The sales of all F-14 parts were suspended on January 26 pending a review, the Defense Logistics Agency said in a statement. Dawn Dearden, a spokewoman for the agency, told AFP the sales were frozen “given the current situation in Iran.†Iran bought 79 F-14s from the United States before the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979. The move comes amid growing U.S.-Iranian tensions over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program and what Washington sees as Iranian subversion of U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.
Not to mention Iranian agents have been fingered in the recent Iraq commando raid that killed five U.S. troops, according to The New York Times:
Investigators say they believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20 may have been trained and financed by Iranian agents, according to American and Iraqi officials knowledgeable about the inquiry.
With a confrontation looming, the U.S. is trying to strangle the Iranian air force in advance of a bombing campaign. As I reported last year at Defense Tech, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force has managed to maintain or even increase its combat power despite embargoes:
All told, the IRIAF flies as many as 300 fighters. All are older designs, but have been maintained and, in many cases, upgraded by the indigenous aerospace industry, which has become proficient in reverse-engineering weapons and spare parts -- and perhaps even engines. And the IRIAF has aerial tankers too -- a force multiplier only the most advanced air forces maintain.
Iran's air defense network would be a tough nut to crack, even with our F-22 fighters and aircraft carriers. We could do it, of course, but probably not without loss. But then what?
And don't forget: there is still no direct evidence of state-sanctioned Iranian meddling in Iraq. If there is, our government hasn't entrusted us with it.
January has been a hell of a month for Defense Tech: traffic is through the roof, reader participation is way up, and the quality of material is at an all-time high. So here are the top five most popular posts for the month.
The Law Catches Up To Private Militaries, Embeds Since the start of the Iraq war, tens of thousands of heavily-armed military contractors have been roaming the country -- without any law, or any court to control them. That may be about to change, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow P.W. Singer notes in a Defense Tech exclusive.
Navy's Deadly New Darts David Hambling reveals a fearsome piece of hardware: a modified satellite-guided bomb, releasing thousands of darts, each carrying a payload of a powerful chemical called DETA.
Electric Lasers Shoot Mortars, Gain Strength Real-life laser weapons continue to inch closer to reality. Two recent examples: Raytheon says its "prototype solid-state Laser Area Defense System successfully detonated 60-millimeter mortars." And Northrop Grumman is opening up a new "directed energy production facility" for building high energy, solid-state lasers.
Second Nork Nuke Test Coming? I was skeptical when I heard the news that "senior defense officials" now think North Korea has "put everything in place to conduct a [second nuclear] test without any notice or warning." But the wonks over at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies are warning us: believe the hype.
China Space Attack: Unstoppable China has shown it can destroy a satellite in orbit. What could the U.S. do to stop Beijing, if it decided to attack an American orbiter next? Short answer: nothing.
And here, in no particular order, are ten posts that didn't get quite as many clicks, but really show off the best of the work being done at Defense Tech HQ:
"Non-Lethal" Viruses to "Neutralize" Cities Inside a Cold War plan to develop "biological agents" -- including ones that can lead to "inflammation of the brain, coma and death" -- for "incapacitating" enemies on the battlefield or "neutralizing hostile cities."
Cop Tech Key to Iraq Fight? All the talk is about more U.S. troops. But if there's going to be a shot in hell of winning the war in Iraq, it'll be up to the Iraqi police. And those cops will need to be equipped with the latest crime-fighting gear.
Mr. Plow Eagerly Awaits Nuclear War Step off, Al Gore! Eric Hundman has found a quick fix to global warming. All we need is a handful of nuclear weapons.
Behind the Ethiopian Blitz
David Axe examines how Ethiopia's tiny air force, which just four years ago was in danger of implosion, spearheaded the effort to drive Islamist militias out of southern Somalia.
Real Iraq Surge: Electronic Attack? Any U.S. military surge in Iraq will be far more than a troop increase. It'll include a slew of new technologies to interrupt and infiltrate insurgent networks.
New Army Camos: No Place to Hide? The Army's new uniform was supposed to blend into every environment -- from deserts to jungles to cityscapes. Has it lived up to the promise?
Merc Chopper Shot Down Blackwater should've seen it coming, that one of their copters in Iraq was bound to get blown out of the sky. David Axe explains.
Behind China's Sat-Killer Test Six posts, covering everything you wanted to know about Beijing's strike against a satellite, more than 500 miles up.
200 Years of "Mind Control" Countless thousands of people complain today about the government taking over their minds. But the problem goes way back -- to 1810, David Hambling explains. And not all of the claims are completely crazy.
Cat & Mouse in Cyberspace
Interesting news on the infowar front, in two parts. First, Declan McCullagh has stumbled onto a previously-undisclosed FBI Net-monitoring program that's "broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's [infamous] Carnivore surveillance system."
Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords...
Call it the vacuum-cleaner approach. It's employed when police have obtained a court order and an Internet service provider can't "isolate the particular person or IP address" because of technical constraints, says Paul Ohm, a former trial attorney at the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section...
That kind of full-pipe surveillance can record all Internet traffic, including Web browsing--or, optionally, only certain subsets such as all e-mail messages flowing through the network. Interception typically takes place inside an Internet provider's network at the junction point of a router or network switch.
The Global Islamic Media Front [recently] announced the imminent release of new computer software called "Mujahideen Secrets.. [allegedly] the first Islamic computer program for secure exchange [of information] on the Internet," and it provides users with "the five best encryption algorithms, and with symmetrical encryption keys (256 bit), asymmetrical encryption keys (2048 bit) and data compression [tools]."
The package "is comparable to any number of commercial products available here in the United States," says ZDNet blogger Mitch Ratcliffe. "The difference is an Islamist skin, which seems more a gimmick to inspire confidence in the software than a guarantee it will be effective."
But "'Mujahedin Secrets' is the latest example of the growing technical competence of online supporters of al-Qaida and other Islamic terror networks, but encryption capabilities are not new in the world of cyber-jihadis," IntelCenter's Ben Venzke tells UPI.
"This is consistent with the ongoing efforts of jihadist sympathizers online... Encryption is used by some (Islamic terrorists)" and some al-Qaida manuals have addressed the question.
He said encryption is "a standard part of the operational security practiced (online) by those (Islamic terrorists) who take the time to use it.
Armor Lack Behind Copter Crashes?
ThreeAmericanhelicopters have gone down in Iraq in a little more than a week. Is there anything behind this collection of crashes? Or is just lethal coincidence -- part of what happens when troops do something death-defying, over and over again? I asked Defense Tech pal ME, a former Kiowa Warrior pilot who served in Iraq, to weigh in with his thoughts.
I haven't heard of any reason as to why we're losing more lately, but we also haven't lost any in a long time prior to this - I think it's reflective of somewhat of the odds catching up to us and an increased combat operations tempo.
[That said], I would point out that US helicopters aren't that heavily armored. [Something David Axe noted about last week's Blackwater copter crash -- ed.] They have blocks of armor protecting some key parts of the engine, and crew compartments, but it's not nearly comprehensive. Most don't have flare systems, and their only active countermeasure against IR missiles is an ALQ-144 jammer. Relatively speaking, there is very little protection from direct small arms hits.
In my opinion, our greatest threat was from small arms and RPGs while operating at low altitude and low airspeed. My troop was under standing orders not to fly above 500 feet AGL (above ground level) or under 60 knots - and never hover unless absolutely necessary. At low altitude - we felt that it was key to minimize the time available to acquire us as a target. We used the ALQ's but at the time I was there, we didn't see much threat from SAMs [surface-to-air missiles]. Towards the fall of 2003 we did start getting more reports of SAM engagements - spiral smoke trails arcing up, rather than lob shots from RPGs, but in our flight regime, AK's and RPGs were the biggest threat.
The Kiowa Warrior... has very little armor [see the pics]. The Blackhawk is similar, and the Apache has relatively more. A friend of mine who was a troop commander in the (in)famous deep strike to kick off OIF said the only positive from that mission was that they learned that the Apache could soak up a lot of small arms fire and keep flying. When you look at the armor though, it's easy to see how a few small arms rounds in the wrong place can bring a bird down.
There are some other issues with the ALQ-144. Some of them are classified. Some are mundane: they're difficult to keep operational in the desert, and must be cleaned to be effective. They also must be turned off and on as part of a landing checklist (see my next point). The Blackwater birds don't appear to have them at all. If there are new supplies of SAMS coming in, they may be much more effective than RPGs and AKs.
…Complacency kills, especially in an environment as unforgiving as Iraq is. With high temps and flying at high gross weights, there is little performance margin. Combat maneuvers take power, and familiarity (read boredom) take their toll, even on experienced pilots. After a few months, I could fly from Baghdad to Al Asad without a map, and knew every neighborhood in between - and it made me too casual at times, about mission prep and procedures. As pilots go back for repeat tours, they may fall into that even more quickly.
"Since May 2003, the U.S. military has lost 54 helicopters in Iraq, about half of them to hostile fire," according to the AP.
You're Fired!
Navy chief Admiral Mike Mullen has fired the captain overseeing the Littoral Combat Ship program, Defense News reports:
Capt. Donald Babcock, the Navy’s LCS program manager, was relieved of his duties Jan. 29 by his boss, Rear Adm. Charles Hamilton – who also is being reassigned. Hamilton relieved Babcock due to “loss of confidence in his ability to command,†according to a Navy source, who added that Babcock would be reassigned to “administrative duties.â€
Both men got their pink slips after an audit revealed that the Lockheed Martin version of the LCS would come in at around $400 million, nearly double the target cost. Two weeks ago the Navy suspended work on the second LockMart LCS for 90 days, long enough to get new managers in place and, hopefully, put the fear of God in Lockheed Martin.
With 55 ships planned, the LCS is a lynchpin of the Navy's future fleet. The class is designed to work close to shore at high speeds and to carry "modular" weapons and sensors packets to enable it to swing between missions. The idea was to populate coastal waters with large numbers of LCSs anchored by a Zumwalt-class land-attack destroyer. But that concept is in jeopardy if the Navy can't keep down costs on both ships. Already the first Zumwalt is careening towards a $3-billion pricetag. Toss in cost overruns on the LCS and the Navy's future surface fleet is dead in the water.
Far from being discouraged, naval analyst Bob Work sees the pink slips and the work stoppage as positive signs. "The Navy needed to say it had a problem. The second thing they had to say was that we have to build affordable ships. Mullen has shown that he is dead serious about doing that."
Most of you probably know Xeni Jardin for her fun, flirty postings on the Boing Boing uberblog. But beneath the beneath the glam exterior is one bad-ass reporter.
Take the epic, five-part, multimedia series Xeni has put together for NPR, after spending a month in dirt-poor, war-ravaged Guatemala. "An estimated 200,000 people were killed in Guatemala's decades-long civil war, and another 100,000 'disappeared,'" she writes, to introduce the first installment. "Many survivors are still searching for the remains of their loved ones."
One group of forensic anthropologists is using technology to help the country come to terms with its past. For 12 years, the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) has been exhuming clandestine graves that hold victims killed in political massacres.
Most of the people killed in Guatemala's 36-year civil war were indigenous. The army's scorched-earth policy sometimes leveled entire villages.
In traditional Mayan culture, the dead and the living are believed to be in constant communication. For many thousands of Mayan people in Guatemala, however, their dead have never been able to rest. Neither have the relatives they left behind.
Now, archaeologists and anthropologists with the FAFG work to identify the human remains, record evidence for possible trials, and return the dead home for reburial.
You can listen to the audio for part one of the series here or here. And be sure to check out Xeni's narrated tour of the FAFG's facility here.
Micro Drones' Killer Intent
My recent piece on Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) in Wired News> traces a familiar pattern in the evolution of air warfare. When balloons were invented they were first used for observation, then for bombing. The first fragile biplanes flying over the trenches in WWI were unarmed, but within a few years they carrying machine guns and bombs. Unmanned Air Vehicles like Predator were flying reconnaissance for years before they were armed for strike missions. (UAV pedants note: the V-1 doesn’t count as it was only ever one-way)
So it’s not surprising that British SAS troopers should decide that rather than just spying on Taliban with their WASP micro air vehicles, they should be able to take them out. Sticking a small C4 charge on these toy-sized craft is a relatively crude approach, but one that should effectively convert them from silent spies to stealth assassins. And at $3,000 a time they are by no means the most expensive weapon around.
But, as the article explains, the US Air Force has much more ambitious plans for arming MAVs to take out installations, vehicles and people. They might initially be used individually like the SAS’s WASPs, but the obvious approach is to release swarms of them as I have previously described – networked robots forming an efficient single unit.
One area I did not have space for was the use of incendiaries, which can be far more effective than explosive pound-for-pound. This is real ‘fire-ant warfare’.
A single insect-sized MAV carrying a few milliliters of napalm would be a dangerous nuisance, especially indoors or inside a vehicle. Several dozen of them would be lethal, especially when they can locate stored fuel or ammunition. Just program them to look for those distinctive ‘danger inflammable’ signs
Similarly, thermite could give tiny robots a disproportionate destructive capability. A mixture of powdered metal and metal oxide, it burns at very high temperature (up to over 2,500 degrees centigrade), enough to turn most metals to liquid. It can burn through metal; in WWII, thermite charges were used as a quick way of disabling artillery. It would not take too much thermite to make an artillery barrel hazardous to use; and surface-to-air missile batteries are an obvious target.
One armed MAV, or ‘termite with thermite’, would not be too much of a menace, but dozens or hundreds could be effective, against even large installations. The small size of the warhead is offset by the extreme precision with which it can be placed by the sort of flying/crawling robot insect which the Air Force has in mind.
This should help put the earlier report on swarming robot cockroaches intended to attack underground installations into perspective. Such weapons are too indiscriminate to be used in an urban environment, but in an enemy bunker, everything is fair game. Stamp on one and the thermite will burn through your shoes and keep going...
Individual cockroaches can burn through grilles or other obstacles, making a way for the rest of the swarm. With their collective intelligence they can identify the complexes vulnerable points, and by combining together, they can destroy most things. When the lights in your bunker start to go out and the air fills with the smoke of burning insulation, how long would you hang around?
You'd think that the Defense Department's higher-ups would be happy, when their research agencies start demanding results from the scientists and engineers that they fund. Not necessarily. Inside Defense reports that the Pentagon's comptrollers have slashed Darpa's budget by $300 million -- about 10% - for the next fiscal year. Another $200 million is supposed to come off the top, the year after that. The reason: "A project management oversight structure introduced in DARPA... mandat[ing] that projects are reviewed at regular execution intervals to ensure that they are meeting defined program goals and objectives."
The switch "has resulted in more effective linking of resources to outcomes," according to "Program Budget Decision 704," an internal Defense Department document obtained by Inside Defense. Which would be a good thing, ordinarily. Except that Darpa hasn't been spending the money it's been given, apparently. While funding for the agency has gone up, up, up since 9/11, the number of program managers hasn't increased as fast. Combined with the new, results-driven process, that "has slowed execution of DARPA’s funding.... resulting in a significant decline in obligations and expenditures," says PBD 704. So what happened to all that excess cash? I haven't been able to get a straight answer, yet.
The subtext to all this wrangling is the leadership of Darpa chief Tony Tether. In the military research world, he's known as a hands-on manager -- a very, very hands-on manager. No item in his $3 billion budget is too small; even some of the names of Darpa research efforts require his approval. "Nothing happens without his say-so," one Darpa-funded researcher tells me.
That's a change for the agency, which has traditionally let its program managers -- and its researchers -- more or less follow their imaginations. Some current and former Darpa types mumble that the quality of research has been undermined, as a result; after all, "Darpa-hard" problems can take longer than six months to solve. But with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are sucking up more and more money, Defense research budgets are tightening up; demanding results doesn't seem like such a bad thing. We'll see how this one shakes out.
While PDB 704 takes from Darpa, it adds $300 million to the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. That's the widely-criticized effort to build new nukes -- a construction effort many sage observers thinks is completely unneeded.
T.M.I., Robo-Dude
That's "too much information," for those of you over the age of fourteen. These days, information superiority is supposed to make U.S. military forces faster, smarter and more lethal and able to defeat more numerous foes on their own turf. But how much information can one soldier process, and how fast can he make decisions?
Unmanned vehicles sporting sophisticated sensors are key suppliers of new and more voluminous streams of info to grunts on the ground. But in addition to potentially overwhelming customers with too much information, robots require regular input from their human masters.
That's a key problem facing the engineers responsible for developing the Army's human-robot interfaces. At the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center in suburban Detroit, Gregory Hudas and his colleagues are trying to figure out what robots should be allowed to do on their own, and what they should ask permission for. The key factors are what human operators are comfortable with, and what they're capable of. "We must be aware of when they [soldiers] get overloaded."
To work out this problem, the folks at TARDEC have linked up two consoles representing the controls of a Future Combat Systems fighting vehicle. Each console boasts three tall touch-screen displays. At the center in front of a padded seat, there is a control stick similar to what you might see on an arcade game. The consoles include a simulation function, akin to a video game, that the TARDEC engineers use for tests.
On one screen, a TARDEC engineer representing an FCS crewman brings up an overhead map of the battlefield dotted with icons representing his vehicle and four robots that he's controlling. One is a Fire Scout aerial drone. The others are ground drones equipped with cameras and guns. On his other screens, the crewman can see what his robots are seeing in addition to what's outside his own vehicle. It's a massive amount of data for one man to process, and things are sure to get worse when he decides to send his drones on a reconnaissance mission, potentially forcing him to also coordinate the movements of five vehicles simultaneously while facing an elusive enemy on unfamiliar terrain.
Which is why the Army decided that each FCS vehicle would include two identical consoles. Side-by-side crewmen would share responsibility for all the functions described above. The Army believed that by coordinating their efforts, one two-man crew should be able to control 10 drones and keep up with all their data feeds.
But that's too many robots, Hudas says. Four drones is the realistic max. And a third crewman at an additional console is ideal. And that's assuming a minimal level of human intervention in the drones activities. Basically, you tell a drone what to do, confirm the command, then let it go. Now, if the drone wants to kill something, it's going to need a soldier's permission. But for surveillance and reconnaissance, it can make its own decisions. "With those applications," Hudas says, "we don't even want a soldier."
Thanks to TARDEC and other research organizations, the Army is making enormous strides in combining thinking men and thinking machines into one cohesive fighting force. That's the subject of a feature slated for our March issue. Stay tuned.
The Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor is the best fighter jet in the world. It's faster, longer-legged, more maneuverable and packs better sensors than anything else flying. But there's one inexcusable gap in its capabilities. Unlike even older fighters, the Raptor can only receive data from external sources; it can't send. Raptor pilots have to get on the radio and tell others what they see on their radars. This at a time when rapidly sharing information between planes, ships and ground forces is the arguably the key to U.S. military power.
I asked the Raptor jockeys at Virginia's Langley Air Force Base about this last year and they shifted uncomfortably in their seats while feeding me some line about how voice comms work just fine. Then they quiety stressed that fixes were being planned. Now those fixes are finally firming up, according to Aerospace Daily & Defense Report:
The F-22 Raptor's "embarrassing success" has created a need for rapid modification of the fighter, says Air Force Gen. Ronald Keys, chief of Air Combat Command. ACC wants a stealthy "tactical target network" data link that can quickly pass key parameters on enemy targets without giving away its position. In initial exercises, the F-22 "was much better at [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and absorbing signals than we had anticipated," Keys says.
Keys went on to say that fixes were planned for the 2008-2013 period, by which time all 180 Raptors should be in squadron service at Langley and in Alaska and New Mexico. The general didn't exactly specify which datalink would be fitted, but recent Air Force experiments, as reported in Defense News last summer, might offer a clue:
The proposed Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT) proved its mettle during a recent two-week exercise in Nevada, allowing troops and military platforms to swap information with Internet-like speed and ease. F-15 and F/A-18 fighter jets took in information about proposed targets, gathered sensor data, and sent it to ground stations to be fused with other data for more precise targeting, Boeing Advanced Systems President George Muellner said May 11. “And it’s all machine-to-machine,†Muellner said.
Machine-to-machine. That means automatic, hands-off, fast and easy. It lets the pilot focus on what pilots do best, flying airplanes, searching the sky and ground for targets with their own eyeballs, and making decisions about who to kill and when.
UPDATE 01/29/07 2:44 PM: "The stealthy Raptor fighter and intelligence-gathering aircraft is ready for war, but probably not the war we've got, Air Combat Command's chief, Gen. Ronald E. Keys, tells Aviation Week."
Essential electronic surveillance systems may be too sensitive--overwhelmed by the density of U.S. and allied emitters--to be useful in the electronically polluted environment of Baghdad, the main focus of the new U.S. military surge.
"If war breaks out, I'm sending the F-22," Keys said last week. But not for operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. "I didn't buy the F-22 for Iraq. We're looking for what can sop up intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance [ISR] in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is the investment [of sending the F-22] worth it? Is it a good idea or just an attractive idea? Will it complicate the air component commander's problems for no gain?"
Long before the China launched its anti-satellite weapon, the U.S. military had an array of plans in place to research and develop technologies for combat in space. One of the best ways to track those plans is to check out the so-called budget "justification" documents the Defense Department puts out each year with its budget request to Congress.
Most of the money for space capabilities is in the Air Force budget, and space weapons funding now resides almost entirely in the "research, development, test and evaluation" portion of that budget. For those who want to follow along at home, the space-fight material is found in "Air Force RDT&E Volume II," pages 567-577 and 879-896.
Those two sets of pages contain the budget numbers, descriptions and even schedules for the Air Force's "Space Control Technology" and "Counterspace Systems" programs, respectively.
The Air Force requested $27 million for "Space Control Technology" R&D in fiscal year 2007, and $47 million for developing and acquiring the first "Counterspace Systems" that will deployed, such as the "Counter Satellite Communications System" and the "Rapid Identificaiton Detection and Reporting System," or RAIDRS.
The Air Force documents define "Space Control Technology" as systems aimed at "Space Situational Awareness (SSA), Defensive Counterspace (DCS), and Offensive Counterspace (OCS)."
SSA includes "monitoring, detecting, identifying, tracking, assessing, verifying, categorizing, and characterizing, objects and events in space," the documents state. "DCS includes defensive activities to protect U.S. and friendly space-systems assets, resources, and operations from enemy attempts to negate or interfere . . . [or] use U.S. space systems and services for purposes hostile to U.S. national security interests. OCS activities disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy space systems, or the information they provide, which may be used for purposes hostile to U.S. national security interests. Consistent with DOD policy, the negation efforts of this program currently focus on negation technologies which have temporary, localized, and reversible effects."
While the Space Control Technology program funds early-stage research and technology development, the Counterspace Systems program "supports the conduct of critical planning, technology insertion, and system acquisition in support of Air Force space control systems and associated command and control development to meet current and future military space control needs."
In other words, technologies that are nearing the point of deployment as weapon systems are funded in the Counterspace Systems program. That's the section of the budget where you'll find the Air Force's plans for the three space weapons that are closest to becoming reality. Here's what the Air Force says about the purposes of these specific systems, and when they'll be operational:
Counter Satellite Communications System: ". . . mobile/transportable counter satellite communications capabilities and associated command and control. . . . Includes architecture engineering, system hardware design and development, software design and integration, testing and procurement of capabilities to provide disruption of satellite communications signals in response to USSTRATCOM requirements."
The budget documents indicate "first-generation" counter satellite communications capabilities are already in place, while the "second-generation" capability will be built by 2011.
Rapid Identification Detection and Reporting System (RAIDRS): " . . . provide[s] attack warning, threat identification and characterization, and rapid mission impact assessments of U.S. space systems. This effort will investigate and implement the technical architecture, operational concept, support concept, training, verification (test), and deployment of a Rapid Attack Identification Detection and Reporting System (RAIDRS). Incremental capability deliveries are planned."
"Spiral 1" of RAIDRS will reach "initial operational capability" toward the end of this year, while "full operational capability" will occur at the beginning of 2010, according to the budget documents. Air Force contractors are scheduled to begin building "Spiral 2" in 2011.
Offensive Counterspace Command and Control (OCS C2): "This effort supports the development of command and control and mission planning capabilities in support of the fielding and employment of Offensive Counterspace (OCS) Systems. It provides for the integration and development of collaborative tools to link deployable OCS systems with Joint Warfighting C2 systems and to enable integrated planning and execution of the OCS mission. Developed capabilities will be integrated into the Space C2 Weapon System / Combatant Commanders' Integrated Command and Control System (CCIC2S)."
Delivery of the first OCS C2 capability will occur in 2008, according to the Air Force budget documents.
So Iran's Fars News Agency is parotingAviation Week's report, that Tehran is about to launch a satellite -- with "the liquid-propellant, 800-1,000-mi. range Shahab 3 missile, or the 1,800-mi. range, solid propellant Ghadar-110," to take the thing into space.
But take these stories with a big heap of salt, Defense Tech's Iran-watching friends remind us. Because reports coming out of Iran are notoriously fickle. In the fall of '05, the press was full of warnings that Iran was about to launch its 65-76 kilogram Mesbah satellite. The thing never made it off the ground. Instead, using a Russian launcher, Tehran sent its Sinah-1 recon satellite into orbit.
So what about this latest claim? "Count me as being very dubious but not totally disbelieving," says one sage observer. "I wouldn't want to say it's totally impossible, but at best you're talking about a very tiny satellite. The Shahab-3 is a single stage rocket, perhaps a little more than half as heavy as the Redstone" missile that was modified to put the first American itty-bitty satellite into orbit, in the '50s.
And that single-stage business is important to keep in mind, notes out pal the Robot Economist. "There is a reason why most [medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles] are multi-stagers - they need to drop as much mass during the boost phase in order to maximize their delta-v budgets [the velocity changes needed to get into orbit]. Iran and
North Korea have generally tried to extend the range of their rockets by increasing the size of their single stagers, because it doesn't require as much R&D and resources.
But if the Globalsecurity.org specs are right, the Iranian missile's delta-v is only about half of the 9-10 kilometers/second needed to get into low-earth orbit. "Unless the Iranians have done something amazing to mod up the power of the Shahab-3, which I haven't seen any reliable evidence of, that theoretical satellite is going nowhere," Mr. RE says.
And "we thought 'Kremlinology' was hard. Ha!" says one space-spotter. "At least there was Kremlinology," another replies. "I continue to despair that even though we have been grappling with the Mad Mullahs for over a quarter of a century there seems to have been no concerted systematic effort to try to reverse-engineer their operational code."
On Monday night, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate told guys like David Hambling and me that we were welcome to come check out its microwave-ish pain ray -- provided we could make it to the middle of Georgia on 36 hours' notice. It wasn't exactly the most serious offer, for fellows in London and in L.A. And it's one of several reasons why I decided not to blog about the demonstration, when word about it hit the wires yesterday.
But New Scientist did pick up on one interesting tidbit: Theodore Barna, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for advanced systems and concepts told Reuters that "We expect the services to add it to their tool kit. And that could happen as early as 2010." (Here's a promo vid for the system.)
Three years from now, hunh? Well, we'll see. For years and years, there have been promises that the pain ray (or "Active Denial System" if you prefer) was just about to be rolled out to the field. Thirteen months ago, for example, the 18th Military Police Brigade requested ADS "to help 'suppress' insurgent attacks and quell prison uprisings." The head of the Army's Rapid Equipping Force said, after nearly 10,000 trial shots, the system was good to go. $30 million was allocated to outfitting three fighting vehicles with pain rays.
But the military still can't shake fears about ADS, as Hambling so ablynoted last month. As Hambling put it, "the big problem is not with the technology, which seems to work fine. The problem is getting people to accept it. Everyone is still worried the millimeter-wave beam is going to give them cancer, melt their eyeballs or make them sterile."
"An advanced concept, pioneered by BAE Systems' researchers, uses light to multiply the speed and power at which HPM [high-power microwave] pulses... Researchers predict leaps of 10-100 times in power output within two years," making it possible to generate the 100-gigawatt pulse needed "to disable a cruise missile at a useful range."
The development of HPM weapons has been hobbled for the last 30 years by seemingly intractable cost, size, beam-control and power-generation requirements. Tests of modified air-launched cruise missiles carrying devices to produce explosively generated spikes of energy were considered big disappointments in the early 1990s because of an inability to direct pulses and predict effects. New active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars can jam emitters or possibly cause damage to electronic components with focused beams. But power levels and ranges are limited by aperture size.
BAE Systems' photonically driven technology could open the way to much smaller and more powerful electronic jammers, nonkinetic beam weapons for cruise and anti-ship missile defenses, and stealth-detecting sensors.
"You could put a [sensor] system on a fighter-size aircraft that could generate enough power, with a 1-ft. resolution, to see stealthy objects at 100 mi." D'Amico says. "You can defeat stealth with enough power. If stealth takes the signature [of an aircraft or missile] down a factor of 10, you have to increase the [sensor's] power by a factor of 10." Most current fighter-size radars have less than a megawatt of peak power. Detecting stealth would require tens of gigawatts, which is now impossible in fighter-size packages...
"We have shown everything we claimed with a laboratory testbed," says Oved Zucker, director of photonics programs for BAE Systems' advanced concepts facility here. "We are in the process of demonstrating total power substantially above 10 gigawatts, and we have plans to test [the system] further in an airborne mode..."
There's no dearth of missions for HPM technology, including detecting and detonating improvised explosive devices, finding suicide bombers or hidden explosives, and attacking shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles...
"At one end, it can fry anything [electronic] that's out there," Zucker says. "The levels of EW extend from the sledgehammer to just making the [computer's] brain a little bit befuddled so it can't think for a moment. At a lower level, you can kill the detector of the other guy's radar as part of the suppression of enemy air defenses. You don't need much power because you're going after the most sensitive part. You're blinding the system."
The level below that is to momentarily stop electronics from functioning. A radar will try to defend itself by using a chain of circuits to "blink," and thereby shut out intruding signals. One method of exploitation is to do something during the blink. But if an intruding signal is fast enough, the radar can't react in time to keep out the invader...
BAE researchers envision HPM pulse weapons that are powerful enough to disable a tank, a missile, perhaps a helicopter or aircraft, but at the same time are small and light enough to function as part of a microwave radar sensor designed into the skin of an aircraft.
I'm sure this beam combo is harder than AvWeek is making it out to be. But still, it's an interesting concept.
Osprey Ready for Primetime? Part One
“It’s a great aircraft, powerful, stable, twice as fast as a Frog and goes over six times as far.†That’s Lieutenant General. John G. Castellaw, the Marine Corps’ Deputy Commandant for Aviation, comparing the new Bell/Boeing MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor to the 40-year-old Boeing CH-46 “Frog.â€
More than 20 years after beginning development, and seven years after a spate of crashes that killed 30 people, the $130-million-per-copy Osprey is finally prepping for its first combat deployment. One of the Marines’ two operational squadrons will head to Iraq or Afghanistan sometime this year. Meanwhile, deliveries continue to the Marines and the Air Force, with more than 50 aircraft in service against a planned total of 410.
Despite the Osprey program’s advanced state, critics are still calling for its cancellation. None have been more vociferous than the wonks at Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. On January 18, freelance writer Lee Gaillard presented his CDI-backed report V-22 Osprey: Wonder Weapon or Widow Maker. “This glitch-plagued program … is poised to reveal fundamental flaws that may cost even more lives.â€
* The Osprey is prone to stalling while descending at 800 feet per minute or faster
* The cabin is too small to haul the advertised two squads (around 26 Marines)
* The cabin isn’t pressurized, limiting how high it can fly with troops
* Its range is no greater than that of many heavy helicopter designs
* Lacking guns, it’s vulnerable in hot landing zones
Many of these flaws were revealed in the military’s operational evaluation that wrapped in 2005. Still, the Pentagon cleared the Osprey for service. Gaillard chalks this up to “unstoppable political momentum†resulting from the Bell/Boeing team lining up contractors in 45 out of 50 states.
Of course, the military contests Gaillard’s claims. It says that after the bugs were ironed out, the Osprey not only works – it’s revolutionary.
I'm on the fence. On one hand, I’ve been around long enough to know that defense contractors sometimes lie … and that the Pentagon sometimes lets them get away with it. On the other hand, last year I heard a similarly scathing CDI brief on the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighter jet, a brief that didn't really match with what I saw, once I had paid a visit to a Raptor squadron to see for myself. So while the documents Gaillard offers as proof – military evaluations, Government Accounting Office reports (PDF!), etc. – I'd like to make up my own mind, thank you very much. In this series, I'll try to nail down: Is Osprey right for emerging missions in the Long War?
"Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has left the Pentagon, but not the Defense Department," the Washington Times reports. "On Jan. 4, Mr. Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, a Pentagon official said."
The Pentagon lists Mr. Rumsfeld as a "nonpaid consultant," a status he needs in order to review secret and top-secret documents, the official said.
Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides, who include close adviser Stephen Cambone, are sifting through the thousands of pages of documents generated during his tenure.
The Pentagon official said former secretaries are entitled to a transition office to sort papers, some of which can be taken with them for a library, for archives or to write a book.
The transition office has raised some eyebrows inside the Pentagon. Some question the size of the staff, which includes two military officers and two enlisted men.
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There have been a whole bunch of fresh faces visiting the site, lately. So I want to make sure y'all know about my weekly-ish, insiders-only, e-mail newsletter. It gives folks a first look at articles I'm writing, and lets 'em know about updates to the site. If you dig Defense Tech, I'd strongly recommend you sign up here. (You'll need a Yahoo ID, which is a bit of a pain. But it'll be worth it, I promise.)
UPDATE 01/25/07 11:27 AM: Reader MS says "one doesn't necessarily need a yahooID to subscribe to your newsletter. Sending a mail to defensetech-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and then confirming it by replying to the following mail does the trick, as well."
“A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.â€
Last summer, I presented a briefing at the US Army Combined Arms Center Combat Studies Institute’s annual symposium. (full transcript of the conference) I also blogged about it here and here. In attendance at the conference, were such illustrious types as General David Petraeus, Dr. Lewis Sorely, Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich, and many others. Granted I was the dim bulb in a room full of klieg lights, but it was interesting experience.
In my briefing, I proposed something very much like the president articulated last night. The crux of the problem is that about 97% of our standing national capacity to perform nation building operations in environments such as Iraq and Afghanistan resides within the military reserves. Most of these units are Army Reserve Civil Affairs units. There are about 7,000 civil affairs billets in the reserves. So a nation of 300 million relies on 7,000 military reservists whom we hope have all the skills we need to perform the stability-and-support, “Phase IV†operations. Four years into Iraq and the electrical grid is still in shambles. As a nation, we can do better.
Clearly our national approach to nation building isn’t working. We don’t have time to build this capacity after the shooting stops or the enemy regime tumbles. Iraq has demonstrated that our reconstruction capability needs to be in place quickly to pacify the civilian population. We have great organizations like USAID performing some of this role, but the American government is not configured to be expeditionary in nature. We need to change.
The military has tried some solutions to this problem like requiring that all reservists register their civilian skills with the military. This is a good idea, but a band-aid at best. In effect, we are relying on a crapshoot to determine if we have the skilled professionals we need in the military to rebuild war-shattered nations. We are hoping that the officers and enlisted men who joined the Army in the 80’s and 90’s have matured into the fire and police chiefs that we brag about having today.
I proposed that we create a standing force of skilled civilians as an augmentation to the military reserves. The same legal protections that apply to military reservists would be extended to these civilians. They would train like reservists and be available for deployment like reservists. They would join with the understanding that they could be put in harm’s way. Many in the blogosphere scoffed at the idea that we would be able to recruit people for this mission, but I believe that in the post 9-11 world many Americans are looking for a way to get in the fight besides going to the mall.
Having this standing capability might also ease our reliance on contractors or the ad-hoc nature that characterized the establishment of the CPA in Iraq. If we are truly engaged in a “generational struggleâ€, then we need to configure our government for it. We wished away “nation building†with political rhetoric in the 2000 election, and now it is time to face reality and enhance our capacity to do it right.
UPDATE 1:55 PM: "I've worked on this issue for many years on and off the Hill," says The White House Project's Lorelei Kelly. The origins can be found (with all due respect, Kris) "in the Clinton era, with the Office of Transition Initiatives."
The Clinton folks wrote the roadmap for complex contingency operations through a set of four presidential directives. Sadly, the new National Security Council threw them all out upon coming to office and so lost some of the most important institutional memory they could have had for subsequent policy crises.
This is an important innovation in government because it operationally begins to re allocate the division of labor away from the military and to civilians, as it should be. The military should not be doing many of the tasks that have accrued to it...but it is a problem solving and manpower heavy organization that does not say "no." Also, I welcome the addition of more civilians working as international public servants. These are jobs that belong in a long overdue discussion about the essential role of government in today's world....the reason the Blackwaters and other private military companies have thrived so during the past decade is not a question of whither mercenaries, its a fat and lazy elected leadership that REFUSES to have this conversation because the easiest budget box to check is to fund the defense budget at any outrageous level...
If we don't talk about the roles and missions of our agencies post 9/11 there will be no end to the spending, and we'll have both the Cold War hangover and legacy budget with an ineffectual grab bag of personnel and tools...all over militarized, and all to our own detriment.
Stressing Iran's preparedness, state television said the Revolutionary Guards planned to begin three days of testing the short-range Zalzal and Fajr-5 missiles Sunday. It could not be confirmed if the exercise had begun near Garmsar city, about 60 miles southeast of Tehran.
"The maneuver is aimed at evaluating defensive and fighting capabilities of the missiles," the report quoted an unidentified Guards commander as saying.
Last year, Iran held three large-scale military exercises to test what it called an "ultra-horizon" missile and the Fajr-3, a rocket that it claims can evade radar and use multiple warheads to hit several targets simultaneously. (emphasis mine)
When I first read this, I practically fell out of my chair laughing. For those unacquainted with the Fajr-3, it is spin-stabilized artillery rocket based with a range of about 50 miles. It is typically fired out of tubes mounted on the back of a truck, similar to the classic Katyusha. Iranian generals have tried to pass off the Fajr family of rockets off as some sort of medium range ballistic miracle before, which I imagine was greeted with a healthy amount of skepticism.
The only way an unguided rocket like the Fajr could avoid radar is if it was fired in a really low arc. The efficacy of this option is very limited, however, because it drastically reduces the rocket's range. The MIRV is just silly. The only way that rocket is going to strike a target in multiple times is if it breaks up in mid-air.
By the way, the Fajr also provides a excellent case of why Wikipedia isn't always the greatest source of information. Some poor sap named ArmanJan created a profile for a Fajr-3 ballistic missile based on the erroneous San Diego Trib article I linked to. Check out the discussion page for lots of great back and forth between him and the heroes that defend Wikipedia's veracity on a daily basis.
If that wasn't enough to crack a smile on your face, just look at how inconsistent the AP story is with a CBS.com story on the same subject:
The Iranian military on Monday began five days of maneuvers near the northern city of Garmsar, about 62 miles southeast of Tehran, state television reported. The military tested its Zalzal-1 and Fajr-5 missiles, the TV reported.
The Zalzal-1, able to carry a 1,200-pound payload, has a range of 200 miles, making it able to hit anywhere in Iraq or U.S. bases in the Gulf as well as into eastern Saudi Arabia. The Fajr-5, with a 1,800-pound payload, has a range of 35 miles.
Neither could reach Israel, but Iran is known to have missiles that can. It is not known if either missile tested Monday is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. (again, emphasis added)
To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "Oh my goodness gracious." 1,800 pound payload? I think I will go with Globalsecurity.org and the Nuclear Threat Initiative's more conservative payload estimate of 90 kilograms (about 200 pounds).
As for the nuclear question, I think that even 1,200 pounds is a bit light for basic gun-type payload. We managed to get our kiloton W9 and W19nuclear artillery shells down to 850 and 600 pounds, respectively, but I don't know if the Iranians are anywhere near that level of technical prowess yet.
UPDATE 11:33 AM: Now the Mullahs are claiming they've got a hand-launched UAV, too.
“Researchers in this company have for the first time designed and built four-kilo (nine-pound) hand-launched aircraft,†Rasool Peyghambari, director of aeronautics company Asr-e Talai Factories told the ISNA news agency.
“These aircraft are unique in the country and they are as good as the best and most efficient ones internationally,†he said, adding “we prefer to display its capabilities after operational testsâ€.
This isn't really my areas of expertise. But Armscontrol.ru has a extended article on Iranian drones, with pictures and data. Needless to say, I don't think they can compete with our snappy F-22 Raptor RC plane, let alone the RQ-11 Raven UAV.
UPDATE 11:433 AM:Check out Jane Vaynman's take on the trouble brewing for Iran's psycho president.
Merc Chopper Shot Down (Updated)
The tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries fighting alongside coalition soldiers in Iraq aren't just tooling around in up-armored SUVs sporting submachine guns. These guys have got helicopters too that they use to escort convoys -- and one of them has just been shot down over Baghdad, according to the Associated Press:
Five civilians died in the Baghdad crash of a helicopter owned by the private security company Blackwater USA, according to a U.S. military official. The helicopter was shot down Tuesday over a predominantly Sunni neighborhood, a senior Iraqi defense official said. The crash came three days after a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter crashed northeast of Baghdad, killing all 12 soldiers aboard.
Blackwater should have seen this coming. Unlike U.S. military helicopters, which are armored and equipped with countermeasures to defeat shoulder-fired missiles, Blackwater's McDonnell Douglas MD-369FF Loaches are essentially defenseless, unless you count the two mercs hanging out the cabin doors with their rifles.
Note that Blackwater's choppers -- which fly from the same Green Zone helipad used by the U.S. Army and Marines -- are just civil versions of the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse that the Army began phasing out after the Vietnam War due to their vulnerability. U.S. Special Forces fly updated H-6s, but only at night, when it's safer. It's not clear what time of the day the Blackwater bird was shot down, but I've witnessed these choppers buzzing around in broad daylight.
It's too early to tell what this shoot-down means for Blackwater and for merc ops in Iraq. But one thing's for sure: with the military struggling to scare up another 20,000 troops for its so-called "surge," the demand for private soldiers isn't going away.
UPDATE 1/24/07: Four of the dead Blackwater men were apparently killed execution-style, perhaps after surviving the chopper crash, while t
I haven't heard of any reason as to why we're losing more lately, but we also haven't lost any in a long time prior to this - I think it's reflective of somewhat of the odds catching up to us and an increased combat operations tempo.
Take the 
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Most of the money for space capabilities is in the Air Force budget, and space weapons funding now resides almost entirely in the 
But take these stories with a big heap of salt, Defense Tech's Iran-watching friends remind us. Because reports coming out of Iran are notoriously fickle. In the fall of '05, the press was full of warnings that Iran was 
"An advanced concept, pioneered by 
Last summer, I presented a 
