Missile madness
ISN Security Watch
"Please join us for a viewing of a modern-day Reefer Madness, the Heritage Foundation's film about nuclear threats, 33 Minutes," read the invitation from the Center for American Progress (CAP), invoking the memory of a 1930s film on the descent into insanity and criminality of a group of marijuana smokers. The film became a cult classic in the 1970s.
That the liberal CAP should be promoting a conservative think tank's film is unusual, except that the point of the program was to expose inaccuracies in the film.
The film's title refers to the time it would take for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), presumably launched by a rogue state such as North Korea or Iran, to reach the continental US.
The issue pits those, like Heritage, who would like to rely on US technological prowess to defeat missile threats against those who believe such measures are futile and would rely instead on deterrence and arms reduction negotiations.
Countering the internet jihad
ISN Security Watch
Radical Islamic groups are increasingly recruiting operatives over the internet, as illustrated by several recent examples.
US Army Major Nidal Hasan - the accused in the November shootings in Fort Hood, Texas - used email to coordinate with the radical Yemen-based American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Five young American Muslims arrested in Pakistan last month and accused of seeking to join a local terrorist organization used Facebook and YouTube to connect with extremist groups in Pakistan.
"This cyber-prodding is an important aspect of jihadist internet usage," Jarrett Brachman, a professor of security studies at North Dakota State University, told ISN Security Watch.
Some experts tout the accomplishments of the Sakinah Campaign, a Saudi-based online effort to combat internet radicalization. Sakinah, which is Arabic for 'religiously inspired tranquility,' originated as an independent, volunteer organization, but has since been subsumed by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs.
Sakinah claims to have turned hundreds of extremists and potential extremists away from "deviant views." Sakinah is focused on stemming the tide of extremism in Saudi Arabia and averting terrorist attacks in that country, specifically by combating the radical Islamist concept of takfir. Takfir refers to a pronouncement that a Muslim or a group of Muslims have become apostates, thus providing a rationalization for killing them.
By all accounts, a western online response to jihadist cyber-radicalization is absent.
Charging the future
ISN Special Reports
Do government operations and the accumulation of debt go hand in hand?
David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher, thought so. Two-hundred fifty years ago he predicted that "the practice of contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused in every government." "It would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit in every banker's shop in London," he mused, "than to empower a statesman to draw bills upon posterity."
Governments, like companies or households, can shoulder limited levels of debt with impunity. But the discussion around the world has now turned to whether governments' debt loads are so heavy that they could lead to economic collapse.
In the US, the federal government's tax collections are lower thanks to the recession, while its spending has spiked, with hundreds of billions of dollars going to massive stimulus and bailout programs. These factors, combined with waging two wars without raising the revenues to pay for them, have some worrying that a perfect debt storm is brewing which could, if not reversed, severely compromise the US economy and government in coming years.
The US currently owes its creditors over $12 trillion and rising. The ratio of debt to GDP has more than doubled the last two years, from 40.3 percent in September 2008 to nearly 86 percent today.
"If we fail to act soon," said Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat of North Dakota, at a recent US Senate budget committee hearing, "federal debt will overwhelm the nation’s budget and economy."
Monetary machinations
ISN Security Watch
One of the biggest international trade gripes the US has with China is its undervalued currency. A low-value renminbi, or RMB, artificially pegged to the US dollar by the People’s Bank of China, facilitates cheap Chinese exports to the US while inflating the price of US imports.
But China has its own bone to pick with the US over currency. With the US as China's chief export destination, China has accumulated $2 trillion in dollar reserves, much of it held in the form of US Treasury securities. The global financial crisis, which the Chinese blame on the US, has led to a falling dollar, leading to the prospect that the US will be repaying its debt to China with cheaper dollars.
The Chinese have been vocal in their desire to reform the international monetary system, making changes which would increase its currency's role in the global economy. The RMB could become more of an international trade transaction and settlement currency. Some Chinese banking officials have even proposed the RMB as an alternative international reserve currency to the US dollar.
CBO health-care estimates, give or take a billion
The Daily Caller
To understand the budget impact of pending legislation, Congress routinely submits proposals to its accounting arm for analysis.
In the case of the health-care bills, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came back with a $1.042 trillion price tag over 10 years for the House bill and a $848 billion cost for the original Senate bill.
Lawmakers often cite CBO figures as holy writ and use them in arguments supporting or opposing proposed measures. But can the CBO estimate costs of complex programs down to the last billion dollars? Do CBO numbers present an accurate picture to legislators and to the American people?
“Everyone should know that any number will be either too high or too low,” Donald Marron, a former CBO deputy director told The Daily Caller.
There are a number of problems associated with CBO’s estimates. Some have to do with the games Congress itself plays with numbers. In the case of highly complex programs like health care, a myriad of variables can throw estimates off. In fact, the government’s track record for estimating health-care program costs is poor.
To Defend…and attack?
ISN Special Reports
Last year, a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack was launched against government websites in Georgia, before and during the armed conflagration between that country and Russia. In 2007, a similar assault was launched against government and commercial computer networks in Estonia.
Rumors abounded in each instance that the Russian government was behind the attacks, in the case of Estonia because Russia was angered by some slight of the Estonian government. The Georgia attack defaced the presidential website and made other government websites unavailable. The Estonia attack, which primarily targeted commercial financial networks, shut down the heavily online Estonian banking system for several days.
DDOS attacks disable their targets by launching huge volumes of email or other messages, more than the target system can handle, from multiple locations. Perpetrators typically muster the capacity to direct this massive messaging activity by surreptitiously taking over hundreds or thousands of computers by embedding them with software components known as malware, transforming them into robots, or 'bots,' arraying these in decentralized networks, or 'botnets,' and then orchestrating an attack on the intended target.
Most experts doubt that either the Georgia or the Estonia examples originated with the Russian government. But the attacks underscored the need to protect systems from a military-style onslaught, perhaps also to develop the capability to counterattack.
Pentagon stuck on outdated concepts of warfare
The Daily Caller
Washington defense types are awaiting the February release of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, in a speech in New York last month, promised the report would be driven by Afghanistan and Iraq war needs, placing an emphasis on ground troops and counterinsurgency operations and less on the modernization of weapons systems.
But if history is any guide, the QDR won’t make much of a difference to defense policies and programs nor to the troops on the ground. That’s because the giant defense bureaucracy is wedded to older concepts of warfare.
The QDR was instituted in the 1990s with the admirable purpose of institutionalizing strategic thinking among Department of Defense echelons. Results have been mixed, at best.
Software voyage
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
The U.S. military is moving toward a model that exploits the benefits of digital navigation systems. Many platforms, including soldier systems, are benefiting from electronic systems that combine digital charts, global positioning and environmental sensors, while getting rid of reams of paper.
In May 2005, for example, the USS Cape St. George became the first Navy vessel authorized to transition to a fully digital navigation system.
In 2007, the USS Oklahoma City became the first submarine to go completely digital for navigation. The following year, the Army’s UH-60M Black Hawk was inaugurated as the newest version of that helicopter, featuring a fully digital navigation system. As is the case with many systems that benefit from automation, there has been an explosion in recent years of available geospatial and navigation data, requiring a paradigm shift. “The most important thing is how to present navigation information that is growing exponentially in an effective, actionable way, in a way that enhances safety and decision-making,” said Kris Jones, a senior manager of marketing operations at Jeppesen, a subsidiary of Boeing Commercial Aviation Services.
The Navy’s digital navigation efforts are being standardized around the Voyage Management System (VMS), which was developed by Sperry Marine, a Northrop Grumman unit.
“The Voyage Management System is a software application that, when coupled with digital hardware and nautical charts provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, provides a digital navigation capability for the Navy,” said Ray LaFreniere, navigation systems product director at the Navy Program Executive Office, Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS). “The Voyage Management System software is the only software application certified by the Navy to meet its requirements.”
Patriot Act redux
ISN Security Watch
The USA PATRIOT Act, passed in 2001 by the US Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, depending on whom you ask, is an important toolbox for US authorities to fight terrorism, or an arsenal with which they could potentially trample on American civil liberties.
While many of the law's provisions are not controversial, its enactment made headlines when it authorized US law enforcement to snoop through records of bookstores, video stores, and libraries, in an effort to discern who was reading or viewing what.
That provision, Section 216, or the so-called "business records" section, as well as two others, are set to expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts, sparking new debate over the balance between counterterrorism and civil liberties.
At the core of the debate lie differing attitudes toward US domestic intelligence activities. The Patriot Act allows intelligence agencies to borrow tools from law enforcement. "If we allow these procedures in criminal investigations," so the pro-Patriot argument goes, "why not make them available for counterterrorism activities?" Critics answer that intelligence investigations tend to be much more wide-ranging then their criminal counterparts, potentially allowing authorities to scoop up piles of private information on ordinary Americans.
Tabloid intelligence
ISN Security Watch
What happens to US intelligence when the president doesn't like to read?
Producing the President's Daily Brief degenerates to the level of a tabloid newsroom, with reporters - or in this case, intelligence analysts - scrambling to attract the chief's attention with sensational stories and headlines.
That, in a nutshell, is what happened during the administration of George W Bush, according to a report released last week by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
The incurious Bush was loathe to immerse himself in details. He also didn't want to hear about issues, such as climate change, which didn't interest him.
This shouldn't come as a big surprise. Bush's was, after all, an administration that failed to act on intelligence that al-Qaida was about to attack the US, proceeded with an Afghan adventure without an elementary knowledge of the political or human landscape, invaded Iraq on false pretenses, and bungled those overseas operations perhaps beyond repair.
Human Rights 2.0
ISN Security Watch
Is it possible to shame human rights abusers into refraining from their perfidious activities?
That is the premise behind "New Tools for Old Traumas: Using 21st Century Technologies for Combat Human Rights Atrocities," a report issued last week by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-leaning Washington think tank.
"There now exist unparalleled opportunities to expose human rights abuses," said the report. "And with the knowledge generated by these new capacities for exposure, human rights champions have new opportunities to intervene to stop ongoing abuses."
There is historical evidence to support the report's supposition. Authoritarian regimes don't publicize their human rights abuses, even when they take pains to justify their policies internally. Even the Nazis conducted their genocidal activities sub rosa and did their utmost to cover up their crimes as the tide of World War II turned against them.
As Jean-Paul Sartre suggests in Being and Nothingness, people don't experience shame when they are alone. Shame comes when their actions have been witnessed by an 'Other.'
On the mark
Special Operations Technology
The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has challenged the U.S. military to sustain combat power in dynamic, dispersed and unsecured battlespaces. In Iraq, especially, the resupply of troops by truck convoy has exposed them to roadside ambushes by insurgents. In Afghanistan, airdropped resupply bundles must often target narrow mountain ridges or valleys—less than optimal venues. In both locations, low altitude airdrops have exposed air crews and equipment to ground fire. Low-altitude airdrops can also give away the positions of small forward units.
It is no coincidence, then, that the armed services, under the Army’s leadership, have accelerated the development of high altitude precision airdrop systems in recent years.
“Six aircraft were hit during a ninemonth period in Afghanistan in 2006,” said Richard Benney, an aerospace engineer in the Warfighter Protection and Airdrop/Aerial Delivery Directorate at the U.S. Army’s Natick Soldier Center. “There has been a big push to go high.”
“With standard airdrops, you need to fly aircraft fairly low to get cargo into tight areas,” said Gary McHugh, business development manager at Airborne Systems North America. “You need to use a round parachute, and a round parachute is at the mercy of wind conditions. When you bring the aircraft down low, it also pays to have a fairly large drop zone.” Over the past four to five years, investments in aerial delivery have proceeded “in leaps and bounds,” McHugh added. “Precision drops at higher altitudes are out of reach of ground fire and reduce the size of the drop zone required to get payloads to the troops on the ground.”
Training readiness center
Military Training Technology
The U.S. military’s training philosophy might be boiled down to a single maxim: train as you will fight. The armed services have many training tools at their disposal; Department of Defense policy encourages the use of a multiplicity of training systems and techniques. The ability to integrate various kinds of training tools can provide a richer, more realistic, and more effective training experience.
That is the idea behind the creation of a live, virtual, constructive (LVC) training environment. Live training refers to “real people operating real systems,” according to a U.S. Air Force training presentation. Virtual “involv[es] real people operating simulated systems,” while the constructive domain involves machine-tomachine interactions. The combination of training components from each of these domains enables the training experience to emulate real operational conditions.
The U.S. military has been conducting LVC training for some time, but it has been done on an ad hoc basis. In other words, commanders would set up LVC training for a specific exercise at a specific location, then tear it down when the exercise was finished. If a similar exercise were scheduled at a different installation, the same LVC environment would have to be reconstructed from the ground up.
But DoD is now taking LVC to a new higher level of development. The U.S. Joint Forces Command has developed an LVC federation that enables various training venues to be linked together. The Army and, more recently, the Air Force, are seeking to develop an LVC architecture that would promote interoperability among systems and allow training components from the various domains to be integrated together on a plug-and-play basis.
Specialized cameras
Special Operations Technology
Special operations units take on the most challenging of assignments and often conduct their operations under the harshest of conditions. Their missions take them to the remotest of locations, and they often operate under the cover of darkness.
Special operations forces make use of video and still cameras in a variety of scenarios. On reconnaissance missions, they are used to send images back to headquarters for further processing and decision-making. Cameras are also used to document special operations missions as well as in training situations.
Special forces’ specialized missions and the environments in which they operate require that they be equipped with devices providing enhanced capabilities. The military’s industry partners have come forward with a variety of photo and video products and components to meet these needs.
Night vision is perhaps the classic example of a specialized camera capability. But, in fact, night vision encompasses two capabilities and two technologies. Electro-optical cameras—the same kind used in commercial photography—utilizing image enhancement technology allow warfighters to discern threats in low-light situations. Infrared cameras display images without the aid of any light at all; they pick up the heat profile emitted from the objects being viewed.
Mapping tool kit offers common view
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
A decade ago, Congress instructed the Department of Defense to provide a geospatial tool kit to warfighters based on commercially available technologies. In response, DoD, under the umbrella of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, initiated the Commercial Joint Mapping Toolkit (CJMTK) program.
CJMTK provides mapping, charting, geodesy, and imagery (MCG&I) functionality for command, control, and intelligence (C2I) applications that run in the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Common Operating Environment (COE). It replaced the Joint Mapping Toolkit, a collection of governmentdeveloped and -owned application program interfaces (APIs) that enabled mission applications to interface with the COE MCG&I functionality.
In a nutshell, CJMTK provides mission programs with a set of geospatial intelligence tools. “These include virtualization tools that enable displays of maps or imagery on screens, analytical tools, and the management of all the geospatial data behind them,” explained Brett Cameron, the program manager for CJMTK at Northrop Grumman Information Systems, the program’s prime contractor.
Landing makes the mission
Special Operations Technology
Unlike the days of the Cold War, when the U.S. military planned the pre-positioning of forces and materiel six months or a year in advance, today’s environment demands agility. And that means the capability to deploy forces to a hot spot within a matter of days. Today’s commanders work on timelines measured in hours instead of days or weeks.
That is why the armed services are looking to improve their ability to expeditiously land forces and equipment in expeditionary operations. This requires preparing the ground for the landing of aircraft in forward areas of operation.
Fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft each have their requirements for suitable materials for landing zones at forward airfields. Fixed wing aircraft require materials that are heat- and skid-resistant, among other attributes. Landing pads for rotary wing aircraft must be able to cope with the phenomenon of brownout from dust generation during landing and takeoffs.
Medical analytics in war
Government Health IT
Let’s say a wounded U.S. solider is evacuated from Afghanistan to the Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Two days later, he develops a mysterious rash.
Medical commanders are concerned this is evidence of an infectious disease outbreak and want to take steps to mitigate its spread among troops in theater.
What information would decision-makers need at their fingertips? They will, of course, want to determine where the solider was located before he was injured; where he ate before he got sick; and who else might be at risk. This would require access to personnel, facilities and medical databases that would identify others who have exhibited similar symptoms.
The U.S. military’s Medical Situational Awareness in Theater (MSAT) project, a portal application, is being designed to allow users to graphically view potential health threats to troops and to support decision making on the location of military medical units. MSAT will use Web services to allow commanders access to multiple databases and to generate graphical displays that turn raw data into actionable medical intelligence.
Climate change, patent pending
ISN Security Watch
On 12 June, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a foreign relations funding bill which included an instruction to the US envoy to the UN-sponsored climate change treaty negotiations. The US delegation was not to accede to any proposal, the House declared, which would compromise the intellectual property rights US companies have over environmentally-friendly technologies.
Viewed in a vacuum, the House action is of little inherent significance. After all, the executive branch is in charge of US foreign policy, and it is the Senate, not the House which must approve treaties.
But the House can make some mischief. Congressmen can make enough noise to stir up public, as well as senatorial, wrath. It can also refuse to fund activities it disapproves of.
The House move was a pre-emptive strike against an expected proposal by China at negotiations later this year in Copenhagen over the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for a regime of mandatory licensing of green technologies. Such a provision would weaken the control companies enjoy under current US and international law over patented inventions.
Although the US will be not asking China to agree to guarantee carbon emissions reductions as part of a Copenhagen treaty, it does want to press the Chinese to implement. The Kyoto protocols did not require reductions of developing economies. China is demanding, in return, access to the green technologies where the US has an edge.
The issue of intellectual property rights will pit the US against China. The two countries together are responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions. The successful completion of a climate change accord may hang in the balance.
White House 2.0: spreading its message
ISN Security Watch
Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for the US presidency was notable for its use of social media for organizing and fundraising. Supporters were able to keep track of the candidate through websites like Myspace and YouTube and were prompted to make cash contributions through mobile phone text messages.
The use of these Web 2.0 technologies - rich internet applications that encourage user collaboration, interaction and contribution - are being carried over to the Obama administration, in a number of areas. They are being used to elicit citizen responses in the administration's efforts to make the government more open and responsive and as part of White House and State Department public diplomacy programs.
The monumental case in point for the use of Web 2.0 as part of public diplomacy was in connection with Obama's groundbreaking speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on 4 June.
“The President’s words were almost instantly translated into fourteen languages, posted on websites and blogs around the world, transmitted by text message to mobile phones in more than 170 countries, and discussed on social networks that span the globe,” said Judith McHale the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, at a recent gathering sponsored by the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institution. “State Department officers texted, blogged and chatted about the speech in dozens of languages.”
Even before the Cairo speech, the White House released an online video, known as the “Noruz message,” of Obama speaking directly to Persian speakers. In an example of another marriage of social technologies and public diplomacy, the State Department organized a text-message campaign to raise $110 million from US private citizens to help internally displaced persons in Pakistan's Swat region.
Web 3.0: Installing the Plumbing
ISN Security Watch
It may not be as viscerally exciting as Web 2.0, but there are a set of technologies working behind the scenes that are beginning to make Web research and collaboration richer and more automated. These technologies are already being exploited by US military and intelligence organizations.
The semantic web, or Web 3.0, as it is sometimes called, adds capabilities supplied by software algorithms which allow machines to understand ordinary text and, by extension, to make connections among “entities”—people, places and things—encountered when searching a body of information.
Web 3.0 won't dramatically change the appearance of Web 2.0 phenomena such as social networking, wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, and mashups. But it will automate some of their functions and will make searching and researching more rewarding by providing greater numbers of links to context-relevant information.
The vision for semantic searching and researching goes back to the 1960s, according to Lewis Shepherd, a former official of the US Defense Intelligence Agency and currently chief technology officer at the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology and Government. In that sense, it has taken quite a long time for the semantic web to get up to speed, but that is exactly what is happening now.
Looking ahead with FLIR
Military Information Technology
Already a sensing workhorse for the U.S. military, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) technology is expanding and enhancing its operational role in response to new missions and new capabilities.
Although FLIR has been around for decades, having been first developed in the 1970s, efforts to improve and innovate are still robust, and the military continues to develop new ways to use it. This has been especially true since the beginning of U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
FLIRs are infrared sensors that detect slight variations in heat and transform those readings into a visual picture in much the same way a digital camera detects and records light patterns. But since FLIR is not light dependent, it has an obvious application for night vision. It is also not impeded by inclement weather or the smoke, fire, dirt and dust of a battlefield.
Perhaps the most common and significant deployment of FLIR technology in Southwest Asia and Afghanistan has been on vehicles, where it has become a vital tool in the battle against IEDs. But the technology has also been incorporated on airborne platforms and integrated with other sensors.
Obsolescence management
Military Logistics Forum
United States armed services and defense agencies have been encouraged to use commercially available systems and products in recent years. Although the Department of Defense and commercial firms use some of the same products, the military faces a problem much more pronounced than in the private sector when these systems begin to age.
That’s because the military utilizes technology and other products over a much longer life cycle than does the private sector. And that longevity is going to be stretched out even further as budget constraints force DoD to squeeze as much usable life out of its systems as it can.
“The typical lifespan for a military system is much longer than for a commercial device,” said David Robinson, program manager for diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) at the Defense Logistics Agency’s Defense Supply Center Columbus. “Most government systems have been out there for 10 years or more. We’ll be flying B-52s for 100 years.”
The implication of limping along with older systems is that the original manufacturer of these systems may be out of business or may no longer be supporting a particular product with replacement parts. “Many of the systems out in the field today were developed in the 1970s and ’80s, if not the ’40s and ’50s,” said Willie Brown, director of obsolescence management services at BAE Systems in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
Targeting hearts and minds
Special Operations Technology
Psychological operations will be assuming increased importance to the United States military in coming years, at least if the number of personnel assigned to PSYOP activities are any indication. Two years from now, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group will have more than doubled the number of its personnel over five years.
The group currently stands at 1,700 strong, an increase of 600 soldiers over the last three years. Colonel Curt Boyd, the unit’s commander, expects to build an additional company and add another 600 soldiers by the end of next year, before the group caps out at around 2,450 in 2010.
The 4th Psychological Operations Group, based in Fort Bragg, N.C., shoulders a diverse set of missions. The unit does everything from supporting operations in Southwest Asia to providing assistance to information programs run out of U.S. embassies around the world. One PSYOP unit is operating independently in Iraq and Afghanistan, while other personnel are attached to special forces and other outfits in theater. They also are integral to regional commands in Asia, Africa and South America. If this sounds like the 4th is stretched a little thin, it is, said Boyd.
A brave new dangerous world
ISN Security Watch
“The world is entering a demographic transformation of historic and unprecedented dimensions.”
That was the essential message of a recently released monograph from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan Washington think tank. The coming demographic dislocations are beginning to attract the attention of geopolitical and military thinkers and planners.
Geopolitics, much like the local variety, is an intensely human endeavor. So is the expression of geopolitical aspirations in the form of war and armed conflict.
That explains why, when the United States Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) examined trends that will impact the future posture of US military forces, first and foremost on its list was demographics. Around the same time that JFCOM released its Joint Operating Environment report last month, the CSIS, which often contributes thought leadership to the US government, released The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century.
“In the future, conflicts will remain human,” Rear Admiral John Richardson, JFCOM’s director of strategy and policy, told ISN Security Watch. “That’s why demographics are important.”
Let clean water flow
ISN Security Watch
March 2009 could have been called International Water Month. The Fifth World Water Forum was held in Istanbul between 16 and 22 March; the UN World Water Development Report was released in advance of that conference; and International Water Day, established by the UN in 1993, was observed on 22 March. The UN report, published every three years, noted that demand for water was at an all-time high - and growing - thanks to population growth, mobility, rising living standards and changes in food consumption. Some countries are reaching the limits of their water resources and competition for water is intensifying, making access an increasingly politicized issue.
In the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, initiated in 2002, the international community committed itself to reduce by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015. The UN report suggested that more than 90 percent of the world population would have access to clean drinking water by 2015, but that by 2030, five billion people, or two-thirds of the projected world population, would be without proper sanitation unless current development efforts were doubled.
The same concerns over global water resources were reflected in Washington in March with a big push toward expanding the US commitment to development activities, which would provide the world’s deprived areas with clean drinking water and proper sanitation.
US Stimulus: Neglecting the Global Perspective? ISN Security Watch
The Obama economic package is focused on preserving and creating domestic jobs and contains trade protectionist measures that could provoke retaliation.
The thing about the global economic recession is that it is just that - global.
Never in current memory, say economists, has economic contraction been worldwide. The economies of the US, Europe, and Japan are projected to post real losses this year while emerging economies like China and India are expected show significant slowdowns.
Overall, real global economic output is projected to contract by at least one percent in 2009, according to statistics published by IHS Global Insight, an economic consultancy based in Lexington, Massachusetts. This comes after growths of 3.9 percent in 2007 and 2.4 percent in 2008.
Command and control underpinning
Military Space & Missile Forum
On December 5, 2008, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency launched a long-range ballistic missile target from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska. Twenty-nine minutes later the target was destroyed off the coast of California with an interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. After flying into space, the interceptor released its kill vehicle, which tracked, intercepted and destroyed the target warhead. The target missile traveled 2,485 miles (4,000 kilometers) before being intercepted—625 miles (1,000 km) more than on any previous test. This was the latest in a series of tests for the ground-based mid-course defense system (GMD), and represented GMD’s eighth intercept overall. It was also the third since September 2006 using an interceptor with the same design and capabilities as those protecting U.S. soil. GMD defends the United States against long-range ballistic missiles, with interceptors deployed in underground silos at Vandenberg and Fort Greely, Alaska, by intercepting and destroying targets toward the apex of their trajectory.
GMD also consists of radars, other sensors, command-and-control facilities, communications terminals and a 20,000-mile fiber optic communications network. Contributing to the success of the December GMD test was the exploitation of data from four different sensors, which were collected and combined by the GMD fire control system and conveyed to the interceptor. More than anything, the test validated the networking of several ground-based and sea-based sensors to track and destroy the target.
“What is a first-time event is that we actually networked different types of radars and different frequencies and sizes and geometries,” Lieutenant General Patrick J. O’Reilly, director of the Missile Defense Agency, explained at a Pentagon briefing later that same day. “We were able to form one very accurate track, and combining all that together, we were able to launch the interceptor out of Vandenberg Air Force Base.”
Normalizing unconventional warfare
ISN Security Watch
During the 2004 US presidential campaign, Democratic Party nominee John Kerry accused President George W Bush of missing an opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden when he "outsourced" the battle of Tora Bora to local Afghan warlords. The accusation set off a debate over whether bin Laden was actually present at Tora Bora at that particular time but skipped the issue over the outsourcing of US military operations.
The US military has partnered with surrogates in the past, but the history of this practice is a limited one. That may change, however, if the ideas of a Washington think tank expert hold sway.
Robert Martinage, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), advocated in a Washington briefing last month an expanded role for US special forces, including, as in the battle of Tora Bora, the "use of non-state actors against other non-state actors."
The field manual for US Army special operations defines partnering with irregular forces as "unconventional warfare" during one of the missions of US special operations forces. Martinage's proposal is in sync with army thinking: The special ops field manual, which was published in September 2008, emphasizes unconventional warfare over other special operations missions such as civil affairs, foreign internal defense (which involves direct aid to local government forces), information operations and psychological operations.
Undoing Bush
ISN Security Watch
Barack Obama has promised to rescind objectionable executive orders signed by his predecessor. There is much to review.
Almost immediately after Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, a flurry of speculation began over when and how he would use his executive powers to undo some of the excesses of President George W Bush. Published reports indicate that over 200 Bush-era executive orders are currently under review by the Obama transition team.
Ironically, Obama will be operating in an environment of enhanced presidential powers thanks to the uninhibited use of the executive pen exercised by his predecessor. The Bush administration successfully increased presidential power through secret opinions and orders authorizing unprecedented detention, surveillance and interrogation practices. Restoring earlier standards of civil liberties will largely rest on the shoulders of the new president.
That Obama will be undoing some of Bush's abuses by the stroke of his own pen is no longer a matter of speculation, having been confirmed by the president-elect himself. Asked on a television interview on 16 November whether he would sign an executive order closing the infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Obama was unequivocal.
Data gold for homeland protection
Military Geosptial Technology
Born in the months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Homeland Security Infrastructure Protection (HSIP) program plays a key role in defending the nation by providing a common geospatial data set for use by government entities at all levels, from federal agencies to local first responders in case of a national emergency.
Despite its name, the program is not currently housed in the Department of Homeland Security, which was not formally established until a few months after HSIP got under way. Instead, it is under National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency (NGA), which was appointed the lead agency for HSIP and tasked to develop a comprehensive set of geospatial data on the country’s critical infrastructure that could be used for multiple homeland security purposes.
HSIP began in the summer of 2002 as a collaborative project between NGA and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). A joint team set out to identify and prioritize potential terrorist targets and to identify the minimum geospatial data requirements to meet the needs of the evolving homeland security community. This inquiry resulted in a list of 103 data sets that NGA and USGS continue to use as the baseline geospatial requirements for HSIP.
DHS eventually joined HSIP as a key federal participant. Together with NGA and USGS, the HSIP team began acquiring what today totals over 340 data sets from government agencies at all levels as well as from commercial vendors in an effort to map the country’s critical infrastructures in 15 sectors. These include information and communications, banking and finance, water supply, emergency services, energy, public health, law enforcement and chemical manufacturing.
Next Tuesday's other elections
ISN Security Watch
Barack Obama may be the odds-on favorite to become the next president of the United States, but his race toward the Oval Office is far from over. Presidential races have notoriously tightened in the last week of campaigning, and sometimes the underdog pulls off a surprise victory.
But there is another series of important elections taking place this coming Tuesday in the US: the congressional races. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 of the 100 Senate positions are slated to be filled. Here, the outcome is clear and almost inevitable: The Democrats will add to their majorities in both houses of congress.
American voters tend to shift political gears when they perceive their country to be going in the wrong direction. That is one reason why Obama is favored to win the presidency. But voters also consider their vote for president and for members of congress differently. Polls show that 75 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with their country's direction and that they will be taking it out on congressional Republicans on election day.
The upshot is that the Democratic majority will be feeling quite muscular when the new US congress is sworn in next January. Even if they have a Democratic president to work with, a 60-percent Democratic congress will not be content to be water carriers for a President Obama. They will want to push some of their own agenda, which is likely to be further to the left than the middle ground Obama will try to stake out. Of course, the president can veto congressional legislation, but not even a President John McCain is going to veto everything. In any event, congressional initiatives are likely to play a bigger role in Washington come January than they have in the last eight years.