We did this a while back pretty suc­cess­fully and so I thought it was high time to do it again (and hope­fully more frequently)…

As you might remem­ber, we had DoD Buzz edi­tor Colin Clark do a live Q&A ses­sion with DT read­ers back in July. Well, we’re doing it again — this time with our Cyber Warfare/​Cyber Security expert and con­trib­u­tor Kevin Coleman.

As you’ve read, Kevin’s one tapped in dude when it comes to cyber threats and the tech­niques to meet and defeat them. Cyber war­fare is becom­ing more and more of an issue in national secu­rity cir­cles, com­pet­ing with loose nukes as a top threat to U.S. secu­rity for key Obama defense advi­sor Richard Danzig.

Kevin teases his dis­cus­sion with this:

Cyber attacks and cyber war­fare are hot issues in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sectors.

Earlier this year, President George W. Bush signed mul­ti­ple (2 or 3) clas­si­fied Presidential Directives address­ing cyber secu­rity and war­fare. The price tag on the direc­tives was first reported at $6.6 bil­lion (January). In March the esti­mate grew to $18 bil­lion. Reported last in May the pric­etag had mush­roomed to $30 billion.

A Congressional study has esti­mated the cost of cyber attacks on busi­nesses now exceeds $225 bil­lion annu­ally. Given all the bailout money being handed out, many busi­nesses believe the Federal Government should absorb the cost of defend­ing our busi­nesses against cyber attacks. 

Now some of you think Kevin is off the mark on his cyber secu­rity assess­ments and some of you cheer his fore­sight in sound­ing the alarm. So, here’s your chance to talk to the man himself.

Tune in tomor­row, Nov. 6, 2008, at 1500 EST on this site to par­tic­i­pate in a live Q&A with Kevin Coleman.

See you then…

– Christian

Since it’s Sept. 11, 2008, I’m going to do some­thing I’ve never done before and share with you my expe­ri­ence of Sept. 11 and Sept. 12, 2001. I’d like to open up the site all day for DT read­ers — world­wide — to describe where you were, what you saw and your impres­sions were on 9/​11. I’ll post the responses through­out the day… 

I was eat­ing break­fast in the National Press Club that morn­ing when I saw the images of the first hit on the WTC play­ing on the news shows that morn­ing in the din­ing room. At first I really thought this was a mis­take, but when I real­ized it was a much larger plane, I began to sus­pect some sort of ter­ror­ist attack. 

I ran down to my news office — at the time I worked for a defense indus­try newslet­ter called Defense Week — and by the time I got to the TVs in my office, the sec­ond plane had hit. Then I knew we were truly being attacked. 

Then the Pentagon… 

As a new news guy, I fig­ured it was time for me to swing into action. I wasn’t sure what to do so I grabbed my things and headed toward what most peo­ple thought would be the next target…the White House. 

The streets were jammed with cars and peo­ple, but it was orderly. No one was totally freak­ing out but there was a thick ten­sion in the air. I got the sense that folks in that part of DC — near the White House and var­i­ous other ‘exec­u­tive office build­ings” — were used to ten­sion and stress. I walked quickly over to the park in front of the White House and was quickly shoved away by an MP5-​​wielding uni­formed Secret Service. People were start­ing to freak.

(more…)

I know you guys are prob­a­bly more inter­ested in the upcom­ing plink­ing of a way­ward satel­lite with a Navy SM3 ABM, but I want to see if I can spark your inter­est and resources to run down another mys­tery.

Imad Mughniyah makes “Carlos the Jackal” look like an afi­cionado. He racked up over 400 kills in var­i­ous ter­ror­ist hits he planned, includ­ing, some believe, the bomb­ing of the US apart­ment com­plex at the Kobar tow­ers in Saudi Arabia. This guy had a $5 mil­lion reward on his head and was arguably worse than Osama bin Laden in his ruth­less­ness and track record of ter­ror­ist attacks.

My big ques­tion is, who had the guts (and intel) to kill him in such a pub­lic way? I know everyone’s going to say Israel did it. They sure have motive enough. But I’m inclined to be skep­ti­cal of that view. It’s almost TOO obvi­ous. I’m sure they helped in some man­ner, but I don’t believe it was their operation…though I’m will­ing ot be con­vinced otherwise.

The oft-​​quoted for­mer Israeli intel chief Dani Yatom had an odd quote the other day on FOX News. He said “the free and demo­c­ra­tic world today achieved a very, very impor­tant goal.” Free and demo­c­ra­tic world? Achieved? So a coun­try that’s a mem­ber of “the free and demo­c­ra­tic world” did this…he used the word “achieved,” which implies they DID it, rather than ben­e­fit­ted from another’s actions.

Maybe I’m pars­ing too much, but I’d like to see what you all can find out about this. I’ll keep my scan on.

– Christian

I want to give our savvy DT read­ers a col­lec­tive pat on the back for your excel­lent dis­cus­sions on the recent F-​​15 ground­ing.

Though I absorb quite a few barbs from you at times and deservedly so, in very few cases (sar­casm) it is one of the great­est plea­sures edit­ing this blog to see how smart, involved and dialed in our read­ers are. The issue with ground­ing the F-​​15s is a per­fect case in point.

Our boy Byron Skinner pegged it right off the bat when he spoke of known struc­tural prob­lems with the F-​​15:

Welcome to the orig­i­nal air frame struc­tural design flaw dis­cov­ered in the F-​​15 in the late 90’s. In short the tail sec­tion wants to fall off. The F-15E’s had already gone into pro­duc­tion and the AF didn’t want to invest any money in an air­craft designed in the 1970’s so it was let go.

Without 9/​11 they may have got­ten away with it but with the Homeland Security over flights and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq mis­sions putting exces­sive hours on the flawed F-​​15 air­frames it’s only a mat­ter of time before more fall out of the sky and an air­crew is lost…

…The design defect is in the aft part of the air frame where the tail fins con­nect to the fuse­lage. If it’s a mate­r­ial prob­lem or a struc­tural design fail­ure it still being debated. It was esti­mated that since it appeared that the F-15’s were good for about 20 years before the air­frames via fatigue and other stresses would be come an issue that with the restric­tions the F-​​15 was ser­vice­able with in the oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment before 9/​11.

The AF decided to roll the dice and not cor­rect the prob­lem and made per­ma­nent the oper­a­tional restric­tions on the F-15’s… 

Then our friends at Aviation Week (I won­der if they were tipped off by our com­ments) put together a story on the prob­lem. Heres what they found:

F-​​15 oper­a­tions were sus­pended pend­ing review of a Nov. 2 crash. A pos­si­ble struc­tural fail­ure was involved in the Missouri Air National Guard F-​​15C crash, which could have larger impli­ca­tions about the integrity of the entire F-​​15 fleet, say USAF officials.

Aerospace indus­try and USAF offi­cials say the fuse­lage broke in two imme­di­ately behind the cock­pit dur­ing a 2.5–3.5g maneu­ver. The air­craft had been deliv­ered to USAF in 1982.

In a state­ment, the pilot said his first warn­ings were smoke and fumes in the cock­pit. Almost imme­di­ately he was in the air­crafts slip­stream. He ejected and suf­fered flail­ing injuries. 

Our boy Byron also brought up the BRAC issue…

Let us not for­get that they were fac­ing declin­ing bud­gets, the Soviets were gone, the pub­lic was EXPECTING a PEACE DIVIDEND, BRAC and an admin­is­tra­tion who never really under­stood the military. 

And Av Week, found some­thing similar:

Also, inves­ti­ga­tors are look­ing at main­te­nance prac­tices to see if prob­lems could have been gen­er­ated by clos­ing down the unit as part of the base-​​realignment process. An ini­tial USAF analy­sis found that it was a unique prob­lem with a sin­gle air­craft, not a fleet-​​wide problem. 

But wor­ries me most is the idea that the Air Force is using this ground­ing to push Congress for more F-​​22 fund­ing. Im not a huge pro­po­nent of con­spir­acy the­o­ries, but it seems so tempt­ing to me that the Air Force cant help but use the ground­ing to say see, we told you the F-​​15s are old and need replac­ing. And they know that brin­ing up BRAC issues have par­tic­u­lar res­o­nance among law­mak­ers starved for Pentagon pork in their dis­tricts no mat­ter how anti­quated the base may be.

Again, Av Week:

USAF and indus­try offi­cials say fleet ground­ings some­times occur every few months for var­i­ous safety issues. They say senior USAF lead­er­ship is using this ground­ing to push for a larger F-​​22 force. And while USAF was ground­ing its F-​​15s, mil­i­tary offi­cials brief­ing an inter­na­tional fighter con­fer­ence in London said that the F-​​15Cs wouldnt be retired until 2025–30, and that the F-​​15E will serve beyond 2035.

The acci­dent in Missouri could be unique to that [one] air­craft, a vet­eran F-​​15 squadron com­man­der says. And if its not, there are lots of fixes you can make to keep them fly­ing. The pitch for more F-​​22s is whats going on. 

And this was not lost on our DT read­ers either.

What wor­ries me most is that at some insti­tu­tional level, in E-​​Ring Air Force offices in the Pentagon, the deci­sion was made to make a big­ger issue of these seem­ingly iso­lated crashes than should have been so that a bet­ter case for F-​​22s could be made. Again, I dont want to think this, but when a ser­vice makes a deci­sion to define its future with one piece of very expen­sive hard­ware like the F-​​22, its almost too tempt­ing a Devils Bargain to avoid.

But if Byrons right, and there is a long-​​term struc­tural prob­lem with the F-​​15, its our duty as a nation to fix the prob­lem or replace the planes as soon as pos­si­ble. I just dont know enough about the engi­neer­ing side of this debate. Thats what Ive got our read­ers for.

Thanks to every­one for your input. And keep up the good work.

(Av Week gouge from NC)

– Christian

On Sunday, we asked Defense Tech read­ers to join in the search of adven­turer and aero­space pio­neer Steve Fossett, who went down in a single-​​engine, civil­ian air­craft more than a week ago.

He flew out of an air sta­tion in west­ern Nevada with­out a flight plan and never returned.

In our post, we made read­ers aware of an effort to enlist blog­gers and con­cerned Internet users into the search. Using Google Maps and other soft­ware, Fossett friends have been scour­ing thou­sands of miles of terrain.

Defense Tech reader Brian Neville sent us a note last night with the fol­low­ing coor­di­nates, say­ing he thinks he might have spot­ted something.

Now, Im no photo-​​interpreter, but look­ing at the hazy image on Google Maps, it seems maybe hes got something.

COORDINATES:

38 degrees, 29 min­utes, 45.05 sec North

119 degrees, 17 min­utes, 40.96 sec West

ele­va­tion = 9976 ft accord­ing to Google Earth. 

So far, nei­ther Brian nor I have been able to find out whom to pass the tip along to and maybe its not a new one, as the Daily Telegraph has reported but Id ask other DT read­ers to help us pass this along and keep their eyes on the net for this avi­a­tion pioneer.

Let me know what you all find…

– Christian

An eagle-​​eyed Defense Tech reader pointed out in an email to edi­tors that the post put up yes­ter­day on July 4 fac­toids had been par­tially debunked by the inter­net inves­ti­ga­tors over at Snopes​.com.

Never shy of embrac­ing infor­ma­tion con­trary to our posts, the edi­to­r­ial board of Defense Tech made the deci­sion to pass along the mit­i­gat­ing data pro­vided by res1huzn even though it was a bit of a stick in the eye for us.

Five sign­ers were cap­tured by the British as trai­tors and tor­tured before they died.

It is true that five sign­ers of the Declaration of Independence were cap­tured by the British dur­ing the course of the Revolutionary War. However, none of them died while a pris­oner, and four of them were taken into cus­tody not because they were con­sid­ered “trai­tors” due to their sta­tus as sig­na­to­ries to that doc­u­ment, but because they were cap­tured as pris­on­ers of war while actively engaged in mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against the British: George Walton was cap­tured after being wounded while com­mand­ing mili­tia at the Battle of Savannah in December 1778, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge (three of the four Declaration of Independence sign­ers from South Carolina) were taken pris­oner at the Siege of Charleston in May in 1780.

(more…)

The Peoples’ Site! is the DT fea­ture where peri­od­i­cally (when we feel like it) we high­light the best com­ments from our com­ments forums. And no entry gen­er­ated more pas­sion recently than “The Commandant Says ‘There is Going to be a Crash.’” Resultantly, we’re ded­i­cat­ing this edi­tion of The Peoples’ Site to Marine Corps Major Tony “Buddy” Bianca.

Buddy has been an Osprey dri­ver for some years, so his two cents mer­its more than a lit­tle atten­tion. Some addi­tional back­ground: I was a Tomcat RIO (like “Goose” in the movie “Topgun”) and retired at the rank of com­man­der after 20 years in the Navy. And I wrote a hand­ful of nov­els about mil­i­tary top­ics. I was also the PAO for the V-​​22 pro­gram at NAVAIR for three years after I retired (before I assumed the edi­tor job at Military​.com). Knowing that, Buddy’s ad hominem attacks will make more sense. Anyway, here’s his response to my post:

Im curi­ous to know what ques­tion the Commandant was answer­ing when this quote was cap­tured. Or are we led to believe that he called you all to break­fast just to strike up a con­ver­sa­tion and tell V22s were going to crash?

And finally (whew!) I dont believe the Commandant brought up, I believe you and your “amigo” did.

Damn. Color me bitch-​​slapped, absolutely. To be clear, I didn’t intend to imply that Mongo agreed with me by com­pli­ment­ing him in the orig­i­nal post. My crime here is I truly respect him as a pilot and a leader. I also wasn’t try­ing to demote Gunny Schneider. I was refer­ring to a time when he was, in fact, a staff sergeant. But what­ever. One thing’s for sure: Regardless of the airplane’s issues, with Marines like Buddy Bianca on the case, the Osprey just might suc­ceed. And if it fails, it won’t be with­out a fight.

– Ward

(Editor’s Note: The Peoples’ Site! is a new DT fea­ture where peri­od­i­cally (when we feel like it) we will high­light the best com­ments from our dis­cus­sion forums.)

In response to “That Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Jet,” Dr. Curiosity writes: “It may be apoc­ryphal, but I once heard from an elec­tronic engi­neer­ing friend of a sim­i­lar bug in a guid­ance sys­tem, devel­oped in the east­ern part of the Southern Hemisphere, that didn’t work quite so well for the North American customers.

“The prob­lem was one of coor­di­nate sys­tems: When you’re used to get­ting pos­i­tive num­bers for South and East coords, and sud­den you’re get­ting every­thing in North and West, things don’t work so well. To get things resolved quickly, they effec­tively installed it back to front — i.e. invert­ing all the num­bers. No-one’s going to notice if a missile’s fly­ing upside down, right? ”

John Diuno offered this in response to Stephen Trimble’s provoca­tive post on the Marine Corps’ obses­sion with VSTOL: “One inter­est­ing sta­tis­tic came out of the first Gulf War. Approx 15 per­cent of con­ven­tional air­craft struck by mis­siles were shot down. (my num­bers might be slightly off, but not by far). The per­cent­age of Harriers shot down when struck by a mis­sile? 100 per­cent! The basic rea­son is that most mis­siles are heat-​​seaking, which head to the hottest parts, namely the noz­zles. Where are the noz­zles on each? F-18/F-15/F-14/F-16…they’re many feet behind the crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the engines and even the air­craft. Where are the noz­zles on a Harrier? Directly below the wings, directly astride the engines, fuel lines, con­trol systems…the heart of the beast.”

And in response to another Trimble post that got many of you fired up, Freefallingbomb writes: “If you blunt the pointed tip of a bul­let with a Dremel then you also make the bul­let lighter. But light objects dont travel as far ( through any medium, not in a vac­uum ) as heavy objects do with the same speed …

“Therefore, the only way to avoid weight loss of the bul­let is not to ask sol­diers to per­form their own basic bal­lis­tic exper­i­ments before a fire-​​fight ( thats what they were sent into com­bat for. I only hope that they get paid enough… ), but sim­ply to pro­duce a new, spoon-​​point-​​tipped bul­let that sim­ply weighs the entire orig­i­nal 62 grams!”

Defense Tech — the (really smart) peo­ples’ site. So keep the com­ments com­ing, com­rades. The peace-​​loving staff of the repub­lic of Defense Tech thanks you.