Great news. According to the Times, “The United States and four other nations reached a tentative agreement to provide North Korea with roughly $400 million in fuel oil and aid, in return for the North’s starting to disable its nuclear facilities and allowing nuclear inspectors back into the country.”

But here’s the weird thing. “We almost certainly could have gotten this deal before the North Koreans tested a missile and a nuke,” the Arms Control Association’s Paul Kerr notes. In a way, I agree with this statement from John Bolton:”

This is the same thing that the State Department was prepared to do six years ago. If we going to cut this deal now, it’s amazing we didn’t cut it back then.

Not that the deal is entirely set. As Slate observes, “any agreement with North Korea should be met with some skepticism because the country has changed its mind in the past, and leader Kim Jong-il still has to give his blessing.”

Filed under: Nukes

The Defense Department’s chem-bio defense budget (CBDP) only accounts for less than one percent of what the U.S. military spends. But there’s still a lot to pore over. I thought that I would give an overview today, talk about procurement tomorrow, and talk about RDT&E on Thursday. (Go to the Defense Department Comptroller’s web site for fiscal year 2008 and access the procurement and RDT&E programs, to find the appropriate documents.)

Overall, the DoD CBDP will obligate $1.63 billion dollars in FY 2008 against 40-odd acquisition projects and other efforts. That’s a bit less than one percent of the DoD modernization budget for that year. Breaking it down, the CBDP will spend:

• $609.6 million for science and technology (37.4 percent)
• $381.9 million for advanced research and development (23.5 percent)
• $543.8 million for procurement (33.4 percent)
• $93.6 million for management functions (5.7 percent)

The services were a bit snippy about this budget because of the spending pattern – R&D spending is twice that of procurement, which means they don’t get as many toys. It’s a trend that continues through the 2008-2013 Program Objective Memorandum (POM), which is the Pentagon’s five year spending plan. Part of this is because of Rumsfeld’s direction to "assume risk in the short term" in order to invest more in out-year future tech. The other part is because most, if not all, of the CB defense projects (detection in particular) have slipped their fielding dates by several years (for several reasons, most involving poor management), forcing a move of funds into R&D (lest they be taken away).

Medical biological countermeasures is the obvious favorite in the program this year (see breakout of funds by area here). You can thank the DOD vaccine program (anthrax and smallpox vaccine buys) and the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI) for that. The vaccine program is spending about $48 million in 2008, while TMTI is spending $248 million in tech base and $69 million in advanced R&D. Both programs’ costs will continue to climb through 2013. The TMTI is the latest "good idea" from OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], where DoD is basically sending a hell of a lot of money to industry to find "silver bullets" – a therapeutic that will address a broad range of BW threats, instead of a "single vaccine-single disease" approach.

This ambitious project is the latest Holy Grail for CBDP. In the late 1990s, the program promised free protective suits and vaccines for everyone. Then it was stand-off biological detection in 2000-2001. In 2002, OSD decided that every military base should have CB defense gear for antiterrorism, and threw a billion dollars at that problem. Now it’s the terrorist BW threat, combined with the worry of "genetically engineered" BW agents, that drives OSD’s "good idea" effort. Funny as in tragic. The installation protection effort started in 2004 (PM Guardian) got half its funds taken to kick-start TMTI, had to be reorganized, and is trying to get back on track. More on PM Guardian’s failures later.

We’re not going to see anything from TMTI for several years though. First, as a warning shot, Congress took $90 million of TMTI money from the DOD CBDP FY07 budget because there was no business plan other than "throw money at industry." Now a plan has been put together, and they’re hiring lots of managers. But as with all medical research projects, and this one in particular, there’s not going to be a final product ready for FDA approval for six to ten years, if we’re lucky. But it’s really, really important! To OSD leadership, not the warfighter, mind you.

In general, the DOD CBDP priorities run like this – chem-bio detection, protective suits and masks, and medical biological countermeasures. The funds left over go to CB defense information systems, medical chemical countermeasures, collective protection systems and decontamination systems. This has been pretty much the same profile for both R&D and procurement since 1995, which is funny since both Gulf Wars (1991 and 2003) showed that our forces really have no effective CB defense information systems, collective protection, or decon capability for most of our operational units or fixed sites.

Test and evaluation efforts have recently been called out in a separate budget line. Nearly $67 million is going to projects to modernize test and evaluation capabilities at Dugway Proving Ground, Edgewood, Dahlgren, and other test sites. The aging test infrastructure was one reason why new CB defense equipment has been delayed. Hard to tell when – or if – this funding is going to get the projects back on schedule. Another $54 million in management funds goes to Dugway every year to pay for salaries and other T&E needs. Past CBDP management funds were kept down to 4 to 4.5 percent of the total program costs, but that’s bounced up to 5.8 percent (and rising) due to OSD deciding it’s going to spend more on studies and upgrading service laboratories. This management slice also doesn’t reflect the R&D funds spent at DTRA CB and the Joint Program Executive Office on managing projects directly.

More information can be found at the OSD office site in its annual report to Congress on CB defense.

UPDATE 02/14/07: Analysis from Dick Destiny.

– Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

Filed under: Chem-Bio

* Nork nuke pact?

* Must read #1: Iraq’s four wars

* Must read #2: NSA cyber-hunter, losing the scent

* Illuminati selling Q-branch stock

* Iran unveils stealthy drone

* FBI’s secret laptops gone

* Fallen soldier is a new dad

* Turbine on a chip

* Ospreys grounded

* The science of Godzilla

* New camo: gravy!

(Big ups: EM, BB, RC, MO, JQ)

Filed under: Rapid Fire

If you’re an “Old Crow” — or a friend of one — drop me a line. I’m trying to learn more about the fine, fine work y’all are doing. All conversations will be off-the-record, naturally.

Filed under: Blog Bidness

The U.S. government’s claim yesterday, that the Iranians are supplying weapons to Iraqi militants, was met with a huge amount of skepticism — and with good reason, given the Administration’s lousy intel-interpreting track record, and the strange conditions of Sunday’s presentation. (More on that, in a second.) But, for what it’s worth, Defense Tech has been hearing about these weapons — especially the “explosively-formed projectiles,” or EFPs — for the last eighteen months. Many of the government’s assertions track, at least loosely, to what we’ve heard.

Soldiers in Iraq were already encountering EFPs — and the closely-related “shaped-charges” — back in the summer of ’05, when I visited the country.

In the garden, there’s a seemingly innocuous copper cylinder, concave on one end, about the size of a gallon of paint. It’s called an explosively formed projectile, or EFP, and when it detonates, the concave end blows outward and melts into a bullet-shaped fragment that slices through armor and flesh. “Ten days ago, one of these sons-of-bitches took out an arm of a Humvee driver and both his legs,” says Captain Greg Hirschey, the 717th’s commander. “I get shivers up my spine every time I see one.”

Back then, it was commonly assumed that the EFP-makers were getting some over-the-border help. After all, Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas have been using the weapons against Israeli tanks for some time.

A few months later, David Axe caught word of a particularly nasty EFP in Anbar province: infrared “tripwire-activated IEDs disguised as rocks and apparently employing shaped-charge warheads.” That sounds almost exactly like the “Fully Operational, Camouflaged Passive Infrared EFP” that the government, in its Iran presentation, said was found in the Basra area, last May.

Still, does that mean there’s a direct, tight connection between the Iranian government and the Iraqi bombers? Terrorists — especially terrorist bomb-makers — share best practices, from Colombia to Spain to Lebanon to Iraq. So it’s not surprising to see one group’s methods mimicked somewhere else. Take those infrared tripwires: they were first used by the Irish Republican Army. And I don’t think we’re about to send a carrier group to the Celtic Sea.

What’s more, when Iranian EFPs were first spotted in Iraq, the bombs were in the hands of Sunni insurgents. At the time, that “seem[ed] to suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out – a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of, given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq.” But now, this looks like terror-makers sharing tricks of the trade, rather some grand, ecumenical alliance.

Or, as Kevin Drum notes, Iran could just be trying to stoke chaos on all sides. “If I were in charge of Iran, it’s probably what I’d be doing,” he writes. And there’s more than just the EFPs to tie Tehran to the conflict in Iraq. Iranian TNT and newly-minted mortars were also trotted out in the American presentation. “The evidence of Iranian meddling in Iraq,” McClatchy notes, “is far more compelling than much of the administration’s pre-war intelligence about Iraq.”
That said, if the case was ironclad, the administration wouldn’t be resorting to silly maneuvers like these when it made its case for Iran’s involvement:

The officials said they would speak only on the condition of anonymity, so the explosives expert and the analyst, who would normally not speak to the news media, could provide information directly. The analyst’s exact title and full name were not revealed to reporters. The officials released a PowerPoint presentation including photographs of the weaponry, but did not allow media representatives to record, photograph or videotape the briefing or the materials on display.

Too much is riding on this evidence for such chicanery. Make the case cleanly, guys. Or don’t make it at all.

UPDATE 5:11 PM: As benjoya notes in the comments to a previous post, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace doesn’t agree with the administration’s assessment.

UPDATE 5:36 PM: Be sure to read Newsweek’s cover story, too. But be ready to wince.

Filed under: Bomb Squad, Strategery

We do not have any direct evidence that insurgents in Iraq are using advanced surface-to-air missiles (sometimes called MANPADS – from MAN-portable Air Defense System); just best guesses, for now. But with the loss of five (and maybe even six or seven) helicopters in quick succession — and an insurgent video apparently showing the latest loss to be a missile casualty — the possibility needs to be considered.

Early MANPADS like the Russian SA-7 are fairly primitive, homing in on exhaust heat. As they steer towards the hottest object in their field of view, they can easily be lured away by decoy flares (or even the sun).

With more advanced missiles, it becomes a game of cat and mouse between the electronics in the missile seeker head and the countermeasures seeking to confuse it. Advanced seekers can not only discriminate flares from engines, but they can be smart enough to home in on the source of the flares. Advanced laser-based countermeasures like CLIRCM do not blind or dazzle seekers as is sometime supposed, but produce a signal which generates false targets and sends the missile off course.

Some missile makers claim that their seekers can beat all known countermeasures; some countermeasures manufacturers claim to be able to defeat all known missiles.

Certainly better missiles need better countermeasures. It’s interesting that the proposed defenses for civilian airliners against terrorist MANPADS only goes up to the level of Stinger Basic, a technology now 20 years old.

Earlier missiles were intended to get close enough to have some chance of damaging an aircraft with shrapnel; modern warheads are contact fuzed, indicating that they are expected to actually hit the target. And hit in a specific place: the missile can discriminate between single-engine, multi-engine aircraft and helicopters and select the optimum point of vulnerability. The recent models are designed to send a dense pattern of high-speed fragments through the target for maximum damage, and the explosion may be enhanced by fuzing which detonates any unused fuel. Their destructive power is formidable.

This leads to last-ditch defenses like aim-point biasing, relatively cheap countermeasures (compared to the multi-million dollar laser jammers) to get the warhead to strike the less flight-critical parts of a helicopter and make the difference between a hit that results in a hard landing and one that destroys the helicopter completely.

Another way of dealing with the threat is to gets the MANPADS first. While Rules of Engagement are unlikely to be changed to alow helicopters to open fire at will, the AirCrcaft CounterMeasures (ACCM) laser provides one option. This is a laser dazzler fitted to helicopters to illuminate potential threats on the ground. The laser makes it much harder to target a helicopter, but more significantly the reaction of the person targeted gives a clue as to whether they are an insurgent getting ready to fire or an innocent civilian.

Another new approach, Ares notes, is DARPA’s Battlefield Helicopter Emulator, an expendable decoy drone which produces the same noise and heat signature as a real helicopter. It may seem like an expensive option — but losing helicopters is a far more costly prospect.

Helicopters operate at low speed and low altitude, making them especially vulnerable to MANPADS. Heavy armor is not an option except for attack choppers like the AH-64 Apache; transport, utility and scout craft carry much lighter protection. And in Afghanistan, even the Soviets’ armored Mil-24 Hind gunships proved vulnerable to Stinger MANPADS.

The situation in Iraq has its parallels with the conflict then. The main importance of new missiles would not be in shooting down helicopters, but on the morale of both sides. The Mujahideen took new heart that the previously invincible ‘Devils Chariot’ could be defeated. Soviet helicopter crews found themselves facing an opponent who could shoot back, and were forced to adopt more evasive tactics which limited their effectiveness.

A similar decrease in effectiveness could happen in Baghdad.

“Based on what we have seen, we’re already making adjustments in our tactics and techniques and procedures as to how we employ our helicopters,” Maj. Gen. William Caldwell was reported as saying earlier.

Previously, US helicopter cover has prevented insurgents from operating from rooftops. If exposing helicopters becomes too risky, then that cover will be more limited. In this way, just a handful of MANPADS could have a significant impact on the ground battles. Which makes the timing of these latest helicopter losses — just before the surge of US troops arrives for a make-or-break operation in Baghdad – highly significant.

(My thanks to Jim O’Halloran, editor of the authoritative Jane’s Land Based Air Defence for providing an insider view on this topic.)

– David Hambling

Filed under: Missiles, Planes, Copters, Blimps

The Pentagon’s IT geeks are putting together plans for a new White House “top-secret network and multimedia Crisis Management System (CMS) designed to operate in a wide range of fixed locations, on Air Force One and on a new fleet of presidential helicopters.” That’s according to the fine folks at FCW.com. The idea is to “provide the president, cabinet secretaries, and designated agency directors and their staffs with a secure, dedicated network capable of handling full motion video, voice graphics and data at 64 fixed and mobile locations.”

The new network will also feature a collaborative tool suite similar to Microsoft Share Point. It will allow the top federal leaders to view and work on documents on the network’s video displays. Ten locations will be equipped with the new technology in 2008 at a cost of $12 million, according to the DISA [Defense Information Systems Agency] budget documents.

DISA said it will equip two next-generation Boeing 747s that serve as Air Force One and nine new presidential helicopters with the new network and CMS. They will also be on six 757 and two 737 VIP aircraft used by the vice president and cabinet secretaries. The new network will provide the leaders with “near perfect reliability and communications survivability,” the DISA budget documents state.

Filed under: Comms

Typically, the senior scientists and military-industrial graybeards who sit on the Defense Science Board are asked to examine specific issues, one at a time. Stuff like directed energy weapons. Or combating improvised explosives. Or how long guardsmen and reservists should be deployed.

But this summer, the Board is being asked to make a very different examination, Inside Defense notes. Instead of drilling down deep, to study a specific problem, Board members are being asked to think expansively — very, Very expansively — and look at… well, pretty much every bad-case scenario an American bureaucrat could ever imagine. Asian economic growth, terrorist technological development, epidemics, famine, religious strife, faulty American manufacturing, biological weapons, hurricanes — you name it, the Pentagon wants the Board to study it. And the members are supposed “identify possible solutions” and come up with “innovative technologies, systems or operational concepts that can be applied… before it becomes a national crisis.”

Better get going, boys.

Filed under: Strategery

“May God bless this ship and all who sail in her,” said Meryl Chertoff, wife of Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, as she cracked a bottle of Champagne on the towering bow of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf at the Northrop Grumman shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi in November.

The newly-christened Bertholf, the first of the so-called National Security Cutters, is the product of two defense giants’ controversial coupling and the biggest piece yet of a sprawling service-wide modernization program. In 2001, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin formed a joint venture, Integrated Coast Guard Systems, to win the then-$11-billion Deepwater contract to replace most of the Coast Guards’ ships, aircraft and command systems. Since then, Deepwater’s cost has ballooned to $24 billion for 90 new ships and 200 aircraft.

Perhaps worst, the program’s much-needed modernized small cutters have proved to be a total wash. Fixating on these leaky, over-budget 123-foot boats, critics in Congress have assailed the joint venture. U.S. Representative Bob Filner (D-Calif) even characterized the firms’ allegedly shoddy work as “criminal if not treasonous.”

But critics have ignored the successes of other Deepwater designs and perhaps miss the point of the partnership. Integrated Coast Guard Systems is the lead systems integrator on Deepwater, but it farms out work on many of the individual cutter and aircraft designs to other companies. Northrop Grumman is building the big cutters and four Global Hawk drones, but other firms are responsible for scores of smaller cutters, short-range boats and vertical-takeoff drones.

EADS provided kits for helicopter upgrades and has delivered the first of 36 HC-144 patrol planes based on its C-235 transport. Lockheed Martin handles upgrades to the service’s HC-130 Hercules patrol planes as well as much of Deepwater’s electronics, but General Dynamics contributes key parts of the latter. To Integrated Coast Guard Systems, platforms are secondary to integration, to the network that links the platforms together. And that network, more than any new ship or airplane, promises to eventually revolutionize the U.S. Coast Guard, assuming the service’s fleet hasn’t rusted away to nothing in the meantime.

But that’s a big if. Read the rest of the story in the latest issue of Defense Technology International. Pics here.

–David Axe, cross-posted at War Is Boring and Ares

Filed under: Ships and Subs

It takes most people more than a year to graduate from the the U.S. military’s explosive ordnance disposal school. With good reason: bombs are beyond dangerous, and defusing them is a whole lot more complicated than “pulling the red wire.”

Which is why I cringe every time I hear about some newbie trying to play bomb squad hero. This NPR story, of a beyond-incompetent Iraqi EOD team, has to be the most cringe-worthy case I’ve heard yet. Because the only thing dumber than randomly shooting at a bomb is randomly kicking it and tossing it around.

Someone, stop these fools, before they get themselves killed.

…an Iraqi explosives team are on the case.

The Iraqi police start shooting at the potential bomb, hoping to set it off. But to no avail. The convoy continues to sit and wait. An hour passes. As Sgt. Lord watches, the Iraqi police move closer to the suspected bomb.

In this case, the first IED turns out to be a fake. To the surprise of the American soldiers, this emboldens the Iraqi police who are now focusing on the second suspected bomb.

“Oh, he kicked it,” says an American soldier watching.

“The second one must have been safe,” Lord says, “because they went over to it, kicked it over, and then threw it across the road. Ay yi yi.”

An hour and a half after first stopping, the convoy moves on. (emphasis mine)

Filed under: Bomb Squad