Sounds practical: The navy's supersonic mine layer
--John Noonan
Cyber Attacks & Warfare - Rules of Engagement
The rapid advancement of cyber attacks and the emergence of cyber warfare have caught government and military leaders around the world off guard. Decision making in time requiring defensive measures or military crisis is guided by doctrine and rules of engagement, but in the case of cyber attacks and cyber warfare they do not currently exist. The complexities and unique characteristics of cyber warfare mandate establishing Cyber Attack and Warfare Rules of Engagement (CAWRoE).
Cyber warfare is different than the conventional war in many ways. It is this difference that will challenge the minds of experts around the world when they attempt to create cyber warfare doctrine and ROE. To frame this discussion, below you will find two definitions that put this challenge in context.
Definition - Cyber Warfare & Terrorism - "The premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the threat thereof, against computers and/or networks, with the intention to cause harm or further social, ideological, religious, political or similar objectives. Or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such objectives." Source: This definition was published in the U.S. Army Cyber Operations and Cyber Terrorism Handbook 1.02. This definition was written by Kevin Coleman back in 2004 for an online article.
Definition - Rules of Engagement - Rules of engagement date at least to the Middle Ages in Europe. In military terms this refers to a directive issued by a military authority controlling the use and degree of force, esp. specifying circumstances and limitations for engaging in combat. The directive delineates the limitations and circumstances under which forces will initiate and prosecute combat engagement with other forces encountered. Source: This definition is based on multiple authorities' sources and combined to clearly articulate ROE.
NOTE-- After months of research, we will soon publish a paper that addresses the question: "What constitutes an act of cyber war?"
History has shown that ROE are often over controlled and regulated by politicians and military leaders. It is anticipated that this will also be the case as it relates to cyber attacks and warfare. In addition, commanders and government leaders at all levels must understand the situation, complexities and uncertainty they face.
The increase in complexity, technical aspects and difficulty in tracing the cyber attacks back to the aggressor will combine to increase the difficulty of creating the ROE for cyber. Careful crafting of cyber ROE is required to diminish ambiguities that could caused delays in actions when the use of force is required and will surely lead to increased implication on the United States.
Cyber attack and warfare rules of engagement will undoubtedly require hundreds of pages to establish a decision framework. That being said, there are a few critical areas that will pose the most significant challenge to policy makers. One of these areas will be the level of confidence in the identification of the entity behind an attack on a nation. Tracing and tracking cyber attacks back to those responsible is not an easy task. Usually this takes months or years not minutes and hours. Current intelligence and surveillance capabilities will provide only minimal assistance in this effort. Although promising research on tracking and tracing cyber attacks is currently underway and advances are occurring on a regular basis, we are far from being able to rapidly identify the party or parties behind the attack with the high degree of confidence and hard evidence necessary to launch an offensive cyber response. At the present time, the newness of cyber attacks and weapons coupled with their potential, but unproven power and the uncertainty about how they might be used, have pushed the decision around the response to cyber attacks all the way to the top and in the hands of the President of the United States.
Conclusion
Over 140 countries around the world have cyber weapons development efforts underway but lack a comprehensive doctrine and legal framework for responding to cyber attacks as well as using offensive cyber weapons against attackers and adversaries. President-elect Barack Obama's national security team will have to rapidly establish the rules of engagement as they relate to cyber attacks and all out cyber warfare. His national security team is said to include: Sarah Sewall, Tom Donilon, Wendy R. Sherman, Michèle A. Flournoy, John P. White, Robert R. Beers, Clark Kent Ervin, Gayle E. Smith, Aaron Williams, John O. Brennan and Judith A. ("Jami") Miscik.
The United States Military has an expansive arsenal of sophisticated cyber weapons at its disposal, policy makers have yet to define the rules of engagement that govern when and how to use them. In a briefing earlier this year I said: "This is totally uncharted territory for policy makers. The characteristics of cyber attacks coupled with the operational aspects of cyber weapons make this a unique challenge."
This remains the case and time is growing short before the next significant cyber attack is launched. Cyber warfare requires new rules of engagement.
Sources tell ABC News that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be staying on in the top Pentagon job, for at least the first year of the Obama administration. "It is a done deal," a source close to the process tells ABC News.
Update from Colin: Two sources told me they believe Richard Danzig will be named Deputy Defense Secretary. He will choose the new faces to man the Pentagon, ensuring the Obama people get folks who are loyal to them and reflect their policy inclinations. Apparently, Danzig will hold that slot for up to a year. Then, if all goes well, he will replace Gates.
ALSO:President-elect Obama will introduce his national security team to the public early next week, a seasoned team that will include: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), as Secretary of State; retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones as National Security Adviser; retired Adm. Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence; and Susan Rice as Ambassador to the United Nations.
Gates, while a registered independent, has served numerous Republican administrations. President George W. Bush nominated Gates to replace the Donald Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterm elections, when the war in Iraq was spiraling out of control.
The former Eagle Scout is expected to be rolled out immediately after the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend as part of a larger national security team expected to include Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, as Secretary of State; Marine Gen. Jim Jones (Ret.) as National Security Adviser; Admiral Dennis Blair (Ret.) as Director of National Intelligence; and Dr. Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
[EDITOR: Okay, I swear, this is the last time a make a political prediction. I dismissed the rumor of Gates' being retained as ridiculous for weeks. Man am I eating crow now. I still say Danzig will eventually be SecDef...but, wait, there I go again! --Christian]
--John Noonan
The "Buzz" on F-22
For a jauntier and updated version of some of my F-22 coverage, you can tune into my latest podcast. I did the interview with Addison Schonland, president and founder of Innovation Analysis Group, a consulting firm based in San Diego.
We spoke about the Pentagon’s out-maneuvering Congress on the F-22 funding and John Young’s subsequent comments slamming the Raptor’s availability, maintenance and costs.
BAE Mobility & Protection Systems’ Advanced Design Group has been pumping out some innovative load carrying solutions. In addition to recently capturing USSOCOM’s armor carrier contract with the RBAV, the ECLiPSE line is beginning to hit the market. So what’s next for BAE?
Poised to become a true leader in the Soldier Systems market, BAE has been working with new materials and there will be a few surprises in store at SHOT show. But for now, we can show you two products designed by Matt Campbell and Mike Walker. Both products are mounted on velcro backs and can be fitted directly to a low-viz armor carrier or to a MOLLE adapter panel.
The Elastic Ammo Pouch carries three M16-style magazines and won’t lose it’s elasticity over time. Additionally, the fabric is durable and will resist abrasion.
The modular holster (not shown) is designed to carry a different pistol than the M9 but it will accommodate several models and specialized cuts will be available in the near future. Due to the velcro backing the holster can be carried vertically or turned 90 degrees for a horizontal carry. Additionally, the magazine can be inserted in either direction to the holster’s orientation.
-- Christian
Pookie Power!
When the US military began taking massive casaulties to IEDs in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the ever-and-always technologically minded DoD looked to procure the latest hot-topic (and expensive) anti-mine toys. The Air Force insisted that their sleek fighter jets could be used in a mine-detection role, while the Army and Marines ordered thousands of new MRAPs for mine detection, convoy duty, and road clearing.
Sometimes it helps to look backwards instead of forwards. Enter the Rhodesian Pookie, an ugly little contraption that helped clear roads and highways during the Rhodesian Bush War of the 1970s. The Pookie was invented as a response to the influx of Soviet mines, by way of ZANU and ZIPRA black liberation movements, into the Rhodesian theater. With it's light weight evenly distributed over wide Formula-1 racing tires, the Pookie carried nothing more than a slanted, v-shaped armored cab for a driver and a large mine-detector centered beneath the vehicle's undercarriage. Only five were ever constructed, but despite small numbers, Rhodesian Pookies cleared thousands of miles of deadly mines, saving untold civilian lives.
Of course the Pookie would have been decimated in modern Iraq or Afghanistan, where radio controlled IEDS -not mines- ruled the roads. But that's not the point. The Pookie, though inadequate for today's fight, was a fine example of an easy military solution to a complex military problem.
Such is the lesson inherent in its design and deployment, best illustrated by DaVinci's an old maxim: simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
If only we could be a fly on the wall when our enemies are plotting to attack us. Better yet, what if that fly could record voices, transmit video and even fire tiny weapons?
That kind of James Bond-style fantasy is actually on the drawing board. U.S. military engineers are trying to design flying robots disguised as insects that could one day spy on enemies and conduct dangerous missions without risking lives.
"The way we envision it is, there would be a bunch of these sent out in a swarm," said Greg Parker, who helps lead the research project at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. "If we know there's a possibility of bad guys in a certain building, how do we find out? We think this would fill that void."
In essence, the research seeks to miniaturize the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle drones used in Iraq and Afghanistan for surveillance and reconnaissance.
The next generation of drones, called Micro Aerial Vehicles, or MAVs, could be as tiny as bumblebees and capable of flying undetected into buildings, where they could photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.
By identifying and assaulting adversaries more precisely, the robots would also help reduce or avoid civilian casualties, the military says.
Parker and his colleagues plan to start by developing a bird-sized robot as soon as 2015, followed by the insect-sized models by 2030.
The vehicles could be useful on battlefields where the biggest challenge is collecting reliable intelligence about enemies.
"If we could get inside the buildings and inside the rooms where their activities are unfolding, we would be able to get the kind of intelligence we need to shut them down," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.
Philip Coyle, senior adviser with the Center for Defense Information in Washington D.C., said a major hurdle would be enabling the vehicles to carry the weight of cameras and microphones.
"If you make the robot so small that it's like a bumblebee and then you ask the bumblebee to carry a video camera and everything else, it may not be able to get off the ground," Coyle said.
Parker envisions the bird-sized vehicles as being able to spy on adversaries by flying into cities and perching on building ledges or power lines. The vehicles would have flappable wings as a disguise but use a separate propulsion system to fly.
"We think the flapping is more so people don't notice it," he said. "They think it's a bird."
Unlike the bird-sized vehicles, the insect-sized ones would actually use flappable wings to fly, Parker said.
He said engineers want to build a vehicle with a 1-inch wingspan, possibly made of an elastic material. The vehicle would have sensors to help avoid slamming into buildings or other objects.
Existing airborne robots are flown by a ground-based pilot, but the smaller versions would fly independently, relying on preprogrammed instructions.
Parker said the tiny vehicles should also be able to withstand bumps.
"If you look at insects, they can bounce off of walls and keep flying," he said. "You can't do that with a big airplane, but I don't see any reason we can't do that with a small one."
An Air Force video describing the vehicles said they could possibly carry chemicals or explosives for use in attacks.
Once prototypes are developed, they will be flight-tested in a new building at Wright-Patterson dubbed the "micro aviary" for Micro Air Vehicle Integration Application Research Institute.
"This type of technology is really the wave of the future," Thompson said. "More and more military research is going into things that are small, that are precise and that are extremely focused on particular types of missions or activities."
-- Christian
Blackwater Shuts Down Vehicle Manufacturing (UPDATED)
Blackwater USA, the private security and training company, has shut down a large part of its manufacturing subdivision after losing the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program and facing dwindling demand for its "Grizzly" Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle.
Reports had previously indicated that Blackwater would lay off its JLTV workers, some of whom were lured to the Moyock, N.C.-based company from Ford and Volvo. But according to sources the company is shutting down all vehicle manufacturing.
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell declined to specify how many employees were laid off by the cut, but sources close to the company say about 50 workers will lose their jobs.
"Any time a specific business venture doesn't go as planned it is disappointing," Blackwater president Gary Jackson told Defense Tech. "After a detailed review of our vehicle manufacturing operation, we made the difficult decision to discontinue this particular business line."
The cuts do not affect Blackwater's manufacturing capability for firearms range systems, Tyrrell added.
Company sources also admit that the military's shift from purchasing new MRAP II vehicles to keeping current MRAPs and outfitting them with stronger armor contributed to Blackwater's business losses since demand for the Grizzly shrank with requirements. And industry watchers say the military will likely skip over the MRAP II design entirely and take a closer look at the MRAP Light, such as Navistar's Maxpro vehicle.
Tyrrell said the vast hanger spaces previously used to build Grizzly's and to design their JLTV prototype will be converted into an aviation maintenance and repair center to build on the company's already expanding contract aviation support business.
Blackwater will also soon launch a new MRAP vehicle driver's training course at their sprawling North Carolina compound, using unsold Grizzlies to prepare troops for navigating the topheavy vehicles in tortuous terrain.
(Gouge=SS)
-- Christian
Flying Submarine or Submerging Seaplane?
The answer is simple: Submarines cannot fly, but seaplanes can submerge -- if you build them properly.
That's what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking to develop. A recent Request for Proposal (RFP) from DARPA calls for a submersible aircraft [that] would combine the key capabilities of three different platforms: (1) the speed and range of an aircraft; (2) the loiter capabilities of a boat; and (3) the stealth of a submarine. "By combining the beneficial characteristics the and operating modes of each platform, DARPA hopes to develop a craft that will significantly enhance the United States tactical advantage in coastal insertion missions," according to the RFP.
The irony of the RFP is that the U.S. Navy was developing such a craft some 45 years ago.
The objectives issued by DARPA are for a vehicle that would have an airborne tactical radius of 1,000 nautical miles, a low-level flight radius of 100 nautical miles (which may leverage surface effects), and a submerged tactical radius of 12 nautical miles. The sum of these must be achieved within eight hours. Endurance on the surface has to be 72 hours in sea states up to five between inserting and extracting personnel. The craft's payload objective is eight men and their equipment with a total cargo weight of 2,000 pounds.
DARPA has identified the major challenges to the project as (1) weight, (2) fluid flow regime, (3) structure, (4) lifting surface geometry, and (5) power and energy storage. These factors force the consideration of a seaplane that can submerge as opposed to a "submarine that can fly." The relatively light construction of an aircraft can be submerged to shallow depths, and to even great depths with internal pressurization. But submarine-like vehicles, built to withstand greater depths, are too heavy for consideration.
The U.S. Navy had begun contemplating the merger of aviation and submarine technologies into a single vehicle as early as 1946. By that time several Navy laboratories were looking into the required technologies. When asked by the press in 1946 whether such a vehicle could be produced, Vice Admiral Arthur W. Radford, at the time the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air, replied: "Nothing is impossible."
A decade later, in 1955, studies were being conducted under contract from the Department of Defense by the All American Engineering Company while aviation pioneer John K. (Jack) Northrop was designing such craft. The All American vehicle was to alight on and takeoff from the water on "hydro-skis"; once on the water the craft could be "sealed" and submerge.
Although nothing resulted from these studies, by the early 1960s the U.S. Navy was ready to invest in such a vehicle. A Navy engineer working on the project, Eugene H. Handler, explained, in a 1964 article in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, "there is... a tremendous amount of [Soviet] shipping in the Soviet-dominated Baltic Sea, the essentially land-locked Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the truly inland Caspian Sea. These waters are safe from the depredations of conventional surface ships and submarines."
The Navy's Bureau of Naval Weapons -- at the time responsible for aircraft development -- awarding a contract to Convair in 1964 to examine the feasibility of a "submersible flying boat," which was being called the "sub-plane" by those involved with the project. The Convair study determined that such a craft was "feasible, practical and well within the state of the art."
The Bureau of Naval Weapons specified a set of design goals:
air cruise speed 150 -- 225 mph air cruise altitude 1,500 -- 2,500 feetair cruise radius 300 -- 500 n.miles maximum gross takeoff < 30,000 lb submerged speed 5 -- 10 knotssubmerged depth 25 -- 75 feet submerged range 40 -- 50 n.miles submerged endurance 4 -- 10 hourspayload 500 -- 1,500 lb takeoff and land in State 2 seasSeveral firms responded to a Navy request and a contract was awarded to Convair to develop the craft. The flying boat, which would alight and takeoff using retractable hydro-skis, would be propelled by three engines -- two turbojets and one turbofan, the former for use in takeoff and the latter for long-endurance cruise flight. Among the more difficult challenges of the design was the necessity of removing air from the engines and the partially full fuel tank to reduce buoyancy for submerging. Convair engineers proposed opening the bottom of the fuel tank to the sea, using a rubber diaphragm to separate the fluids and using the engines to hold the displaced fuel.
To submerge, the pilot would cut off fuel to the engines, spin them with their starter motors for a moment or two to cool the metal, close butterfly valves at each end of the nacelles, and open the sea valve at the bottom of the fuel tank. As the seaplane submerged, water would rise up into the fuel tank beneath the rubber membrane, pushing the fuel up into the engine nacelles. Upon surfacing, the fuel would flow back down into the tank. The only impact on the engines would be a cloud of soot when the engines were started.
When the engines were started their thrust would raise the plane up onto its skis, enabling the hull, wings, and tail surfaces to drain. The transition time from surfacing to takeoff was estimated to be two or three minutes, including extending the wings, which would fold or retract for submergence. Only the cockpit and avionics systems were to be enclosed in pressure-resistant structures. The rest of the aircraft would be "free-flooding." In an emergency the crew capsule would be ejected from the aircraft to descend by parachute when in flight, or released and float to the surface when underwater. In either situation the buoyant, enclosed capsule would serve as a life raft.
The craft would have a two-man crew and could carry mines, torpedoes or, under certain conditions, agents to be landed or taken off enemy territory.
The Navy Department approved development of the craft, with models subsequently being tested in towing tanks and wind tunnels. The results were most promising. But in 1966 Senator Allen Ellender, of the Senate's Committee on Armed Services, savagely attacked the project. His ridicule and sarcasm forced the Navy to cancel a project that held promise for a highly interesting "submarine." Although the utility of the craft was questioned, from a design viewpoint it was both challenging and highly innovative.
DARPA would do well to check the Navy's historical records as it embarks on the development of a flying submarine -- -oops, I mean submerging seaplane.
-- Norman Polmar
The Sunday Paper (Transition Edition)
Okay, I'm going to use this edition of The Sunday Paper to make two predictions:
1. Robert Gates will not stay on as SecDef and will be replaced by Richard Danzig a few weeks into the Obama administration, if not immediately.
2. Once the new administration gets into office, F-22 will be the first major program to be cut significantly or cancelled altogether followed shortly by Presidential Helo (VH-71). (JSF is also a target, especially if any more foreign partners balk.)
So what do you think, dear erudite-in-DoD-matters-type DT readers? Who's going to be SecDef? What programs are toast?
We had a couple great pieces up yesterday at Military.com on the Army's accelerating manpower issues.
One of the perspectives comes from that CSBA seminar I've been talking about here for the last couple of days. Basically, Andrew Krepinevich -- a former Army colonel and 10-pound brain on strategic issues -- made the case that the Army should curtail its plans to expand by 65,000 Soldiers over the next few years.
His justification is labor pool one: the Army's having too hard a time getting good recruits and the drain of senior NCOs and junior officers creates a leadership vacuum.
Here's part of Greg Grant's story on the issue and you can read the rest of it HERE:
His central message is alarming: the quality of the Army’s soldiers is in sharp decline, from enlisted personnel to NCOs to officers. It’s a “particularly discouraging” trend for the Army as it is happening despite the service’s “increasingly aggressive” use of financial incentives including bonuses and a salary increase of 33 percent between 1999 and 2005.
The Army has lowered standards to fill recruitment quotas, including weight and body fat restrictions, number of high school graduates and is allowing in more recruits with moral waivers. Krepinevich sees troubling signs of a repeat of the Vietnam era “shake-and-bake” sergeants, with the widespread promotion of inexperienced enlisted soldiers ill suited to the challenge of leading small units in combat.
The officer corps is also dropping in quality. Of the nearly 1,000 cadets from the West Point class of 2002, 58 percent are no longer on active duty. The Army is forced to pull soldiers from the ranks who have not graduated college and send them to OCS. Today, over 98 percent of eligible captains are promoted to major. The number of involuntary “stop loss” extensions has increased, by 43 percent between 2007 and 2008. Nearly half of those affected are NCOs.
This, at a time when the ongoing counterinsurgency wars demand much more intellectual horsepower in its soldiers. As the Army’s new doctrine manual FM 3-0, states: current and future conflicts “will be waged in an environment that is complex, multidimensional, and rooted in the human dimension.”
He goes on to recommend that the Army should specialize by creating Security Cooperation BCTs that are trained in the hard work of nation building, foreign internal defense in a permissive environment and mil-to-mil relations. This idea has been tossed around a lot in Washington and has been summarily rejected by the Army at every turn. Krep argues that it takes too long to refocus a line unit to stability ops and risks losing the "Golden Hour" before insurgencies take root.
That's true, but my experience has been that aside from the numbers and stats and "big think," the Army has learned a heck of a lot in a very short time during the post 9/11 conflict environment. I tend to agree that a broadly trained force is a stronger one: "Jack of all Trades, Master of None" so to speak, so that when that third block of the "three block war" erupts, we've got guys who can close with and destroy when needed.
One thing that Krep does say that I think bears some thinking is that the Army needs to recognize that it can't do everything and shouldn't be postured thereto. I thought to myself that that's easy to say until you have Capitol Hill screaming about "why can't we solve this NOW!" It's one thing for the Army to say "sorry, not in our lane" and quite another to tell Congress and the President to call someone else.
We also ran a great story from our friends at Aviation Week looking at the flip side of the force sized coin. Bettina Chevanne wrote up a dispatch on Army Sec Pete Geren's justification for the continued Army buildup.
"We're growing the U.S. Army, but is it enough? If demand stays the same, the answer is no," Geren said. Determining the right end strength for the Army begins with a "realistic" Quadrennial Defense Review and a national security strategy, he added.
So to Krep's point...'if the demand stays the same...' I've never understood the justification for the demand and the Army has never really been publicly explicit about it. If the Iraq commitment shrinks by, say, 100,000 troops and the other 40,000 goes to Afghanistan (which would be a bad idea in my view given the Afghans fiercely anti-occupation streak) that leaves a 100,000 buffer. Now, don't come down on my too quickly there, dear readers, that's just back of the envelope math. But it seems to me the Army is arguing for a force increase during a time when the demand for a large occupying force is going to shrink.
And that doesn't even take into account budgetary pressure and rumblings from Congress that saving jobs on the F-22 production line might be more important to them than adding more personnel at Fort Hood.
Whatever the case, it will be interesting to see how reality collides with the shrinking momentum from an Iraq hangover over the next 12-to-18 months for the Army.
Frozen Phantom: The South Korean air force showcased its new aircraft testing and evaluation center on opening day, September 8, by coating this F-4 Phantom fighter jet with ice. In the facility, engineers simulate conditions that a plane might encounter at 40,000 feet to determine if the craft’s composite structure—particularly in its wings—can endure the freezing temperatures without cracking
--John Noonan
Pentagon Slammed by Cyber Attack
The Pentagon has suffered a direct hit from a cyber attack. The weapon used is said to be a hybrid computer worm/virus. Insiders say the hybrid rapidly spread through the thousands of interconnected defense computer networks. A computer worm is different from a computer virus. A worm is thought to be more dangerous because it can run itself where as a virus needs a host program to run. The DoD responded quickly and has taken steps to slow the advancement of the worm/virus by quarantining networks and systems until the worm/virus can be removed.
Cyber investigators have not pinpointed the entry point for the worm/virus, but insider sources point to removable storage devices as the most likely point of infection. This seems to be supported by the fact that U.S. Strategic Command has banned the use of removable media (thumb drives, CDRs/DVDRs, floppy disks) on all DoD networks and computers effective immediately. This incident has been deemed so severe that unprecedented defensive measures have been instituted to protect the military systems.
Oddly enough, all Internet users are being warned to stay vigilant by security experts who believe that Monday, Nov. 24 is poised to be the worst day of the year for computer attacks.
Security experts at Spy-Ops I spoke with said, "If this can happen to the Department of Defense it can happened to any organization." They went on to say that the cost of this attack could easily reach into the billions of dollars if the worm/virus destroys data. If that's not bad enough, one expert went on to say that the nightmare scenario is if the malicious code alters data rather than deleting it -- a much more difficult problem to resolve.
News of the cyber attack came on the heels of today's release of the "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World" document by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The document stated that non-military means of warfare, such as cyber, economic, resource, psychological and information-based forms of conflict will become more prevalent in conflicts over the next two decades.
While the source of the attack remains classified, the usual cast of characters comes to mind. At the head of the list are of course China and the RBN -- Russian Business Network. If the attack is found to be sponsored by another country, could this be considered an act of cyber war?
There's been a lot of talk about the impending collapse of "the big three" automakers over the last two weeks -- of course, what people really are talking about is GM...but panic sells better, right?
One angle we've explored at Military.com is the effect a collapse of one or more of the American automakers would have on the defense industry...specifically military vehicles like Humvees, Medium trucks, Strykers, tanks and Bradleys.
The answer from our sources: "not much."
Now, I have a lot of respect for Sen. Karl Levin, the Democratic icon and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. But his pandering to the panic and his Michigan constituents about how GM's failure would put American national security at risk just isn't supported by the facts.
Former NATO commander Wes Clark tried to tie the two together the other day with an oped in the New York Times where he said stuff like this:
In a little more than a year, the Army has procured and fielded in Iraq more than a thousand so-called mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. The lives of hundreds of soldiers and marines have been saved, and their tasks made more achievable, by the efforts of the American automotive industry. And unlike in World War II, America didn’t have to divert much civilian capacity to meet these military needs. Without a vigorous automotive sector, those needs could not have been quickly met.
Huh? AM General makes the Humvee and isn't part of the big three domestic market except for its "Hummer" line of vehicles. The armor innovations didn't come at all from GM, Ford or Chrysler. MRAPS aren't made by them either. Where does Clark come up with this?
And even the $3,000 watch-wearing, private jet flyin' CEOs are claiming the Pentagon will suffer if there are no more Suburbans made.
Chrysler's chief executive, Robert Nardelli, told the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday that a crippled auto industry "would undermine our nation's ability to respond to military challenges and would threaten our national security."
My sources are telling me -- and others -- that the Big Three pulled out of the defense market a long time ago, not seeing it as a profitable, stable market for their goods. In fact, none of the JLTV downselectees have any ties to the domestic auto business -- how's that for innovation Wes?
Levin has spread his fear dust all over the country, claiming: “This is a national security issue as well as an economy issue,” Levin said. “But first and foremost, it’s a jobs issue," according to a report on Crains Detroit Business.
Surely, there could be some downside to the crisis for suppliers to the defense industry. But another source of mine said he's done some preliminary searches of DoD contracts and couldn't find a single instance where "this just jumps out at you." He mentioned that "you need to go way down the supply chain for some widget to find a connection"...but that is very preliminary.
Yes, a collapse of one of the Big Three would suck. But a "national security issue?" That's a stretch...
Senator Clinton isn't the only female in the hunt for a major cabinet position in the Obama administration. Word on the street is that Michelle Flournoy is under strong consideration for the Secretary of Defense post.
Ms. Flournoy, a graduate of Harvard and Oxford, made her bones as a DoD worker bee with the Clinton Administration. She went on to teach at the National Defense University and -in 2007- co-founded the respected Center for New American Security. She's also one of the two principal defense brains assigned to President-elect Obama's transition team.
Flournoy knows her business, has a strong background in both asymmetrical and traditional state threats, and seems to believe in a moderate approach to any withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. She's experienced, qualified, and her centrist positions on defense issues would (seemingly) make her a safe choice to head up the DoD.
Unfortunately, Ms. Flournoy's reasoned approach to Iraq -withdrawal that takes into consideration the efficacy of the Iraqi government and logistical realities- could lock horns with Obama's ideological "withdraw now, regardless" plan.
Any drawdown that falls short of Obama's campaign promise of expedited removal of US troops from theater risks upsetting the easily perturbed, zealous faction of the Democratic base. That makes Ms. Flournoy almost as politically risky as continuing the tenure of current SECDEF, Robert Gates.
--John Noonan
Stealthy Airlift for Commandos
Another intriguing idea that emerged from this week's Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments talk comes from Bob Martinage who discussed the Special Operations Community's airlift shortfall.
You saw yesterday that we mentioned the debate over CV and MV-22 numbers and the potential replacements for a reduced buy of Ospreys for the spec ops community. But one thing I didn't write about was Martinage's call for a stealthy long-range transport for use by SOF to sneak larger numbers of personnel and equipment into shady LZs.
What Martinage proposes is to use the same airframe that the Air Force decides on for its new Next-Generation bomber program. Think of it as B-1 meets C-17.
If we want to gain access into a denied environment like China in the future, we've got to have a stealthy SOF transport. The C-130, even with all the tricks it can do for active defenses and so on, is not going to be survivable against the types of integrated air defenses that are available today, let alone 2015 or beyond. Whether it's for inserting ground forces into an anti-access area or denied environment against China, Iran or you name it -- or [for] truly clandestine operations in sensitive areas around the world, I need a stealthy transport. This will almost certainly need to be a variation of the Next Generation Bomber that the Air Force is building.
You might remember that our boy Steve Trimble at Flight Global pulled a diamond out of the rough when he spotted a line in NGB-contender Northrop Grumman's press release saying they thought delivering snake eaters to their drop zone in specialized cruise missiles fired from the NGB would be a swell idea.
That is, unless you're one of those commandos stuffed in metal tube at angels 1 traveling at 300 kts.
Anyway, though this sounds a bit "Starship Troopers" Martinage admits the Air Force has shown little enthusiasm for the less sexy (compared to the fighter jocks) world of covert ops.
It is imperative for AFSOC to field a stealthy SOF transport to provide clandestine mobility and support to SOF ground units in denied, semi-permissive and politically sensitive areas. It appears that the only feasible path ahead is to develop a SOF transport variant of the NGB. Without active support of the Air Force, both in terms of integrating fundamental performance parameters for SOF applications into the initial NGB design and willingness to procure additional airframes for SOCOM-funded modification, a stealthy SOF transport is unlikely to be realized.
That would kind of suck, huh?
-- Christian
Marines Being Marines (Better than Last Time)
This is a picture from a gallery by John Moore, a kick butt shooter (photo) who's been in Afghanistan for a while during the last month.
I posted it because I want to see how quickly our well-informed DT readers can spot ... well, WHY I thought it was a cool picture.
Moore's caption reads simply: "U.S. Marines scan for Taliban insurgents as Afghan forces search a house for weapons October 25, 2008 in the Korengal Valley of Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan."
Make sure to check out the entire gallery. It really brings back memories...
-- Christian
Dogfight Over F-22 Reveals DoD Schisms
This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.
The battle over how many F-22 Raptors the U.S. Air Force requires is revealing some nasty infighting as the White House administration change nears.
The Defense Secretary staff has told Air Force planners not to talk to congressional staffers and to work only through the offices of Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England and acquisition chief John Young.
Insiders on Capitol Hill contend that the Defense Department has been and is continuing to withhold F-22 funds -- in defiance of the law and the intent of Congress -- in an attempt to punish the Air Force. England is still angry about the service's success in getting Congress to approve long-lead funding for 20 more aircraft, which would bring the service's total to 203 stealthy fighters.
However, the Office of the Secretary of Defense has released funds for only four aircraft, which brought howls from aerospace analysts that it is too few aircraft to avoid a shutdown of production between administrations.
The U.S. Air Force's new chief of staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz, is soon supposed to tell the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin (D-Mich.), how many F-22s the service needs beyond the 183 that are already in the budget.
Schwartz's budgeters and planners are expected to recommend a force of 250-275, a cut of more than 100 aircraft from the service's current requirement of 381. The 250 would allow a force of seven squadrons with 24 aircraft each or 10 squadrons with 18 Raptors.
Young points out that there is no money in the Air Force's budget plans for fiscal 2010 for F-22s. Neither Congress nor the defense secretary want to keep funding F-22 and C-17 production through supplemental defense budgets.
"John is stuck taking direction from England, which I think he agrees with in this case, unlike with the alternative engine for the F-35 [which England attempted to kill]," says a Washington-based official with insight into the affray between the Air Force, Congress and senior Pentagon civilians. "Plus John has people around him who have their own agenda, or are not competent. They had John believing that the numbers being used by Lockheed and the Air Force late last week were from a Rand study on F-22 that has nothing to do with the current circumstances.
"I don't know where all the [defense] money is going to come from," he says. "But at least with the F-22 we know what we are getting and have some grasp of the cost."
A new study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies -- whose CEO, John Hamre, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for President-elect Barack Obama's defense secretary -- contends that war costs, manpower costs, underfunded operations and procurement crises in every service will force the new administration to reshape almost every aspect of current defense plans, programs and budgets.
Obama will be faced with contracts worth $70 billion (Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter, Transformational Satellite, the Combat Search and Rescue Helicopter and a new tanker aircraft) that would be added to current procurement and force modernization plans that total more than $183 billion in the fiscal 2009 defense budget, say Anthony Cordesman and Hans Kaeser, authors of "Defense Procurement by Paralysis."
Some of the sharpest minds -- and least partisan -- on defense issues in Washington spoke during a conference with media and other military experts yesterday on where they believed the Army, Marine Corps and Special Operations forces should go in the coming years in terms of organization, equipment and strategy.
It was an incredibly interesting series of talks from the folks at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and brought up a number of key issues and recommendations that in some cases jibe with what those services/organizations are already doing and forged some new ground on how the key players in the GWOT should better shed the idea of "next war-itis."
We'll be rolling out their recommendations over the next couple days here and at DoD Buzz, but I wanted to throw this one out there at the outset to get the pot stirred a bit.
Both Dakota Wood and Robert Martinage -- who spoke about the Marine Corps force posture and that of the Spec Ops community, respectively -- called for a reduction of the MV-22 buy for the Marine Corps and a recognition that the Osprey couldn't satisfy the Spec Ops aviation shortfall.
Like the Air Force's F-22, the Osprey has become a bit of a raison d'etre for the Marine Corps, which staunchly supports the aircraft as a replacement for all of its CH-46 fleet. Wood argued that the cost was simply too much for the aircraft given other pressing, high-dollar Marine Corps programs coming in the future, reset, an expanded force and any number of contingencies the service will face. And, oh by the way, does anyone think the financial meltdown and the government's bailouts will slow down in the next couple of years?
If the Air Force is going to have to rethink its F-22 buy, why shouldn't the Marine Corps do the same thing with its MV-22 plans for similar reasons?
Recognizing the Osprey has its advantages in flying farther, faster and higher than anything in its class, Wood said the service needs to buy some MV-22s for missions that fit that kind of profile. But he added his voice to a growing chorus of experts who say it's time to scale back the buy and look to a rotary wing replacement that cheaper and more available than the Osprey to do those short hop chores the MV-22 is simply too expensive to justify doing.
Martinage made an interesting point that as spec ops forces push further and further into FID and UW missions in hard to reach corners of the world, sourcing spare parts for the CV-22 when the thing goes TangoUniform will be a deal breaker. He argued that anywhere an Osprey can go, a fleet of C-27s, U-28s and long-range helos can go -- with less risk of spare parts sources and overall O&M costs.
It's the hard, cold reality of it, but these guys aren't haters of the Osprey, they're just trying to give the best recommended solutions to critical problems in a severely fiscally constrained environment. It's good food for thought.
-- Christian
PECOC Getting More Feathers
The British military continues development of its Personal Equipment and Common Operational Clothing (PECOC) program to serve as a bridge between Soldier 95 kit and the planned Future Integrated Soldier Technology (FIST). Press reporting continues and in addition to the previous piece on the BBC, on 3 November 2008, The Times published an article on PECOC.
In the photo you can see an example of the new Hybrid Cam Day Sack.
Examples of trials clothing that have been seen feature Napoleon pockets to maintain a low profile under armor, stand up collars and full bicep pockets with velcro. The Smock is expected to under go some changes from the current SF smock and a second insulated, waterproof jacket is planned. Interestingly, every time the UK issues a new Smock it is based on the current issue SF Smock, which naturally changes as well. Additionally, it looks as though Britain will adopt the MOLLE standard for attachment systems as they move closer and closer to purchasing new equipment.
Finally, amid concerns of third party kit of dubious quality, there are indications that the UK military may follow a plan similar to the “Certified Team Soldier Gear” initiative proposed by the US Army’s PEO-Soldier for distinctive markings or tags on issue equipment. This will be to educate Soldiers and leaders on whether equipment has been vetted for issue by MOD.
The other day I got an email from a source of mine who claimed some of his buddies working in the private security industry in Pakistan and Afghanistan told him Pakistani intelligence officers have been found in "non life-supporting postures" after skirmishes or air strikes on insurgents in Afghanistan.
In other words, elements within Pakistan's ISI are directly aiding anti-coalition forces in Afghanistan -- sometimes engaging in combat operations with them.
I asked Edelman what the deal was...here's a brief transcript of how that conversation went:
Defense Tech: In Afghanistan, have you seen any evidence of Pakistani agencies' involvement in assisting the Taliban and other parties within Afghanistan against US troops and also within the [federally administered tribal areas]?
Edelman: I think that, you know, there's a long history here. The Pakistan government for a very long time has regarded Afghanistan as its 'strategic depth' and clearly there have been relationships that go back to the Mujahaddin era that have persisted. We've had some concerns about it, we've expressed those concerns. We had a meeting with the head of ISI, general Pasha ... my view is we ought to give him a chance to see how he can handle his new responsibilities and go from there.
Defense Tech: So is that a 'yes?'
Edelman: You'll have to make a judgment on whether that was a yes or not.
Defense Tech: So you have seen involvement...?
Edelman: As I said there have been persistent ties that have withstood over a long period of time and we've expressed concerns over those ties.
Sounds to me like a yes...What do you all think?
-- Christian
Legal Risk of Cyber Outage
New analysis indicates that critical infrastructure operators are ill prepared to deal with cyber attacks. That reinforced the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report earlier this year that found Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power company serving over 8.7 million people, is vulnerable to cyber attacks. One just released study asked respondents to indicate the state of readiness to defend against IT threats in eight different industries. The results showed that 50 percent of respondents said that utilities, oil and gas, transportation, telecommunications, chemical, emergency services and postal/shipping industries were not prepared. The energy sector emerged as the most vulnerable target. So it is no wonder the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is once again moving to address the threat to our nation's critical infrastructure.
DHS is looking for public input as it prepares for next year's release of a revised version of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), thus updating the 2006 version of the plan. The federal government has sought to actively engage the private sector in a number of industries to address the threat of cyber attacks. Originally, the federal government identified seventeen critical infrastructure areas and designated federal agencies to be in charge of creating plans as well as overseeing collaborative efforts to protect those areas. It should be noted that earlier this year DHS announced that it also had designated critical manufacturing as an additional sector.
One industry insider speaking to me on the promise of anonymity said: "Utility executives are not going to spend money on defending their systems against cyber attacks. When they do, they decrease the financial performance of the company and that subtracts from the executives bonuses." So is this yet another group of businesses that are going to the Federal Government looking for a hand out?
Cyber attacks against utilities are just not theoretical, they are real. Earlier this year there were dozens of reports that stated CIA senior analyst Tom Donohue told a gathering of 300 US, UK, Swedish and Dutch government officials, engineers and security managers from electric, water, oil & gas and other critical industry asset owners that "Cyber Attack Caused Multi-City Power Outage." Cyber attacks against utilities are now a foreseeable risk.
Foreseeable Risk and Threats - (a legal term) - A danger which a reasonable person should anticipate. Foreseeable risk is a common affirmative complaint put up in lawsuits for negligence (a tort).
We sought out a legal opinion and got one.
"The significant media attention being given to the threat of cyber attacks, as well as the fact that a number of high ranking government officials have warned about this threat, suggest that corporations have a duty to assess their exposure to this risk and create a cyber risk mitigation strategy. Failure to do so could constitute negligence due to the fact that in this day and age, cyber attacks are reasonably foreseeable," said Attorney Fred Rice specializing in corporate legal issues.
FACT: Tort litigation costs have reach nearly $300 billion annually.
But how far could the legal action go? I posed the following scenario to Edward Maggio, professor of criminal justice at the New York Institute of Technology. Scenario: A cyber attack directed against an electrical utility causes a power spike and outage. The spike and outages damage a piece of life support equipment resulting in the death of a patient relying on the device.
Given the above scenario, if the electrical utility did not take appropriate action to protect against such attacks, could the utility be held accountable?
"While culpability for the impact resulting from cyber attacks is a somewhat uncharted area of law, legal action against a power utility will be based on negligence. It is likely that hackers who engage in successful cyber attack against a power utility have likely made previous attempts against a chosen target. Such previous attempts would serve as evidence that a power utility had a duty to mitigate and protect itself from cyber attacks," Maggio said.
It is clear that any utility that fails to appropriately plan for or respond to the increased threat of cyber attacks are failing in their duty to protect the general public. Anyone harmed as a result of a cyber attack against a utility may have cause of action (lawsuit) when they were harmed due to the power utility's failure to increase its cyber security he went on to explain.
Will it take a major cyber attack with litigation before the necessary steps are taken to protect our critical infrastructure? It sure looks that way.
Blast from the past part II: Freaky deaky airmobile ICBM test
Project Valour-IT
I hope you all don't mind, but I've got to hit the pause button for a moment and knock out a little public service announcement.
I've been involved with Project Valour-IT for several years now and I can honestly say that the annual fall charity drive is one of my favorite times to be a blogger. The blogosphere-driven fundraising drive raises all kinds of dosh to purchase voice-activated laptops for soldiers who have lost limbs in combat. Those specially modded lappies make it possible for wounded troops to write and answer emails, update friends and family on their progress, and otherwise make them feel human and functional again.
Major Chuck Ziegenfuss, who was seriously injured by an IED blast in 2005 and was one of the first recipients of a Valour-IT laptop sends (with some selective edits) the rundown:
Valour-IT is completely out of money, and it's really going to be a shitty Christmas for wounded service members waiting for laptops. And yes Virginia, there is a waiting list.
So we begin the Valour-IT veteran's day fundraising project. Our goal is $250000, and that means each of the five branches are racing to the $50,000 finish line. Team ArmyAir Force, will, of course, win, because all of you WILL contribute. You will get your friends, family, and coworkers to contribute. You will get acquaintances to contribute.
Look, you don't have to donate your life savings. Just figure out how much you spend on mini-luxuries for a week. Five trips to starbux is $30. Drink coffee at work instead, and you've sacrificed little, but you can now contribute three percent of a laptop. Think about your weekly luxuries. What can you do without, so that you can give the gift of modern functionality to someone who needs it?
We've made sure the fund raiser will cover the mid-month pay period, too. So put back that can of creamed corn (really who eats that?) when you are doing your turkey day shopping. That's a dollar right there. Put back the second can of purple jelly too. Learn to make gravy instead of buying a jar.
It's important. It's something you can do to give, really give, someone such a great gift this holiday season. While we focus on being thankful for what we have , take a little time to remember what others have recently lost, and know that the only thing stopping them from regaining a piece of what they've lost--is you.
Please click the Team Air Force donation button below if you'd like to help out. Thanks so much to all who gave back to those who gave all.
John Noonan
Resolving the Next-Gen Armor Muddle
[From our friends at Breach-Bang-Clear on the Woroner armor debate.]
All right boys and girls, there’s been a helluva lot of discussion here about Dave Woroner's armor design and whether it would work or not work or whatever. Honestly I think part of the problem is that first off it’s over most (not all) of our heads. Second off, Woroner doesn’t want to tell too much about the damned thing out of OPSEC or COMSEC concerns, which makes explanation difficult at best. Imagine trying to explain a lawnmower engine if you couldn't talk about internal combustion, or if pistons were classifed.
Lemme see what I can do to make it make a little sense.
Have you heard about the Boomerang System made by BBN Technologies in Boston? It’s an acoustical sensor system that uses "acoustical entrapment" to quickly and reliably identify the location of a sniper or other shooter that’s putting rounds downrange towards our grunts. It's been on Future Weapons and a couple other shows, has actually deployed to the AOR and apparently works.
Woroner’s system is kind of like that, but it uses light sensitivity to detect incoming projectiles. Sound won’t work, it’s too slow for a system to detect an EFP or whatever and mitigate the blast. You might be able to detect the blast, depending upon the strength of the device and the range, but you damn sure wouldn’t be able to detect it and then take steps to defeat it. Only light and electricity are fast enough to react to something moving at thousands of feet per second, which is why light and electricity are the basis of Woroner’s “barrier system”.
It’s in the high nanosecond, low microsecond range of response, putting a countermeasure out to intercept the incoming weapon and either destroy it or mitigate it by shearing the blast wave off with it’s own blast moving at a reciprocal speed. This is effectively a countermeasure system intended to be used in addition to next-gen armor to reduce or nullify the incoming blast and projectile(s). Let me put it to you the way I had to explain it to Slim, which I think you’ll find is a little simpler than Dave’s explanation.
Some delinquent little bastard in your neighborhood uses a potato gun to launch a spud at your car. You’ve got Woroner’s system mounted on the hood. It detects the incoming spud using light, not sound, and throws out some high tech shit you can’t pronounce let alone explain to intercept it. That stuff is moving at about the same speed as the spud. It hits the potato and slows it down, possibly deflecting it some so that while it still hits your fender, it only hits with the impact of a nerf dart.
Potato-gun launched spud to nerf dart. Makes sense to me. I’d rather get clocked in the head with an orange foam bullet than an Idaho baker any day.
Translate that to the Big Sandbox. Hajji detonates an IED next to a humvee with Woroner’s system mounted on it. Woroner’s system senses the wave of the incoming projectile and puts a radically different defensive measure into play. This measure deflects the oncoming shear waves and ameliorates the remaining overpressure and underpressure events by shear redirection and deflection. Whatever’s left of the incoming projectile and its blast hits the humvee. The crew inside are better off if its up-armored, and better off still if it’s armored in next-gen armor and best of all if they weren't in it to begin with (but that's not really practical now, is it?).
[EDITOR: Essentially Dave's idea is to deploy a sort of air bag around the vehicle to absorb the shock waves and also help deflect any projectiles by creating space between the vehicle and the offending spawl. Kind of like FRAG Kit 6, right...what's the big difference there? Gaps between the cold-rolled steel armor plating.]
So that’s the deal with his 'armoring' system. I can’t tell you any more about it ‘cuz me no speaka da geek and I only understand about half of what he says. If you want to know more, you need to ask Woroner himself, or maybe that fat bearded guy that does the TV advertisements and infomercials. I dunno. I don’t know if you flip a switch, click an icon or piss on the damned dilithium crystals to turn it on, and I couldn’t tell you whether it’s powered by lithium batteries, sparkplugs or a pseudo-Riemannian manifold. What I do know is that if there’s the slightest chance the thing works, and it’ll help our guys come home whole, then somebody somewhere with some mojo needs to check it out and get it some attention. It’s a sad truth that without the lobbyists and pitchmen and assorted high dollar schmoozers the big corporations have, it may not even matter whether it works or not because no one will hear about it.
That’s why I ran the damned article in the first place, and I honestly don’t much give a hoot if you agree with him or disagree with him, think he’s a genius or a complete assclown. If we get a debate started about it, generate some dialogue, then maybe something positive will come out of it.
Oh, and about the MRAPs and all that other business – those of you that are bitching about his statements regarding the MRAP are missing the point. He agrees, I agree, Slim agrees, everybody agrees they’re saving lives. That’s not the issue. The issue is we’re going to have to come up with something else to address other missions and other terrains, because it gets stuck and it rolls over and you can’t turn the damn thing around in a narrow street. Unless our next war is waged in the world’s biggest parking lot, then that’s going to cause some problems.
So, hope this clears things up a little bit. If not, then I hope it at least piqued your interest.
One of the Pentagon’s top policymakers warned Thursday that a “surge” of U.S. troops to Afghanistan like the one executed in Iraq 18 months ago doesn’t recognize the complexities of the Taliban and al Qaeda-sponsored violence there and could backfire.
Eric Edelman, the Pentagon’s top civilian policy advisor to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, said the situation in Afghanistan is far different than the one faced by U.S. troops in Iraq during the darkest days of sectarian violence in 2006,
“We shouldn’t just focus on the numbers of forces,” Edelman told defense reporters at a Nov. 13 breakfast meeting in Washington. “The success of the surge in Iraq, in my view, was less a function of the increased numbers … it was what they were doing that mattered.”
“The single-minded focus on what’s the level of force is wrong headed because there are a lot of elements that go into it and there’s no magic number,” he added.
Edelman said the Pentagon had executed what he called a “silent surge” of about 30,000 U.S. and NATO troops into Afghanistan in 2006, “but the scale of the insurgency began to outpace even the steps that we had taken.”
While Iraq has a well educated population, an oil-based economy and is mainly urban, Afghanistan is one of the poorest nations in the world, with illiteracy reaching close to 80 percent for males and per capita wages close to 50 percent of those in Haiti.
“There are very large differences between the circumstances in Afghanistan and the circumstances in Iraq,” Edelman said. “It’s very complicated and I don’t think it’s a ‘one size fits all’ there.”
Edelman blamed Pakistan’s previous regime, led by Pervez Musharraf, for negotiating a series of cease fires that allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers to regroup and pour militants into the anti-coalition fight across the Afghan border.
The counsel against launching a large troop buildup in Afghanistan to tame the violence comes as President-elect Barack Obama continues to call for a two brigade increase in forces to counter growing Taliban and al Qaeda-sponsored violence.
Advisors to Obama have emphasized the need for “soft power” to tame the anti-coalition insurgency in Afghanistan, including increases in military trainers, added diplomatic initiatives and more economic outreach.
“There are opportunities to use capabilities besides military power in Afghanistan that have been underdeveloped in administration policy up until now,” top Obama advisor and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig told reporters last month. “It is very important to engage the Afghans as much as possible themselves.”
But Obama advisors also continue to insist that the nearly 6,000 additional U.S. troops are necessary to push militants out once and for all.
Edelman stressed that some elements of the counterinsurgency doctrine that worked in Iraq could be applied to Afghanistan, particularly the notion of separating the insurgents from the population and to “clear, hold and build” on territory won back from the militants’ grip. But the ethnic complexities, degrees of anti-American sentiment among what he called “big ‘T’ and little ‘T’ Taliban” and deep cultural biases against occupation make Afghanistan a longer term commitment.
“It’s not going to be an easy cookie-cutter transfer of one to the other,” Edelman said.
Obama advisors argue the additional brigades for Afghanistan will come directly from reductions in Iraq. But commanders in Iraq, Edelman added, worry that a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces along the lines of the 16-month plan advocated by Obama could erase the surge’s gains during a crucial period of provincial and national elections.
For that reason, Edelman said he expects an Obama administration to move conservatively in reducing troop levels in Iraq.
The new administration, he said, will "try and make sure the U.S. plays a role as the guarantor of free and fair elections, and that the notion of politics as a zero sum game in Iraq doesn’t get loose again, which could lead to some unraveling of the security gains.”
-- Christian
Army Aviation Accidents Top $16 Billion
This article first appeared at Aviation Week.com.
U.S. Army aviation accidents and incidents have cost the service about $16.2 billion over the past dozen years, according to an exclusive Aerospace DAILY analysis of data provided by the Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center (USACRC).
The average cost per an accident or incident for the more than 30,000 events was $539,281, the analysis shows, with a maximum single-event cost of about $62.4 million. The mishaps have lead to 2,856 deaths.
So far this fiscal year -- Oct. 1 through Nov. 10 -- the service seems to be off on solid footing as far as mishaps go, according to online statistics released through the USACRC.
The Army shows seven reported Class A-C aviation accidents in FY '09. There are three flight accidents resulting in an overall rate of 2.385 accidents per 100,000 hours flown within the Army flying hour program.
The current number of Class A-C accidents is 65 percent below last fiscal year, and 73 percent below a three-year average of the same periods. The Army has lost no soldiers this fiscal year in aviation mishaps.
Reducing fatalities and injuries has been a priority for Army safety leaders. "While I'm not a fan of statistics, it is evident soldiers and leaders ‘get it' by the 46 percent decrease in on-duty fatalities across our Army in fiscal 2008 (compared to fiscal 2007)," wrote Brig. Gen. William Wolf, new director of Army safety and commanding general of the USACRC, in a Nov. 3 letter posted on the center's Web site.
Since 1986, the Army aircraft with the most reported fatalities due to mishaps are UH-60 Black Hawks, with more than 880 events, the analysis shows.
Placing second are the old UH-1H Hueys, with more than 460.
Next come Chinook variants, with the CH-47D accounting for more than 250 fatalities, according to the analysis.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated how critically important snipers are to a fight marked by urban canyons and high-mountain caves. Problem is, those highly-trained sharpshooters are in short supply, and the need for accurate, long-range fire has outpaced the services' ability to field one-shot killers.
So both the Army and Marine Corps began a program to seed infantry squads with so-called "designated marksmen" -- call them "snipers-lite."
The growing need to equip these new marksmen with accurized rifles prompted the Army to reconsider the role of the venerable M-14 rifle for the war on terror. Back in Desert Storm, armorers from the 10th Special Forces group took M-14s equipped with a match barrels and fitted a gas piston on them for optimal performance, re-designating it the M-25. They replaced the stock with a McMillan M1A fiberglass one, developed a scope mount and added a Bausch & Lomb 10x40mm fixed-power optic or a Leupold Mark 4.
The revamped M-14 provides the Army squad designated marksman with on-command direct fire support for his squad, a fire team or his platoon. The heavier-caliber sharpshooters provide cover when machine guns displace, counter-sniper fire in urban areas, and they help in overtaking valuable real estate.
Infrared targeting lasers such as the AN/PEQ-2 and PAQ-4C make the DM's job more like 24-hour shift work. Now that suppressors for the M-14-series of rifles are available, the night-vision capabilities coupled with sound mitigation makes the Soldier's ability to own the night even more secure.
Taking the M-14 modifications a step further, Crane Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center teamed up with Sage International to create an M-14/M1A package that is dubbed the "Enhanced Battle Rifle."
Using the M-14 barrel, receiver and trigger groups, the EBR chassis adds a retractable stock, a cheek piece that's adjustable for height and a floated Picatinny quad-rail fore-end made of high-strength aluminum. The EBR also adds a pistol grip for additional control and ergonomic sling points.
But the new rifle is heavier than the M-16 or M-4 which weighs nearly seven pounds, with each 30-round magazine adding another pound. The basic M-14, however, weighs nearly 10 pounds with an addition of almost two pounds for every 20 rounds of 7.62 the EBR fires.
A soldier's wisdom varies from one to another but many don't care about the weight. The confidence in the effective range and terminal ballistics of the M-14's 7.62mm round brings the argument back to the Vietnam-era rifle.
The EBR feels a little heavy at the fore end, but this helps the rifle address criticism that it is uncontrollable when firing on full-auto. The additional weight -- and the fact that the stock is in line and parallel with the barrel -- helps reduce muzzle climb.
The EBR chassis comes with a Picatinny rail that replaces the stripper-clip guide, helping Soldiers mount high-powered scopes that can extend the rifle's range. Unique to the EBR is an extended rail just forward of the receiver. For the followers of the Jeff Cooper doctrine on scout rifles, red dot optics work well in making this rifle an effective close quarter battle scout rifle. Regardless of scope height, the shooter can obtain proper cheek weld by adjusting the EBR's stock.
As the Army and Marines Corps continue to develop a semi-auto designated marksman rifle, many within the tactical community feel that the resurrection of the M-14 is just a stopgap. But praise from troops using the M-14's variants and moves made by the Navy suggest otherwise. In 2004, the Navy signed a contract to upgrade nearly 3,000 of their M-14s with the Sage EBR chassis.
What will remain, in any case, is the designated marksman. The smallest infantry unit includes a team leader, two riflemen and a gunner. One of these riflemen will be expected to fill the role of the designated marksman, using optics to distinguish combatants from non-combatants and minimizing collateral risk with precision fire in urban areas.
The book on small unit tactics has evolved to defeat a new kind of enemy, and the old standby Springfield Armory M-14 has evolved right along with it.
The Army Combat Shirt has only been an issue item for about a year but much of its success can be attributed to PEO-Soldier’s decision to field the garment immediately and improve it over time. In fact, although the basic concept has stayed constant, the design has been in a perpetual state of change. At the recent SOFEX at Ft Bragg, NC we got a chance to take a look at the latest version (v5.3) of the ACS at Massif’s booth. While this version has not yet been approved for procurement, it features design refinements specified by PEO-Soldier. Many Soldiers will be happy to hear that noticeably absent was the “Army of One” logo.
Manufactured from Massif’s proprietary Blaze, Breeze, and Helium fabrics, the ACS is completely FR, even incorporating new flame resistant resin zippers. The Blaze fabric is a four way stretch and used for the sleeves and under arm panels. Designed with comfort under body armor in mind, the ACS is constructed with flat seams and features raglan sleeves. The body is formed from Breeze fabric and the modesty panel designed to cover the breast area is made from Helium fabric. A high mock-T collar prevents chaffing caused by the IOTV’s high collar.
While garments in other color schemes (including Multicam) are currently on the drawing board, development of military variants including the Airman Battle Shirt and a khaki version for the Navy.
Currently, the ACS can only be ordered by members of the United States Army. To order contact Massif Mountain Gear Company.
The Navy has officially placed in service a new submarine rescue capability, replacing its long-serving and highly versatile rescue submersibles. The Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System (SRDRS)replaces the submersible Mystic, the Navy's last Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV).
The SRDRS, according to Navy statements, "is a rapidly deployable rescue asset that can be delivered by air or ground, installed on pre-screened military or commercial vessels of opportunity. . . and mated to a distressed submarine within a 72-hour time to first rescue period."
Unfortunately, only two of the three major components of the SRDRS are now available, and the system in some ways lacks the flexibility of the now-discarded DSRVs. The SRDRS is a three-phased acquisition program:
The first phase was the Atmospheric Dive System 2000 (ADS2000), which was delivered to the Navy in 2006. This is a manned, one-atmosphere dive suit that enables a diver to inspect a disabled submarine on the ocean floor to a depth of 2,000 feet, i.e., approximately the "crush depth" of the U.S. Navy's deepest-diving submarines. The diver would also have a limited ability to clear debris from escape hatches.
The second phase is the Rescue Capable System (RCS), delivered to the Navy in October 2008. This system is based on the "Falcon," a tethered, remotely-operated, pressurized rescue module that is lowered from the surface ship to "mate" with the escape hatches on a disabled submarine. The survivors climb into the module, which is then brought back up to the surface ship. The RCS also includes the ship-based launch and recovery system, and controls. The Falcon can conduct rescue operations to a depth of 2,000 feet, can mate to a disabled submarine at a list and trim of up to 45 degrees, and can transfer up to 16 personnel at a time.
But the third phase of the SRDRS -- that will not be delivered until late 2012 -- is the submarine decompression system. This will enable rescued submariners to remain under pressure during the transfer from the rescue module to hyperbaric treatment chambers aboard the surface ship to prevent their being affect by the "bends" as they reach surface pressure after being in a disable submarine that might have increased internal pressure.
The Navy touts the SRDRS as being air transportable and then able to be taken to sea in a variety of pre-designated U.S. and foreign naval and merchant ships. However, being a surface-based system, the SRDRS is vulnerable to bad weather and rough seas and, of course, could not affect a rescue under Arctic ice.
The SRDRS underwent a test and operational evaluation during the international submarine rescue exercise Bold Monarch in May-June 2008. The rescue module transferred personnel from three participating submarines -- from Norway, the Netherlands, and Poland. More recently, the SRDRS conducted an exercise with the Chilean submarine Simpson on 17-18 September 2008.
The SRDRS replaces the rescue submersibles Avalon (DSRV 2), which was deactivated on 1 September 2000, and the Mystic (DSRV 1), deactivated on 1 October 2008. Both DSRVs became fully operational in late 1977, although they were completed several years earlier. The DSRVs, also air-transportable, could be carried and supported by specially designed surface ships -- that have since been discarded -- and submarines (SSN and SSBN) that have special fittings provided. Several U.S. and foreign submarines were modified to carry a DSRV. The rescue submersible could then be carried to sea and both launched and recovered from the submerged "mother" submarine.
The DSRV could mate with all U.S. submarines except for the new discarded NR-1 and Dolphin (AGSS 555) as well as most foreign submarines. A DSRV could carry 24 survivors (plus 3 or 4 crewmen), and could transport them under pressure to the mother submarine, which could also have a pressurized compartment to receive the survivors. And, with the DSRV there was no need to place a diver on the disabled submarine, in part because the DSRV had a capability of both examining the submarine and clearing debris from a hatch. However, while the DSRVs had a capacity of 24 crewmen compared to 16 for the Falcon rescue chamber, the latter received power through its tether while the DSRVs required a two-hour battery charge between rescue cycles.
The two DSRVs were built as part of the comprehensive Deep Submergence Systems Project (DSSP), established following the loss of the nuclear-propelled submarine Thresher (SSN 593) in 1963. Two DSRVs were built, each weighing 37 tons and just under 50 feet in length. They had an operating depth of 5,000 feet -- far beyond the collapse depth of U.S. submarines -- and, because they could be clandestinely employed from submarines, they provided a very use capability for special missions.
The DSSP also sponsored the development of advanced emergency submarine location devices, submarine escape gear, the ability to locate and recover small objects on the ocean floor, and a large object salvage capability. It was also responsible for developing systems for the nuclear-propelled research/recovery submersible NR-1.
In honor of Veteran's Day, I wanted to share with you all a quick story on a Soldier's valor to help us all remember the heroism and sacrifice our armed forces display each and every day on the job:
On Sept. 24, 2008, Staff Sgt. Christopher Upp, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, was awarded the Silver Star for actions on July 31, 2007 in Chowkay Valley, Afghanistan.
While at Vehicle Patrol Base Seray, an incoming mortar round struck the base’s mortar pit, killing the platoon leader and initiating an attack. Staff Sgt. Upp led a small group through machine gun and rocket propelled grenade (RPG) fire towards the mortar position.
The incoming fire knocked them to the ground several times. When they reached the 120-mm mortar, an incoming RPG damaged the tripod and shrapnel tore a large gash in Staff Sgt. Upp’s left arm. With the mortar’s support legs damaged, Staff Sgt. Upp used his hands -- and when the tube got too hot, his back -- to guide return fire. Through heavy fighting, he fired 75 rounds at the attacking enemy and significantly contributed to the successful defense of the patrol base.
I've been honored to witness acts like this in my many days and months covering the armed forces as a reporter. Thank you for all of the great times and endearing memories.
-- Christian
Kill bin Laden Exclusive Pics (the entire collection)
Multiple sources are reporting that hackers have penetrated the email system of the White House.
People described as "US government cyber experts" are said to suspect the cyber raids were sponsored by the Chinese government. These sophisticated, targeted attacks repeatedly penetrated the unclassified network's defenses. The breaches seem to closely follow the "Grain of Sands" technique used by Chinese intelligence agencies.
The "Grain of Sands" is a methodology used to derive intelligence from disparate pieces of data no matter how seemingly trivial, as each data point might just be the final little piece that completes the puzzle. It is important to note that inside sources tell us that the classified network and system was NOT compromised.
This comes just days after Newsweek reported that both the Obama and McCain campaigns had their security breached by overseas hackers. Reportedly a significant amount of data had been exfiltrated. Intelligence Analysts at Spy-Ops believe that the hacks and data transfers were a concerted effort to track the candidates' policy positions which could aide in future negotiations with the United States. The FBI and U.S. Secret Service had notified both campaigns of the security breach in late August.
At first, the campaign security thought it was just another "phishing" attack, using common methods. One source said the FBI told them: "You have a problem way bigger than what you understand. You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system." Unofficial sources tell us that the attacks were traced back to Russia, China and an un-named third country.
This is at least cyber espionage or is it an act of cyber war? Are we at Cyber DefCom 1? A clear-cut cyber warfare doctrine is needed to answer these questions.
Blast from the past 1979: US Air Force sponsors First Strike, depicting a catastrophic Soviet surprise attack on America's strategic forces. Reagan defense build-up ensues...
MRAP and JLTV vs. Reality
[NOTE: Here's another contribution from our friends at Breach Bang Clear. The author is a friend of mine, David Woroner of Survival Consultants International. He's a ballistics expert, former PSD contractor and all-around mad scientist who's come up with a novel new armor for newly built vehicles. This is part one of a multi-part series on new solutions for ballistic defeat.]
If it has a new gen armor system attached to it, then I’m in favor of the JLTV over the MRAP. Why? Well, a number of reasons.
The MRAP has some things going for it, and it’s saved some lives, no question. But it’s not the end-all be-all, ultimate solution to what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan—and it’s not going to be the solution in future wars that may be fought differently…and certainly will be fought in different terrain.
Let’s face it, the MRAP is a bank vault tipped on its side with wheels and a motor. A million dollar bank vault tipped on its side with wheels and a motor. Consider some of its weaknesses, and the financial burden to fix or repair. We’re talking about a serious chunk of change just in the case of blowing the undercarriage out. My opinion on this shouldn’t be misconstrued as some reticence on my part to help out the troops. Anyone that knows me or has served with me knows I am STAUNCHLY behind the protection of our troops. It can be done with the technology at hand, and it can be done more efficiently.
Consider the cost, operational relevance and troop transportation capability of the MRAP (and the coming MRAPII) vs. something like the JLTV. We’re in a war, and in a war, particularly conducted with blitzkrieg type operations, it’s always going to be better to put fewer men and less equipment into less expensive vehicles. Put simply, I’d rather attack anything with a million ants than a pair of elephants. When it comes to those vehicles, protection doesn’t have to be expensive, the vehicles can be more efficient to operate in a disparate variety of terrains, and let’s don’t forget the cost of fuel.
Let me explain further.
The concepts of blitzkrieg were known in other countries, albeit poorly developed (the British army had partially implemented it), by the end of the First World War, but the Germans had worked out the complexities of breaking through a front with highly concentrated resources. This technique failed the Germans in their offensives of March 1918, largely because the breakthrough elements were on foot and could not sustain the impetus of the initial attack. The deployment of motorized infantry was the key to sustaining a breakthrough, but this would have to wait until the 1930s to be realized.
Superimpose the realities of modern war and we can see that the Humvee has proven itself to be a woefully inadequate method of safely transporting troops into battle, even with all the so-called ‘hillbilly armor’, up-armor packages, etc. We should have done it right the first time, or not done it at all. We should still be doing things right the first time or not doing it at all...
Let’s scroll back a hundred years to see the appearance of the first true British/American tanks worthy of the name. These hunks of steel, bristling with machine guns and small guns, were long enough to accomplish what they were originally designed for—to bridge the gaps of trenches. In those days, this was perhaps a good idea. Review the realities of today again. Everything has changed. Virtually every fundamental tenet of modern warfare is different than it was in WWI. So why do we persist in reverting to brawn over brains?
In those days, all we had were metals and a cubic mentality. Today we understand there are lightweight materials perfectly suitable for making lighter and more maneuverable vehicles of war without sacrificing the protection necessary to make them worthy of deployment. Yet our powers that be have built and fielded a 21ST century version of the WWI tank.
Why?
There are some laws and rules that must be applied to the discussion. Obviously we know that our modern vehicles must be lightened. We have a multitude of materials now that weren’t dreamed of then. Most vehicles in this discussion use some type of composite armor, meaning a hybrid of several materials much stronger as an admixture than by themselves. To fully understand my contention, however, one must understand some basic ‘Laws of Physics and Materials’.
First of all we have Spectra, Dyneema and other lightweight ‘soft’ material that can take up some of the weight.
But there are two laws that must be obeyed:
First, any projectile (or spall) traveling over 2,000fps will liquefy and penetrate just about any type of material. Imagine if you will a 22.250 cartridge. Its velocity is in the 4,000fps range. Now envision an M249 or Minimi type weapon putting out that sort of high velocity projectile at an incredible rate of fire and you begin to see some of the problem.
The second rule pertains to the shape of the armor. If it has a poor deflection angle, the round will penetrate rather than deflect. Take a lesson from our stealth aircraft. Its angles do the same thing, only with radar instead of hostile fire. The same principle applies to ballistic trajectory impact.
The reason boron carbide is so widely used is that it is a ceramic, which is essentially a glass. The majority of heavy duty anti-penetration materials in hard armor utilize this form of material. There are alternatives in play, such as pressing with an applied resin on top of soft armor until it hardens, then sandwiching it between some hard armor. One thing that has always taken me aback, though, is the lack of geometry used in armor design. Why was it such a surprise that we eventually put v-shaped boat hulls on armored vehicles? Did our modern designers just completely disregard the successful work of their Rhodesian forebears? V-shaped hulls were part of the way they tamed the landmines employed against them to such good effect by SWAPO, ZIPRA, ZANU and assorted other acronym-happy Communist-backed insurgents.
If you’ve ever seen the holes an 88 would punch into a Sherman tank in WWII, it is pretty apparent that they were cold-rolling (to the best of the contemporary technology) the armor. Then came Chobham, which basically utilizes a mixture of ceramics and different metallurgy. However, a balance of materials, placement, spaced methodology and geometry is the key to a true winning formula.
When discussing armor, one would be remiss not to bring up the subject of conventional Reactive Armor. These devices are nothing more than high speed reactive chemical bombs designed to detonate upon the impact of a hypervelocity shell. It is really meant to defeat copper jet penetrating charges, be they from an RPG or another tank’s main gun round.
Although not specifically part of the subject matter at hand, it’s worth pointing out that anyone who appreciates what may become future armor will appreciate Electro-Magnetic Armor. EMA uses electricity to defeat shaped charge warheads such as those from RPGs. Repetitive live fire testing has proven not only the theoretical properties of EMA but the actual, demonstrated ability to defeat shaped charges.
I won’t digress further by discussing other intelligent but somewhat whacky ideas such as Shear Thickening Fluids. From my understanding, development along these lines has been abjectly taken out with the garbage.
There are some good principles starting to come about that I believe originated with two or three different groups at once. These have to do with ‘spacing’, which in the light seem to make good ole’ fashioned sense.
Since we’ve all heard about how much Mine Resistant Vehicles weigh, its no wonder that scientists and material engineers continue to search for the elusive mixture of this and that necessary to reduce weight and retain the capacity to stop a hypervelocity round.
The offensive and defensive races for a defense-to-offense weapon is often elusive. This is NOT because the offensive weapon cannot be defeated. It is because nobody has grasped the necessary concepts or been given the green light to go ahead in reference to the consternating weapon.
Even if the JLTV is FCS compatible (which would be a big plus), the lightweight armor will still be of concern. The DoD is even now handing out massive contracts to the JLTV producers they feel best suited to construct them, but the armor problem has yet to really be solved.
There are a couple of things that must be brought into the overall picture:
1. The weight of the MRAP has already resulted in the “stranding with personnel inside” until reinforcements or flyboys arrive to bail them out. Still on the weight issue, you’d better have a nice paved road for the beast, otherwise you WILL be stuck in the mud or sand. These cost a MILLION USD apiece? It’s worth spending money to save troops, hell yes, but can we not do better? Could we design one that would crawl over rough terrain without tipping over?
2. Whatever the incarnation of the JLTV turns out to be, it will require the real and true next-gen armor. There are better answers than what is being considered now. They must eventually come into play because the majority of WIA and KIA suffered has been, horribly, due to a lack of thinking like good ole’ Heinz. Far better to put them into play now.
Look, military improvisation to deal with tactical problems isn't new to American war-making. Think about all they did when they hit the hedgerows in '44, or take a look at the pictures of sandbags held by chicken wire to the front glacis of Sherman tanks. My point here is that we should design our JLTVs, and whatever else we're going to go to besides the MRAPs, and make sure our troopers aren't having to improvise in some other faraway place to keep themselves whole.
Tough Ethics Rules for Upcoming Obama Appointments
Colin has an excellent piece up on DoD Buzz that's generated a ton of conversation over there so I thought I might share it over here...
The Obama transition team has issued ethics guidelines that are likely to make it extremely difficult to attract qualified defense industry appointees.
“No political appointees would be able to work regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration,” the new guidelines say.
“You can understand the motivation behind it, but it’s not clear that you will get the best and brightest people who understand what needs to be done to serve in the government. As you know previous administrations have had great difficulty attracting people under the existing guidelines,” a procurement expert with experience in and out of government told me this morning.
The Aerospace Industries Association recently published a report, “Overcoming Barriers to Public Service,” on the difficulties of finding good people.
Three of the candidates for senior Pentagon positions — Paul Kaminski and Jacques Gansler for deputy secretary of Defense, and John Douglass for undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics — might well benefit from the Obama strictures. All three men are eminent in their field, none of them have worked for a defense company recently and all are old enough that they probably would not have to scramble for a high paying job in industry after they leave government.
-- Colin
Iraq Clearly NOT a Distraction from bin Laden Hunt
So, let me get this straight. Bush critics have been whining for years that the president wasn't doing enough to kill bin Laden and his deputies -- that he should essentially invade Pakistan, Syria and other places to kill him or Zawahiri if US officials get the right intel.
And now the New York Times -- after Obama wins largely on an anti-Bush referendum -- decides to publish a story that shows all the way back in 2004, the much-maligned Donald Rumsfeld secured an executive order form the president to allow the same kind of commando raids administration critics have been saying should have been pursued all along? And don't tell me the NYT didn't have a good portion of this story a month ago...this is an evergreen piece that didn't have any news hook to it other than the recent Syria raid, which is probably when Mazzetti and Schmitt fleshed out most of the sourcing.
Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries
WASHINGTON — The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.
These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.
In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.
Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A., according to senior American officials, who said that in others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of C.I.A.-directed operations.
But as many as a dozen additional operations have been canceled in the past four years, often to the dismay of military commanders, senior military officials said. They said senior administration officials had decided in these cases that the missions were too risky, were too diplomatically explosive or relied on insufficient evidence.
More than a half-dozen officials, including current and former military and intelligence officials as well as senior Bush administration policy makers, described details of the 2004 military order on the condition of anonymity because of its politically delicate nature. Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the military declined to comment.
Apart from the 2006 raid into Pakistan, the American officials refused to describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks, except to say they had been carried out in Syria, Pakistan and other countries. They made clear that there had been no raids into Iran using that authority, but they suggested that American forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives.
According to a senior administration official, the new authority was spelled out in a classified document called “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order, that streamlined the approval process for the military to act outside officially declared war zones. Where in the past the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days when there were only hours to act, the new order specified a way for Pentagon planners to get the green light for a mission far more quickly, the official said.
It was bitter cold. The harsh wind swept across their high mountain redoubt with only thin native blankets to shelter them from the bitter Afghan air. They were hours from resupply, carrying only what they could on their backs.
And that's just how they wanted it.
Peering through their high-tech spotting scopes and talking in low whispers to pilots above, the Delta Force operators high in the mountains of Tora Bora were warmed by the thought that they, more than anyone else in that desolate land, were killing more perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks than anyone else in the world.
For nearly a week, 40 of America's best trained, most elite Soldiers from the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, or "Delta Force," combed the 14,000 foot peaks with wavering Afghan militia allies to hunt down the world's most wanted man: Osama bin Laden. In a first ever account, the man who shepherded those bearded warriors into Tora Bora's thin mountain air writes of the near misses, frustrated plans and weak-kneed guerrillas that stymied their quest for al Qaeda's top commanders.
Writing under the name "Dalton Fury," the Delta Force commander -- a major at the time - gives a detailed look in "Kill bin Laden: A Delta Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man" how the unit prepared for, planned and executed its complicated mission.
For Delta, it was an unprecedented task. A force best know for lightning-fast counterterrorism raids, long range reconnaissance and high value target snatches, the operators on the Tora Bora mission had to work a hybrid plan that combined unconventional warfare, intelligence collection, long-range logistics and close air support - all while waiting for the call to swoop down on an Osama hideout at a moment's notice.
"We went into a hellish land that was considered impregnable and controlled by al Qaeda leaders who had helped defeat the Soviet Union," Fury writes. "We killed them by the dozen. Many more surrendered. ... And we heard the demoralized -- bin Laden speak on the radio, pleading for women and children to fight for him."
"Then he abandoned them all and ran from the battlefield," Fury adds with some satisfaction. "Yes. He ran away."
(Though Defense Tech knows Fury's true name, we will honor his wishes and not reveal it here and I have updated my previous post with the redaction.)
As Fury tells it, his Delta colleagues racked up an impressive body count and thought for a while they had actually killed the al Qaeda leader or his deputy. But a reader can clearly see between the lines of "Kill bin Laden" that Fury was frustrated with his unit's lack of success in killing their key target. While dropping JDAMs on terrorist caves was gratifying, Fury never mentions a single shot fired by his operators in the entire early December 2001 engagement -- cold comfort to some of the best combat marksmen in the world who were itching for an up-close fight.
Fury is also disappointed by his commanders' reluctance to engage his operators more into the fight, mandating the reliance on Afghan militias to do most of the heavy lifting. His unit proposed two plans to corner bin Laden. One involved a backdoor, high-altitude mountaineering assault from the Pakistan border, the other called for sowing GATOR anti-personnel mines along the most likely approaches and escape routes to stymie an al Qaeda escape long enough for a commando assault.
Both plans were rejected by higher headquarters -- or the White House -- and Fury was left to the worst possible alternative: a frontal assault.
"Kill bin Laden" is one of the most detailed and informative descriptions of a battle forgotten by most Americans, but one that was truly the closest the West gotten to bin Laden since 9/11. It's not the "tell all" of Eric Haney's "Inside Delta Force" but compares well with Gary Bernsten's "Jawbreaker" in it's revelation of black ops.
And that's where Fury has bumped into the most controversy. Some in the Army Special Force community have rejected Fury for his breach of Delta's code of silence - a written and un-written rule among operators that one never speaks to outsiders of their endeavors. Credible online forums have already revealed Fury's true name, ignoring his pleas for anonymity for fear of endangering his family.
Fury declined several requests for an interview with Defense Tech to discuss this issue and details of his book.
Revealing his missions and opening Delta to the world in even this small way has earned "Kill bin Laden" scorn from portions of the special operations community. But Fury's critics never dispute his facts.
So give "Kill bin Laden" a read; the author did the American public a service by explaining to the victims of 9/11 how America tried to kill the mastermind behind that horrifying day, and it could serve to remind us all that "enemy number one" is still out there - and so is Delta, hunting him to the ends of the Earth.
-- Christian
Say Hello to Soldier Systems Daily and the FR Shemagh
Defense Tech is proud to announce the arrival of a new regular contributor to our blog.
You've seen a couple of his posts pimped here, but we've just brought on board Eric from Soldier Systems Industry Daily blog to help us get the word out on technical developments in the personal military and tactical equipment arena.
Eric brings 20 years of military experience to the Web -- split evenly between the Army and Air Force -- and much of that in the special operations world. Soldier Systems is a tapped in crew, pulling gouge from the industry and the services way before the competition.
We're thrilled to have them join us in a collaborative effort to bring the most relevant and cutting-edge gear innovations to Defense Tech readers -- stuff we all hope will help you folks in your worldly endeavors.
Manufactured from lightweight Acclimate® FR 100% Flame Resistant no melt cotton, the new XGO is the first FR Shemagh ever. The material passed the American Society for Testing and Materials vertical flame resistance test (ASTM 6413-99). What is just as fantastic is that the Shemagh is treated with Ag47 Silver Antimicrobial treatment to fight odor that builds up from using the Shemagh day after day in a hot dusty environment. It exceeds the standard for antimicrobial resistance in accordance with American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists test for determination of antimicrobial effect (AATCC 100).
This isn't some cheapo shemagh you buy down the souk, these are 100% American made. They have barely hit the market and have already been adopted as part of the BAMS kit.
Currently available in Tan and Coyote versions, XGO is capable of doing custom runs of colors and patterns. For more info, contact XGO on the web.
Again, please welcome Eric from Soldier Systems Daily to our growing list of contributors.
-- Christian
Live With Cyber Security Expert Kevin Coleman
Don't Forget Today's Cyber Security Q&A
Please be sure to join Kevin Coleman on a live online Q&A this afternoon.
-- Christian
Sharing the Indians' Lunch---REMOVED
It now looks as if the "user" who posted these videos removed them from YouTube...if anyone knows how to dig up cached versions please let me know and we'll post again.
This is one of the most fascinating lectures I've seen in a long time.
Remember when the aviation press (and we) splashed across their pages the fact that the Indian Air Force had scrubbed the floor with US Air Force F-15s and F-16s in their shiny new export Su-30s back in 2005?
Well, this guy flew in a more recent air training battle with the Indians out at Red Flag and talked about the ins and outs of the Su-30 vs the F-15. I won't pretend to try and explain his comments for you, take the time to watch his presentation and see for yourself the treasure trove of information on one of Russia's most impressive combat aircraft.
He also talks about some of the reasons why the US did so poorly in '05 over in India.
(And make sure to watch minute 8:18 on part one for a look at how to kill a Raptor)...
(NOTE: New Link)
And Part II...(REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE)
(Gouge: NC)
-- Christian
A Word from the Bossman
Ward posted a very thoughtful commentary on Military.com yesterday that I thought all of you who are fans of the Bossman might like to take a look at...
In the last pre-presidential election poll Military.com ran earlier this week, 78 percent of our readers picked John McCain over Barack Obama. In a poll conducted the following day, the leading answer to the question "What issue was the most important to you as you voted for president" was "the economy" (39 percent) – even more important than "the wars" (32 percent). Juxtaposing these two polls not only yields one of the answers to how Obama won the election, it also shows the degree to which Americans, even Americans with war fighting experience, are convinced Jihadist elements are no longer an imminent threat.
On the morning after the election the pundits sum up the results with the idea that Barack Obama's victory is one of hope over fear. And assuming that's true, the ability for a people to carry that out is a luxury that shouldn't be taken for granted.
Contrast this presidential election with the one held four years ago. The year 2004 has faded as a distant memory now, but think back: That the Rovian-style political operatives were able to leverage fear in Americans to win a second term for George W. Bush says more about the fact that Americans were actually scared at that time than it does about the hired guns ability to affect outcomes at will.
In 2004 the Iraq War was going poorly. Casualty rates were high. The insurgency was proliferating. Al Qaeda was blooming in new places, and Bin Laden and his confidants were releasing messages at a regular clip. Major European cities were weathering terrorist attacks.
America wasn't scared because Karl Rove told it to be. America was scared because the times were scary to the degree that the majority of voters feared a change at the top. Four years later not only has that fear faded, it is all but gone from the national consciousness.
That fear started fading the minute George W. Bush stopped staying the course. It continued to fade with the removal of Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of Defense (an effort we might forget was championed by John McCain) and the appointment of Gen. David Petraeus as the commander of the multi-national force in Iraq. It faded with the Anbar Awakening and other tribal gains facilitated by counter-insurgency experts and great military figures like Army Col. H. R. McMaster and Marine Capt. Seth Moulton. And it faded with the decision of an obdurate commander-in-chief who elected to "double down" in the face of conventional wisdom and the advice of his military leadership and implement the Surge.
And this trend was underwritten by the efforts of the men and women of the U.S. military and their families – efforts not just in Iraq but in a refocused Afghanistan mission and in troubled places like the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, the Korean Peninsula, and the all the world's oceans. Since hostilities began with Operation Enduring Freedom in the fall of 2001, members of the all-volunteer force have repeatedly gone into harm's way for upwards of 15 months at a time. Their efforts allowed a majority of voting Americans to feel, as Election Day exit polls indicated, that the wars are all but over. And that sense suppressed fear and afforded hope.
Let's allow the pundits their thesis. Hope won over fear this week, and that's good. We should strive to always be a nation of hope. Hope brings out our better nature as a people and makes us a rightful example to the rest of the world. So here's to hope – the hope of which third-world refugees at gunpoint can only dream. This hope fuels the way forward, a new direction full of promise and buoyed by optimism. But as we fervantly celebrate hope on talk shows, on campuses, in the streets, and on our Facebook pages, let's be mindful of what it took to create it.
We did this a while back pretty successfully and so I thought it was high time to do it again (and hopefully more frequently)...
As you might remember, we had DoD Buzz editor Colin Clark do a live Q&A session with DT readers back in July. Well, we're doing it again -- this time with our Cyber Warfare/Cyber Security expert and contributor Kevin Coleman.
As you've read, Kevin's one tapped in dude when it comes to cyber threats and the techniques to meet and defeat them. Cyber warfare is becoming more and more of an issue in national security circles, competing with loose nukes as a top threat to U.S. security for key Obama defense advisor Richard Danzig.
Kevin teases his discussion with this:
Cyber attacks and cyber warfare are hot issues in both the public and private sectors.
Earlier this year, President George W. Bush signed multiple (2 or 3) classified Presidential Directives addressing cyber security and warfare. The price tag on the directives was first reported at $6.6 billion (January). In March the estimate grew to $18 billion. Reported last in May the pricetag had mushroomed to $30 billion.
A Congressional study has estimated the cost of cyber attacks on businesses now exceeds $225 billion annually. Given all the bailout money being handed out, many businesses believe the Federal Government should absorb the cost of defending our businesses against cyber attacks.
Now some of you think Kevin is off the mark on his cyber security assessments and some of you cheer his foresight in sounding the alarm. So, here's your chance to talk to the man himself.
Tune in tomorrow, Nov. 6, 2008, at 1500 EST on this site to participate in a live Q&A with Kevin Coleman.
See you then...
-- Christian
Russia's Waving its Missiles Around Again...
From the headlines at Military.com:
Russia will deploy missiles near NATO member Poland in response to U.S. missile defense plans, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday in his first state of the nation speech.
Medvedev also singled out the United States for criticism, casting Russia's war with Georgia in August and the global financial turmoil as consequences of aggressive, selfish U.S. policies.
He said he hoped the next U.S. administration would act to improve relations. In a separate telegram, he congratulated Barack Obama on his election victory and said he was hoping for "constructive dialogue" with the incoming U.S. president.
Medvedev also proposed increasing the Russian presidential term to six years from the current four, a major constitutional change that would further increase the power of the head of state and could deepen Western concern over democracy in Russia.
The president said the Iskander missiles will be deployed to Russia's Kaliningrad region, which lies between Poland and the ex-Soviet republic of Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, but did not say how many would be used. Equipment to electronically hamper the operation of prospective U.S. missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic will be deployed, he said.
He did not say whether the short-range Iskander missiles would be fitted with nuclear warheads and it was not clear exactly when the missiles would be deployed.
"Mechanisms must be created to block mistaken, egoistical and sometimes simply dangerous decisions of certain members of the international community," he said shortly after starting the 85-minute speech, making it clear he was referring to the United States.
The president said Georgia sparked the August war on its territory with what he called "barbaric aggression" against Russian-backed South Ossetia. The conflict "was, among other things, the result of the arrogant course of the American administration, which did not tolerate criticism and preferred unilateral decisions."
Medvedev also painted Russia as a country threatened by growing Western military might.
-- Christian
So Now What?
Here's Av Week's impression of where Obama will go with defense:
Obama promises to put "people first" in the military and bring major combat operations in Iraq to a close over the next few years. He wants to boost the National Guard and reserves, from personnel to equipment, and emphasize diplomatic efforts to promulgate U.S. interests abroad. But most importantly to the U.S. aerospace and defense industry - as well the foreign-based firms - Obama openly declares his desire to subdue the so-called military industrial complex that has long irked liberal advocates.
An Obama administration will "place our troops before CEOs, reining in military outsourcing and restoring honesty, openness, and economic good sense to our defense contracting and budgeting processes," according to a recently updated campaign Web site position.
"Negative trends in recruitment and retention threaten the strength of the all-volunteer force," the Obama campaign says. "In allowing this to occur, President Bush is repeating mistakes made at the end of the Vietnam War that 'hollowed out' our force. An Obama administration will rebuild a military that has been pushed to the breaking point."
Combined, the platform of Obama and running mate Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) paints a person-over-program picture, although the Democrats assert their willingness to develop, buy and equip the U.S. military with the best weapons and technology. But even there, Obama will favor admittedly blander programs that make for the backbone of global operations rather than high-profile fighters and attack aircraft.
"We must preserve our unparalleled airpower capabilities to deter and defeat any conventional competitors, swiftly respond to crises across the globe, and support our ground forces," the Democratic candidate says.
"We must adapt and make tradeoffs among systems originally designed for the Cold War and those required for current and future challenges. We need greater investment in advanced technology ranging from the revolutionary, like unmanned aerial vehicles and electronic warfare capabilities, to systems like the C-17 cargo and KC-X air refueling aircraft--which may not be glamorous to politicians, but are the backbone of our future ability to extend global power," the Obama camp says.
Nevertheless, rather than wholesale upheaval, changes to the Pentagon's budget, force structure and military capabilities are likely to come in measured amounts as the U.S. faces wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as continuing counter-terrorism efforts around the world and at home. As Aviation Week reported in late June, the next president will face mounting economic and budgetary pressures that will weigh on their defense policies as much or more than just the post-9-11 concerns of the Bush administration.
-- Christian
SEALs for President!
After staying up late watching the polls, I need a quick switch out of politics.
So here's a cool vid to help you all deal with the political hangover. Call it a post-election Gatorade.
-- Christian
The Last Election Poll You'll Take (This Year)
OK, you guys knew I had to do this. But I thought it would be fun to run an election poll here since we have so many international readers.
Make sure to comment on why you think your candidate is the better pick, we can at least take advantage of the discussion one more day, right?
ALERT: Make sure to tune in to WAVY TV.com tonight between 8:00pm and 10:00pm to participate in the online chat with Military.com Editor, DT contributor and my boss Ward Carroll as he discusses the impact of the election on the military community.
-- Christian
Mind Control -- For Real
Dr. Parmentola mentioned this video a colleague of his sent to him the other day, so I tracked it down and embeded it here for DT readers.
I just got finished reading an excellent SciFi book titled "Old Man's War" (I had already read the "Ghost Brigades") and it talks about a brain-embedded computer called a "brain pal." Well, it looks like we're closer to that than many had once thought.
-- Christian
Army Working on Science's Outer Limits
It's like something out of "The Terminator." Self-aware virtual humans, regenerating body parts on "nano-scaffolding," mind controlled weapons - all the stuff of movie robots, comic heroes and otherworldly tomes.
But for some, this kind of higher-than-high tech is as real as life and death.
Dr. John Parmentola, Director of Research and Laboratory Management with the Army's science and technology office, told military bloggers Nov. 3 that the Army is "making science fiction into reality" by creating realistic holographic images, generating virtual humans and diving into quantum computing.
It may sound like a trailer for the next "Star Trek" installment, but Parmentola is deadly serious.
For the last several years, the Army has kept a close eye on research into areas of science that might have once been called "paranormal;" its practitioners drummed out of the academy as kooks and nut-jobs. But now the idea of implanting specific memories or erasing damaging ones, for example, isn't mere fantasy.
Dr. Joe Tsien, a neurobiologist at the Medical College of Georgia and co-director of the Brain Discovery Institute, has been able to erase certain memories from mice subjected to traumatic experiences in a laboratory environment, Parmentola said. From a practical standpoint, the Army could use this kind of technology to help Soldiers who've been psychologically scarred by staring death straight in the eye.
"You can imagine people who have horrifying memories, it would be great if we could eliminate them so this way they're not plagued by these memories uncontrollably," Parmentola said. "We have Soldiers that have this problem, like PTSD and traumatic brain injury, but there are many other examples that occur in the civilian world."
The Army plans to highlight Tsien's and other research into the ragged edges of science fiction at the 26th Army Science Conference in Orlando next month, where experts in neurorobotics, high-tech computer displays and quantum physics will explain how Soldiers could benefit from the types of radical science most have only seen on episodes of the "X-Files."
Take mind communication, for example. Experiments have shown that certain thoughts generate electrical impulses on the surface of the scalp, Parmentola said. Think commandos who can stealthily communicate without using their voice or Soldiers who control weapons with their thoughts from a distance over a wireless connection.
"You could wear a cap that is sensitive to these electrical impulses, pick up the pattern and amplify those small signals send it over a wire [or wirelessly] connect it to a device," Parmentola said. "So if you think of a thought 'turn on,' it will automatically turn on a computer or that device."
Or how about regenerative medicine? Parmentola said researchers aren't far away from being able to grow back body parts - both internal organs and limbs - that have been lost in combat or other accidents. The technique focuses on the use if molecular-sized particles that act as a kind of scaffolding to support the growth of body tissue - say, a finger - and dissolves as the biological material solidifies.
It's not that unlike what a salamander can do when it loses a limb.
"We're beginning to understand how this occurs and if we can, it holds the hope of, being able to regrow limbs on people," Parmentola said.
Then some of this space-aged research takes a turn into the Einsteinian world of quantum mechanics and particle physics - places most mere mortals who simply hump hills with ammo-laden rucks fear to tread.
"Quantum ghost imaging," for example, is as complicated as it sounds. Basically it's a phenomenon of physics that allows images to be rendered through the pairing of photons that do not reflect or bounce off an object, but off of other photons that did, thereby creating a sort of "ghost" image of it. This technology would enable the Army to generate images of personnel and equipment through clouds and smoke.
"It's like having a tracing tool … that goes over the image and that's connected to another one on a piece of paper that exactly imitates what it is that you are tracing with the other pen," Parmentola said. "It takes advantage of a remarkable property of quantum mechanics to try and do this."
And if you do end up at the Army Science Conference next month, don't be startled by the three-dimensional holographic image of a soldier talking to you (not that the regenerated arm, mind-controlled computer or implanted memories won't freak you out enough) as you walk down the hall. It might just be the virtual human Army researchers are creating to make simulators and war games more realistic for training, Parmentola said.
They're working on creating "photorealistic looking and acting human beings" that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang.
"I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they're responding," Parmentola said.
To test out the computer generated humans' "humanity," Parmentola and his researchers want to unleash some of their cyber Soldiers into so-called "massively multi-player online games" such as "World of Warcraft" or "Eve Online" - games frequented by thousands of super-competitive human players in teams of virtual characters fighting battles that can last for days.
"We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they're good enough to convince humans that they're actually human," he said.
-- Christian
The (Face) Paint of Darkness
The guys over at the Soldier Systems blog have a cool entry on face paints that can help a warfighter hide from enemy passive night vision systems.
Here's what they've got:
REDEYE™ and BLACKEYE™ camouflage compounds are formulated to eliminate or minimize hazardous reflected "green light" emitted from phosphorous screens on Night Vision Devices. Both of these compounds appear "invisible/black" when viewed by a passive enemy Night Vision Device.
GREENEYE™ face paint has a signature identical to green vegetation when viewed at night through a passive NVG and/or using an IR Illuminator. It also appears as green in visible light.
Now the site over at Orion Filters, which makes the NVG-beating paint, is all cagey and top secret...it takes a few steps to get to the info and I'm not sure how open the whole site really is. But the folks at Soldier Systems got the gouge somehow and if it's straight up (which usually their info is) this is a development that could have far reaching implications -- for American troops and their enemies.
It seems from Orion's write up that the face paint can help minimize the reflective light against an operator's face when he's using NVGs...and the green paint actually helps make him invisible to a vegitative backdrop.
There's already been the incorporation of "nano" fibers in Army and Marine Corps body armor that helps reduce reflectivity of ambient light, but that technology is by no means an invisible cloak. The addition of the Orion Filters face paint and other compounds, however, could help make US and allied forces truly "ghosts of the night."
This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.
The next U.S. president could move forward with a new competition to buy the Air Force's much-needed aerial tanker replacements with an idea quietly crafted this fall at the Pentagon as a potential compromise.
But, for now, the idea has been dashed amid the political firestorm over the $35 billion program.
Pentagon acquisition chief John Young says his team discussed the notion of a new strategy to judge the existing KC-X proposals put forth by rivals Northrop Grumman/EADS North America and Boeing.
The new concept was proffered inside the Pentagon, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates eventually decided to shelve the tanker competition and declare a "cooling off" period before proceeding.
The new strategy would include two phases. In the first, both proposals – which met all of the key requirements of the KC-X competition – would be declared "technically compliant," Young says. Both offers satisfied threshold requirements on fuel carriage, range and cargo and troop transport among others.
Second phase
But one complexity in the last competition was how to value nearly 800 smaller requirements that were not weighted prior to the outset of the source selection.
In the second phase, the Pentagon would then focus on value. The Defense Department would request a best and final offer from both bidders for the development and procurement of the first 68 (of 179) aircraft. The winner would be selected on the best total combined cost, he says.
Based on the previous competition, Northrop's combined cost for development and first units was $12.5 billion compared to Boeing's $15.4 billion. Boeing's proposal was based on modifications to its 767-200 while Northrop's was a version of the Airbus A330-200.
"If we went back for a best price proposal from both of those teams, we would get better prices," Young says.
He notes that lifecycle cost would be too thorny because of fluctuations in areas outside the Pentagon's control. For example, the price of oil recently dropped, dramatically reducing the lifecycle cost of both aircraft. However, fuel efficiency of the two bids were different, and given the challenge of projecting such costs in the future, Young says the simplest way of conducting a price competition is to focus solely on the up-front price associated with developing and buying the first aircraft.
Young asserts this strategy could be useful as the Pentagon embarks on other programs that build off of commercially available products. Still, some lawmakers are pushing the concept of buying both designs and splitting procurement between the two production lines.
'Very bad decision'
Top Air Force officials have previously and repeatedly said the service's budget cannot bear the cost of both developments. Furthermore, buying two designs at once would require the Pentagon to operate five tanker models simultaneously until one is retired. These would be the massive KC-135 fleet (which is the first to be replaced), the KC-130, KC-10 and the two new variants.
Jake Tapper: Gates a 
Sometimes it helps to look backwards instead of forwards. Enter the Rhodesian Pookie, an ugly little contraption that helped clear roads and highways during the 
This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.
This article first appeared at Aviation Week.com. 
This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.
