U.S. official who makes TATP and similar explosives in mass quantities.
His interest in bomb-making began at Cornell University, where he earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry. He honed his skills at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, one of the nation's top centers for explosives research and testing.
Yeager's brews are used for testing and training police officers and bomb-sniffing dogs. Until recently, authorities knew little about peroxide-based bombs because they are too volatile to handle casually. Moreover, TATP in particular is hard for dogs to detect.
Over the past year, the FBI and Transportation Security Administration have trained dog teams to sniff out the chemical cocktails at 75 airports and on subway, train and bus systems in 13 cities. The government pays up to $50,000 to train each of the 420 teams currently in action.
"It's a threat that's not here right now, but we see it coming," said Dave Kontny, director of TSA's national explosives detection canine teams. "So we're better off to have these teams."
John Rollins, a counterterrorism expert at Congressional Research Service and former U.S. intelligence official, said TATP and other varieties of peroxide-based bombs are most likely to show up in the hands of homegrown extremists and other splinter sympathizers of international terrorist groups.
The larger and centrally organized groups, such as al-Qaida, are more interested in "big bang" weapons that he said would cause widespread deaths and economic losses.
But aspiring terrorists, Rollins said, "would lean toward this because it's so readily available, it's so hard to detect."
"It certainly would be enough of a bang to draw attention to their cause, and shake the foundations in the short term of society's belief that the government can protect the United States," Rollins said.
The New York Times' Dan Mitchell was kind enough to give our little site a shout-out over the weekend, in his "What's Online" column. It's second time in about a month he's given Defense Tech a nod.
Meanwhile, Jewcy -- a smart, new online magazine for members of the tribe -- spends an inordinate amount of bits profiling me. The piece is way, way too generous to me. "Whiz Kid of Warfare?" Hardly. And it doesn't give nearly enough credit to Defense Tech's real heroes -- guys like David Axe, David Hambling, and Haninah Levine. But the story, written by Michael Weiss, does get at the heart of what makes this site cool. And for that, I am extremely grateful.
This was just forward to us from our good friend Dave Danelo over at On Point. His man Andrew Lubin is embedded in Iraq.
A chance encounter last weekend at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq became an opportunity to talk more about the future of Ramadi. ON Point's Andrew Lubin bumped into Ramadi's Mayor Latif Obaid Ayadeh at the Al-Asad airstrip. Lubin was on his way to Baghdad, and Mayor Latif, who had been meeting with American officials to discuss reconstruction and civic improvements, was returning to Ramadi. Brief excerpts of the impromptu interview and free-wheeling discussion are below:
ON Point: How long have you been the mayor?
Latif: Less than one month. I am the first mayor in a long time. There is a lot to do.
ON Point: What are you doing to make Ramadi a better place to live?
Latif: I'm cooperating with the Marines, and trying to bring jobs, reconstruction, and civil order to my town.
ON Point: What kind of jobs?
Latif: Real jobs. Right now the Marines (Civil Affairs Group & Civil-Military Operations Center) are providing demolition and some repair jobs. These are good for now, but we need stable and permanent jobs quickly.
ON Point: Do you need anything else from the Marines?
Latif: No. They are training the IA's [soldiers], my IP's [policemen], and providing us with the weapons, training, and trucks we need. They are doing a wonderful job.
ON Point: Do you get the necessary support from Baghdad?
Latif: No. They say that they are too busy to help. In the new budget these is supposed to be money for Anbar Province and Ramadi, but we get much less than we are promised.
ON Point: Why are they doing this to you?
Latif: I have my suspicions, but they deny it. But the future of Baghdad is in Anbar and Ramadi, if they would only see it.
ON Point: Is the terrorist activity still crippling your town?
Latif: No, the Marines have done a wonderful job. It is not yet peaceful, but it is much better than it was a year, or even 6 months ago.
With the Army and Marine Corps stretched to breaking in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Navy is scrambling for ways to contribute more to inland fights. One result is a new river boat squadron, second of its type, stood up two weeks ago. Riverine Squadron Two and its sister, Ron One, are part of Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, which gathers all the Navy's coastal and land forces under one banner and adds brand new capabilities.
NECC -- based alongside patrol boats (pics!) and amphibious ships at Little Creek, Virginia -- includes construction battalions, logistics troops, harbor patrol units, ordnance disposal teams and the new riverine squadrons, and is the subject of a story in the current issue of Defense Technology International.
"It was definitely the ongoing war that created the idea," says Captain Robert McKenna, NECC's 44-year-old training officer. "We realized that the Army and Marine Corps were nearing capacity and that there was more to be done. We were looking for ways for the Navy to contribute more. Then we started looking out and said, the Navy really is contributing. And the sailors contributing the most in theater are the ones wearing this uniform."
He gestures to his green and brown fatigues, the same ones worn by the Navy's 16,000 Seabees, 3,000 port cargo handlers and hundreds of Explosive Ordnance Disposal experts -- all of whom have been busy abroad in recent years. "They had no type command that took care of their Title X functions: training, equipping, manning."
"We saw a need to put them into a coherent structure and better equip them," adds NECC commander Rear Admiral Donald Bullard, 55. "And then, all of the sudden, we began to look at other capabilities" including Navy civil affairs and riverine.
Riverine forces in nimble, heavily-armed boats played a huge role in the Vietnam War, but were run down after the evacuation of that country as the Navy shifted focus on deterring the Soviet Navy. In Iraq, a country crisscrossed by large rivers, canals and marshes, the U.S. and British militaries (pictured) found themselves chasing down waterborne smugglers and insurgents in jerry-rigged engineer boats until specialized forces could be reconstituted.
The U.S. Marines sent its new boats to patrol Haditha Dam, a major power-generating station in western Iraq, but wasn't happy diverting money and resources to a mission that once belonged to the Navy. By 2005, the Corps was ready to divest itself of the riverine mission. Then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark sensed this.
"Admiral Clark asked, Marines how can I help?" explains Lieutenant Commander Mike Egan, 44-year-old commander of Riverine Squadron One. "One of the ways was, hey, this riverine mission thing. That was the impetus that got the whole riverine thing rolling.”
NECC will have three squadrons, each with 224 sailors and, eventually, a combination of 39-foot Small Unit Riverine Craft, built by Raytheon, and smaller Special Operations Craft-Riverine, built by United States Marine. “The goal is to get 16 boats per squadron," says Ron One's Lieutenant Chris Cowart, 40. The total includes eight SURCs and at least four SOC-Rs. "The balance could be either."
Until enough boats are manufactured, the Navy is borrowing SURCs from the Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for training and plans to fall in on the Corps' boats at Haditha Dam when it first deploys a squadron to Iraq in 2007. Their mission in Iraq will be much like the Marines', patrolling waterways, landing Marines and Masters at Arms for raids or riverbank security, searching small boats to interdict insurgents and illegal weapons.
While the missions and platforms are the same, the Navy is adding high-tech capabilities to its riverine squadrons that the Marines have lacked. In addition to the usual bank of radios, Navy SURCs will feature digital network terminals in order to plug into the Army's command and control architecture. And, according to Lieutenant Christopher Farricker from Riverine Group One, the Navy is shopping for a small UAV that can boost a four-boat patrol's situational awareness. The idea, he says, is to get that "bird's eye view and give it back to the boat operator." The service hasn't down-selected types yet.
The conventional Trident may be dead, but nuclear Tridents have sparked a heated debate over the future of the UK's nuclear weapons.
Submarine-launched Trident missiles have been Britain's only nuclear option for almost a decade – the UK never had independent ground-launch capabilities, and all the British air-delivered nuclear weapons were dismantled by 1998. The missiles are built, maintained, and serviced in the U.S., but Britain insists that it maintains operational independence.
Today, the British Tridents are based on four Vanguard-class submarines, which are aging and due to be decommissioned in the 2020s. Since the government believes that new subs will take 17 years to design and build, a decision needs to be made. If Britain does not build new subs, it will lose its independent nuclear deterrent force.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's government could have made the decision on its own, but opted instead to open the issue for debate and let Parliament decide – a vote is scheduled for March 2007.
Supporters of renewing the Trident say that 1) no other nuclear states are considering eliminating their arsenals, 2) the number of nuclear states is increasing, 3) the world is a risky place, 4) it is impossible to predict whether the Tridents will be needed, so it is better to retain them. These arguments together seem to say, essentially, that in an uncertain, dangerous world, it is better to have nukes than not (shhh – don't tell Iran!).
Opponents argue that the weapons are 1) unnecessary (Britain's role in the world no longer requires nukes), 2) ineffective (deterrence is an "unproven theory" that is "essentially flawed," especially when it comes to terror), 3) expensive (roughly £20 billion that could be better spent elsewhere), 4) illegal (in violation of Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty, which obligates each signatory to work towards nuclear disarmament), and 5) immoral.
The Scots have been particularly virulent in their criticisms – this is partially tied up in British regional politics but also stems from the fact that the Trident submarines' only base is located in Scotland. Scottish officials have drafted two provocative but doomed-to-fail bills: one would criminalize "supporting the threat of the UK’s nuclear deterrent;" the other would charge the British government £1 billion (almost $2 billion) for each nuclear warhead transported through Scottish territory.
Churches and NGOs across the country have voiced their opposition, as well, and polls consistently show a majority of the British public opposed to Trident renewal. Blair has only offered minor concessions – he "wants to" reduce the number of subs and warheads slightly but says the issue needs more study.
If the Trident debate remains binary – renewal vs. no renewal – Blair has more than enough votes to push his proposal through Parliament. There may be a third option, though: delay the decision. U.S. nuclear experts Dick Garwin, Philip E. Coyle (disclosure: my boss), Theodore A. Postol, and Frank von Hippel recently argued that the Vanguard subs can last up to 15 years longer than the government said, with refurbishments and light use. They argue that putting the decision off would be the best way to maintain "a variety of options." It is unclear whether the government is interested in this option, but over 100 MPs (out of 646) have called for the decision to be delayed.
This will be a debate to watch – if the disarmament advocates succeed, Britain may become the first of the big five nuclear powers to give up its weapons. It looks unlikely in the near future, though.
This is part three of my investigation of the DOD Chemical Biological Defense Program (CBDP) budget for FY2008. Today, we invade the lair of the research and development community. Sixty-one percent of the R&D budget for next year ($610 million) is in budget activities 6.1 through 6.3, what is called science and technology or the tech base. Not much happens in here other than applied research into potential technologies that might develop into a practical application - someday. And that pays for a lot of scientists' salaries. The other 39 percent is advanced development (about $380 million), budget activities 6.4 and 6.5. These funds are used to prove that prototypes work and that a given project is ready for manufacture and fielding.
I'm going to talk about the advanced development funds first, because it's easier to explain. The medics will develop biological vaccines to counter plague and botulinum toxin ($40 million and $19 million respectively). We might see a fielded plague vaccine in 2010 - maybe. Don't count on a bot tox vaccine prior to 2015. Nearly $70 million is going to the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI). Although the project is supposed to be focused on far future "silver bullets" for BW threats, for some reason, DOD will start spending advanced development funds next year. On what, I have no idea, since the investigational part has barely started in the tech base. I'm not sure DOD knows what they'll be doing either - it's been more of a "here, take this $2 billion and put it to work with industry" kind of affair. Ready, fire, aim.
Medical chemical research funding is about one fourth of that of med bio research funding. The $36 million is being split nearly equally on an advanced anticonvulsant system, a nerve agent bioscavenger, and an improved nerve agent treatment system. There's about $7 million being spent at AFRRI for medical radiological countermeasures. This is a new area - previous to 2007, the CBDP really didn't want to do med rad countermeasures. Then Dale Klein (from DOE) decided that the CBDP might want to think about being a CBRN Defense Program. Hasn't completely happened yet, in part because the Air Force and Navy really don't want to do joint radiological programs, and there is so much medical radiological research already going on outside of the program.
The tech base for medical accounts for 42 percent of the R&D budget. There's nearly $250 million being spent in the TMTI program, $85.7 million spent on biological defense research, and $62 million being spent on chemical defense research. Don't ask me what they spend it on. Lots of drug discovery efforts, studies on how things work in the body, potential pre- and post-treatment therapies. I'm not a medical guy, and tech base is frankly a lot of small, high risk projects, many of which aren't successful. It's not DARPA-like, but it's not uncommon to see a project go for 3-4 years before being terminated if it isn't leading anywhere.
On the non-medical side, about 13 percent of the R&D funds goes to advanced development projects. Detection projects make up 4.5 percent ($45 million) of the R&D funds. In biodetection, most funds are going to the development of critical reagents for biological detection ($10 million) and development of a tactical (man-portable) biological agent detector ($3 million). I'm not enamored of a Joint Biological Tactical Detector System (JBTDS). The warfighters want a bio equivalent to the automatic chemical detectors, refusing to listen to the analysts quietly pointing out that chemical hazards are somewhat different acting than biological hazards. The requirements guys have ignored the challenge of managing the analysis of thousands of liquid samples every week if this system were to be fielded.
On the chemical detection side, DOD is spending $12 million on continued R&D for the Joint Chemical Agent Detector (yes, even as it is being fielded, there's still significant R&D tweaking going on). About the same is being spent on the joint reconnaissance systems, probably tests and evaluations. A few million being spent on the agent water monitor system. There's really not a lot of new R&D being spent in CB detection, largely in part that we've got good systems out there, and there are few potential future technologies to reach out toward.
Individual protection R&D, funded at $12.5 million, is addressing the Joint Service Aircrew Mask, probably for final testing and approval prior to production. No R&D going to new suits or masks for the first time in a while, and is not expected for several years more (other than in the tech base). In part this is because (again) we have pretty good suits and masks, and there are no great leaps forward in this area. Also, the CBDP is being lazy and not really searching for what ought to be the next big idea in individual protection. We're stuck with hot suits and rubber masks. If something comes up, they'll move the money.
Collective protection has just one R&D project, the Joint Expeditionary Collective Protection project. This effort will field mobile field shelters and expedient shelters replacing... well, there is nothing out there right now for troops other than medics. There's $14 million going to that project, which is really a realigned effort from a former CP shelter project that crashed and burned when the users wouldn't back off their unrealistic demands on technology and engineering (we want it much
NECC -- based alongside patrol boats (
The conventional Trident may be 