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Missile Defense

Michael Ramirez.

A 60 Mph Unmanned Tank

The Ripsaw:

"Every engineer they consulted said they couldn’t best the 42mph top speed of an M1A Abrams, the most powerful tank in the world. Other tanks are built to protect the people inside, with frames made of heavy armored-steel plates. Designed for rugged unmanned missions, the Ripsaw just needed to go fast, so the brothers started trimming weight. First they built a frame of welded steel tubes, like the ones used by Nascar, that provides 50 percent more strength at half the weight."

Upgraded B-2 Bomber

Its unmistakable teardrop profile is shrouded in the blur of a condensation cloud as it reaches high subsonic speed.

The striking image of the B-2, officially known as the Spirit Bomber, was taken as the aircraft soared over Palmdale, near Los Angeles.

It was released to coincide with the announcement of upgraded military software for the United States Air Force's fleet of 20 B-2s.

Tightening the Defense Budget

Secretary of Defense Gates talks about the defense budget, and defends recent cuts, particularly cuts to the F-22 Raptor:

SEC. GATES: I think what we’re trying to do is not reduce emphasis on conventional warfare, but be more selective about the weapons systems that we fund to fight that kind of a fight. I’m not cutting the F-22; I’m not recommending the F-22; I’m simply recommending that the program set in 2005 was to build 183 of these aircrafts. I’m simply saying, let’s finish that program and then let’s focus on buying large numbers of the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, which has 10- to 15-year newer technology, has some capabilities that the F-22 doesn’t have.

The F-22 is a great airplane, all you have to do is ask the pilots who fly it, but – and it will remain in the inventory, but there is no military requirement for more than 183 of them, 187 with those that are in the supplemental. So we’re doing that, we’re building additional ships, we’re doing more in the way of theater and tactical ballistic-missile defense. We’re converting more ships to have ballistic-missile defense that would help against China. So I think there’s kind of a misunderstanding of exactly what it is we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to be more selective about systems that actually work and that can be delivered in a reasonable period of time than some of these exotic systems.

Regarding missile defense:

SEC. GATES: We have two threats: theater and tactical ballistic missiles and ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles from rogue states like North Korea. We are significantly increasing the missile defense capabilities to deal with the theater and tactical threat, from Iran or Hezbollah or others like that, in a number of different ways – a lot of money being added to the budget.

We are not cutting the number of interceptors in Alaska, we are going to fund – robustly fund research and development to keep enhancing their capabilities, we are keeping alive the airborne-laser program, we are just not buying a second research platform. We’re going to make do with one 747 to do this research. The procurement program was completely out of control, with 27 47s and so on and so forth. So I think we are doing a lot, we do very well with terminal defense, with THAD and the theater missile. We do very well at midcourse with the ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California.

Now, we’re continuing to do research work on the boost phase, where they’re just coming off the pad, and we have several programs, some of them classified, that are aimed at taking care of that. So I think we have really strongly supported missile defense, and I think that what we have taken out of the budget, frankly, were some experimental capabilities that were really not intended for the rogue-state missile threat but rather, a much larger threat. So I’m trying to conform our program to our policy. Our policy is to have a missile defense and it was – as it was in the Bush administration, our policy is to have a missile defense against rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea. That’s what our program does.

Popular Mechanics has more: The 7 winners and losers under Gates' proposed budget. Littoral combat ships and the F-35 win big, the Army's Future Combat System and F-22 lose.

Al Qaeda Offline

The Washington Post:

"There had been this aura of invincibility" about al-Qaeda's media operations, said Gregory D. Johnsen, a U.S.-based expert on violent Sunni groups in Yemen. "Now this has really been taken away from them."

Technology Can Be A Scary Thing

We learn that there is very good reason to doubt the most recent Osama bin Laden videos timed for release around the sixth anniversary of 9/11. The doubt does not stem from bin Laden's fake looking beard or nonsensical left-wing remarks.

Rather, it is because others have proven just how easy it is to create a phony bin Laden video. No wonder bin Laden's a miserable failure.

But there are far more shocking developments in the war on terror yet. This time - good news for the good guys. The Belmont Club writes: The Wizard War

The National Science Foundation's "Darkweb" project is developing a variety of technologies to automate what only a few online sleuths can do: find Jihadis online and track them, even when they post under different names. It can perform content and traffic analysis and "profile" the style of authors.

Read the rest.

A Bloodless Attack

China stealthily invaded the German government's computer systems last month, and seems to have struck again:

the People's Liberation Army, or PLA, assaulted part of the Pentagon's system used by policy advisers to the defence secretary, Robert Gates, is the latest and potentially most serious breach and set alarm bells ringing across the US military.

There are also reports of Chinese hackers "attacking the computer networks of British government departments."

What is behind this recent flurry of Chinese Internet warfare? Does the People's Republic have a rogue hacker on their hands, or is this a series of well-timed cyber-raids to spook the West?

Regardless, this threat has been overlooked and under reported for some time, and will probably remain so until something seriously wrong goes down.

Chinese Cyber Warfare

These invisible, stealth attacks often go unreported. It is inevitable that a future catastrophe will be predicated on the failure of computer-based military/government/defense systems whose collapse will be due to premeditated attack via overseas hackers.

China Invades Germany and Gets Caught

August 28, 2007: Chinese Cyber War operatives have, over the last three months, hacked into the computer networks of several German government ministries (Foreign, Economics and Research), as well as the office of the Chancellor ( Angela Merkel, the head of the government). Some 160 gigabytes of data was moved to computers in northern China. This revelation was leaked to the media while the Chancellor was in China, to discuss trade matters, and demand that China do more to stop the theft of German intellectual property.

The Chinese attack was supposed to be done so that it would not be detected. But it was, and as much as 200 additional gigabytes of data did not make its way to China. Naturally, the Chinese deny everything, but the Germans are apparently still building their case that this was a Chinese government sponsored operation. The first major hack of government computer networks took place back in the 1980s, when a gang of West German hackers, hired by the Soviet secret police (KGB) were caught inside U.S. Department of Defense networks, stealing classified data.

Keep your eyes and ears open, and your computer security closed tight.

H/T Dawn Patrol.

Bloggers Get Credit For Journalism

Jay Rosen: The journalism that bloggers actually do, A New York University professor critiques Michael Skube's recent Times Op-Ed questioning the journalistic value of blogs.

Among other reasons why Blogs are not to be dismissed, Rosen lists some examples of stories made newsworthy by the Blogosphere:

March, 2007. Firedoglake at the Libby Trial. Popular lefty political blog provides the only blow-by-blow coverage of the trial by splitting the work among six contributors who bring big knowledge to bear for a committed-to-the-case readership. Reporters come to rely on the blog for its updates and its accuracy in live-blogging and analysis.

2007 to present. Blogger Michael Yon reports from Iraq. Supported primarily by donations from readers, independent journalist Michael Yon -- a former Green Beret -- is spending 2007 embedded with soldiers whose courage and sacrifice he admires, and whose stories he tells, mostly recently from Anbar province.

December 2006-April 2007. Talking Points Memo drives the U.S. Attorneys firings into the national spotlight. Mixing old-fashioned legwork with perseverance and lots of help from readers over several months, Josh Marshall and his TPM Media empire accumulate evidence "from around the country on who the axed prosecutors were, and why politics might be behind the firings."

August, 2006. Porkbusters, the Sunlight Foundation and TPM Muckraker expose congressional earmarks and the senator who placed a secret hold on a bill to put information about federal fund recipients online.

And there are many more. I've written on this topic as well here.

H/T Instapundit.

The Universe In Layman's Terms

Wow.

The Scale of the Universe

The scale of the Universe is simply astounding. The best way for the layperson to understand the distances we are dealing with is not to use words like Parsecs or light years, but rather to use easy to understand analogies.

(Via PJM)

Terrorism Defense

New MRAPs Headed to Iraq

U.S. troops serving in Iraq will have a little more protection soon, as two of the military's newest armored vehicles are on their way to the theater.

Two Buffalo Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, known as "MRAPs," were loaded onto C-5 Galaxy aircraft Thursday night at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., to be shipped to Iraq. This latest shipment is part of the Defense Department's push to get as many of the new vehicles to troops in combat as quickly as possible.

IED EATER:

1,500 MRAPs will be delivered to Iraq by the end of the year

However, this is down from earlier estimates:

John Young, chairman of DoD’s MRAP Task Force, had said — “ambitiously,” according to Morrell — that 3,500 to 3,900 would be delivered to Iraq in that time.

Previous posts on MRAPs here and here.

Army Green Going Green

Military Iraq Vehicles Go Hybrid

Military.com:

The diesel-electric hybrid hype has met its match: the U.S. Army. After focusing on hydrogen fuel cells in its original version of “The Aggressor,” a high-performance, off-road Alternative Mobility Vehicle (AMV) for military ground exploration and scouting missions, the Pentagon is now going the way of Detroit -- with batteries.

The new, second-generation prototype will still utilize the same basic chassis and exterior design for light-duty capacity. But the Army’s auto research arm -- part of the Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) -- has developed a battery-dominant, hybrid-electric drivetrain with a diesel engine-generator. That could make the new Aggressor the first hybrid to hit the streets of Baghdad en masse.

Nice.

Muslim Science

Taner Edis, who "...grew up in Turkey, the son of a Turkish father and an American mother, and now teaches physics at Truman State University in Missouri," when asked:

How would you assess the state of scientific knowledge in the Islamic world?

Said:

Dismal. Right now, if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice. There's very little contribution coming from Muslim lands.

Why? Because,

Islamic culture has not been as supportive of intellectual independence for different areas of life.

But really, why? Bill Whittle put it best:

because here in America, a practically broke 19 year old kid can be the President of a Corporation, that’s why. Of course some of these fail. Most of them fail, spectacularly fail, flaming wreckage, oh-the-humanity failures. I’ve had many of these, personally. More will no doubt come. It’s easy to succeed in a country that lets you fail this often and this easily.

The ingredients for greatness, goodness, success, happiness and prosperity are not hard to find, and yet so much of the world is a political and economic disaster.

Again: why?

Because folks, it ain’t the ingredients. It’s the recipe.

Yep.

Update: I apologize. There is some progress in Muslim science. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Fisking Wikipedia

Who is editing Wikipedia?

A database of 34.4 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization's net address has made.

Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material.

Voting-machine company Diebold provides a good example of the latter, with someone at the company's IP address apparently deleting long paragraphs detailing the security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President Bush.

The text, deleted in November 2005, was quickly restored by another Wikipedia contributor, who advised the anonymous editor, "Please stop removing content from Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism."

Very enlightening.

Update: Wow, this is BIG. Two BBC employees have been caught editing entries in Wikipedia. One edited the President's middle name to "Wanker," another changed the word "terrorists" to "freedom fighters." Almost unbelievable... if you've never listened to the BBC.

Military Intelligence?

This may be hard for anti-war activists to swallow, but there are other things to thank the Pentagon for, other than our peace and security:

Lasers, Mermaid Legs, and Wall-Climbing Lizard Bots

Chigh-energy lasers, night-vision goggles, stealth fighter.

And let's not forget... Thirty-five years ago, DARPA helped create the earliestversion of the Internet.

New Armor To Iraq

MRAP's on the way to Iraq:

Tech. Sgt. Brad Hughes double-checks the load information on a pair of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles after they are loaded on a C-17 Globemaster III at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., for shipment to Iraq July 28. An estimated 3,500 MRAP vehicles are expected to be in Iraq by Dec. 31. Sergeant Hughes is a loadmaster with the 317th Airlift Squadron. U.S.

A Mine Resistant Ambushed Protected (MRAP) prototype vehicle is displayed on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., July 26, 2007. The MRAP is designed to help protect military troops from mines and improvised explosive devices in Iraq. This prototype is currently being tested in Aberdeen, Md. Defense Dept. photo by William D. Moss.

And about that Dragon Skin NBC was such a big fan of: Revealed: DoJ Dumps Dragon Skin body armor.

The Challenge To The M4

Military.com:

Army Agrees to M4 Sand Test Shoot-Off

Finally:

After months of heated debate, the Army will conduct a side-by-side test shoot next month with its standard-issued carbine to see how well it can withstand extreme dust and sand environments.

The Competition

The shoot off will test the capabilities of the M4/M16 operating system against three other rifles: the Heckler and Koch-built HK416, the FNH USA-designed Mk16 SOCOM Combat Assault Rifle and the previously-shelved, H&K-manufactured XM8 carbine.

All three competitors use a gas-piston operating system that requires less maintenance and has demonstrated in some tests that it can fire accurately even if completely fouled with sand, dust and mud.

More on the ongoing debate surrounding the M4, 416, and others here: Reconsidering the M4.

Pit Stop

A KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft from Grissom Air Reserve Base, Ind., refuels an F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft from Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, while flying over the Pacific Alaska Range Complex during exercise Red Flag-Alaska July 16. During the multi-national training exercise, pilots fly various aircraft under simulated air combat conditions. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Shawn J. Jones)

(Courtesy BlackFive)

The Pot Calls The Kettle Black

Think Progress is whining again: Washington Times Propagates False Headline: ‘Senate Rejects Iraq Pullout’

Rather, the post argues, the vote was to end a conservative filibuster.

Therefore, the headline should have read: 'Senate Rejects Democratic Vote To End Conservative Filibuster.'

Does that sound any better?

Speaking of false headlines, Think Progress should consider its own casuistry:

After Years Of Misleading Excuses, Pentagon Finally Seeks Lifesaving Vehicles For Troops In Iraq


The title of this post would lead one to believe that the Pentagon has never been in search of 'Lifesaving Vehicles For Troops In Iraq.'


This, of course, is a blatant lie. More on the armor controversy here, here, here, here, and here.

If Think Progress thinks the Pentagon has just begun building or procuring 'Lifesaving Vehicles' for our troops, its writers are grossly uninformed.

Update: Pentagon May Increase MRAP Purchase - "Delivery delays have spurred the Pentagon to consider ordering up to 20,000 more armored vehicles needed to protect U.S. soldiers from roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan." This doesn't exactly square with the headline by Think Progress that the Pentagon is "finally" seeking Lifesaving vehicles for the troops. Funny how those facts get in the way sometimes.

Update: A reader commented, noting further proof of misinformation with respect to armoring our troops.