Here's a video mystery that's been puzzling me for some time: footage which seems to show a group of Tomahawk cruise missiles flying in very close formation. But, so far as I know, Tomahawks don't really have the technology to pull of such a move. So is it for real?

The video appears in several places on the Internet. The title screen says "Operation: Iraqi Freedom Date: 22 Mar 03" and gives the unit and call sign of the aircraft involved, as well as a "Target Name" of "Cruise Missile Formation." It certainly seems to show several light-colored objects moving together at high speed. They do not stick to one formation but move relative to each other, while keeping quite close spacing.

Are they really cruise missiles, though? There are obvious advantages to sticking together -- they'd likely appear on radar as a single object -- but it would be difficult to achieve. Tomahawk Cruise missiles do not have air-to-air radar and can't 'see' each other. There have been models with radar which looks downwards and uses digital scene matching for navigation; that system was superseded by GPS, however.

Continue reading "Mystery Cruise Missile Video" »

As the FBI investigation into Curt Weldon's Russia dealings expands, most people have focused on figuring out if the former Republican congressman -- or his family and associates -- profited from his work in Congress. But it's important to look at Putin's government, as well -- especially the deals that the Russian government was proposing to the United States.

In my 2006 interview with Curt Weldon, prior to the FBI investigation, the congressman told me about a recent meeting with the head of Rosoboronexport, the Russian government agency that handles weapons exports. According to Weldon, Sergey Chemezov, a former KGB officer and then the Rosoboronexport head, wanted to talk business. "He’s coming to Washington and he asked to meet with me In a semiofficial visit. It’s not agency-to-agency, but he's coming over," Weldon told me. "He’s got Putin’s full support. They are fully aware of his visit."

What follows is Weldon's explanation of the offer Chemezov laid out:

Chemezov offers—it’s an amazing offer with Putin’s support... there are countries in the Middle East that are approaching Russia to buy replacement weapons and spare parts. Chemezov is here to say, "We want to work with America to either establish either a joint company, or even an American company that would act as a front for weapons these nations want to buy. So American would not think we’re going behind their back." What an unbelievable offer. Chemezov is here, with Putin’s knowledge, to try to set that up with us. Our National Security Advisor doesn’t even attend the meetings.

Weldon thought this idea was great, and was angry that National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley didn't show up for the meeting.

[Image: Federation of American Scientists]

Continue reading "Russians Proposed U.S. 'Front' for Selling Weapons" »

Senators and Representatives cried foul, when European aerospace giant EADS won a contract to supply tanker planes to the U.S. Air Force -- sending tens of billions in Pentagon cash into the coffers of a French-German concern. But what few mentioned was that some of that Air Force money might wind up in a Russian bank, too.

Back in 2006, a Russian state-owned bank, Vneshtorgbank, made a $1.17 billion investment in EADS -- scooping up about five percent of the company. It's one of a number of deals in which foreign governments have used sovereign wealth and private equity funds to buy up military concerns.  And the American military is starting to get worried about "the potential impact on the U.S. defense sector," Inside the Pentagon reports.

“I am concerned,” Gary Powell, assistant deputy under secretary of defense for industrial policy, told ITP.  This is the Defense Department’s "first review on the subject," and it's due to be published in January of '09.

The Pentagon has typically examined deals in which a foreign defense contractor buys another firm -- especially if that firm is American. But that's different from a foreign government making those investments, through new-ish instruments known as sovereign wealth funds.

[Photo: Encarta]

Continue reading "Pentagon Warily Eyes Foreign Banks" »

If the previews are anything like the movie, the Get Smart revamp is going to make Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls look like Citizen Kane.  But, as you'd expect from a Hollywood summer blockbuster, the gadgets will still be top-notch, even if the script is fifth-rate. Take, for example, this Swiss Army Knife -- complete with working crossbow, flamethrower and blowgun. Gizmodo has the pics, and the specs. (Almost as many tools as this knife, I'd say.) And once you've checked the knife out, you can put that $11.75 to better use. A DVD of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, perhaps?

* Harriers bomb 237-ton weed stash

* Inside Russia's space surveillance centers

* Missing wing? No prob!

* Video: Toddlers shoot machine guns

* Inhofe hearts Future Combat

(High five: RC)

We spent two years visiting off-the-beaten track nuclear sites for our new book, A Nuclear Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry. But we're often asked: Why didn't you visit the former plutonium productions plants at Hanford? What about the Bangor nuclear submarine base? Will you be diving the atomic wrecks in Bikini Atoll?

The truth is, time is limited, and so was our budget (our trip to Iran almost broke the bank). But if we could draw up a wish list for a sequel, it would look something like this:

• A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories, Kahuta, Pakistan. This is where the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb A.Q. Khan oversaw Pakistan's efforts to obtain fissile material. Khan – alleged to have supplied nuke parts and know-how to North Korea, Iran, and Libya – recently recanted his confession, and the research lab bearing his name is still in business.
• Pokhran test range, Rajasthan, India. In 1974, India joined the nuclear club with a test code-named "Smiling Buddha." It also conducted a series of nuclear tests here in 1998. Like Pakistan, India has yet to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.


• Yongbyon nuclear center, North Korea. Sometimes, talking to your enemies can get results. In 2007, an agreement was reached with North Korea will shut down and seal the Yongbyon nuclear facility, but a full accounting of the country's nuclear arsenal – and a completing dismantling of its production capability – is long overdue. (Note to photo editors: The cooling tower, symbol of North Korea's nuclear program, is slated for demolition).


• Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, United Kingdom. While researching our book, we considered a visit to the U.K. equivalent of Los Alamos National Laboratory. A friend even gave us the e-mail of the director. We wrote...and never head back. Like the French, the British are surprisingly secretive about their nuclear arsenal.


• Negev Nuclear Research Center, Israel. The Israelis take secrecy about their nuclear weapons program to another level – ask Mordechai Vanunu. Still, anyone who wants a glimpse inside this facility can take a look at the photos he smuggled out in 1985.


• Reggane, Algeria: In 1960 and 1961, while the Algerian war was still raging, the French conducted four nuclear tests in the vicinity of Reggane, in the Sahara Desert. The first French atmospheric test was codenamed "Gerboise bleue" ("blue jerboa"). As an alternative, we'd settle for a trip to French Polynesia, where the French continued nuclear testing until 1996.


• The Soviet submarine base in Sevastopol. Fans of Cold War architecture should pay a visit to Sevastopol, where the Soviets built a submarine base inside a mountain. Guided tours by underground tour operators are available.

Continue reading "Nuclear Vacationing: Next Year in North Korea?" »

"Kip" has served with the U.S. military in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He blogs at Abu Muqawama, where this post originally appeared.

Are you deaf?  Limp?  Ancient?

After climbing a flight of stairs, do you most resemble a hyperventilating pumpkin?

Can't fire your weapon? Can't learn a language? Think that Blue Force Tracker is a Ticketmaster promotion for the Blue Man Group?

Fired from your last company command for drunk driving?

Believe that preaching Christ to your Muslim counterparts is the surest way to salvation?

Great, because the US Army has a job for you that you literally can't fail -- training at the Fort Riley Training Mission to be an advisor to a foreign military.

You can fail Airborne school. You can fail Ranger school. You can fail Sapper school. But the Army's number one mission -- our efforts to develop security forces capable of providing security and stability to the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan -- no matter what you do, no matter how terrible you are going to be as an advisor, you simply can't fail the training.

Continue reading "Soldiers Can't Fail Army's Most Important Training" »

According to Time magazine, he is. Iraqi Army Brigadier General Ali Jassim Mohammed Hassen al-Frejee, helped bring order to Lutufiyah, a town 18 miles south of Baghdad. And he could prove a model to other Iraqi senior officers. 

Not yet 40 years old, the chain-smoking Ali grew up in Baghdad, the third-generation son of a military family... Rejoining the army in March 2004, he quickly established himself as one of the rising stars of the new military due to his aggressive instincts ("My tactics are simple," he says. "Whenever we see the enemy, we go after them.") and his uncompromising belief that the future of Iraq must be non-secular. A Shi'a, he is married to a Sunni, and one of his sons is named Omar, a distinctively Sunni name. Accusations of pro-Shi'a bias have plagued the Army (which is predominantly Shi'a) since its post-Saddam reconstruction, but Ali says he does not tolerate any favoritism among his soldiers.

...His own mainly Shi'a units demonstrated a loyalty to secularist ideals during the Sadr Uprising instigated by the Mahdi Army that engulfed several cities in late March. While many Iraqi soldiers in Basra and Baghdad either refused to take up arms against other Shi'as or even handed over their weapons to them, General Ali's soldiers in Mahmudiya, the largest city in the area, stuck through five days of heavy fighting that killed five Iraqi soldiers and 25 insurgents. Ali threw approximately 1,000 Iraqi soldiers into the battle, devised and directed their missions to clear the city, and visited the battlefronts repeatedly to provide firm leadership presence. "This was Shi'a soldiers fighting Shi'a militias, and the soldiers never wavered," says General Ali. Colonel Zemp says that while the U.S. Army provided intelligence, air support, and 150 reinforcement troops, the Iraqi Army spearheaded the effort. "The battle was General Ali's crowning achievement so far. It showed both Shi'a extremists and the people of the city that the Iraqi Army is not just the area's legitimate authority in theory, but that it is in charge in reality."

There are other Iraqi forces that are getting their act together, of course. And the general isn't in complete lock-step with U.S. tactics, either.  He "bristles at one American-supported strategy. Much of the peace in the area also stems from the deployment of the 'Sons of Iraq,' armed Sunni security groups funded by the U.S. Ali grudgingly acknowledges their role. However, even the name makes him testy."

"I hate this name. Are we not all Sons of Iraq? I call them volunteers. They have helped securing the peace, yes, but there is only one army and one police force and at some point, these people will have to become a part of these forces."

[Heads-up: Baghdad Bureau]

Continue reading "Is This the Best General in the Iraqi Army?" »

Pakistan is up in arms over an airstrike that killed 11 suspected militants. An "unprovoked and cowardly attack" one military official tells PTV.  "The Government of Pakistan strongly condemns the air attack," says the Foreign Ministry.

So the U.S. has taken the unusual, although not unprecedented, step of releasing a drone's video of the incident, in order convince viewers that the strike was legit.

The Lede says the video "generally confirms aspects of both the American and the Taliban accounts of the border clash on Wednesday." Take a look, and judge for yourself. But keep in mind, The Lede cautions, that the drone footage only "seems to account for three of the dozen or so bomb strikes; where did the others fall?"

Lockheed recently unveiled a new sketch for Blackswift, the Pentagon's $800 million hypersonic airplane project. The question is whether the program will ever be more than sketches and mock-ups. The Senate Armed Services Committee has recommended cutting the project's budget by more than 40 percent; even its backers in the military doubt whether the aircraft will ever fly. 

Blackswift is an ultra-ambitious effort to build an aircraft that can take off from a runway, do some spins in the air, accelerate to over six times the speed of sound, and then land back safely on the ground.

So-called hypersonic (more than Mach 5) projects like these have previously relied on scramjets -- engines that ignite and burn air, instead of an oxidizer, for propulsion. The problem is, the air has to be moving really, really fast (and at high altitudes) in order for the scramjets to work. So far, the most successful effort has been NASA's X-43. It had to be flown up into the atmosphere by a B-52 plane. Then, a rocket brought the X-43 up to multi-Mach speeds. Only then could the aircraft's air-breathing, scramjet engine take over, and propel the X-43 at hypersonic rates. The hypersonic portion of the flight lasted only 10 seconds.

Essentially, Blackswift aims to combine the plane, the rocket, and the scramjet-powered craft into a single airframe, with a single engine that has both a standard turbine and scramjet. It's an enormous challenge. Moreover, Blackswift's masters at Darpa and the Air Force want the thing to fly hypersonically for a full minute. "If Blackswift is successful, we'll get 60 seconds of flight time -- six times longer than the X-43," Air Force chief scientist Mark Lewis tells Danger Room. "It's really exciting."

What Lewis is still trying to figure out is how he'd test the thing, much less fly it. The combo engine, especially, "is a big unknown. It's very difficult to simulate, especially on the ground. The first time you do test it is going to be when you fly it," he says.

At least "there are no obvious violations of the laws of physics," Lewis adds.

And, as if getting hypersonic aircraft to fly in a straight line weren't hard enough, the Darpa requirements for Blackswift call for the craft to do an "aileron roll" -- a spin, along its axis -- in midflight. Why the roll? Lewis says he "doesn't know." And the Senate Armed Service Committee is scratching its head. In its recent report on the new defense spending bill, the committee noted, "it is not clear why that will necessarily enhance the program."

Continue reading "Hypersonic Plane Hits Turbulence; Budget Cut, Testing in Doubt" »

You can hear Nathan and me discuss our nuclear travels on Fresh Air today (at 3 pm in Washington on WAMU 88.5, check your local listings for other cities).

Do you trade music with your pals? Use Facebook to keep in touch with far-away friends? Play World of Warcraft as a girl, when you're really a boy? Check your e-mail a little too often?

Well, then, you may not be trustworthy enough to become a spy.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) -- which, in theory, oversees all of the country's intelligence services -- is looking to launch a series of research studies into "cyber-behavior." Because what wannabe spooks do on-line should play "an important part" in the "process for granting security clearances for personnel working in national security positions." Suspect activities include "social network usage," "compulsive internet use," "distribution of pirated materials," and "on-line contact with foreign nationals."

The first step is to get a "better understanding" of "which specific cyber-behaviors are normative, acceptable, or favorable as well as identifying those that may be associated with risky or problematic cyber behavior within the workplace."

Areas of potential interest include, but are not limited to: social network usage; disclosure of information in computer-mediated activities; extent of on-line contact with foreign nationals; cyber behavior that suggests an unwillingness to abide by rules; compulsive internet use; involvement in computer groups (especially those allied to stigmatized practices); providing false information within computer-mediated communications about oneself or others; procurement and distribution of pirated materials; engaging in deviant cyber-behaviors with the intention of causing harm to others including “hacking” and sabotage. 

I think that puts the entire staff of WIRED in serious jeopardy of blowing the top secret clearances we've all craved for so long. Ah, well.

Continue reading "Top Spook: Facebookers, Gamers May Be Unfit to Spy" »

The U.S. military's Missile Defense Agency signed a $97 million contract with a Kremlin-connected nonprofit, to help secure Russia's aid in anti-missile projects.

Pentagon higher-ups ultimately quashed the deal between the agency and International Exchange Group, or IEG, for "facilitating" Russian "cooperation" on target missiles and early-warning radars. But the 2004 agreement shows the strength of the connections between the Defense Department, IEG and former Congressman Curt Weldon, now under investigation by the FBI. Earlier this week, news emerged that the wife of one of Weldon's staffers was reportedly paid money by IEG for work never performed.

On the surface, the non-profit IEG was merely working to facilitate U.S.-Russian partnerships. In a 2006 interview with Sharon Weinberger, Weldon revealed that the organization did much, much more. With IEG, Weldon said, "you can get access to any [WMD] sites you want in Russia, you can get cooperation with any project in Russia. We’ll give you access the inner circle of President Putin."

In a letter to IEG, Brig. Gen. Mark Shackelford, then deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency, said he wanted to "establish a relationship" with the nonprofit for precisely that kind of access. The Missile Defense Agency wanted to use Russian missiles to test American "detection and tracking equipment." And he was hoping to include "Russian radar data for early warning of third-country ballistic-missile launches ... into the United States ballistic-missile defense system." Here are the first two pages of the $97 million contract with IEG to gain Russian participation in those efforts.

Traditionally, the Missile Defense Agency had never been enthusiastic about Russian cooperation. It killed the RAMOS (Russian American Observation Satellite)  project several years ago. So why did the agency agree to take part in this dubious relationship? Well, for starters, Weldon was one of the seminal supporters of missile defense, helping the agency at its height secure over $10 billion a year in funding. But the entire structure of IEG was suspect and smacked of conflict of interest: Why should the U.S. government have to pay an openly Kremlin-linked nonprofit in order to ensure government cooperation?

Is Weldon the villain in all of this? It's important to note that Danger Room didn't obtain these documents through some secret sources: Weldon handed them to us, as part of our research for these reporters' new book about atomic travels.  Some level-headed people in the nonproliferation community still credit Weldon with showing genuine interest in nuclear security. So why did Weldon support this scheme? Here are a couple of possibilities: A) Weldon had a financial interest in IEG, or B) Weldon had no financial interest in IEG and honestly believed this was the only way to gain Russian cooperation. There's also a third possibility: Weldon had a financial interest in IEG and believed this would help nuclear cooperation.

Speaking of would-be villains: Who in the Pentagon can we credit for saving the Pentagon from paying $100 million to this shady Russian outfit? That would be Doug Feith, who was widely criticized for his management of the Pentagon's policy shop. Weldon blamed Feith's office for scuttling the deal; the people there apparently questioned its legality.

[Photo: MDA]

- Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge

Continue reading "Pentagon Inked $97 Million Deal With Kremlin-Tied Outfit; Promised 'Access' to 'Putin's Inner Circle'" »

* Whiskey Tango Foxtrot does that mean?

* Cyber Command's part-time geeks

* Buses get the Keanu defense

* Shark sense for robot hands

* 6,000-mile telescope

(High five: RC)

The debate about depleted uranium ammunition as an environmental hazard gets a bizarre new spin from Marc Abrahams of the Annals of Improbable Research. Abrahams turned up a paper which concludes that depleted uranium, of all things, might make an environmentally friendly alternative to lead shot for duck hunters.

As he explains in The Guardian:

The recommendation, published in 1983 in the Journal of Wildlife Management, has not been much disputed. The study's authors, biologists Susan Haseltine and Louis Sileo, were based at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Centre in Laurel, Maryland.

Lead shot is dangerous for ducks, especially if it hits them. When it doesn't hit a duck (or another hunter, as sometimes happens), the shot falls into the wetlands. The lead leaches into the muck, slowly poisoning any ducks that have managed to avoid being shot.

In many hunting areas, lead shot is verboten. At the time of the study, steel was being touted as the best alternative to lead. But Haseltine and Sileo pointed out its drawbacks. "Steel shot shells are more expensive than lead shot shells when purchased in a retail outlet," they wrote. "They cannot be used in all guns and have not been well received by some hunters, who question their performance on ducks and geese."

Depleted uranium (DU) is probably best known for its use in anti-tank rounds. And it's the subject of more than a little controversy over its possibly-toxic health effects. The researchers note, however, that uranium may not be very poisonous even to a duck that, of its own accord, swallows some in pellet form. That is what Haseltine and Sileo sought to verify.

Continue reading "'Greener' Duck Hunting Ammo: Depleted Uranium" »

The Pentagon's non-lethal weapons division is looking for technologies that could "disable" aircraft, before they can take off from a runway -- or block the planes from flying over a given city of stretch of land.

In a request for proposals, issued earlier this week, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate announced that it would like arms-makers to come up with a way to "safely divert an aircraft in the air or stop and/or disable an aircraft on the ground." And no, shooting the thing with a missile doesn't count. The Directorate wants "reversible effects which allow the targeted aircraft to be quickly returned to an operational condition with minimal time to repair."

Continue reading "Pentagon Wants Kill Switch for Planes" »

Our new book, A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, isn't all road trips and sightseeing. In between travels to nuclear bunkers and missile test ranges, we paid visits to gadflies of the nuclear world who we thought could help us plan our travels. That's how we (well, Sharon, anyhow) ended up in the office of Curt Weldon, the former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania.

Weldon, for those of you not familiar with the former lawmaker, was famous for securing funding for some Russian flying saucers, his conspiratorial belief that a classified program had identified several of the 9/11 terrorists, and his determination to insert himself in nuclear issues, ranging from North Korea to Iran. It was actually the Russians that got him in trouble. We'll get back to that.

We wanted to see Weldon because we were trying to get access to Russia's closed nuclear cities, and frankly, Weldon was known for having good contacts with the Russian government. How close? Well, we'll get to that, too. Weldon, on hearing of our interest, was thrilled to talk, just thrilled. Because he wanted to tell us all about how he could single-handedly solve the world's nuclear problems. I mean, this is a man who kept a mock-up of a suitcase nuke in his office.

This was in 2006. Not long after that,the FBI raided Weldon's office and he subsequently lost his seat in the House. It is suspected that Weldon may have helped secure funding for Russian companies that in turn, paid money to his daughter. Nowadays, it's tough to get Weldon, who is at the center of a corruption probe, to talk about Russia, let alone the International Exchange Group, or IEG, the nonprofit Russian corporation that appears to be part of the FBI's investigation into the former Congressman. The Kremlin-connected IEG, the Wall Street Journall notes, was dedicated to "promoting U.S.-Russia business exchange" and "removing bureaucratic obstacles to the implementation of U.S.-funded nonproliferation programs" in Russia.

Weldon remains under investigation, though he has not yet been charged. Ken Silverstein at Harper's has been covering this issue for several years now, as has Laura Rozen writing at War and Piece. But the latest twist comes from the Journal, which reported that IEG may have paid money to the wife of a Weldon staffer. Many of the questions center on the mysterious figure at the head of IEG, Vladimir Petrosyan, and his relationship with Weldon. How close were Petrosyan and Weldon?

Two years ago, Weldon was more than happy to talk about this relationship, and even handed over a sheaf of documents to us about IEG and Petrosyan, including this letter from Petrosyan, promising to help Weldon save the world from Iran and North Korea. Here's a snippet of what Weldon said as part of a nearly three-hour interview about his involvement with Russia and the International Exchange Group:

I had a group of Russians approach me two years ago, three years ago through David Vitter, a U.S. senator. He was then a house member. One of David’s best friends from childhood is a lawyer named Claude Kelly. He said, David Vitter said, "Spend some time with these guys: they have some ideas about Russia and they want to talk to you." They bring a delegation; Vitter with them. They introduced themselves as representative of a man, Kotenkov. He worked in the equivalent in West Wing. [Aleksander] Kotenkov sent them over here to establish a new relationship between the United States and Russia, directly involving Putin’s inner circle. They tell me, "If you pursue this: you can get access to any [WMD] sites you want in Russia, you can get cooperation with any project in Russia. We’ll give you access the inner circle of President Putin."

Continue reading "Lawyers, Nukes, and Money: The Strange Case of Weldon's Russia Plan" »

Activists planning protests at the forthcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver are wary of a police weapon they refer to as "Crap Cannon." Luckily for them, it doesn't exist. Fox News filed this report:

Also called “Brown Note,” [the cannon] is believed to be an infrasound frequency that debilitates a person by making them defecate involuntarily.

Mark Cohen, co-founder of Re-create 68, an alliance of local activists working for the protection of first amendment rights, said he believes this could be deployed at the convention in August to subdue crowds...

Cohen, who described Brown Note as a “sonic weapon used to disrupt people’s equilibrium,” cited eyewitness accounts of its use during free-trade agreement protests in Miami in 2003...

His group is preparing against a possible attack by Brown Note and other crowd-control measures by dispatching street medics at the convention trained in treating injuries in demonstration situations.

He should save himself the time. While the story of a frequency that liquefies bowels has been going around for many years, the facts don't really back the tale up. Mythbusters tackled it in 2005, concluding:

Even after testing a wide range of sub-audible and near-sub-audible noises on him, not once did Adam lose control of his bowels. Some discomfort was reported however, due to the effects of low-frequency sound on the lungs.

Continue reading "Protesters Panic Over 'Crap Cannon'" »

The first rule of Site R is: You do not talk about Site R. Or, as the security guidance about the Pentagon’s nuclear war bunker (AKA Raven Rock Mountain Complex, or RRMC), states: “Avoid conversations about RRMC with unauthorized personnel.” The other two rules of Site R are: “Do not confirm or deny information about RRMC to reporters or radio stations,” and “Do not post RRMC information on Internet web pages.”

We might suggest a fourth rule: do not send information about RRMC to reporters working on a travelogue about nuclear weapons.

In our book released this week, A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, we start off in the American southwest and travel all the way to Iran in search of a better understanding of nuclear weapons and warfare. In an itinerary that includes underground missile alert facilities, uranium plants and remote Pacific outposts, we try to answer the question: What is the current nuclear strategy, and does it make any sense?

Nuclear bunkers, a Cold War holdover, embody many of the contradictions in today’s nuclear policy. First built as a way to shield top leaders from atomic fallout, they quickly became obsolete with the advent of thermonuclear weapons and precise, long-range missiles. Some, like the congressional bunker at the opulent Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, have closed their doors; others, like Cheyenne Mountain, have teetered on the brink of shutdown.

But our interest in Site R was piqued by an announcement that was posted in 2006 on the website of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Pentagon’s nonproliferation agency:

Raven Rock Military Complex The Hardened Facilities Managers Conference, co-sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Raven Rock Military Complex*, will focus on priority issues of both countering enemy underground facilities (UGF) and protecting friendly underground facilities. Managers of U.S. operated UGF's will provide overviews of their corresponding complexes. In addition technical and vulnerability issues will be discussed and site tours will be provided.

If Site R is so gosh-darn secret, why did they post this notice, and more importantly, how did we get our grubby little mitts on documents relating to this conference, including an an informational overview, a “Welcome Package", an agenda, security guidance for attendees, and a schedule of shuttles to Site R (which we are not posting)? Cunning subterfuge? A Deep Throat inside the mountain? A Freedom of Information Act request?

Sadly, we just asked for them. We e-mailed the contact person for the conference, provided our affiliation, and asked for the conference materials. We did say “please."

All of the information was unclassified, and it provides for us at least a small window into what goes on underground at Site R.

Continue reading "How To: Visit a Secret Nuclear Bunker" »

* BBC locates missing billions in Iraq (in spite of US gag)

* Government faces revolt over new terror law; spooks speak up to claim neutrality

* Grim milestone: 100 British troops dead in Afghanistan, tribute from PM Brown

* Did Royal Navy sonar kill 26 dolphins?

* Policeman killed in training exercise by 'non-lethal' CS gas round

Like them or despise them, one thing has been consistent about stun gun-maker Taser International: They never, ever lose in court. 45 wrongful death or injury lawsuits had swung the company's way, as of early last year. About a month ago, Taser even got a judge to reverse three Ohio autopsies that had partially faulted the electroshock weapons.

But that all changed on Friday, when a federal jury in San Jose found the company responsible for the death of 40-year-old Robert Heston Jr., awarding his family more than $6 million in damages. "An attorney for the family called the verdict a 'landmark decision,' and indicated that it was the first time Taser International had been held responsible for a death or injury linked to its product," the Monetrey County Herald reports.

An autopsy found that Heston died from a combination of methamphetamine intoxication, an enlarged heart due to long-term drug abuse, and Taser shocks.

Heston's parents, Betty Lou and Robert Sr., and their daughter sued Taser International. They alleged the company failed to properly warn users that its product could be dangerous, and even lethal, when used repeatedly in conjunction with chest compressions and on people under the influence of drugs...

The six-person jury found that Arizona-based stun-gun manufacturer Taser International should have more effectively warned police that Taser shocks were potentially dangerous. Salinas police testified during the trial that they were not warned that the shocks could be dangerous.

Plaintiffs attorney John Burton said the verdict is precedent setting, noting that this was the first time a jury found Tasers are dangerous when used too often... According to Burton, the verdict included $5.2 million in punitive damages, and $1.021 million in compensatory damages. The jury found that the victim was 85 percent at fault, resulting in an apportioned final damages award.

Continue reading "First Jury Zaps Taser; $6 Mil for Wrongful Death" »

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in late August 2005 and the levees around the city broke, flooding the city and killing hundreds, Ed Link was as surprised as everyone else.

He shouldn't have been. As one of the nation's foremost hurricane experts, Link, a professor at the University of Maryland, had access to the government's most sophisticated mathematical models for predicting damage from big Gulf Coast storms. But those models weren't accurate because the data they were based on were incomplete, out of date or just plain wrong.

But Link and 300 teammates were determined to fix that, as I describe in a piece over at Wired News:

As the floodwaters receded and the Army Corps of Engineers rushed to repair the levees, the government asked Link to lead a team of engineers and scientists from the government and private sector -- 300 in all -- to recode those old models. The goal of the vaguely named Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force was twofold, Link told Wired.com: first, "to get that knowledge built back into the levee repairs so the same vulnerability wasn't built into the system again. The second was to come up with a 'risk assessment' looking forward."

In other words, to have a much better idea, grounded in solid science, of who might be killed or have their property destroyed in future Gulf Coast hurricanes.

(Photo: Army Corps of Engineers)

Annaliza Savage is Wired.com's multimedia editor. This is her first post for Danger Room.

Ziv Koren is a world-renown combat photographer whose coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has vaulted him to international acclaim. Now, he's helping invent a whole new visual aesthetic that digitally combines still photos with moving images, seamlessly.

Koren has spent years shooting for titles, including Time Magazine, the New York Times, and Paris Match. His photograph of the aftermath of a suicide bombing of an Israeli bus was selected by the World Press Photo Organisation in 2000 as one of the most important photos in the last 45 years. But when film director Solo  Avital asked Koren to be the subject of the documentary, "More than 1000 Words," the photographer found his work started to expand beyond the still, frozen frame.

In order to film Koren on the West Bank, Gaza and other hot zones, the filmmakers devised a small "finger camera" to mount on Koren¹s lens. Avital says it was the only way to get close to Koren without attracting too much attention. But the result is that you can see Koren's subjects as he does -- through his lens. And that gives much more information, about both the photographer and the photographed.

Continue reading "War Photog Blends Video, Stills for New Combat Views" »

Drone maker iRobot today announced plans to work with the University of Washington on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, or AUV, called Seaglider.

"We have a strong track record for transferring new technology from research initiatives into products that support military missions,” said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot. “Ten years ago we transformed the original PackBot into a combat-proven robot used today by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and licensing the Seaglider from the University of Washington will help our robots conquer new underwater frontiers.”

Seagliders help civilian, academic and military personnel make oceanographic measurements at a fraction of the cost of traditional research vessels or moored instruments. These long-range, high-endurance vehicles economize on energy consumption with a buoyancy-based propulsion system to support mission ranges of thousands of kilometers and deployments lasting up to several months. Instruments can be attached to the Seaglider to continuously collect oceanic physical properties across a range of depths and areas, providing valuable insights to oceanographers and military planners.

Seaglider, funded by the Office of Naval Research and developed by the University of Washington, can dive to 1000 meters.  While used now for oceanographic measurements, iRobot clearly intends to find new military applications, similar to what it did with its military robots.

[Image: University of Washington]

Continue reading "iRobot Goes to Sea" »

While the rest of us were sightseeing or lounging at the beach, Sharon Weinberger and her defense reporter husband, Nathan Hodge, spent their last two years' worth of comp time and sick days visiting Iran's uranium conversion plant, West Virginia's secret nuclear bunker, and the A-bombed-out Marshall Islands. The result, A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, was released today by Bloomsbury Press. Sharon, Nathan, and I chatted about the book.

Noah Shachtman: What's the deal with you two? Don't you like skiing? Mountain climbing? Getting drunk on Mexican tequila? Why would anyone want to take a nuclear vacation?

Sharon Weinberger & Nathan Hodge: We love all that, honest. But you’re dealing with two reporters who have a fascination with all things weapons-related. Not necessarily in that “gee whiz, that bomb can raze an entire city” sort of a way, but more like, “what would motivate anyone to build this thing?”

For Sharon, A Nuclear Family Vacation was in some ways an extension of her first book, Imaginary Weapons, which explored the very odd subculture of weapons scientists who went off the proverbial deep end chasing a would-be super bomb. This book takes a step back and looks at the larger culture surrounding the places and people involved in building and using nuclear weaponry.

For Nathan, it was the perfect excuse for a road trip. And of course, we could visit family on the way: Sharon’s cousin works at the Los Alamos lab, an aunt lives near the Nevada Test Site, Nathan’s parents are just down the road from the Greenbrier bunker. The nuclear world has greater reach than you think.

NS: How were you able to get access to Iran? And does it have a bomb?

SW & NH: We got our visas literally two hours before boarding a flight to Tehran. Nathan had applied twice before for a journalist visa to Iran, with no luck. But in late 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he would open up Iran’s nuclear facilities to students, tourists and other visitors to prove his country’s peaceful intentions. We took that as an invitation. Still, it took a lot of pleading with consular officials to get that last-minute visa.

Does Iran have the bomb? Well, if you believe the latest National Intelligence Estimate, it abandoned its weapons program in 2003. But it is still developing enrichment technology, and has a pattern of secrecy surrounding its nuclear efforts that is troubling indeed.

NS: You also visited the Marshall Islands, where many a nuke was dropped – and where American radars watch out for ICBMs, on the Kwajalein Atoll.  What’s the nightlife on Kwajalein like? I mean, after a long day of missile defense and intercontinental ballistic missile tests, what do people do there for fun?

Continue reading "Inside Sharon's Nuclear Family Vacation" »

* U.S. wants 58 bases in Iraq?

* Fuel costs dock Canada's navy

* Euro drone project dead

* Nuke scientists gone wild!

* RIP, Dr. Gas Mask

(High five: PJB, ACU)

The Pentagon was recently sold a satellite -- on the condition that the U.S. military wouldn't blast the thing out of space.

Back in March, Space News explains, the premature shutdown of the upper stage of a Russian rocket left the AMC-14 telecommunications satellite thousands of miles from its proper orbit. The satellite's owners, Luxemborg's SES, "declared the satellite a total loss" -- and sold the machine to an insurance company. The underwriters then sold the satellite to the Pentagon, but only after "a guarantee by U.S. defense authorities that the satellite would not be purposely destroyed in orbit."

The demand that the transfer of title to the satellite include a no-shootdown clause illustrates the nervousness of satellite underwriters and fleet operators in the wake of two events: the Chinese anti-satellite missile test in January 2007, in which China destroyed one of its retired weather satellites; and the U.S. Defense Department's destruction of an out-of-control spy satellite in February using a sea-based missile...

While there was no indication that U.S. defense authorities intended to do such a thing, this official said the companies involved in the sale wanted to protect themselves against any future allegations that they had contributed to orbital debris.

(Good aim: TH)

Continue reading "Company to Pentagon: Don't Shoot Down Our Sat" »

Want to speak to citizens of a rogue state? June 10 is your chance to learn everything you wanted to know about Iran but were afraid to ask. Well, sort of. It is, however, the day the Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran is hosting an Iranian hotline, where ordinary citizens from the "Great Oppressor" can speak to citizens from the "Axis of Evil."

No, this is not like the Messiah hotline popular with some "end-of-timers" in Iran, this is part of an attempt to push diplomacy between Iran and the United States.

"Tomorrow, June 10, from 10am to 1pm EDT, members of Congress, celebrities, former officials, and other citizens visiting Capitol Hill will use a row of 1960’s-era red 'hotline' telephones to talk directly to ordinary Iranians in Tehran," the organization sponsoring the event reports.

These things don't always go as planned. The New Yorker wrote about one such hotline experiment earlier this year:

Maryam, one of the translators, who is a student at Columbia, stood up to take a break. “The Iranians in Tehran are in their own world,” she said, rubbing her hands together to get warm. “They just keep talking without really listening to the questions. But this one guy, when they were talking about the cold weather, he told the American that at least you have shelter over there, unlike the Iraqis whose homes you blew up. That didn’t go over very well—the American walked away.”

I think a hotline to North Korea -- though unlikely -- would be way more interesting, or at least entertaining.

There's concern in some corners of the U.S. military about "enemy activities in sleep research," neuro-pharmaceutical performance enhancement, and "brain-computer interfaces." And it's not coming from the Pentagon's scientific fringe, or from some tin-hat kook with a Defense Department badge. The celebrated scientists on the Pentagon's most prestigious scientific advisory panel, JASON, are the ones worried about adversaries' ability "to exploit advances in Human Performance Modification, and thus create a threat to national security."

In a recent report, unearthed by Secrecy News, the JASONs are recommending that the American military push ahead with its own performance-enhancement research -- and monitor foreign studies -- to make sure that the U.S.' enemies don't suddenly become smarter, faster, or better able to endure the harsh realities of war than American troops.

The JASONs are particularly concerned about (and excited by) new drugs that promote "brain plasticity" -- rewiring the mind, essentially, by helping to "permanently establishing new neural pathways, and thus new cognitive capabilities."  The military has already tested these neuro-modulators as a way to keep troops alert after sleepless nights.

But these new drugs will certainly have extensive off-label use for improvement of memory and cognitive performance. [They] may have the additional effect of weakening or overwriting existing memories. Depending on the ultimate performance of these drugs, adversaries might use them in training programs or field operations... to increase troop effectiveness or modify troop behavior and/or emotional responses.

Continue reading "Top Pentagon Scientists Fear Brain-Modified Foes" »

"Self-medication is pervasive in American culture," the Pentagon's top scientific panel recently noted.  Especially American military culture. One study showed that "90% of Special Forces soldiers and 76% of support soldiers" used energy boosters, protein powders, creatine, and other supplements.

But troops are doing more than chemically modifying their bodies. After years on patrol overseas, "12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope," Time magazine reports in a cover story on "America's Medicated Army."

Continue reading "Pill-Popping Troops Fight Off Fatigue, Depression" »

Want to learn about astrosociology? How about "alternative space-time or space-like realm necessary for faster-than-light (FTL) travel or manipulation of the space-time metric?"  Oh, yes, it's all there: antigravity, zero point energy,  warp drive, faster-than-light travel.

Well, not quite all there. The new Space, Propulsion and Energy Sciences International Forum, organized by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Space, Propulsion & Energy Sciences (IASSPES) is the partial reincarnation of the Space Technologies and Applications International Forum, aka STAIF, which used to to take place every year in New Mexico.

STAIF was ground zero for space colonizers and would-be warp drive builders -- sort of an umbrella organization for space exploration that included everything from the conventional to the downright bizarre ideas for reaching distant planets. There are fewer sessions now, but it's definitely preserved some of the really out-there concepts, like the "First Symposium on Astrosociology," which includes (but is not limited to) "planetary defense and societal protection "

Helpfully, they also have a workshop in "Financing" that will help prospective warp driver builders get money to make their dreams come through.

[Image: NASA]

Also:

• Is the Search for Warp Drive Dead?
• NASA's Dreamers, Put to Sleep?
• NASA Dreamers? Dream On, Baby...
• Time Travel too Crazy for DARPA

"Defense Secretary Robert Gates is likely to recommend to President Bush that he nominate a former Air Force executive, Michael B. Donley, to the service's top civilian post," a senior defense official tells the AP.

Donley, who was acting secretary of the Air Force for seven months in 1993 and served as the service's top financial officer from 1989 to 1993, would replace Michael Wynne, who was fired by Gates on Thursday along with the Air Force's top uniformed officer, Gen. Michael Moseley...

Donley currently is the Pentagon's director of administration and management. He has held a variety of strategy and policy positions in government, including a stint on the National Security Council from 1984 to 1989. Before that he was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff. He served in the Army from 1972 to 1975.

UPDATE: The shake-up continues. Defying expectations, Gates' pick for Chief of Staff is General Norton Schwartz, the head of U.S. Transportation Command. It's the first time in a while that a former fighter pilot won't be in charge of the Air Force.  Schwartz also has experience at Special Operations Command -- which should be useful in understanding today's unconventional conflicts.  Lt. Gen. William Fraser III will become the new Vice Chief of Staff, replacing Gen Duncan McNabb, who gets Schwartz's old Transportation Command job. (Didja follow all that?)

Continue reading "Clinton-Era Air Force Secretary Returns (Updated)" »

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has tapped Northrop Grumman to develop binoculars that will tap the subconscious mind. The Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System program, informally called "Luke's Binoculars," combines advanced optics with electro-encephalogram electrodes that can, DARPA believes, be used to alert the wearer to a threat before the conscious mind has processed the information.

While they were considering a number of technologies for neural detections, it appears DARPA has settled on EEG. "HORNET will utilize a custom helmet equipped with electro-encephalogram electrodes placed on the scalp to record the user's continuous electrical brain activity," says Northrop. "The operator's neural responses to the presence or absence of potential threats will train the system's algorithms, which will continue to be refined over time so that the warfighter is always presented with items of relevance to his mission."

I described this project in an article last year for Wired News, when DARPA was still sifting through the concepts. The idea was to incorporate technology that detects neural patterns that indicate a possible threat -- the idea being that the subconscious mind detects threats faster than the conscious mind realizes (essentially, the binoculars bypass inhibitory reflexes). Some scientists I spoke with thought the projects was interesting -- particularly the advancements in optics and imaging -- but that neural detection technology wasn't nearly developed enough for the schedule DARPA anticipated (the agency wants to field the binoculars in just a few short years).

The most common sense challenge raised about these binocular by one scientist I spoke with was the whole issue of bypassing inhibitory reactions. Is that really something you want a soldier to do? It'll be interesting to see what the first soldiers to use these binoculars have to say about them.

[Image: DARPA]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Air Force Chief of Staff General "Buzz" Moseley after repeatedly accusing the service of being unable to focus on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a fascinating interview with Air Force Times, conducted right after his removal, Moseley said the critiques were dead-on. 

It's an eye-opening admission. For years, Moseley's generals have been warning about the dangers of China and a resurgent Russia -- and downplaying today's counterinsurgency conflicts. Now, Moseley is saying there is "an almost zero chance we will fight a nation-state" like Russia or China. Which makes you wonder why the Air Force has been so preoccupied with these countries.

Q. Secretary Gates has said the services, and the Air Force, are focused on “next-war-itis.” What’s your view?

A. I don’t have a critique of Dr. Gates, because I believe the services have to be able to do everything — across the entire spectrum of conflict. We have got to be able to fight a counterinsurgency, an irregular war scenario, all the way up to the high-end theater. And we have to be able to do that 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You don’t get to pick when and where you do this. You have to be able to do it on a global scale. And I surely 100 percent support the notion that the bureaucracy is very, very slow at being able to capitalize on creative innovative opportunities. ...

I’m as frustrated as Dr. Gates with a bureaucracy that is very, very slow at adapting to things like this, whether it’s this war or the next, or whether this notion of the next war, I think we are going to have to do better on this...

Continue reading "Moseley: Gates was Right; 'Zero Chance' of War with China or Russia" »

* NYPD gets new stun guns

* Iran to Iraq: Let's team up

* Military supercomputer breaks records

* Hacker: Darpa's cyberwar range won't work

* Worldwide robot population: 5 million

The Russians are usually credited with building good, simple weapons (like the Kalashnikov series and RPG-7 ) but considered weak when to comes to high tech. A close look at one of their tank-busting smart bombs shows how far they've come, however.
 
The sensor-fuzed weapon is one of the most sophisticated weapons in the US air-to-ground arsenal. This is a 1,000-pound bomb which releases forty small BLU-108 submunitions, over an area the size of 20 football fields. Each BLU-108 (or "cans of whup ass" as some call them) scans the area below with an infra-red sensor; on detecting an armored vehicle below, it fires an explosively formed penetrator with lethal accuracy. The EFP is capable of piercing the thin top armor and scoring a mobility kill any known tank: basically, there goes your engine. A single sensor-fuzed weapon will knock out several vehicles in a formation; an aircraft armed with several of them could stop a large-scale armored assault in its tracks. (The video, above, is a reconstruction of a B-52 which took out a battalion-sized Iraqi force in one pass using sensor-fuzed weapons.)

It turns out the Russian have their own version. This is a 500-kilogram bomb made by Bazalt, termed SPBE-D.

Continue reading "Russia's 'Cans of Whup Ass' (Updated)" »

Frankly, it seems like Al Qaeda is becoming more like the Pentagon with each passing day. Women want equal rights to wage Jihad; the bureaucrats issue nasty memos and want to coordinate strategic communication; and now they're putting out the equivalent of a "request for proposals" on how to cause madness and mayhem.

"Senior al-Qaida leaders through a password protected Internet message board periodically ask their loyal readers to send in their best ideas for attacking their enemies," reports National Defense, quoting recent remarks by Rita Katz, of the SITE Institute. Katz claims Al Qaeda gets "thousands" of responses.

“Basically they are using all the jihadists throughout the world as their eyes,” said Katz. The request called for members to look for vulnerabilities in U.S. government facilities or for targets “anywhere in the world,” she said.

This shows that terrorist groups are not lacking for ideas when it comes to cooking up deadly plots, but Katz warned that it’s important to distinguish “chatter” from real threats.

What next? A DARPA for terrorists? A prize for the most innovative terrorist idea?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn't just kick the Air Force's two top leaders to the curb yesterday. When he fired chief of Staff General "Buzz" Moseley and Secretary Michael Wynne, he was telling the service that the long, slow decline of its nuclear corps is officially over.

Hallelujah, says one Air Force nuclear missileer.

Until 1992, the Air Force's Strategic Air Command controlled nearly every aspect of the country's nuclear bomber and missile operations. Then SAC was disbanded. The Air Force's nuclear specialists became bureaucratic orphans. "The nuke community was fucked the day they killed SAC," the missileer tells Danger Room. "Mosley and Wynne just happened to be driving when the car hit the tree."

First, the newly established Air Combat Command took over the missile job. But it quickly became clear that this fighter-and-bomber squad wasn't the right place for intercontinental ballistic missile operators. "So then they stuck them under Air Force Space Command -- an even worse fit," the missileer says.

ICBM specialists used to spend their entire careers doing nuclear work.  But under Space Command, officers had to start branching out -- operating satellites, rather than prepping for an atomic strike. They had to take classes on space warfare, instead of nuclear maintenance. "For the past 15 years or so, the Air Force has not been growing nuclear experts… We've lost an entire generation of officers."

Continue reading "Bosses Nuked, Some Air Force Missileers Cheer " »

As if losing nukes, fighting with the boss, and failing to focus on the wars at hand weren't reasons enough for Defense Secretary Bob Gates to can the leadership of the Air Force.  Worldwide War Pigs comes up with ten more reasons why the top two Air Force bigs, Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. "Buzz" Moseley, should've been booted.

1. Bleeding USAF [U.S. Air Force] aircraft maintenance personnel down to dangerous levels to where aircraft aren't available. One of the big weapons the USAF has is the USAF maintainer and all of the tribal knowledge and ways of doing things learned over the years. The recently fired leaders along with previous leaders have let PowerPoint warriors run amok. Continuous reorganization of the maintenance community over the years was for the most part, trying to fix something that wasn't broken.

2. Not funding enough spares for aircraft. Can you say "can-bird"?

3. Not just maintenance but personnel levels in general. A few years ago lots and lots of company grade officers were let go because some idiots in USAF manpower couldn't do their job and balance the scales. This is a hugely expensive way to run the show. The USAF has 6-7000 airmen doing Army-like duties in the war all while cutting people in core-USAF-mission skills. Looney Tunes. This is one of many causes for the poor showing in control of nuclear weapons...

5. Failing to buy new build F-16s. The F-16 is a cheap aircraft to operate... And USAF for a long time is starting a slow motion train wreck that is seeing the fighter force geriatric. Stop gap buys of the F-16 would help keep the USAF healthy, until/if the F-35 JSF [Joint Strike Fighter] proves itself.

Continue reading "Ten More Reasons for the Air Force Purge" »

Do you have an idea so insane it just might work? If so, It could win you $100,000 .... and save the country from terrorist attacks (I won't even begin to speculate on which of those factors is more motivating for most people). The nonprofit National Security Initiative is sponsoring the American Security Challenge, billed as "America's first business plan competition devoted to our nation's security....will award $100,000 or more to the winning business plan."

The competition focuses on both technology and business--meaning you should have an innovative technology, as well as a plan to bring that technology to market. If you win, you get the cash to hopefully make that happen. Entrepreneurs, academics, and businesses with less than $1M in revenue can apply, and it can be a technology in any of the following areas:

• Energy including renewable energy, fuel cells, cleantech, stationary and mobile power supplies and storage, nanotechnology, stationary and mobile power supplies and storage, etc.

• Information management including large scale data handling and fusion of multi-lingual, multi-source, multi-format, visualizations, data mining, graph databses and symantec web, etc.

• Life sciences including CBRNE, WMD, IED detection • Cybersecurity including authentication, identification, wireless security, information assurance, signal intelligence, etc.

• Data collection and storage including location based technology, RFID, satellite and other imagery, spectroscopy, x-ray, gamma, chromatography, etc.

• Facility security including CCTV, perimeter security, biometrics, etc.

Defense company AgustaWestland sponsored a similar contest (sorry, deadline has passed), but that was a measly 25K.

If you have any bright ideas, but no business plan, leave a suggestion below. If we get some good ideas, DANGER ROOM will hold its own competition.

[Image: Justin Jang]

In February, a B-2 stealth bomber crashed in Guam. Now we know why. And we've got video of the scene.

On takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base, the $1.4 billion plane abruptly "pitched up, rolled and yawed to the left before plunging to the ground," the AP describes. The reason why: "Water distorted preflight readings in three of the plane's 24 sensors, making the aircraft's control computer force the B-2 to pitch up on takeoff, resulting in a stall and subsequent crash." Luckily, "both pilots ejected safely just after the left wing made contact with the ground in the first crash since the maiden B-2 flights nearly 20 years ago." Check out the video, and you'll see just how fortunate the pilots were to make it out.

(Spotter: CA)

Continue reading "Video: Stealth Bomber Crashes" »

* Israel about to attack Iran?

* Pentagon duped by Tehran's agents?

* Manga vs. nuke warship fears

* Mission unknown for plutonium 'triggers'

* KSM: My nose is too big!

(High five: RC)

The Air Force's top civilian and uniformed leaders are being booted out of the Pentagon. Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley has resigned. Secretary Michael W. Wynne is next.

The move, initially reported by Inside Defense and Air Force Times, isn't exactly a shocker. The Air Force has come under fire for everything from mishandling nukes to misleading ad campaigns to missing out on the importance of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Most importantly, the Air Force's leadership has been on the brink of open conflict for months with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. That's because in the halls of the Air Force's chiefs, the talk has been largely about the threats posed by China and a resurgent Russia. Gates wanted the service to actually focus on the wars at hand, in Iraq and Afghanistan. "For much of the past year I’ve been trying to concentrate the minds and energies of the defense establishment on the current needs and current conflicts," he told the Heritage Foundation. "In short, to ensure that all parts of the Defense Department are, in fact, at war."

Last fall, the Pentagon's civilian chiefs shot down an Air Force move to take over almost all of the military's big unmanned aircraft. "There has to be a better way to do this," Moseley complained at the time.  Things only got more tense when Gates said that the future of conflict is in small, "asymmetric" wars -- wars in which the Air Force takes a back seat to ground forces. Then Gates noted that the Air Force's most treasured piece of gear, the F-22 stealth fighter, basically has no role in the war on terror. And when a top Air Force general said the service was planning on buying twice as many of the jets -- despite orders from Gates and the rest of the civilian leadership -- he was rebuked for "borderline insubordination."

Relations between Gates and the Air Force chiefs soured further when the Defense Secretary called for more spy drones to be put into the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force complained that all those extra flight hours were turning the roboplane's remote pilots into virtual "prisoners."  Gates then publicly chastised the service during the drone buildup, comparing it to "pulling teeth." 

The scrapes harmed the service's image in Congress, and with the public. And so the Air Force launched an $81 million marketing effort to demonstrate its relevance in today's conflicts. Outside analysts wondered whether such a push was in violation of American anti-propaganda laws -- especially after one of the spots was found be be "misleading."

But, according to Air Force Times, "the last straw appears to be a [damning] report on nuclear weapons handling... [that] critical report convinced Gates that changes must be made." That's the reason Gates gave reporters, in a Pentagon press conference today. But it might just have been the excuse he needed to can a pair of bureaucratic adversaries -- read on.

The service inadvertently shipped "four high-tech electrical nosecone fuses for Minuteman nuclear warheads were [t]o Taiwan in place of helicopter batteries. The mistake was discovered in March — a year and a half after the erroneous shipment," The New York Times reports. "The mishandling of the nosecone fuses was viewed as another indication of lack of discipline within America’s nuclear infrastructure, and was another embarrassment for the people in charge of those weapons."

Last fall, the Air Force's 5th Bomb Wing lost track of six nuclear warheads. Then, in mid-May, the service  flunked a nuclear surety inspection, when security personnel couldn't even be bothered to stop playing videogames on their cellphones. Now, it looks like Moseley and Wynne has some serious time to play with themselves.

Despite reports you may be reading elsewhere, this firing was not about nukes or missiles, well-placed sources say. "Far and away the biggest issue was the budget stuff, not the nuclear stuff.  The UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] fight, the F-22 deal... Gates really didn't appreciate it," one of those sources tells Danger Room.  Now, with the botched missile and nuke shipments, "the SecDef [Secretary of Defense] has good cover to do something that suits him bureaucratically."

"The problem seems to be a philosophical difference between Gates and the USAF [U.S. Air Force], not anything to do with nuclear weapons," another adds. And Moseley and Wynne may not be the last to go. Rumors are swirling of more top-level Air Force officers getting the axe. Stay tuned.

Continue reading "Air Force Chief, Secretary Resign (Updated Yet Again)" »

Global warming is real, and at least partially man-made, according to controversial Army scientist Dr. Bruce West. Greenhouse gases have contributed to rising temperatures by as much as 70 percent, he said during a conference call with bloggers, arranged by the military.

For several years, West, the chief scientist of the Army Research Office's mathematical and information science directorate and an adjunct professor at Duke University, has been touting the Sun's effects on climate change -- and warning that the "anthropogenic contribution to global warming" has been "significantly over-estimated" by the the majority of the scientific community.   

His conference call began on a similarly iconoclastic note, saying that "our research has suggested an alternative to the apparently universally-accepted cause of global warming. Many contend that the controversy over global warming had been resolved, with the scientific community concurring that humanity has caused the increase in the Earth's average surface temperature... [I] disagree."

Continue reading "Army Climate Skeptic: Global Warming is Man-Made" »

I'll be on WNYC's "The Takeaway" Friday morning at (gulp) 6:10 AM, talking about the Air Force's purge.

UPDATE: For your listening pleasure...

Shi'ite extremists in Iraq have added a frightening new weapon their arsenal: a jury-rigged rocket launching system which some are describing as a "flying improvised explosive device."

The new weapon came to light after a pair of recent attacks. The first, on Forward Operating Base Loyalty in Baghdad, killed two American soldiers and wounded 16. The second was earlier this week in Baghdad's Sha'ab neighborhood. A truck-turned-crude-rocket-launcher detonated before it could fire off its full, deadly load of munitions. But the four it did get off -- plus the explosion on the truck, itself -- managed to kill 18 and wound 29. The military is calling the weapon an IRAM, short for improvised rocket assisted mortar. The Long War Journal has more details -- and tons of pictures.

Continue reading "Iraqi Extremists' New Weapon: 'Flying IED'" »

"Things not people" now appears to be the focus of the the famed lightning weapons maker once known as Ionatron.  The company, now known as Applied Energetics, was presenting this week at the Department of Homeland Security's science and technology conference in Washington. I missed the talk, but lucky for us, MountainRunner was there and can bring us up to date.

Perhaps the most interesting news is that the company, which initially attracted investors with ambitious promises of a revolutionary nonlethal lightning gun, appears now to have thrown this idea out the window. "[T]hey are NOT looking to anti-personnel applications," MountainRunner tells us. "They said that's just an area that's too much of a headache and they'd rather let Taser walk that minefield and they'll focus on anti-IED and anti-vehicle application (things not persons)."

Continue reading "Lightning Weapon Will Zap Your Car, Not You" »

Somewhere on the world's waterways, a pirate will try to strike today. Another will tomorrow. And another the day after that. Piracy is on the rise, across the globe -- up nearly 75%, from last decade to this one, according to a new report from the RAND Corporation. There's now at least an attempt at a pirate attack nearly every day. 

Why?  Mainly, the RAND report says, because there are now more targets to loot. "First and most fundamentally, there has been a massive increase in commercial maritime traffic. Combined with the large number of ports around the world, this growth has provided pirates with an almost limitless range of tempting, high-payoff targets."

And while some governments (and some reporters) have worries about pirates and terrorists teaming up, "the presumed convergence between maritime terrorism and piracy remains highly questionable, however. To date, there has been no credible evidence to support speculation about such a nexus emerging."

Continue reading "Pirate Attacks Up 75%; Nearly One Raid Per Day" »

* Navy ends Burma relief bid

* UK copter's "gold standard cock up"

* China gets U.S. spy gear?

* Jammers of the future

* Air Force's "special capabilities" in surveillance

(High five: Hambling)

All sorts of retailers will promise to sell you James Bond-style gadgetry.  But Russia's lurch into aristo-capitalism means that the weapons from 007's old adversaries -- which once would have been kept strictly secret -- are now advertised in glossy catalogs like the one on Rosboronexport's web site.

Most of the content is standard military stuff, but the section on Special Weapons has some items which belong more in the hands of 007 than your average soldier. Planning a quiet assassination somewhere? How about the PSS handgun:

The PSS pistol arms Special Operations Forces and, therefore, is designed for attack and self-defence at short ranges when noiseless and flameless fire is vital. To this end the 7.62x42mm SP-4 round, which conceals exhaust gases in the case, is used for firing. Shooting is virtually noiseless. Absence of a silencer makes the pistol very compact, and thus convenient for covert transportation and always keeps it ready for use.

At just .7 kg and 165mm long, the PSS is certainly compact compared to any weapon with an external sound suppressor. If your target is wearing concealed body armor that will stop handgun bullets, then you might want the SR-1 9mm pistol:

Continue reading "Russia's Spy Weapons Catalogue" »

The Air Force is yanking pilots out of fighter cockpits, and ordering 'em to fly armed, robotic aircraft instead. The Navy, on the other hand, is largely staying out of the killer drone business. The sailors want to keep their robo-planes on spy duty, thank you very much.

"Unmanned aircraft are good for targeted strikes, but less effective in quick-changing, dynamic combat situations Navy fighter pilots aboard the USS Truman [tell the AP]. The pilots contend that technicians piloting drones by video and computer from afar might not get a full visual sense - or the intangible 'feel' - for a combat scene."

Drones also perform well in places with limited anti-aircraft capabilities - such as Iraq and Afghanistan - but could be easier targets for ground-based rockets in places with more advanced systems.

"There is a lot that I can do and relay and make decisions in real-time - based on being at the scene - that a guy is going to have a very difficult time making from one camera," said Cmdr. Bill Sigler, head of an F/A-18 fighter jet squadron on the USS Truman.

The Navy officially backs that position.

"Manned aircraft still retain relevancy in scenarios where airborne decision-making is critical to mission success," said Navy spokesman Lt. Clay Doss.

Not that the Navy is completely uninterested in killer drones. The service just wants unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, that are smart enough to fly -- and land on an aircraft carrier -- by themselves. As the AP notes, the Navy has a $646 million contract with Northrop to do just that. The first test flight is scheduled for late 2009, with a deployment date of 2025.

Continue reading "Navy: No Killer Drones, Yet" »

On October 24th, 1962, then-Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev told the president of Westinghouse that he didn't want a nuclear war over Cuba. But if it happened, Guantanamo naval base there would “disappear the first day” after a U.S. invasion of the island.

"At the time, Khrushchev’s threat seemed like empty bluster," the National Security Archive notes.
What Kennedy did not know was that the Soviets had deployed nuclear cruise missiles to Cuba, armed with 14-kiloton warheads, roughly the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima."

At about the time that Khrushchev was speaking with [the Westinghouse executive], a convoy of FKR cruise missiles was moving from Mayari Arriba to a pre-launch position at the village of Vilorio. (See map below.) On the night of October 26-27, at the height of the missile crisis, the convoy was ordered to the launch position the village of Filipinas, 15 miles from Guantanamo naval base...

[This was on the same day] that the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended an all-out U.S. invasion of Cuba to destroy the Soviet missile bases. President Kennedy rejected the advice of his military advisers in favor of a diplomatic solution to the crisis that included a secret understanding between his brother and the Soviet ambassador.

The revelations are part of a new book, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, which draws on the Archive's deep files on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Over the next month, the site is promising to publish all sorts of documents related to that panicked moment in 1962.  Stay tuned.

I'll be a guest on the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU 88.5 tomorrow talking about surveillance technologies. Tune in at 1 pm.

Metal Storm, the plucky little Australian company that rose to fame on its "million-rounds-a-minute" gun, has won a contract worth nearly $1 million from the U.S. Office of Naval Research. The money is for the company to continue development of its 12-gauge, Multi-shot Grenade Launcher, one of a number of weapons the company is developing with its unique stacked projectile technology.

Good news? Yes. Enough to keep the company, which has been around now for over a decade now, afloat? Unclear. A million dollars is chump change in terms of weapons development, but for investors, it may signal confidence in (and hope for ) the company's technology, which has yet to find a military customer. Is that confidence warranted? Well.....

Metal Storm has both its detractors and defenders, but I have yet to see any sane argument for how the company will start making significant sales to a major military customer.

[Image: Metal Storm]

Continue reading "Super Gun Maker Scores Navy Contract" »

The military still doesn't have a deployable ray gun, but it seems that more and more people are placing their bets on the solid state, electric-powered laser.

Not wanting to be left out of the race to field compact battlefield lasers, Boeing announced yesterday that it's tested its own solid-state laser technology. "In each laser firing at Boeing's facility in West Hills, Calif., the high-energy laser achieved power levels of over 25 kilowatts for multi-second durations, with a measured beam quality suitable for a tactical weapon system," says Boeing.

What's interesting about this announcement is that Boeing is not part of the Defense Department's Joint High-Powered Solid State Laser, a program that has funded Northrop Grumman and Textron to build a deployable laser weapon. Boeing at one point teamed with the Livermore lab on a solid-state work, but that laser, which was powerful but large, was not selected by the program for funding. Similarly, Raytheon also has a solid state laser that was passed over for funding. Both Livermore and Raytheon have continued their solid-state laser work on their own dime, however. Boeing, until this point, did not appear to be that active on solid-state lasers, and it appears this new effort is self-funded.

It's easy to see why companies might invest their own money in solid-state lasers -- this technology is looking like the most practical route to deployable laser weapons, particularly given the difficulties of deploying chemical lasers.

Continue reading "Electric Laser Race Heats Up" »

Over the last few years, Marine Corps whistleblower Franz Gayl has been waging a one-man war against the military's gear-buying bureaucracy.  And along the way, he's picked up some powerful allies -- like Senators Joe Biden and Kit Bond, who have hammered the Corps for being slow to purchase and field everything from spy drones to armored vehicles.

Now, the Senatorial pair have picked up the cudgel again. "The Marines have mismanaged a four-year effort to develop hidden video cameras to track insurgents planting roadside bombs, according to a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates from [the] two senators," USA Today reports.

Continue reading "Senators to Gates: Fork Over the Hidden Spy Cams " »

The Pentagon is trying to figure out just how bad battlefield explosions rattle troops' brains. One solution: a flexible, "tape," packed with electronics and sensors, that can measures the blasts' effects.

Darpa has just handed Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, a $2 million, 18-month contract to put together prototype spools of the "sensor tape." 

PARC says its expertise in "jet-printing" and "polymer devices and circuits" ought to help out with the manufacture and design.  The tape will include "multiple sensors to collect and record data associated with blasts, including shock waves, acceleration, acoustic levels, and light intensities," the center says in a statement. "Comprising small, lightweight patches, the disposable tape will be attached to a soldier's helmet or uniform for a period of one week, then removed to read the data, and then discarded."

The Army has already outfitted 1,145 soldiers' helmets with blast monitors. These new sensors, Darpa and PARC hope, will be a little easier to carry out, and to read.

ALSO:

• Speed Gauge for Soldiers' Heads
• Army's Helmet Sensors Measure Hits to Head
• DARPA's Stick-On Body Sensors

[Illo: PARC]

Sir Hugh Orde, Northern Ireland's top cop and potential candidate to head the London Police, says we ought to think about negotiating with Al Qaeda. More cops and counterterror agents won't be enough to deal with Osama's followers, he contends. So it's time to start "thinking the unthinkable."

Asked whether Britain should attempt to talk to al-Qaida, he said: "If you want my professional assessment of any terrorism campaign, what fixes it is talking and engaging and judging when the conditions are right for that to take place.    

"Is that a naive statement? I don't think it is ... It is the reality of what we face. If somebody can show me any terrorism campaign where it has been policed out, I'd be happy to read about it, because I can't think of one."

After all, Orde argues, the Irish Republican Army did finally decide to put down its weapons. 

"It got to a point where those combatants realised ... certainly on the republican side, it wasn't ever going to work. So there's a certain pragmatism in there. The question, does Bin Laden see it that way, probably not. If you don't ask, you don't know."

Orde's heart may be in the right place, but AQ and the IRA are totally different.  What worked for one probably won't work for the other.  The IRA had territory, interests, goals, and even political organization. There was a distinct hierarchy to either be targeted or negotiated with.  AQ is, at present, a loose coalition, literally "the base" for various Islamist groups to pool their resources and ideology.  Plus, it isn't the only Islamic extremist game in town.

Continue reading "Northern Ireland's Top Cop: Negotiate with Al Qaeda" »

Two smart, articulate candidates -- neither one of which is a complete hostage to his party's ideological extremes. Clear differences on Iraq, the war on terror, health care, and housing. And, just for good measure, a fascinating third party force, articulating truths that need to be heard.

Folks, this isn't a partisan political blog. But as a former campaign worker bee, and as someone who cares about the big issues facing our country, this presidential race is as good as our system gets. 

U.S. troops are supposed to use the Voice Response Translator gadget, to help them communicate in Arabic or Pashto. Joel Johnson gives the gizmo a spin on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Hilarity ensues. 

ALSO:

• Translation Gizmos for LA Cops
• Darpa's Greatest Hits and Misses
• Instant Arabic, a Few Clicks Away
• Device: Arabic In, English Out

* Fox Fallon speaks

* McCain: I'd secretly spy on Americans, too

* Star-spangled stealth

* Hearts, minds, and killer 'bots

* Staying neutral in a cyber war

The U.S. military's small, but growing, arsenal of armed robots has a new addition. Bot-maker Foster-Miller has shipped the first of its new killer machines to the Defense Department's Combatting Terrorism Technology Support Office. 

The 350-pound MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) machine can carry a 40mm grenade launcher or a M240B medium machine gun. Or, if the robot's operators want their killer 'bot to be a little less-lethal, the thing can be equipped with a laser dazzler, a loudspeaker, or pepper spray. 

After years of safety testing and modifications, three of MAARS kill-bot predecessors were sent to Iraq in 2007. But after nearly nine months in the field, safety concerns (among other reasons) have kept those machines from firing a shot in combat.   

So MAARS' makers keep emphasizing how safe their lethal machine is. Software controls allow the robot's driver to select fire and no-fire zones. A mechanical range fan keeps MAARS' gun pointed away from friendly positions. "MAARS was developed with safety as the number one goal... [and] will continue to be tested exhaustively under various conditions in the coming months to ensure full compliance with standards and a safety release for fielding," the company says in a statement, which goes on to reinforce that the robot is "human-operated." 

Continue reading "U.S. Military Gets Newest Kill-Bot" »

I harbored some vain hope that outing a few spammers-disguised-as-PR-agents might save me from getting quite so many ridiculously off-topic press releases. And I did get one apologetic e-mail, from a forlorn flack. But, for the most part, the pork products have continued to pour into the Danger Room Inbox.  This week's thinly-veiled spam included items about brush-clearing goats, porn star "socialite" Kim Kardashian, and solar-powered doohickeys. Why exactly they chose to send this "news" to a defense technology reporter is beyond me. Perhaps y'all can detect some hidden rationale.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Martha Nudel <XXXXXX@fws.gov>
Date: Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 11:58 AM
Subject: Goats Rather Than Tractors
To: XXXXXXX

In just a few days, a few hundred goats cleared several acres of thick brush and grass at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in California. Refuge managers typcially remove brush and small limbs using manpower and heavy equipment.  Goats, however, are less expensive, they don’t burn fossil fuels and reduce the carbon footprint.

The Rio Vista Unit of Sacramento River Refuge is bordered by private homes and local parks.  Refuge land and fire managers examined several options to reduce the buildup of vegetation and thereby reduce the risk of wildfire. Everyone agreed it was worth giving the goats a try.  Refuge manager Kelly Moroney said neighboring landowners and local government officials were pleased with the results.

Goats first grazed on the refuge in June 2007, clearing about 35 acres.  This year, the goats will browse through 50-60 acres. They will be followed by student work crews who will cut the higher limbs.  “Ultimately,” says Moroney, “we want a closed canopy on top that shades out low, understory growth. This will make a natural fire break, requiring less maintenance over time.”  Moroney also says goats are now being considered for other refuges and additional acreage at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex and throughout the region.

Continue reading "DR Inbox: Goats, Porn Stars, and Solar Power Spam" »

The American military has been widely criticized, from within and from without, for not paying enough attention to the cultures of Iraq and Afghanistan. But today's most xenophobic recruits look like enlightened navigators of the human terrain, compared to the folks in military intelligence who drew up this 1945 pamphlet.

"The Punch Below the Belt" is an infantryman's guide to all of the hazards a fight with the Japanese army would present -- from ambushes to snipers, camouflage to booby traps. And it's a propaganda piece, continually reinforcing that Tokyo's soldiers deserve whatever hell the war brings them. "Probably no army in the history of warfare has equalled the Japs in treachery and craftiness," the pamphlet reads. "A Jap can invent ruses as easily as a goldbrick can invent diseases. All Jap ruses, however, follow the same basic pattern -- making danger appear harmless."

Earlier in the war, a similar document taught G.I.s "How to Spot a Jap" among other Asians. (Sample wisdom: "The Chinese has a smooth face... The Jap runs to hair.") Other pamphlets, such as a 1943 "Short Guide to Iraq" were considerably more nuanced.

Each of the techniques in "Punch" are illustrated by cartoons that are about as far as you can get from political correct. And each of the techniques was also practiced by Allied forces, at some point during World War II.

But it's not clear whether American soldiers got to read the pamphlet. It was issued by the Military Intelligence Service of the War Department on August 1, 1945. Five days later, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. 

(The bomb: DF, RW, CB)

The Army is weighing in on the global warming debate, claiming that climate change is not entirely man-made.  Instead, Dr. Bruce West, with the Army Research Office, argues that "changes in the earth’s average surface temperature are directly linked to ... the short-term statistical fluctuations in the Sun’s irradiance and the longer-term solar cycles."

In an advisory to bloggers entitled "Global Warming: Fact of Fiction [sic]," an Army public affairs official promoted a conference call with West about "the causes of global warming, and how it may not be caused by the common indicates [sic] some scientists and the media are indicating."

In the March, 2008 issue of Physics Today, West, the chief scientist of the Army Research Office's mathematical and information science directorate, wrote that "the Sun’s turbulent dynamics" are linked with the Earth's complex ecosystem. These connections are what is heating up the planet. "The Sun could account for as much as 69 percent of the increase in Earth’s average temperature," West noted.

It's a position that puts West at odds with nearly every major scientific organization on the planet. "The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling," Science magazine observes. So has the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, for their work on global warming. [UPDATE: West himself said during a Thursday conference call that global warming is at least partially man-made -- and maybe as much as "70 percent" due to human intervention.]

West faults the IPCC and other scientific groups have "conclude[d] that the contribution of solar variability to global warming is negligible." He argues that these groups have done a poor job modeling the Sun's impact, however, and that's why they have "significantly over-estimated" the "anthropogenic contribution to global warming."

In recent days, the science and politics of climate change have once again taken center stage. NASA's Inspector General just issued a report, acknowledging that political appointees "reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public." Yesterday, the Senate began debating a bill that would cap carbon dioxide emissions -- considered one of the leading causes of man-made global warming.

UPDATE: "The Army does not have a position on global warming. Dr. West is an Army chief scientist, and is presenting one alternative theory to the cause of global warming," Army spokesperson Lindy Dinklage tells Danger Room. "This research is just some amongst thousands of studies being conducted by Army Scientists across the globe." 

Okay. But the Army's Office of the Chief of Public Affairs chose to promote just this one study. And when Army public affairs rolls out research from an Army chief scientist -- with no clarifications that these are just his private views -- I think it's fair to call that an official endorsement.

After the jump: the Army's full press release.

Continue reading "Army: Sun, Not Man, Is Causing Climate Change (Updated)" »

Air Force funded researchers say they've made a breakthrough in a process called "ghost imaging" that could someday enable satellites to take pictures through clouds. The Air Force reports:

University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus, professor (Dr.) Yanhua Shih initiated ghost-imaging research in 1995, by using entangled photons. In the experiment, one photon passed through stenciled patterns in a mask to trigger a detector, and another photon was captured by a second detector. Surprisingly, an image of the pattern between the two detectors appeared, which the physics community called ghost-imaging.

In an article entitled "Reflection of a Ghost" that appeared in April's Physical Review, fellow researcher Dr. Keith Deacon indicated that ghost-imaging appears promising for future applications to satellite technology. Dr. Deacon said he believes ghost-imaging may enable a satellite to be equipped with a detector and that would be coupled with a second camera that would take images of the sun. That combination of technologies could generate ghost images of the Earth's surface, even if there are obstructing atmospheric conditions.

The image created in this new experiment is of a toy soldier.

[Image: University of Maryland]

Are things getting better in Afghanistan -- or worse?  On the one hand, you have the Telegraph and the New York Times reporting that the Taliban is "on the brink of defeat" and "fleeing to the Pakistani border after being routed in recent operations by the United States Marines."  On the other, it looks like this year's spring offensive by the "most lethal... in the six year conflict," NightWatch notes.

In the data sample drawn from unclassified reporting sources that NightWatch uses, April featured 199 violent incidents in 86 districts, making it the most lethal April in the six year conflict. May featured 214 incidents of violence  in over 100 districts, also a new six-year total for May and the highest single monthly total. Despite official efforts to spotlight improvement, the spring offensive thus far is worse than last year’s spring offensive. The security situation has deteriorated again.

At no prior time has the Taliban managed to stage attacks in over 100 of the 398 districts. The previous highs were 86 in April 2008 and 83 in May 2007. Fighting has been heavy in Garmser District in Helmand Province but it has been significantly higher in Zormat District in Paktia Province; Andar District in Ghazni Province and Asadabad District in Konar, all across from the tribal areas of northern and central Pakistan. If Taliban fighters are heading to Pakistan, they are going back to base to rest and to get more ammunition and supplies.

Of course, this doesn't have to be a binary choice. The Taliban could be causing more mischief, and the Marines may be kicking their asses.

More questions, and more data, over at Abu Muqawama.

[Photo: 24th MEU]

It's a minor miracle. Boeing is delivering the first of its new, electronic attack airplanes to the Navy today.  And not only is "the event is occurring exactly according to the original schedule," the DEW Line notes. "Boeing's five-year-old development program" is right on budget, too.  Cue the choir; wake the pastor.  In the military development world -- where projects routinely balloon in price and ship years after they're supposed to -- this kind of basic competence is bordering on the supernatural.

It's an important project, too. The American military is almost out of these electronic attack planes. "The aging four-seat EA-6B Prowlers are now the USA’s sole remaining tactical aircraft type for radar jamming, communications jamming and information operations like signals interception," Defense Industry Daily observes. "They’ve been predictably busy as a result. In Iraq, they’ve been used for everything from escorting strike aircraft against heavily defended targets during the opening days of the war, to disrupting enemy IED attacks by jamming all radio signals in an area."

The new plane, the EA-18G Growler, takes the old aircraft's electronic warfare package, and puts it onto the body of a sleeker, faster fighter jet -- the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet. Some might say that mitigates the on-time, on-budget miracle, a bit.  "This is not the same as starting a new weapon project from scratch," the DEW Line says.

Continue reading "Shocker! Navy Gets New Plane On Time, On Budget" »

Adhesives, man-made tornados, or plain ol' dexterity and balance -- researchers have come up with all sorts of ways for robots crawl up walls and tall buildings. Now SRI International, which has long been a leader in robotics, has developed 'bots that scale and stick to walls using electrostatic charges. Computerworld reports:

[SRI's Philip] Von Guggenberg said that the new electrical adhesive technology called compliant electroadhesion, provides an electrically controllable way to stick machines to a wall. Since positive and negative charges attract, SRI researchers induce negative charges into the wall being climbed, while at the same time imposing positive charges in the robot, using an on-board battery source.

That adhesion lets the robots, using either feet or tracks, scale a vertical wall. They can even climb walls covered in dust and debris, or made out of concrete, wood, steel, glass, drywall, and brick. However, they have a harder time with damp surfaces, von Guggenberg noted. He also added that regular robots, especially those with tracks, can be retrofitted with the technology and turned into wall climbers.

SRI also says the technology could eventually be used to enable human wall crawlers, which could prove useful for U.S. Special Forces.

[Image: SRI International]

* Israeli Army loses secret docs

* Lockheed can't keep costs in check

* Weapons of the new Cold War

* Basra's duck of death

* Flying tank, 1967

(High five: SW)

Regular Danger Room readers won't learn much from this Newsweek story about how drones are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan today.  But the piece has some priceless anecdotes about the robot planes' halting, stutter-step history. 

Marilyn Monroe plays a bit part.  So does a young Japanese-American engineer named Norman Sakamato --  the godfather of drones, who spent the first two years of World War II with his family in a Japanese internment camp in Arizona. But the most colorful material comes from the recent past:

When fighting in the Balkans broke out in the early 1990s, Jim Woolsey, director of the CIA, was in a jam. He did not have many (if any) spies on the ground. Desperate for imagery from Bosnia, he asked the Air Force what it would take to get a drone for the spooks. The answer, he recalls, was "six years and $500 million." Then Woolsey remembered a secret UAV project run out of the Pentagon's civilian Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency using the design skills of a brilliant Israeli expat named Abe Karem. Woolsey tracked down Karem in California. Karem told him his craft, code-named Amber, had been cut from the budget by the Army in 1990 and was now lying in pieces in a California warehouse. What would it take, Woolsey asked, to get it flying again? "Six months and $5 million," he recalls Karem's saying. (Karem says the story is a bit more complicated, but Woolsey's version is essentially correct.) The stripped-down craft that emerged was called the Gnat. Woolsey was so pleased by the videos it took that he arranged to have them piped back to a TV set in his office in Langley, Va. He would amaze congressmen with private showings. (Among the lawmakers who enthusiastically backed the Gnat was Charlie Wilson, the character played by Tom Hanks in the movie "Charlie Wilson's War.") The drone was back in business. In the late 1990s the Gnat evolved into the Predator, a drone that could not only take pictures but fire missiles.

Even that didn't happen overnight. For years the CIA and Air Force squabbled over control and funding of the project, missing the chance to use a Predator as an offensive weapon against terrorists in hiding. A crucial advocate for the project was Gen. John Jumper, who was commander of U.S. air forces in Europe during the Kosovo conflict. He was exasperated that the early Predators didn't have GPS. (Jumper is recalled by a colleague remarking about a recon photo of a Serbian tank hiding in a forest: "That's a very nice tank. Where the f––– is it?") When Jumper returned to the United States to run Air Combat Command in 2000, he made a new push to get a weapon under the Predator's wings.

The DDG-1000 is the Navy's biggest, baddest, most expensive, most technologically-advanced destroyer, ever. But the service's chiefs don't seem particularly eager to defend it against Congressional critics. The admirals may not even want the so-called "Zumwalt" ship, Christopher Cavas writes in today's Defense News.

The Navy has never articulated a simple and forceful argument explaining the need for the Zumwalt-class ships, under development for more than a decade. Many officers remain confused about the destroyer's abilities and intended use.

"I certainly haven't seen a vigorous defense mounted," said one veteran retired officer. "The position papers are out there to support the ship, but nobody's standing up for it."

Former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark "generally described DDG-1000 as a technology driver for the fleet," Defense News adds.  Both of his successors, Adm. Mike Mullen and Roughead, who like Clark were surface officers, similarly offered only lukewarm support."

Continue reading "Admirals Abandoning Navy's Super-Destroyer?" »

Everything you thought you knew about Pakistan's nuclear-smuggling ring is wrong. At least, that's what the accused ringleader and an English journalist would have you believe.

On Friday, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, recanted his confession that he had supplied nuke parts and know-how to North Korea, Iran, and Libya.

In his first western media interview since 2004, Khan said the confession had been forced upon him by President Pervez Musharraf. "It was not of my own free will. It was handed into my hand," he told the Guardian.

Pakistani editorials and clerics are now calling for Khan's release from custody.  But how, exactly, this explains away the brochures pimping Khan's nuclear equipment and expertise is a little beyond me. "U.S. government specialists aren't buying Khan's new tune," either, Nukes & Spooks says.

In an e-mailed response, one U.S. official said simply:  "We haven't changed our assessment that A.Q. Khan was a major--and very dangerous--proliferator.  He sold sensitive nuclear equipment and know-how to some genuinely bad actors."

Ever-so-conveniently, documents which Khan claims "would have gone a long way in proving my
innocence" were shredded by Swiss authorities, under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.  (Copies may be floating around the black market, however.)  No, I don't get it, either.

And just to make matters more complicated, a new book by London-based journalist Shyam Bhatia claims that Pakistan's slain former Prime Minister, Benzair Bhutto, smuggled "critical nuclear data"  into North Korea, in exchange for missile technology.

Continue reading "New Intrigue Surrounds Pak's Nuke Smuggling Ring" »

Cities and corporations are stringing up thousands and thousands of surveillance cameras, armed with advanced video intelligence algorithms, to watch out for terrorists and crooks. Too bad the rest of us get caught on tape, while the electronic eyes make their spy sweeps. And no one knows what the spycams are recording.

A strain of new software may have the potential to change that, however, by blurring or encrypting faces in the footage, until there's an alarm or an investigation. Ironically, some of the same firms that made video surveillance extra Orwellian are now working to make the spy networks a bit more privacy-friendly.

Take video-analysis company 3VR. Its software builds up databases of every vehicle, license plate and face a surveillance network sees -- yikes -- and triggers an alarm when a suspect person or car crosses a camera's lens.

Now, 3VR's engineers are tweaking the algorithms to blur out all the faces and vehicles that don't fall under the software's suspicions so the rest of us aren't filmed just because we happen to be walking by the wrong place at the wrong time.

A pair of University of Toronto professors have put together a similar system, a "secure visual object coding application" that "uses cryptography techniques to encrypt 'objects of interest' within video frames -- faces or other features that may be used to identify a person -- and store them separately."

Of course, a security guard or investigator could later unecrypt the faces, with the proper key (or a subpoena). So a person wouldn't know for sure he was hidden from the cameras forvever. But at least the decrypting would be an auditable event -- something a supervisor (or a judge) could track. The boss or magistrate could tell whether the monitor jockey wanted to see a robber's getaway, or a woman's legs. 3VR chief Stephen Russell writes on his blog, it's "a way to 'watch the watchers,' if you will."

Continue reading "New Spy Cam Software Blurs Faces of the Innocent" »

It isn't just the United States that has problems with strategic communications. Al Qaeda's Ayman Al-Zawahri angered would-be female jidahists when he said that the place for women is in the home. CBS News reports on the reaction to the this recent decree:

In response to a female questioner, al Qaeda No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al Qaeda fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al Qaeda.

A'eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.

Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for "Companion of Weapons."

"How many times have I wished I were a man ... When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al Qaeda, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest...I am powerless."

On a tangentially related subject, Dunkin Donuts has pulled the advertisement of Rachel Ray wearing a scarf that vaguely, sort-of resembled a Keffiyah. Okay, that's not really related, but it's such a weird story I felt like mentioning it.

There are all kinds of stories about how the White House is defended.  One urban legend says Stinger anti-aircraft missiles are supposedly perched on the roof. According this 1998 report by Human Rights Watch, Pennsylvania Avenue may be protected by a laser weapon, meant to ward off 9/11-style suicide attacks.

Lasers originally developed for dazzling and blinding missions are being offered to law enforcement agencies and potentially for commercial sale. In one notable example, a California-based company, Light Solutions, is reportedly developing a dazzling counter-terrorism "green laser" for the Army on behalf of the U.S. Secret Service. A secret "black" program, this laser is intended to defend the White House and other government buildings in Washington from someone who might employ a light plane or helicopter in an attack.

The "green laser" described was developed in conjunction with Darpa and the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory (now part of the Air Force Research Lab). The latest version is the Compact High Power (CHP) Laser Dazzler, described as a 500 Milliwatt, 532nm Green Flashing Laser. As with the WWII dazzling strobelights, the flashing is said to increase effectiveness and produce disorientation in the target. It is effective out to a one-mile range, and has been urgently requested in Iraq as an alternative to lethal means of stopping drivers approaching checkpoints.

Continue reading "Does the White House Have a Secret Laser Defense? (Updated)" »

* Victory in Mosul?

* U.S. using prison ships?

* Lt. Gen. William Odom, RIP

* Chem weapon-sucking sponge

* Condi, KISS team up

(High five: PJB, RC)

Could it be curtains soon for a small company that dreams of building a gyroplane, a rotorcraft whose rotor "is driven by aerodynamic forces in autorotation"? In a press release, Groen Brothers, which is publicly traded and has received funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, announces that it is reducing "its employee work force by two-thirds, and is reducing other expenditures as well."

Groen Brothers has struggled for over a decade to raise money for its plane, which is a revival of a mid-century aviation concept. As Graham Warwick explains over at Aviation Week's ARES blog:

Groen's dream is to revive the gyrodyne concept made famous by the Fairey Rotodyne, a 44-seat convertiplane that flew in 1957, but was cancelled in 1962 (check out the video). In a gyrodyne, the rotor is powered for vertical take-off and landing and autorotates in forward flight, allowing the aircraft to fly faster than a conventional helicopter. The turboprop-powered Rotodyne exceeded 190mph - the turbofan-powered Heliplane is intended to reach 400mph.

At the end of last week, Groen Brother's stock was trading at six cents.

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