Pentagon's Animal Kingdom

When ABC News really, really wants to know about robolobsters, mind-controlled sharks, mechanical pack mules, and terror-fighting dolphins, they know just who to call...

"Animals have been part of military operations since there have been military operations," said Noah Shachtman of DefenseTech.org. "They have been the fighting man's best friend for generations and in modern-day warfare that's still the case."

While there are no sharks yet in uniform and cyborg insects are still in development, Shachtman finds some encouragement in the military's more unusual programs.

"The Defense Department is what, $600 billion a year?" he asked. "That leaves a lot of room for all kinds of kooky projects. I wouldn't say there's an order from Donald Rumsfeld to build mechanical bees or something like that, but especially in DARPA, there's a desire to explore and freedom to look into things that may or may not work out militarily."

He believes that, although many of DARPA's programs are scrapped before they're seen through, it's one of the few places in government research where dreaming is considered an asset.

"I wouldn't interpret that to mean we're going to have an army of dolphins and robotic bears attacking the enemy anytime soon," Shachtman joked.

Read thing whole thing here.

Morphing Planes Moving Towards Reality

The idea has been around for ages -- since before the Wright Brothers. But, lately, the military has gotten serious about trying to build airplanes that change shape in flight. The reason? To get "aircraft that loiter for a long time and that also fly very fast," a Darpa program manager told New Scientist in '03. "The type of wings that you design for each of those things are different... loitering wings are generally high span and a large surface area, whereas fast wings have a low wing span and a low area. We want to generate wings that drastically change their surface area and shape, meaning more than 150 per cent change in surface area."

Sounds cool. But pulling it off has been really tough. Some Pentagon-funded engineers are trying to design wing superstructures that slide or fold. Another group, also with Defense Department backing is aiming for an even further-out solution: materials that actually bend and twist into new shapes.

Nature has already figured out how to do this, Darpa program managers noted, with plants. A plant bends toward the light, quickly furls its leaves when touched, or pushes a concrete sidewalk aloft with its roots is essentially moving fluids between cells.

MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang "realized that the solid compounds used to store electrical energy in lithium rechargeable batteries could be made to work in a similar way. The movement of ions to and from these materials during charging and recharging, he thought, was analogous to the moving fluids in plants," an MIT press release notes. "Could this be a synthetic counterpart to nature's solution?"

To find out, Chiang and Hall began testing commercially available rechargeable batteries of a prismatic form, then designed their own devices composed of graphite posts surrounded by a lithium source. The results were promising.

Among other things, they found that the batteries continued to expand and contract under tremendous stresses, a must for devices that will be changing the shape of, say, a stiff helicopter rotor that's also exposed to aerodynamic forces...

The researchers have already demonstrated basic battery-based actuators that can pull and push with large force. Later this year, they hope to demonstrate the shape-morphing of a helicopter rotor blade. The morphing capability should allow for a more efficient design, ultimately making it possible for a vehicle to carry heavier loads.

Rapid Fire 03/22/06

* "Scientist faces arms charges"

* Spec Ops Osprey delivered

* SpaceX set to launch

* Human brain on a chip

* Brooklyn Bridge's Cold War stockpile

* Q-Branch's solar drone

* One plane: no flaps, no pilot

* Portable water purifier wins nanotech prize

(Big ups: CA, RC)

Chem Plant Security Gets Serious

There are 15,000 chemical plants scattered around the country. A third of them are near major population centers. The estimated casualty counts if any of them were struck are utterly catastrophic. And there's no federal plan -- not even federal guidelines -- to secure these facilities. The chemical industry has been "reluctant to accept... security requirements" from Washington, Global Security Newswire notes. And, for the longest time, Washington didn't want the power to do so. "Unlike EPA, for example, which requires drinking water facilities to improve their security," notes a recent Congressional report, "DHS [Department of Homeland Security] does not have the authority to require chemical facilities to assess their vulnerabilities and implement security measures."

But there's been an "unusual turnabout by the Bush administration," the Times reports. "It is now lobbying for regulations that senior administration officials worked privately to block shortly after the 2001 attacks, saying then that voluntary measures would be sufficient."

In his speech Tuesday, at a forum sponsored by George Washington University and the American Chemistry Council, a trade group, [DHS secretary Michael Chertoff] said the regulations should be most stringent for plants that, because of the amount and danger of their chemical stockpiles or their proximity to urban areas, pose the greatest risks.

But he said the nation should have uniform standards, strongly implying that states should not be allowed to adopt their own rules, as New Jersey did late last year, particularly if those rules were more stringent.

He also said private-sector, "third party" inspectors could check on compliance, similar to the way accountants certify corporate financial compliance for the government.

Chertoff used the speech to endorse a chemical security bill, backed by Senator Susan Collins, that's currently making its way through Congress. According to IBM homeland security analyst Christian Beckner -- who's my go-to guy on these matters -- it's "sensible legislation that requires all parties to make compromises and can deliver the level of security that we need."

That is, if it can get passed. Beckner "walked away from the event feeling less confident about whether the key parties are actually ready to actually make these compromises, or whether they would rather hold out for legislation that meets more or all of their key demands."

Hopefully my gut intuition is wrong here, and we will instead see a sensible compromise in the weeks ahead and a bill signed into law in the next few months. Any failure to move forward on this legislation is unacceptably dangerous for our national security.

UPDATE 10:22 AM: Read the AP's account of Chertoff's talk, and you'll get the feeling that the wire service's reporter was at an entirely different speech.

He said the government would not set minimum standards for chemical companies to follow, allowing the industry to tailor its own "so we can go about the objective of raising our security in a way that doesn't destroy the businesses we're trying to protect."

"There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and we're going to let chemical operators figure out the right way, as long as the cat gets skinned," Chertoff said...

Critics said the proposal relies too much on the chemical industry to police itself.

"It's a lot like putting a 'Beware of dog' sign out in the yard but not actually buying a guard dog," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass. He said federal regulations should spell out minimum protections against different kinds of terror attacks, adding that the use of outside auditors was like "having the private sector grade the industry's homework."

C.N.O., Podcasting

One thing about the Overlords at Military.com: They've got juice -- especially in the Navy, where editor Ward Carrolll and Overlord-in-Chief Chris Michel both served as fliers. Drop their names, and admirals return e-mails, quick.

So it's no surprise, really, that Ward was able to snag for his podcast this week Admiral Mike Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations. Click here to listen to the CNO talk about his vision for a "thousand-ship Navy," the need to "outpace strategic competitors," and the "shift of our forces to the Pacific." Recent guests have included Joe Galloway, Nate Fick, James Barber, and, uh, me.

Rapid Fire 3/21/06

* Space sensors, terror auto-responder on DoD tech demo list

* E-mail in short supply at FBI

* Land mines' welcome mat

* GAO still hates Future Combat

* SAIC employees get bloggy

* Private companies to service Space Station

* New missions for laser jet?

* Iraq's "Britney Spears Effect"

(Big ups: /., TR, DID)

Iraqi Police = Shi'ite Militia?

Defense Tech pal Chris Allbritton has a brutal story out of Iraq, on the "growing evidence" that "massacres... are being tolerated and even abetted by Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated police forces, overseen by Iraq's Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr." This is exactly the kind of thing Stephen Biddle warned us about.

On his watch, sectarian militias have swelled the ranks of the police units and, Sunnis charge, used their positions to carry out revenge killings against Sunnis. While allowing an Iranian-trained militia to take over the ministry, critics say, Jabr has authorized the targeted assassination of Sunni men and stymied investigations into Interior-run death squads...

So black is the reputation of the National Police, that after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, many Sunnis said the perpetrators were Interior Ministry troops who were looking for a pretext to start a civil war. Their fears were further fueled in the bloody two days after the attack, when Iraq became a sectarian slaughterhouse. Instead of protecting citizens from each other, National Police units stood by as Shi'ite rioters — and rival militiamen from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army — stormed Sunni mosques and swarmed over Sunni neighborhoods, according to numerous reports, including some confirmed by U.S. Gen. George Casey, commander of American forces in Iraq...

[Former National Security Advisor for the Coalition Provisional Authority David] Gompert notes, "I remember saying, 'If there is going to be a civil war, it's going to be fought between Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias." And as long as Jabr is running the Interior Ministry and its police forces, there is little doubt which of the two in such a conflict will have the law — and American training — on its side.

America's Arsenal Aimed at China

Usually, I write about small things: a tight-knit group of cops, a single murder, a squad of soldiers, one crazy game. My cover story (!) in this month's Popular Mechanics is my first attempt to go big. Really big. $70 billion big.

The idea was to take the President and the SecDef at their words -- that the "Long War" against Islamic extremism is the country's top military priority. Does the Pentagon's $70 billion a year budget for new weapons back that up? Is America's arsenal being geared towards counter-terror, counter-insurgency type fights?

Take a guess.

Inside the defense establishment, the Long War has competition. In many minds, the real threat is a rising China. And, at least when it comes to acquisitions, the China crowd has the upper hand. Which means the weapons budget is packed with gear -- Joint Strike Fighters, DD(X) destroyers -- optimized for a big war in the Pacific, not a messy one in the Middle East.

The story hasn't appeared online, yet. I'll let you know when it does. But Tom Barnett, who's quoted several times in the piece, has some excerpts up on his blog.

Is That a Chem-Bio Munition?

The UK magazine New Scientist caught a hot tip from sources within the U.S. patent world. Seems that a team of individuals invented a new type of rifle grenade (image shown is actually an old Canadian rifle grenade), and the U.S. Army applied for the patent for the munition. Presumably the individuals worked for the government, and I might suspect their agency is associated with the Ordnance Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Problem here is how they described the munition...

There is the need to deliver and disperse a payload comprising an aerosol-forming substance without the use of high-explosives, the formation of shrapnel and shock wave. In addition, the devices for rapid dispersion and delivery must be capable of being readily launched from exiting conventional rifle muzzles, while providing efficient and effective target accuracy and range. Furthermore, the projectile is adapted for delivering a range of payloads while inflicting minimal injury and damage near or around target areas.

In the same manner, there is also a need for delivering non-aerosol payloads or articles, including. but not limited to, flash grenades, concussion grenades, nets, noise generators, stun balls, tire puncturing elements, electromagnetic pulse generators, mines or bomblets, listening devices, signal emitting objects, unmanned aerial vehicles, biological/chemical agents, and the like for efficient, rapid dispersal and delivery.

The patent actually makes this point four times in print. Oops! As New Scientist points out, developing munitions for the purpose of disseminating CB warfare agents is, well, against international treaty these days. The Army is reportedly trying to withdraw the offending words, but can it really take three years (it was filed in February 2003)?

My two cents - I don't think that the government is deliberately developing munitions to deliver CB warfare agents - I think a few enterprising government civilians designed the munition to be multi-purpose, and one possible purpose would be to deliver riot control agents or pepper spray (or any other non-lethal aerosol out there). They didn't think it through, and now it's in print. Rather than offend the arms control community and get the lawyers all excited, the U.S. government's trying to correct the situation. But still - hardly the thing you'd want to have floating around the internet. It's not like this government needs the bad publicity and the mistaken impression of flaunting international treaties...

Hat tip to Saurabh and Saheli!

-- Jason Sigger, crossposted at Armchair Generalist

Battlefield Questions, Answered Fast

The fancy sensors, flying drones, and big bandwidth pipes get most of the attention. But, when it's being done right, network-centric warfare is as much about simple collaboration as it is about gee-whiz gadgetry. Chat rooms, message boards, online libraries all give folks in the field new sources of information and advice, so they can make better battlefield choices.

The latest Army Times has a great example of this in action -- a sort of rapid-fire "Dear Abby" for commanders in the field.

An Army major general in Iraq had a classified question about the insurgency early last month. Rather than pull his advisers away from their immediate mission, he e-mailed a request to a military think-tank, the Center for Army Lessons Learned. 'We answered it in seven hours with 10 people digging for information,' said Craig Hayes, manager of CALL's Request for Information [service].

Contractors developed the Request for Information prototype six years ago to enable soldiers to get immediate information online, culled from sources outside and within CALL. With a few keystrokes, soldiers — regardless of rank — had access to 100 experts and a few hundred thousand documents...

Before the Iraq war, a couple of CALL staffers answered a few questions a week as a secondary duty, Kinsey said... Now, [they're] providing upward of 120 answers a week... And it’s a two-way feed, with troops in the field not only seeking information but also providing insights and tips gained on the battlefield and at tactical centers. CALL staffers take that information and turn it around within 18 hours, kicking it back to others who need it.

Any soldier — or Marine, airman or sailor — may file an RFI, but those deployed or about to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan have priority. The staff tries to answer those questions within eight hours.

“Recently, we got one that said, ‘I’ve got two Soviet mine rollers and no clue how to use them,’” said Albert Fehlauer, lead RFI research analyst. The soldier was trying to train Iraqi troops on their own weapons. “That’s the rewarding aspect. You feel that you’re really helping people.”