Saddam Dead; Footage Everywhere (Updated)

As I'm sure you all know by now, Saddam Hussein has been hanged to death -- executed for his role in the slaughter of 148 in the Shi'ite town of Dujail.

Iraqis, according to the Times, "spent much of the day crowding around television sets to watch mesmerizing replays of a videotape that showed the 69-year-old Mr. Hussein being led to the gallows at dawn by five masked executioners, and having a noose fashioned from a thick rope of yellow hemp lowered around his neck."

But, as Xeni notes in an excellent round-up of the execution coverage, "explicit images of Hussein's corpse and 'unedited' cellphone video of the hanging (which includes the moment of death) have already shown up online," on Google Video.

The video is grotesque. But "I think there's a public interest in making this available for adults who choose to see it, non-passively," Xeni tells Defense Tech. I agree.

UPDATE 9:26 PM: Defense Tech pal Michael Hastings has himself a scoop, interviewing Ali Al Massedy, who "was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, normally Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's official videographer, was the man responsible for filming the late dictator's execution at dawn on Saturday."

UPDATE 10:24 PM: Eric Umansky has "the most telling part of the execution." Let's just say Moqtada Al-Sadr is psyched.

UPDATE 12/31/06 11:49 AM: "We are seeing 21st century psychological operations," says TPM Cafe. "It can be concluded there were elements within America's government and/or military, working in concert with Iraq's current scarecrow power-holders, who wanted as many people as possible in the world to see Saddam hang." I'm not sure I buy this. And I can't get with screeching tone. But it's an interesting notion, nonetheless.

UPDATE 12/31/06 11:56 AM: Juan Cole gets into the execution's religious dynamics.

The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday –- and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar.

The timing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a “sacrifice” for his nation, an explicit reference to Eid al-Adha. The tribunal had given the old secular nationalist the chance to use religious language to play on the sympathies of the whole Iraqi public.

The political ineptitude of the tribunal, from start to finish, was astonishing. The United States and its Iraqi allies basically gave Saddam a platform on which to make himself a martyr to Iraqi unity and independence -- even if by unity and independence Saddam was really appealing to Sunnis' nostalgia for their days of hegemony.

(Big ups: Josh)

Pain Beam Not Easily Foiled

My recent pieces on the Active Denial System (ADS) or ‘pain beam’ sparks discussions here and elsewhere on the web. One of the most common challenges to the device is that the beam of short-wavelength microwaves could easily be blocked with tinfoil.

It’s not that easy.

Captain Jay Delarosa, spokesman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate told me:

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

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

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

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

…actual tests show that the beams penetrate even minute openings or cracks, for example, and sometimes appear almost to wrap around corners to affect fingers and feet of those trying to hide behind or hold up protective devices.

"The radio frequency is hard to block," Booen says. "Some of the people tested against tried to hide by laying down behind some concrete traffic barriers and the beam went underneath [where there was uneven contact with the ground]."

What about that tinfoil? It will have to cover every square inch and any rips or tears will make it useless. Joints may be tricky; if you flex foil too many times holes start appearing. For vision you will need a metal mesh visor, like the kind they use on microwave oven doors. The problem is, the size of the mesh depends on the wavelength of the radiation - so short-wavelength ADS beam requires something much finer than normal microwave mesh. You also need to think about the effect on your breathing, body temperature and communication.

While it is theoretically possible to put together an anti-ADS armor suit, this is less of a spur-of-the-moment improvised undertaking and more of an elaborate workshop project taking some time and effort. (And by the same token, you could make yourself bullet-proof if you used quarter-inch steel plate instead of foil.)

Get your suit working and your problems are just beginning, as it will quickly identify you as a troublemaker rather than an innocent bystander. Separating ‘tourists from terrorists’ is one of the ADS’s main goals, and as Capt Delarosa says:

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

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

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

There is another alternative. The Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP), which I described in New Scientist (subscribers only) is a non-lethal weapon which fires an extremely short laser pulse, producing a plasma flash-bang at the target. This could be deployed on the same platform as the ADS, using the same power source. “Many of the countermeasures that can be envisioned against the ADS” could be nullified by the PEP by “ablation of the defence” according to a Navy study on the effects of plasmas. Such a laser could chew through a layer of foil with a few pulses.

A PEP might also negate foil without having to blast it away. Ultra-short pulses have recently been demonstrated that can turn metals pitch black , so that the surface absorbs incoming radiation and reflective foil is made useless. This technology was developed at Rochester's High Intensity Femtosecond Laser Laboratory ; they are funded by (among others) DARPA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. We’ll be looking more at short pulse lasers in 2007.

There are many questions still remaining around the Active Denial System and its effects. But we may safely assume that in the many years of its development the Air Force has taken possible countermeasures into account.

UPDATE 5TH JAN Some interesting responses in the Comments section.

Leather is no protection; wet leather, like any other wet material, will absorb the beam and heat up. This may sound like a good idea, until you look at the numbers and realise that it only gives you a few seconds extra, then you have extremely hot water/steam in contact with your skin...foil is a better idea. The issues around damp/wet cloth, sweat etc were investigated a few years back in FWR-2002-0016-H Effects of skin and environmental conditions on sensations evoked by MMW covered this). There was some concern about one subject wearing a sweater developing nettle rash (urticaria) which is mentioned in F-BR-2006-0018-H Effects of exposure to 400-W 95-GHz Millimetre Wave Energy on Non-stationary Humans , but this did not happen again.

To clarify one concern, as I understand it running away would not make you a target for escalated force (like getting shot at); turning up in a tinfoil bodysuit might do.

And as for Nicholas Weaver's request "Could you get zapped by it and tell us first hand?" - er, no thanks. It sounds painful. There's a good firsthand account by Eric Adams in Popular Science here:

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

-- David Hambling

Noah's 50 Favorite Posts of 2006

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

"Q Branch's" Stock Market Shenanigans
Killer robots, cheeky Brits, cute marine mammals, shady government officials, insider trading -- plus, a gratuitous reference to James Bond -- all in one post.

Laser Weapons "Almost Ready?" Not!
If you’re into military technology at all, somewhere in the back of your mind, you want laser guns to happen. That doesn't mean they will.

The Dead Bombers of Halabja
David Axe finds the machines behind Iraq's gas attacks.

Kneel Before the Centaur
Like a lot of us, former Navy electrician Dennis Buller is worried about our troops over in Iraq. But he's actually built a machine to do something about it.

China Tops Iraq, Osama in QDR
How the Pentagon's every-four-years master plan focuses more on a future fight with China than today's wars.

The Best Weapon
David Axe attends a tanker's memorial service in Iraq.

Real-Life Ray Gun: Say When?
I was skeptical, when I first heard about the idea of using lasers and man-made lightning to detonate explosives at a distance. Now, a little less so.

Happy Birthday to Me
Momma always told me to look on the bright side.

Be Mickey Mouse's Spy
Here's your big chance, junior spooks: the Walt Disney Company needs an ""Intelligence Analyst."

The Enemy is Me
Last summer, a U.S. Colonel in Baghdad told me that I was America's enemy, or very close to it.

Mini-Sensors for "Military Omniscience"
The Pentagon's new way to spot insurgents: a set of palm-sized, networked sensors that can be scattered around a war zone. It’s part of a larger Defense Department effort to establish “military omniscience” and “ubiquitous monitoring.”

Stealth's Radioactive Secret
There’s a simple technology that could transform civil aviation -- slashing fuel consumption, reducing greenhouse emissions and cutting noise. The problem, David Hambling explains, is it's a military secret.

New Detectors Sniff Terrorists' Scents
The Pentagon's fringe science arm wants to keep track of potential enemies-of-the-state in every way imaginable: not just by sight, or by sound, or by their e-mail; but by their smell, as well.

Laser Labs Go Back to the Future
George Neil and Bob Yamamoto don't remember exactly where they were when they found out that the Pentagon was canceling their laser cannon project. But they remember how they felt.

Air Force One Scare; Real Security Sacrificed
The headline sure seemed scary: "Web site exposes Air Force One defenses," Steven Schwartz notes. Too bad the article didn't mention that the site is a firefighter safety manual, to help rescue passengers.

Federal Bureau of Luddites
Why the FBI is still using tech that's straight out of the leisure suit era.

Iran's Kooky, Incendiary Arsenal
Super-fast underwater missiles ain't the half of it. Iran's armed forces are rolling out a slew of new military hardware.

China's R&D: Don't Freak
China is about to pass the U.S. in the development of defense and commercial technology, Matthew Tompkins warns. And they're gonna take our lunch money, too.

Terrorists' Unmanned Air Force
The bad guys can use drones, too.

Sunny, With a 75% Chance of Air Superiority
Some Air Force weapons simulators act like our biggest enemies just don't exist. Haninah Levine explains.

Giant Slingshot: New Way to Space?
All space projects get into orbit pretty much the same way – by burning lots of rocket fuel. But what if, David Hambling asks, we could throw something so hard, it would wind up in space?

NSA Sweep "Waste of Time," Analyst Says
It'd be one thing if the NSA's massive sweep of our phone records was actually helping catch terrorists. But a leading data analyst says that "it's a waste of time... let[ting] the real terrorists run free."

The Tech That Took Out Zarqawi
Ten years ago, taking out Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi with F-16s would have been an impossible task. Not any more, David Axe reports.

Enter the BomBot
One of the nice things about being editor of Defense Tech is that people occasionally show up at your apartment with military robots.

Superbomb - or Crapshoot?
A panel convenes, to assess the not-quite-dead controversy over a phantom superbomb. Sharon Weinberger wonders why she wasn't invited.

Clowns Sabotage Nuke Missile
On Tuesday morning, a retired Catholic priest and two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. Seriously.

Taking on Iran's Air Force
What happens a stand-off with Iran turns violent?

Missile Flop: Norks in Tight Spot
Is North Korea's busted missile test as a major problem for the U.S. -- or for Kim Jong-il?

Semper Fi Sauvignon
From the halls of Montezuma to Fallujah, the United States Marine Corps have proved themselves to be the most resourceful warriors on the planet. Now, a single test remains: Make a rich, smooth red wine.

CIA's Wacky, Online 'Personality Quiz'
These are tough times for the CIA. But can things have grown so dire at Langley that the it has to resort to gimmicks like a wink-wink-trying-to-be-ironic-and-cool- but-instead-looking-even-more-dorky recruiting website?

Hez Hacked Israeli Radios?
Readers debate whether Hezbollah really compromised Israel's most secret communications.

"Plug-and-Play" Ship Hits the Water
Why Navy Captain Don Babcock is in such a hurry.

Attack Of The Genius Robot Cockroach Swarm
"I have seen some radical ideas for attacking deep bunkers," David Hambling says, "but this beats 'em all."

Area 51: Hype vs. Reality
A veteran aviation journo writes about secret airplanes he believes might be under development at Area 51. David Axe wonders how much proof he has.

Robotic Frisbees of Death
The Air Force thinks it has an answer to the most vexing problem in counter-insurgency: frisbees. Not just any frisbees, mind you. Robotic frisbees. Heavily armed robotic frisbees.

How to Rate a (Possibly) Stupid Weapon Idea
Sharon Weinberger's 15-point test to find out if a weapons-maker is full of it.

Iraqi Forces Don't Suck ... Entirely
Despite what you might have heard from other media, David Axe says, the Iraqi Army does not suck.

High-Tech Uniforms Finally Heading to War
A collection of high-tech soldier gear, 15 years and half a billion dollars in the making, will finally make it into battle.

Army "Big Brother" Unit Targets Bloggers
Bloggers: "Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be."

Spyboys Go Web 2.0
How the military keeps tabs on overseas TV channels, 24/7 -- and what it means for the future of intelligence.

Cash-Poor Army Pays Big to Pimp Pricey 'Future'
The Army is quickly going broke, its leaders insist. But there's one Army account that the generals are still managing to keep packed to the brim: marketing.

Bush: Space is for Soldiers
Theresa Hitchens explores the President's new space plan -- and finds a martial bent.

Big War Machines Pushed for Korea Fight
How military bigwigs are angling for North Korean fight.

NORK Nuclear Test: It's A Dud
Jeffrey Lewis is the first to figure out that Kim Il Jung's nuclear test isn't all it was cracked up to be.

BattleHog Drone's Story Stinks
David Hambling asks: Could a home security consultant operating out of a Manhattan apartment have built the latest and greatest killer drone?

"The Deadlies"
Defense Tech's search for the most insanely hazardous gear, ever.

Mechanical Mole Men, Attack!
Throughout the ages, bad guys have loved bunkers. Which is why the Air Force wants teams of tunneling, foot-long "subterranean vehicles."

Labouchere of Arabia
David Axe camps out with a modern-day T.E. Lawrence.

Drunks, Butts Test Pain Ray; Paris Hilton Next?
David Hambling's new reality-show pitch. Milimeter wave weapons are involved.

Pentagon Plan: Hit Anywhere on Earth, in an Hour
The secret connection between Nordstrom's toddlers department and the Pentagon push to "strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."

So Where Are All The Dirty Bombs?

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

Annual incidents of trafficking and mishandling of nuclear and other radioactive material reported to U.S. intelligence officials have more than doubled since the early 1990s, says the director of domestic nuclear detection at the Department of Homeland Security.

Also up: scams in which fake or non-existent nuclear or radioactive material is offered for sale, often online, says Vayl Oxford, nuclear detection director at the department.

"We sense that people have recognized the value of nuclear material as a useful way of making money," Oxford said. "Nuclear material is becoming a marketable commodity."

The incidents tracked by the department, based on its reporting and information from foreign diplomatic and intelligence sources, average about twice the number made public each year by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Oxford said reports of nuclear and radioactive materials trafficking have ranged from 200 to 250 a year since 2000, up from about 100 a year in the 1990s.

But here's the thing ,Vayl. When you look at the amount of materials stolen or lost (some data are shown in the article's sidebar), we're talking about ounces and a few pounds at best of gamma emitters. No one's tracking the alpha/beta radioactive material out there (polonium anyone?). Still, not exactly enough for an improvised nuclear weapon, maybe enough to scare unknowledgable people.

You might have seen the last season's "Sleeper Cell" that only reinforced some of these fears. I enjoyed watching the terrorist cell use americium 241 to "test" their lead-lined cooler container for radiation leaks (except that americium isn't a strong gamma emitter), talk about how exploding an aircraft holding one nuclear fuel rod over Los Angeles would "cover the city in nuclear fallout" (ah, not really), and how the authorities "got a hit from the radioactive sniffers" on the lead-lined cooler on its way to the last target. Yeah, it's only a drama, but I'll bet people believe this stuff. Maybe it was just disinformation for the real terrorists... yeah, that's the ticket.

-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

UPDATE 12/29/06 11:36 AM: David Hambling writes in to say: "Also, the UK police are ordering some 12,000 CBR [chemical-biological-radiological] suits -- looks like they're expecting those famous/mythical dirty bombs too."

UPDATE 12/29/06 12:05 PM: J here. Great conversation in the comments, especially the cool-headed plugger noting that "dirty bombs" are hazards, not life-threatening events. Many of the comments seem to go to the question of "what's your point?" Without getting too academic (hey, I'm not the ArmsControlWonk, after all), my point is simply this. While there's lots of radioactive hazards out there, the really bad ones aren't being moved in great quantities to cause a mass casualty incident. Given that "dirty bombs" of whatever flavor - alpha, beta, gamma - are largely more of a clean-up job, and while costly to clean up, government goes on. The anthrax letters didn't shut down the USPS, but it did slow things down on the east coast. The polonium poisoning didn't shut down Heathrow Airport for a minute.

They're hazards, they are low-probability events, they're not mass casualty events. Given that basis, what's the appropriate federal response? I suggest that it is not to put rad detectors in every port and every border crossing into the United States and within every major metropolitan area, as DHS's DNDO has suggested (which would cost billions of dollars to implement plus annual sustainment and training costs). The appropriate response is to lock down the bad rads (cesium, uranium, and plutonium), get the terrorists before they attack, and be prepared (like our UK brethern) to clean it up if it happens. Simple. Smart. Efficient. But not the course of action being implemented by the government.

Rapid Fire 12/27/06

* 'Invisible electronics' coming?

* 70 year-old plane still flies

* Semtex, knives smuggled onto planes

* Nuke trafficking doubles

* Pak agents assault NYT ace

* Ethiopia 1, Islamists 0

* Tires = snitches

* GD, Force Protection team up

* Fed agencies move out of DC blast zone

* How quick could Japan go nuke?

* Guide to your neighborhood meth lab

* Daily Show does homeland tech

* Gauss pistol

* Mindball!

"Man convicted of stealing Teddy Roosevelt's gun"

* Duhhhhhh

* RIP, President Ford

(Big ups: BP, RS, HLS Watch)

Rapid Fire 12/26/06

* Dems don't spook defense contractors

* Tons of nuke missile tests

* Hot Hornet vid

* Meet the Swiss Jet Man

* "Rosetta phone"

* Scooter of doom

* Nanotech armor

* Ultrasonic mine fighter

* Noonan's close call

* Roggio vs. Muj TV

* Defense Dep't bans HTML e-mail

* U.S. blocks Israel arms sales?

* Sea-Based Radar to set sail? (background here)

* Goodbye, Godfather

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

Bump: Def Tech's 20 Biggest Posts of 2006

Out of the hundreds and hundreds of technologies, tactics, and political maneuvers Defense Tech highlighted, here are the twenty you guys clicked on the most in 2006. Thanks for another great year, everyone.

1) Clowns Sabotage Nuke Missile
On Tuesday morning, a retired Catholic priest and two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. Seriously.

2) Look Out, Pyongyang? Rail Gun in the Works
One of the big selling points of the Navy's new destroyer is that it can rain a whole lot of hell -- 20 rocket-propelled artillery shells, in less than a minute -- on targets up to 63 nautical miles away... But really, that's the start. The ship's real power will come when it moves away from chemical powders to shoot its projectiles -- and starts relying on electromagnetic fields to shoot projectiles almost six kilometers/second, instead.

3) SEAL Ship: Silent But Deadly
Every shipbuilder in the Navy these days talks about how his hulking destroyer or Cold War sub is now going to sneak SEALs onto shore... Military.com overlord Chris Michel was down in San Diego, and saw a pretty cool new prototype ship that's been designed from scratch to handle the mission.

4) Air Force Plan: Hack Your Nervous System
The brain has always been a battlefield. New weapons might be able to hack directly into your nerve cells and neural pathways.

5) Marines Quiet About Brutal New Weapon
War is hell. But it’s worse when the Marines bring out their new urban combat weapon, the SMAW-NE. Which may be why they’re not talking about it, much.

6) Urban Combat Skateboard!

7) Replacement Arm, Good as New
Thought-controlled robotic limbs were only the beginning.

8) Robotic Frisbees of Death
It ain't easy, picking out evil-doers in the urban canyons of the Middle East; there are so many places to hide. Taking 'em out can be even harder, what with all those noncombatants hanging nearby. But the Air Force thinks it might have an answer to this most vexing problem in counter-insurgency: frisbees. Not just any frisbees, mind you. Robotic frisbees. Heavily armed robotic frisbees.

9) David and the Inflatable Goliath
Inside the Darpa project to build a humongous blimp that can haul 500-1000 tons' worth of soldiers and gear halfway across the world in less than a week.

10) Falcon Fills Blackbird's Shoes
A decade after the final retirement of Lockheed Martin's Mach-3 SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, the Air Force is preparing to test a plane that flies more than three times as fast. Two Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicles, built by Lockheed Martin with input from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), will take to the air in 2008. The $100-million program aims to field a Mach-10 unmanned aircraft that can spy on foreign powers, drop bombs or even lob satellites into orbit.

11) Giant Slingshot: New Way to Space?
All space projects get into orbit pretty much the same way – by burning lots of rocket fuel, a spaceship powers itself past the sky. But what if there was a different approach? What if we could throw something so hard, it would wind up in space?

12) Facial Armor Rears Its Ugly Head
No matter how many times soldiers and marines say they're not interested, there's always someone trying to wrap them up in heavier, hotter, more uncomfortable armor. The latest culprit: MTek Weapon Systems, which is pushing Stormtrooper-esque "facial armor" for our troops.

13) Air Force's Secret Drone Program Revealed
A new, $1.7 billion, "Penetrating High Altitude Endurance" drone is thought to be able to cruise at 70,000-80,000 ft,soaring high above defended territory.

14) CIA's Wacky, Online 'Personality Quiz'
These are tough times for the Central Intelligence Agency. But can things have grown so dire at Langley that the CIA has to resort to gimmicks like this wink-wink-trying-to-be-ironic-and-cool-but-instead-looking-even-more-dorky recruiting website?

15) Pain Ray, Sonic Blaster, Laser Dazzler - All in One
For a while, now, I've been hearing about the Defense Department's plans to outfit a fighting vehicle with a pain ray, a sonic blaster, and a laser dazzler, too. I never figured they'd actually send the thing to Iraq, though. Project Sheriff, I assumed, would just be the military equivalent of a concept car -- a chance to see if some whiz-bang gear really worked together. But the Pentagon may wind up deploying this straight-outta-sci-fi jalopy, after all.

16) Battle Ball for Sailor Training
Check out the Navy's nine-foot plastic ball. It sits on wheels, enabling unlimited rotation in any direction -- making virtual reality feel a whole lot more real.

17) Chinese Laser vs. U.S. Sats?
Was it just China Hawks' hype? Or did Beijing really blind U.S. satellites by firing high-powered lasers at 'em? And what does that mean for the future of America's eyes and ears in the sky?

18) The Tech That Took Out Zarqawi
Ten years ago, taking out Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi with F-16s would have been an impossible task. Not any more.

19) 'Invisible' Boomerang 'Bot
It's nice to have a set of robotic eyes in the sky. But surveillance drones tend to be loud, and rather obvious, as they keep watch above a Middle Eastern city. That's why a small company out of Minneapolis, VeraTech Areo, has built a hand-held spy drone that it says is practically invisible.

20) Area 51: Hype vs. Reality
A veteran aviation journo writes about secret airplanes he believes might be under development at the Air Force's remote Groom Lake test facility in Nevada, a.k.a. Area 51. How much proof does he have?

(Big ups: Slate, and their surprising top ten stories of the year. And, and a note to Long Tailers: two of these posts were actually from '05.)

Missile Radar Still Adrift

CBS News took a peek last night at our favorite giant golf ball, er, missile defense radar.

With documents obtained by the Project on Government Oversight the CBS News Investigative Unit found a host of issues with the Sea-Based X-Band Radar — SBX for short — that still remain unresolved, just ahead of its activation in the waters off Adak Island, Alaska.

- Beyond questions raised in our CBS Evening News story about plans to stick it in some of the most unforgiving weather in the world, if the SBX has a single point of failure, according to sources within Missile Defense, it is The Dove. The Dove is the large support vessel, 279 feet long, which travels with the SBX, delivers personnel, supplies and fuel to the radar platform. Though the SBX has a helicopter platform, military and Coast Guard helicopters won’t land there. So the SBX uses a single crane to lift people and material off the Dove. According to the Coast Guard letter obtained by CBS News, there are regularly waves as high as 30 feet many days out of the year. There are concerns that the Dove will not be able to maneuver close enough to the SBX to re-supply without colliding or injuring crew men in those conditions.

Other potential problems include:

-Fuel spills: the Dove carries 600,000 gallons of diesel fuel and the SBX carries 1.2 million gallons. If both vessels spilled their fuel in the pristine waters off Adak Island, it would be the second largest fuel spill in Alaskan history. Second only to the Exxon Valdez. How likely is a fuel spill? According to incident reports obtained by the Investigative Unit, the Dove spilled 3-5 gallons of diesel during fueling operations on December 9th. It happened near Hawaii and the system was shut down when crewmembers saw a growing oil slick. That’s not a lot of fuel by Exxon Valdez standards but the spill occurred in ocean conditions with 12-foot swells, relatively calm compared to conditions in the Bering Sea.

-Security: As a source within the Missile Defense Agency said, “Trying to defend a billion dollar asset with rifles, shotguns and 50 cals is ridiculous.” The SBX will be protected around the clock by about a dozen lightly armed security contractors. Can the SBX defend itself from a direct attack by a bomb-laden boat?

Pentagon Plan: Hit Anywhere on Earth, in an Hour

I've had sources ask to meet me in some pretty odd places. But there was one meeting last year that had to be just about the strangest request yet. It wasn't just that this very-recently retired Defense Department strategist wanted to meet at the Pentagon City Mall -- that's a pretty common place to grab an off-the-record cup o' joe. It was where in the mall he had in mind: at the Nordstrom's coffee shop, tucked all the way in the far reaches of the store, just past the little kid's clothes section.

So I walk past the rows of toddlers' jumpers, past the blue-haired ladies ordering around their grandkids. I sit down with my source. And he begins to tell me about a Pentagon plan that's even odder that the place where we're meeting.

Here's the goal, as another source -- U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander, Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler -- later told me on-the-record: "strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."

Sounds... ummm, ambitious, right? So how do you pull off that kind of mission, now known as "Prompt Global Strike?" Well, that's the subject of my cover story in this month's Popular Mechanics.

Now, of course, the American military has weapons that can destroy just about anything on the planet in a matter of minutes: nuclear missiles. Which might have been the right answer for containing our Soviet adversaries. But as the Cold War receded into memory, U.S. strategists began to worry that our nuclear threat was no longer credible. That we were too muscle-bound for our own good. Were we really prepared to wipe out Tehran in retribution for a single terrorist attack? Kill millions of Chinese for invading Taiwan? Of course not. The weaker our enemies grew, the less ominous our arsenal became. Military theorists called it "self-deterrence." "In today's environment, we've got zeros and ones. You can decide to engage with nuclear weapons, or not," Navy Capt. Terry Benedict told me. "The nation's leadership needs an intermediate step – to take the action required, without crossing to the one."

Benedict's option -- one of two I explore in the article -- is Trident ballistic missiles, armed with conventional warheads instead of nukes. For lots of good reasons (like the better-than-average chance the missiles could start World War III) Congress has negged the idea. But, in the military establishment, there's still a great deal of interest in using ballistic missiles for the hour-or-less mission. How exactly the nuclear holocaust issue is supposed to be resolved is, at this point, unclear.

Which brings us to option #2. It's a long-term play. And a long-shot, too. The military's research divisions are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into exotic, high-speed weapons like the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, illustrated on the cover. If it works out as planned, the X-51 will go Mach 5 (roughly 3600 mph) -- much, much faster than any equivalent in the U.S. arsenal. Some Pentagon planners see the X-51 as part of a suite of futuristic weapons that can almost-instantly threaten American adversaries everywhere, without threatening the entire planet in the process. But it's way off in the distance; the X-51's first test flight isn't until 2008. I'm expecting several more trips to Nordstrom's Cafe before then.

UPDATE 11:40 AM: If you want to learn how the Prompt Global Strike concept got started -- and how it's being put into early development, today -- I strongly recommend this chronology, from the Federation of American Scientists' Hans Kristensen.

Flood of Secret Docs Coming

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

Secret documents 25 years old or older will lose their classified status without so much as the stroke of a pen, unless agencies have sought exemptions on the ground that the material remains secret...

And every year from now on, millions of additional documents will be automatically declassified as they reach the 25-year limit, reversing the traditional practice of releasing just what scholars request...

Gearing up to review aging records to meet the deadline, agencies have declassified more than one billion pages, shedding light on the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War and the network of Soviet agents in the American government.

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

Behind the Green Zone Jail Break

In a war filled with too-strange-for-fiction stories, this may be the strangest yet. Was Iraq's former electricity minister, jailed on corruption charges, really "sprung from a Green Zone prison this weekend by U.S. security contractors?" If so, how did they pull it off? And what does it say about the rapidly-expanding, ridiculously-lucrative, morally-ambiguous field of private militaries?

Robert Young Pelton, author of the recently-published Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror, tells Defense Tech that his "guess (if the story is true) is that they simply presented their DoD and other credentials and said [the contractors] were there to accompany him to some mythical destination. Once out of prison it is very easy to leave the Green Zone and then take a taxi to Jordan, Syria, Kuwait or Kurdistan."

He also figures that "there was no gunplay or violence involved... [A]nother likely scenario would be to simply bribe the jailer (by paying a family member) and then the jailer making up some cock and bull story."

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow P.W. Singer -- who wrote Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, which has become the ur-text on this new wave of mercenaries -- is less interested in the particulars of the break-out. It's the long-term trend that bothers him: guns-for-hire running around war zones, with almost zero accountability, undermining the U.S. war effort again and again. He tells Defense Tech:

So the Great Private Military Escape joins the lengthy list vying to be made into a bad Hollywood movie (sorry, Blood Diamonds). My other favorites include the Triple Canopy lawsuit which alleges that a company supervisor told his employees that he had "never shot anyone with my handgun before" and then fired his handgun through the windshield of a parked taxi, killing the driver; the Aegis "trophy video," in which employees posted footage on the web of shooting at Iraqi cars on the web, set to Elvis music; the Donald Vance case, in which a US contractor was held 97 days without charges in a US military prison; the various Blackwater episodes, ranging from the 4 guys sent to Fallujah without maps, intell, or proper equipment, to the plane crash in Afghanistan, in which the plane lacked basic safety equipment and didn’t even follow basic flight safety procedures, flying by guesswork into a box canyon, killing 3 civilians and 3 US Army; and of course don’t forget the wonderfully named Custer Battles charging for all sorts of fraud at Baghdad airport, such as a bomb-sniffing dog that in the words of a US Army colonel turned out to be "a guy with his pet."

At what point do we accept that this whole situation has gone well beyond the original idea of privatization and start to rein it in? Then again, the Army Under Secretary testified to Congress 2 months back that the Army had never authorized Halliburton or its subcontractors to carry weapons or guard convoys, denying we even had firms handling these jobs. So, I guess its like the end of Dallas, where the whole private military industry in Iraq (estimated by Centcom to be 100,000) was "just a dream."

Phil Carter, just back from a year-long Army deployment in Iraq, notes that the 100,000 contractors (mostly logistics guys, not trigger-pullers) "very nearly doubles the size of the U.S. force in country. However, there has never been an open, public, meaningful debate over the wisdom of using so many contractors in so many battlefield roles. Instead, it has happened over time as the slow result of small policy decisions made by myriad actors. I think this will be one of the major policy questions which emerges from the Iraq war once it is over."

Axe Meets the Space Marines

Axe is in Lebanon. So he's not around to give his Pop Sci cover story, "Semper Fly," a proper shout-out. Allow me.

The Marines have typically been the American military's emergency fighter, its "911 force," the guys you want to get to a trouble zone, ASAP. But these days, getting overflight rights and managing logistics right can slow things to a crawl. So a bunch of waaaay out-of-the-box-thinkin' Marines have come up with an almost insanely ambitious new plan: send squads through space, instead. The concept is called "Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion," or SUSTAIN.

Each Sustain lander is intended to hold a squad of 13 Marines. Mounted on wedge-shaped carrier aircraft, the lander would detach, climb, and accelerate with scramjet engines to 100,000 feet and then fire rocket engines to get above 50 miles, following an arc over hostile countries. Composite shields would absorb or deflect the searing heat of reentry as the vehicles angle for the landing zone.

Lafontant arrived at this Space Marines vision after years of analyzing military space needs. A 44-year-old Queens, New York, native who joined the Corps in 1984 as an infantry officer and progressed through Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he studied space systems operations and joined the small fraternity of Marine Space Operations Officers. In 2001 he took a job in the Pentagon working for the National Reconnaissance Office. He was serving as liaison to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in November 2001 when the Marine Corps launched its deepest air assault ever.

Five hundred Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit prepared to fly 441 miles through the mountains of northern Pakistan in CH-53E Sea Stallion helicopters to capture an airstrip near Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was to be the beginning of the first large offensive against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. If all went well, the Marines expected to walk away with Osama bin Laden.

But political considerations sabotaged the mission. For weeks, the Marines had bobbed on the Indian Ocean aboard two assault ships while State Department officials negotiated with Pakistan for the right to fly through the country’s airspace. Pakistan granted access only after winning economic and military concessions that, some say, have reinforced a repressive regime. When U.S. troops finally touched down on November 25, bin Laden’s trail was cold. “We ended up selling our soul to the devil to get through,” Lafontant says. He grew determined to find a way around that sort of diplomatic entanglement. “What if we don’t have to have anybody’s permission?” he asked himself. “What if we just go above and drop in?”

Now, David just loves this idea. But he knows it's pretty damn far-fetched. He does a good job at laying out the obstacles to making SUSTAIN happen. Not just the extremely high technical hurdles; the Marines' total and utter lack of funds for the project, too. He warps up his story on a balanced note:

Whether or not Sustain ever makes it past the concept stage, it’s clear that military planners are looking to increase the mobility of American forces. A Marine space transport — one that would reduce politically charged bureaucratic delays and the potential for mission snafus — might sound impossible, but to Lafontant and others entrusted with imagining the future of war, it is simply the next logical step.

Rapid Fire 12/19/06 (Updated)

* Iraq's economic boom...

* ...and electrical war

* Attacks at new high

* MySpace dealer, caught

* Skype lie detector? (background here)

* 4th time's the charm for spacewalkers

* Sat, jet in laser link

* Ol' Virginny spaceport opens

* Scots forced to share kilts

* Uranium secretly stashed (sweet!)

* DSB hearts nukes

* Insurgent TV

* Big naval buildup to spook Iran?

* What's an Air Force to do?

* 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds

(Big ups: RC, EO)

New "X" Plane's Twisty Wings

The wings on the Air Force's latest experimental "X" plane can't stay on straight. And that's a good thing.

The X-53 -- formerly known as the "Active Aeroelastic Wing research vehicle," or AAW -- is pretty much your standard /A-18 fighter jet. Except its wings are flexible, twisting as the plane races through the air at transonic speeds -- and giving the plane better maneuverability, in the process.

Every plane's wings bend a little, when air pressure hits 'em. But that "aeroelastic effect" is usually a bad thing for the aircraft, dragging it down. So, "traditionally, air vehicles have been designed with stiff geometry in order to minimize aeroelastic instabilities," the Air Force notes.

The X-53, on the other hand, is built from the start to bend with the wind. Its flaps, ailerons, and actuators are repositioned, so that the air pressure bends the wing in a way that provides lift, instead of drag. A thinner skin allows the outer wing panels to twist up to 5 degrees.

The idea, a NASA fact sheet observes, dates back to the earliest days of flight.

When Orville Wright first took to the air on Dec. 17, 1903, he didn't have ailerons or flaps to control his airplane. Instead, the Wright brothers had chosen to twist or "warp" the wingtips of their craft in order to control its rolling or banking motion. Rather than using one of the craft's two control sticks to make the wingtips twist, they had devised a "saddle" in which the pilot lay. Cables connected the saddle to the tips of both wings. By moving his hips from side-to-side, the pilot warped the wingtips either up or down, providing the necessary control for the Wright Flyer to make turns.

The X-53 -- a cooperative effort between the Air Force Research Lab, NASA, and Boeing's Phantom Works, in the works since the beginning of the decade -- should give engineers "more freedom in designing more efficient, thinner, higher aspect-ratio wings for future high-performance aircraft while reducing the structural weight of the wings by 10 to 20 per cent," NASA says. "This will allow increased fuel efficiency or payload capability, along with potentially reduced radar signature. The technology also has application to a variety of other future aircraft, such as high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft, transports, and airliners."

(Big ups: AF Daily Report)

Rapid Fire 12/18/06 (Updated)

* Spy planes' rescue mission

* Taser vs. snake

* Whistleblower jailed in Baghdad

* Reining in Spec Ops

* "When computer profiling goes bad"

* YouTube vs. crooks

* Spy's $10M poison dose

* One step closer to invisibility cloaks

* Google Earth saves NASA

* Navy intranet flops

* AFN: WTF? (background here)

(Big ups: RC, HuffPo)

KebabQuest

I knew it was going to be a bad day in Beirut when I got booted out of the breakfast buffet at the downtown Radisson.

I had been enjoying my hummus, green olives and nan with a pot of strong coffee when I made the mistake of putting down my fork so I could turn the page in the Patrick O'Brian novel I was reading. The waiter grabbed my plate without asking if I was done, and scurried off. I figured, hey, no problem, I can always get another plate. And besides, I still got my coffee. But then the waiter came back and took those too.

Now, I could've raised a fuss, but I was too tired to remember how to say, "stop," in Arabic. (I remember now: "kiff.") you see, I'm still on D.C. time so I couldn't sleep the night before. I was nearly delirious. And, on the radio, they were playing a Christmas rendition of the Macarena. (don't ask.)

Anyways, I had interviews -- I'm on assignment here for Defense Technology International. So a couple hours later I hailed a cab and headed out. By 4 o'clock, I was done with my interviews, even more exhausted and, what's more, starving. I needed some kebab bad. I tried to hail a cab but they were all full. I walked down a street, hailing cabs all the while, until I came to an army checkpoint. A soldier asked me, in Arabic, where I was going. I replied in french and we had a rather muddled conversation that resulted in him pointing back the way I had come and gesturing with his rifle. So I turned around ... And got turned around. I couldn't remember which way was home.

I finally got a cab. The driver spoke some french. He didn't know where the Radisson was, so it was up to me. I had no idea so I picked a direction and hoped I might eventually recognize something. But half an hour later, I decided we were going in the wrong direction. I admit, I blamed my cabbie. Beirut is his town; he should know where the Radisson is. So I told him to stop "over there" and I hopped out with a mind to walk a couple blocks then hail another cab with, hopefully, a smarter cabbie.

By now I could've killed and eaten a small Lebanese person. Perhaps a baby Druze.

I walked down a sketchy alleyway full of broken-down cars and greasy, dark-eyed mechanics who stared at me as I passed. I was feeling very American in a very bad way, so I waved down the first cab I saw and hopped in without looking at the driver. Then a voice said, in French, "number two?"

It was the same cabbie as before. And it was too late to refuse his service. He was already speeding down the road, assuring me that he had just remembered where the Radisson was.

(Lest you fail to appreciate the sheer enormity of this coincidence, let me stress: Beirut is crawling with tens of thousands of cabs, and in 10 minutes I had walked several blocks in a random direction from where I got dropped off. Hundreds of cars passed within sight, including scores of cabs. The odds of hailing the same cabbie a second time in that environment are astronomical.)

Hey, Macarena!

Half an hour later, I was at the Radisson and my cabbie was 20,000 livres richer. That's no fewer than eight kebab-equivalents. Speaking of which, I found the nearest kebab stand, politely refused some skewered lamb brains bobbing in olive oil and ordered two kebabs.

They were the most delicious kebabs I've ever had. And they haven't even made me sick (yet).

-- David Axe

p.s.: the Lebanese army has stationed an M-113 armored personnel carrier with a .50-caliber machine gun at the McDonald's down the street, perhaps to guard the "McArab" chicken shawarma they serve there.

New High for I.E.D.s

"US troops in Iraq are dying in roadside bombings at a higher rate than any period since the war began," the Boston Globe reports. "But commanders still have no effective means to monitor the deadliest routes for patrols."

Military deaths from roadside bombs have hit an all-time high in recent months: In October, 53 US troops died from improvised explosive devices, while in November, 49 troop deaths were blamed on so-called IEDs -- the second and third highest monthly tolls of the war, official statistics and casualty reports show...

The Joint IED Defeat Organization, which had been hailed as the "Manhattan Project" of the roadside bomb problem, "has been a disaster," said Ed O'Connell, a counter-insurgency specialist at the government-funded Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., who has advised US commanders in Iraq.

For its part, the organization claims some progress. They say that the percentage of bombs that are disarmed or detonated before they can kill or maim has remained "stable and consistent" over the past 18 months, and they say there are now fewer casualties per IED attack...

But officials acknowledged that the number of roadside bombings has "risen dramatically over the last two years," though they would not provide statistics.

That increase has confounded the military and raised questions about whether gathering intelligence on the bombers should be the office's top priority... [T]he IED office told the Globe that it spends 63 percent of its budget on ways to "defeat the device," while only 30 percent goes to attacking "the network" that creates and plants the bombs. The rest of its budget is spent on new training methods for US troops operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But military specialists say that the Pentagon needs to pay more attention to dissecting the "kill chain" -- the source of the bomb components, who made the bomb, and who planted it.

"We can't even detect their explosives," said Loren Thompson , a military specialist at the Lexington Institution, an Arlington, Va., think tank that supports strong military preparedness. "We don't have the resources to police or survey every road. The IED problem is a case study of how military transformation has failed.

"It sounds like a threat where good intelligence and good surveillance would make a big difference," [h]e said. "But we don't seem to be able to develop those things."

UPDATE 4:40 PM: This seems like a smart, and long-overdue, move.

Iraq War Ain't by the Book

There was a disconnect, when the Army first released its interim manual for fighting insurgencies, two years ago. The book said to stay off of big bases, and to emphasize "secrecy and surprise." American operations often went in the completely opposite direction.

The field manual has now been finalized. But, as the L.A. Times notes, many of those gaps between theory and practice remain.

The U.S. military's new counterinsurgency doctrine takes issue with some key strategies that American commanders in Iraq continue to use, most notably the practice of concentrating combat forces in massive bases rather than dispersing them among the population...

The authors of the manual say the new doctrine is not meant as a critique of the Iraq strategy... [They] rather were saying they simply did not want people to hole up and become "fobbits."

"You put a protect force in that lives in the neighborhood. They stay 24/7 to protect the people," Keane said at a briefing this week. "That piece is what we have never been able to execute in Baghdad..."

The new doctrine, which was begun in January and released in draft form in June, cautions that campaigns against insurgents are "often long and difficult" and that progress is hard to measure. Conventional militaries often stumble in the beginning of an insurgency but can succeed if they learn, adapt and push ahead against it, according to the manual.

"The military forces that successfully defeat insurgencies are usually those able to overcome their institutional inclination to wage conventional war against insurgents," the doctrine says...

Overall, the doctrine says, a counterinsurgency operation is "a struggle for the population's support." To win that confidence, militaries must learn about the culture and people they are trying to protect as well as fight the insurgents who are attempting to destabilize the country, it says...

"I do not know how they will translate this to the field," [one author] said. "But I do think this will be No. 1 on the reading list."

By the way, I'm in the middle of going through the new field manual. It's fascinating -- and an easy read, not at all jargon-filled. I'd encourage everyone to check it out for themselves.

UPDATE 7:20 PM: Eason Jordan's new IraqSlogger site is trying to launch with a little controversy, by questioning why this new manual was posted on public sites -- and highlighting online Jihadists' reactions. "How would a U.S. soldier... feel knowing the hot-off-the-presses counterinsurgency manual is available to the 'bad guys' at the same time it is available to the 'good guys?'" the site asks.

Rapid Fire 12/16/06

* Iraqi police get armor

* "Hobbits" vs. insurgents

* Syn-fuel bomber takes off (background here)

* Gates to shake up intel?

* Best. Patents. Ever.

* Ravezooka!

JSF's First Flight, Cut Short

Uh-oh. America's brand-spankin', new, whiz-bang stealth jet, the Joint Strike Fighter, "took off for the first time Friday but landed about 30 minutes into a planned hourlong flight," according to the AP. Murdoc has some pics.

Tricycle of Death

This is truly the mother of all scoops. After months of clandestine meetings, Freedom of Information Act requests, and classified military computer hacks, Murdoc has finally discovered the wonder weapon that is guaranteed to turn the tide in Iraq. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... the Urban Combat Patrol Tricycle!

Army About to "Break," Says Chief

For most of the year, Army officials have been complaining that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are chewing up their money, their gear, and their troops. Now, Army chief of staff General Peter Schoomaker has made the loudest, most public plea yet.

As it currently stands, the Army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces to wage the Global War on Terror and fulfill all other operational requirements without its components - active, Guard, and Reserve - surging together...

At this pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilization, we will break the active component.

As the Washington Post notes, he's calling for "expanding the [active duty] force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year [to a total of 512,000] and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops."

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation's main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today's Pentagon policies is "not right."

In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war "flat-footed" with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then the Army chief of staff, decried the "hollow Army," Schoomaker said it is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called a long and dangerous war.

Most observers say Schoomaker's dire forecasts are on the money, and a long time coming. But Spencer Ackerman, for one, says the chief of staff "deserves no praise for the warning he issued yesterday."

In February, when Rumsfeld had to go to the Hill to refute charges of breaking the Army, he brought Schoomaker along for insulation:

General Schoomaker points out that he remembers what a "broken" Army looks like when he was a young officer... The difference between that Army and the professional and motivated force we have today could not be more dramatic.

Rapid Fire 12/15/06

* Blair blocks BAE corrpution probe

* Pantex nearly detonates a nuke

* RC tank?

* JASONs loves alt-fuel

* On patrol in Fallujah

* Spy cams wising up

* What every kid needs: toy atomic lab

* NSA construction boom

* "Data spills: 100 mil served"

* Beyond technicolor

* Now that's a tinfoil hat!

(Big ups: AL, War & Piece, RC, Pogo Nick, Haninah)

What the Hell...

...is Noah Shachtman doing? Find out in the March issue of Wired magazine.

Army "Future": Fewer Drones

The other day, Inside Defense broke the news that the Army was shaving billions off of its massive modernization program, Future Combat Systems. Now, we're starting to get some details. Turns out the drones are the ones getting the axe.

FCS originally envisioned four types and sizes of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, buzzing over soldiers' heads. The littlest ones would join platoons. Slightly bigger drones would be assigned to companies. Batallion commanders would supervise an even larger UAV. And the biggest of 'em all -- an armed, robotic helicopter -- would work for the brigade.

Those four classes of UAVs are now being trimmed down to two; just the tiniest and the most gargantuan drones will remain. There will still be other robotic planes in the Army's arsenal -- the hand-held Ravens, the