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Archive for December, 2006

Saddam Dead; Footage Everywhere (Updated)

Sunday, December 31st, 2006

As I’m sure you all know by now, Saddam Hussein has been hanged to death — exe­cuted for his role in the slaugh­ter of 148 in the Shi’ite town of Dujail.
hussein_hanging.jpgIraqis, accord­ing to the Times, “spent much of the day crowd­ing around tele­vi­sion sets to watch mes­mer­iz­ing replays of a video­tape that showed the 69-​​year-​​old Mr. Hussein being led to the gal­lows at dawn by five masked exe­cu­tion­ers, and hav­ing a noose fash­ioned from a thick rope of yel­low hemp low­ered around his neck.“
But, as Xeni notes in an excel­lent round-​​up of the exe­cu­tion cov­er­age, “explicit images of Hussein’s corpse and ‘unedited’ cell­phone video of the hang­ing (which includes the moment of death) have already shown up online,” on Google Video.
The video is grotesque. But “I think there’s a pub­lic inter­est in mak­ing this avail­able for adults who choose to see it, non-​​passively,” Xeni tells Defense Tech. I agree.
UPDATE 9:26 PM: Defense Tech pal Michael Hastings has him­self a scoop, inter­view­ing Ali Al Massedy, who “was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, nor­mally Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s offi­cial video­g­ra­pher, was the man respon­si­ble for film­ing the late dictator’s exe­cu­tion at dawn on Saturday.“
UPDATE 10:24 PM: Eric Umansky has “the most telling part of the exe­cu­tion.” Let’s just say Moqtada Al-​​Sadr is psy­ched.
UPDATE 12/​31/​06 11:49 AM: “We are see­ing 21st cen­tury psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions,” says TPM Cafe. “It can be con­cluded there were ele­ments within America’s gov­ern­ment and/​or mil­i­tary, work­ing in con­cert with Iraq’s cur­rent scare­crow power-​​holders, who wanted as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble in the world to see Saddam hang.” I’m not sure I buy this. And I can’t get with screech­ing tone. But it’s an inter­est­ing notion, nonethe­less.
UPDATE 12/​31/​06 11:56 AM: Juan Cole gets into the execution’s reli­gious dynam­ics.

The tri­bunal also had a unique sense of tim­ing when choos­ing the day for Saddam’s hang­ing. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This week­end marks Eid al-​​Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims com­mem­o­rate the will­ing­ness of Abraham to sac­ri­fice his son for God. Shiites cel­e­brate it Sunday. Sunnis cel­e­brate it Saturday — and Iraqi law for­bids exe­cut­ing the con­demned on a major hol­i­day. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was per­ceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite gov­ern­ment that had accepted the Shiite rit­ual cal­en­dar.
The tim­ing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a sac­ri­fice for his nation, an explicit ref­er­ence to Eid al-​​Adha. The tri­bunal had given the old sec­u­lar nation­al­ist the chance to use reli­gious lan­guage to play on the sym­pa­thies of the whole Iraqi pub­lic.
The polit­i­cal inep­ti­tude of the tri­bunal, from start to fin­ish, was aston­ish­ing. The United States and its Iraqi allies basi­cally gave Saddam a plat­form on which to make him­self a mar­tyr to Iraqi unity and inde­pen­dence — even if by unity and inde­pen­dence Saddam was really appeal­ing to Sunnis’ nos­tal­gia for their days of hegemony. 

(Big ups: Josh)

Posted in War Update | 26 Comments »

Pain Beam Not Easily Foiled

Friday, December 29th, 2006

My recent pieces on the Active Denial System (ADS) or pain beam sparks dis­cus­sions here and else­where on the web. One of the most com­mon chal­lenges to the device is that the beam of short-​​wavelength microwaves could eas­ily be blocked with tin­foil.
Its not that easy.
Captain Jay Delarosa, spokesman for the Joint Non-​​Lethal Weapons Directorate told me:

“We have con­ducted exten­sive test­ing and have deter­mined that most read­ily avail­able mate­ri­als are not effec­tive as coun­ter­mea­sures against the ADS.

Few peo­ple appre­ci­ate the rea­sons behind this, and even John Pikes oth­er­wise excel­lent GlobalSecurity site claims:

Countermeasures against the weapon could be quite straight­for­ward for exam­ple cov­er­ing up the body with thick clothes or car­ry­ing a metal­lic sheet or even a trash can lid as a shield or reflector.

foil2.JPG
As described pre­vi­ously, the beam is at least two meters in diam­e­ter, and the small­est skin expo­sure is enough to cause intol­er­a­ble pain. A red hot poker does not need to be in touch with much skin to make you pull away, and the ADS causes as much pain on your nerve end­ings. A shield will not work unless it cov­ers your whole body and them some, because the ADS beam dif­fracts. According to an arti­cle in Aviation Week & Space Technology last July -

actual tests show that the beams pen­e­trate even minute open­ings or cracks, for exam­ple, and some­times appear almost to wrap around cor­ners to affect fin­gers and feet of those try­ing to hide behind or hold up pro­tec­tive devices.
“The radio fre­quency is hard to block,” Booen says. “Some of the peo­ple tested against tried to hide by lay­ing down behind some con­crete traf­fic bar­ri­ers and the beam went under­neath [where there was uneven con­tact with the ground].”

What about that tin­foil? It will have to cover every square inch and any rips or tears will make it use­less. Joints may be tricky; if you flex foil too many times holes start appear­ing. For vision you will need a metal mesh visor, like the kind they use on microwave oven doors. The prob­lem is, the size of the mesh depends on the wave­length of the radi­a­tion - so short-​​wavelength ADS beam requires some­thing much finer than nor­mal microwave mesh. You also need to think about the effect on your breath­ing, body tem­per­a­ture and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
While it is the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble to put together an anti-​​ADS armor suit, this is less of a spur-​​of-​​the-​​moment impro­vised under­tak­ing and more of an elab­o­rate work­shop project tak­ing some time and effort. (And by the same token, you could make your­self bullet-​​proof if you used quarter-​​inch steel plate instead of foil.)
Get your suit work­ing and your prob­lems are just begin­ning, as it will quickly iden­tify you as a trou­ble­maker rather than an inno­cent bystander. Separating tourists from ter­ror­ists is one of the ADSs main goals, and as Capt Delarosa says:

If an indi­vid­ual makes exten­sive efforts to counter the effect of a non-​​lethal sys­tem, then they are likely show­ing hos­tile intent and an esca­la­tion of force may be war­ranted based on exist­ing rules of engagement.

The Marines will always ensure that non-​​lethals have lethal backup. Marine Corps Colonel Wade Hall is blunt about the use of ADS in a con­voy pro­tec­tion sce­nario:

“If they try and deflect beams then we will kill them because we know what their inten­tions are”

There is another alter­na­tive. The Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP), which I described in New Scientist (sub­scribers only) is a non-​​lethal weapon which fires an extremely short laser pulse, pro­duc­ing a plasma flash-​​bang at the tar­get. This could be deployed on the same plat­form as the ADS, using the same power source. Many of the coun­ter­mea­sures that can be envi­sioned against the ADS could be nul­li­fied by the PEP by abla­tion of the defence accord­ing to a Navy study on the effects of plas­mas. Such a laser could chew through a layer of foil with a few pulses.
A PEP might also negate foil with­out hav­ing to blast it away. Ultra-​​short pulses have recently been demon­strated that can turn met­als pitch black , so that the sur­face absorbs incom­ing radi­a­tion and reflec­tive foil is made use­less. This tech­nol­ogy was devel­oped at Rochester’s High Intensity Femtosecond Laser Laboratory ; they are funded by (among oth­ers) DARPA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Well be look­ing more at short pulse lasers in 2007.
There are many ques­tions still remain­ing around the Active Denial System and its effects. But we may safely assume that in the many years of its devel­op­ment the Air Force has taken pos­si­ble coun­ter­mea­sures into account.
UPDATE 5TH JAN Some inter­est­ing responses in the Comments sec­tion.
Leather is no pro­tec­tion; wet leather, like any other wet mate­r­ial, will absorb the beam and heat up. This may sound like a good idea, until you look at the num­bers and realise that it only gives you a few sec­onds extra, then you have extremely hot water/​steam in con­tact with your skin…foil is a bet­ter idea. The issues around damp/​wet cloth, sweat etc were inves­ti­gated a few years back in FWR-2002–0016-H Effects of skin and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions on sen­sa­tions evoked by MMW cov­ered this). There was some con­cern about one sub­ject wear­ing a sweater devel­op­ing net­tle rash (urticaria) which is men­tioned in F-BR-2006–0018-H Effects of expo­sure to 400-​​W 95-​​GHz Millimetre Wave Energy on Non-​​stationary Humans , but this did not hap­pen again.
To clar­ify one con­cern, as I under­stand it run­ning away would not make you a tar­get for esca­lated force (like get­ting shot at); turn­ing up in a tin­foil body­suit might do.
And as for Nicholas Weaver’s request “Could you get zapped by it and tell us first hand?” — er, no thanks. It sounds painful. There’s a good first­hand account by Eric Adams in Popular Science here:

“About a half-​​second after ‘One,’ I felt a warm spot on my back. A mil­lisec­ond later the heat inten­si­fied dra­mat­i­cally, as though some­one were press­ing an elec­tric burner hard on my back. I expected to hear siz­zling, to smell burn­ing flesh. The pain exploded to the point where I was no longer actu­ally think­ing, and cer­tainly wasn’t in any sort of con­trol of my reac­tions. With a shout of “Yeow!” I invol­un­tar­ily sprang out of the way.” 

– David Hambling

Posted in Less-lethal | 26 Comments »

Noah’s 50 Favorite Posts of 2006

Thursday, December 28th, 2006

Enough with the pop­u­lar­ity con­test. Here are my picks — in more-​​or-​​less chrono­log­i­cal order — for the 50 best Defense Tech posts of 2006.

“Q Branch’s” Stock Market Shenanigans
Killer robots, cheeky Brits, cute marine mam­mals, shady gov­ern­ment offi­cials, insider trad­ing — plus, a gra­tu­itous ref­er­ence to James Bond — all in one post.
Laser Weapons “Almost Ready?” Not!
If youre into mil­i­tary tech­nol­ogy at all, some­where in the back of your mind, you want laser guns to hap­pen. That doesn’t mean they will.
The Dead Bombers of Halabja
David Axe finds the machines behind Iraq’s gas attacks.
Kneel Before the Centaur
Like a lot of us, for­mer Navy elec­tri­cian Dennis Buller is wor­ried about our troops over in Iraq. But he’s actu­ally built a machine to do some­thing about it.
China Tops Iraq, Osama in QDR
How the Pentagon’s every-​​four-​​years mas­ter plan focuses more on a future fight with China than today’s wars.
The Best Weapon
David Axe attends a tanker’s memo­r­ial ser­vice in Iraq.
Real-​​Life Ray Gun: Say When?
I was skep­ti­cal, when I first heard about the idea of using lasers and man-​​made light­ning to det­o­nate explo­sives at a dis­tance. Now, a lit­tle less so.
Happy Birthday to Me
Momma always told me to look on the bright side.
Be Mickey Mouse’s Spy
Here’s your big chance, junior spooks: the Walt Disney Company needs an ““Intelligence Analyst.“
The Enemy is Me
Last sum­mer, a U.S. Colonel in Baghdad told me that I was America’s enemy, or very close to it.
Mini-​​Sensors for “Military Omniscience“
The Pentagon’s new way to spot insur­gents: a set of palm-​​sized, net­worked sen­sors that can be scat­tered around a war zone. Its part of a larger Defense Department effort to estab­lish mil­i­tary omni­science and ubiq­ui­tous mon­i­tor­ing.
Stealth’s Radioactive Secret
Theres a sim­ple tech­nol­ogy that could trans­form civil avi­a­tion — slash­ing fuel con­sump­tion, reduc­ing green­house emis­sions and cut­ting noise. The prob­lem, David Hambling explains, is it’s a mil­i­tary secret.
New Detectors Sniff Terrorists’ Scents
The Pentagon’s fringe sci­ence arm wants to keep track of poten­tial enemies-​​of-​​the-​​state in every way imag­in­able: not just by sight, or by sound, or by their e-​​mail; but by their smell, as well.
Laser Labs Go Back to the Future
George Neil and Bob Yamamoto don’t remem­ber exactly where they were when they found out that the Pentagon was can­cel­ing their laser can­non project. But they remem­ber how they felt.
Air Force One Scare; Real Security Sacrificed
The head­line sure seemed scary: “Web site exposes Air Force One defenses,” Steven Schwartz notes. Too bad the arti­cle didn’t men­tion that the site is a fire­fighter safety man­ual, to help res­cue pas­sen­gers.
Federal Bureau of Luddites
Why the FBI is still using tech that’s straight out of the leisure suit era.
Iran’s Kooky, Incendiary Arsenal
Super-​​fast under­wa­ter mis­siles ain’t the half of it. Iran’s armed forces are rolling out a slew of new mil­i­tary hard­ware.
China’s R&D: Don’t Freak
China is about to pass the U.S. in the devel­op­ment of defense and com­mer­cial tech­nol­ogy, Matthew Tompkins warns. And they’re gonna take our lunch money, too.
Terrorists’ Unmanned Air Force
The bad guys can use drones, too.
Sunny, With a 75% Chance of Air Superiority
Some Air Force weapons sim­u­la­tors act like our biggest ene­mies just don’t exist. Haninah Levine explains.
Giant Slingshot: New Way to Space?
All space projects get into orbit pretty much the same way by burn­ing lots of rocket fuel. But what if, David Hambling asks, we could throw some­thing so hard, it would wind up in space?
NSA Sweep “Waste of Time,” Analyst Says
It’d be one thing if the NSA’s mas­sive sweep of our phone records was actu­ally help­ing catch ter­ror­ists. But a lead­ing data ana­lyst says that “it’s a waste of time… let[ting] the real ter­ror­ists run free.“
The Tech That Took Out Zarqawi
Ten years ago, tak­ing out Abu Musab Al-​​Zarqawi with F-​​16s would have been an impos­si­ble task. Not any more, David Axe reports.
Enter the BomBot
One of the nice things about being edi­tor of Defense Tech is that peo­ple occa­sion­ally show up at your apart­ment with mil­i­tary robots.
Superbomb — or Crapshoot?
A panel con­venes, to assess the not-​​quite-​​dead con­tro­versy over a phan­tom super­bomb. Sharon Weinberger won­ders why she wasn’t invited.
Clowns Sabotage Nuke Missile
On Tuesday morn­ing, a retired Catholic priest and two vet­er­ans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear mis­sile launch facil­ity, and began beat­ing the silo cover with ham­mers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III mis­sile off-​​line. Seriously.
Taking on Iran’s Air Force
What hap­pens a stand-​​off with Iran turns vio­lent?
Missile Flop: Norks in Tight Spot
Is North Korea’s busted mis­sile test as a major prob­lem for the U.S. — or for Kim Jong-​​il?
Semper Fi Sauvignon
From the halls of Montezuma to Fallujah, the United States Marine Corps have proved them­selves to be the most resource­ful war­riors on the planet. Now, a sin­gle test remains: Make a rich, smooth red wine.
CIA’s Wacky, Online ‘Personality Quiz’
These are tough times for the CIA. But can things have grown so dire at Langley that the it has to resort to gim­micks like a wink-​​wink-​​trying-​​to-​​be-​​ironic-​​and-​​cool– but-​​instead-​​looking-​​even-​​more-​​dorky recruit­ing web­site?
Hez Hacked Israeli Radios?
Readers debate whether Hezbollah really com­pro­mised Israel’s most secret com­mu­ni­ca­tions.
“Plug-​​and-​​Play” Ship Hits the Water
Why Navy Captain Don Babcock is in such a hurry.
Attack Of The Genius Robot Cockroach Swarm
“I have seen some rad­i­cal ideas for attack­ing deep bunkers,” David Hambling says, “but this beats ‘em all.“
Area 51: Hype vs. Reality
A vet­eran avi­a­tion journo writes about secret air­planes he believes might be under devel­op­ment at Area 51. David Axe won­ders how much proof he has.
Robotic Frisbees of Death
The Air Force thinks it has an answer to the most vex­ing prob­lem in counter-​​insurgency: fris­bees. Not just any fris­bees, mind you. Robotic fris­bees. Heavily armed robotic fris­bees.
How to Rate a (Possibly) Stupid Weapon Idea
Sharon Weinberger’s 15-​​point test to find out if a weapons-​​maker is full of it.
Iraqi Forces Don’t Suck … Entirely
Despite what you might have heard from other media, David Axe says, the Iraqi Army does not suck.
High-​​Tech Uniforms Finally Heading to War
A col­lec­tion of high-​​tech sol­dier gear, 15 years and half a bil­lion dol­lars in the mak­ing, will finally make it into bat­tle.
Army “Big Brother” Unit Targets Bloggers
Bloggers: “Big Brother is not watch­ing you, but 10 mem­bers of a Virginia National Guard unit might be.“
Spyboys Go Web 2.0
How the mil­i­tary keeps tabs on over­seas TV chan­nels, 24/​7 — and what it means for the future of intel­li­gence.
Cash-​​Poor Army Pays Big to Pimp Pricey ‘Future’
The Army is quickly going broke, its lead­ers insist. But there’s one Army account that the gen­er­als are still man­ag­ing to keep packed to the brim: mar­ket­ing.
Bush: Space is for Soldiers
Theresa Hitchens explores the President’s new space plan — and finds a mar­tial bent.
Big War Machines Pushed for Korea Fight
How mil­i­tary big­wigs are angling for North Korean fight.
NORK Nuclear Test: It’s A Dud
Jeffrey Lewis is the first to fig­ure out that Kim Il Jung’s nuclear test isn’t all it was cracked up to be.
BattleHog Drone’s Story Stinks
David Hambling asks: Could a home secu­rity con­sul­tant oper­at­ing out of a Manhattan apart­ment have built the lat­est and great­est killer drone?
“The Deadlies“
Defense Tech’s search for the most insanely haz­ardous gear, ever.
Mechanical Mole Men, Attack!
Throughout the ages, bad guys have loved bunkers. Which is why the Air Force wants teams of tun­nel­ing, foot-​​long “sub­ter­ranean vehi­cles.“
Labouchere of Arabia
David Axe camps out with a modern-​​day T.E. Lawrence.
<a href=“http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002950.html>Tomorrow’s Insta-​​Weapons
America owes a big chunk of its mil­i­tary supe­ri­or­ity to what it can make. So what hap­pens, Nicholas Weaver asks, when much of that high-​​precision man­u­fac­tur­ing can be located any­where and owned by any­one?
Drunks, Butts Test Pain Ray; Paris Hilton Next?
David Hambling’s new reality-​​show pitch. Milimeter wave weapons are involved.
Pentagon Plan: Hit Anywhere on Earth, in an Hour
The secret con­nec­tion between Nordstrom’s tod­dlers depart­ment and the Pentagon push to “strike vir­tu­ally any­where on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes.”

Posted in Blog Bidness | 2 Comments »

So Where Are All The Dirty Bombs?

Thursday, December 28th, 2006

I’ve never been one to fully under­stand the great fear that many state and fed­eral emer­gency response man­agers seem to have over dirty bombs, given the many train­ing exer­cises that seem to include the threat as the main haz­ard. This USA Today arti­cle talks about the issue of loose and stolen radioac­tive mate­r­ial.
radioactive.jpg

Annual inci­dents of traf­fick­ing and mis­han­dling of nuclear and other radioac­tive mate­r­ial reported to U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials have more than dou­bled since the early 1990s, says the direc­tor of domes­tic nuclear detec­tion at the Department of Homeland Security.
Also up: scams in which fake or non-​​existent nuclear or radioac­tive mate­r­ial is offered for sale, often online, says Vayl Oxford, nuclear detec­tion direc­tor at the depart­ment.
“We sense that peo­ple have rec­og­nized the value of nuclear mate­r­ial as a use­ful way of mak­ing money,” Oxford said. “Nuclear mate­r­ial is becom­ing a mar­ketable com­mod­ity.“
The inci­dents tracked by the depart­ment, based on its report­ing and infor­ma­tion from for­eign diplo­matic and intel­li­gence sources, aver­age about twice the num­ber made pub­lic each year by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Oxford said reports of nuclear and radioac­tive mate­ri­als traf­fick­ing have ranged from 200 to 250 a year since 2000, up from about 100 a year in the 1990s.

But here’s the thing ‚Vayl. When you look at the amount of mate­ri­als stolen or lost (some data are shown in the article’s side­bar), we’re talk­ing about ounces and a few pounds at best of gamma emit­ters. No one’s track­ing the alpha/​beta radioac­tive mate­r­ial out there (polo­nium any­one?). Still, not exactly enough for an impro­vised nuclear weapon, maybe enough to scare unknowl­edgable peo­ple.
You might have seen the last season’s “Sleeper Cell” that only rein­forced some of these fears. I enjoyed watch­ing the ter­ror­ist cell use ameri­cium 241 to “test” their lead-​​lined cooler con­tainer for radi­a­tion leaks (except that ameri­cium isn’t a strong gamma emit­ter), talk about how explod­ing an air­craft hold­ing one nuclear fuel rod over Los Angeles would “cover the city in nuclear fall­out” (ah, not really), and how the author­i­ties “got a hit from the radioac­tive snif­fers” on the lead-​​lined cooler on its way to the last tar­get. Yeah, it’s only a drama, but I’ll bet peo­ple believe this stuff. Maybe it was just dis­in­for­ma­tion for the real ter­ror­ists… yeah, that’s the ticket.
– Jason Sigger, cross­posted at Armchair Generalist
UPDATE 12/​29/​06 11:36 AM: David Hambling writes in to say: “Also, the UK police are order­ing some 12,000 CBR [chemical-​​biological-​​radiological] suits — looks like they’re expect­ing those famous/​mythical dirty bombs too.“
UPDATE 12/​29/​06 12:05 PM: J here. Great con­ver­sa­tion in the com­ments, espe­cially the cool-​​headed plug­ger not­ing that “dirty bombs” are haz­ards, not life-​​threatening events. Many of the com­ments seem to go to the ques­tion of “what’s your point?” Without get­ting too aca­d­e­mic (hey, I’m not the ArmsControlWonk, after all), my point is sim­ply this. While there’s lots of radioac­tive haz­ards out there, the really bad ones aren’t being moved in great quan­ti­ties to cause a mass casu­alty inci­dent. Given that “dirty bombs” of what­ever fla­vor — alpha, beta, gamma — are largely more of a clean-​​up job, and while costly to clean up, gov­ern­ment goes on. The anthrax let­ters didn’t shut down the USPS, but it did slow things down on the east coast. The polo­nium poi­son­ing didn’t shut down Heathrow Airport for a minute.
They’re haz­ards, they are low-​​probability events, they’re not mass casu­alty events. Given that basis, what’s the appro­pri­ate fed­eral response? I sug­gest that it is not to put rad detec­tors in every port and every bor­der cross­ing into the United States and within every major met­ro­pol­i­tan area, as DHS’s DNDO has sug­gested (which would cost bil­lions of dol­lars to imple­ment plus annual sus­tain­ment and train­ing costs). The appro­pri­ate response is to lock down the bad rads (cesium, ura­nium, and plu­to­nium), get the ter­ror­ists before they attack, and be pre­pared (like our UK breth­ern) to clean it up if it hap­pens. Simple. Smart. Efficient. But not the course of action being imple­mented by the government.

Posted in Nukes | 327 Comments »

Rapid Fire 12/​27/​06

Wednesday, December 27th, 2006

* ‘Invisible elec­tron­ics’ com­ing?
* 70 year-​​old plane still flies
* Semtex, knives smug­gled onto planes
* Nuke traf­fick­ing dou­bles
* Pak agents assault NYT ace
* Ethiopia 1, Islamists 0
* Tires = snitches
* GD, Force Protection team up
* Fed agen­cies move out of DC blast zone
* How quick could Japan go nuke?
* Guide to your neigh­bor­hood meth lab
* Daily Show does home­land tech
* Gauss pis­tol
* Mindball!
“Man con­victed of steal­ing Teddy Roosevelt’s gun“
* Duhhhhhh
* RIP, President Ford

(Big ups: BP, RS, HLS Watch)

Posted in Rapid Fire | 8 Comments »

Rapid Fire 12/​26/​06

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

* Dems don’t spook defense con­trac­tors
* Tons of nuke mis­sile tests
* Hot Hornet vid
* Meet the Swiss Jet Man
* “Rosetta phone“
* Scooter of doom
* Nanotech armor
* Ultrasonic mine fighter
* Noonan’s close call
* Roggio vs. Muj TV
* Defense Dep’t bans HTML e-​​mail
* U.S. blocks Israel arms sales?
* Sea-​​Based Radar to set sail? (back­ground here)
* Goodbye, Godfather

(Big ups: AE, RC, KR, MO)

Posted in Rapid Fire | 4 Comments »

Bump: Def Tech’s 20 Biggest Posts of 2006

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

Out of the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of tech­nolo­gies, tac­tics, and polit­i­cal maneu­vers Defense Tech high­lighted, here are the twenty you guys clicked on the most in 2006. Thanks for another great year, every­one.
silo-E8-gate_smaller.jpg1) Clowns Sabotage Nuke Missile
On Tuesday morn­ing, a retired Catholic priest and two vet­er­ans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear mis­sile launch facil­ity, and began beat­ing the silo cover with ham­mers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III mis­sile off-​​line. Seriously.

2) Look Out, Pyongyang? Rail Gun in the Works
One of the big sell­ing points of the Navy’s new destroyer is that it can rain a whole lot of hell — 20 rocket-​​propelled artillery shells, in less than a minute — on tar­gets up to 63 nau­ti­cal miles away… But really, that’s the start. The ship’s real power will come when it moves away from chem­i­cal pow­ders to shoot its pro­jec­tiles — and starts rely­ing on elec­tro­mag­netic fields to shoot pro­jec­tiles almost six kilometers/​second, instead.
3) SEAL Ship: Silent But Deadly
Every ship­builder in the Navy these days talks about how his hulk­ing destroyer or Cold War sub is now going to sneak SEALs onto shore… Military​.com over­lord Chris Michel was down in San Diego, and saw a pretty cool new pro­to­type ship that’s been designed from scratch to han­dle the mis­sion.
4) Air Force Plan: Hack Your Nervous System
The brain has always been a bat­tle­field. New weapons might be able to hack directly into your nerve cells and neural path­ways.
5) Marines Quiet About Brutal New Weapon
War is hell. But its worse when the Marines bring out their new urban com­bat weapon, the SMAW-​​NE. Which may be why theyre not talk­ing about it, much.
6) Urban Combat Skateboard!
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7) Replacement Arm, Good as New
Thought-​​controlled robotic limbs were only the begin­ning. 8) Robotic Frisbees of Death
It ain’t easy, pick­ing out evil-​​doers in the urban canyons of the Middle East; there are so many places to hide. Taking ‘em out can be even harder, what with all those non­com­bat­ants hang­ing nearby. But the Air Force thinks it might have an answer to this most vex­ing prob­lem in counter-​​insurgency: fris­bees. Not just any fris­bees, mind you. Robotic fris­bees. Heavily armed robotic fris­bees.
9) David and the Inflatable Goliath
Inside the Darpa project to build a humon­gous blimp that can haul 500‑1000 tons’ worth of sol­diers and gear halfway across the world in less than a week.
10) Falcon Fills Blackbird’s Shoes
A decade after the final retire­ment of Lockheed Martin’s Mach-​​3 SR-​​71 Blackbird spy plane, the Air Force is prepar­ing to test a plane that flies more than three times as fast. Two Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicles, built by Lockheed Martin with input from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), will take to the air in 2008. The $100-​​million pro­gram aims to field a Mach-​​10 unmanned air­craft that can spy on for­eign pow­ers, drop bombs or even lob satel­lites into orbit.
11) Giant Slingshot: New Way to Space?
All space projects get into orbit pretty much the same way by burn­ing lots of rocket fuel, a space­ship pow­ers itself past the sky. But what if there was a dif­fer­ent approach? What if we could throw some­thing so hard, it would wind up in space?
FAST G16_small.jpg12) Facial Armor Rears Its Ugly Head
No mat­ter how many times sol­diers and marines say they’re not inter­ested, there’s always some­one try­ing to wrap them up in heav­ier, hot­ter, more uncom­fort­able armor. The lat­est cul­prit: MTek Weapon Systems, which is push­ing Stormtrooper-​​esque “facial armor” for our troops.
13) Air Force’s Secret Drone Program Revealed
A new, $1.7 bil­lion, “Penetrating High Altitude Endurance” drone is thought to be able to cruise at 70,000–80,000 ft,soaring high above defended ter­ri­tory.
14) CIA’s Wacky, Online ‘Personality Quiz’
These are tough times for the Central Intelligence Agency. But can things have grown so dire at Langley that the CIA has to resort to gim­micks like this wink-​​wink-​​trying-​​to-​​be-​​ironic-​​and-​​cool-​​but-​​instead-​​looking-​​even-​​more-​​dorky recruit­ing web­site?
15) Pain Ray, Sonic Blaster, Laser Dazzler — All in One
For a while, now, I’ve been hear­ing about the Defense Department’s plans to out­fit a fight­ing vehi­cle with a pain ray, a sonic blaster, and a laser daz­zler, too. I never fig­ured they’d actu­ally send the thing to Iraq, though. Project Sheriff, I assumed, would just be the mil­i­tary equiv­a­lent of a con­cept car — a chance to see if some whiz-​​bang gear really worked together. But the Pentagon may wind up deploy­ing this straight-​​outta-​​sci-​​fi jalopy, after all.
16) Battle Ball for Sailor Training
Check out the Navy’s nine-​​foot plas­tic ball. It sits on wheels, enabling unlim­ited rota­tion in any direc­tion — mak­ing vir­tual real­ity feel a whole lot more real.
starfire-optical-range-laser3_small.jpg17) Chinese Laser vs. U.S. Sats?
Was it just China Hawks’ hype? Or did Beijing really blind U.S. satel­lites by fir­ing high-​​powered lasers at ‘em? And what does that mean for the future of America’s eyes and ears in the sky?
18) The Tech That Took Out Zarqawi
Ten years ago, tak­ing out Abu Musab Al-​​Zarqawi with F-​​16s would have been an impos­si­ble task. Not any more.
19) ‘Invisible’ Boomerang ‘Bot
It’s nice to have a set of robotic eyes in the sky. But sur­veil­lance drones tend to be loud, and rather obvi­ous, as they keep watch above a Middle Eastern city. That’s why a small com­pany out of Minneapolis, VeraTech Areo, has built a hand-​​held spy drone that it says is prac­ti­cally invis­i­ble.
20) Area 51: Hype vs. Reality
A vet­eran avi­a­tion journo writes about secret air­planes he believes might be under devel­op­ment at the Air Force’s remote Groom Lake test facil­ity in Nevada, a.k.a. Area 51. How much proof does he have?
(Big ups: Slate, and their sur­pris­ing top ten sto­ries of the year. And, and a note to Long Tailers: two of these posts were actu­ally from ’05.)

Posted in Blog Bidness | 107 Comments »

Missile Radar Still Adrift

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

CBS News took a peek last night at our favorite giant golf ball, er, mis­sile defense radar.
SBX.jpgWith doc­u­ments obtained by the Project on Government Oversight the CBS News Investigative Unit found a host of issues with the Sea-​​Based X-​​Band Radar SBX for short that still remain unre­solved, just ahead of its acti­va­tion in the waters off Adak Island, Alaska.
– Beyond ques­tions raised in our CBS Evening News story about plans to stick it in some of the most unfor­giv­ing weather in the world, if the SBX has a sin­gle point of fail­ure, accord­ing to sources within Missile Defense, it is The Dove. The Dove is the large sup­port ves­sel, 279 feet long, which trav­els with the SBX, deliv­ers per­son­nel, sup­plies and fuel to the radar plat­form. Though the SBX has a heli­copter plat­form, mil­i­tary and Coast Guard heli­copters wont land there. So the SBX uses a sin­gle crane to lift peo­ple and mate­r­ial off the Dove. According to the Coast Guard let­ter obtained by CBS News, there are reg­u­larly waves as high as 30 feet many days out of the year. There are con­cerns that the Dove will not be able to maneu­ver close enough to the SBX to re-​​supply with­out col­lid­ing or injur­ing crew men in those con­di­tions.
Other poten­tial prob­lems include:
–Fuel spills: the Dove car­ries 600,000 gal­lons of diesel fuel and the SBX car­ries 1.2 mil­lion gal­lons. If both ves­sels spilled their fuel in the pris­tine waters off Adak Island, it would be the sec­ond largest fuel spill in Alaskan his­tory. Second only to the Exxon Valdez. How likely is a fuel spill? According to inci­dent reports obtained by the Investigative Unit, the Dove spilled 3–5 gal­lons of diesel dur­ing fuel­ing oper­a­tions on December 9th. It hap­pened near Hawaii and the sys­tem was shut down when crewmem­bers saw a grow­ing oil slick. Thats not a lot of fuel by Exxon Valdez stan­dards but the spill occurred in ocean con­di­tions with 12-​​foot swells, rel­a­tively calm com­pared to con­di­tions in the Bering Sea.
–Security: As a source within the Missile Defense Agency said, Trying to defend a bil­lion dol­lar asset with rifles, shot­guns and 50 cals is ridicu­lous. The SBX will be pro­tected around the clock by about a dozen lightly armed secu­rity con­trac­tors. Can the SBX defend itself from a direct attack by a bomb-​​laden boat? 

Posted in Missiles | 26 Comments »

Pentagon Plan: Hit Anywhere on Earth, in an Hour

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

I’ve had sources ask to meet me in some pretty odd places. But there was one meet­ing last year that had to be just about the strangest request yet. It wasn’t just that this very-​​recently retired Defense Department strate­gist wanted to meet at the Pentagon City Mall — that’s a pretty com­mon place to grab an off-​​the-​​record cup o’ joe. It was where in the mall he had in mind: at the Nordstrom’s cof­fee shop, tucked all the way in the far reaches of the store, just past the lit­tle kid’s clothes sec­tion.
0107global_main.jpg So I walk past the rows of tod­dlers’ jumpers, past the blue-​​haired ladies order­ing around their grand­kids. I sit down with my source. And he begins to tell me about a Pentagon plan that’s even odder that the place where we’re meet­ing.
Here’s the goal, as another source — U.S. Strategic Command’s deputy com­man­der, Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler — later told me on-​​the-​​record: “strike vir­tu­ally any­where on the face of the Earth within 60 min­utes.“
Sounds… ummm, ambi­tious, right? So how do you pull off that kind of mis­sion, now known as “Prompt Global Strike?” Well, that’s the sub­ject of my cover story in this month’s Popular Mechanics.
Now, of course, the American mil­i­tary has weapons that can destroy just about any­thing on the planet in a mat­ter of min­utes: nuclear mis­siles. Which might have been the right answer for con­tain­ing our Soviet adver­saries. But as the Cold War receded into mem­ory, U.S. strate­gists began to worry that our nuclear threat was no longer cred­i­ble. That we were too muscle-​​bound for our own good. Were we really pre­pared to wipe out Tehran in ret­ri­bu­tion for a sin­gle ter­ror­ist attack? Kill mil­lions of Chinese for invad­ing Taiwan? Of course not. The weaker our ene­mies grew, the less omi­nous our arse­nal became. Military the­o­rists called it “self-​​deterrence.” “In today’s envi­ron­ment, we’ve got zeros and ones. You can decide to engage with nuclear weapons, or not,” Navy Capt. Terry Benedict told me. “The nation’s lead­er­ship needs an inter­me­di­ate step to take the action required, with­out cross­ing to the one.“
Benedict’s option — one of two I explore in the arti­cle — is Trident bal­lis­tic mis­siles, armed with con­ven­tional war­heads instead of nukes. For lots of good rea­sons (like the better-​​than-​​average chance the mis­siles could start World War III) Congress has negged the idea. But, in the mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment, there’s still a great deal of inter­est in using bal­lis­tic mis­siles for the hour-​​or-​​less mis­sion. How exactly the nuclear holo­caust issue is sup­posed to be resolved is, at this point, unclear.
Which brings us to option #2. It’s a long-​​term play. And a long-​​shot, too. The military’s research divi­sions are pour­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars into exotic, high-​​speed weapons like the X-​​51 hyper­sonic cruise mis­sile, illus­trated on the cover. If it works out as planned, the X-​​51 will go Mach 5 (roughly 3600 mph) — much, much faster than any equiv­a­lent in the U.S. arse­nal. Some Pentagon plan­ners see the X-​​51 as part of a suite of futur­is­tic weapons that can almost-​​instantly threaten American adver­saries every­where, with­out threat­en­ing the entire planet in the process. But it’s way off in the dis­tance; the X-51’s first test flight isn’t until 2008. I’m expect­ing sev­eral more trips to Nordstrom’s Cafe before then.
UPDATE 11:40 AM: If you want to learn how the Prompt Global Strike con­cept got started — and how it’s being put into early devel­op­ment, today — I strongly rec­om­mend this chronol­ogy, from the Federation of American Scientists’ Hans Kristensen.

Posted in Missiles, Nukes, Strategery | 28 Comments »

Flood of Secret Docs Coming

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

Score one for the good guys. In a shock­ingly sane move, the Bush Administration — widely con­sid­ered to be the most secre­tive in recent his­tory — is going to let hun­dreds of mil­lions of once-​​classified doc­u­ments enter into the pub­lic sphere.
z01.jpg

Secret doc­u­ments 25 years old or older will lose their clas­si­fied sta­tus with­out so much as the stroke of a pen, unless agen­cies have sought exemp­tions on the ground that the mate­r­ial remains secret…
And every year from now on, mil­lions of addi­tional doc­u­ments will be auto­mat­i­cally declas­si­fied as they reach the 25-​​year limit, revers­ing the tra­di­tional prac­tice of releas­ing just what schol­ars request…
Gearing up to review aging records to meet the dead­line, agen­cies have declas­si­fied more than one bil­lion pages, shed­ding light on the Cuban mis­sile cri­sis, the Vietnam War and the net­work of Soviet agents in the American government. 

Earlier this year, the Administration was scram­bling to make secret again already declas­si­fied papers, like the CIA’s 1948 plan to drop leaflets behind the Iron Curtain. Good for them for hav­ing the sense to switch course.

Posted in Cloak and Dagger | 91 Comments »

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