Exclusive: Raytheon Wins Big Bucks for Missile Radar Move
Raytheon Co. won a $400 million Pentagon contract this week to move a missile defense radar from the Marshall Islands to the Czech Republic.
So far, the company has only received about $5 million to start planning for the transfer. But more work under the contract could be in train before long -- a Missile Defense Agency spokesman said Thursday that a permission deal with the Czech Republic could come "within weeks."
The U.S. wants to put an X-band radar in the Czech Republic to work with a missile interceptor site in Poland, to defend Europe against attack from Iran. Neither Poland nor the Czech Republic has given final go-ahead, however, and Russia continues to oppose the deal. For its part, the U.S. insists the interceptors would pose no threat to Russia, or even change the current military balance between Russia and Europe.
Raytheon's new award is an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract that extends through 2013. The initial task order covers money only for "site surveys, studies, analysis, planning, design, and similar activities," as provided for in the 2008 defense budget. Congress restricted what MDA can spend on the plan until the host countries have given the all-clear.
The X-band radar that will be used in the Czech site comes from the Marshall Islands, where it has been for about a decade. MDA says that radar is no longer needed for U.S. missile defense testing, which has moved away from the Marshall Islands to California and Alaska. So Raytheon will disassemble it, upgrade it and move it to Europe.
Because the radar has already been built, there won't be that many opportunities for local industry. But Raytheon says it's already talking to Czech officials about ways to get local workers involved in the project.
Official announcements of the new contract are expected in coming days from Raytheon and from MDA. The Defense Department announced the deal in one of its daily contract roundups. Earlier this year, Boeing received a similar contract to begin work on its plans for the Polish interceptor site.
-- Rebecca Christie
An Interview With Gen. P
Sometimes I can pull a rabbit out of a hat...
I had this scheduled for the last day of my embed in Iraq but was grounded in Baqubah because of weather and missed it. But he graciously rescheduled, and we're happy to bring it to you literally hours after we spoke with the man in charge on the ground in Iraq.
Click HERE to listen to the PodCast from the Editor's Desk with Gen. David Petraeus.
-- Christian
EXCLUSIVE: Army Delays New Body Armor Test
Here's a story we're posting tomorrow morning at Military.com, but I thought I'd give DT readers a little preview. It's like manna from heaven: an M4 story and a body armor story all in one week!
FROM TOMORROW MORNING'S MILITARY.COM FRONT PAGE:
The Army has opted to delay testing of new body armor designs that can stop powerful armor piercing bullets and vests that contain flexible plating much like the controversial Dragon Skin armor.
Citing industry requests, the Army's top gear buyer told Military.com the test firing on so-called XSAPI and FSAPI armor would be held off until March 2008.
"Some body armor manufacturers told us they needed a little more time to get long-lead materials and to test new designs before they could submit them to us," said Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, head of the Fort Belvoir, Va.-based Program Executive Office Soldier.
Brown said the new armor designs would likely be tested at Aberdeen Test Center, Md., beginning in March and finished up by June. Testing on the new designs was previously set to begin last fall.
Well, the results are in...and it doesn't look good for the M4 carbine.
You'll remember that Defense Tech and Military.com were on top of the story of worries over the M4's reliability in the dusty conditions found in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn insisted the Army conduct side-by-side testing between the M4, SCAR, 416 and XM8 in an "extreme" dust environment.
Well, the tests are complete and it seems the M4 came in dead last against its competitors. And, guess what...the Army's not budging. The M4 is still the best.
I'll have the full story posted tomorrow morning at Military.com, but here's a preview: Ten of each weapon; 6,000 rounds per weapon; 120 rounds fired per "dust cycle" (and when they say dust, they mean DUST...testers had to wear respirators and Tyvec suits); wiped and light lube every 600 rounds, fully cleaned and lubed every 1,200 rounds.
XM8: 127 Class I, II and III stoppages. Mk16 (5.56 SCAR): 226 Class I, II and III stoppages. HK 416: 233 Class I, II, and III stoppages. M4: 882 Class I, II and III stoppages.
Army top gear buyer, Brig. Gen. Mark Brown: "The M4 carbine is a world-class weapon. Soldiers "have high confidence in that weapon, and that high confidence level is justified, in our view, as a result of all test data and all investigations we have made."
An "in the know" congressional staffer: "These results are stunning, and frankly they are significantly more dramatic than most weapons experts expected. It's time to stop making excuses and just conduct a competition for a new weapon."
Be sure to check out the full story tomorrow morning at Military.com.
It was the cause du jour for the 110th Congress; a silver bullet that would save lives in an increasingly unpopular war, make even the most superfluous lawmaker look like they were on top of defense issues, and bolster the military credentials of any Pentagon-hostile Capitol Hill denizen.
It even had a catchy acronym: MRAP.
The so-called "Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected" vehicle became the latest symbol of the Bush administration's callous treatment of men and women in uniform--it was the new "body armor shortage" issue. And the "V-shaped hull" behemoths were easy to latch onto for lawmakers looking for a hardened steel club to batter the White House's handling of the war and equipping of America's troops.
"This is outrageous and another example of this Administration's gross mismanagement of this war. Our troops are being killed and these vehicles save lives. No more delays; no more excuses," Democratic presidential candidate and outspoken MRAP advocate Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said in an August 24 statement.
Most people didn't realize that MRAP vehicles were already in the Iraqi theater--used primarily by explosive ordnance disposal units that cruised the main supply routes for roadside bombs. When the issue exploded into the political debate, however, Congress flooded the Pentagon with money and mandates to outfit nearly every patrol with the IED-hardened vehicle--with some calling for a one-for-one replacement of up-armored Humvees.
A new defense secretary fresh out of confirmation hearings and eager to make nice with a Democratic Congress acceded to lawmakers' demands and launched a crash program to get as many MRAPs to the field as industry and logistics could bear.
But if anyone spoke for caution in this plan (and I was one of them), they were quickly shouted down as chicken hawks--dismissed as ignorant of the risks and deadly violence of plying Iraq's bomb-strewn roads.
But now the game has changed. Finally sober minds are beginning to prevail and the services are finding the courage to push back. Let's say the surge gave them the "breathing room" to take a moment to really examine whether these vehicles fit their battle plans or were, as one defense researcher termed them, just a "million dollar Kleenex."
To be sure, MRAPs have their place in a counterinsurgency. The Marine Corps was blamed early this year for taking too long to purchase their MRAPs. But the head of the Corps' Systems Command, which buys all Marine gear, rightly called the MRAP a "boutique vehicle"--one that had very specific uses but could not be employed in place of Humvees in all cases. In October, the first fissures emerged in the MRAP debate when Marine Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson revealed Marine commanders in Iraq were asking Pentagon leaders to slow down their shipment of the vehicles to Iraq. The vehicles come in three different sizes--from 10 to 25 tons--and even the smallest versions are too heavy for some bridges and roads and too wide for village streets. Nevertheless, the Pentagon, at the behest of Congress, began to flood the zone with orders, shipping the vehicles almost as soon as they came off the line.
"I would say 'relax.' We don't know how we're going to use them, nobody does," Nicholson told me. "And anyone who says 'this is exactly how many we need and this is exactly how we're going to use them' is not being truthful."
Nicholson was speaking for Marine commanders, but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to figure his sentiment was shared by Army leaders in Iraq as well.
Many also wondered how the large, intimidating vehicles would work in a counterinsurgency campaign that emphasized interaction with the population and a "hearts-and-minds" approach. Not to mention that if the surge strategy worked, the IED risk to troops would drop and billions would have been spent on a vehicle that had outlived its usefulness.
"Our concern is there seems to be this rush to judgment on spending a fairly large amount of money on a program that hadn't been planned for and not much discussion about how you actually plan to operationalize this and incorporate it into the force," said Dakota Wood, former Marine transport officer and co-author of the CSBA analysis report "Of MRAPs and IEDs: Force Protection in Complex Irregular Operations."
Unfortunately, any reasonable approach to fielding these vehicles was shouted down by war opponents.
But since arguments against the surge are harder to come by these days, the services are taking the first steps in slowing the MRAP freight train. Late last month, the Marine Corps announced it would cut 1,300 vehicles from its order, saving the Pentagon $1.7 billion and removing the logistical headache of moving the weighty vehicles to the field and trying to find something to do with them.
"What's happened since September of 2006 has been absolutely amazing by most counts. We have not lost nearly the numbers of vehicles that we were experiencing because attacks have gone down dramatically," said Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway at a Pentagon press conference a few days ago. "And I will say that in incorporating greater use of the vehicles, we found that especially the heavy variants don't give us the combat flexibility that a smaller, lighter vehicle does. And commanders in the field have said off-road, you know, it's just a little problematic in places."
"That we could save the government $1.7 billion with a decision, that would have us scratching our head about what we're going to do with this excess number of vehicles then in five years," Conway added, "seems to me, it's all win-win."
And now, apparently, Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the number two commander in Iraq, is questioning whether his service needs its 10,000 MRAP order (down from 17,000 earlier this year). He told USA Today this week that with the success of the surge and the increase in tips and other intel on IEDs, the need for MRAPs has waned.
He's going to chat with his commanders in the field to see what they need at this point, a realistic reaction to a changing security environment that many MRAP backers on Capitol Hill refused to believe possible.
And for now, Congress hasn't whimpered that its sage military advice is being ignored.
"Those [in Congress] that we contacted who, again, were our supporters, sort of nodded and said, 'well, it made sense.' Another one said, 'well, I always thought we were buying too many.' Another said, 'you know, if you don't need it, why would you spend $1.7 billion of taxpayer money to go ahead and make the purchase?'" Conway recalled. "So at least at this point, we haven't heard anything negative coming out of the Congress."
-- Christian
DT Takes a First Hand Look at Army Weapons
One of the distinct advantages of working for a place like Military.com and Defense Tech is that on occasion you get to spend a day at the firing range slingin' lead from the latest in military weaponry.
Our boy Bryant Jordan went down to Blackwater USA to test fire the Kriss .45 cal. submachine gun a couple weeks ago, and I just had the pleasure of spending the day out at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland getting some trigger time on a variety of weapons the service is pushing to troops in the field.
First of all, it's a big deal to even be allowed on base at Aberdeen. Some of the U.S. military's most closely-held testing and evaluation of armor, ballistics and explosives goes on there and officials are loath to let anyone in - especially the press - to get even a preliminary glance at what they're up to.
But thanks to an invitation from the Fort Belvoir, Va.-based PEO Soldier, Aberdeen opened its doors on Wednesday for a small group of journalists to come out and learn more about Army weapons. On hand were program managers, test directors, engineers and everyday Joes to answer questions and give the ground truth on what's being developed.
Testers showed off six different systems either already deployed to the field or ready to be fielded with units in the Sandbox, including:
XM320 Grenade Launcher - Pretty close to my favorite one to shoot, the XM320 is a major upgrade for the M203, 40mm grenade
slinger attached to the barrel of M4s and M-16s. Finally H&K has gotten through to the Army about its side-eject under-barrel grenade launcher. The Army plans to field about 71,600 XM320s in a one-to-one replacement of the M203 beginning in late 2008 … and it's a good thing. The XM320 can be detached from your combat rifle and fired as a stand-alone weapon (which is how we fired it at Aberdeen) but I'll tell you, it's tough to handle in that configuration for tall people like me since the butt stock doesn't extend very far.
The best part of the system, however, is the integrated electronic sighting system that comes with it. Developed by Insight Technology, the optic uses an iron sight reticule that's precision balanced. A soldier uses a hand-held range finder to determine the distance to a target, dials in the yardage in five-yard intervals on the XM320 sight and a handy green/red light and digital bar tells the shooter whether he's on target and shooting level. I hit the target at 150 yards on my first shot. The rifle-mounted laser illuminator can be used at night with the system to find a target even in darkness, making the new grenade launcher far more effective in all conditions, said Maj. Larry Dring, assistant product manager for individual weapons with PEO Soldier.
M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun System (MASS) - Here was another modular weapon that's pretty cool, but a little more
difficult to use than the grenade launcher. Mounted under the combat rifle - or configured as a stand-alone weapon using a standard M4 pistol grip and collapsible butt stock, the M26 is designed to fire both standard 12 gauge rounds and non-lethal munitions. The M26 has an extendable choke-tube that allows the shooter to place breeching rounds against a door frame from a safe distance with the shotgun attached to his rifle - a method that eases the transition between shotgun and rifle in combat situation, said Sgt. 1st Class William Kone, test and evaluation NCO at Aberdeen.
That's all well and good, but I found the cocking mechanism to be clunky and inefficient. Instead of an under-barrel pump-gun style action, a metal bar attached to the bolt extends out to the side, forcing the shooter to transition his hand position to load another round into the breach. I'm sure with practice, I could have gotten as fast on the action as Kone, but I wasn't the only one with that complaint. The Army plans to field 38,000 MASSs beginning in late 2008 to replace its Mossberg 12ga. pump guns.
Read the rest of my weapons report from the Aberdeen range at Military.com's Warfighter's Forum
A quick head's up here. My friend Paul Solman, the economics correspondent for PBS's News Hour show, just broadcast his package on the body armor procurement controversy.
While he doesn't mention Defense Tech by name, he did afford us a screen shot and pulled documents from my previous work on the story with Marine Corps Times newspaper.
Our editorial schedule will be a little off-kilter for the next few days. We'll be covering the annual Air Force Association "Air and Space" conference in Washington, D.C., from Sept. 24 to the 26th.
We'll try a little of the "live blogging" thing, but there still might be some lag time for the material as we cut the wheat from the chaff to deliver nothing but the most relevant info to our readers.
Keep coming back throughout the next couple of days for updates on AFA news.
First of all, I want to thank all you DT readers for your incredibly insightful discussions regarding the latest spat over Dragon Skin. It’s such a pleasure to edit a site that draws such informed conversations that actually help drive the story forward.
So a big pat on the back to our readers, we appreciate it.
In fact, one of our savvy readers helped push the debate even further by tipping DT off on a whole new class of body armor that simply puts Dragon Skin – and, frankly, all others to shame.
“Foreign.Boy” wondered why in the heck DT readers weren’t discussing the “Trojan Armor” system, invented by armor expert extraordinaire Troy Hurtubise. With all this hoopla about how Dragon Skin is the new wonder armor, how could such well-informed readers ignore the cutting-edge performance of this as yet unnoticed system?
After viewing the scientifically-precise laboratory field tests for myself, I cannot help but agree whole heartedly with (may I go so far as to call him my “colleague?”) – “Foreign.Boy.”
Watch a report on the new suit below (and don’t mind the weird cover shot on the video screen).
(Be sure to read the continued entry, you won't be disappointed.)
So I’ve dug and zorched around the net based on FB’s suggestion. And here DT readers can view for themselves in wonderment at this new armor. I’m sure you’ll all agree that the folks over a PEO Soldier would be smart to drop everything they’re doing and launch a “Manhattan Project”-style rapid fielding initiative to get the Trojan Armor on our boys in the Box.
And, oh, from all of us at Defense Tech - have a great Memorial Day weekend, folks. I’ll leave you with this added video we dug up showing Hurtubise testing early prototypes of the suit. Thank goodness he made such life-saving improvements!
Dragon Skin vs. Army
The war between Pinnacle Armor and the Army went nuclear this week as NBC News claimed that Pinnacle's innovative "Dragon Skin" armor is far superior to the vest the Army currently issues to soldiers.
The report shows test conducted by NBC that seem to prove the vest - as its proponents have claimed over the last several years - can take many more rifle shots than the Army's Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts.
But Army officials disclosed to Military.com that in a series of tests conducted by the service in May of last year, the Dragon Skin vest failed to stop bullets as well as the current Army armor. In fact, test results showed that bullets slipped through the vest as early as the second shot.
"The bottom line is that Dragon Skin by Pinnacle catastrophically failed to meet the requirement," said Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, the head of the Fort Belvoir, Va.-based Program Executive Office Soldier, in a May 17 interview.
Pinnacle's president Murray Neal told Military.com the tests were flawed and that Army testers were unsure how to adequately evaluate his technology - which uses a series of small ceramic disk "scales" to cover the entire torso.
He called Army claims that his vests failed "a bold-faced lie" and said the service is embarrassed to admit its current armor isn't the best out there.
The Army's ESAPI is a rigid ceramic plate about 12-inches high and six inches wide. Soldiers wear front and back plates and two smaller side plates, all of which are designed to stop armor piercing AK-47 rounds found in the war zone.
The controversy went public last March when the Army issued a so-called "Safety of Use Message" that banned all store-bought armor, and specifically stated that Dragon Skin did not meet the service's requirement for ballistic protection.
At the urging of Capitol Hill, the Army bought 30 Dragon Skin vests in May of 2006 and put them through a standard "first article" test to see if the armor could hold up to the same ballistic conditions its current-issued ESAPIs must endure during certification.
According to Karl Masters, one of the Army's top ballistics experts, the Dragon Skin failed to stop a 7.62 x 63mm APM2 round on the second shot of the test.
"We ran this vest through the exact same test protocol that every ESAPI supplier goes through," Masters said. "Can you meet the ESAPI requirement or not? That's the question."
Neal argued in a release after last year's tests that Masters and another Army ballistics expert were dumbfounded by the "flexible armor system" and weren't sure where to place the shots for the test.
"Deviation from the ESAPI test protocols and procedures tool place by the selection of shot placements of APM2 rounds around the ceramics in non-rifle defeating areas," Neal said in a written statement.
But Army officials said the shots were aimed at the same areas for ESPI testing and that the first penetration would typically have been the end of the "sudden death" test.
Engineers agreed to continue with the evaluation, however, subjecting separate Dragon Skin vests to submersion in oil, salt water, extreme cold and extreme heat.
Army data shows 13 complete penetrations or unacceptable back-face deformations - where the bullet doesn't go all the way through but causes enough of a dent that it would result in serious trauma - on four failed vests.
The tests were held in mid-May at H.P. White labs, a respected ballistics testing facility in Street, Md. H.P. White is the same test lab where the Army evaluates all its armor components, preferring not to use the Army-run Aberdeen Proving Ground ranges to fend off accusations of bias.
More troubling to Army testers was the near complete delamination of the disks from the Kevlar backing within the Dragon Skin on several of the environmental tests.
After being subjected to 160-degree heat for six hours, the Dragon Skin vest failed on the first shot. X-ray photos of the vest show the disks slipped off their backing, exposing portions of the chest area without any ceramic protection.
"Certain areas of the adhesive hardened and become brittle and when that happened, they all dropped down," Brown said.
Further tests in minus-60-degree cold, immersion in oil and diesel fuel showed similar delaminations and shot failures.
Neal said the Army manipulated the x-ray photos, but admitted one vest had an adhesive "anomaly."
Perhaps the biggest Army concern is Dragon Skin's weight. An extra large vest is nearly 20 pounds heavier than the Army's current armor, though Masters admitted it did have more rifle protective coverage than issued vests.
"The Army continues to look at these types of armor," Masters admitted. "If we can ever eliminate this weight penalty, we may have an opportunity to go to gapless coverage."
The Army declined to provide details of the test failures when the controversy erupted last year, claiming operational security concerns.
But the NBC News investigation prompted officials to rethink their strategy in an effort to keep Army families from purchasing Dragon Skin vests for their loved ones in the combat zone.
"Soldiers must have confidence in their equipment when they go down range," Brown said. "They've got to know that they're wearing the best and their families have got to know that they're wearing the best."
You’ll remember the post we put up on Monday exposing the flub by the folks at Boeing who didn’t pay close enough attention to a full-page newspaper advertisement the company sponsored that day.
The ad - which promoted a PBS documentary running that day about the experienced of U.S. troops in Iraq (the documentary was excellent, by the way) - shows what appears to be an Iraqi soldier in place of what clearly should have been an American. Anyone with even basic knowledge of the military should have recognized the AK-47 crooked in the soldier’s arm. Not a U.S. weapon, and I don’t care how many people perpetuate the myth that American troops carry AKs in Iraq, it’s extremely rare.
Putting a soldier with an AK in his arm on the full-page ad wasn’t what the promoters were going for, I’m sure.
Well, after four days of teeth-gnashing, the Washington Post (my local paper) published an article in its “In the Loop” section pointing out the error and attempting to make some sort of explanation for it. We rest our case, gang…
"It could turn out to be that that is an Iraqi soldier," said Richard Robbins, who directed the film. "We are trying to get to the bottom of it." But Robbins said Jacob Bailey, the award-winning Air Force photographer who took the picture, "thinks it probably was an Iraqi soldier, as do we."
A big shout-out should go to all our readers for engaging in the discussion on this one. I’m pretty confident we were the only ones on the net to catch this error and our coverage helped move the Post – and maybe others – to print their story.
It’s a full page advertisement that ran today in the Washington Post (and maybe other papers) sponsored by the Boeing Co. that calls attention to a program running tonight on PBS called Operation Homecoming.
From the ad:
…Operation Homecoming is a unique documentary that explores the first-hand accounts of American troops who have participated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…
…the film opens a profound window into the experiences of those serving in America’s Armed Forces…
AMERICAN troops and AMERICAN armed forces…
Now look at the picture again…
The soldier is holding an AK-47…
Doesn't look to me like it's of an American Soldier…
A Boeing spokeswoman said the photo was provided by the documentary maker. She said they hadn’t gotten any calls about it and had never noticed that it was not of an American serviceman.
Now, let me get this straight. Boeing makes practically every weapon the U.S. military uses today (I know I’m exaggerating, but keep with me here). They’re one of the lead systems integrators for the Army’s Future Combat System program, so they know what today’s troopers carry. With all that experience, you’d think at least someone would have enough insight to raise their hand and say: “Wait a minute guys, this isn’t an American…?”
Twelve days ago, Peter Singer broke the story here, that private military contractors were going to be subject to the same laws as soldiers. Since then, big media outlets from the Boston Globe to the Financial Times have picked up on Singer's scoop. Today, it's the Washington Post'sturn. The paper puts the story on the front page.
"Right now, you have two different standards for people doing the same job," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who pushed the provision. "This will bring uniformity to the commander's ability to control the behavior of people representing our country."
Graham, an Air Force Reserve lawyer, said the change will help morale in the field. "If the troops see someone getting away with something that hurts the overall mission, that is a morale buster," he said.
Under military law, known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, commanders have wide latitude in deciding who should be prosecuted. Crimes include many that have parallels in civilian courts -- murder and rape, for instance -- as well as many that don't, such as disobeying an order, fraternization and adultery.
Legal experts say that latitude is one reason why attempting to hold civilians to the same standards as U.S. troops could be a messy process. It is also likely to raise constitutional challenges: Civilians prosecuted in military court don't receive a grand jury hearing and are ultimately tried by members of the military, rather than by a jury of their peers...
To try to solve the problem, Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) introduced legislation last week that he said would strengthen MEJA [the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which supposedly expand federal prosecutors' authority to foreign battlefields], an option he considers superior to using military law. "Military law is not appropriate for civilians," Price said. "The constitutional questions just confuse the issue."
The New York Times also gives our lil' site a shout-out over the scoop, in the "What's Online" column.
Neither the Globe nor Defense News could find any big defense contractor to comment on the five-word change to the law, spearheaded by Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and former JAG. But they've caught the legal and private military interest groups squirming.
Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, an organization that represents government contractors, tells Defense News that "one result [of the rule change] may be that contractors now can be punished for actions not ordinarily prosecutable under U.S. law."
The UCMJ’s "behavioral requirements are very different and potentially in conflict with contract law and criminal law," Soloway said...
Civilian contractors now might be punished for disrespecting an officer, disregarding an order or committing adultery — actions that are not prosecutable under U.S. law, Soloway said.
"If a general or colonel directs a contractor or government civilian to do something that is outside terms of contract, under U.S. procurement law, the contractor does not do it without authority from the contracting officer," Soloway said. But under the UCMJ, "that might be failure to follow an order."
"I think there should have been some kind of hearing before Congress passed this measure," Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, tells the Globe.
"Ultimately, if this power is used, it will create a substantial issue that would likely reach the Supreme Court, and it will put us at odds with contemporary international standards."
Fidell said that US courts have a history of throwing out convictions of civilians who were tried in military courts, including the 1957 case of a wife who killed her husband on a military base.
"There was a period of decades that you could have crimes by US persons overseas that could never be punished," he said.
Hopefully, that will start to change.
Milblogger Clamp Down Blows Up (Updated)
For the last couple of weeks, Defense Tech has been looking into the increasinglyhostile atmosphere that soldier- journalists -- milbloggers -- have been facing. Now, a bunch of bigger outlets have picked up on the story -- and advanced it several steps.
The [Army's] August order [about blogs] specifically states that soldiers may not create or update their blogs during duty hours, and the sites must not 'contain information on military activities that is not available to the general public.'
That includes 'comments on daily military activities and operations, unit morale, results of operations, status of equipment, and other information that may be beneficial to adversaries.'
If soldiers are found violating those rules, both the servicemembers and their commanding officers are notified... leadership can decide what punishment, if any, the soldiers should face...
Noah Shachtman, editor of defensetech.org, said... "The fact that soldiers want to write about their experiences is something that should be embraced by the Army... They’re not looking to bad-mouth the military. They’re looking to talk proudly about their experiences."
"We are not a law enforcement or intelligence agency. Nor are we political correctness enforcers," Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, [head of the Virginia National Guard "Big Brother" website-monitoring unit] said. "We are simply trying to identify harmful Internet content and make the authors aware of the possible misuse of the information by groups who may want to damage United States interests."
Some bloggers say the guidelines are too ambiguous - a sentiment that has led others to pre-emptively shut down or alter their blogs.
"It's impossible to determine when something crosses the line from not a violation to a violation. It's like trying to define what pornography is or bad taste in music," said Spc. Jason Hartley, 32, who says he was demoted from sergeant and fined for reposting a blog he created while deployed to Iraq with the New York Army National Guard.
According to Hartley, the Army had forced him to stop the blog even before the oversight operation existed, citing pictures he had posted of Iraqi detainees and discussions of how he loaded a weapon and the route his unit took to get to Iraq.
Blackfive's [Matt] Burden says soldiers are receiving mixed messages: some receive approval from their immediate commanders, only later to be rebuked by more senior officials. Burden says his site and another milblog, Armor Geddon, were once featured in an internal Army PowerPoint presentation which described both as serious operational security risks.
"That kind of message from the administration of the Army sends a chilling signal to a young soldier who was told by his commander that it was okay to do what he was doing," Burden told Wired News.
He and fellow milbloggers gathered this year in April for a first ever MilBlog Conference in Washington, DC. They plan to reconvene in May, 2007. Debate over how to address authorities' OPSEC concerns without creating a "chilling effect" among bloggers was a heated topic at the 2006 gathering.
"My advice would be to bring together active duty, reserve and veteran bloggers to take a look at this issue in a way that would help the military," Burden says, "There's a lot of positive information coming from these 1,200 or so military blogs, and if it's not positive, it's giving people a better understanding of what it's like to be a soldier or the family of a soldier fighting this war."
Active duty milblogger John Noonan co-edits OPFOR (military slang for "opposing force") and posts on such topics as "foreign policy, wargaming, grand strategy and hippy bashing."
Noonan is among those who believe the current flap is partly the result of a generation gap between younger, tech-savvy recruits for whom life online is second nature and older, more senior military officials who don't get the net and are accustomed to the military's long-established history of carefully monitoring release of information from the battlefield.
"They don't want to lose the traditional control they've had over information released from the battlefield to the American people," Noonan said. "It's counterintuitive for military guys who are used to total control over what information is released and what isn't, to all of a sudden having zero control."
Xeni also filed a story for NPR's Day to Day, which should air this afternoon.
UPDATE 10/31/06 4:20 PM: ABC News weighs in here, with some pretty bruising commentary from Blackfive. Note to self: Do not piss this guy off.
New Space Policy? No Way!
I'm sure a bazillion bloggers are going to squeal in paranoia about thisWashington Post story, on the Bush Administration's new space policy. But, of course, they could have been squealing a full week earlier, if they had just read Defense Tech first.
Thanks to Haninah Levine and Theresa Hitchens, this site was on top of the more martial space plan on October 11th. Other elements of the story -- the Air Force's "Counterspace Operations Doctrine," the Chinese laser supposedly that's targeting U.S. satellites -- have all been addressed here, too. A long time ago.
And so, with that, I'm ushering in a new category: "Eat DT's Dust" -- stories that the mainstream press takes up, long after this site has dealt with 'em. I'm posthumously inducting Jeffrey Lewis' post, "NORK Nuclear Test: It's A Dud," into the club, too. The Wonk beat all the big papers to the now-universal conclusion.
There are plenty of times, of course, when Defense Tech just points to, or comments on, stories that have been broken by outlets like the Times, the Post, or ABC News. But when it's the reverse -- well, I figure we ought to strut our stuff just a little bit more.
NORK Nuclear Test: It's A Dud (Updated)
HA HA HA HA.
I -- Jeffrey Lewis, crossposting from Arms Control Wonk -- love the US Geological Survey.
There is lots of data floating around: The CTBTO called it 4.0; The South Koreans report 3.58-3.7.
You're thinking, 3.6, 4.2, in that neighborhood. Seismic scales, like the Richter, are logarithmic, so that neighborhood can be pretty big.
But even at 4.2, the test was probablya dud.
Estimating the yield is tricky business, because it depends on the geology of the test site. The South Koreans called the yield half a kiloton (550 tons), which is more or less -- a factor of two -- consistent with the relationship for tests in that yield range at the Soviet Shagan test site:
Mb = 4.262 + .973LogW
Where Mb is the magnitude of the body wave, and W is the yield.
3.58-3.7 gives you a couple hundred tons (not kilotons), which is pretty close in this business unless you're really math positive. The same equation, given the US estimate of 4.2, yields (pun intended) around a kiloton.
A plutonium device should produce a yield in the range of the 20 kilotons, like the one we dropped on Nagasaki. No one has ever dudded their first test of a simple fission device. North Korean nuclear scientists are now officially the worst ever.
Of course, I want to see what the US IC says. If/when the test vents, we could have some radionuclide data -- maybe in the next 72 hours or so.
But, from the initial data, I'd say someone with no workable nuclear weapons (Kim Jong Il, I am looking at you) should be crapping his pants right now.
First the missile, then the bomb. Got anything else you wanna try out there, chief?
UPDATE 10/10/06 1:14 AM: Noah here. Looks like the LA and NY Times have both pickedup (sorta) on what the good Wonk was sayin'.
Throughout history, the first detonations of aspiring nuclear powers have tended to pack the destructive power of 10,000 to 60,000 tons — 10 to 60 kilotons — of conventional high explosives.
But the strength of the North Korean test appears to have been a small fraction of that: around a kiloton or less, according to scientists monitoring the global arrays of seismometers that detect faint trembles in the earth from distant blasts...
Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a weapons design center in California, said the small size of the test signaled the possibility of what might be described as a partial success or a partial failure.
“As first tests go, this is smaller and less successful than those of the other nuclear powers,” he said.
Perhaps the North Koreans wanted to keep it small, he added. “But if it turns out to be a kiloton or less,” Dr. Coyle said, “that would suggest that they hoped for more than that and didn’t get it.”
UPDATE 10/10/06 8:45 AM: Rumor alert! Stratfor is pretty sure that the Nork nuke -- "about one-fortieth of the Nagasaki blast" -- was a dud, too. But, just to be on the safe side, the intel service offers up "three possible explanations for the apparently small yield: the North Koreans deliberately detonated a very small device, they tested a larger device but it failed to execute properly, or the explosion was not caused by an atomic device."
Possibly the North Koreans wanted to show that they had the technology but did not want to appear too threatening, so they minimized the size. Or they could be demonstrating the ability to use lower-yield nuclear mines or artillery shells that would protect North Korea by blocking strategic passes into the country, and would possibly threaten Seoul but would not pose a significant threat elsewhere. Also, the water table is high in the area of the blast; maybe they were being careful not to break into the aquifer.
These are all good reasons, but the counterargument is that if you are going to go nuclear, go nuclear. North Korea does not have a pressing need -- or history -- of being subtle, so a small blast doesn't fit in with its plan...
What if the North Koreans didn't go nuclear, but detonated a large chemical explosive in an underground chamber? It would take a lot of explosive to yield that result, but it is not impossible. A chemical explosion would have a different seismic signature than a nuclear one, and therefore geologists should have already discounted this theory; but the analysis is going to take up to two days, according to the White House. It is certainly not beyond the North Koreans to fake a nuclear explosion, and there have been some big explosions in North Korea that have been mistaken, for a short period of time, for something nuclear. But there is no evidence, beyond our speculation, for this theory.
UPDATE 10/10/06 8:51 AM: Interesting counter-argument from Trent Telenko in the comments. Since North Korea has "had the complete design specifications for a Chinese missile-ready nuclear warhead of the plutonium implosion type for years," thanks to the A.Q. Khan network, this dud may be more dangerous than it seems.
Twelve days ago, Peter Singer 
The 
For the last couple of weeks, Defense Tech has been looking into the 
Thanks to Haninah Levine and Theresa Hitchens, this site was on top of the more martial space plan on October 11th. Other elements of the story -- the Air Force's "
You're thinking, 3.6, 4.2, in that neighborhood. Seismic scales, like the Richter, are logarithmic, so that neighborhood can be pretty big.