I wasn’t able to jump on this yesterday due to some Military.com commitments, but there was an interesting piece in the New York Times about the huge amount of UAV data pouring into military hard drives — so much that the USAF, for example, is drowning in it.

It got me to thinking that the services are exactly right to store all that drone feed footage no matter how boring it might be. The flight of a Reaper drone from its impoundment in Jalalabad to its target in Miran Shah might be just rocky paths and scrub brush, but to a skilled analyst, the tell-tale differences from each pass over a span of time might mean the difference between detecting a new “rat line” and ignoring a key Taliban infiltration route.

The story seems to indicate that there’s a shortage of analysts to evaluate the video and pinpoint the intel that might prove useful — especially if it’s second or third order data.

Air Force officials, who take the lead in analyzing the video from Iraq and Afghanistan, say they have managed to keep up with the most urgent assignments. And it was clear, on a visit to the analysis center in an old hangar here, that they were often able to correlate the video data with clues in still images and intercepted phone conversations to build a fuller picture of the biggest threats.

But aren’t there software solutions that can process the footage and pick out the things analysts might be interested in? I mean, the National Geospacial Intelligence Agency doesn’t pour over hard copies of Key Hole satellite shotsKestrelTest with a magnifying glass anymore, do they?

But while the biggest timesaver would be to automatically scan the video for trucks and armed men, that software is not yet reliable. And the military has run into the same problem that the broadcast industry has in trying to pick out football players swarming on a tackle.

So I dredged up a company I’d seen one year at a trade show that developed software to run in the background of UAV feeds. The application pinpoints vehicles, personnel and other objects interesting to the operator and tracks them in a color coded box. Seems to me the same could be developed for a passive application where the video footage is just run through the processor after the mission and the software picks out certain clips that contain the clues analysts program in.

I can see the article’s point — the AF is developing new software to get key info to the field from drone passes faster to the operator on the ground…but what about that change analysis piece?

Here’s a cool analysis test from the Kestrel web site.

– Christian

Classified Information is defined as data, regardless of form that includes sensitive information that its disclosure is restricted by law or regulation to particular group of people. Information is classified at one of three levels based on the amount of danger that its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause to national security.

The highest basic level of classified information is Top Secret. Top Secret information is defined as information that if disclosed would reasonably be expected to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security. The next to highest level of classified information is Secret. Secret information is defined as information that if disclosed would cause “serious damage” to national security. The third level of classified information is Confidential. Confidential is defined as information that if disclosed could cause “damage” to national security.

There are other restrictions on information such as NTK — need to know and SSI — sensitive security information. In these dangerous times, a slip or accidental disclosure of classified information can easily result in loss of life and billions of dollars of damage.

The extraordinary sensitivity of our intelligence and defense organizations’ mission requires the extraordinary protection against possible unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Any information coming to your attention concerning the loss or unauthorized disclosure of classified information should be reported immediately to proper government officials. Due to a number of recent security incidents involving the unauthorized disclosure of classified information training programs like “Handling Classified Information” has seen a significant increase in demand according to Spy-Ops. Organizations are taking additional steps to inform employees and contract workers of their responsibilities when handling sensitive information.

The most widely known case of leaking classified information came when the identity of a secret agent was disclosed. CIA covert operative Valerie Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, had her identity publically disclosed in multiple newspapers back in July of 2003. Since then, disclosures of classified information seem be become know monthly.

Examples (By far not an exhaustive list):

Jul 15, 2008 The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is exploring into how confidential and extremely sensitive information on airline security and the state of airporst was leaked to the press.

April 2008 A Defense Department official who worked as a weapons policy analyst pleaded guilty to disclosing classified military information that was later passed on to China.

August 2007 A Congressman revealed a budget cut in the classified portion of the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Bill dealing with the human-intelligence programs.

July 2007 Millions of documents containing sensitive and sometimes classified information have been floating about freely on file sharing networks after being inadvertently exposed by individuals downloading P2P software on systems that held the data. Among these documents were the Pentagon’s classified (secret) network infrastructure diagrams, complete with IP addresses as well as information on five separate Department of Defense information security system audits.

October 2006 A report published on the front page of the New York Times included a classified one-page slide “Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict” from an Oct. 18 military briefing.

August 2006 A Navy lawyer could be put behind bars for 30 years after Navy officials charged him with passing along secret information while he was stationed at Guantanamo Bay.

April 2006 The CIA fired an officer who acknowledged, after failing a polygraph examination, giving classified information to a reporter.

April 2005 The Justice Department launched an investigation into leaks to the media about the National Security Agency’s classified domestic surveillance program.

These incidents and many others have triggered multiple ongoing investigations by the FBI and many other federal entities. One would think that the people who have been authorized to handle classified information would take divulging this information more seriously. We should all be outraged when our country’s secrets are disclosed for whatever reason. After all, it puts all of us at risk.

– Kevin Coleman

Last week while working on cyber attacks against media web sites I discovered some information I thought you might benefit from reading.

One of the more significant concerns with cyber warfare is a targeted attack against the news media. There are two different strategies that play here. The first possibility is a disruptive strategy — where the cyber attack disables the media from reporting on activities and disrupting their ability to inform the public about events that are or have just taken place. The second strategy addresses the use of the media as a source of misinformation. Misinformation and disinformation campaigns are easily mounted and you can even find this tactic addressed in the well known work “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. We have assessed the implication of both of these scenarios using the Scenario Based Intelligence Analysis Tool created by Spy-Ops. The result of that analysis is below.

Scenario 1 — Media Disruption
An attack against the entire media sector in an attempt to disrupt its ability to communicate with and inform the public is rated a 2.3 on our risk scale.

MEASUREMENT SCORE
Cost = 4.3
Complexity = 4.7
Difficulty = 4.4
Discovery Probability = 3.8
Success Probability = 2.0
Impact = 4.7
Current Defense = 2.5
___________________________________________
Overall Risk = 2.3

Scenario 2 — Dis or mis Information
An attack against a primary new source with the intent to inject mis-information for public dissemination is rated a 4.1 on our risk scale.

MEASUREMENT SCORE
Cost = 1.3
Complexity = 1.6
Difficulty = 2.2
Discovery Probability = 2.0
Success Probability = 4.0
Impact = 4.7
Current Defense = 2.5
___________________________________________
Overall Risk = 4.1

In support of the higher risk and increased likelihood of success in this type of attack is the following account of events that took place on June 17, 2007. The viewers of a Czech television channel watching a Web cam program monitoring weather in various Czech mountain resorts saw a nuclear explosion taking place in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains in the northern Czech Republic. CNN Europe reported that members of a Czech art group were responsible and got in trouble for hacking a television broadcast and inserting the phony video of the nuclear explosion.

One can only imagine the psychological impact on the viewers that witnessed this prank. The TV channel CT2 said that they received frantic phone calls from viewers who thought a nuclear war had started. By the way, just recently the artists were acquitted of the charges stemming from the fake nuclear blast on TV.

Watch the Video of the News/Weather Cast.

In a conversation I had with a security consultant he told me: “Sure it could happen in the U.S. today. The media industry has not made the necessary security improvements since the Captain Midnight incident in the late 80s.”

– Kevin Coleman

Congress’ watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, is warning that the Pentagon needs to improve how it plans for and manages development of critical intelligence and surveillance systems.

In a report released April 23, the GAO said the military has struggled “to improve integration across DOD and national intelligence agencies” hampered by the widely differing missions and bureaucratic cultures of the intelligence agencies.

This is not an academic exercise. The report notes that the military plans to spend $28 billion over the next seven years to field a wide array of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. That’s just airborne systems and does not include spy satellites, with their traditionally hefty price tags.

The GAO report cites one example where the Pentagon “had difficulty obtaining complete information” on top secret “national” assets — usually a veiled reference to highly classified radar and electro-optical satellites — “because of security classifications of other agency documents.” Also, budget wars have hampered the effort to improve coordination across the intelligence enterprise, the GAO report says. In classic understated fashion, the report says that “disagreements about equitable funding from each budget have led to program delays.”

The Pentagon has drawn up an “ISR Integration Roadmap” but it does not appear to help much, if the report’s language is parsed carefully. The roadmap does not “provide a long-term view of what capabilities are required to achieve strategic goals or provide detailed information that would make it useful as a basis for deciding among alternative investments.”

The GAO reviewed 19 intelligence and reconnaissance systems proposals and found that 12 “sponsors” — this could be a combatant command, an intelligence agency or a service — “did not complete assessments, and the completeness of the remaining seven sponsors’ assessments varied.” Perhaps most worrying, was the office’s finding that the entity charged with overseeing these crucial decisions — the Battlespace Awareness Functional Capabilities Board — “lacks adequate numbers of dedicated, skilled personnel to engage in early coordination with sponsors and to review sponsors’ assessments.”

The report’s authors recommend that Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and James Clapper, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, to work together and develop “a comprehensive source of information on all ISR capabilities.” Also, Gates should also put in place a monitoring process to make sure the capabilities board and those it works with do a better job. Finally, the report’s authors say the capabilities board’s staffing levels and their expertise should be reviewed.

– Colin Clark

We now return to our regular programming. Semper Fidelis.

(Gouge: BT)

– Ward

Operation Iraqi Freedom has rung in the new year with a bang — literally. On Jan. 10, U.S. warplanes dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, one of the largest air strikes of the Iraq war. This attack reflects the increased use of air power as a component of Gen. David Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy (Gen. Petraeus is the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq and the primary author of FM 3–24, the Army’s counterinsurgency manual). In 2007, the U.S. conducted more than 1,100 air strikes, a more than fivefold increase over the previous year.

The U.S. military’s fascination with bombing is rooted in our competitive advantage in advanced technology.

The 1991 Gulf War saw the first widespread use of precision-guided munitions to destroy high-value targets (often deeply buried and hardened). Now ubiquitous in everyone’s cars, the global positioning system was mated to dumb bombs to make them “smart” in Afghanistan, resulting in the venerable B-52 bomber (which has been in service in the U.S. Air Force since 1955) flying close air support missions at tens of thousands of feet altitude (usually directed by soldiers on the ground or the pre-set target coordinates). In Iraq, as guidance technology makes bombs more accurate, they are getting smaller — instead of 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound bombs, 500-pound (or even smaller) bombs can be used to destroy targets with less likelihood of collateral damage. According to Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Mueller, director of the Combined Air Operations Center in Iraq, the benefit of being able to use smaller bombs is that they can “take one building and not the whole block.”

But the FM 3–24 counterinsurgency manual recognizes that “bombing, even with the most precise weapons, can cause unintended civilian casualties.” Consequently, “an air strike can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation government and provides insurgents with a major propaganda victory.” In other words, bombing is a proverbial Catch-22. Insurgents or terrorists may be killed, but no matter how much care is taken to avoid non-combatant casualties, innocent civilians may also be killed.

According to Wing Commander Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, “Even a 400-pound bomb has a wide area of blast and you are quite likely to kill some civilians. Kill a wife, children, mother or uncle and people become so angry the terrorist cycle starts all over again.”

Such phenomenon was evident in Iraq very early on. In November 2003, after U.S. F-16 fighter jets dropped several 500-pound bombs in Fallujah, one resident remarked, “We used to have hopes of the Americans after they removed Saddam. We had liked them until this weekend. Why did they drop bombs near us and hurt and terrify my children like this?”

Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Yet this may be the case of increasing the use of air power in Iraq.

Even if civilians are not killed (the military claims that 35 al-Qaida militants were killed in the attack that dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs and that there were no civilian casualties), bombing results in destruction and devastation (the attack destroyed 25 homes and 13 vehicles). And the reality is that a bombed-out house is a bombed-out house — while the returning occupants may be happy to have al-Qaida out of the neighborhood, they may not be too happy about their house. The wake of such wreckage runs contrary to FM 3–24 and another important tenant of counterinsurgency: “Successful counterinsurgents support or develop local institutions with legitimacy and the ability to provide basic services, economic opportunity, public order, and security.” So while bombing may be one solution to achieving security, it may also create setbacks to providing basic services and economic opportunity — and ultimately counterproductive to counterinsurgency.

Does airpower fly in the face of proper COIN doctrine, and is it actually causing setbacks as we work to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan?

(Gouge: WW)

– Ward

Back in 1985, during my first airwing detachment to Fallon, Nevada, my squadron participated in an exercise called “Constant Peg.” C-Peg was super classified and involved American fighter crews flying 1v1 ACM mission against Soviet fighters like MiG-23s and MiG-21s. These fighters were based at Tonopah. (My pilot and I went up against a MiG-23.)

Now during the briefs before the exercise the guys flying the MiGs were very hyper about us NOT landing at Tonopah … ever, ever, ever … even though the exercise took place just north of the field. “If you have an emergency go back to Fallon,” was the refrain, which struck us as a bit excessive, even considering the fact these enemy airplanes were based there.

The squadron operations officer, who went on to be a corporate test pilot, said something that made sense years later: “They’re not worried about the MiGs. There’s something else going on there.” When we pushed him for details, he said he didn’t know. He just had a hunch that C-Peg was a cover for another program.

Well, we now know that other program was the F-117 developmental test program. And after seeing firsthand the V-22’s DT program for three years, I can tell you that it’s a miracle that nobody found out about the Stealth jet during that time. Incredible stories have emerged about long commutes and clueless families and night ops. They did have a couple of close calls. There were reports of UFOs by local civilians that were quashed by Air Force officials.

So, again, have the folks in Texas seen something the Air Force doesn’t want them to see?

Check out these eyewitnesses in this news report. They seem convinced that they saw something weird:

– Ward

This from our friend Simon at ABC News:

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was paid $100,000 to endorse a veterans charity that watchdog groups say is ripping off donors and wounded veterans by using only a small portion of the money raised for veterans services, according to testimony in Congress today.

Read the entire ABC News report here.

– Ward

The Navy announced today that two important steps have been taken under existing law and regulations to allow it to conduct effective, integrated training with sonar off the coast of southern California after a federal court earlier this month imposed untenable restrictions on such training.

In accordance with the provisions of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), and at the recommendation of the Secretary of Commerce, the President concluded that continuing these vital exercises without the restrictions imposed by the district court is in the paramount interests of the United States. He signed an exemption from the requirements of the CZMA for the Navy’s continued use of mid-frequency active (MFA) sonar in a series of exercises scheduled to take place off the coast of California through January 2009. The Navy already applies twenty-nine mitigation measures approved by federal environmental regulators when using active sonar, and these will remain in place.

An exemption from the act was sought after an order was issued on Jan. 3 by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, which created a significant and unreasonable risk that the Navy will not be able to conduct effective sonar training necessary to certify strike groups for deployment in support of world-wide operational and combat activities. Use of sonar is part of critical, integrated training that must be done in the Navy’s operating area off the coast of San Diego to take advantage of Southern California’s bathymetric features and its extensive ranges, airfields, and other infrastructure necessary for effective training. Approximately half the Navy’s fleet will receive its most critical, “graduate level” training here before it deploys its forces around the world.

In a separate but related action, the Council on Environmental Quality approved the Navy’s request for alternative arrangements for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, for these exercises until completion of the Southern California Range Complex environmental impact statement.

Following up on these actions, Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter signed a decision memorandum yesterday agreeing to those arrangements, which include adaptive management measures, more thorough reporting procedures, and increased public participation.

“We can protect our national security while simultaneously being good stewards of the environment,” said Winter. “These alternative measures, in addition to the 29 protective measures already in place, will ensure our operating forces can train realistically without harming the environment.”

“We are already taking extensive measures to protect marine mammals, and we have had positive results from those measures,” said Winter. “We are furthermore committed to an extensive data collection effort to help inform our future efforts in this regard.”

Even before the court’s order, the Navy employed 29 protective measures, developed in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service, any time sonar is used on Navy ranges, or in major exercises. The existing measures include, among other things, stationing specially trained lookouts to look for marine mammals, passive acoustic monitoring for marine mammals, establishing safety zones around ships where sonar power is reduced or shut down if marine mammals are sighted, and employing extra precautions during chokepoint exercises.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said that the actions were necessary in order to ensure the Navy’s ability to train Sailors to detect quiet submarines that might threaten its ships.

“We cannot in good conscience send American men and women into potential trouble spots without adequate training to defend themselves,” said Roughead.

“The southern California operating area provides unique training opportunities that are vital to preparing our forces, and the planned exercises cannot be postponed without impacting national security,” said Roughead. “The steps that have been taken will allow our men and women to train realistically, while continuing the effective employment of proven mitigation measures that have been endorsed by the Council on Environmental Quality and our regulator, the National Marine Fisheries Service.”

So has sanity prevaled here? Or is this another win for the evil empire running roughshod on the environment?

– Ward

There are new details of Israeli’s attack on Syria that suggests the U.S. had knowledge of the event and perhaps some back-channel involvement. The Pentagon was monitoring the electronic emissions coming from Syria during Israel’s Sept. 6 attack and, while there was no active Pentagon engagement in the operation to destroy a nuclear reactor, there was advice provided, say military and aerospace industry officials.

Read the rest at Military.com.

(Photo: Syrian target before and after. Courtesy Washington Post.)

And all of us here at Defense Tech wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.