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 | Protecting privacy in a surveillance society ISN Special Reports Earlier this year, the German Federal Constitutional Court overturned a law on the retention of data on telephone calls, email and internet traffic for law enforcement purposes, finding that the law posed a "grave intrusion" to personal privacy. The court concluded that the communications retention law does not make sufficiently clear what the data would be used for and does not provide adequate protection of personal information. The law, the judges ruled, failed to balance the need to provide security with the right to privacy and contradicted a basic right of private correspondence. The German case is emblematic of a conundrum facing governments and citizens in a digitally connected world obsessed by a desire to be secure against terrorism. Law enforcement agencies have the potential to capture large volumes of telephone, email and internet data as well as pictures stored by the millions of surveillance cameras mounted in cities and towns around the world. The question is whether law enforcement agencies will be availing themselves of this data, or better yet, under what circumstances and for what purposes they may do so. As suggested by the ruling of the German court, the retention and examination of private data ought to be subject to common sense conditions which would restrict access to clearly defined law enforcement needs and which would protect the privacy of the innocent. Securing our ports US Coast Guard Forum The United States Coast Guard’s role in battling the recent and potentially catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico illustrated the agency’s multifaceted mission. As the Coast Guard took the lead in attempting to contain the huge slick, its environmental, safety, security and law enforcement functions were all on display. So too was its role in protecting and enhancing the security of the nation’s ports. As the petroleum behemoth approached the coastline, it threatened the closure of gulf ports and the disruption in billions of dollars of commerce. “The Coast Guard mission is to ensure the safety of the port and to support the free flow of commerce,” said Jack McCready, chief of the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance branch of the United States Coast Guard Research and Development Center. “Damage to the port can result from planted devices, but also from disasters, which can result in unseen underwater structures that can damage the depth of a shipping channel.” Peter Miller, the director of the maritime security program at Cubic Applications and the former security director at the port of Tampa, pointed out that the Coast Guard has established high standards for port security. “The captains of the port are Coast Guard officers,” he said. “They set the standards and we all have to perform.” Among other things, Coast Guard regulations mandate that each port draft a port security plan, update it each year, and make it available for review by local Coast Guard officials. Working at the port of Tampa, Miller noted, “We could have Coast Guard inspectors roaming the port at any given time of the day with a copy of our port security plan, checking to see if they could find a discrepancy. If they did, they would report it and we would have a certain amount of time to fix it.” Coast guard regulations also require ports to develop an oil spill removal plan, said Captain Kevin Kiefer, chief of the Office of Port and Facility Activities at U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Washington. US Coast Guard: Bigger missions, fewer dollars ISN Security Watch The US government is demanding more than ever from its Coast Guard. In addition to its traditional domestic search and rescue, drug interdiction, and port security missions, the agency has also been called upon in recent years to conduct counterpiracy missions in the Gulf of Aden and to protect Iraqi petroleum pipelines and shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf. The Coast Guard, which has been part of the US Department of Homeland Security since 2003, was one of the first US government agencies to respond to January's earthquake disaster in Haiti. In the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard is the US government's lead agency responsible for attempting to stanch the flow of oil from BP's ruptured well. The Coast Guard is unique among US federal agencies, in that it combines the attributes of an armed force, with security and regulatory activities. Yet despite the increasing demands being put on the Coast Guard, the Obama administration has rewarded the agency with a three percent decrease in funding, to $10.1 billion, in the proposed fiscal year 2011 budget it unveiled earlier this year. Load, unload, repeat Military Logistics Forum Within the historical paradigm of warfare, materiel handling equipment (MHE) was the province of logistics operators at an operation’s rear echelon. Now that modern warfare has taken on significantly less of a linear configuration, these key pieces of equipment—such as forklifts, container carriers and cranes—are to be found everywhere on the battlespace. True, materiel handling equipment is still used in ports and depots. But they are also to be found at forward operating bases, and sometimes even farther forward than that. The U.S. military buys materiel handling equipment from the same suppliers that produce heavy equipment for the construction, warehousing and agricultural industries. But military requirements are more stringent. Many of the pieces acquired by the armed services require armor, they are increasingly including climate control systems to enable operation in a variety of locales, and above all, they are required to be extremely and robust and reliable, in order to perform the heavy duty required of them. That duty often happens where the rubber meets the road, as soldiers are confronting adversaries. “We’ve seen engineering support being embedded far forward on the battlefield,” said Chris Saucedo, general manager of the military products division of JCB, an equipment manufacturer. “MHE is not sexy equipment,” said Lieutenant Colonel Darrell Bennis, product manager for combat engineer and materiel handling equipment and the Army’s TACOM Life Cycle Management Command, “but ultimately it is the most important equipment on the battlefield. Nothing moves unless it is moved, and MHE does the moving.” And that means serving the warfighter wherever the warfighter may be. “If a Marine is fighting in every clime and place, his materiel handling equipment and construction equipment needs to be there too,” said Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Reilly, deputy program manager for engineering systems at the Marine Corps Systems Command. “Equipment that is expeditionary is critical to the Marine Corps since it travels in ships and flies into unimproved airfields. Pinpointing sniper perches Special Operations Technology Hostile sniper fire has historically been a major cause of casualties among United States ground forces, and the current conflicts have proved no different. U.S. ground forces operating in Afghanistan and Iraq have been faced with the continuous threat of sniper fire. Such has been the nature of the conflicts being fought against insurgents in urban environments—which provide an enemy endless places to hide—but also in rural mountainous regions where snipers can find cover in terrain much more familiar to them than to U.S. troops. Snipers attack in groups of ones and twos and not in waves, taking pot shots at U.S. forces. These enemy engagements are very brief, and therefore are difficult to defeat. Vehicle and environmental noise often prevent personnel from hearing the report of sniper fire or from localizing its source. They might not be aware they are under attack until they hear the ding of a round bouncing off a vehicle—or worse. To reduce potential casualties, ground forces require situational awareness. They need to be alerted to the location of local threats and to be able to respond to take out those threats immediately. These kinds of capabilities are being provided by a number of sniper detection systems that have been designed and developed for use by ground forces. The systems currently in use by U.S. forces are acoustic-based, meaning that the system is equipped to listen through an array of microphones for the bang and crack of sniper gunfire. By processing the signals collected from sensors, they alert users to the presence of incoming fire and provide an indication of the direction and distance of that fire. These systems range from vehicle-mounted systems to soldier-worn gadgets. Denying access Special Operations Technology Remote, ground-based electronic sensors, used to collect intelligence on enemy movements and to aid in surveillance and reconnaissance, have been available to the United States military for decades. But sensor technology has progressed dramatically since the war in Vietnam, when acoustic and seismic sensors, which pick up sound and vibration respectively, were dropped in the vicinity of Viet Cong supply routes. In earlier times, all of the processing, analysis, and interpretation of the sensors’ work was done on the back end, by highly trained personnel working with the technology of that day. Today’s unattended ground sensor systems come in a variety packages and flavors. Besides acoustic and seismic capabilities, sensors these days are also capable of electro-optical, infrared, and magnetic detection. Today’s unattended ground sensor (UGS) systems vary from simpler intrusion detection systems which raise an alarm when a perimeter has been breached, to those which can identify and classify an approaching threat and transmit that information directly to decision makers. Still others are capable of activating cameras to provide users with imagery of potential targets while others are combined with munitions which can target those threats. The right round Special Operations Technology The use by British Army foot patrols in Afghanistan of weapons using 5.56 caliber ammunition has revealed some of the limitations of that variety of bullet. The soldiers complained they were being outranged by, and therefore unable to return fire to, Taliban fighters armed with Russian-made AK47s using 7.62 caliber ammunition. As a result, 7.62 weapons were once again issued to the British patrols. The United States military uses a number of different calibers of small arms ammunition, including both the 7.62 and 5.56 caliber rounds. The 5.56 mm M4 carbine is the standard rifle now issued to U.S. Army troops. The advantages and problems associated with both varieties of ammunition are of concern to U.S. military officials as well. Comparing the 7.62 and 5.56 caliber ammunition in isolation reveals trade-offs between the two. The 5.56 ammunition and weapons are lighter in weight, easing the burden on dismounted warfighters. They have less stopping power, and are also less likely to penetrate doors and walls, but the latter attribute can be an advantage in urban combat situations where the prevention of collateral damage is important. But they also have a much shorter range than the 7.62—its energy and lethality rapidly fall away after about 300 meters—making them less effective in standoff engagements with an adversary. The 7.62 mm round can easier drop an enemy and has a much longer range than the 5.56, but both the ammunition and the weapons that fire them are weightier. The 7.62 weapons also have significantly greater recoil, making them harder to control in automatic mode. The recoil also makes it more difficult to train recruits to shoot accurately. A key question for decision-makers concerning the next generation of weapons is whether these two different calibers of ammunition should be replaced both with one general-purpose round, which would equip all troops with weapons effective at multiple combat ranges. Port of call: Hampton Roads Government Health IT In Hampton Roads, Va., the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs are staging the most far-reaching military health information mash-up ever attempted. Taking place in southeastern Virginia’s Tidewater region, an area with a dense concentration of military personnel, the project will bring together defense and veterans medical centers, as well as local providers Sentara Healthcare, Riverside Health System and Bon Secours Medical Group in an unprecedented test of health information-sharing across the military-civilian divide. The project is planned as a leap forward in the military’s effort to create a single Virtual Electronic Lifetime Record (VLER) for its members. VLER health communities will test electronic health information-sharing among the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs and private provider networks. The network that evolves from the pilot will help cement the Obama administration’s vision for establishing easy access by armed services members and veterans to their complete medical and administrative personnel records. Don't be hit Ground Combat Technology The United States military’s involvement in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq means that American forces are often operating at close quarters with the enemy, often in urban environments. This state of affairs had left tactical vehicles vulnerable to attack by rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and other rocketpropelled, armor-penetrating weapons. The U.S. armed forces and their industry partners face a number of dilemmas in devising defenses to these weapons. Chief among these is to devise a product that is non-lethal, so as to minimize collateral damage as well as potential fratricide. The armed services, as well as private industry concerns, both in the U.S. and overseas, have devised and continue to develop defenses that protect vehicles from the worst of an RPG or similar attack. These defensive systems can be broadly divided into two categories. Passive defenses, such as netting or bar armor, equip a vehicle with material designed to absorb the force and blunt the trauma associated with an RPG hit. Active defenses are those mounted on vehicles that detect, classify and track incoming threats before launching a countermeasure which either blocks or diverts an RPG, or disables it in such a way as to prevent it from penetrating the vehicle’s armor. Public Diplomacy 2.0 ISN Security Watch The Obama administration has the reputation for being Web 2.0-savvy, and for good reason. 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 connection technologies, as some now call them - applications that encourage user collaboration, interaction and contribution - have been carried over to the Obama administration, most notably as part of White House and State Department public diplomacy programs. But the program to use web tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to influence international public opinion actually found its start in the waning days of the Bush administration, when a team of White House and State Department operatives initiated a program attempting to defeat international terrorists in the same cyber venue in which they had achieved so much success in propagandizing, recruiting, organizing and fundraising. Expeditionary airfields Special Operations Technology The current expeditionary posture of the United States armed forces requires the agility and flexibility to land forces, equipment and supplies at forward locations expeditiously. During the Cold War, the U.S. military prepositioned forces and materiel six months or a year in advance. Today’s commanders need to deploy forces to hot spots within a matter of days. They work on timelines measured in hours instead of days or weeks. These requirements suggest the capability to quickly stand up functioning airfields in forward areas of operation. Warfighters must prepare the ground for runways and landing zones, and be prepared with lighting and air traffic control systems. Private industry is supplying the armed forces with a variety of materials designed to transform rugged landscapes into suitable airfields, as well as with portable equipment to allow them to function properly. 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. Tracking every ship at sea US Coast Guard Forum The United States Coast Guard’s multifaceted set of missions—defense, maritime and environmental safety, law enforcement, and homeland security— are matched by a wide scope of information technology requirements. Since the early 1990s, many of the Coast Guard’s most important IT applications have been developed and sustained at its Operations Systems Center (OSC), a unit located near Martinsburg, W.V. The OSC is an information technology service organization providing support for some 65 Coast Guard enterprise systems. Some of these applications reach beyond the Coast Guard to encompass the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies; at least one is international in scope. The OSC employs over 70 federal government staff members and 450 contract personnel, and provides a full spectrum of IT capabilities, including full system life cycle support, system hosting, and system development and support. The OSC operates along five business lines—financial, human resources, intelligence, logistics and operations, explained Captain Michael Ryan, the unit’s commanding officer. Each business line is responsible for the life cycle support of multiple applications within its area, including development, maintenance and updating enterprise applications. “The enterprise applications that we deal with are those that go beyond just a regional influence within the Coast Guard,” said Ryan. More power, less battery Special Operations Technology Toward the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, so the story goes, the Army Materiel Command was scrounging around for any batteries it could find to send to the theater. Whether true or not, the story is a testament to the increasing reliance of individual warfighters on electrically powered devices. Small teams of deployed special operations and other ground units increasingly carry with them a range of devices—from radios and GPS units to night vision goggles, range finders and body armor cooling systems—that operate on electric power. That means the troops must carry their power sources with them, and this adds to the weight and bulkiness of their burdens. For the most part, the U.S. military still relies on batteries, not unlike those common in everyday civilian life, to meet most of these portable and man-wearable power needs. In the case of non-rechargeable—“primary,” in industry parlance—batteries, warfighters must carry replacement batteries wherever they go. In the case of rechargeable batteries, they must tote the chargers around with them. In some cases, power sources can make up 20 to 40 pounds of the loads carried around by warfighters. Part of the reason for this burden is that different devices use different kinds of batteries. It comes as no surprise, then, that the military and its industrial contractors continually strive to achieve greater power density—packing more electricity into a smaller package— in the batteries they produce and procure. There have also been efforts to standardize battery-run devices around a limited number of power sources and to optimize their usage by making batteries smarter. White House likely to meet resistance on trade The Daily Caller President Obama is likely to meet with congressional roadblocks, if, as he promised in last week’s State of the Union address, he intends to pursue a policy “that opens global markets.” In a little-quoted passage of the annual speech, Obama also promised to “strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea, Panama and Colombia.” To flesh out what his boss meant in those cryptic references, deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis expounded on trade policy in a morning-after speech before a gathering sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Key pillars of Obama’s trade policy, Marantis said, will include pursuing the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) — a proposed regional free-trade area to encompass the U.S., Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Australia and Vietnam — while also pushing ratification of the already-negotiated free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Addressing how the administration would tackle the new item on the trade agenda — TPP — while closing old business, Marantis said, “We can talk and chew gum at the same time.” The real question is whether the Obama administration will be able to pursue Bush-era trade policies while overcoming congressional objections at the same time. The South Korea, Panama and Colombia trade agreements were each presented to Congress at least three years ago without having been acted upon. An even bigger question is why Obama is pursuing free trade in the first place. As a candidate, Obama argued that the American public had been oversold on the benefits of free trade and specifically came out against the Colombia FTA. Commerce: stimulus deserves middling grades The Daily Caller The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) and a member of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board agreed with the less-than-stellar grades given the federal government’s performance by the Reinvestment and Recovery Act by Input, a government market research firm. At a presentation before an industry group in Washington on Thursday, DOC Inspector General Todd Zinser agreed that the grades given by Input’s Kevin Plexico were “fair.” Input gave the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) an Incomplete for jobs creation, a C for transparency, a B- for contracting effectiveness and a B for speed of spending. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency (RAT) Board is made up of 12 federal department inspectors general and was created to coordinate oversight and policy on how the $787 billion stimulus is spent. Two if by sea Military Logistics Forum The idea of seabasing is not a new one. Aircraft carrier groups, hospital ships and their supply vessels can each be considered seabases of a sort. Tsunami relief provided in Indonesia in 2004 and humanitarian assistance operations in Bangladesh in the aftermath of the November 2007 cyclone were both seabased. So are the ongoing multinational antipiracy operations off the coast of Somalia. What is relatively new is the emphasis that the Navy and Marine Corps have placed in recent years on enhancing capabilities for prepositioning equipment and material at sea, and on transferring vehicles and equipment from seabases. These efforts have included acquiring new vessels and inserting new technologies that promote these goals. “Seabasing supports the application of joint, multi-national, and other government and non-government agency capabilities in regions where access is restricted or denied due to political sensitivities, threat, or lack of infrastructure,” explained Navy spokesperson Lieutenant Callie Ferrari. “Seabasing supports the maritime strategy’s core capabilities, including supporting forward presence, humanitarian assistance and disaster response, and maritime security operations, as well as power projection during conflict.” Transforming the fleet US Coast Guard Forum The United States Coast Guard is faced with multifaceted missions—ensuring public safety, enforcing laws, protecting natural resources, and providing for maritime homeland security. These challenges require that the Coast Guard invest in and maintain a variety of operational vessels. At the same time, the Coast Guard is challenged to maintain vessel readiness. Fatigue, corrosion and obsolete technology have taken their toll on its fleet. In response, the Coast Guard has committed, since the mid-1990s, annual investments of over $1.5 billion and a total of $27 billion for modernization and recapitalization, much of it directed toward upgrading and replacing the Coast Guard’s aging vessels. Since 2007, the Coast Guard’s Acquisition Directorate has been spearheading this effort. A major component of the program’s portfolio is the Integrated Deepwater System program. Deepwater began in the mid-1990s when the Coast Guard sought a comprehensive, state-of-the-market, system-of-systems approach to delivering new platforms and modernizing legacy assets. In 2002, the Coast Guard competitively awarded the Deepwater program as an independent acquisition to Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The approach of using a commercial lead systems integrator for a complex acquisition proved problematic, however. Systems failures and cost overruns led the Government Accountability Office to conclude that the Coast Guard’s Deepwater management approach was overly risky. At the end of the first five-year contract award period, the Coast Guard reasserted its role as lead systems integrator and decided to bring Deepwater projects under the management of the Acquisition Directorate. The Pentagon’s defense review trap ISN Security Watch The Washington defense and contracting communities are anxiously awaiting next month's release of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, in a speech in New York last month, promised the report would be driven by current Afghanistan and Iraq war needs, placing an emphasis on ground troops and counterinsurgency operations and less on the modernization of weapons systems. If that proves to be the case, it would amount to a Pentagon about-face since the last QDR, released in 2006, which had a rather short shelf life. The last edition was replete with proposals for spending on a laundry list of military modernization programs, much of which were to be scrapped or scaled back after the Department of Defense decided a year later to increase ground troop strength and emphasize counterinsurgency operations. The fiasco associated with the last QDR may be explainable, at least in part, on the change of leadership at the Pentagon. Donald Rumsfeld was pushed out as secretary of defense and his replacement, Robert Gates, who continues to serve in the Obama administration after having been appointed by George W Bush, emphasized planning for the wars the US was actually fighting instead the wars Rumsfeld would have liked the US to be fighting. Vehicle vital signs Military Logistics Forum U.S. military land, sea and air platforms face deployment for stretches of months at a time. It is important for the armed services to know that any given vehicle, vessel or aircraft is ready for duty in advance of deployment. Similarly, it is advantageous once in theater for commanders to be apprised in advance of potential problems with a platform that may require maintenance. The armed services deploy, and industry provides, a number of automated diagnostic tools that measure critical functions within these platforms and are able to give the green light for deployment or alert personnel of upcoming problems before they become critical. These automated tools provide a number of advantages, according to Don Flynn, director of military vehicles at BAE Systems. “They reduce costs by allowing maintenance to be performed before a catastrophic failure occurs,” he said. “It is easier and cheaper to replace an oil filter or a fan belt before you reach system failure.” Onboard diagnostic tools also help make logistics more efficient and promote higher levels of readiness by allowing maintainers to order parts in advance. “You can track usage and health data so maintainers can have parts ready when vehicles come in for work,” said Flynn. Otherwise, a vehicle would have to be brought back to the maintenance shop if needed parts were not on hand after inspection. Rendering a more realistic scene Military Training Technology With the continued emphasis by the U.S. DoD and other nations’ militaries on realistic simulation scenarios for training and mission rehearsal, the development of image generators that can portray true-tolife situations has become all the more important. Image generators (IGs) are a component of training and simulation visual systems that create a virtual environment which is as realistic as possible for the task at hand. These might include, for example, out-the-window views on flight simulators, or an entire cast of characters and cultural artifacts for urban operations training. Visual systems are the package of technologies—including image generators, hardware, software, and display systems— that bring these virtual environments to the trainee. “Image generators are essentially the picture generator portion of a game engine,” explained Phil Perey, technology director at CAE. “They give you a view of the outside world and they do that in a way that is interactive.” Current image generators operate at 60 Hz, a speed which will be increasing before long, challenging developers to provide fluid graphics with very low latency times for a myriad of environmental permutations including, for example, changes in terrain, weather, and shading. The latest IGs also come equipped with capabilities that emulate views from infrared sensors, night vision goggles, and other such devices. Assault power Special Operations Technology In May of last year, a new weapon, the Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle (SCAR), was issued to a battalion of Army Rangers, who were headed for Afghanistan. Since that time, over 1,800 SCARs have been fielded with U.S. forces, including with the Navy SEALs. SCAR was developed by the U.S. Special Operations Command to provide a modular weapon system that could be adapted to various operational missions and training requirements. Also important to USSOCOM was reducing the logistics footprint by replacing six legacy weapon systems. SCAR is one of several new or improved weapons systems that could enhance the performance and ease the burden of special operations ground forces in the coming years. Increased modularity, reliability and use life are among the key goals sought in the development of future generations of infantry weapons, as is reduced weight. Legacy weapons are also constantly being improved to increase their reliability and to enable them to accommodate the latest war fighting apparatus, such as night vision equipment. Encryption evolution Military Information Technology The U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) is currently in the process of testing and evaluating a new encryption technology designed to lower costs and maintain security by allowing various Department of Defense networks operating at different security levels to merge onto a single network infrastructure while keeping data exclusive to authorized user groups. The project will test the Unisys Stealth Solution for Network, a secure information sharing system that seeks to obscure the existence of classified sources of data from hackers, while also employing both new and traditional encryption methodologies. The initiative is just one of a number of ongoing efforts by military and industry to develop encryption techniques that are ever more secure and efficient. Especially with the growing popularity of wireless systems, encryption technologies—with their promise of solving the age-old dilemma between the need to share information and the need to safeguard it from others—are a vital aspect of operations. Getting serious about games Military Training Technology The U.S. military is committed to the use of serious gaming as part of training regimes and will likely be using more games in the coming years. A significant landmark in the Department of Defense’s use of serious gaming came earlier this year when the Army committed $17 million to acquire 3,500 copies of the ground combat game Virtual Battle Space 2 (VBS2). The military has adopted gaming as a training strategy because it delivers the goods, in some situations, better than traditional classroom instruction. However, it is not meant to replace but only to complement live, virtual and constructive training experiences.
“We have commissioned studies on the effectiveness of gaming for training purposes,” said Roger Smith, chief scientist and chief technology officer for the U.S. Army’s PEO STRI. “The evidence shows that it works very well. It is usually much better than didactic classroom lectures because soldiers pay more attention and pick up lessons quicker. People who used to fail out of lecture or demonstration courses are now taking the same test and passing.” Smaller but accurate Military Space and Missile Forum New rules of engagement designed to minimize collateral damage have governed U.S. forces in Afghanistan since early in the summer of 2009, when General Stanley McChrystal took command of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Safeguarding the civilian population has now taken priority over neutralizing enemy combatants in that nation. This evolved emphasis in the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has meant that warfighters are demanding the delivery of smaller munitions when air power is called in to support ground operations. At the same time, dwindling military budgets means these capabilities must be delivered on a shoestring. U.S. Navy and Air Force efforts to supply air-to-ground weapons in support of operations in Afghanistan have emphasized responsiveness to warfighter requirements together with budgetary frugality. One key attribute required of small air-to-ground missiles, to ensure they do the damage expected of them, is accuracy. To that end, the U.S. military is updating existing weapons to include advanced sensor and guidance systems. “Small warheads reduce collateral damage,” said Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Spires, head of weapons and tactics at the Air Combat Command, “but if the target is not hit precisely, they don’t cause much damage at all.” Drawdown drawing near Military Logistics Forum The drawdown of U.S. military personnel from Iraq has begun to have its effects on the planning and operations of deployed logistics units. Some are already involved in moving personnel and materiel to Afghanistan; others are executing plans to reduce the U.S. footprint in Iraq, while still others are full speed ahead and are expecting to draw down only at some point in the future. The U.S. Air Force’s 447th Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron, based at Sather Air Base at Baghdad International Airport, has seen the effects of the military drawdown in Iraq primarily within its aerial port operations. “We have constant communication with our higher headquarters, who provide visibility of drawdown-specific movements as they arise,” said First Lieutenant Alan M. Reynolds, the 447th’s director of operations. “In the past few months, our airmen have worked closely with the Army to coordinate the movement of their units to the Afghanistan area of responsibility.” Linking engineering and sustainment Military Logistics Forum Around 10 years ago, the Department of Defense set out to re-engineer defense logistics by placing increased reliance on the private sector for the support of military weapons systems. That was before the nation’s long commitment to fighting expeditionary wars in Southwest Asia. Once the United States began to operate in those far-flung environments, the challenges to military logistics and sustainment contractors have multiplied. Now, they must provide support for systems, not only stateside or in established garrisons in Germany, but halfway around the world in places without established supporting infrastructures. Time and distance are two, but perhaps not the most severe, of these challenges. Often, contractors must operate alongside military personnel in austere and non-permissive environments, away from the comforts of home, family, and business-as-usual, and in locations where they place themselves in danger of being injured or killed by enemy combatants. Unattended ground sensors Special Operations Technology As far back as 1966, during the war in Vietnam, the United States military deployed remote, ground-based electronic sensors to collect intelligence on enemy movements and to aid in surveillance and reconnaissance. Back then, acoustic and seismic sensors, which pick up sound and vibration respectively, were dropped from aircraft in the vicinity of the Ho Chin Minh Trail and other Viet Cong supply routes.
Navy aircraft would then fly over the areas seeded with the sensors to pick up their output. All of the processing, analysis and interpretation of the sensors’ work was done on the back end, by highly trained personnel working with the computer systems of that day. Sensor technology has progressed markedly since then. The sensors themselves are loaded with sophisticated software that allows them to identify, and in many cases, classify, an approaching threat and transmit that information directly to those who need it. Wireless and satellite communications make the transmission of that intelligence easier and more efficient. DoD eyes smaller propulsion systems Military Space and Missile Forum Military space and missile systems are evolving and transforming. With those developments come updated requirements for propulsion systems. The Department of Defense, through programs such as Operationally Responsive Space, wants smaller satellites built, modular in design, which can be rapidly configured to meet immediate mission requirements. That program requires the development of smaller propulsion systems that can be integrated into a modular design. To a certain extent, military space programs have a model for the miniaturization of propulsion components in ballistic defense systems. Civilian space programs are already studying ballistic defense systems in an effort to adapt components, including propulsion systems. Military space programs will likely be doing the same. What's behind door #1? Special Operations Technology For a U.S. military increasingly tasked with operating in densely populated urban areas, assaulting and breaching buildings is becoming an increasingly important element of the mission set. There are several factors that need to be considered when planning and executing such a mission. One is how to approach the structure in question. A second is what means are best to actually enter the building.
A variety of companies are coming up with myriad systems, tools and devices to smooth the way for the operators undertaking these very dangerous activities. What is more, they are constantly improving them. For example, could special forces do better than use ladders to scale outside walls? Attacking forces have used ladders throughout all of history and little has changed in the design of the ladder—basically two side rails and rungs—but what has changed has the way to move the ladder where it needs to be and offer better stabilization. Several companies have devised systems to make the ladder more useful and safer in a tactical environment. Or, take the task of affixing an explosive charge to a door to facilitate entry. One company, Sentry Solutions of Wilton, N.H., has developed a breaching paste that ensures the charge will stick to its target until detonated, minimizing the resulting fireball. The solid state alternative Military Information Technology When a U.S. Navy aerial surveillance aircraft encountered Chinese jet fighters and was forced to land on a Chinese-held island in 2001, the crew found it necessary, in light of the hostile nature of the incident, to destroy the data stored on the aircraft’s onboard systems. Logically, such an operation ought to be accomplished with the push of a button or by entering a simple command. Instead, the crew was forced to use axes against the systems in order to prevent their Chinese captors from gaining access to sensitive data. The crew had to physically destroy the storage media because most of the data gathering systems on the aircraft in question employ hard disk drives like those found in most home and office computers. It is nearly impossible to completely erase a hard disk, and any erasure would take too long in an emergency situation. That’s why the axes came out. These days, growing numbers of military computing systems, and some commercial ones as well, are employing solid state drives (SSDs) as an alternative to the hard drives familiar to anyone who owns a personal computer. While SSDs have had a niche in high-end military systems for some time now, usage is expected to expand greatly as prices continue to fall. Displaying for knowledge Military Geospatial Technology As geospatial intelligence data becomes increasingly available for use in an ever-widening variety of applications, from big-picture command and control to small-unit tactical operations, there is growing interest in improving the means of displaying that data. Doing so within each of those contexts, however, presents its own set of technological challenges. At the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for example, analysts spend hours viewing and interpreting geospatial imagery on their office computers. The agency is seeking to upgrade its cathode ray tube desktop displays to newer technology. Command centers could make use of large-scale displays that can be viewed and discussed by a group of staffers, instead of all of them crowding around a computer monitor. Such an application requires the exploitation of the latest projection technology and the synchronization of data from multiple projectors and multiple sources in order to generate data-rich, highresolution imagery on a large display. Deployed units are finding uses for geospatial data on platforms as diverse as warships and tactical ground vehicles. Here, the challenge is often to display images of acceptable resolution in an area with limited transmission bandwidth. A number of companies specialize in technologies that facilitate and actuate large-scale, high-resolution displays that can be used to display geospatial intelligence. Mechdyne, for example, specializes in advanced visualization environments, including three-dimensional and stereoscopic displays, as well as large-scale audiovisual solutions. Geospatial intelligence analysts often want 3-D viewing to discern depth in the imagery and to interpret spatial details. This is achieved by presenting two separate images, viewed while wearing polarized glasses that direct one image to the left eye and the other to the right eye, achieving the perception of depth. Performance made to order Military Logistics Forum In the 1990s, the Department of Defense set out to save billions ofdollars by re-engineering defense logistics. The program revolved around an increased reliance on the private sector for the support of military weapons systems and the concept of entering into long-term logistics support contracts, which were based on incentives to achieve specific performance goals. This arrangement DoD later called performance- based logistics, or PBL. By 2001, DoD identified PBL as its preferred weapon system support strategy. “DoD defines PBL as the purchase of performance outcomes, such as the availability of functioning weapon systems, through long-term support arrangements rather than the purchase of individual elements of support—such as parts, repairs and engineering support,” noted a report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in January 2009. While PBL was first applied to weapons system platforms, DoD now uses it to purchase support for subsystems and components as well. The Defense Logistics Agency, the Air Force, and other services and agencies throughout the U.S. military have entered into PBL arrangements in a variety of settings and participate in PBLs in a multiplicity of contexts. The military attributes the success of performance-based logistics to the establishment of robust relationships with prime contractors and to the identification of proper performance metrics, which vary with each contract. Access for the future Military Information Technology Late last year, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) issued a request for information on industry capabilities for a physical access control system (PACS) at the Pentagon. That system is being procured in order to make the massive structure’s physical access system compliant with FIPS 201-1, a standard published in March 2006 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology on personal identity verification (PIV) of federal employees and contractors.
A PACS is an information technology infrastructure that allows for the electronic verification of employees entering a facility with a physical credential such as the Department of Defense’s Common Access Card (CAC). A PACS is powered by a server database that includes a comprehensive compendium of the identities of CAC holders, their authentication data, and their levels of access privilege, as well as the capability of running a suite of authentication functionalities required by the PIV standard. The Department of Defense has been issuing CACs to the defense community as the standard identification card for logical access to computer systems for some time. In 2004, the White House issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 12, which required all federal agencies to begin a program of issuing high assurance verification cards to all employees for both logical access to federal computer systems and physical access to facilities. The requirements of HSPD 12 have been widely interpreted as requiring a biometric identifier, such as fingerprint or facial recognition or an iris scan. DoD now uses the CAC as the exclusive mechanism for access to department computer systems. The idea now is to apply the CAC to physical access to the Pentagon. Numerous DoD facilities both stateside and around the world have already made that transition or are in the process of doing so. Supply chain operations reference Military Logistics Forum U.S. military and government agencies charged with providing supplies to warfighters by their nature seek to enhance the efficiency and lower the costs of their operations. But those efforts have reached a state of enhanced urgency, thanks to the economic times in which we live. With federal, including defense, dollars stretched thin and the Obama administration’s promise to stop using supplemental budgets to fund combat operations (beginning next year), some see a cultural shift on the horizon, which will demand ever further efficiencies and cost cutting. The discipline of supply chain management teaches that achieving these virtues requires an end-to-end enterprise view of logistics that stretches from supplier to warfighter, from order to delivery. So it is significant that three government agencies, two of them military and one civilian, have united in a partnership to streamline warfighter supply operations. The U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) has partnered with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the General Services Administration (GSA) in an effort known as the Strategic Opportunities Initiative to study, analyze and re-engineer the processes they employ to provide supplies to warfighters. Aiding them in this effort has accorded with a method called the Supply Chain Operations Reference model, or SCOR. “The goal of the project is to meet warfighter needs at minimum total supply chain cost,” said Army Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Gulick, chief of the Distribution Metrics and Analysis Branch of USTRANSCOM. “This is achieved through unity of effort among the organizations in the Joint Deployment Distribution Enterprise” (JDDE). Soft power with guns ISN Security Watch It hardly could have been a coincidence. On Wednesday last week, the Pentagon's Military Health Service chief spoke before the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington on the role of the US military in global health. Meanwhile, the head surgeon of US Africa Command flew in from Stuttgart to chair a two-day symposium beginning on Thursday on AFRICOM's health-related activities. With a new congress having recently been convened and a president about to take the oath of office, it is not surprising that advocates of military medical diplomacy are front and center extolling the virtues of their activities. US military health officials want to protect their budgets in a Washington atmosphere that may not be the best for them. For one thing, the economic crisis has the US government pouring trillions of dollars into efforts to stimulate financial activity and create jobs, causing the budget deficit to balloon to frightful levels. More to the point, many in Washington, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is being held over from the Bush administration by Barack Obama, have questioned the growing militarization of US foreign policy. By that, Gates means not only the rush to use US military force before diplomatic channels have been exhausted, but also the emphasis on using military capabilities for projects such as infrastructure building and humanitarian relief. Full speed ahead with LCS ISN Security Watch For approximately the last fifteen years, the US Navy has been fairly consistent in its projections that a fleet of between 300 and 320 ships would satisfy its long-run mission requirements. The Navy’s current number is 313. The Navy defines its requirements as the ability to support a major conflagration together with another skirmish elsewhere on the globe.. It periodically runs analyses from which it builds classified models that it uses to project its vessel needs, Robert Work, vice president of strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, told ISN Security Watch. The fact that Navy estimates of fleet strength have varied little over the last decade and a half shows that it is has likely employed a consistent set of assumptions over that period, Work asserted. But the US Navy now operates only 280 ships, which means that it must embark on an ambitious shipbuilding and acquisition program if it is to reach its desired strength. In fact, the navy has plans to implement such a program over the next 30 years. The problem is that, according to a study by Work released by the CSBA in February, given the budgets likely to be allocated to the Navy, these plans do not look realistic. Powering down Military Information Technology Researchers have been calculating the levels of electricity used by computers and other office equipment since the late 1980s. The interest in this subject intensified in the early 1990s, when the Environmental Protection Agency issued its first EnergyStar consumption specifications for personal computers. In the last 10 years, however, the proliferation and increasing importance of electricity-intensive computer servers and data centers—driven by demands for new Internet services such as search, music downloads, video-on-demand, social networking and telephony— have really brought this issue to the forefront. At the same time, there is an increased awareness of the issues surrounding fossil fuel consumption, including global warming. The costs, both financial and environmental, of greater energy consumption have led to a great deal of talk in recent years about cutting energy costs and consumptions in IT departments. But a recent report from CDW Corp. suggests that IT executives may care about energy efficiency, but that this not reflected in their priorities when it comes to purchasing IT equipment. A new dawn for democratic capitalism ISN Special Reports The presidential campaign in the US has taken an ironic twist in recent weeks, as John McCain, in his latest attempt to steer the electorate away from focusing on substantive issues, has used the "S"-word to describe Barack Obama - socialist. This, in a season in which everyone from Republican legislators to Wall Street bankers have been heard to ruefully proclaim that "We're all socialists now." To describe the current wave of government interventions in the financial markets as socialist is not that much of a stretch. In the US, at least, the federal government is taking equity stakes in financial institutions, sometimes forcibly. Ultimately, however, the west will want to preserve its legacy of democratic capitalism. But in order to do so, it will have to rewrite that legacy. That governments will have a role in shaping markets for some time to come is axiomatic. The transactions which will see governments ultimately pouring trillions of dollars into markets and institutions will take a long time to unwind. At what point governments will be willing to withdraw from this intervention is an open question. The greater challenge for governments will be to forge a political economy which is designed to prevent the market meltdown we are now witnessing. This means moving away from direct market interventions and towards a regime of intelligent regulations in which democratic institutions act to preserve the benefits of free markets. Sensor project flies again Military Information Technology Still seeking an updated airborne surveillance platform, the Army is reviving its previously canceled Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) program with a new strategy based on greater reliance on commercial technology and an incremental approach to development.
The new iteration of the program, which is already well into the contract award process, represents a marked change from the status of ACS just a couple of years ago. It was initially an Army-Navy joint effort, but the Navy eventually pulled out. The Army awarded Lockheed Martin an $879 million contract in 2004 to develop the first phase of the ACS project, only to cancel the contract a year and a half later. The Army was able to salvage ACS for a couple of reasons, analysts say, most importantly because it still had the requirement for the updated airborne electronic surveillance capabilities that ACS was intended to provide. In addition, the contract cancellation was precipitated at its early stages, not because of problems with electronic capabilities, but primarily because of the inadequacy of the aircraft chosen to house the system. The early termination paved the way for a new version of the program, based on the argument that problems were detected and decisively dealt with early on, before too much money had been spent. Equally important, ACS has morphed from a development program to an integration program during its hiatus. Many of the subsystems to be incorporated into ACS have matured in the interim. An emphasis on COTS technologies and an incremental approach to technology introduction have made ACS all the more viable going forward. From factory to foxhole Military Logistics Forum Over the last decade or more, the commercial world has reengineered its business processes and implemented new technologies to streamline product distribution. The idea has been to migrate from the stockpiling of inventories and towards delivering specific items to specific customers. The United States military has sought to emulate the business world in a number of areas, including distribution, towards the same ends: greater efficiency and reduced costs. When it comes to supplying customers, in this case, warfighters, the military, especially at time of war, must wrestle with the additional problem of getting on-time deliveries to mobile, forward-deployed forces. Recent developments in military transportation are emblematic of the how the Department of Defense is meeting these challenges.
Distribution is the term that best describes the approach the military now takes to transportation. Distribution goes beyond earlier concepts of transportation and logistics by suggesting an end-to-end approach that delivers material from the factory to the foxhole more effectively and at lower cost than before. The evolving effort to accomplish this feat has required organizational changes, new relationships with private industry, and the more effective deployment of technology. The key organizational change came in September 2003, when former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld vested the commander of the United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) with authority as Distribution Process Owner, or DPO. USTRANSCOM thus became responsible for all strategic movement activities and policies for the Department of Defense.
Air Force NetCents-2 contract ready for takeoff Defense Systems Nine-billion dollars bought the U.S. Air Force plenty of network centric hardware, software, and services. But the Air Force is about to embark on a second NETCENTS contract worth an additional $9 billion. NETCENTS, as its name suggests, supports network centric operations through the acquisition of information technologies, networking equipment and services, and voice, video and data communications hardware and software. Air Force components use the NETCENTS contract routinely for networking and information technology products and service requirements. The other armed services, as well as the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), have also made acquisitions through NETCENTS. The first NETCENTS contract, which will expire in 2009, was awarded to eight prime contractors, four of them small businesses, all of whom, together with their teams of subcontractors, were entitled to compete for task orders issued under the contract. This contracting scheme will be changing significantly under the new contract, in which eight separate contracts will be let to dozens of prime contractors. This may play havoc with contractors that do not adapt to the new regime. The Air Force expects to award the NETCENTS-2 contracts as early as May 2009. Also shifting will be the scope of the contract. Other Air Force and non-Air Force network centric programs such as the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) will likely be incorporated into NETCENTS. In addition, there will be an increased emphasis on acquiring the services necessary to establish and maintain service-oriented architectures (SOAs). (See sidebars 1 and 2). This reflects the Pentagon’s continued move toward SOAs as a key organizing principle behind U.S. military information systems and networks since the first NETCENTS contract was let.
Battling botnets Military Information Technology In May of last year, a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack was launched against government and commercial computer networks in the Baltic nation of Estonia. Rumors abounded at the time that the Russian government was behind the attack, miffed by a perceived slight by the Estonian government.
Perpetrators often muster the capacity to direct massive messaging activity by surreptitiously taking over tens of thousands of computers by embedding them with software components known as malware and transforming them into robots, or “bots,” and arraying these in a decentralized network, or “botnet.” The key piece of evidence connecting Russia to the Estonia attack was that some of the e-mail traffic directed toward Estonian computers was traced back to a Russian government computer. But that did not prove Russian government involvement, because that system could have been recruited to an offending botnet, or the perpetrators could have otherwise spoofed the origin of the traffic. Indeed, most experts have concluded that the attack was organized by ethnic Russians within Estonia, without Russian government complicity. Experts are unanimous that today’s primary use of botnets is by criminal elements out for monetary gain. But the Estonia attack, even if it was not initiated by the Russian government, underscored the need to protect systems from a militarystyle attack, perhaps also to develop the capability to counterattack. Banking on bailout ISN Security Watch The incipient agreement reached in the wee hours of Sunday morning among US congressional leaders and the White House to bail out Wall Street reflects a presumption that has remained almost constant since the beginning of the crisis: that the US government had to intervene in the financial markets. The basic parameters of the proposal to jump start global credit markets with the infusion of US$700 billion in US treasury funds elicited little dissent among Washington insiders – that is, until a group of insurgent Republicans in the House of Representatives bolted from, but later rejoined, the congressional consensus. The Republican proposal would have attempted to attract capital to US markets by allowing US-based multinational corporations to repatriate foreign profits at sharply reduced tax rates. (A small group of House conservatives are still holding out against the bailout.) The Republican scheme, if it would have worked at all, would have taken much longer to stimulate global credit markets than the immediate commitment of US$700 million from the US treasury. The fact that the Republican leadership were persuaded to abandon their proposal is a testimony to the panic that has overtaken Washington. 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.
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. DOD preps personal health records Federal Computer Week Microsoft Corp. is the lead developer in a partnership with the Military Health System and Google Inc. to develop a personal health record system for military health care beneficiaries, an MHS spokesman said. An initial version of the system is scheduled to be unveiled in Dec. 2008, according to an MHS blog posting last month by Stephen Jones, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs. The prototype personal health record will be “available to, and entirely controlled by, the patient, and at no additional cost to the beneficiary,” according to the Jones blog post. |
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US Muslims under microscope ISN Security Watch The Muslim community in the US is concerned, and rightly so, about the perception that it is a breeding ground for home-grown terrorists. Just last week, the Washington Post reported the story of a US-born Virginia resident and convert to Islam who was arrested in New York as he attempted to leave the country for Somalia to join the al-Qaida affiliated al-Shabbab group. There are several other prominent examples of US Muslims adopting radical ideologies and perpetrating acts of violence. US Army Major Nidal Hasan, born in the US of Palestinian parentage, is accused in the November 2009 shootings in Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 US military personnel were killed. More recently, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized US citizen born in Pakistan, pleaded guilty to planting a bomb in Times Square. Both Hasan and Shahzad were apparently in touch with and influenced by the radical Yemen-based American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. On the other hand, it was Aliou Nasse, a Senegalese Muslim immigrant, who alerted New York police to a suspicious SUV parked near Times Square, which turned out to be Shahzad's. All this points to a multifaceted situation, in which the mainstream US Muslim community is attempting to integrate itself into US society while a small, "but not insignificant" number, in the words of a January 2010 study funded by the US Department of Justice, are becoming radicalized and turning to violence. Worse yet for US Muslims is the perception that many of them are in league with enemies of the US, which has led, among other things, to tense relations with law enforcement agencies. An army of apps Military Information Technology Military commanders, users and technology specialists often complain about how long it takes to get software applications into the hands of warfighters in the field. Now some organizations are trying to do something about it. The Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are taking separate approaches to this problem. The Army has initiated a competition among its own people—soldiers and civilians, but not contractors—to come up with new Web and mobile applications in a program called Apps for the Army. DARPA, as part of a recently released request for information entitled Mobile Apps for the Military, is seeking commercially available mobile applications that could be adapted to warfighter handheld devices, thus broadening their functionality and making them more utilitarian. One of the obstacles to the more widespread adoption of commercially available applications by the military is the defense acquisition system itself, analysts inside and outside the Department of Defense say. As DARPA noted in its request for information, “The military’s own acquisition process ... can take years to complete and involves an unwieldy linear process of formal requirements definition, technology development and system certification. Furthermore, there is a real risk that these very technologies will be obsolete by the time they are in the warfighter’s hands.” Mobile Apps for the Military advocates “a transformation in technical approaches and business processes,” with the agency envisioning “the rapid development of applications that keep up with the fluid demands of warfighters on the ever-changing battlefield.” DARPA also seeks to “enable pervasive use” of the mobile apps “targeted especially among the end-users at lower levels in the military echelon.” Some private sector firms, including current DoD contractors, point out that business and technology models already exist that enable the quick deployment of new commercial technologies to the field. But a paradigm shift in military acquisition procedures will be required for those models to be broadly adopted and make a difference in the long run. Agricultural biotechnology and its discontents ISN Special Reports At first blush, the development and introduction of agricultural biotechnologies would seem a godsend for a world challenged to squeeze higher crop yields from diminishing resources of water and arable land. Under the rosiest scenarios, the application of biotechnology could enhance the prospect of food security in poorer nations and provide enhanced economic security to small landholders in developing economies. Biotechnology, a direct descendant of pioneering 19th century work in genetics, manipulates organisms at the gene, chromosome or DNA level to improve plants for specific uses, such as achieving higher yields from a batch of seeds, developing plants that are resistant to pests, or enhancing the nutritional value of crops by boosting their content of beta carotene or iron. But there are also risks associated with agricultural biotechnology. Local plant varieties may fall out of favor, thus narrowing genetic variation. Pest resistance may lead to the evolution of super pests, leaving local farmers without knowledge of techniques such as crop rotation to cope with the phenomenon. Perhaps most significantly, biotechnology tends to rely on proprietary, often patented, products not always available or affordable to developing world farmers. The concentration of intellectual property among a limited number of seed purveyors can lead to monopolistic or oligopolistic market models, as well as higher prices to farmers and consumers. It can also lead to a situation where biotechnology is available only to rich farmers, leaving poor farmers behind. Achieving intelligence dominance ISN Security Watch In the 2009 Academy Award-winning movie The Hurt Locker, a Baghdad butcher holds a cell phone as he stands near the site of an improvised explosive device (IED). A squad of US soldiers shouts at the Iraqi to put the phone down. He smiles and waves, reassuring the soldiers he is not a threat. Then he presses a button on the cell phone and detonates a bomb, killing one of the soldiers. Such an incident would be rare, according to the authors of a new report from the National Strategy Information Center, a Washington-based think tank, if their recommendations were to be implemented by the US military. The report, titled Adapting America’s Security Paradigm and Security Agenda, posits that the population-centric warfare being pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq is here to stay for decades to come, and that the US needs to adapt its military thinking and its capabilities to meet that challenge. The risk of an incident portrayed in The Hurt Locker could have been mitigated, according to the report, by achieving intelligence dominance, a technique originally developed by the British during World War II, and since also practiced by Israelis, Australians and others. Information dominance involves developing deep local knowledge by assigning agents or operatives to relatively small geographical areas of responsibility. The report argues that the US needs to develop this kind of capability together with its host nation partners in current and future population-centric conflicts. Offsetting China in the Pacific ISN Security Watch China's People's Liberation Army is building up anti-access and area-denial capabilities with the apparent goal of extending their power to the western half of the Pacific Ocean. Chinese military and political doctrine holds that China should rule the waves out to the second island chain of the western Pacific, which extends as far as Guam and New Guinea, essentially dividing the Pacific between the US and China and ending US hegemony on that ocean. Among the anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) capabilities being fielded by China include anti-satellite weapons; spaced-based reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition; electromagnetic weapons; advanced fighter aircraft; unmanned aerial vehicles; advanced radar systems; and ballistic and cruise missiles. The Chinese also have an emerging and muscular deep-water navy. "The PLA navy is increasing its numbers of submarines and other ships," said Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of US naval operations, at a recent speech hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. "Navies tend to grow with economies and as trade becomes more important." All of this has US military planners and thinkers worried. The A2AD buildup threatens the US forward presence and power projection in the region. "Unless Beijing diverts from its current course of action, or Washington undertakes actions to offset or counterbalance the effects of the PLA’s military buildup," said a report recently released by the Washington-based Center for Budgetary and Strategic Assessments, "the cost incurred by the US military to operate in the [w]estern Pacific will likely rise sharply, perhaps to prohibitive levels, and much sooner than many expect[...].This situation creates a strategic choice for the United States, its allies and partners: acquiesce in a dramatic shift in the military balance or take steps to preserve it." Justifying targeted killings ISN Security Watch When George W Bush announced his pursuit of a global war on terror, he asserted the right as commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces to target and detain anyone, anywhere he deemed to be a threat to the US. This included US citizens on US soil. The inauguration of Barack Obama heralded the end of Bush's repudiation of international law, in words if not in deeds. When Obama accepted the Nobel peace prize in Oslo last December, he declared that "we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. Even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war." So much for Obama's words; what of his actions? Obama has continued and escalated Bush's war in Afghanistan and has continued and expanded his predecessor's policies of targeting leaders of al-Qaida and the Taliban with air strikes, not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan and Yemen. Are these targeted killings protected under the umbrella of international law? Harold Koh, legal adviser to the US Department of State valiantly defended the legality of Obama's policies and actions at a speech in Washington in March. But it is debatable whether his analysis provided a full legal justification for Obama's policies and activities. Condition based maintenance Military Logistics Forum Drivers who take good care of their automobiles usually change the oil and perform other maintenance at scheduled intervals, based upon the car manufacturer’s recommendations. That’s also the way the United States military traditionally performed maintenance on its vehicles, weapons systems, and other platforms. If a manufacturer recommended, for example, that an aircraft be brought in for maintenance after 300 hours of flight, the armed services would figure in a safety factor and maintain the platform a little bit sooner than that. But there is a transition taking place in military maintenance strategy. Instead of performing maintenance at scheduled intervals, there is now greater emphasis on monitoring components and subsystems so that they can be maintained when they need maintenance, and not before. A series of practices, procedures and technologies called condition based maintenance (CBM) attempt to optimize maintenance tasks, save money and improve machine operational performance. Implementation of CBM requires first of all an analysis of maintenance requirements and priorities. It also involves, especially in the iteration the Department of Defense calls CBM+, the electronic, online monitoring of key subsystems and components for signal processing, detection of incipient failures, and prediction of their remaining useful life. There is evidence that suggests that platforms monitored through CBM+ exhibit greater reliability and readiness, which saves the armed services money. Some newer platforms have the sensors designed in from the beginning; others must be retrofitted with the technology. Budgetary considerations play a large role in determining whether platforms will be retrofitted with CBM+ technologies. Expeditionary processing Military Information Technology Despite continuing efforts at rationalization and consolidation, the Army’s information technology infrastructure remains unwieldy. The service currently maintains information technology operations at 447 locations in the United States alone, supporting 19 commands and agencies, with diverse operational and management schemes. The cost and difficulty of operating many diverse systems prompted a 2009 memo from Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, who called for evolving LandWarNet, the Army’s portion of the Department of Defense’s Global Information Grid, to a global Army information enterprise. “The Army will transform LandWarNet to a centralized, more secure, operationalized and sustainable network capable of supporting an expeditionary Army in this era of persistent conflict,” the memo said. The Army intends to accomplish this by establishing five network service centers worldwide—two in the continental United States and one each in Southwest Asia, Europe and the Pacific—to handle networking, data processing and storage, operations, and security. At the heart of each NSC will be a consolidated data center known as an area processing center (APC). The idea behind APCs is to consolidate identity management, e-mail, data management and storage, security services, backup and recovery services, service desk, collaboration software, knowledge management, and other applications into a set of LandWarNetaccessible enterprise services. The point of consolidation is to lower operating costs and to improve the configuration management, availability and security of the Army’s servers and applications. New scope for NETCENTS Military Information Technology Air Force officials are working on a new version of the NETCENTS contracting vehicle that will be structured substantially differently from its predecessor. The upcoming NETCENTS 2 program will add more complexity to the instrument, but will also likely drive more business to NETCENTS and will especially benefit smaller businesses. The existing program, which was to expire last year, received a one-year extension, with four three-month options, as contracting officials and senior leaders put the finishing touches on the requests for proposals. NETCENTS supports network-centric operations through the acquisition of commercial information technologies, networking equipment and services, and voice, video and data communications hardware and software. The $9 billion indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contact, which was initiated in 2004, has been used primarily by the Air Force, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, which together used 68 percent of the dollars spent and 84 percent of the task orders. The Army spent 11 percent of the total dollars, the Navy, 7 percent, and the Defense Information Systems Agency, 4 percent. The new NETCENTS will include a $24 billion spending ceiling, stricter enforcement of mandatory use policies for Air Force acquisitions of networking and telecommunications equipment and services, and more complicated teaming arrangements. Intel common ground Geospatial Intelligence Forum During a series of tests last summer at Empire Challenge ’09, U.S. Joint Forces Command assessed how the various flavors of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) work together and the degree to which they could share data with command and control systems to create a common operating picture (COP). Geospatial information is the foundational layer upon which the common operating picture is based. DCGS is a family of programs with common elements designed to meet the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance needs of each of the armed services. While DCGS includes common elements, it is not, strictly speaking, a joint program. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are each working on their own DCGS platforms. DCGS, as it is being developed, provides an interoperable architecture for the collection, processing, exploitation, dissemination and archiving of all forms of intelligence. DCGS does not eliminate the use of legacy systems. Instead, each service is adapting its legacy systems to the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), which provides a common operating environment for all of the DCGS programs. Systems that collect, analyze and disseminate geospatial information have become DIB enabled, and newer geospatial tools as well are being developed for use on DCGS. “We saw a greater level of interoperability between the different programs than we had seen before,” said Chris Jackson, chief of integration at JFCOM’S Joint Intelligence Directorate, referring to Empire Challenge ’09. The DCGS-C2 connection was “less than perfect and kind of clunky, but good,” added Frank Hunt, a project lead at JFCOM’s Joint Systems Integration Center. “Luckily, we had command and control engineers on site so they could take information back with them and try to work on it.” The green side of war ISN Security Watch On Earth Day, 22 April, the US Navy conducted a test flight of an F/A-18 Super Hornet at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, run on a 50-percent mixture of a fuel refined from the crushed seeds of the flowering Camelina sativa plant. The flight of the Green Hornet, as it was called, followed an Air Force test a month earlier of an A-10C Thunderbolt II at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, fueled with a similar blend. Both events had the purpose of testing the performance of biofuel/petroleum mixtures with an eye toward the eventual certification of the fuels for routine use. They also demonstrate the efforts of the Department of Defense to increase its use of renewable energy, not only for environmental reasons but also to protect the military from energy price fluctuations and dependence on overseas sources of petroleum. The DoD spends $20 billion a year on energy and incurs $1.3 billion in additional costs for every $10 per barrel increase in the market price of oil, according to a report recently released by the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate. In addition to vulnerability to price fluctuations, the DoD's "reliance on fossil fuels also compromises combat effectiveness by restricting mobility, flexibility and endurance on the battlefield," said the report. "Transportation of fuel to the combat theater is a significant vulnerability as fuel convoys are targets in Iraq and Afghanistan." The most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, released by the DoD in February 2010, recognized the interplay between climate change and the security environment. "Climate change may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict," the QDR noted, "placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world." The Air Force was encouraged by the results of the March A-10C test, Jeff Braun, director of the Air Force Alternative Fuels Certification Office, told ISN Security Watch, and plans to switch half of its continental US jet fuel consumption to alternative fuels by 2016. The Navy's goal is to displace half of its petroleum requirement for the entire fleet by 2020. The Army believes it will be using biofuel blends exclusively in the continental US by 2025. Politics and prosecution ISN Security Watch US Attorney General Eric Holder announced last November that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo detainees would stand trial in a civilian US district court in New York in connection with charges stemming from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But Holder's decision was soon pulled back, after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who at first supported the move, claimed that the security costs to conduct a two-year trial a few blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood would be prohibitive. He was joined by a chorus of Republican members of Congress who argued that military commissions, rather than civilian courts, were the best venues for trying terrorists. One senator, Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has offered the White House a deal under which the detainees would be tried by the military and Graham would not stand in the way of President Barrack Obama's desire to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility. In short, the process of deciding where to prosecute the detainees has become mired in politics. Drawdown Military Logistics Forum The continuing drawdown of U.S. troops and equipment from Iraq, anticipating a withdrawal of combat elements in 2011, is providing the Army with a bumper crop of logistics challenges. The Army Materiel Command, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., has specific processes and facilities in place to smooth this transition. The withdrawal from Iraq is, of course, taking place simultaneously with a buildup in Afghanistan. The AMC, which is the executive lead for the disposition of equipment coming out of Iraq, must first receive a determination from the U.S. Army Central Command, whether theater provided equipment being drawn down from Iraq is needed elsewhere within the area of responsibility of the U.S. Central Command. “We are in support of U.S. forces Iraq and the Army Central Command as they conduct this responsible drawdown from Iraq,” said Lieutenant General James Pillsbury, deputy commanding general of the Army Materiel Command. The AMC commanding general, General Ann Dunwoody, is fond of describing the equipment being withdrawn from Iraq as baseball hurtling southward, Pillsbury related. “We’re the catcher’s mitt,” he added. Preservation for the future Military Logistics Forum A long-term war footing has challenged the U.S. military to transport and store large volumes of equipment in a manner that will avert potential damage from the elements. Units deployed to the Southwest Asia theater will often leave much of their equipment behind in garrison. Since it is rarely possible or practical to store a fleet of trucks, for example, in an indoor facility, these vehicles will be parked in a yard for long periods while not being used. The transport of equipment poses similar, if not greater, challenges. Equipment that can range from training simulators to radar units to aircraft must often be transported on trucks, ships and other vehicles, and be prepared to perform to the maximum upon arrival at their destinations. There are a variety of materials on the market that are used to cover and wrap even the most sensitive pieces of equipment to protect them from everything from water and humidity to wind, dirt and sand. Used in the commercial world to transport and store a variety of different kinds of equipment, such as boats, the same products are also available in varieties that meet military specifications. “The armed forces has a lot of equipment that in today’s conflicts are not being used because we are not fighting a traditional style of warfare,” said Dave Hutton, director of Navy and Coast Guard sales at Shield Technologies Corporation, a company headquartered in Eagan, Minn. “They are being left in yards in garrisons and not being used while manpower is being used elsewhere. This equipment is not getting the care and maintenance they need.” “We have seen situations where expensive equipment is coming back from theater and are parked out in fields because there is nowhere else to store it,” said Steve Hanna, president of Protective Packaging Corp. in Dallas. “We have seen radars come back to the states for maintenance. Then it takes six months to a year before they are rotated back to theater. All this raises issues of the equipment being exposed.” To the rescue Special Operations Technology Potential contractors on a new Air Force platform for combat search and rescue experienced something of a shock last year when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates canceled the program after a second round of bidding had already been completed. The CSAR-X competition, as it was called, would have provided the Air Force with a new and innovative CSAR platform. Boeing Company won the first round of bidding to provide a replacement for an aging fleet of HH-60Gs and was prepared to provide the Air Force with a variant of its MH47G when a successful bid protest sent the project back to the drawing boards. A second round of bidding ensued, a process which was aborted before a contracting decision was ever made. The original decision to acquire a state-of-the-art CSAR air frame was made to provide the Air Force with greater range and power, as well as other benefits, and would have cost the Air Force a pretty penny. Industry sources say that Gates is more interested in looking at a tried and true platform for any future CSAR replacement. But CSAR professionals like Major Jason Wetzel of the 306th Rescue Squadron, headquartered at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., will tell you they don’t much care what platform gets them to the rescue site; it’s their training and specialized equipment that count. The unit has been deployed all over the globe, including in southwest Asia, and will soon be departing for an assignment in the Philippines. “Our basic mission is search and rescue, during the day or night, in any environment, friendly or not friendly, in CONUS or OCONUS,” said Wetzel. “We consider ourselves to be human based and independent of weapons systems or aircraft. We can work on any aircraft, whether U.S. or foreign military. But it doesn’t really matter to us what gets us to the rescue scene—whether it is by bicycle, horse, train, or snowmobile—whatever gets us closer to the person we need to rescue.” Sustaining the MRAP Military Logistics Forum United States operations in Iraq took a 180 degree turn during the second half of 2003, when the fast paced, mechanized, expeditionary war that quickly took down Saddam Hussein’s regime turned into a slogging counterinsurgency operation, often staged on complex urban terrain. That change in venue and operational tempo left U.S. troops, in their lightly armored vehicles, vulnerable to roadside attacks from improvised explosive devices. In 2007, IEDs accounted for two-thirds of U.S. fatalities in Iraq. From an equipment standpoint, the answer given by the Department of Defense to these developments was to sink $25 billion to acquire mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles. Why? Because these heavy, lumbering trucks are best suited to protect troops from IEDs. Their height and weight shield the troops sequestered inside and their V-shaped undercarriage deflects the force of an IED blast away from the underbody of the vehicle. The hurry-up acquisition of some 15,000 MRAPs has presented formidable challenges to the maintenance and sustainment of the vehicles in theater. Despite the presence of MRAPs in Southwest Asia for several years, the vehicles have not yet become part of the armed services’ force structure. Instead, they are supplied to troops in theater with little opportunity for warfighters to train in vehicle operation or maintenance at their home stations. Easing the ride US Coast Guard Forum The United States Coast Guard performs many of its missions on smaller watercraft. These vessels, and the personnel inside them, can take quite a pounding, especially in severe sea states. Repeated exposure to wave shocks and to the forces of the ocean can impair performance, produce discomfort and cause acute and chronic injuries. That is why the Coast Guard has, for several years, been acquiring boats equipped with shock mitigation technologies. “The biggest problem with Coast Guard ships is wave shock,” said Doug Taylor, CEO of Taylor Devices in North Tonawanda, N.Y. “It can cause damage to equipment and to people. A severe wave shock can knock someone out. The most important thing about any armed vessel is to optimize the blending of man and machine.” In the past, Coast Guard and naval personnel often preferred standing to sitting while operating their vessels, according to Johan Ullman, CEO of Ullman Dynamics in Gothenburg, Sweden. “Many people believe you can use your legs from a standing position to absorb impacts,” he said. While there is some truth to that belief, Coast Guard personnel are often exposed to forces that cannot be handled merely by standing or bending the legs. Much of the activity surrounding shock mitigation on Coast Guard vessels surrounds equipping vessels with seats that cushion the blows to which crews are subjected. A more realistic view Military Training Technology The U.S. military is increasingly demanding immersive training and simulation environments to prepare warfighters for a variety of missions and tasks. These large scale training systems invariably require the use of multiple projectors to display a coordinated set of images across a set of large screens. This approach to training systems has created a more complex technology environment and has challenged developers to deliver projectors with ever increasing levels of fidelity and resolution, as well as projection units that work as a system to provide the kind of training environments that the military demands. Innovations in projection systems also include satisfying demand for specific mission applications, most notably for night vision. They also endeavor to enhance the efficiency of training systems by reducing the costs of operating the systems and by automating the task of calibrating the images emanating from multiple projectors. “What we are seeing on the projector front is an increase in resolution, which allows us to configure a display system that is approaching or meets eye limiting resolution,” said Mike Raines, vice president for simulation at 3D Perception, a company that provides complete display systems. “That is no small task, especially when there is large field of view.” SAR boosts imagery power Geospatial Intelligence Forum The use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery in Haitian relief efforts has underscored the growing importance of this technology for a variety of defense, intelligence and humanitarian missions. Moving quickly to help the earthquake-devastated nation, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in January issued task orders to all three of the contractors awarded an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract for commercial satellite synthetic aperture radar (COMSAR) imagery only the month before. “The task orders we recently issued to support operations in Haiti were focused on acquiring imagery of certain areas of the country to detect changes,” said Laura Gentry, international commercial program manager for COMSAR at NGA. “The user of the imagery wanted to see what buildings looked like before, versus after, the earthquake.” U.S. Southern Command had requested the imagery from NGA through the Department of State, which is the lead agency coordinating relief efforts. The unusual move of awarding task orders to each of the three vendors under the COMSAR contract was to “allow us to be flexible,” said Gentry. “Our job is get data for end-users. It depends on when satellites are available. Each satellite makes only one pass per day, so with more vendors and satellites working the job, you get more access to the geography that is needed.” The Haiti disaster relief efforts are representative of the growing demand in the use of synthetic aperture radar for intelligence imagery and mapping. The data that will be provided under the latest COMSAR contract will enable NGA to provide other government and Department of Defense agencies improved information acquisition capabilities, particularly in bad weather and low light conditions. More lethal helicopters on the horizon Special Operations Technology In this day and age of constrained military budgets, a program initiated over two years ago to streamline the supply of helicopter-fired missiles appears to be particularly timely today. The Hellfire family of missiles is performing well, but in a few years they, along with a number of other helo-launched munitions, will be replaced by the Joint Air to Ground Missile. JAGM will be replacing many in the current crop of helicopter-launches missiles, including the several variants of Hellfire used by the Army, Navy, and Marines, the Marines’ air-launched, anti-armor TOW missile, and the Maverick. The JAGM will be integrated on several fixed wing and unmanned aerial platforms as well.
The JAGM is to be integrated on six platforms initially: the Army’s Apache D, advanced reconnaissance, and extended range multipurpose utility helicopters, the Navy’s SH-60 Seahawk and MH-60 Romeo, and the Marine Corps’ AH-1Z Cobra. JAGM came about after the termination of the Joint Common Missile program in 2007 and the Pentagon ordered a reduced-risk, three-phased approach to the development of a joint air-launched missile. Raytheon Corp. and Lockheed Martin each received 27-month contracts to develop competing JAGM designs based on common program requirements. Down-selection is expected toward the end of 2010, and an initial operational capability is slated for 2016. JAGM is an Army-led program. “Where we are today is with the multiple variants of the Hellfire family of weapons,” said Captain Brian Corey, the Navy’s program manager for direct and time-sensitive strike. “Where we’re going in the future is with JAGM.” 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. Teleconference collaboration Military Information Technology The project is still on the drawing boards, but the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is planning to enhance a popular room-based video teleconferencing service by combining it with desktop-based teleconferencing and other collaboration tools. The new program, which will be called Defense Collaboration Services, will be combining and enhancing the capabilities of DISN Video Services (DVS), a longstanding program that provides room-based teleconferencing, and Defense Connect Online (DCO), a more recent program launched in 2008. DCO provides lower-end desktop-based video together with other collaboration tools such as whiteboarding, instant messaging and chat. “DVS is primarily a room-based service,” explained Tony Montemarano, DISA component acquisition executive. “DCO is a desktop service. We will be bringing those two together in one program in the future. We’ve listened to industry and to our customers in making the decision. “There needs to be a more seamless solution,” he added. “The advantage is that you have the option of including people sitting in a conference room and others sitting at their desktops in the same teleconference. It makes the technology more ubiquitous, convenient and flexible.” DISA is currently strategizing and evaluating what industry can offer to bring the two services together. “We’re honing the specifics of the acquisition,” said Montemarano. “We’re still working out how the technologies will interface with one another and with Department of Defense unique attributes,” such as the Common Access Card. “Right now we’re building the technical framework before we move forward with a request for proposals.” 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.” |
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