Black Horizon

Bin Laden informer could be killed by Pakistan

2012-01-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

BBC:

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said he is "very concerned" about a Pakistani doctor arrested for providing intelligence for the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden last year.

Dr Shikal Afridi is accused of running a CIA-run programme in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed. A Pakistan panel says he should be tried for treason.

Mr Panetta told the CBS TV network the arrest had been "a real mistake".

Dr Afridi provided "very helpful" information for the raid, he added.

He was arrested shortly after the operation, carried out by US special forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on 2 May last year.

Pakistan was deeply embarrassed by the raid, and condemned it as a violation of sovereignty.

'Phoney programme'
In an interview with the CBS programme 60 Minutes to be aired on Sunday, Mr Panetta said: "I'm very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual."

He added that his action "was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan".

"As a matter of fact Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism and for them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part," Mr Panetta said.

Last October, a Pakistani commission investigating the raid recommended that Dr Afridi should be tried for high treason.

In the aftermath of the operation, reports emerged that the CIA had recruited the doctor to organise a phoney vaccination programme in Abbottabad.

The aim of the programme was allegedly to confirm Bin Laden's presence in the city by obtaining a DNA sample from residents.

It is not clear if any DNA from Bin Laden or any family members was ever obtained.

Washington has been arguing that Dr Afridi should be freed and allowed to live in the US.

Mr Panetta also repeated US claims that someone in authority in Pakistan must have known where Bin Laden was hiding at the compound - located close to the country's top military academy.

"I personally have always felt that somebody must have had some sense of what was happening at this compound," he said. "Don't forget, this compound had 18-foot walls. It was the largest compound in the area."

Robots are taking over the military!

2012-01-26T12:35:00.000-08:00

WIRED DANGER ROOM:

The big loser in the Pentagon’s new budget? Ordinary human beings.

About 80,000 Army soldiers and 20,000 Marines are getting downsized. Half of the Army’s conventional combat presence in Europe is packing up and ending its post-Cold War staycation. Replacing them, according to the $613 billion budget previewed by the Pentagon on Thursday: unconventional special-operations forces; new bombers; new spy tools; new missiles for subs; and a veritable Cylon army of drones.

This is the first of the Pentagon’s new, smaller “austerity” budgets: it’s asking Congress for $525 billion (plus $88.4 billion for the Afghanistan war), compared to a $553 billion request (plus $117 billion in war cash) last year.

Only the Pentagon is emphasizing what the military is keeping, not what it’s cutting. That’s because congressional Republicans don’t like swallowing these cuts — and really don’t want to acquiesce to a currently-scheduled law that could tack on another $600 billion-plus to the already-scheduled, decade-long $487 billion in cuts. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is preempting the objections, promising a force that’s “smaller and leaner, but agile, flexible, ready and technologically advanced.”

That means no changes to the U.S. fleet of 11 aircraft carriers and 10 air wings, all reflecting the Obama administration’s emphasis on the western Pacific.

It means leaving the nuclear triad — the bombers, subs and missiles that can end all life on earth — alone. (With one exception: the military will delay replacing the Ohio-class submarine by two years.) It means electronic weapons to jam enemy defenses and attack online networks. It means elite commando forces like the ones who just rescued two aid workers kidnapped in Somalia. And it means drones for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert.

As previewed by President Obama earlier this month, the new budget is going to fund 65 Predator and Reaper combat air patrols — squadrons of up to four drones — “with a surge capacity of 85,” up from 61 today. The Army may be losing 100,000 soldiers, but if it’s any consolation, the Army’s forthcoming Gray Eagle drone gets the thumbs-up.

So does “sea-based unmanned” systems like the Navy’s Fire Scout robo-copter, and unspecified “new unmanned systems with increased capabilities,” probably a reference to next-gen drones like the Navy’s X-47B, which should be able to fly from an aircraft carrier at the click of a mouse by 2018 — the better to patrol the Pacific.

Some other programs get expanded, too. For 20 years, Navy’s studied creating non-aircraft-carrier bases at sea, to put in places where the U.S. can’t have land bases, to launch small jump jets like the F/A-18 Hornet, helicopters or drones. Now the Pentagon will fund “development of a new afloat forward staging base,” according to budget documents, although it’s not specifying what how large those ships will be or how much they’ll cost.

It’s also a great time to be a snake-eater. Pentagon budget documents describe Special Operations Forces as “critical to U.S. and partner counter terrorism operations and a variety of other contemporary contingencies.” In other words, whereas the military invaded and occupied trouble spots during the 2000s, it’ll send commandos for discrete missions in the 2010s.

More money is also going into the Air Force’s new long-range bomber, which won’t always have a human in the cockpit; “improved air-to-air missiles,” probably to prepare for the day when China’s stealth aircraft are a challenge; new jammers and communications gear; and even designing “a conventional prompt strike option from submarines.” It’s going to be good time to manufacture powerful, non-nuclear missiles.

Even the most expensive defense program in history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet family, is getting a mere haircut. After Panetta embraced the planes on Friday, the Pentagon says it’ll merely “slow Joint Strike Fighter procurement” — even though weapons testing recently found it to have 13 expensive new flaws.

All that will let the military “retain a decisive technological edge,” Panetta said, “leverage the lessons of recent conflicts and stay ahead of the most lethal and disruptive threats of the future.”

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE AT WIRED!

FBI wants an App for that ...

2012-01-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

BBC:

The FBI wants an app to combine information from Twitter, Facebook and Google Maps.

The FBI is seeking to develop an early-warning system based on material "scraped" from social networks.

It says the application should provide information about possible domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps "using mash-up technology".

The bureau has asked contractors to suggest possible solutions including the estimated cost.

Privacy campaigners say they are concerned that the move could have implications for free speech.

The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) posted its "Social Media Application" market research request onto the web on 19 January, and it was subsequently flagged up by New Scientist magazine.

The document says: "Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations."

It says the application should collect "open source" information and have the ability to:

Provide an automated search and scrape capability of social networks including Facebook and Twitter.
Allow users to create new keyword searches.
Display different levels of threats as alerts on maps, possibly using colour coding to distinguish priority. Google Maps 3D and Yahoo Maps are listed among the "preferred" mapping options.
Plot a wide range of domestic and global terror data.
Immediately translate foreign language tweets into English.

The FBI says the information would be used to help it to predict the likely actions of "bad actors", detect instances of people deliberately misleading law enforcement officers and spot the vulnerabilities of suspect groups.

Privacy permissions
The FBI issued the request three weeks after the US Department of Homeland Security released a separate report into the privacy implications of monitoring social media websites.

It justified the principle of using information that users have provided and not opted to make private.

"Information posted to social media websites is publicly accessible and voluntarily generated. Thus the opportunity not to provide information exists prior to the informational post by the user," it says.

It noted that the department's National Operations Center had a policy in place to edit out any gathered information which fell outside of the categories relevant to its investigations.

It listed websites that the centre planned to monitor. They include YouTube, the photo service Flickr, and Itstrending.com - a site which shows popular shared items on Facebook.

It also highlighted words it looked out for. These include "gangs", "small pox", "leak", "recall" and "2600" - an apparent reference to the hacking-focused magazine.

Super Guppy visits Amarillo one last time ...

2012-01-26T07:09:00.000-08:00

Photos by Steve Douglass

If you were out by Rick Husband/Amarillo International Airport yesterdau - you may have witnessed a strange looking whale of an aircraft landing - Nasa's "Super Guppy."

The unique one of a kind aircraft was making it's last delivery of a V-22 Osprey fuselage to the Amarillo Bell/Textron plant.

This Super Guppy is the latest and last of a long line of Guppy cargo aircraft used by NASA.

Guppy aircraft were used in several past space programs, including Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab, to transport spacecraft components. The first Guppy aircraft was developed in 1962, designed specifically for NASA operations by Aero Spacelines of California.

This was the last trip of the Super Guppy to Amarillo - it will be retired soon. from this point onward V-22 fuselages will be transported by trucks which may be slower but are more fuel efficient.

Breaking: SEALS rescue Two from Somali Pirates

2012-01-25T03:11:00.000-08:00

NPR In a daring raid reminiscent of the kind used to kill Osama bin Laden, U.S. Navy SEALs swooped into Somalia Wednesday morning and rescued two aid workers, who had been held by pirates for months.

The New York Times reports the soldiers came in by parachute and engaged in a firefight that killed nine pirates. The SEALs left with Jessica Buchanan, a 32-year-old American, and a 60-year-old Dane, Poul Thisted (in a helicopter ) who were injury free and on their way home.

President Obama authorized the mission on Monday and by the time he stepped into the House chambers last night for his State of the Union address, he knew the mission had been successful. As ABC News reports, that explains why Obama detoured to thank Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on his way in.

"According to the U.S. officials, two teams of Navy SEALs parachuted near the compound where the two hostages were being held. As the SEALS approached the compound on foot gunfire broke out, the U.S. officials said, and several of the militants were reportedly killed. There is no word that any of the Americans were wounded.

"The SEALs gathered up Buchanan and Thisted, loaded them onto helicopters and flew them to safety at an undisclosed location. The two hostages were not injured during the rescue operation and are reported to be in relatively good condition."

The president issued a statement, this morning, praising the Special Operations forces.

"Last night I spoke with Jessica Buchanan's father and told him that all Americans have Jessica in our thoughts and prayers, and give thanks that she will soon be reunited with her family," Obama said in a statement. "The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice. This is yet another message to the world that the United States of America will stand strongly against any threats to our people."

The New York Times reports that the raid began at about 3 a.m. local time. By morning, the bodies of nine pirates were taken to the nearby city of Hiimo Gaabo and local leaders tell the Times three to six pirates were captured.

According to the Danish Refugee Council, Buchanan and Thisted were kidnapped while working for the humanitarian organization's de-mining unit. They were held hostage for three months.

Some of the kidnappings have been blamed on the Somali Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab, while others seem to have been carried out by criminals seeking ransoms.

President Barack Obama said he authorized the raid. He thanked the Special Operations forces for their "extraordinary courage and capabilities," but did not provide details on the fatalities.

"The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice," Obama said in a statement. "This is yet another message to the world that the United States of America will stand strongly against any threats to our people."
Before news broke of the rescue, Obama told Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, "Leon, good job tonight. Good job tonight," at the State of the Union address.
Panetta later said in a statement that the raid "is a testament to the superb skills of courageous service members who risked their lives to save others."

New V-22 posing

2012-01-24T18:32:00.001-08:00

Caught one of the brand spanking new Ospreys on a test flight out of Amarillo today. I see them quite often - and yet I'm still impressed.

Photo by Steve Douglass

USAF picks Dragonlady over Global Hawk UAV

2012-01-24T15:21:00.001-08:00

AVWK: The U.S. Air Force has decided to scrap its Northrop Grumman high-altitude unmanned surveillance plane program and instead extend the life of its U-2 aircraft into the 2020s, according to a government official and a defense analyst.

Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute, said the Air Force decision was based on the cost of the Global Hawk unmanned planes, and that the service would investigate using a Marine version with different sensors that Northrop is developing for the Navy.

The Northrop drone is one of dozens of weapons programs that face cancellation or cutbacks in the Pentagon’s fiscal 2013 budget and five-year plan, which begins to implement $487 billion in spending cuts over the next decade.

A U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the Air Force’s Block 30 variant of the unmanned plane was being terminated in the budget request that will be sent to Congress Feb. 13.

Lawmakers have the final say over the Pentagon’s budget, and have reversed other program cancellations in the past.

An Air Force spokeswoman declined to comment.

Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz told Reuters earlier this month that the service’s budget proposal for fiscal 2013 would include terminations of some programs.

He declined comment at the time about the Global Hawk program, saying the service would likely “end up doing what gives us the best capability for the least cost.”

The remotely piloted Global Hawk surveillance planes fly at altitudes above 60,000 feet and can remain in the air for over 24 hours.

The Block 30 airframes sell for roughly $30 million apiece, not including their payloads. Raytheon’s optical, infrared and radar sensors let the aircraft scan large swaths of terrain and transmit images in near real-time.

The Global Hawk was due to replace the Cold War-vintage U-2 spy plane in 2015, but those planes, built by Lockheed Martin, would now remain in service until around 2023, the U.S. official said.

The planes have been used over Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya. They also were used over Japan after the March earthquake, flying from Andersen AFB, Guam, and have been used to track forest fires in California.

US Abraham Lincoln moves through Strait of Hormuz without incident

2012-01-22T19:43:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- Flanked by British and French ships, the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier moved through the Strait of Hormuz without incident Sunday despite recent threats from Iran.

The U.S. Naval Forces Central Command said in a statement that the Lincoln "completed a regular and routine transit of the strait ... to conduct maritime security operations." The Lincoln is in the region with the USS Carl Vinson, giving the U.S. Navy its standard two-carrier presence there.

A British defense ministry spokesman, who was not named per policy, said Sunday that the "HMS Argyll and a French vessel joined a U.S. carrier group" going through the strait "to underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law."

"Britain maintains a constant presence in the region as part of our enduring contribution to Gulf security," the spokesman said.

Several weeks ago, as the USS John Stennis left the Persian Gulf and headed back to the western Pacific, Iranian officials warned the United States not to send in another carrier.

"We have always stated that there is no need for the forces belonging to the countries beyond this region to have a presence in the Persian Gulf," Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said in early January, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. "Their presence does nothing but create mayhem, and we never wanted them to be present in the Persian Gulf."

Tehran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the only outlet to-and-from the Persian Gulf between Iran and the United Arab Emirates and Oman, as it faces increased scrutiny over its nuclear program and possible sanctions on its oil exports. The critical shipping lane had 17 million barrels of oil per day passing through in 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

USAF launches drone controller satellite

2012-01-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - The Air Force has sent into space a satellite that is expected to improve communications with military drones in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Officials say a Delta 4 rocket carried the WGS 4 satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:38 p.m. Thursday.

It's the fourth in a series of military satellites that have been put into place since 2007. The next one is expected to be ready to launch next year.

WGS stands for Wideband Global SATCOM. The satellites are replacing aging Defense Satellite Communications System spacecraft and have 10 times the speed and capacity of the older satellites.

British Rock Is a Spy Rock ...

2012-01-18T20:15:00.000-08:00

BBC:

Britain has admitted for the first time that it was caught spying when Russia exposed its use of a fake rock in Moscow to conceal electronic equipment.

Russia made the allegations in January 2006, but Britain has not publicly accepted the claims until now.

Jonathan Powell, then Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief of staff, told a BBC documentary it was "embarrassing", but "they had us bang to rights".

He added: "Clearly they had known about it for some time."

They had been "saving it up for a political purpose", he said.

The story was first aired on Russian television, which ran a report showing how the rock contained electronic equipment and had been used by British diplomats to receive and transmit information.

It showed a video of a man walking along the pavement of a Moscow street, slowing his pace, glancing at a rock and slowing down, then picking up his pace. Next the camera films another man, who walks by and picks up the rock.

The Russian security service, the FSB, linked the rock with allegations that British security services were making covert payments to pro-democracy and human rights groups.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

Iran says it could ambush US carriers with submarines ...

2012-01-18T15:45:00.000-08:00

Robert Johnson

Underscoring its desire to keep U.S. aircraft carriers from the Persian Gulf, a senior Iranian military commander today announced his possible plan to ambush the American fleet.

Chalk this one up to more bluster, or part of a mounting back and forth rhetoric headed nowhere good, either way — Tehran plans to rely on its subs.

Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army's Self-Sufficiency Jihad, Rear Admiral Farhad Amiri told FARS that Iran has the finest electric diesel submarines in the world, and that while the U.S. has focused on Tehran's "astonishing surface capabilities," it has forgotten about the underwater threat.

Amiri said he plans to slip his fleet of subs onto the Persian Gulf floor and "fire missiles and torpedoes simultaneously."

Iran claims to have 17 Ghadir diesel electric subs in its fleet, and four have been photographed together, so the threat is not entirely without merit.

The Ghadir is incapable of holding a commando crew, and despite scant details it may be well-equipped to follow through on this most recent threat.

Earlier this month Iran demanded the U.S. remove its carriers from the Gulf after the John C. Stennis passed through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian Army Commander Major General Ataollah Salehi said "We advise, warn and recommend [the U.S. Navy] not to return this carrier to its previous location in the Persian Gulf."

"We are not in the habit of repeating the warning and we warn only once," Salehi said, without mentioning the Stennis.

Read more: HERE

Want to know how to hack a UAV? 99 cents.

2012-01-14T05:26:00.000-08:00

My good friends.

The new and much improved (edited) version of my book "The Interceptors Club & The Secret of the Black Manta" is now available for download on SMASHWORDS and soon I-tunes!

With that in mind - I need some more good reviews. Maybe you could help?

You may now download it in many formats for 99 cents for a limited time at : https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/15490

Enter coupon code: FM68A and you won't be charged. Have fun and I hope you like it!

You can read more about my book HERE!

Keywords for this post: RQ-170 drone photos, Iran UAV, stealth drone, Area 51. Stealth UAV, Hacking a UAV, Hacking a Drone, Stealth Helicopters, North Korea, F-22 -F-35, Skunk Works, Top Secret. Beat of Kandahar photos, Osama Raid Stealth helicopters, White Sands Missile Range, Dreamland, Holloman AFB, ARES 151, RQ-170 Sentinel, secrets, Stealth Blimps

US warns Iran it would be "crossing the red line" if strait are closed.

2012-01-13T06:05:00.000-08:00

The U.S. has warned Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei through a secret channel of communication that closing the Strait of Hormuz would elicit an American military response, a report says.

United States government officials would not describe how the message was relayed, and whether Iranian leaders responded, the New York Times reports.

But Obama administration officials have warned Iran that shutting down the Strait of Hormuz — a vital waterway that carries one-sixth of the world's oil supply — would cross a "red line."

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, said recently that if Iran made good on its closure threats, the U.S. would "take action and reopen the strait," which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes, the Times reports.

Iranian nuclear scientist killed in bomb blast

2012-01-11T05:05:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- A blast in a Tehran neighborhood reportedly killed a nuclear scientist Wednesday morning, the latest in a string of attacks against such scientists in the country that Iran has blamed on Israel.
A motorcyclist placed a magnetic bomb under Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan's Peugeot 405, the country's IRNA news agency said.

The blast wounded two others who were passengers in the car, the news agency said.
Roshan worked at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province, according to another news agency, Fars.

Natanz, which is said to have 8,000 centrifuges in operation, is one of two facilities that are enriching uranium in the country. This week, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency identified the second in the mountains of Qom province.
The Wednesday attack followed a similar mode of operation as others that have killed nuclear scientists in the capital city.

On January 12, 2010, Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed in a blast when an assailant stuck a bomb under his car. Officials later arrested a person in connection with that incident.

In November 2010, nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari was killed in a blast where, again, a bomb was stuck under a car by someone on a motorcycle.

"The bomb used in the (Wednesday) explosion was a magnetic bomb, the same kind that were used in previous assassinations of Iranian scientists. And the fact is that this is the work of the Zionists," Fars news agency quoted Tehran's Deputy Governor Safarali Baratloo as saying.
Iran uses the term 'Zionist' to refer to Israel.

The nation has been engaged in a war of words with Israel, whom it accuses of trying to destabilize the republic.

Iran maintains its nuclear program is for energy purposes only, disputing allegations by the United States and other countries that it is trying to develop a weapons program.
Ali Ansari, a professor at the Institute for Iranian Studies at Scotland's University of St Andrews, said more information needs come out about the victims to help determine who's perpetrating the attacks.

Some have speculated that the victims were members of the opposition movement and could have been targeted by internal forces, Ansari said.

"But if it is true that Israel is behind it, Iran should make a formal complaint to the U.N. so they can get an answer from Israel," Ansari said."Because if they really think some other country is killing their nuclear experts, why are they not giving them more protection?"
Iran's 1st Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said the attacks would not stop the country from achieving its scientific goals, IRNA reported.

"Iranian scientists become more determined to take steps in line with the aspirations of the Islamic Republic in spite of terrorist operations," Rahimi told the news agency.

RELATED

BBC:
The US has condemned the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in a car bomb attack in north Tehran.

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said the US "had absolutely nothing to do" with the attack.

Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, who worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, died along with the driver of the car.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US.

Both deny any involvement.

Washington and its allies suspect Tehran of secretly trying to develop a nuclear weapons capacity but Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful.

"The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this. We strongly condemn all acts of violence, including acts of violence like this," said Mr Vietor.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization described the killings as "a heinous act".

Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said on state TV that the bomb attack would not stop "progress" in the country's nuclear programme.

Mr Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, was a university lecturer who supervised a department at the Natanz plant, the semi-official news agency Fars reported.

Iranian officials said two men on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his car during the morning rush hour and detonated it outside a university campus.

CNN's Shirzad Bozorgmehr and Lateef Mungin contributed to this

Aviation Week report on RQ-170 Sentinel loss

2012-01-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

AVIATION WEEK/BILL SWEETMAN

The first clear pictures of the center-line reconnaissance bay on Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel show that the small unmanned aircraft was carrying sensor balls mounted in an internal compartment with specially treated transparent panels—developed for the F-22—when one of them crashed in Iran on Dec. 4.

The new pictures were taken at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan on Sept. 30. The images show that a wheels-up landing would have inflicted massive damage to the bay and sensor package.. That package is “similar to some of the podded electro-optical/infra-red [EO/IR]systems” used by other non-stealthy aircraft and unmanned aerial systems, says a veteran black-world engineer with insight into U.S. UAS programs.

The accident was caused by a “lost [data] link, followed by, or simultaneous with, another malfunction,” says a second official involved with the program. Putting the loss into perspective, “We’ve lost over 50 MQ-1s [Predators] and 9s [Reapers], so this should not be a surprise.”

The U.S. Air Force squadron that flew Sentinels was activated in 2005 and the stealthy, unmanned aircraft was first photographed at Kandahar in 2007. Early RQ-170 operations were conducted from both Afghanistan—with CIA involvement—and South Korea.

The RQ-170s were brought back to the U.S. in 2009, re-equipped with a full-motion video (FMV) camera, and then redeployed to Afghanistan, say USAF intelligence officials. At that time it was operated by the USAF 432nd Wing’s 30th Reconnaissance Sqdn. (RS), then at the Tonopah Test Range Airport in the northwest corner of the USAF Nevada Test and Training Range. The wing also flies the Predator and Reaper, and the Tonopah base was once the clandestine home of the F-117 stealth fighter.

Prior to refitting, the aircraft carried a long-range, EO/IR camera thought by U.S. analysts to be used for monitoring missile tests and other activities in sparsely populated eastern Iran.

The RQ-170’s operational altitude of 50,000 ft. gives it an advantage over other lower-cost UAVs and the manned RC-135 Cobra Ball (for monitoring foreign missile tests) that are restricted to about 30,000 ft. and below. However, the Sentinel is not a high-end, very low-observable stealth design with sophisticated sensors. It is instead a robust, reduced-signature, sensor truck designed to maintain high sortie rates.

Other stealth design features include a variant of the “toothpick” leading-edge profile developed for the B-2. Stealth dictates sharp leading edges, but bluff shapes are better for aerodynamics and stability. The compromise on the RQ-170 and B-2 is to make the edges sharp at their ends, where more radar scattering is most likely, and more blunt at the mid-point.

Initially, flights are thought to have been conducted along the borders of Afghanistan. avoiding the airspace of neighboring countries. However, after adding shorter-range FMV, the aircraft operated in Pakistan’s airspace to monitor the compound of Osama bin Laden, and later over Iran, defense officials say.

The RQ-170 has a dual history of operations for both the CIA and Air Force.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE AT AVIATION WEEK

Everything you wanted to know about UAS - but were afraid to ask:

2012-01-10T08:57:00.001-08:00

1105_001

Iran enriching uranium at fortified underground complex

2012-01-09T15:02:00.000-08:00

BBC:
Iran has begun enriching uranium at a heavily fortified underground site, the UN's nuclear watchdog has confirmed.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said medium-level enrichment had begun at the Fordo plant, in northern Iran.

Iran has said it plans to carry out uranium enrichment there - but insists this is for purely peaceful purposes.

The West argues Tehran is building a nuclear weapons capacity. The US called the work at Fordo a "further escalation" in the dispute.

The existence of the facility near Qom, in the north of the country, only came to light after it was identified by Western intelligence agencies in September 2009.

All nuclear material in the (Fordo) facility remains under the agency's containment and surveillance”

Tehran said it began the project in 2007, but the IAEA believes design work started in 2006.

BBC Iran correspondent James Reynolds says the facility has attracted plenty of attention and suspicion.

It is underground, heavily fortified and protected by the armed forces - making it a very difficult target for air strikes.

The US and Israel have refused to rule out attacks on Iranian facilities.

On Monday a spokeswoman for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Gill Tudor, said the agency could "confirm that Iran has started the production of uranium enriched up to 20%".

She added that "all nuclear material in the facility remains under the agency's containment and surveillance".

Iran insists enriched uranium is needed to make isotopes to treat cancers. But analysts say 20% enrichment is an important step towards making uranium weapons-grade.

In Washington, state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said such a level of enrichment was "a further escalation" of the Iranians' "ongoing violations with regard to their nuclear obligations", and suggested "a different kind of a nuclear programme".

Bell building Magellan in Amarillo.

2012-01-09T13:14:00.001-08:00

Image: Bell B412

Bell to build new commercial helicopter in Amarillo

Breaking with its recent past, Bell Helicopter plans to produce its next new commercial helicopter, code named Magellan, at its military aircraft plant in Amarillo.

The decision to build the new aircraft model in Amarillo, rather than at Bell's commercial aircraft production facilities in Mirabel, Canada was announced today in an email to employees from Bell CEO John Garrison.

Bell manufactures gear boxes, rotorblades and other commercial aircraft components in Fort Worth.

Magellan is Bell's program to develop a new medium capacity helicopter, probably capable of hauling about 15 people and with long-range capacity to get to offshore oil rigs. The company officially launched the program a year ago, with no fanfare, but is expected to detail the aircraft's projected capabilities at the annaul Heli Expo trade show that will be held in Dallas next month.

The following is the text of Garrison's message:

Following a company-wide assessment to determine the best use of our production facilities to meet all of our future requirements, we have decided to conduct final assembly, production test flight and delivery of the Magellan aircraft at our Amarillo, Texas facility.

Amarillo was selected principally based on capacity. Our operating plans call for commercial aircraft production in Mirabel to continue to ramp sharply in the years ahead in anticipation that the commercial market will return to growth in the near future, while military production in Amarillo is projected to decline with lower V-22 requirements with the second multi-year contract.

Cross-leveling our capacity in this case to support our balanced business requirements is the best solution for the company as a whole, ensuring that all our production centers remain engaged, and driving lowest overall costs in order to remain competitive in both our commercial and military markets.

This is not a change in our manufacturing and final assembly strategy. Mirabel remains our principle commercial aircraft assembly center and commercial airframe design center of excellence; and Amarillo remains our military assembly and delivery center of excellence. Engineers in Mirabel assigned to the Magellan development team will continue that work.

In a company memo circulated to its employees in January 2011, Bell officially acknowledged Magellan and said it was a follow-on to “Project X.” Many observers believe the rotorcraft builder is working on a medium-twin helicopter to replace the venerable 412–whose basic airframe dates back to the early 1960s and the single-engine UH-1 Huey–and that this new twin would be aimed primarily at the superheated deepwater offshore oil-and-gas market but has both civil & military applications.

Related: Bell betting 1 Billion on new helicopter R&D

Iranian court sentences American to death for "spying."

2012-01-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian court has convicted an American man of working for the CIA and sentenced him to death, state radio reported Monday, in a case adding to the accelerating tension between the United States and Iran.

Iran charges that as a former U.S. Marine, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati received special training and served at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading to Iran for his alleged intelligence mission. The radio report did not say when the verdict was issued. Under Iranian law, he has 20 days to appeal.

The 28-year-old former military translator was born in Arizona and graduated from high school in Michigan. His family is of Iranian origin. His father, a professor at a community college in Flint, Michigan, has said his son is not a CIA spy and was visiting his grandmothers in Iran when he was arrested.

His trial took place as the U.S. announced new, tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes Tehran is using to develop a possible atomic weapons capability.

Iran, which says it only seeks nuclear reactors for energy and research, has sharply increased its threats and military posturing against stronger pressures, including the U.S. sanctions targeting Iran's Central Bank in attempts to complicate its ability to sell oil.

The U.S. State Department has demanded Hekmati's release.

The court convicted him of working with a hostile country, belonging to the CIA and trying to accuse Iran of involvement in terrorism, Monday's report said.

In its ruling, a branch of Tehran Revolutionary Court described Hekmati as a mohareb, an Islamic term that means a fighter against God, and a mofsed, or one who spreads corruption on earth. Both terms appear frequently in Iranian court rulings.

In a closed court hearing in late December, the prosecution asked for the death penalty for Hekmati.

The U.S. government has called on Iranian authorities to grant Swiss diplomats access to him in prison. The Swiss government represents U.S. interests in Iran because the two countries don't have diplomatic relations.

Hekmati is a dual U.S.-Iranian national. Iran considers him an Iranian since the country's law does not recognize dual citizenship.

His father, Ali Hekmati, and family friend Muna Jondy, an attorney who has been speaking on behalf of the family, did not immediately respond to emails and phone messages left at their offices before business hours Monday morning.

Similar cases against Americans accused of spying have heightened tensions throughout the years-long standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

Iran arrested three Americans in July 2009 along the border with Iraq and accused them of espionage, though the Americans said they were just hiking in the scenic and relatively peaceful Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Florida man arrested for terrorism plot

2012-01-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- A Florida man, arrested Saturday for allegedly plotted to bomb night clubs and the sheriff's headquarters in Tampa, Florida, faces a federal judge on a terror charge Monday afternoon, federal prosecutors said.

Sami Osmakac, a 25-year-old naturalized American born in Kosovo, planned a car bombing that would be followed by hostage-taking and the explosion of a suicide belt he planned to wear, according to a criminal complaint made public Monday.
"We all have to die, so why not die the Islamic way?" Osmakac allegedly told an undercover FBI employee, according to the complaint.

The federal investigation of Osmakac began in September when a "confidential human source" told the FBI that Osmakac, a resident of Pinellas Park, Florida, "asked for al Qaeda flags," the complaint said.

A law enforcement official, who asked not to be identified because the official was not authorized to talk about the probe, said the suspect does not appear to have any ties to al Qaeda, and early information indicated he was "self-radicalized."
"I don't have any indication anyone else was involved in the plot and pushing this," the official said.

By November, the suspect was discussing potential terror targets in Tampa and asked for the confidential source's help in getting guns and explosives for the attacks, the complaint said.

The government's source introduced Osmakac to an undercover FBI employee, which led to a December 21 meeting during which the suspect said "he wished to acquire an AK-47-style machine gun, Uzi submachine guns, high capacity magazines, grenades and an explosive belt," the complaint said. He later allegedly gave the FBI employee a $500 down payment for the weapons, it said.

"The explosives and firearms that he allegedly sought and attempted to use were rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public," the government said.

Osmakac, in a New Year's Day meeting with the undercover FBI employee, outlined his plot, it said. His alleged bomb targets were "night clubs in the Ybor City area of Tampa, the operations center of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office in Ybor City and a business in the South Tampa area of Tampa," the government said.
After the car bombing, he would retrieve guns and explosives stashed in a Tampa hotel room to begin the second phase of his attacks, the complaint said.

He told the FBI employee that "he wanted to use the explosive belt to 'get in somewhere where there's a lot of people' and take hostages," the complaint said. He would then demand that the FBI "release some prisoners," it said.

"Once I have this ... they can take me in five million pieces," he allegedly said, "an apparent reference to the explosive belt that would be attached to his waist," the government said.

FBI agents arrested Osmakac Saturday night, just after he "made a video of himself explaining his motives for carrying out the planned violent attack," the government said.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY ON CNN

Great Satan's Navy rescues hijacked Iranian sailors.

2012-01-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- U.S. sailors from a carrier strike group whose recent presence in the Persian Gulf drew the ire of Iranian military officials have rescued 13 of the Middle Eastern country's sailors from a hijacked fishing boat, a military spokesman said Friday.

The destroyer USS Kidd came to the aid of the ship Thursday in the North Arabian sea, near the crucial Strait of Hormuz, according to the Navy.

The rescue prompted the captain of the freed ship to offer his "sincere gratitude," according to Josh Schminky, a Navy Criminal Investigative Service agent aboard the Kidd.

"He was afraid that without our help, they could have been there for months," said Schminky.

The rescue Thursday came two days after Iran said the United States should not send any more warships into the Persian Gulf.

The USS John Stennis Strike Group, which includes the Kidd, moved out of the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz last week, prompting Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi to warn that "there is no need for the forces belonging to the countries beyond this region to have a presence in the Persian Gulf," according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

"Their presence does nothing but create mayhem, and we never wanted them to be present in the Persian Gulf," Vahidi said.

According to the Navy, a helicopter from the Kidd spotted a suspect pirate boat alongside the Iranian vessel. At the same time, the Kidd received a distress call from the captain of ship, the Al Molai, saying he and his crew were being held captive by pirates.

A team from the Kidd boarded the Al Molai, took 15 suspected pirates into custody and freed 13 Iranian hostages, the Navy said.

The suspected pirates, mostly Somalis, were taken to the Stennis to be held until a decision is made about prosecution, Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby said Friday.
Pirates hijacked the Al Molai 40 to 45 days ago, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command said in a statement.

The crew was "held hostage, with limited rations and we believe were forced against their will to assist the pirates with other piracy operations," according to the statement.

The Navy team provided food, water and medical care to both the suspected pirates and the crew of the Al Molai after securing the ship and ensuring everyone was safe, Schminky said.

The crew had "been though a lot," he said.
"We went out of our way to treat the fishing crew with kindness and respect," he said.

X-37B spying on China?

2012-01-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

America's classified X-37B spaceplane is probably spying on China, according to a report in Spaceflight magazine.

The unpiloted vehicle was launched into orbit by the US Air Force in March last year and has yet to return to Earth.

The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to discuss its mission but amateur space trackers have noted how its path around the globe is nearly identical to China's spacelab, Tiangong-1.

There is wide speculation that the X-37B is eavesdropping on the laboratory.

"Space-to-space surveillance is a whole new ball game made possible by a finessed group of sensors and sensor suites, which we think the X-37B may be using to maintain a close watch on China's nascent space station," said Spaceflight editor Dr David Baker.

The X-37B, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), looks like a mini space shuttle and can glide back down through the atmosphere to land on a runway, just like Nasa's re-usable manned spaceplane used to do before its retirement last July.

Built by Boeing, the Air Force's robotic craft is about 9m long and has a payload bay volume similar to that of a small van. But what goes in the payload bay, the USAF will not discuss.

The current mission was launched on an Atlas rocket and put into a low orbit, a little over 300km up, with an inclination of 42.79 degrees with respect to the equator - an unusual profile for a US military mission which would normally go into an orbit that circles the poles.

The X-37B's flight has since been followed from the ground by a dedicated group of optical tracking specialists in the US and Europe, intrigued by what the vehicle may be doing.

These individuals have watched how closely its orbit matches that of Tiangong.

The spacelab, which China expects to man with astronauts in 2012, was launched in September with an inclination of 42.78 degrees, and to a very similar altitude as the OTV.

"The parallels with X-37B are clear," Dr Baker says in Spaceflight, the long established magazine of the British Interplanetary Society.

"With a period differential of about 19 seconds, the two vehicles will migrate toward or against each other, converging or diverging, roughly every 170 orbits."

No-one can say for sure what sort of mission the spaceplane is pursuing; all the USAF has said is that the OTV is being used as a testbed for new technologies.

An artist's impression of the recent Shenzhou capsule docking with Tiangong-1
But the suggestion any new sensors in the X-37B might take an interest in Tiangong's telemetry is certainly an interesting one.

Washington retains a deep distrust of Beijing's space ambitions - even its apparently straightforward human spaceflight missions.

Part of the problem is that China draws little distinction between its civilian and military programmes, unlike in other parts of the world, such as Europe, where the bloc's space agency, Esa, is committed by charter to "exclusively peaceful" programmes. European military space projects are the preserve of national governments.

In the US, also, that distinction is pretty clear with Nasa being charged with the majority of civilian projects.

In China, on the other hand, the lines are more blurred and the military reaches across all its space programmes.

"If this is what the X-37B is doing, I think it really is no bad thing," Dr Baker told BBC News. "As with the Cold War, the proliferation of space surveillance systems enabled us to get arms agreements that would not have been possible without each side knowing fully what the other side was doing."

Tiangong-1 was launched in September
Not everyone is convinced by the latest analysis.

Read the rest of the story HERE at the BBC

Iran could close Straits of Hormuz - but at what cost?

2012-01-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

Reuters:

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent
LONDON | Thu Jan 5, 2012 10:35am EST

But they could also find themselves sparking a punishing -- if perhaps short-lived -- regional conflict from which they could emerge the primary losers.

In recent weeks, a growing number of senior Iranian military and civilian officials have warned that Tehran could use force to close the 54 km (25 mile) entrance to the Gulf if Western states impose sanctions that paralyze their oil exports.

In 10 days of highly publicized military exercises, state television showed truck-mounted missiles blasting towards international waters, fast gunboats practicing attacks and helicopters deploying divers and naval commandos.

Few believe Tehran could keep the straits closed for long -- perhaps no more than a handful of days -- but that alone would still temporarily block shipment of a fifth of all traded global oil, sending prices rocketing and severely denting hopes of global economic recovery.

But such action would swiftly trigger retaliation from the United States and others that could leave the Islamic republic militarily and economically crippled.

"They can cause a great deal of mischief... but it depends how much pain they are willing to accept," says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island.

He said he believed Tehran would only take such action as a last resort: "They are much more likely to threaten than to act."

The true purpose of its recent saber-rattling, many analysts suspect, may be more a mixture of deterring foreign powers from new sanctions and distracting voters from rising domestic woes ahead of legislative elections in March.

With the United States signing new sanctions into law on New Year's Eve -- although they will not enter force until the middle of the year -- and the European Union considering similar steps, few expect the pressure on Tehran to let up.

"This is probably less a genuine military threat than a bid to put economic pressure back on the West and split Western powers over sanctions that threaten Iran's oil economy," says Henry Wilkinson, head of intelligence and analysis at London security consultants Janusian.

"Iran now does not have much to lose by making such a threat and a lot to gain."

But many fear the more Iran is pushed into a corner, the greater the risk of miscalculation.

Its ruling establishment is also widely seen as deeply divided, with some elements -- particularly the well-equipped and hardline Revolutionary Guard -- much keener on confrontation than others.

SEA MINES, MISSILES, SUBMARINES, SPEEDBOATS

"I cannot see strategic sense in closing the straits, but then I do not understand the Iranian version of the 'rational actor'," said one senior Western naval officer on condition of anonymity.

"(But) one can be pretty certain that they will misjudge the Western reaction... They clearly find us as hard to read as we find them."

The capability to wreak at least temporary chaos, however, is unquestionably there.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet always keeps one or two aircraft carrier battle groups either in the Gulf or within striking distance in the Indian Ocean.

Keenly aware of conventional U.S. military dominance in the region, Iran has adopted what strategists describe as an "asymmetric" approach.

Missiles mounted on civilian trucks can be concealed around the coastline, tiny civilian dhows and fishing vessels can be used to lay mines, and midget submarines can be hidden in the shallows to launch more sophisticated "smart mines" and homing torpedoes.

Iran is also believed to have built up fleets of perhaps hundreds of small fast attack craft including tiny suicide speedboats, learning from the example of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels who used such methods in a war with the government.

At worst, its forces could strike simultaneously at multiple ships passing out of the Gulf, leaving a string of burning tankers and perhaps also Western warships.

But a more likely initial scenario, many experts believe, is that it would simply declare a blockade, perhaps fire warning shots at ships and announce it had laid a minefield.

"All the Iranians have to do is say they mined the straight and all tanker traffic would cease immediately," says Jon Rosamund, head of the maritime desk at specialist publishers and consultancy IHS Jane's.

RETALIATION, ESCALATION

U.S. and other military forces would find themselves swiftly pushed by shippers and consumers to force a route through with minesweepers and other warships -- effectively daring Tehran to fire or be revealed to have made an empty threat.

During the so-called "tanker war" of the mid-1980s, Gulf waters were periodically mined as Iran and Iraq attacked each other's oil shipments.

U.S., British and other foreign forces responded by escorting other nations' tankers -- as well as conducting limited strikes on Iranian maritime targets.

This time, retaliation could go much further. In closing the straits, Tehran would have committed an act of war and that might prove simply too tempting an opportunity for its foes to pass up.

"We might well take the opportunity to take out their entire defense system," said veteran former U.S. intelligence official Anthony Cordesman, now Burke Chair of Strategy at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

"You'd almost certainly also see serious strikes on their nuclear facilities. Once the Iranians have initiated hostilities, there is no set level at which you have to stop escalation."

Whilst in theory it would be possible to push heavily protected convoys through the straits even in the face of Iranian attack, few believe shippers or insurers would have the appetite for the level of casualties that could involve.

Instead, they would probably hold back until Tehran's military had been sufficiently degraded. That, Western military officers confidently say, would only be a matter of time.

"Anti-ship cruise missiles are mobile, yet can... be found and destroyed," said one U.S. naval officer with considerable experience in the region, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Submarines are short-duration threats -- they eventually have to come to port for resupply and when they do they will be sitting ducks."

"DANGEROUS GAME OF CHICKEN"

Given the forces arrayed against them, many analysts believe Tehran will ultimately keep the straits open -- not least to allow their own oil exports to flow -- whilst finding other ways to needle its foes.

If they did wish to disrupt shipping, they could briefly close off areas of the Gulf through declaring "military exercise areas," "accidentally" release oil into the main channel or perhaps launch one-off and more deniable hit-and-run attacks.

The rhetoric, however, looks almost certain to continue.

"This isn't the first time we have heard these types of threats," said Alan Fraser, Middle East analyst for London-based risk consultancy AKE. "Closing of the Straits of Hormuz is the perfect issue to talk about because the stakes are potentially so high that nobody wants it to happen."

Henry Smith, Middle East analyst at consultancy Control Risks, says he believes the only circumstances under which the Iranians would consider such action would be if the United States or Israel had already launched an overt military strike on nuclear facilities.

"Then, I think it would happen pretty much automatically," he said. "The Iranians have been saying for a long time that is an option, and they would have little choice but to stick to that. But otherwise, I think it's very unlikely."

For many long-term watchers of the region, the real risk remains that in playing largely to domestic audiences, policymakers in Washington, Tel Aviv and Tehran inadvertently spark something much worse than they ever intended.

"Both sides are talking tough," said Farhang Jahanpour, associate fellow at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University. "Unfortunately it can very easily get out of hand and cause a conflagration. I blame hardliners on both sides. They are playing a very dangerous game of chicken." (Additional reporting by William Maclean)

(Reporting By Peter Apps; Edited by Richard Meares)

Obama - firing soldiers to save money

2012-01-05T05:53:00.000-08:00

The US is to axe thousands of troops as part of a far-reaching defence review aimed at coping with huge budget cuts over the next decade, officials say.

The changes - to be unveiled on Thursday - are likely to end a decades-old policy of maintaining the strength to fight two wars at once.

President Barack Obama will announce the plans with Defence Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon on Thursday.

The Pentagon faces more than $450bn (£288bn) in cuts in the next 10 years.

Another $500bn in cuts could be looming at the beginning of 2013, after a congressional committee failed to act on finding budget savings last year.

Despite this Mr Obama, wary of the upcoming presidential election, is expected to emphasise that the US military budget is continuing to grow, albeit at a slower pace.

US officials have sought to portray the president as taking a deliberate approach to defence spending, insisting any troop reductions will be informed by a review of strategy by commanders.

There's the growing pressure on the defence budget in an age of austerity.

The commitment of US combat forces in Iraq is over and the developing draw-down of US numbers in Afghanistan makes this a good moment for a re-appraisal.

There is also a broader desire to re-orientate the focus of US defence policy away from the Middle East and towards Asia.

Today will not be the moment for detailed announcements about troops cuts and weapons programmes delayed or cancelled. But cuts there will be in due course, with more US troops likely to be brought home from Europe.

The US Army and the Marine Corps will be reduced in number and the US Marines will return to their traditional role as a rapid intervention force.

The focus for the future looks to be on what the Pentagon calls "the Air-Sea Battle" - the creation of forces capable of containing a rising military player in the Asia-Pacific region. Nobody says so explicitly, but it's China they clearly have in mind.

White House spokesman Jay Carney described the planned cuts as "surgical". The president is also reported to have been closely involved in the decision-making process.

No specific cuts or troop reduction figures will be announced on Thursday, reports say, but the White House said the review "will guide our budget priorities and decisions going forward".

Reuters news agency says officials are considering a 10-15% reduction in the US Army and Marine Corps over 10 years - equivalent to tens of thousands of troops.

Future in Asia
The US is expected to make several large long-term strategic changes as a result of budget pressures, including reducing the overall number of ground troops and strengthening air and naval power in Asia.

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says more US troops are likely to be brought home from Europe.

Our correspondent says the focus for the future looks to be on what the Pentagon calls "the Air-Sea Battle" - the creation of forces capable of containing a rising military player in the Asia-Pacific region. He says it is clearly China that the US officials are thinking of.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta made clear last autumn that Asia would be central to US security strategy, including countering China's influence in the region, describing the Pacific as a "key priority".

Backing away from a potential two-war footing has been debated in the Pentagon for years.

In June 2001, then-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress the two-war strategy was "not working".

And when the US was in fact fighting two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - the military suffered a shortage of manpower.

The expected change in strategy would prepare the US to fight one war while waging a holding operation elsewhere to "spoil" a second threat.

Officials say they are using recent examples to guide their decisions.

"As Libya showed, you don't necessarily have to have boots on the ground all the time," an unnamed official told Reuters. "We are refining our strategy to something that is more realistic."

Yet many of the Nato allies in Libya are facing similarly tight defence budgets, and Mr Obama is likely to face criticism from defence hawks in Congress, including Republicans and those seeking to challenge him for the presidency in November.

Iran's Parliament preparing a bill that would prohibit all foreign warships from Persian Gulf

2012-01-04T12:13:00.000-08:00

Iran's parliament said Wednesday it was preparing a bill that would prohibit all foreign warships from entering the Persian Gulf unless they received permission from the Iranian navy.

The bill, disclosed by the the semiofficial Fars News Agency, surfaced a day after Iran’s armed forces commander warned a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier not to return to the gulf, remarks that rattled commodities markets and helped drive up oil prices.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to a warning by Iran's army chief that an American aircraft carrier should not return to the Persian Gulf.

Iran tested two long-range missiles on the last day of its naval exercises. The country is threatening to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which would cut off a large percentage of the world's oil supply.

The proposed legislation suggested that at least some Iranian officials are serious about trying to stop the U.S. Navy from entering the oil-rich gulf waters. Iranian analysts said the bill probably would not have been introduced if it were not supported by higher authorities.

“If the military vessels and warships of any country want to pass via the Strait of Hormuz without coordination and permission of Iran’s navy forces, they should be stopped by the Iranian armed forces,” Fars quoted lawmaker Nader Qazipour as saying in explaining the bill. He noted that Iran regards the strait as part of its territorial waters and said the bill would be presented to parliamentary leaders next week.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ahmad Vahidi restated Iran's position that “transnational forces” have no place in the region. Vahidi also said Iran is willing to organize joint military drills with neighboring countries, Fars reported Wednesday.

The news agency, which has ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, claimed that the carrier USS John C. Stennis, which steamed out of the Persian Gulf last week, had escaped while being “chased by Iranian warships.”

The United States has dismissed as overblown rhetoric Iran’s threats to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow entrance to the Persian Gulf, in retaliation for Western sanctions over its uranium-enrichment program.

The increasingly bellicose tone from Tehran has coincided with a currency crisis that has forced the government to intervene to prop up the ailing rial. Helping to drive the rial to record lows was U.S. legislation signed Saturday by President Obama that includes a provision for unilateral sanctions against Iran’s central bank.

Iran responded by injecting an additional $200 million into the country’s currency markets Wednesday, Fars reported. While the rial’s rate appeared to stabilize, people involved in trading dollars said they were hanging onto their foreign currency for now.

Many Iranians were trying to buy dollars anyway, but sellers were hard to find.

“Nobody is selling their dollars,” said one exchange office representative who did not want to be identified. “The current rate is artificial.”

The crisis spurred rumors that the job of Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani was in jeopardy. According to Fars, he has asked for more authority to clamp down on “speculation” against the rial.

Iran is worried about American aircraft carriers ...

2012-01-04T06:06:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- Iran warned the United States Tuesday not to return a U.S. aircraft carrier "to the Persian Gulf region."

U.S. officials rejected the "warning" and another recent threat from Tehran that it could close the Strait of Hormuz. The White House and U.S. State Department called the latest threats signs that sanctions against Iran, the result of a standoff over its nuclear activities, are working.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will not repeat its warning," said Maj. Gen. Ataollah Salehi, commander of Iran's Army, according to the state-run news agency IRNA.

Salehi "said the country will not adopt any irrational move but it is ready to severely react against any threat," the report added.

The commander spoke at the Port of Chabahar in southern Iran, as forces held a military parade the day after Iran ended naval drills in the region, IRNA reported.
What's Iran's real plan? U.S. sanctions hurting Iran's currency Report: Iran tests nuclear fuel rod Navy won't tolerate Iran 'disruption'

Iran was referring to the USS John C. Stennis, part of the U.S. Navy's fleet in the region. It moved last week from the Persian Gulf into the North Arabian Sea, as part of what the Navy's 5th Fleet called a pre-planned transit.

Iran said the ship's movement during Iran's naval exercises showed that the United States "understood" that Iran's maneuvers were not "suicidal or aggressive," but rather about Iran protecting its own "interests and power."

But Western diplomats last week described the naval drills -- which, according to Iranian officials, included test-firing missiles -- as further evidence of Iran's volatile behavior.
Iran's naval exercises began in the strait and also included waters in the Sea of Oman and the Indian Ocean up to the Gulf of Aden, according to IRNA.

After Tuesday's warning from Iran, a Pentagon spokesman issued a statement saying "deployment of U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf region will continue as it has for decades."
"These carrier strike group deployments are necessary to maintain the continuity and operational support to ongoing missions in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility," George Little said.
The United States has had forces in the Persian Gulf since World War II.

Its ships sail through the Persian Gulf frequently, many on their way to and from the 5th Fleet's headquarters in Bahrain. The 5th Fleet's area of responsibility covers about 2.5 million square miles, including the Persian Gulf, which the Navy also refers to as the Arabian Gulf; the Red Sea; the Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean.

The dispute over the Stennis began last week. Tehran said an Iranian warplane identified a U.S. carrier patrolling the area of the drills. State-run media showed a picture of the vessel.
Iran's state-run Press TV said Tuesday the images it showed last week were of the Stennis.
Tuesday's events came amid growing tensions over the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping channel.
Iran last week threatened to block the strait if sanctions are imposed on its oil exports. France, Britain and Germany have proposed sanctions to punish Iran's lack of cooperation on its nuclear program.

Cmdr. Amy Derrick Frost, spokeswoman for the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, responded at the time, "Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated."

In his statement Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Little said the Navy "operates under international maritime conventions to maintain a constant state of high vigilance in order to ensure the continued, safe flow of maritime traffic in waterways critical to global commerce.

"Our transits of the Strait of Hormuz continue to be in compliance with international law, which guarantees our vessels the right of transit passage. We are committed to protecting maritime freedoms that are the basis for global prosperity; this is one of the main reasons our military forces operate in the region."

The dispute has been pushing up oil prices. Nearly 17 million barrels of oil a day pass through the strait, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. "Flows through the Strait in 2011 were roughly 35% of all seaborne traded oil, or almost 20% of oil traded worldwide," the agency says.
"No one in this government seeks confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz," Little said. "It's important to lower the temperature."

But closing the strait would require means that likely are not available to Iran, said Jean-Paul Rodrigue, an expert in transport geography at Hofstra University. "At best, Iran can posture and potentially disrupt traffic for a short duration," he said.

China and Japan are more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than the United States is, he said, and he added that any move to close the strait would be "suicidal" to the current regime.

Iran ramps up tension by launching missile

2012-01-02T05:02:00.000-08:00

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran test-fired a long-range, shore-to-sea missile on Monday, the final day of its naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, state-run media reported.

The Ghader missile was fired during the "power" stage of the maneuvers, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. The test was successful, and the missile hit its intended targets, according to the report.

"A large number of the long-range surface-to-sea Ghader missiles have already been delivered to the Iranian Armed Forces," IRNA said.

A short-range Nasr missile would also be test-fired, along with a surface-to-surface Noor missile, the news agency said.

The Noor is an "advanced radar-evading, target-seeking, guided and controlled missile and can easily find its target and destroy it," IRNA reported, quoting 2nd Adm. Seyed Mahmoud Musavi.
Iran began the exercises in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman on December 24, IRNA said. Western diplomats have described the maneuvers as further evidence of Iran's volatile behavior.
Iran also successfully test-fired a medium-range, surface-to-air and radar-evading Mehrab missile on Sunday, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. A submarine also successfully fired torpedoes at mock vessels, according to the report.

Fars added that plans for Monday involve "a new tactic which is designed to prevent any movement in the Strait of Hormuz if the Iranian navy so desires."

The naval exercises focused attention on the strait -- a shipping channel leading in and out of the Persian Gulf between Iran on one coast and Oman and the United Arab Emirates on the other. It is strategically important because tankers carrying oil travel through it -- some 15 million barrels daily in 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Iran tests fires missile amid growing tensions

2012-01-01T04:56:00.000-08:00

Iran has successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile during military exercises in the Gulf, the official Irna news agency reports.

Iranian naval commander, Mahmoud Mousavi, was quoted as saying the missile was equipped with the "latest technology" and "intelligent systems".

The test comes a day after he denied earlier state media reports that Iran had test-fired long-range missiles.

He said on Saturday missile launches would take place "in the coming days".

Iran's 10 days of naval exercises began last week and are taking place in international waters to the east of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

They come at a time of increased tensions between the West and Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Tehran reacted angrily last week to reports that Western nations were planning to impose further sanctions targeting Iran's oil and financial sectors.

Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, which links the Gulf - and its oil-producing states - to the Indian Ocean.

About 20% of the world's oil passes through the narrow strait.

The US and its allies believe Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons - a charge Iran denies.

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes. Iran has maintained that it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity to meet growing domestic demand.

Man arrested for carrying explosives through checkpoint at Midland Airport

2012-01-01T04:48:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- A North Carolina man was arrested on suspicion of attempting to carry explosives through a security checkpoint at an airport in Midland, Texas, federal authorities said.

Trey Scott Atwater of Hope Mills was taken into federal custody Saturday morning after Transportation Security Administration agents spotted what they described as a suspicious item.
The item was in his carry-on during X-ray screening at a security checkpoint at Midland International Airport, FBI spokesman Mark Morgan said in a statement.

Neither the FBI nor the TSA identified the explosives, though a Midland spokeswoman said the items were "wrapped in military grade wrapping" and are in the possession of the Midland Police Department.

"At no time was there any danger to the people at Midland International Airport or the community of Midland, Texas," Morgan said.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated while authorities "conducted a sweep, and deemed all clear," said Tasa Watts, the city spokeswoman.

Atwater has been arrested on a federal count of attempting to get on an aircraft with an explosive, Morgan said

Grail spacecraft orbiting Moon.

2011-12-31T21:53:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- The first of twin research spacecraft entered the moon's orbit Saturday, part of an effort to learn more about how it and other terrestrial bodies formed, NASA said.

The GRAIL-A -- which launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral on September 10, along with its sister spacecraft GRAIL-B -- began a "lunar orbit insertion burn" at about 4:30 p.m. ET, NASA said on an associated Twitter feed.

That burn was set to finish around 5 p.m. The second in the pair, GRAIL-B, will follow suit Sunday.
"Burn complete! #GRAIL-A is now orbiting the moon and awaiting the arrival of its twin #GRAIL-B on New Year's Day," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced on Twitter.
The two orbiters, each 3 1/2 feet high and 2 1/2 feet deep, are named for named for NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory.

They will fly in tandem orbits, measuring the gravity field and ideally answering "longstanding questions about the moon and (giving) scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed," according to NASA.
The moon is about 250,000 miles from Earth, a distance that NASA's Apollo crews reached in about three days. But the GRAIL spacecrafts took much longer, namely 3½ months, because they covered more than 2.5 million miles "reshaping and merging their orbits" so that they could be better positioned and coordinated to study the moon, NASA said.

The orbiters, whose mission was timed to miss lunar eclipses in December and June, are expected to collect data for 82 days.

Maria Zuber, principal investigator for GRAIL, said the moon remains mysterious in many ways and little is known about the process of how it was formed. Scientists theorize that the moon formed when a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth.

It remains unknown why the near side of the moon is so different from the far side. The basins are flooded with volcanic material on one side, and the other side has mountainous highlands. Why did these sides evolve differently?

"We think the answer is locked in the interior," Zuber said at a NASA news briefing Wednesday.
A study published in the journal Nature over the summer suggested that there may have been a second moon moving at about the same speed as our moon, and in the same orbit.
The second moon bumped into the original moon, the theory goes, and caused the formation of a mountain instead of a crater.

This model predicts the whole exterior of the moon was once molten and cooled from the outside in such a way that when the second moon hit our moon, it pushed all of that molten material to the near side.

GRAIL can help test this hypothesis. The spacecraft are designed to help scientists explore the interior of the moon indirectly by measuring the pull of gravity as they fly over the surface. With data about these changes in gravity and topography, scientists will be able to construct a map of what's inside our celestial neighbor.

Scientists wanted the spacecraft to be as small as possible so they could launch in one rocket.
But they weren't sure if the orbiters would make it through eclipses that happen at the moon every six months, since their technology depends on lithium-ion batteries and solar panels.
A lunar eclipse occurred in early December, and the next one is in June. Based on the current performance, scientists think GRAIL can continue through the June eclipse.

Should one of the orbiters completely fail, scientists could not get the high precision they would get from the two spacecraft; the mission depends on having both, Zuber said. If the lunar orbit insertion doesn't happen for one of the spacecraft, there would be another opportunity to try again in late April.

2012 is here!

2011-12-31T20:26:00.001-08:00

US inks 29.4 billion fighter deal with Saudis

2011-12-30T08:14:00.000-08:00

China unveils space conquest plans ...

2011-12-30T08:03:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- China plans to put laboratories in space, collect samples from the moon and prepare to build space stations over the next five years, according to an ambitious plan released this week aimed at putting the country on the global map for space exploration.

China also plans to launch manned-vessels and freighters into space during the coming half-decade, according to a government white paper. The country's eventual goal in the longer term is a manned lunar landing.

"With economic progress, also comes the need for scientific development and exploration," said Jiao Weixin, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Beijing University. "By investing in space exploration, China wants to contribute and be a major player in the world on more than one level."
The Chinese plans announced this week come as the United States has been scaling back its ambitions and funding for space exploration.

Since 2003, China has made major breakthroughs in its space program, including becoming the third country after Russia and the United States to put a human in space. It successfully completed a spacewalk in 2008.

In November, the successful automated docking and return of an unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou-8, paved the way for the creation of China's future space laboratory. The spaceship blasted off from a launch facility in the Gobi Desert in northwest China, one month after the first space laboratory module Tiangong-1 was launched into space.

China says its military-run space program will be used for peaceful purposes. But its activities have set off controversy in the past, like when it shot down one of its dead satellites in 2007, for example. That move alarmed some officials in the United States and other countries and raised concerns about the militarization of the space race.

Some experts say a critical gap in Chinese-U.S. space relations is the absence of regularized talks on space security, which took place between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War

Rare Scaled Composites ARES 151 jet stops in Amarillo.

2011-12-29T19:17:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge:

A rare - one -of-a-kind military prototype made a surprise stop at Rick Husband Amarillo International today. It's called the Model 151 Ares and was designed as a proof-of concept demonstrator for the US Army's requirements for a low-cost - fast and agile attack aircraft - a sort of mini A-10 Warthog - the current US militarys' premier tank killer.

Designed in the early 90s, by Scaled Composites out of Mojave, California - who built the first private space ship (Virgin Galactic's Space Ship One) and Space Ship Two (the first commercial space ship soon to be taking well-heeled passengers into space - ARES 151 landed shortly before noon to refuel.

The aircraft (thought to be in mothballs) has been taken out of retirement and is being used as a test-bed for the NAVY, its' mission - classified.

It is interesting to note the ARES 151 sports a new low-vis flat grey paint job and a few more (new?) antennae - slightly modified (more rounded) lines and was absent it's 25 mm GAU-12/U Gatling cannon as seen in the video below.

The aircraft flew on to Smyrna Georgia and is rumored to be heading to the Naval Air Warfare Center at Pax River in Maryland.

Photos by Steve Douglass

A little more info from WikiPedia

The ARES has quite unique shape compared to other aircraft. It incorporates canards which enable safer flight at low altitude. The canards serve as the pitch control and are designed so that the canard surface reaches critical angle of attack sooner than the main wings, protecting the aircraft from stall while full roll control is retained.

The canards have a wingspan of 19.2 feet (5.85 m) and are swept 7 degrees forward so they can be placed behind the cockpit.

The main wing has a span of 35 feet (10.7 m) and a reference area of 191 sq. ft. (17.7 m2), not including the strakes. It is swept aft 16 degrees at the leading edge. The strakes are swept 49 degrees at the leading edge.

These strakes, combined with a wet wing center-section area, form the bulk of the 2,200 lb (1000 kg, approximately 333 U.S. gallons) fuel capacity. The wing has conventional ailerons on the outboard trailing edge, and spoil-flaps (similar to the dive-brake flap) on the inboard trailing edges. The ailerons are actuated by push-rods, and the spoil-flaps are hydraulically operated.

Directional stability is provided by twin boom-mounted fins, each of 18 sq ft (1.7 m2). area. Each has a cable-actuated rudder at its trailing edge. The rudder actuation system also drives the full-time mechanical nosewheel steering for ground operations.

The engine inlet is another major unique feature of ARES. Since gun gas ingestion posed significant problems in other aircraft development programs (like A-10), the configuration of ARES was designed to avoid this problem: the engine inlet is entirely contained on the left side of the aircraft, and the gun is installed on the right side. The inlet has a circular cross section, and is straight into the fan face. The engine is mounted slightly transversely in the fuselage, with an 8-degree misalignment from the aircraft's longitudinal axis.

The engine exhaust is turned back to the longitudinal axis by a curved composite tailpipe. A composite tailpipe was to help get the gun recoil reaction closer to the aircraft lateral center of gravity (CG) location, the gun is sub-merged as deeply as practical into the right side of the fuselage. Also, the fuselage is not centered about the aircraft centerline, but is offset to the left by three inches. This results in the firing barrel of the gun being only about 18 inches from the lateral CG. This minimizes the yaw movement caused by the recoil of the gun.

The aircraft fuselage is almost completely made of fiberglass composite material installed over the foam core. The technique of making of composite aircraft fuselages has been perfected by Scaled Composites in previous aircraft.

Performance
Maximum speed: 464 kt (763 km/h)
Range: 1200 nm (2200 km)
Wing loading: 34 lb/sq. ft (166 kg/m2)
Thrust/weight: 0.43 (at maximum weight)
Armament
25 mm GAU-12/U Gatling cannon
AAMs: AIM-9 Sidewinder
air-to-ground weapons include: Unguided rockets

Breaking: Russian nuclear sub fire - put out by sinking it.

2011-12-29T18:45:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW (Reuters) —

After battling for hours to extinguish a blaze aboard a nuclear submarine, Russian firefighters finally gained control of it early Friday by submerging the stricken vessel at a navy shipyard.
Related

Television showed a giant plume of smoke above the yard in the Murmansk region of northern Russia as more than 100 firefighters struggled to douse flames that witnesses said rose 30 feet above the submarine.

The firefighters tried for hours to douse the flames with water from helicopters and tugboats before trying another approach: partly sinking the submarine. The fire continued to burn, but the intensity was reduced. “The fire has been localized,” Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said from a control room in Moscow more than nine hours after the blaze began on Thursday.

Russia said that the vessel’s nuclear reactor had been shut down and that all weapons had been removed from the 550-foot Yekaterinburg, which launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Barents Sea at a firing range thousands of miles away in Kamchatka as recently as July.

“Radiation levels are normal,” a spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry said. “No one was injured.”

After hours of trying to put out the flames, officials decided to partly submerge the hull of the 18,200-ton submarine at the Roslyakovo dock, one of the main dockyards of Russia’s northern fleet, 900 miles north of Moscow.

Local media reports were vague, but the blaze was believed to have started when wooden scaffolding caught fire during welding repairs to the submarine, which had been hoisted into a dry dock.

The submarine can carry 16 ballistic missiles, each with four warheads. Its nuclear reactor was not damaged in the fire. Russian Navy submarine reactors are built to withstand enormous shocks and high temperatures.

“The reactor has been shut down and does not pose any danger,” an official at navy headquarters said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Russia’s worst post-Soviet submarine disaster occurred in August 2000 when the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 crewmen aboard.

Anonymous hacks STRATFOR

2011-12-29T07:58:00.000-08:00

Hacked US security firm Stratfor has told its subscribers that it may take a week or even longer to restore its website.

The site went offline on 24 December.

Hackers have posted credit card details, email addresses, phone numbers and encrypted passwords which they said were taken during the attack.

Stratfor has said it will pay for a credit card fraud protection service for members whose payment details might have been compromised by the breach.

Tweets posted on accounts linked to the hacktivist group Anonymous said that the US Department of Defense, the defence firm Lockheed Martin and Bank of America were among Stratfor's clients.

A recent message posted by @YourAnonNews added that other parties affected by the hack included Google, American Express, Coca-Cola, Boeing, Sony, Microsoft and the mining group BHP Billiton.

An email from Stratfor to its subscribers said: "At our expense, we have taken measures to provide our members whose credit card information may have been compromised with access to CSID, a leading provider of global identity protection and fraud detection solutions and technologies.

"We have arranged to provide one year of CSID's coverage to such members at no cost.

"As part of our ongoing investigation, we have also decided to delay the launching of our website until a thorough review and adjustment by outside experts can be completed."

The identity theft prevention service Identity Finder has carried out its own analysis of details posted online about hacked clients whose names fell between A and M. It suggested that the attack netted:

9,651 unexpired credit card numbers
47,680 unique email addresses
25,680 unique telephone numbers
44,188 encrypted passwords of which roughly half could be "easily cracked"
This list is expected to grow if the hackers publish details of the N to Z list.

Donations
A tweet posted to the account @AnonymousIRC on 25 December claimed that $1m (£650,000) had been taken from the hacked accounts and had been given to charity.

Participants in Anonymous have subsequently posted screenshots which allegedly show money being transferred to the charities Red Cross, Save the Children and Care.

The organisations will have to return the money if credit card owners report the charges as being unauthorised. Some supporters of the Anonymous movement have also expressed concern that the charities could theoretically be charged a fee for the return of the transactions.

Anonymous Twitter accounts have also hinted that the hackers planned to release details of emails harvested in the breach, adding that "Stratfor is not the 'harmless company' it tries to paint itself as.

Stratfor could not be reached for comment. However a video posted by Fred Burton, its vice president of intelligence, to YouTube promised to provide updates "as more details become available" and offered details about the credit card protection scheme.

NORAD F-16s scrambled over Washington, D.C

2011-12-29T07:53:00.000-08:00

CNN:
Two F-16 fighter jets were dispatched by the North American Aerospace Defense Command to intercept a civilian aircraft near Washington, D.C., NORAD said Wednesday.

The incident happened about 12:15 p.m. ET after the aircraft failed to establish radio contact, the agency said in a press release.

“The civilian aircraft re-established communications and was allowed to continue on its way without incident,” NORAD said.

Out of an abundance of caution, officials are being vigilant about security concerns around the holidays.

After the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 in September, two fighter jets were scrambled after reports of air passengers acting suspiciously on two flights. Although no problems occurred, authorities sent F-16s to shadow the flights just in case.

US Navy : "attempts to block the Strait of Hormuz will "not be tolerated,"

2011-12-28T12:39:00.000-08:00

CBS/AP) The U.S. Navy said any attempts to block the Strait of Hormuz would "not be tolerated," after Iranian officials threatened to choke off the key oil supply route.

Iran's navy chief warned Wednesday that his country can easily close the strategic strait at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the passageway through which a sixth of the world's oil flows.

It was the second such warning in two days. On Tuesday, Vice President Mohamed Reza Rahimi threatened to close the strait, cutting off oil exports, if the West imposes sanctions on Iran's oil shipments.

"Closing the Strait of Hormuz is very easy for Iranian naval forces," Adm. Habibollah Sayyari told state-run Press TV. "Iran has comprehensive control over the strategic waterway," the navy chief said.

In response, the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet's spokeswoman warned that any disruption "will not be tolerated." The spokeswoman, Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, said the U.S. Navy is "always ready to counter malevolent actions to ensure freedom of navigation."

With concern growing over a possible drop-off in Iranian oil supplies, a senior Saudi oil official said Gulf Arab nations are ready to offset any loss of Iranian crude.

That reassurance led to a drop in world oil prices. In New York, benchmark crude fell 77 cents to $100.57 a barrel in morning trading. Brent crude fell 82 cents to $108.45 a barrel in London.

The Iranian threats underline Tehran's concern that the West is about to impose new sanctions that could target the country's vital oil industry and exports.

Western nations are growing increasingly impatient with Iran over its nuclear program. The U.S. and its allies have accused Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has denied the charges, saying its program is geared toward generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

The U.S. Congress has passed a bill banning dealings with the Iran Central Bank, and President Barack Obama has said he will sign it despite his misgivings. Critics warn it could impose hardships on U.S. allies and drive up oil prices.

The bill could impose penalties on foreign firms that do business with Iran's central bank. European and Asian nations import Iranian oil and use its central bank for the transactions.

With concern growing over a possible drop-off in Iranian oil supplies, a senior Saudi oil official said Gulf Arab nations are ready to step in if necessary and offset any potential loss of Iranian crude in the world markets.

Reflecting unease over the rising tensions, the U.S. benchmark crude futures contract for February delivery was above $101 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Its London-based Brent counterpart fell slightly, but still remained above $109 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil producer, with an output of about 4 million barrels of oil a day. It relies on oil exports for about 80 percent of its public revenues.

Iran has adopted an aggressive military posture in recent months in response to increasing threats from the U.S. and Israel that they may take military action to stop Iran's nuclear program.

The navy is in the midst of a 10-day drill in international waters near the strategic oil route. The exercises began Saturday and involve submarines, missile drills, torpedoes and drones. The war games cover a 1,250-mile stretch of sea off the Strait of Hormuz, northern parts of the Indian Ocean and into the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea as a show of strength and could bring Iranian ships into proximity with U.S. Navy vessels in the area.

Iranian media are describing how Iran could move to close the strait, saying the country would use a combination of warships, submarines, speed boats, anti-ship cruise missiles, torpedoes, surface-to-sea missiles and drones to stop ships from sailing through the narrow waterway.

Iran's navy claims it has sonar-evading submarines designed for shallow waters of the Persian Gulf, enabling it to hit passing enemy vessels.

A closure of the strait could temporarily cut off some oil supplies and force shippers to take longer, more expensive routes that would drive oil prices higher. It also potentially opens the door for a military confrontation that would further rattle global oil markets.

Iran claimed a victory this month when it captured an American surveillance drone almost intact. It went public with its possession of the RQ-170 Sentinel to trumpet the downing as a feat of Iran's military in a complicated technological and intelligence battle with the U.S.

American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate the drone malfunctioned.

Iran threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz

2011-12-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- It is just 34 miles (55 kilometers) wide and dotted with islands and rocky outcrops, a channel that links the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean. Like many marine chokepoints, the Strait of Hormuz has long commanded the attention of empires and their navies.

And in recent decades it has become even more critical: One-third of the oil carried by sea passes through Hormuz -- that's some 15 million barrels every day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Now Iran's vice president is warning that the Islamic Republic could block the strait if sanctions are imposed on its exports of crude oil. France, Britain and Germany have proposed such sanctions as punishment for Iran's lack of cooperation on its nuclear program.

To demonstrate its intent, Iran is holding a 10-day military exercise in an area from the eastern part of the strait out into the Arabian Sea, with some elements playing the part of enemy forces. Western diplomats describe the maneuvers as further evidence of Iran's volatile behavior, following the occupation of the British Embassy in Tehran. And it's not the first time Iran has used this vital sea lane in a high-stakes game of brinkmanship.

The strait is thought to have been named for the Persian word hur-mogh, the date palm found on the coast. It was mentioned in a first-century mariner's account, "The Periplus of the Erythtraean Sea," and through the ages was known for its pearls.
Iran's military might in Iraq Iran military posturing Iran-Iraq alliance unlikely, expert says

But as oil became the lubricant of the world economy, the Strait of Hormuz -- and the sea lanes leading to it -- became a geostrategic flashpoint. So narrow is the strait, with sea lanes just two miles wide heading in and out of the gulf, that ships must pass through Iranian and Omani territorial waters.

In addition, Iran and the United Arab Emirates dispute sovereignty over several islands close to the strait.

Iran last tried to disrupt and sabotage Persian Gulf shipping during its decade-long conflict with Iraq, when the Arab gulf states were funding Saddam Hussein's war effort. When Iraq began attacking Iranian tankers in 1984, Iran responded by targeting vessels headed to and from gulf ports. And it began a guerrilla war at sea -- laying mines in shipping lanes.

That led the U.S. to provide military escorts for Kuwaiti shipping. In 1988, an Iranian mine damaged and nearly sank the USS Samuel B. Roberts, prompting U.S. President Ronald Reagan to order retaliatory strikes against Iranian oil platforms and naval vessels. Two platforms -- Sirri and Sassan -- were destroyed and an Iranian warship sunk in Operation Praying Mantis.

Since then, the U.S. has increased cooperation with the navies of gulf Arab states and established the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

But Iran's neighbors understand that their reliance on the strait to transport oil and liquefied natural gas remains vulnerable. According to U.S. diplomatic cables, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in December 2009 that "Iraq would be the hardest hit" if tensions led Iran to try to blockade the strait. Kuwaiti officials have suggested building a 1,000-mile land pipeline to the Gulf of Oman to reduce reliance on the maritime route.

Today, after decades of sanctions, Iran does not have the naval power to block the strait, and its aging air force would be no match for U.S. and gulf state fighter jets. But military experts say Iran could wage "asymmetrical warfare" -- involving mines and attacks by Revolutionary Guards' patrol boats. It has also developed a class of small submarines, three of which were launched last month, according to the Iranian naval commander quoted by the Fars news agency.

Even bellicose language from Iranian politicians has already caused jitters in oil markets. Earlier this month an Iranian legislator, Parviz Sarvari, warned: "Soon we will hold an exercise on closing the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure."

Any attempt to interfere with shipping would be a double-edged sword for Tehran. Iran also relies on the strait to export its crude and other products, and has to import most of its refined gasoline for lack of refining capacity. The U.S. State Department says there is "an element of bluster" in the Iranian threats.

Even so, analysts worry that the deterioration in U.S.-Iranian relations could magnify the consequences of a collision or provocation in the gulf. Shortly before retiring as chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen said: "If something happens, it's virtually assured that we won't get it right, that there will be miscalculations which would be extremely dangerous in that part of the world."

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told CNN on Monday that an incident in the strait "could spark a wider war precisely because there's no communication, no diplomacy and no de-escalatory mechanisms between the United States and Iran."

Al Qaeda claims blame for Iraq attacks

2011-12-27T06:21:00.000-08:00

Baghdad (CNN) -- Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility Tuesday for a string of attacks that killed almost 70 people and wounded more than 200.

The seemingly coordinated explosions Thursday struck during the height of morning rush hour, hitting a number of Baghdad's primarily mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. Nine car bombs, six roadside bombs and a mortar round all went off in a two-hour period, targeting residential, commercial and government districts in the Iraqi capital, police said.

"The series of special invasions launched, under the guidance of the Ministry of War in the Islamic State of Iraq, to support the weak Sunnis in the prisons of the apostates and to retaliate for the captives who were executed," the group said on an al Qaeda website.

Iraq's leadership is dominated by Shiite Muslims, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The country's Sunni minority held power under former leader Saddam Hussein.

Bloodshed in Baghdad Iraq's future hinges on political crisis Iraq after the withdrawal
A recent political crisis has raised fears of a return of the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq that ripped the country apart at the height of the war a few years back.

On December 19, al-Maliki, a Shiite, ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice president, a move that escalated sectarian tensions and threatened to collapse Iraq's fragile power-sharing government.

The political turmoil as well as the recent spate of violence erupted just days after the final U.S. troops withdrew.

Failure to launch - матерщи́на! Another Russian rocket goes nowhere.

2011-12-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

This time, a Soyuz-2 vehicle failed to put a communications satellite into orbit after lifting away from the country's Plesetsk spaceport.

Debris is said to have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere near the western Siberian town of Tobolsk.

In August, a Soyuz failure on a mission to resupply the space station led to a six-week suspension of flights.

Friday's rocket was carrying a Meridian-5 satellite, designed to provide communication between ships, planes and coastal stations on the ground, according to RIA Novosti.

It was a Soyuz-2.1b, the most modern version of the rocket that has been in service in various forms since the 1960s.

The failure is said to have occurred seven minutes into the flight. Sources being quoted by the Russian media talk of an anomaly in the rocket's third stage.

"The satellite failed to go into its orbit. A state commission will investigate the causes of the accident," the spokesman of Russia's space forces, Alexei Zolotukhin, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

August's botched launch involved a Soyuz-U. An inquiry into that incident eventually traced the problem to a blocked fuel line, again in the third stage of the vehicle. But the U and 2.1b Soyuz variants use different engines in this segment of the rocket, so no immediate parallels between the two incidents can be drawn.

Friday's failure now puts a major question mark against the next Soyuz launch, scheduled for 26 December from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This flight is intended to put in orbit six satellites for the Globalstar satellite phone company.

And it will raise concern again among the partners on the International Space Station (ISS) that there may be systematic problems in the Russian launch sector.

Following the retirement of the American space shuttle in July, the Soyuz rocket is the only means of getting astronauts and cosmonauts to the ISS. August's failure saw manned flights stand down even longer than the six weeks for unmanned Soyuz rockets, and the hiatus put a severe strain on the operation of the space station.

Russia has experienced a number of launch mishaps in the past 13 months.

Space balls?

2011-12-23T06:23:00.000-08:00

CNN: large metal ball that fell from space into the Namibian grasslands last month is not alien, officials say, but that's about all they know for certain about the object.

According to a report on The Namibian website, the 13-pound metal sphere with two bumps on its poles was found by a farmer near Onamatunga in the Omunsati region between November 15 and November 20. Explosions were heard in the area before the discovery, but no evidence of an explosion was seen around the area where the object was found.

Paul Ludik, director of the country's National Forensic Science Institute, told The Namibian the sphere, with a circumference of 3.6 feet, is made of a "sophisticated" metal alloy that is known to man, but he said it has no markings that would identify it. No international space agency has claimed ownership, he said.

“A number of tests have been performed on the object, and it appears to be hollow. We are still busy with a detailed examination of the object,” The Namibian quotes him as saying.

Ludik told The Namibian that the object poses no cause for alarm, and that such reports of metallic spheres falling from space are common in the Southern Hemisphere.

RQ-170 may have crashed due to pilot error combined with mechanical failure.

2011-12-22T20:15:00.000-08:00

MSNBC: The United States is investigating a combination of pilot error and mechanical failure as possible causes for the crash of a classified U.S. drone in Iran and does not believe Iran brought down the plane, according to two U.S. government officials.

The unmanned RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which had been on a sensitive CIA surveillance mission over Iran, crashed and was apparently reassembled by Iran before being put on display in Tehran, said one of the officials, who was speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the investigation.

While exactly what went wrong with the aircraft is not publicly known, it is now becoming clear that its operators could have crashed the plane and destroyed it if they had taken action while it was still at a higher altitude, according to a source familiar with the aircraft and its operation.

Instead, the stealthy drone built by Lockheed Martin Corp broke up into several large pieces, allowing Iran to reassemble the plane and possibly share some of its technological secrets with China, Russia or other U.S. competitors.

Once the plane, built by Lockheed Martin Corp, dropped to a low enough altitude, its aerodynamic design made a catastrophic crash impossible, said one person familiar with the plane's design and operating procedures.

Pilot error has not been confirmed, but it is one of the causes under examination, according to the two officials.

The new information explains why the drone was not destroyed and instead fell into Iran's hands in an incident that has significantly heightened tensions with the United States.

The plane measures over 40 feet from wing tip to wing tip, and carries a full-motion video sensor that was used this year by U.S. intelligence to monitor al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan ahead of the raid that killed him.

The main concern about technology Iran could pilfer from the drone centers on special coatings on the craft's surface that make it largely invisible to radar.

The computers onboard the drone are believed to have been heavily encrypted and its sensors were not the most sophisticated tools in the U.S. arsenal.

The United States and other Western nations tightened sanctions on Iran last week and Britain withdrew its diplomatic staff from Tehran after hard-line youths stormed two diplomatic compounds.

The United States has not ruled out military action against Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails to resolve a dispute over the program, which Washington believes is aimed at developing atomic weapons.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Bombings rock Baghdad in response to US pullout

2011-12-22T06:07:00.000-08:00

CBS/AP) BAGHDAD - A wave of at least 14 bombings ripped across Baghdad Thursday morning, killing at least 60 people in the worst violence in Iraq for months. The apparently coordinated attacks struck days after the last American forces left the country and in the midst of a major government crisis between Shiite and Sunni politicians that has sent sectarian tensions soaring.

The bombings may be linked more to the U.S. withdrawal than the political crisis, but all together, the developments heighten fears of a new round of Shiite-Sunni sectarian bloodshed like the one a few years back that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But the bombings bore all the hallmarks of al Qaeda's Sunni insurgents. Most appeared to hit Shiite neighborhoods, although some Sunni areas were also targeted. In all, 11 neighborhoods were hit by either car bombs, roadside blasts or sticky bombs attached to cars. There was at least one suicide bombing and the blasts went off over several hours.

The deadliest attack was in the Karrada neighborhood, where a suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden vehicle blew himself up outside the office of a government agency fighting corruption. Two police officers at the scene said the bomber was driving an ambulance and told guards that he needed to get to a nearby hospital. After the guards let him through, he drove to the building where he blew himself up, the officers said.

Sirens wailed as ambulances rushed to the scene and a large plume of smoke rose over the area. The blast left a crater about five yards wide in front of the five-story building, which was singed and blackened.

"I was sleeping in my bed when the explosion happened," said 12-year-old Hussain Abbas, who was standing nearby in his pajamas. "I jumped from my bed and rushed to my mom's lap. I told her I did not want to go to school today. I'm terrified."

At least 25 people were killed and 62 injured in that attack, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Figures gathered from Iraqi health and police officials across the city put the death toll at 60, and 160 injured. The spokesman for the Iraqi health ministry put the death toll at 57 and said at least 176 people were injured. But conflicting casualty figures are common in the aftermath of such widespread bombings.

For many Iraqis and the Americans who fought a nearly nine-year war in hopes of leaving behind a free and democratic country, the events of the past few days are the country's nightmare scenario. The fragile alliance of Sunnis and Shiites in the government is completely collapsing, large-scale violence with a high casualty toll has returned to the capital, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is displaying an authoritarian streak and may be moving to grab the already limited power of the Sunnis.

Video: U.S. troops home from Iraq for Christmas

Al-Maliki's Shiite-led government this week accused Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the country's top Sunni political leader, of running a hit squad that targeted government officials five years ago, during the height of sectarian warfare. Authorities put out a warrant for his arrest.

Many Sunnis fear this is part of a wider campaign to go after Sunni political figures in general and shore up Shiite control across the country at a critical time when all American troops have left Iraq.

Iraq PM tells Kurds to hand over Sunni VP

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told "The Early Show" on Thursday that the wave of violence represents an "I told you so" moment in his mind. McCain long opposed deadline-oriented withdrawal plans for U.S. troops, arguing the Obama administration's claim that Iraq is now a relatively peaceful nation with a capable domestic security apparatus was a fallacy.
"It was pretty obvious if we did not have a residual force there, things could unravel very quickly. All of us knew that," said McCain.

"The president campaigned saying he would bring around the end of the war. ... He made interesting comments, 'We are leaving behind a stable Iraq,' which we knew is not true. We needed the residual force there. It's not there and things are unraveling tragically."

Because such a large-scale, coordinated attack likely took weeks to plan, and the political crisis erupted only few days ago, the violence was not likely a direct response to the tensions within the government. Also, al Qaeda opposed Sunni cooperation in the Shiite-dominated government in the first place and is not aligned with Sunni politicians.

The Sunni extremist group often attacks Shiites, who they believe are not true Muslims.

U.S. military officials worried about a resurgence of al Qaeda after their departure. The last American troops left Iraq at dawn Sunday.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

Hacking of RQ-170 - not very likely

2011-12-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

Iran spy drone GPS hijack boasts: Rubbish, say experts

Cockup far more likely than conspiracy, as usual
By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 21st December 2011 17:03 GMT
Free whitepaper – King’s College London uses IBM System Networking RackSwitch for HPC
Doubts that Iran managed to bring down an advanced US drone over the country last month using an advanced GPS spoofing attack have been raised by experts, who say that attacks of this type would be extremely tough to pull off.

Iran announced on 4 December that it had captured an advanced American remotely piloted spy drone, thought to be an RQ-170 Sentinel, and proudly broadcast images of the captured kit on state TV. The images depicted a drone that was intact and showed little or no signs of damage.

The Islamic Republic initially claimed that its air forces shot the drone down after it encroached on the country’s airspace near the Afghan border. Iran later claimed it was taken down by a sophisticated cyber-attack. Days later an Iranian engineer said that this attack involved swamping the drone's GPS receivers with a rogue signal that tricked it into landing on autopilot in Iran instead of a US Air Force base.

The unnamed Iranian boffin told Christian Science Monitor that Iran developed the attack after reverse-engineering previously captured or shot down US drones, and by taking advantage inherent weaknesses in the GPS navigation system.

The US said the drone was lost on a mission in Western Afghanistan before conceding it was carrying out a covert spy operation over Iran. The US has asked for the return of the drone via Swiss authorities.

RQ-170 Sentinel drones, nicknamed the Beast of Kandahar, are advanced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with stealth capabilities, developed by Lockheed Martin and operated by the US Air Force, sometimes on behalf of the CIA. The stealth capabilities should have prevented the Iranians from spotting the UAV on radar.

However they might have intensified GPS jamming around uranium enrichment sites to ward off drones, so it is plausible that the downed RQ-170 Sentinel came under a GPS nobbling attack. Publicly available material collated by specialist sites, such as The Aviationist, suggest US drones might be vulnerable to this sort of attack, among others.

However, such GPS spoofing attacks are really tough to pull off and analysts are wary of swallowing Iran's spy drone hacking claims. The Iranian authorities would need to know the location of the drone within a matter of metres and hit it with a GPS signal stronger than the satellites' transmissions.

Neither of these signals are encrypted so the stronger signal would win out, but the hijacker must gradually introduce errors to guide the craft down towards the chosen landing point, all the time maintaining a signal lock, a non-trivial effort established by US academics during experimentation:

According to our experiments, the attacker must ensure that his time offset to the system time is less than 75ns. Any greater offset will cause the GPS receiver to lose lock when the spoofing signal is turned on. A value of 75ns roughly corresponds to a distance of 22.5m, meaning that the attacker must know his distance from the victim with an accuracy of 22.5m (or better) — a higher offset will cause the victim to lose lock due to the signal (chip phase) misalignment.

We confirmed that the initial location offset will cause a noticeable jump of the victim’s reported position during the attack. Large offsets could therefore be detected by the victim by monitoring its position. Any imperfections in the arrival time of the signal from different antennas will directly impact the position calculated by the victim. If the relative time offset gets above 80ns, the signals will even cause the receiver to lose lock. This means that, if an attacker has multiple antennas, he must precisely know the distance from each antenna to the attacker in order to be able to spoof a desired location. We could also observe a general localization error as predicted in our theoretical analysis, even for smaller mismatches in the arrival times.

The paper, On the Requirements for Successful GPS Spoofing Attacks [PDF], compiled by eggheads at ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, and UCI, in Irvine in the US, suggests various countermeasures. The covert satellite-lock takeover attack is straight out of the playbook of James Bond villains*. Iran may be trying to run such attacks, Russia might even be helping, but the probability of such a hijacking succeeding is very low.

Either Iran got very lucky or the the drone was simply lost, possibly a result of a command-and-control failure, or jamming over an nuclear facility that disrupted communications with its base, before fail-safe mechanisms, er, failed. In this scenario, the drone unluckily landed in the desert somewhere (rather than mountains where it would have been destroyed or severely damaged).

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/21/spy_drone_hijack_gps_spoofing_implausible/

Kim Jong Un sharing power with uncle and military

2011-12-21T07:37:00.001-08:00

Kim Jong-un, North Korea's new leader, will share power with an uncle and the military after the death of his father Kim Jong-il as the isolated country shifts to collective rule from strongman dictatorship, according to reports.

The source, with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing, told Reuters that the military, which is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal, has pledged allegiance to the untested Kim Jong-un who takes over the family dynasty that has ruled North Korea since it was founded after world War Two.

The source also said Beijing was only notified of Kim's death earlier on Monday, the same day that North Korean state television broadcast the news. Kim died on Saturday.

The source declined to be identified but has correctly predicted events in the past, telling Reuters about the North's first nuclear test in 2006 before it took place.
The situation in North Korea appeared stable after the military gave its backing to Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong-un, the source said.

"It's very unlikely," the source said when asked about the possibility of a military coup. "The military has pledged allegiance to Kim Jong-un."

"You'd better cry or I'll give you something to really cry about!"

2011-12-20T20:31:00.000-08:00

VP Biden says Tailban is not the enemy?

2011-12-20T19:32:00.000-08:00

The White House on Monday defended Vice President Joe Biden for saying that the Taliban isn't an enemy of the United States despite the years spent fighting the militant Islamic group that gave a home to Al Qaeda and its leader Usama bin Laden while he plotted the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"It's only regrettable when taken out of context," White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the vice president's remarks in an interview published Monday.

"It is a simple fact that we went into Afghanistan because of the attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. We are there now to ultimately defeat Al Qaeda, to stabilize Afghanistan and stabilize it in part so that Al Qaeda or other terrorists who have as their aim attacks on the United States cannot establish a foothold again in that country," Carney continued.

During Biden's interview with Newsweek last week, the vice president said it's "good enough" for the U.S. if Afghanistan stops being a "haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America" and its allies. He added that the U.S. is supportive of a reconciliation process between the Afghan government and the Taliban even if it's questionable whether a reconciliation is possible.

"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That's critical," Biden said. "There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy, because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us."

Biden said that the U.S. is on a dual track in Afghanistan -- keep the pressure on Al Qaeda and support a government that is strong enough to "negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban."

Carney said the U.S. did not send the military into Afghanistan because the Taliban were in power, and the vice president's point was that "while we are fighting them, it is not the elimination -- the elimination of the Taliban is not the issue here."

Indeed, the U.S. entered Afghanistan just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans to rid the country of Al Qaeda, whose leader had been an invited guest and offered safe haven for years by the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist.

Today, fewer than 200 Al Qaeda terrorists reportedly remain in the country. But military officials say the primary attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan are being conducted by fighters loyal to the Taliban and the Taliban-tied Haqqani network, both of which are based out of neighboring Pakistan and freely cross the treacherous border.

According to Reuters, U.S. officials are hopeful that 10 months of secret negotiations with Taliban insurgents will soon result in a breakthrough that will allow the U.S. to leave Afghanistan as scheduled by 2014 without leaving the country to the whims of the hardline group.

Reuters reported Sunday the deal the U.S. is considering would include a prisoner release of Taliban detainees in Guantanamo Bay in exchange for a renunciation of violence and international terrorism, part of reconciliation talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The U.S. also would offer unequivocal support for establishing a Taliban office in an Islamic country that it could use as a diplomatic headquarters, Reuters reported, and would demand preconditions such as a renunciation of violence, a break with Al Qaeda and respect for the Afghan constitution.

Carney said Monday that the U.S. has been clear that those conditions "would need to be met."
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Biden's remarks -- as well as Biden's and President Obama's belief that the Taliban are not the enemy -- are "bizarre, factually wrong and an outrageous affront our troops carrying out the fight in Afghanistan." He said the comments also reflect the administration's policy of "appeasement."

"The Taliban harbored the terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans on Sept 11. The Taliban continues to wage war against us and our allies, a conflict in which we have lost over 1,800 troops. The Taliban receives arms and training from Iran. And the Taliban seeks to reinstate a tyrannical government that violently rejects basic notions of human rights and oppresses minorities. The Taliban is clearly a bitter enemy of the United States," Romney said in a statement late Monday.

Read more: HERE

Military tensions rises in reaction to Kim Ills death - son named successor

2011-12-19T05:58:00.000-08:00

Earlier a tearful North Korean television announcer, dressed in black and her voice quavering, said the 69-year old ruler died on Saturday of "physical and mental over-work" on a train on his way to give field guidance -- advice dispensed by the "Dear Leader" on trips to factories, farms and the military.

Security concerns over the hermit state, that in 2010 shelled civilians on a South Korean island and is blamed for the sinking of one of its warships earlier that year, were heightened after Seoul said the North had test-fired a short range missile prior to the announcement of Kim's death.

It was the first known launch since June and in a bid to calm tensions, South Korea's defense ministry said it might abandon plans to light Christmas trees on the border, something the North has warned could provoke retaliations.

North Korea's official KCNA news agency lauded Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong-un as "the outstanding leader of our party, army and people."

"We have esteemed comrade Kim Jong-un," KCNA led a dispatch that said North Koreans from all walks of life are in utter despair but were finding comfort in the "absolute surety that the leadership of Comrade Kim Jong-un will lead and succeed the great task of revolutionary enterprise."

But there was uncertainty about how much support the third generation of the North's ruling dynasty has among the ruling elite, especially in the military, and worry he might need a military show of strength to help establish his credentials.

"Kim Jong-un is a pale reflection of his father and grandfather. He has not had the decades of grooming and securing of a power base that Jong-il enjoyed before assuming control from his father," said Bruce Klingner, an Asia policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

"(He) may feel it necessary in the future to precipitate a crisis to prove his mettle to other senior leaders or deflect attention from the regime's failings."

Video from Chinese state television showed residents weeping in the North Korean capital Pyongyang. KCNA reported people were "writhing in pain" from the loss of the man who in 1994 assumed the leadership of the totalitarian state from his father Kim Il-sung, the North's first, and officially eternal, president.

Large crowds gathered at a massive memorial of Kim's father and state founder Kim Il-sung in central Pyongyang mourning the death of the "Dear Leader." Kim will be laid to rest next to his father, KCNA said.

The funeral of Kim, turned into a demi-god by his propaganda machine, will be held on December 28.

News of the death of the man whose push to build a nuclear arsenal left the North heavily sanctioned and internationally isolated, triggered immediate nervousness in the region, with South Korea stepping up its military alert.

China, the North's neighbor and only powerful ally, said it was confident the North would remain united and that the two countries would maintain their relationship.

"We were distressed to learn of the unfortunate passing of (Kim) ... and we express our grief about this and extend our condolences to the people of North Korea," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying.

"We are confident the North Korean people will be able to turn their anguish into strength and unify as one," he said.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il dies

2011-12-19T01:31:00.000-08:00

CBS/AP) PYONGYANG, North Korea - Even as the world changed around him, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il remained firmly in control, ruling absolutely at home and keeping the rest of the world on edge through a nuclear weapons program.

Inheriting power from his father in 1994, he led his nation through a devastating famine while frustrating the U.S. and other global powers with an on-again, off-again approach to talks on giving up nuclear arms in return for energy and other assistance. Kim was one of the last remnants of a Cold War-era that ended years earlier in most other countries.

His death was announced Monday by state television two days after he died. North Korea's news agency reported that he had died at 8:30 a.m. Saturday after having a heart attack on a train, adding that he had been treated for cardiac and cerebrovascular diseases for a long time. He was 69.

CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton reports news of Kim's death was met with a flood of televised emotion in North Korea, as state TV showed orderly columns of state officials weeping dramatically, and ordinary North Koreans beside themselves in apparent grief on the streets of Pyongyang.

In South Korea, however, like much of the rest of the world, the news provoked concern. Hatton reports that South Korea put its military on high alert Monday, even calling off-duty troops back to work in the event of any provocations from the North.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported later Monday that the North had conducted at least one short-range missile test. Two South Korean military officials said they couldn't immediately confirm the report, saying to do so would breach a policy of not commenting on intelligence matters.
Both said any firing would be part of a routine drill and have little relation to Kim's death. They both spoke on condition of anonymity, citing policy. Yonhap cited unidentified government and military officials as saying the test occurred off the east coast.

Kim, who reputedly had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but he had appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country documented by state media.

Russia seizes nuclear material that was Iran bound

2011-12-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

Radioactive material has been found in the luggage of a passenger travelling from Moscow to Tehran.

The Russian customs service said it had seized the material at Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport.

The service said in a statement that tests showed the material was a radioactive isotope which could be obtained only "as a result of a nuclear reactor's operations".

The statement said the material had triggered an alarm in the airport's radiation control system. The luggage search led to a discovery of 18 pieces of radioactive metal packed in individual steel casings.

A Sheremetyevo airport customs spokeswoman said the material had been identified as sodium-22 but gave no other details.

Sodium-22 is a radioactive isotope of sodium that can be used in medical equipment

Iran: Meet the new sky spy - that can kill you

2011-12-15T06:06:00.000-08:00

The US Air Force reportedly plans to deploy a new offensive, radar-evading drone in Afghanistan after Iran downed one of its stealth drones, which was in violation of the Islamic Republic's airspace.

The Predator C Avenger is designed to evade detection and carry payloads of the weight of a bunker buster, the international aerospace weekly Flight International reported on its website on December 12.

The US Air Force has ordered a single Predator C Avenger -- produced by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. Inc. -- for deployment in Afghanistan.

"This aircraft will be used as a test asset and will provide a significantly increased weapons and sensors payload capacity on an aircraft that will be able to fly to targets much more rapidly than the MQ-9 [Reaper] UAS," the US Air Force said in a statement.

Alongside four weapon stations on each wing, the drone has an internal weapons bay, which provides “greater flexibility and will accommodate a large selection of next generation sensor and weapons payloads," it added.

The newest aircraft is jet-powered and particularly characterized by its capability of carrying a total payload of more than 907 kilograms -- almost the weight of a GBU-24 penetrator bunker buster bomb.

Analysts say the fact that Taliban militants have no radars to detect such aircraft robs Washington of excuses to deploy the stealth drone in the war-torn country.

The prospect of the deployment of the highly-capable Predator C comes after Iran successfully brought down a US RQ-170 stealth drone recently as the aircraft was flying over the northeastern Iranian city of Kashmar, some 250 kilometers (156 miles) away from the Afghan border.

MRS/AS/HN

RQ-170 crashed due to technical glitch - but Iran still - blah-blah-BSing.

2011-12-14T13:58:00.001-08:00

The war of words between Iran and the U.S. over the RQ-170 Sentinel continues. On Tuesday U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers denied Iran’s claim that it had shot down the UAV.

“I will say without hesitation that this is not something that anyone had anything to do with coming down with, other than a technical problem,” said Rogers. “There was a technical problem that was our problem, nobody else’s problem. I think there’s a lot of PR (public relations) going on.”
“These things are not infallible,” he added.

Meanwhile, Iran says it will reverse-engineer the UAV.

“Our next action will be to reverse-engineer the aircraft,” Parviz Sorouri, head of Iran’s parliamentary national security committee said. “In the near future, we will be able to mass produce it…. Iranian engineers will soon build an aircraft superior to the American (UAV) using reverse-engineering.”

Iran claims a Revolutionary Guards cyber-warfare unit hacked the aircraft’s flight controls, bringing it down.

U.S. officials are skeptical that Iran will be able to reverse-engineer the UAV itself but are concerned that might be done with the help of Russia or China.

But Sorouri said Iran is “in the final stages of cracking (the UAV’s) code.”

“We will acquire valuable intelligence through deciphering the Americans’ covert intelligence and espionage methods once the code is cracked,” he added.

Secret saucer shaped cargo transported through Kansas may be X47B drone.

2011-12-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

COWLEY COUNTY,

Kansas - Residents in Cowley County are still talking about a mystery craft, seen being towed down US 77 Monday.

Sitting inside Lindly's Appliance Store, Kammi Root is used to seeing large machinery towed down US 77. But what she saw Monday afternoon is something she won't soon forget.

“There was this funny sphere that went through on this big trailer and my first thought was, 'That looks like a UFO,’” said Root.

A huge 32 foot craft, wrapped in tarp, was as mysterious as the transport company who called Sheriff Don Read for help.

“They told us that it was an aircraft and that they had explored other ways to transport it but this was the best way for them to do it and they asked us not to say a whole lot about it,” said Read.

After all, the massive load's shape would certainly draw enough attention on its own.

“People were calling in saying, 'Oh they think they found a flying saucer. It looks like a flying saucer to us and we don't know for sure what it is,’” said Donetta Godsey with the Winfield Daily Courier.

For nearly an hour, officers helped maneuver the craft through Cowley County.

”The biggest thing that we had to deal with was down at the roundabout we had to remove a bunch of signs and markers because the load was so long it couldn't make the corner,” said Read.

Meanwhile, onlookers struggled to wipe the shock from their faces and the questions from their minds.

”What was that funny thing that was on that trailer that looked like something from somewhere else?” said Root.

So what in the world was it? Undersheriff Bill Mueller says it was an experimental aircraft from Northrop Grumman, possibly a new unmanned drone. It still has a ways to go. Its final destination is Maryland.

UPDATE: The unusual object traveling through Cowley County, which was the cause of much conversation Monday morning, was a U.S. Navy drone.

Hauled on a large flatbed truck along U.S. 77, area residents got a look at a 32-foot-wide, dull gray, wrapped apparatus shaped like a flying saucer and featuring flashing red lights.

Reports were that the object is a Navy drone, which — after wings are attached — will fly from aircraft carriers. Most likely it's an X-47B. See comparison photo. It's not a UFO - so calm down True Beleivers.

One clearance location of concern was the bridge north of Winfield, which only is 35 feet wide.

Local emergency management officers, along with members of the Arkansas City and Winfield police departments and Cowley County Sheriff's Department, were on hand to control traffic as the aircraft was transported through Cowley County to Maryland.

MQ-9 Reaper crashes - without any help from Iran.

2011-12-13T11:07:00.001-08:00

WSJ: One of the Air Force’s premier drones crashed Tuesday morning in the Seychelles, the Indian Ocean archipelago that serves as a base for anti-piracy operations, as well as U.S. surveillance missions over Somalia.

The crash of the MQ-9 Reaper comes roughly two weeks after a U.S. drone went down in Iran.

The Seychelles, where U.S. officials have worked closely with local officials to establish the drone base, is hardly enemy territory, and the drone that crashed Tuesday was operated by the Air Force, not the CIA, which operated the stealth RQ-170 that crashed in Iran.

Still, Tuesday’s crash once again illustrates the fallibility of unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Air Force acknowledged the crash at the Seychelles airport, and a spokesman for the service said the crash happened as the drone was landing. No one was injured.

The Air Force said the cause of the crash — the first ever of a Reaper in the Seychelles — was under investigation. A statement from the civil aviation authority in the Seychelles attributed it to engine failure, saying that, after landing, the drone failed to stop before skidding into an outcropping of rocks at the end of the runway.

“It has been confirmed that this drone was unarmed and its failure was due to mechanical reasons,” the statement said. The Air Force confirmed that the MQ-9 was unarmed.

Photos of the Reaper show that it sustained heavy damage, with the nose of the drone carved off and one wing partially missing.

Gervais Henrie, editor of the local Le Seychellois Hebdo, who witnessed a crew lifting the remains of the drone with a crane after the crash, said it had burst into flames. Much of the Reaper appeared charred.

“Totally destroyed,” Henrie said in a phone interview.

The U.S. military is believed to have only a handful of Reapers in the Seychelles, based in a hangar located about a quarter-mile from the main passenger terminal at the airport.

The island nation of 85,000 people has hosted the drones since September 2009. U.S. and Seychellois officials have said the primary mission of the Reapers was to track pirates in regional waters, but they have also been used to conduct surveillance missions over Somalia.

The base in the Seychelles is part of a constellation of drone bases that the U.S. government has expanded in the region to monitor or attack al-Qaeda affiliates.

Hernie said Seychellois often see the Reapers flying overhead, and that they have come to accept them as a a routine part of living in the islands.

2 Army Helicopters Crash in Washington

2011-12-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

Crews enter the training area southwest of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., near the scene where two Army OH-58 Kiowa helicopters crashed, killing four soldiers Monday, Dec. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/The News Tribune, Jeremy Harrison)

RAINIER, Wash. — Two Army helicopters crashed Monday night at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in an accident that killed four soldiers, a military spokesman said late Monday.

The two-seat reconnaissance choppers crashed after 8 p.m. in the southwest training area of the sprawling base, according to the Army.

The victims were not immediately identified, even by unit, pending notification of relatives.

It was not immediately clear whether the aircraft collided or crashed separately.

"We don't have details on what actually occurred," base spokesman J.C. Mathews said. "That will be part of the investigation."

The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters were on a training mission, Mathews said, further details will be part of the investigation.

The Kiowa Warrior is a single-engine, four-bladed aircraft used for armed reconnaissance, Mathews said. It's often called a scout helicopter.

The crash site is geographically closest to the civilian community of Rainier, which is south of Tacoma, Mathews said.

Early Tuesday morning, two sheriff's vehicles blocked access to a rural plot of land where officials erected large sets of lights to illuminate the crash site.

Base officials secured the crash site late Monday and immediately began an investigation. The Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., will lead the overall investigation into the accident, base spokesman Joe Piek said.

China's Secret Underground Nuclear Tunnels System

2011-12-13T04:58:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post:

The Chinese have called it their "Underground Great Wall" — a vast network of tunnels designed to hide their country's increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear arsenal.

For the past three years, a small band of obsessively dedicated students at Georgetown University has called it something else: homework.

Led by their hard-charging professor, a former top Pentagon official, they have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data.

The result of their three-year effort? The largest body of public knowledge about thousands of miles of tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the Chinese military in charge of protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.

The study has not yet been released, but already it has sparked a congressional hearing and been circulated among top officials in the Pentagon, including the Air Force vice chief of staff.

Most of the attention has focused on the 363-page study's provocative conclusion — that China's nuclear arsenal could be many times larger than the well-established estimates of arms control experts.

"It's not quite a bombshell, but those thoughts and estimates are being checked against what people think they know based on classified information," said a Defense Department strategist who would discuss the study only on the condition of anonymity.

The study's critics, however, have questioned the unorthodox Internet-based research used by the students, who drew from sources as disparate as Google Earth, blogs, military journals and, perhaps most startlingly, a fictionalized TV docudrama about Chinese artillery soldiers — the rough equivalent of watching Fox's TV show "24" for insights into U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

But the strongest condemnation has come from nonproliferation experts who worry that it could fuel arguments for maintaining nuclear weapons in an era when efforts are still being made to reduce the world's post-Cold War stockpiles.

Beyond its impact in the policy world, the project has also made a profound mark on the students — including some who have since graduated and taken research jobs with the Defense Department and Congress.

"I don't even want to know how many hours I spent on it," said Nick Yarosh, 22, an international politics senior at Georgetown. "But you ask people what they did in college, most just say I took this class, I was in this club. I can say I spent it reading Chinese nuclear strategy and Second Artillery manuals. For a nerd like me, that really means something."

For students, an obsession

The students' professor, Phillip A. Karber, 65, had spent the Cold War as a top strategist reporting directly to the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But it was his early work in defense that had cemented his reputation, when he led an elite research team created by Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser, to probe the weaknesses of Soviet forces.

Karber prided himself on recruiting the best intelligence analysts in government. "You didn't just want the highest-ranking or brightest guys, you wanted the ones who were hungry," he said.

In 2008, Karber was volunteering on a committee for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Pentagon agency charged with countering weapons of mass destruction.

After a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan province, the chairman of Karber's committee noticed Chinese news accounts reporting that thousands of radiation technicians were rushing to the region. Then came pictures of strangely collapsed hills and speculation that the caved-in tunnels in the area had held nuclear weapons.

Find out what's going on, the chairman asked Karber, who began looking for analysts again — this time among his students at Georgetown.

The first inductees came from his arms control classes. Each semester, he set aside a day to show them tantalizing videos and documents he had begun gathering on the tunnels. Then he concluded with a simple question: What do you think it means?

"The fact that there were no answers to that really got to me," said former student Dustin Walker, 22. "It started out like any other class, tests on this day or that, but people kept coming back, even after graduation. . . . We spent hours on our own outside of class on this stuff."

The students worked in their dorms translating military texts. They skipped movie nights for marathon sessions reviewing TV clips of missiles being moved from one tunnel structure to another. While their friends read Shakespeare, they gathered in the library to wargame worst-case scenarios of a Chinese nuclear strike on the United States.

Over time, the team grew from a handful to roughly two dozen contributors. Most spent their time studying the subterranean activities of the Second Artillery Corps.

While the tunnels' existence was something of an open secret among the handful of experts studying China's nuclear arms, almost no papers or public reports on the structures existed.

So the students turned to publicly available Chinese sources — military journals, local news reports and online photos posted by Chinese citizens. It helped that China's famously secretive military was beginning to release more information, driven by its leaders' eagerness to show off China's growing power to its citizens.

The Internet also generated a raft of leads: new military forums and blogs, once obscure local TV reports now posted on the Chinese equivalents of YouTube. Strategic string searches even allowed the students to get behind some military Web sites and download documents such as syllabuses taught at China's military academies.

Painstaking discoveries

The main problem was the sheer amount of translation required.

Each semester, Karber managed to recruit only one or two Chinese-speaking students. So the team assembled a makeshift system to scan images of the books and documents they found. Using text-capture software, they converted those pictures into Chinese characters that were fed into translation software to produce crude English versions. From those, they highlighted key passages for finer translation by the Chinese speakers.

The downside was the drudgery — hours feeding pages into the scanner. The upside was that after three years, the students had compiled a searchable database of more than 1.4 million words on the Second Artillery and its tunnels.

By combining everything they found in journals, video clips, satellite imagery and photos, they were able to triangulate the location of several tunnel structures with a rough idea of what types of missiles were stored in each.

Their work also yielded smaller revelations: how the missiles were kept mobile and transported from structure to structure as well as tantalizing images and accounts of a "missile train" and disguised passenger rail cars to move China's long-range missiles.

To facilitate the work, Karber set up research rooms for the students at his home in Great Falls. He bought Apple computers and large flat-screen monitors for their video work and obtained small research grants for those who wanted to work through the summer. When work ran late, many crashed in his basement's spare room.

"I got fat working on this thing because I didn't go to the gym anymore. It was that intense," said Yarosh, who has continued on the project this year not for credit but purely as a hobby. "It's not the typical college course. Dr. Karber just tells you the objective and gives you total freedom to figure out how to get there. That level of trust can be liberating."

Some of the biggest breakthroughs came after members of Karber's team used personal connections in China to to obtain a 400-page manual produced by the Second Artillery and usually available only to China's military personnel.

Another source of insight was a pair of semi-fictionalized TV series chronicling the lives of Second Artillery soldiers.

The plots were often overwrought with melodrama — one series centers around a brigade commander who struggles to whip his slipshod unit into shape while juggling relationship problems with his glamorous Olympic-swim-coach girlfriend. But they also included surprisingly accurate depictions of artillery units' procedures that lined up perfectly with the military manual and other documents.

"Until someone showed us on screen how exactly these missile deployments were done from the tunnels, we only had disparate pieces. The TV shows gave us the big picture of how it all worked together," Karber said.

Challenging arsenal estimates

In December 2009, just as the students began making progress, the Chinese military admitted for the first time that the Second Artillery had indeed been building a network of tunnels. According to a report by state-run CCTV, China had more than 3,000 miles of tunnels — roughly the distance between Boston and San Francisco — including deep underground bases that could withstand multiple nuclear attacks.

The news shocked Karber and his team. It confirmed the direction of their research, but it also highlighted how little attention the tunnels were garnering outside of East Asia.

The lack of interest, particularly in the U.S. media, demonstrated China's unique position in the world of nuclear arms.

For decades, the focus has been on the two powers with the largest nuclear stockpiles by far — the United States, with 5,000 warheads available for deployment, and Russia, which has 8,000.

But of the five nuclear weapon states recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, China has been the most secretive. While the United States and Russia are bound by bilateral treaties that require on-site inspections, disclosure of forces and bans on certain missiles, China is not.

The assumption for years has been a relatively small Chinese arsenal— anywhere from 80 to 400 warheads.

China itself has encouraged that perception. As the only one of the five original nuclear states with a no-first-use policy, it insists that it keeps a small stockpile only for "minimum deterrence" of a retaliatory strike.

Given China's lack of transparency, Karber argues, all the experts have to work with are assumptions, which can often be dead wrong. As an example, Karber often recounts to his students his experience of going to Russia with then-Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci in 1992 to discuss U.S. help in securing the Russian nuclear arsenal.

The United States had offered Russia some 20,000 canisters designed to safeguard warheads — a number based on U.S. estimates at the time.

The generals told Karber they needed 40,000.

Skepticism among analysts

At the end of the tunnel study, Karber cautions that the same could happen with China. Based on the number of tunnels the Second Artillery is digging and its increasing deployment of missiles, he argues, China's nuclear warheads could number as many as 3,000.

It is an assertion that has provoked heated responses from the arms control community.

Gregory Kulacki, a China nuclear analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, publicly condemned Karber's report at a recent lecture in Washington. In an interview afterward, he called the 3,000 figure "ridiculous" and said the study's methodology — especially its inclusion of posts from Chinese bloggers — was "incompetent and lazy."

"The fact that they're building tunnels could actually reinforce the exact opposite point," he argued. "With more tunnels and a better chance of survivability, they may think they don't need as many warheads to strike back."

Reaction from others has been more moderate.

"Their research has value, but it also shows the danger of the Internet," said Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. Kristensen faulted some of the students' interpretation of satellite images.

"One thing his report accomplishes, I think, is it highlights the uncertainty about what China has," said Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank. "There's no question China's been investing in tunnels, and to look at those efforts and pose this question is worthwhile."

This year, the Defense Department's annual report on China's military highlighted for the first time the Second Artillery's work on new tunnels, partly a result of Karber's report, according to some Pentagon officials. And in the spring, shortly before a visit to China, some in the office of then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates were briefed on the study.

"I think it's fair to say senior officials here have keyed upon the importance of this work," said one Pentagon officer who was not authorized to speak on record.

For Karber, provoking such debate means he and his small army of undergrads have already succeeded.

"I don't have the slightest idea how many nuclear weapons China really has, but neither does anyone else in the arms control community," he said. "That's the problem with China — no one really knows except them."

Iran not returning UAV - but President Obama had to ask.

2011-12-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration said Monday it has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but is not hopeful that Iran will comply.
President Barack Obama said that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. 'We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond,' Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.

He wouldn't comment on what the Iranians might learn from studying the downed aircraft. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said it's difficult to know 'just frankly how much they're going to be able to get from having obtained those parts,' the Associated Press reports.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Panetta said they're not optimistic about getting the drone back because of recent Iranian behaviour that Clinton said indicated 'that the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region.'

'We submitted a formal request for the return of our lost equipment as we would in any situation to any government around the world,' Clinton told reporters at a State Department news conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

'Given Iran's behaviour to date we do not expect them to comply but we are dealing with all of these provocations and concerning actions taken by Iran in close concert with our closest allies and partners,' she said.

Panetta said the request to return the drone was appropriate. 'I don't expect that that will happen,' he said. 'But I think it's important to make that request.'

Formal request: President Obama at Monday's news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-

Neither Obama nor Clinton would provide details of the drone request, but diplomatic exchanges between Washington to Tehran are often handled by Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Iran.

The State Department said Monday that the Swiss ambassador to Iran met with Iranian foreign ministry officials last week but refused to say what they discussed.
Iran TV reported earlier Monday that Iranian experts were in the final stages of recovering data from the RQ-170 Sentinel, which went down in Iran earlier this month.

Tehran has cited the capture as a victory for Iran and displayed the nearly intact drone on state TV. U.S. officials say the aircraft malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran.

Despite the incident, Clinton said the administration and its allies would continue to push Iran to engage over its nuclear program while at the same time increasing pressure on the regime with new, enhanced sanctions.

Keeping it: Iran says it will not return the US RQ-170 Sentinel high-altitude reconnaissance drone that crashed in Iran earlier this month

'We obviously believe strongly in a diplomatic approach. We want to see the Iranians engage and, as you know, we have attempted to bring about that engagement over the course of the last three-plus years. It has not proven effective, but we are not giving up on it,' she said.
Standing beside Clinton, Hague agreed.

'We're not giving up on engagement with Iran, but on a number of occasions Iran has behaved in a way in recent weeks and months which has intensified confrontation with the rest of the world,' he said. 'We have seen an increasing predilection for dangerous and illegal adventures on the part of at least parts of the Iranian regime.'

Clinton and Hague referred to the storming of British diplomatic compounds in Tehran, allegations that Iran tried to arrange the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Iran's ongoing support for militant groups and its continued defiance of demands to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.

Gen Hossein Salami, deputy head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, said on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a 'hostile act' and warned of a 'bigger' response.

Read more:

Posit: What if RQ-170 is a Trojan Horse?

2011-12-11T17:01:00.000-08:00

(C) Steve Douglass
Permission required for publication or posting.

The following is fiction:

Somewhere behind closed doors deep inside the Pentagon:

Man #1: "STUXNET slowed them down some - but it looks like Iran will have the bomb within eighteen months."

Man #2: "And that would be bad."

Man #3 "It would mean the destruction of Israel - or at the least another world war - most likely a nuclear one."

Man #2: "So what do we do- bomb them back into the Stone Age?"

Man #1: "That would most definitely lead to war - and also would kill everyone in the large pro-democracy movement in Iran. We can pray for another Arab Spring type overthrow - but its a race between extremists getting the bomb and a peaceful overthrow of Ahmadinejad."

Man # 3: "They need time."

Man #2: "Who?"

Man # 3: "The Israelis - the pro democracy movement in Iran - and - heck WE do."

Man # 2: "Is there any other way we can slow them down? If only we could hack their entire military network."

Man #1: "Maybe there is - I've been doing some thinking and - well it's a long shot but it might give us access."

Man #3: "Are you pausing for dramatic effect - or are you thinking."

Man #1: "No - it's just that it entails some risk."

Man #3: "Out with it."

Man #1. "The Iranian's know we've been flying drones over their country, Predators, Sentinels, Distant Star - etc., but even with the Russian's help the haven't been able to bring one down."

Man #2: "And?"

Man # 1 "And do you remember how an infected USB drive almost handed China our entire military intranet on a silver platter? They dropped these infected USB flash drives all over Bagdad - in bars US servicemen frequented. They picked them up thinking "wow - free flash drive!" plugged them in and voila! It took us almost six months to purge the stupid virus from our system."

Man #2: "I think I know where he is going with this. You talking about Deep Blue Horizon?"

Man #3. "Deep Blue what?"

Man #1: "Deep Blue Horizon is an advanced piece of A.I. software. It's smart - no -beyond brilliant. Heck - I think it's alive sometimes."

Man #3: "So what does it do?"

Man #2: "Anything we tell it to do. It's unstoppable. Released inside a computer system it mimics that system and is virtually undetectable. It can defend itself - travel anywhere we let it and is at our command."

Man #3: "So how come I've never heard of it?"

Man #2: What's your clearance level?"

Man #3: "Top Secret MAGENTA"

Man #1: "That's why. He isn't cleared. You are going to have to read him in - sign some papers."

Man #3: "Whatever it is - I'll go to my grave …"

Man #1:"You know the drill."

Man #2: "So …?"

Man #1: "So we put DBH inside the operating system of one of our drones - one they want bad. A stealthy one - but not on the cutting edge -something dated."

Man #3: "And we "loose" it over Iran?

Man #1: "Exactly. They'd crap themselves in excitement. They'd parade it like a stolen goat."

Man #2: "Not only that - they'd share the tech with the Russians - Chinese - just to rub our noses in it."

Man #3: "How does it get in?"

Man #2. "It seeks out access-an open wireless point - it's a worm. It can even travel over power lines."

Man #1: " Then It would propagate through various systems until it well- gave us the keys to everything - weapons systems-power grids - encrypted networks - you name it."

Man #2: "And they wouldn't even know it was there."

Man #3. "We'd own them?"

Man #1: "Well - yeah. We'd own them."

Man #2:"And they'd push a button - and nothing would work."

Man#3: "I'm going to the President with this."

-Steve Douglass

Iran not returning UAV - even though we haven't asked for it back.

2011-12-11T16:58:00.000-08:00

CBS NEWS: TEHRAN, Iran - Iran will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.
Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a "hostile act" and warned of a "bigger" response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.

"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Salami said.

Iranian television broadcast video Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone.

Salami called its capture a victory for Iran and a defeat for the U.S. in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

"Iran is among the few countries that possesses the most modern technology in the field of pilotless drones. The technology gap between Iran and the U.S. is not much," he said.

Officers in the Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, had previously claimed that the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.

American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials had spoken anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.

But Salami refused to provide more details of Iran's claim to have captured the CIA-operated aircraft.

"A party that wins in an intelligence battle doesn't reveal its methods. We can't elaborate on the methods we employed to intercept, control, discover and bring down the pilotless plane," he said.

Iran planning Show & Tell with captured RQ-170 drone

2011-12-11T06:20:00.000-08:00

Russian and Chinese experts appealed to Iranian authorities asking them to give access to the shot down US drone, wrote on Thursday, the Iranian newspaper The Tehran Times citing an informed source at Iran's armed forces. It is also possible, the newspaper continues, that the UAV will be on display, "Interfax".

As reported by the newspaper VIEW, according to media reports, American downed Iranian military reconnaissance aircraft invisible CIA used to gather information on Iranian nuclear facilities, as well as the training camps of militants "of Hezbollah."

On Tuesday it was announced that the U.S. spy plane RQ-170 performed the task of American intelligence, but the nature of the device was not specified. Earlier, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby expressed concern that Iran's military might to seize the data about the secret techniques of the American UAVs. On Sunday, Iranian television channel Press-TV spread the information that the Iranian air defense forces in the east downed U.S. drone aircraft.

The coalition of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) later said that the drone, the destruction of which on Sunday said Iran could be lost during the last week in the job in Afghanistan.

According to military analyst Vladislav Shurygin: "Management of UAV is its main vulnerable heel. To communicate with control centers, and managed, UAVs must have "thick" radio channels, which are protected from external influence is extremely difficult. They can score a noise, but this is the most primitive solution.

Much more serious option is to capture anti-UAV control. To do this, to break the encryption system and the control signals, drowning out the signal control center, to take control of the UAV to its signal. "

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

AVWK: RQ-170 UAV loss will not compromise keys to stealth tech

2011-12-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

By David Fulghum , Bill Sweetman
Washington, Washington

The crash of a stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aircraft in Iran is revealing details about U.S. intelligence monitoring of that increasingly bellicose and isolated nation.

Among these clues is evidence that Washington has been conducting intelligence-gathering overflights with both stealthy and nonstealthy unmanned aircraft to observe Tehran’s military developments. That a Sentinel was involved is important because the Lockheed Martin-built flying wing currently carries a full-motion video (FMV) payload (AW&ST Aug. 9, 2010, p. 29; Dec. 14, 2008, p. 26). FMV is the key to activity-based intelligence analysis, the same discipline that revealed Osama bin Laden’s hiding place. Both the CIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) see activity-based intelligence as the path to better monitoring of Iran, and they are busy expanding that capability.

Early on, officials said the crashed aircraft was possibly the Lockheed Martin Sentinel. That initial hesitation by the U.S. to confirm the downed unmanned aircraft as an RQ-170 indicates there are other aircraft monitoring Iran as well. Moreover, the intelligence community indicated that missile testing in eastern Iran was at least one of the targets of interest for Sentinel when it carried a different payload.

Yet there appears to be no panic in the military or aerospace industry about any loss of stealth or advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) technology in the crash.

“The Iranians don’t have the ability to reverse-engineer it, and there was no fancy [ISR] technology on board,” says a veteran intelligence specialist with insight into the program. “There could be a bit of a problem if the Russians or Chinese get the [airframe].”

Video released by the Iranian government shows the airframe intact, but with the landing gear and bottom of the Sentinel hidden. Specialists say the aircraft was not shot down because there is no blast or fire damage. The lack of crash damage would indicate the standard UAV flight-termination procedure after an airborne mishap of going into a flat spin. The video also shows an F-117 type grill work over the engine intake to avoid radar reflections from moving parts on the face of the engine. A Lockheed Martin stealth specialist contends that it’s still an acceptable idea if the size of the aircraft is constrained and it has “big, fat, round leading edges” to further attenuate radio-frequency reflections.

Russian missile developers explained to Aviation Week the problem they had using the remains of a downed U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth fighter to upgrade the stealth-detection capability of their next-generation air defenses. Because only sections of the F-117 survived intact, “we haven’t been able to model the entire [low-observable bomber],” a Russian engineer conceded. “It’s not the same as testing against an undamaged F-117. You provide us with a complete stealth aircraft and then we’ll tell you how effective we are.”

Having a virtually intact aircraft should present fewer problems for reverse engineering. However, it is a lengthy process and often means replicating a design that is already several years and at least a generation of technology behind.

The RQ-170, equipped with a full-motion video sensor, was a key element in the Osama bin Laden raid in Pakistan. Perhaps the most important detail that emerged from the raid was how much its planning relied on activity-based intelligence. Bin Laden was never seen, but the coming and going of important people revealed that he was there. Much of the critical information was gathered by the FMV sensor system and the data was analyzed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The need for even more sophisticated activity-based intelligence is being emphatically touted by NGA.

“We’re moving into more of an anticipatory [style of operations],” a senior agency official says. “We look at key intelligence questions and bring as many pieces of information together as we can by using multi-intelligence fusion and nontraditional sources.” The bin Laden residence was identified by “pattern of life activity, and [the NGA] worked with the assault team to look at the best way to get there,” the official says. Information developed from the data included flight path and acoustics modeling, line-of-sight analysis, landing-zone surveys and calculating the heights of walls, as well as the locations of entryways, windows and doors.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT AVIATION WEEK

Wow China - that was fast! RQ-170 Drone at Wal-Mart!

2011-12-09T13:49:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge ; )

-Steve Douglass

High resolution - enhanced photos of recovered RQ-170 stealth drone

2011-12-08T19:01:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge:

Photos source: "Jeff" originally posted on The Aviationist

Hastily repaired taped on wing:

Light blasted image (enhanced) of inlet showing there is indeed an engine contained within. This is no fake shell.

Enhanced contrast tonality reveals skin structure details:

Contrast and enlargement shows putty used to patch wing together:

Click to enlarge:

Photo enhancement by Steve Douglass

Comparison photo shows downed RQ-170 matches "Beast of Kandahar"

2011-12-08T15:22:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge:

Speculation among experts are split on the purported video of the UAV in Iran's possession - may be a model - a mock-up or a fake.

I think it's the real thing.

Marks on the fuselage match those in photos of the UAV that have been in wide circulation since 2010.

I think I'll do some more enhancement work on the video and stills and post the results soon - but for now ... I think it's the real deal.

-Steve Douglass

Note: Looking at higher rez-video shown on TV news programs show lots more detail and it's clear it's a real RQ-170 - although it does look like it was pieced together after crashing. The video does not show any proof the Iranians shot down the craft.

-Steve Douglass

BREAKING: Iran releases video of RQ-170 drone

2011-12-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian TV aired images Thursday of what it says is a U.S. stealth drone that went down in Iran last week, an apparently intact RQ-170 drone propped on a pedestal and triumphantly displayed.

"Military experts are well aware how precious the technological information of this drone is," said Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Forces, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Aired by the official Press TV network, the video showed different angles of the unmanned aircraft. It had been flying over the eastern town of Kashmar when it went down, the network said.

"Recently, our collected intelligence and precise electronic monitoring revealed that this aircraft intended to infiltrate our country's airspace for spying missions," Hajizadeh said.

"After it entered the eastern parts of the country, this aircraft fell into the trap of our armed forces and was downed in Iran with minimum damage."

He said the wing-to-wing width "is around 26 meters with a length of 4.5 meters and height of 1.84 meters" and the aircraft "is equipped with highly advanced surveillance, data gathering, electronic communication and radar systems."

Hajizadeh said B-2 and F-35 planes have used the technology found in the aircraft, which is guided via "satellite link and land stations in Afghanistan and the United States.

"As far as its platform and coating are concerned, this kind of plane has been designed to evade radar systems and from the viewpoint of technology it is amongst the most recent types of advanced aircraft used by the U.S.," Hajizadeh said.

The authenticity of the video could not be independently confirmed, but the seemingly good condition of the plane fueled talk about how the incident happened and whether the drone on display was the real one.

Commentators on Press TV expressed surprise that the craft was captured in such good shape. U.S. officials said the drone crashed.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said his initial reaction to pictures sent to him by CNN is that they weren't what he would expect to see after a crash. He said he's guessing that the object is a mockup prepared for a parade, noting a U.S. flag in the picture.

Bill Sweetman, an aviation analyst, said the craft appears to be the RQ-170, and it looks real to him.

If the drone came down in what he called a flat spin, or what is known as a falling leaf departure, the plane would be pretty much intact, he said, but the belly would be badly scraped. He said all of the electronics inside would most likely be in one piece.

Sweetman doubts the Iranians hacked into the system and took control of the aircraft. It is much more likely it crashed by itself, he said, since "that is what drones do."
And the condition also suggests it was not shot down but was a system failure. There are no burn marks from a fire, no holes, and no outer damage. Sweetman noticed a dent along the leading edge but doesn't know what that means.

The CIA and the Pentagon would not comment on the latest development.
Two U.S. officials confirmed to CNN on Tuesday that the drone was part of a CIA reconnaissance mission that involved both the intelligence community and military personnel stationed in Afghanistan.

A senior U.S. official with direct access to the assessment about what happened to the unmanned aircraft said it was tasked to fly over western Afghanistan and look for insurgent activity, with no directive to either fly into Iran or spy on Iran from Afghan airspace.

A U.S. satellite quickly pinpointed the downed drone, which apparently sustained significant damage, the senior official said.

The official Islamic Republic News Agency and Fars said Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss ambassador to Iran, who received an official reprimand for the U.S. actions. Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Iran, which doesn't have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Iran demanded U.S. reparations for the act, which it says is "against every international law and regulation, as well as contrary to the region's peace and security," Fars said.

Drone Crash in Iran Reveals Secret U.S. Surveillance Effort/photos

2011-12-07T18:20:00.000-08:00

Drone Crash in Iran Reveals Secret U.S. Surveillance Effort
By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: December 7, 2011

WASHINGTON — The stealth C.I.A. drone that crashed deep inside Iranian territory last week was part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into the country to map suspected nuclear sites, according to foreign officials and American experts who have been briefed on the effort.
Enlarge This Image

An undated photo of an RQ-170 Sentinel drone at the air base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. One of the drones crashed in Iran.

Until this week, the high-altitude flights from bases in Afghanistan were among the most secret of many intelligence-collection efforts against Iran, and American officials refuse to discuss it. But the crash of the vehicle, which Iranian officials said occurred more than 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan, blew the program’s cover.

The overflights by the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin and first glimpsed on an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2009, are part of an increasingly aggressive intelligence collection program aimed at Iran, current and former officials say. The urgency of the effort has been underscored by a recent public debate in Israel about whether time is running out for a military strike to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.

In a recent speech, President Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, hinted at secret efforts by the United States to keep watch on Iran’s nuclear program.

“We will continue to be vigilant,” Mr. Donilon said last month at the Brookings Institution. “We will work aggressively to detect any new nuclear-related efforts by Iran. We will expose them and force Iran to place them under international inspections.”

Iran said over the weekend that it had captured the RQ-170, the same drone deployed over Osama bin Laden’s compound before he was killed in May. Senior intelligence officials were disturbed that the drone was publicly discussed in the coverage of the Bin Laden raid, in part because of the fear of exposing its use over Iran.

A statement Sunday from the American-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said Iran might have recovered an “unarmed reconnaissance aircraft” lost while “flying a mission over western Afghanistan.” But several experts noted that the sophisticated stealth technology of the RQ-170 — which greatly reduces the chances that the drone can be detected by radar — had little use in western Afghanistan, because the Taliban have no radar to detect flights.

Iranian officials have said that the aircraft was detected near the town of Kashmar, 140 miles from the Afghan border, and that it was shot down or crashed because its control systems were hacked by the Iranian military. American officials say that those stories are fanciful, and that the drone was lost because of a malfunction.

Either way, the centerpiece of what had been a covert program is now in the hands of Iranian forces, which may share the captured technology with other countries. There are differing accounts of the extent of the damage to the craft; Iran has not published photographs of the wreckage, though officials have said video of the drone may soon be broadcast on television.

Two officials said that the United States briefly considered going in to retrieve the downed drone, or to destroy it, as first reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, but the operation was deemed too risky. There are questions about whether Iran could reverse-engineer the technology, though they certainly could sell the vehicle to China, Russia or other countries with a deep interest in it.

“The flights from Moscow and Beijing to Tehran were probably quite full the last few days,” said P. W. Singer, who studies military robotics at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Singer said that the most sought-after technology on the craft is probably its array of sensors, which may include sophisticated radar that is more advanced than anything Russia or China use currently.

Dennis M. Gormley, a missile and drone expert at the University of Pittsburgh, said reverse-engineering the aircraft itself will be difficult even for a sophisticated military. “Unless somebody put the engineering drawings in the U.A.V.,” he said, using the abbreviation for unmanned aerial vehicle, “it won’t be easy. In any complex piece of aviation equipment, you have to replicate the tolerances precisely.”

In Abbottabad, Pakistan, the RQ-170 was used to model the Bin Laden compound. In Iran, among other missions, it is looking for tunnels, underground facilities or other places where Iran could be building centrifuge parts or enrichment facilities.

One such facility, outside Qum, was revealed by President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain in 2009, though it appears that Israel played a major role in detecting that facility. One senior official said recently that “we’ve got nothing of that scale yet,” but added “we are looking every day.”

Surveillance of Iran is nothing new: American satellites have been trained on its nuclear facilities, their missile bases and their defenses for many years. But the RQ-170 Sentinel, which can fly at an altitude of 50,000 feet, is considered especially vital to the effort.

While an orbiting surveillance satellite can observe a location for only a few minutes at a time, a drone can loiter for hours, sending a video feed as people move about the site. Such a “pattern of life,” as it is called, can give crucial clues to the nature of the work being done, the equipment used and the size of the work force.

“It’s basically like staking out a Mafia social club,” said John Pike, who tracks military technology at the Web site GlobalSecurity.org. “If I’m just looking at brick-and-mortar targets, satellite’s fine. But if I want to see what people are doing all day, the drone is a whole lot better.”

In addition to video cameras, independent experts say the drone almost certainly carries communications intercept equipment and sensors that can detect tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes and other chemicals that can give away nuclear research.

News reports in South Korea in 2009 said the United States planned to base the RQ-170 drone there to fly surveillance missions over North Korea, whose nuclear and missile programs are a top American intelligence target.

Click to enlarge:

Squared exhaust nozzle:

Nose:

Aviation Week story on origins of Beast of Kandahar/RQ-170 drone

Stealth fighter marks important anniversary

2011-12-07T10:14:00.001-08:00

Alamogordo Daily News
By Arlan Ponder, For the Daily News
Posted: 12/06/2011 10:31:20 PM MST

Click photo to enlarge

"Have Blue," is the predecessor of the Air Force's famed F-117A Nighthawk ... (U.S. Air Force photo)
To many people, Dec. 1 marked a realization that there were only 24 more shopping days to Christmas. But to people who are involved with stealth fighters, an event happened on this date that forever changed the world of aviation.

It was the first flight of "Have Blue."

Have Blue was the predecessor of the Air Force's famed F-117A Nighthawk -- the first "stealth fighter" in the Air Force's inventory.

On Dec. 1, 1977, just after sunrise at Groom Lake, Nev., HB1001 made its maiden flight, and history, as Lockheed test pilot Bill Park took it through its flight.

Ben Rich, the former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works that built many of the nation's most advanced aircraft said, "This flight will be every bit as important to the nation's future and the future of the Skunk Works as the first test flight of the U-2 spy plane."

This came after the prototype was flown disassembled, via a C-5 Galaxy, from the Lockheed Plant in Burbank, Calif., to the classified Nevada base. The crew who made that historic flight in the middle of the night Nov. 16, 1977, never knew they had the first Experimental Survivable Testbed prototype in their cargo hold until years later after the F-117A came out of "the black."

The Have Blue prototypes, or XST, were the first fixed-wing aircraft designed from an electrical engineering (rather than an aerodynamic) perspective and, while similar to the later F-117, were smaller with greater wing sweep and inward-canted vertical tails.

Weighing only

8,950 pounds empty, the Have Blue aircraft topped out at a max takeoff weight of only 12,500 pounds. Lockheed engineers exploited as much off-the-shelf technology as practical to reduce design risks and keep costs and design turnaround times to a minimum.
The production aircraft used an environmental control system adapted from the C-130 Hercules; flight controls from the F-16 Fighting Falcon; brakes from the F-15 Strike Eagle; an ACES-2 ejection seat common to the F-15, F-16 and A-10 Warthog; and comm/nav equipment used in other Tactical Air Command aircraft. The ground support equipment used for the aircraft was common to 95 percent of other aircraft, thus facilitating deployments and cutting life cycle/logistical costs.

Have Blue had only three objectives:

• In-flight validation of the four low-observable signatures the program had previously identified.

• Demonstrate acceptable flying qualities and performance.

• Demonstrate modeling capabilities that accurately predict low-observable characteristics of an aircraft in flight.

Additional variations of Have Blue included the absence of flaps, a speed-brake and weapons bays on the XSTs. With regard to the inward-canted vertical tail section, initial beliefs that the inward-canted tails would help shield the hot exhaust from infrared detection proved exactly the opposite; it funneled the hot exhaust straight down beneath the aircraft, increasing its infrared signature.

The F-117A also employed a targeting Forward Looking Infrared, or FLIR, system mounted in a recess below the windshield. Target acquisition and weapon delivery is carried out with a ventral FLIR/laser turret, to the right of the nose wheel bay. Due to the absence of radar for ranging to bomb release, the laser provided both range finding and designation for weapons, its ventral position providing a similar field of view to established FLIR/laser targeting systems such as Pave Tack. 5

The navigation/attack system was fully digital and built around IBM mission computers and MIL-STD-1553B busses, integrated with Honeywell inertial navigation equipment. The cockpit employed a Kaiser HUD derived from the F-18 Hornet's AVQ-28, Honeywell color multi-function displays coupled to a Harris digital tactical (moving map) display system.

The Air Force has revealed the existence of a ground based automated mission planning system that used a ground based computer, graphics consoles and the aircraft's Delco 1553 bussed cartridge tape system for uploading mission particulars into the navigation/attack system. In addition, the flight instrumentation included a Honeywell radar altimeter and air data computer.

Sadly, on May 4, 1978, HB1001 met its demise on its 37th test flight, when landing gear trouble resulted in a decision for Park to eject. Park was injured in the incident and never flew again. As a result of his injuries and the subsequent removal from flight status, Lockheed named him their director of flight operations.

A short 13 months later HB1002 met the same fate as Air Force test pilot Ken Dyson ejected from it after experiencing engine and hydraulic failure. By this point, the program was within a few sorties of its planned completion and had achieved all of the Have Blue program's objectives.

Considered an overwhelming success, the Air Force closed the doors on Have Blue. Both of the prototypes are buried at Groom Lake.

As a result of the testing on Have Blue, numerous changes were made from the prototypes to the final F-117 design. The most noticeable difference was the arrangement of the vertical tail. On Have Blue, the tails are inward-canted, while on the Nighthawk the tails are outward-canted.

In the end, it was determined the inward-canted tails acted as reflectors and bounced the exhaust heat toward the ground and made the aircraft more visable from below. Designers ultimately moved the tails back on the F-117 so they weren't directly over the exhaust. This move also increased the tail moment arm by 50 percent, though later versions of the plane required larger tails for better control.

For the trivia minded, the windowless Skunk Works hangar where the Have Blue prototypes were engineered, fabricated and assembled is the same building that produced the F-104 Starfighter, U-2 Dragon Lady and SR-71 Blackbird aircraft. In addition, in March 1976 the radar range at White Sands Missile Range, which used the most sensitive and powerful in the free world, was used to test a wooden, flat paneled, 38-foot, black painted model nicknamed the "Hopeless Diamond."

Alan Brown, former director of engineering at Lockheed, said there couldn't be an F-22 Raptor without the F-117; however, without a test flight on Dec. 1, 1977, in a dry lake bed in Nevada, neither aircraft might have made it to the Air Force inventory.

Arlan Ponder is the media relations chief for the 49th Wing Public Affairs Office at Holloman Air Force Base.

Cicada drone test program a success

2011-12-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON, Dec 05, 2011

The Naval Research Laboratory Vehicle Research Section has successfully completed flight tests for the Autonomous Deployment Demonstration (ADD) program. The final demonstration took place Sept. 1 at the Yuma Proving Grounds, Yuma, Ariz., and consisted of a series of eight balloon-drops at altitudes of up to 57,000 ft, delivering sensor-emplacement Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft (CICADA) vehicles within 15 feet of their intended landing locations.

The ADD concept is to enable small unmanned air vehicles (UAV) equipped with sensor payloads to be launched from aircraft (manned or unmanned),

“The mission profile is straight forward,” says Chris Bovais, aeronautical engineer and flight test coordinator, NRL Vehicle Research Section. “The CICADA is dropped from another airborne platform, flies to a single waypoint, and then enters an orbit. It descends in that orbit until it reaches the ground.”

The NRL developed CICADA Mark III UAV is a glider; it has no propulsion source onboard, therefore. It requires another airborne platform to get it to an altitude such that it can glide to its destination. Its lack of a motor and small size, make it nearly undetectable in flight.

The ADD field trials successfully demonstrate that the CICADA can perform a precision delivery of a notional payload after being dropped from a ‘mother-ship’ or being carried aloft by a balloon. Standoff distances of 30 nautical miles and altitudes up to 57,000 feet were demonstrated, with an average landing error of 15 feet from the commanded location.

During the demonstration, the UAV ensemble was lifted to altitude using balloons operated by Aerostar International. A UASUSA built Tempest UAV, with two

Tempest CICADA test drop
CICADA vehicles attached on wing-mounted pylons, was carried aloft to altitudes approaching 60,000 feet. The Tempest mother ship was released from the balloon, autonomously executed a pull-up maneuver, and then carried the two CICADAs to a drop location. Each CICADA vehicle was then released from the mother ship and autonomously flew to the preprogrammed target waypoint.

“Many remote sensors are currently hand emplaced,” said Bovais. “The CICADA allows for the low-cost delivery of multiple precision-located sensors without placing the warfighter in harm’s way.”

The CICADA Mark III is a unique vehicle. The airframe is simply a printed circuit board also serving as the autopilot, the first known multi-purpose

CICADA MK III
airframe/avionics implementation of its kind. This novel construction method significantly reduces assembly time, minimizes wiring requirements, and enables the manufacture of low-cost and rugged micro air vehicles. The airframe shape is easily scaled to accommodate various payload sizes and potential acoustic, magnetic, chemical/biological and SIGINT sensors. Unique to this construction technique, additional electronic payloads can be inserted into the system by updating the printed circuit board artwork and ‘re-winging’ the aircraft.

A custom autopilot for the CICADA, both hardware and software, was developed by the Vehicle Research Section to be both inexpensive and robust. The only flight sensors are a 5Hz GPS receiver and a two-axis gyroscope. Although having minimal sensors, the navigation solution and the flight controller proved to be quite robust during in-flight testing, routinely recovering from tumbling launches. The flight controller also included a custom NRL algorithm that accurately estimated wind speed and magnitude, despite having no air data sensors onboard.

SOURCE: Naval Research Laboratory

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Daniel Parry, 202-767-2541
nrl1030@ccs.nrl.navy.mil

CNN:More details on CIA drone loss

2011-12-06T13:17:00.001-08:00

By Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr

A stealth US drone that crashed in Iran last week was part of a Central Intelligence Agency reconnaissance mission which involved both intelligence community and military personnel stationed in Afghanistan, two U.S. officials tell CNN. The officials said they did not believe the mission involved flying the drone directly over Iran because the reconnaissance capability of the-RQ 170 drone allows it to gather information from inside Iran while remaining on the Afghanistan side of the border. The officials also for the first time acknowledged to CNN it was an RQ-170 drone that was lost.

When the drone crashed in Iran late last week, the U.S. briefly considered all potential options for retrieving the drone or bombing the wreckage, according to a third official. But those ideas were relatively quickly discarded as impractical, the official said. There was also satellite surveillance over the site which helped confirm the location of the wreckage before the Iranians retrieved it.

All of the officials have direct knowledge of the events, but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of sensitive intelligence matters. CIA officials have declined to comment.

Indications of the intelligence community’s involvement in the drone incident emerged over the weekend when the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan issued a vaguely worded statement saying, ” "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status." Several coalition officials said at the time they had no direct knowledge of the incident and they were essentially ordered to put out this statement. It is significant that the statement only says “operators” of the UAV without saying which part of the military or US government might have been operating it, one coalition official said.

American officials are discounting the Iranian claim they shot the drone down and insist the crew lost flight control and the drone then entered Iranian airspace.

Secret Drone belonged to CIA

2011-12-06T05:45:00.000-08:00

Drone belonged to CIA, officials say
Greg Miller
Monday, Dec 5, 2011
The unmanned surveillance plane lost by the United States in Iran was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA, U.S. officials said Monday.

The officials said Iran’s military appears to be in possession of one of the more sensitive surveillance platforms in the CIA’s fleet, an aircraft that was shaped and designed to evade enemy defenses.

The mission of the downed drone remains unclear. Iran, a longtime adversary of the United States, is believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon and is also accused of providing support to anti-coalition elements in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The RQ-170 has been used by the CIA for highly sensitive missions into other nations’ airspace, including months of surveillance of the compound in Pakistan in which Osama bin Laden was hiding before he was killed in a May raid by Special Operations forces.

A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the drone was being flown by the agency. A Pentagon spokesman, George Little, also declined to comment.

The disclosure that the drone apparently recovered by Iran was being flown by the CIA comes after previous signals from U.S. officials that had created the impression that the plane was being flown by the U.S. military on a more mundane mission over Afghanistan and had simply strayed into Iranian territory.

A statement issued by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan on Sunday said that the downed drone “may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status.”

U.S. officials insisted Monday that the statement was technically accurate, noting that it did not explicitly assert that the aircraft was being operated by ISAF or the U.S. military. Instead, the language of the statement was ambiguous about the drone’s ownership and mission. The CIA’s role in operating the plane was first reported Monday by NBC News.

Some U.S. officials began to cast doubt on the ISAF statement almost as soon as it was released. Current and former U.S. defense officials said it was unlikely that the military would be using a highly sophisticated stealth aircraft — one presumably in relatively short supply — for surveillance operations over western Afghanistan.

The statement’s suggestion that U.S. pilots lost control of the aircraft was accurate, according to U.S. officials who have disputed claims by Iran that its defense forces downed the aircraft, or that it had been felled by a sophisticated cyberattack.

Although the ISAF statement said that the drone was flying “a mission over western Afghanistan,” CIA drones are generally used to conduct surveillance as well as strikes beyond that country’s borders, most notably in Pakistan. The agency’s aircraft do take off from and land at air bases in Afghanistan, however. There is no indication that the drone lost in Iran was armed.

The RQ-170 has special coatings and a batwing shape designed to help it penetrate other nations’ air defenses undetected. The existence of the aircraft, which is made by Lockheed Martin, has been known since 2009, when a model was photographed at the main U.S. airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

millergreg@washpost.com

Staff writer Greg Jaffe contributed to this article.

Did Iran hack the secret RQ-170 drone?

2011-12-05T19:44:00.000-08:00

It's an intriguing scenario - worth of a novel or a movie - a super secret US spy drone gets "hacked" by unfriendly forces.

It's so intriguing that this author wrote a novel based on that very premise titled; The Interceptors Club & The Secret of the Black Manta.

Then tonight came the news that Iran has claimed to have "hacked" one of the US's stealthy secret drones officially known as the RQ-170 Sentinel - or as "stealthies" have come to know it as "The Beast Of Kandahar."

I research what I write - and can say without a doubt - it may be possible - but not very probable. It would require highly compartmentalized top secret inside information and sophisticated super-computer hacking capabilities along with considerable signal intercept capabilities the likes Iran does not have.

Techies are quick to point out that a few years ago insurgents were eavesdropping on the unencrypted video feeds of Predator drones. (see link here)

In that case it was clear that US military planners underestimated the technical sophistication of the enemy, compounded by rushing Predators into service without enough encrypted satellite feeds to handle them all and (as a result) Iraqi insurgents (using a cheap piece of software called "SkyGrabber") were able to not only tell when they were being watched but could actually intercept the video and watch it live.

Technically this isn't "hacking" because it didn't allow the insurgents to get inside the UAV control system, and the video feeds were being broadcast in the clear.

However, being able to watch the Predator feeds did provide insurgents with valuable intelligence and advanced warning whenever (and wherever) the UAV were up and hunting.

Since then, sources inside the military say the fix is in - and all feeds are now encrypted. Proof is in the incredible success the US has had (this year alone) in hunting down and blowing up high-ranking terrorist insurgents - over eighty at last count.

That said - it's a given that UAV control links are also encrypted and very hard to intercept.

UAVs (even semi-autonomous ones like the RQ-170) are directed via redundant narrow-banded frequency-hoping microwave (Low Probability of Intercept) KU Band satellite links that are incredibly difficult to detect let alone capture - or for that matter hack into.

If it was at all possible to hack the UAV control path - it would require a supercomputer - or better yet - a bank of supercomputers to break the encryption - and even that night not work.

Could it be that Russia who covets Iran's oil and has helped them immensely (in their quest to acquire the bomb) may have helped Iran "hack" into the US's super stealthy spy drone control system - hijacking it or causing it to crash?

Probably not - but if there is even the slightest possibility chances are US military strategists and planners will be burning the midnight oil to find out.

But - then comes the reality check. First, the obvious question, how would Iran know when a stealthy drone is in the local airspace available to hack - when they don't show up on radar?

Iran's radar is fairly sophisticated - obtained from (who else) Russia and even as such is still not much of a threat to a stealth drone (such as the RQ-170) cruising at 90,000 feet. It is a fact - all American stealth aircraft are designed around defeating Russian military radar systems - including the dumbed-down versions they sale for export.

Not only is the RQ-170 stealthy - it is small and the chances are one was detected are incredibly slim.

But what if - and I'm just spit balling here- - Iran knew whenever a RQ-170 was flying over their country - say through some mustache twirling b-movie secret agent - an imbedded Boris - as it were- alerting them to the overflights - routes -frequencies used etc.

Could they somehow (assuming they had the technical know-how, and the flight control software and (incredibly) were able to crack the frequency hopping signals that tell the drone what to do - hijack the Beast of Kandahar?

Before launch, UAVs like the RQ-170 are set up via a direct wired connection with special authentication keys that can't be snatched out of the airwaves. When queried by the satellite link controlling the drone - all authentication keys must match with the ground/mobile station. If the authentication fails - the link is rejected. If no authenticated link can be established, the drone is programmed to fly back to it's point of origin or other landing sites under friendly control.

However, I can't help but imagine a movie scene - drone controllers at Creech AFB are pulling their hair out because they can't control their secret sky spy.

Someone frantically pushes a button to trigger a self-distruct - and nothing happens.

The drone controllers watch helplessly as their secret stealth UAV soft-lands in Iran, only to be circled by grinning Iranian military, giving Uncle Sam the middle finger and chanting "Allahu Akbar" as they dance and fire their AK-47s in celebration.

BUT IT'S PURE FICTION ...

It's easy for fiction writers to invent the perfect black box to make the hijacking of a drone seem plausible - but in reality - what most likely happened was a malfunction that resulted in a crash.

But still - could it have been shot down - as Iran claims?

Again, stealthy high flyers such as the RQ-170 are virtually invulnerable when it comes to enemy fire. Bullets won't reach and even high-flying missiles can't lock on a small stealthy UAV.

Although Iran is boasting it shot down a drone - they've been known to lie.

Iran has downed (or claimed) to have downed several Israeli drones - but the photos they have released aren't of stealthy high-flyers.

The majority of the downed drones are short-range, low altitude or hand launched mini drones - the kind vulnerable to small arms fire.

However - there is another possible way to down a high flying UAV like the RQ-170 and it doesn't require hacking or jets, bullets or bombs. What it does require is some advanced technical ability and a unique weapon - something Russia is known to have in it's arsenal.

The Russians are geniuses at building jammers.

According to a story on AFP (published in October) : "Russia has sent a set of mobile radar jammers to Iran and is negotiating future deliveries that Moscow believes do not contravene the current UN sanction regime on the Islamic state, an official said Tuesday.

The Avtobaza truck-mounted jammers are a part of a broader line of arms that Russia hopes to sell Iran despite concerns over Tehran's nuclear programme, the deputy head of the military and technical cooperation agency said.

"This is a defensive system," the agency's deputy director Konstantin Biryulin was quoted as saying by the state RIA Novosti news agency.

"We are not talking about jets, submarines or even S-300 (missile) systems. We are talking about providing security for the Iranian state."

So that's how you down a UAV.

Once you know it's up - you clear the airspace and pump the airwaves so full of radiated microwave power the UAV can't hear - goes dumb - or the microwaves overload and burn out the autonomous brain - causing the UAV to wander aimlessly, eventually running out of fuel and crashing in Iran.

To down a drone, no hacking is needed. Just blast it with radio waves.

But the worlds' media has already seized on the remote possibility that the UAVS can be "hacked" or "hijacked" because it -well - sounds cool and sinister and dredges up all kinds of scary possibilities.

NEW CYBERWARFARE!

So how about implanting a virus? Wasn't something like that in the news not too long ago?

A recent article on a virus that infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones was given more press than it deserved. It was a common type - a keystroke logger - the same type your computer can get - and has been removed.

The virus probably entered the system via an infected USB thumb drive. Once found it became clear it wasn't engineered to take over the control of a military drone and in fact was quite ineffectual.
Reaper & Predator drones aren't hooked up to the Internet so there was no-way for the virus to transmit its' acquired keystoke data to whomever engineered it.

However, it's a sexier story to imagine UAVs hijacked by an enemy uber-hacker to maybe even turned against us - plus -it gives the the media the excuse to use the new cool-sounding-term: "new cyber-warfare!"

It's catchy - but in the end the odds are that the drone that crashed- just crashed on its' own.

However, just in case - Steven Spielberg is reading this - I better start working on a movie script version of my novel.

-Steve Douglass

Military sources confirm Iran has stealth drone.

2011-12-05T09:41:00.000-08:00

FOXNEWS:

Iran is in possession of a RQ-170 Sentinel drone that went missing over the Islamic Republic, U.S. military sources told Fox News on Monday.
The Sentinel is the same kind of stealth high tech drone that was used to monitor the compound during the raid that killed Usama bin Laden in Pakistan, the sources said.

The sources confirmed the Iranians have the drone, however, they did not say that the Iranians shot down the spy plane, as was reported by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

"An advanced RQ-170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran's armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran's armed forces," IRNA quoted an unidentified Iranian military official saying Sunday. The official also warned of strong and crushing response to any violations of the country's airspace by American drone aircraft.

Earlier, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan issued a statement saying the aircraft may have been a drone that operators lost contact with last week while it was flying a mission over neighboring western Afghanistan.
A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the incident, said the U.S. had "absolutely no indication" that the drone was shot down.

Iran is locked in a dispute with the U.S. and its allies over Tehran's disputed nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Iran denies the accusations, saying its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and that it seeks to generate electricity and produce isotopes to treat medical patients.
The RQ-170 Sentinel is made by Lockheed Martin and is equipped with stealth technology.

Iran said in January that two pilotless spy planes it had shot down over its airspace were operated by the United States and offered to put them on public display. In July, Iranian military officials showed Russian experts several U.S. drones they said were shot down in recent years.

Also in July, Iranian lawmaker Ali Aghazadeh Dafsari said Iran's Revolutionary Guard shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that was trying to gather information on an underground uranium enrichment site.

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., told Fox News on Monday that "it's less likely than not" that the Iranians did not shoot down the plane, but it had a mechanical or computer malfunction that caused it to go down "and then used it for propaganda purposes."
"In the past, they have claimed these shoot-downs and been unable to produce any pieces of the drone, and currently, they have not exhibited any piece of the RQ-170 yet," he said

Breaking: Iran claims they have shot down stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel drone

2011-12-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

WSJ WASHINGTON—Iran said on Sunday that it shot down a U.S. stealth drone near the country's eastern border, but U.S. officials in Afghanistan said the craft could instead be an unmanned reconnaissance plane that veered off course and crashed last week.

Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted a military official who said Tehran had downed an RQ-170 Sentinel, the U.S. Air Force's stealth drone.

U.S. and NATO officials wouldn't say what kind of American drone had disappeared, but U.S. officials said there was no indication that the aircraft had been shot down by the Iranians. One American official said the drone likely suffered from a mechanical failure.

American officials said they believe that after the remote pilots lost control of the aircraft, the drone crashed in an unknown location.

On Sunday afternoon, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's command in Afghanistan said the Iranians may have been referring to an unmanned craft lost while flying a mission over western Afghanistan "late last week."

"The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status," said the statement released by NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The drone "suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran's armed forces," IRNA quoted the military official as saying.

The news agency reported that the official also warned of a strong response if the U.S. were to violate Iranian airspace.

Iran's assertion that it had shot down the drone wasn't the first such claim it has made.

In July, it said it shot down a drone near the city of Qom. In January, Tehran said its forces shot down drones in the Gulf.

U.S. officials rebutted those claims, and Tehran produced no evidence.

The RQ-170 Sentinel was the type of stealth drone used to conduct surveillance on the compound used by Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, before the May raid by Navy SEAL commandos that killed the al Qaeda leader.

The U.S. has flown missions with the RQ-170 Sentinel from bases in Afghanistan, but most of its capabilities remain classified.

It is also known by a nickname, the "beast of Kandahar," earned when aviation enthusiasts first spotted the craft flying from Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan.

Defense analysts have speculated in the past that the Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., was based in Afghanistan not just to conduct secret missions into Pakistan but also for surveillance of Iranian military sites.

The stealth drone was originally part of the Air Force's classified fleet and its existence was officially denied. But the service now makes available a fact sheet about the aircraft.

The drone is a wing-shaped aircraft, like the stealth bomber, a design that is supposed to make it less visible to radar.

The number of Sentinels that the Air Force operates remains a closely guarded secret.

The "RQ" designation is used for unarmed drones, such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk. But some analysts have said the U.S. might try to arm the airframe at some point in the future.

Iran claims to have its own fleet of unarmed drones, but U.S. officials question Tehran's ability to conduct even short-range reconnaissance with unmanned aircraft.

UPDATE:
Responding to the Iranian report, NATO command in Afghanistan released a terse statement Sunday: "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a US unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status."

The White House declined to comment but officials did not seem unduly alarmed, suggesting that the drone's capture would not provide Iran with significant information about U.S. surveillance technology and techniques.

The RQ-170 Sentinel is a high-altitude reconnaissance drone whose existence was revealed in 2009 by specialised reviews and later confirmed by the US Air Force in 2010.

In January, Iran announced that its forces had downed two US drones after they violated Iranian-controlled airspace.

It said it would put the aircraft on display to the public, but there has been no indication it ever did so.

In June, Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Guards' aerospace unit, said Iran had shown Russian experts the US drones in its possession.

"Russian experts requested to see these drones and they looked at both the downed drones and the models made by the Guards through reverse engineering," he said.

Hajizadeh did not specify how many US drones were shown nor give any details of the copies Iran was said to have made of the aircraft.

The US military and the CIA routinely use drones to monitor military activity in the region.

They have also reportedly used them to launch missile strikes in Yemen as well as in Afghanistan and in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt.

The latest report comes as relations between Pakistan and the US have hit a new low after 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in an air strike near the Afghan-Pakistani border last month, prompting Pakistan to boycott Monday's Bonn conference on Afghanistan's future.

It also comes at a time of heightened political tension over Iran's nuclear programme, with speculation rife that Israel is mulling air strikes against Iranian atomic facilities, with or without US backing.

Iranian officials and Guards commanders, who regularly boast about Tehran's military capabilities, have warned against any such military action targeting the Islamic republic.

UPDATE: LA TIMES: Some initial reports out of Iran suggested the drone had been shot down. But the semiofficial Fars news agency, which is close to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, quoted a military official as saying that Iran's electronic-cyber warfare unit had managed to take control of the aircraft and bring it "under their possession."

The official told Fars that Iran's response "will not be limited to the country's borders."

Iranian officials identified the aircraft as an RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone, which is made by Lockheed Martin. The United States has not confirmed using the Sentinel, although at least one was reportedly monitoring Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan during the raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader in May.

Iranian news agencies did not immediately publish images of the allegedly downed craft.

UPDATE YAHOO NEWS: The United States Air Force acknowledged in October that a computer virus had infected the computer system at Creech Air Force base in Nevada that is used to remotely operate Predator and Reaper drones. In 2009, an Iraqi insurgent hacked into a U.S. drone down-link, which is not usually encrypted, cyber security expert James Lewis, a former Reagan administration official with the Center for Strategic and Institutional Studies, told Yahoo News last month.

"Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations," the Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman, Yochi Dreazen and August Cole reported in December 2009.

"Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems," the Journal report said. "Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter."

The unarmed stealth drone Iran claims to have brought down, the RQ-170 Sentinel, is manufactured by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Program, based in Palmdale, California.
Until 2009, the U.S. Air Force would say little about the model, despite reported sightings of it on the tarmac at Kandahar International Airport, Afghanistan since 2007.

A December 2009 photo of the RQ-170 posted on aviation websites, however, prompted the Air Force to at least acknowledge the plane's existence, Military Times' Michael Hoffman reported in 2009:

"For two years, the RQ-170 has been the Air Force's Bigfoot," Hoffman wrote. "Photos and drawings of the stealthy UAV, also called the 'Beast of Kandahar,' have surfaced, producing shrugs and no-comments from service officials. In early December, a clear photograph of the jet's left side appeared on aviation Web sites, perhaps prompting the Air Force to 'fess up."

However, Air Force officials have not explained what the stealth aircraft is doing in Afghanistan given the fact that the Taliban has no air force or radar, Hoffman noted.

"Experts such as Phil Finnegan, a UAV analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm, suggest the stealth capabilities are being used to fly in nearby countries," Hoffman wrote. "Neighboring Iran has an air force and air defense system that would require stealth technology to penetrate."

The RQ-170 was also reportedly used in U.S. surveillance surrounding the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan last May.

The RQ-170 reportedly does not use the most sophisticated U.S. military technology because as a single engine UAV, it was judged to have a higher likelihood of occasionally going down.

Chilcott: Iran embassy attackers government supported

2011-12-02T15:13:00.001-08:00

BBC:

Dominick Chilcott told the BBC Iran is a country in which such action is only taken "with the acquiescence and the support of the state".

Hundreds of protesters attacked the UK embassy in Tehran on Tuesday.

And diplomats working at the Iranian embassy in London have left Britain after being expelled.

The Iranian diplomats expelled from the UK flew out of Heathrow on a chartered Iran Air flight on Friday afternoon.

Their expulsion was ordered by Foreign Secretary William Hague after the British embassy in Tehran was stormed on Tuesday.

Iran said it regretted the incident, which it described as "unacceptable behaviour by a small number of protesters".

But Mr Chilcott, the newly appointed British ambassador to Iran, told the BBC's Gavin Esler the attack was likely to have had state backing.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

We will continue to work tirelessly to find a negotiated solution”

Nick Clegg
Deputy prime minister
He said: "Iran is not the sort of country where spontaneously a demonstration congregates and then attacks a foreign embassy. That sort of activity is only done with the acquiescence and the support of the state.

"And there are a number of reasons why, with the benefit of hindsight, it's very clear that this was a state-supported activity."

He also said some within Iran's ruling regime may have underestimated the British response.

"The risk is that certain people in the regime who liked the idea of confrontation, because they felt it would rally people to the flag, miscalculated how strong the response would be," said Mr Chilcott.

"They probably didn't expect us to send home the Iranian embassy in London and, reading between the lines, you can see in the way they have responded to that move, some remorse in having provoked it. I think that might apply more generally too," he added.

Earlier, Iranian diplomatic staff boarded a plane at Heathrow Airport, London, heading to Tehran
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told the BBC's Sarah Rainsford the UK's relationship with Iran had "taken a very serious knock".

He said: "Something really bad happened when the Iranian authorities allowed those people to overrun our embassy compounds, and it is quite right that we have been very clear in our response - as have many other European countries who have withdrawn their ambassadors for consultations.

"It doesn't mean we're cutting off all diplomatic relations with Iran. It doesn't mean we are in any way lessening our determination to try to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear question, which is immensely important to Europe and the whole world, and we will continue to work tirelessly to find a negotiated solution."

On Wednesday, Mr Hague told MPs: "If any country makes it impossible for us to operate on their soil, they cannot expect to have a functioning embassy here."

The foreign secretary said there had been "some degree of regime consent" in the attacks on the embassy and on another UK diplomatic compound in Tehran.

He also said all UK diplomatic staff in Tehran had been evacuated and the embassy closed.

Barak: Israel may be forced t o act against a nuclear Iran

2011-12-01T11:24:00.000-08:00

JERUSALEM – Israel does not want to take military action against Iran over its nuclear program, but at some point may have no other option, the Israeli defense minister said Thursday.

The Jewish state at this point did not intend to launch a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, but retained the option as a "last resort," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio.

"We don't need unnecessary wars. But we definitely might be put to the test," he said.

Barak said he hoped that sanctions and diplomacy would pressure the Iranian leadership to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program, but did not expect that to happen.

Israel, like the West, is convinced Iran is developing a nuclear bomb, despite Tehran's insistence that its nuclear program is designed to produce energy.

Israel says a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten the Jewish state's survival, citing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated references to Israel's destruction, Iran's arsenal of ballistic missiles and its support for militant groups that fight Israel.

The U.S. -- as well as some security experts in Israel -- have loudly opposed the prospect of an Israeli military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, because of its potential for touching off retaliation against Israel and a broader, regional conflagration.

But Barak suggested that Israel might not alert world powers before embarking on a strike.

"Israel is a sovereign state and it is the government of Israel, the Israeli army and security forces who are responsible for Israel's security, future and survival," he said.

Mysterious blasts, computer viruses and assassinations have disrupted Iran's nuclear program, and there has been speculation of Israeli involvement.

Read more: HERE

Brits kick out Iranian diplomats

2011-11-30T06:05:00.000-08:00

The UK is to expel all Iranian diplomats following the storming of its embassy in Tehran, Foreign Secretary William Hague has announced.

He said he had ordered the immediate closure of the Iranian embassy in London.

Tuesday's attack by hundreds of protesters followed Britain's decision to impose further sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme.

Iran's parliament had previously voted to reduce diplomatic ties with the UK.

Mr Hague said he was demanding the immediate closure of the Iranian embassy in London, with all its staff to leave the UK within 48 hours.

He said there had been "some degree of regime consent" in the attacks on the embassy and on another UK diplomatic compound in Tehran.

He said all UK diplomatic staff in Tehran had been evacuated and the embassy closed.

"They cannot expect to have a functioning embassy here," Mr Hague told MPs.

However, Mr Hague said the UK was not severing relations with Iran entirely.

Correspondents say the move means relations between the UK and Iran are now at the lowest level.

Hashim Khan, an anti-Taliban tribal leader killed

2011-11-30T05:57:00.000-08:00

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Hashim Khan, an anti-Taliban tribal leader, was killed in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday when a bomb hidden in his car detonated, police said.

Two of Khan's colleagues traveling with him were injured, said police official Abdul Rashid.
The explosion took place at 1 p.m. in Hangu city in Orakzai Agency, one of seven semi-autonomous tribal regions in northwest Pakistan, known to be a hotbed of militancy.

Khan was an influential tribal elder who led a local resistance against the Taliban and its many factions.

No one has taken responsibility for the attack.

T-50-3 Photo Bank

2011-11-30T05:45:00.000-08:00

LINK

Перспективный авиационный комплекс фронтовой авиации.

Самолет пятого поколения оснащен принципиально новым комплексом авионики, интегрирующем функцию «электронного пилота», и перспективной радиолокационной станцией с фазированной антенной решеткой. Это в значительной степени снижает нагрузку на летчика и позволяет концентрироваться на выполнении тактических задач. Бортовое оборудование нового самолета позволяет осуществлять обмен данными в режиме реального времени как с наземными системами управления, так и внутри авиационной группы.

Применение композиционных материалов и инновационных технологий, аэродинамическая компоновка самолета, мероприятия по снижению заметности двигателя обеспечивают беспрецедентно низкий уровень радиолокационной, оптической и инфракрасной заметности. Это позволяет значительно повысить боевую эффективность в работе, как по воздушным, так и наземным целям, в любое время суток, в простых и сложных метеоусловиях.

Translation:
The aircraft is equipped with a fifth-generation brand new avionics, integrating the function of "electronic pilot" and promising radar with a phased antenna array. This greatly reduces the load on the pilot and allows you to concentrate on the implementation of tactical tasks. On-board equipment of the new aircraft can exchange data in real time as the land-based control systems, and within the aviation group.

The use of composite materials and innovative technology, aerodynamic design aircraft, measures to reduce the visibility of the engine provides unprecedented low level radar, optical and infrared signature. This can significantly increase the combat effectiveness of the work, both in air and ground targets, at any time, in simple and adverse weather conditions.

Iran one year away from the bomb ..

2011-11-29T18:45:00.000-08:00

Yadlin: Tehran needs 12-18 months to build a nuclear bomb
By YAAKOV KATZ
11/29/2011 15:03

Ex-IDF intel chief Yadlin says once Tehran makes decision to build a nuclear bomb it'll take 12-18 months.

There is time before the use of military force will be necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear program, former head of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin hinted on Tuesday, saying that once Tehran makes the decision to build a nuclear bomb it will take 12-18 months.

Yadlin spoke at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv where he now serves as the director. He completed his term as head of Military Intelligence last November.

The cause of a blast on Monday in the city of Isfahan – home to a key Iranian nuclear facility – continued to remain a mystery on Tuesday.

Yadlin hinted that it was possible that once the Iranians go to the “breakout” stage and begin enriching military-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon, other countries in the world will be prepared to launch a military strike against Iran. He said that Israel did not need to take action until it reaches that stage.

Yadlin seemed to share the opinion of former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who has said that Israel should not consider military action until a “sword is against its throat,” meaning until Iran is already building a nuclear weapon.

“Once the Iranians decide they are going to the breakout stage and they openly declare publicly that they are moving forward to a nuclear weapon there will be new opportunities that do not exist today,” said Yadlin, “and this requires us to maintain a dialogue with countries that have better [military] capabilities to deal with this threat.”

He said that the Iranians already have enough lowenriched uranium for 4-5 nuclear weapons, but that they are waiting until they feel that the price they will pay is low before building the bomb.

“The Iranians will [build the bomb] only when they feels that the risks are low. This has not happened,” he said. “What has happened is that the Iranians have obtained all of the necessary components – they can enrich uranium, they have missiles and the recent International Atomic Energy Agency report shows they are also working on the weapon.”

Yadlin said that while Iran will retaliate against a future Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities, it will not be interested in a longterm conflict with Israel.

“There will definitely be a response but I propose that Hezbollah and Hamas capabilities should not lead the debate since these are groups that we could find ourselves up against any given day,” Yadlin said.

“There are international mechanisms to limit the Iranian response – by the world and Israel which has ways to make it clear to the Iranians that they will pay a heavy price for launching a prolonged war.”

Iran denies nuclear facility blew up - but satellites reveal it did.

2011-11-29T18:34:00.000-08:00

By JPOST.COM STAFF AND YAAKOV KATZ
11/29/2011 11:05

Isfahan's deputy governor calls reports of previous day's mysterious blast "sheer lies," according to IRNA news.

Officials from the Iranian city of Isfahan denied on Tuesday that the city had been hit by a mysterious explosion the previous day.

Mohammad-Mahdi Esma'ili, Isfahan's deputy governor in political and security affairs, called the reports "sheer lies" according to the IRNA news agency. An official from the city's fire department also denied that there had been an explosion.

A mysterious explosion rocked the Iranian city of Isfahan on Monday, home to a key facility in Tehran’s nuclear program.

The source and target of the explosion were unclear. Some reports claimed that it took place in a military base and others claimed it was a gas explosion. Isfahan hosts a nuclear facility involved in processing uranium which is fed to the Natanz fuel enrichment facility.

Two weeks ago, on November 12, an explosion hit an Iranian military base near the town of Bid Kaneh, killing 17 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Maj.-Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, chief architect of the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program. Israel’s Mossad has been accused of orchestrating the blast.

On Monday, the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) revealed a satellite image of the military base harmed in the attack two week ago. The image showed extensive damage to a number of buildings within the compound. ISIS said that the blast was caused while Iran was apparently performing a procedure involving an engine for a new missile.

Head of the Military Intelligence Research Directorate Brig.-Gen. Itay Brun told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that the blast at the missile base on November 12 could delay Tehran’s development of long-range missiles.

“The explosion at the site to develop surface-to-surface missiles could stop or delay activities on that track and in that location, but we must emphasize that Iran has other development tracks in addition to that facility,” Brun said.

Compared to an earlier satellite image of the site, the image taken after the blast on November 22 shows damage to most of the buildings in the base.

Some were completely destroyed. ISIS said that some of the destruction could have been the result of subsequent controlled demolition of buildings and the removal of debris.

The Iranian media provided contradictory information about the explosion on Monday.

The Fars news agency reported a large blast in the province but later removed the report from its website.

The Mehr news agency cited other Iranian news media, which it did not identify, as reporting that a blast had taken place at a gas station at a town near Isfahan. However, it also quoted the deputy governor of the province as saying he had no reports of a big explosion in his region.

“So far, no report of a major explosion has been heard from any government body in Isfahan,” Deputy Governor Mohammad Mehdi was quoted as saying by the semi-official news agency.

Separately, the European Union is preparing new restrictive measures against Iran and shares US concerns about Tehran’s nuclear program, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said on Monday.

Van Rompuy did not offer details of the planned sanctions in remarks to reporters after a White House meeting with President Barack Obama and other top US officials.

In a joint statement issued after the meeting, the US and EU said they shared “deep concern” about the possible military dimensions of Tehran’s nuclear pursuits.

“We stress our determination to ensure that Iran complies with its obligations, including abiding by United Nations Security Council resolutions, and to cooperate fully with the IAEA to address the international community’s serious concerns over the nature of its nuclear program,” the statement read.

Reuters contributed to the report.

Breaking News: British Embassy stormed by Iranian protesters

2011-11-29T09:29:00.000-08:00

BBC: Protesters in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have broken into the UK embassy compound during a demonstration against sanctions imposed by Britain.

Militant students are said to have removed the British flag, burnt it and replaced it with Iran's flag. State TV showed youths smashing embassy windows.

The move comes after Iran resolved to reduce ties following the UK's decision to impose further sanctions on it.

The UK's Foreign Office said it was "outraged" by the actions.

"It is utterly unacceptable," it said in a statement. "The Iranian government have a clear duty to protect diplomats and embassies."

It later updated its travel advice to Iran, urging Britons there to "stay indoors, keep a low profile and await further advice".

After a series of ups and downs in relations following the 1979 Iranian revolution, London and Tehran restored full diplomatic ties in 1988.

Iran broke off relations the following year after Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa on the author Salman Rushdie. Partial diplomatic relations were restored in 1990 and these were upgraded in 1999 to ambassadorial level.

In 2001, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited Iran.

In March 2007, Iranian forces seized eight Royal Navy sailors and seven marines from their patrol boat on the border between Iran and Iraq, saying that the sailors had entered Iranian waters. They were freed the next month.

In June 2009, Britain froze Iranian assets worth almost £1bn under sanctions imposed over Iran's nuclear programme, and later Iran and Britain each expelled two diplomats. The same month, Iran accused Britain of involvement in the post-presidential election unrest in Iran.

In November 2011, Britain imposed new financial sanctions on Iran, a move which appears to have led to the current situation.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry later expressed its "regret for certain unacceptable behaviour by a small number of protesters in spite of efforts by the police".

"The relevant authorities have been asked to take the necessary measures and look into this issue immediately," it said.

The students clashed with riot police and chanted "the embassy of Britain should be taken over" and "death to England".

Students were said to have ransacked offices inside the building, and one protester was reported to be waving a framed picture of Queen Elizabeth II.

Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency said embassy documents had been set alight. Staff fled by the back door, the agency added.

Pictures showed a car inside the compound on fire while several hundred other demonstrators were gathered outside the embassy's walls.

After about two hours, police seemed to be back in control of the building. Live TV footage showed riot police removing protesters.

Security forces fired tear gas, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. It said some protesters and police had been injured in the clash.

However, later reports said some protesters were still in the embassy. The governor of Tehran and the city's head of security have entered the building to try to persuade them to leave, the BBC has learned.

An unconfirmed report from the official Irna news agency said a separate group of protesters had broken into another British embassy compound in the north of the city and seized "classified documents".

Continue reading the main story

In pictures: Iran embassy protest
It was not clear how many embassy staff were in the building at the time. A Foreign Office source said it was checking on the well-being of workers and diplomats, AP reported.

There was strong international reaction to Tuesday's events.

The US condemned the attack "in the strongest terms".

"We stand ready to support our allies at this difficult time," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe also condemned the incident, adding: "France expresses its full solidarity with the UK."

Russia said the attack was "unacceptable and deserving condemnation".

Last week the US, UK and Canada announced new measures targeting Iran over its controversial nuclear plans.

For its part, the UK Treasury imposed sanctions on Iranian banks, accusing them of facilitating the country's nuclear programme

That decision followed a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that suggested Iran was working towards acquiring a nuclear weapon.

It said Iran had carried out tests "relevant to the development of a nuclear device".

Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

On Sunday, Iran's parliament voted by a large majority to downgrade diplomatic relations with the UK in response to the British action.

Iranian radio reported that some MPs had chanted "Death to Britain" during the vote, which was approved by 87% of MPs.

"Click" Russia activates missile warning system

2011-11-29T07:59:00.001-08:00

BBC: Russia has turned on a new incoming missile early warning system in its westernmost region in response to US plans for a missile shield in Europe.

President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the system to be activated on a visit to the radar unit in Kaliningrad, a Baltic region bordering EU countries.

The unit is equipped with the new Voronezh-DM radar system.

Mr Medvedev has warned Russian missiles could be deployed on the EU's borders if the shield is installed.

Washington wants an anti-missile shield ready by 2020, arguing that it is necessary to provide protection from the potential missile threat posed by countries like Iran.

Under President George W Bush, the US had initially intended to locate major parts of the shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, but Russia objected vigorously.

When Barack Obama took office in the White House, he scaled back the original ambitions.

"Nato's missile defence system [is] designed to defend against threats from outside Europe - not designed to alter balance of deterrence," Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a recent tweet.

Domestic context
In a statement carried by Russian news agencies, Mr Medvedev said: "I expect that this step will be seen by our partners as the first signal of the readiness of our country to make an adequate response to the threats which the missile shield poses for our strategic nuclear forces."

Russia has said it may deploy Iskander ballistic missile launchers in Kaliningrad
Quoted by Interfax, he said: "If our signal is ignored... we will deploy other means of defence including the adoption of tough counter-measures and the deployment of a strike group."

Mr Medvedev has spoken of deploying Iskander missiles - modern versions of the mobile Scud surface-to-surface missile - in Kaliningrad.

On Tuesday, he said Russia was ready to listen to new anti-missile defence proposals from "Western partners" but added that "verbal statements are not enough".

The radar system activated on Mr Medvedev's orders was installed this year at Pionerskoye, Kaliningrad, and is meant to replace older systems in Ukraine and Belarus, according to Russian news website lenta.ru.

With an operating range of 6,000km (3,730 miles), the Voronezh DM can cover "all of Europe and the Atlantic", according to the Russian military.

It is designed to detect space and aerodynamic targets, including ballistic and cruise missiles.

Iran's nuclear programme and its development of long-range missiles have alarmed Western states, despite Tehran's assurances it is not seeking weapons of mass destruction.

One analyst said the decision to activate the system was important but had to be seen in a domestic context.

"Data from this station will allow Russia's leadership to make a decision about a retaliatory nuclear strike, should such a hypothetical need arise," Mikhail Khodaryonok, editor of journal Aerospace Defence, told AFP news agency.

But he described Mr Medvedev's announcement as mainly "pre-election rhetoric" given that both the US missile shield and the Russian system were defensive in nature.

"You would really need to have a vivid imagination to link it to the US missile defence system," the analyst said.

Pakistan/NATO clash may have been a trap set by Taliban

2011-11-29T07:30:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AP) – NATO forces may have been lured into attacking friendly Pakistani border posts in a calculated maneuver by the Taliban, according to preliminary U.S. military reports on the deadliest friendly fire incident with Pakistan since the Afghanistan war began.

The NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend in an apparent case of mistaken identity, The Associated Press has learned.

A joint U.S.-Afghan patrol was attacked by the Taliban early Saturday morning. While pursuing the enemy in the poorly marked border area, the patrol seems to have mistaken one of the Pakistan troop outposts for a militant encampment and called in a NATO gunship and attack helicopters to open fire.

U.S. officials say the reports suggest the Taliban may have deliberately tried to provoke a cross-border firefight that would set back fragile partnerships between the U.S. and NATO forces and Pakistani soldiers at the ill-defined border.

Officials described the records on condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters.

The incident has sent the perpetually difficult U.S.-Pakistan relationship into a tailspin.

On Tuesday, Pakistani Gen. Ashfaq Nadeem called the incident a "deliberate act of aggression" and said it was "next to impossible that NATO" did not know it was attacking Pakistani forces.

Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, announced Monday he has appointed Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark, an Air Force special operations officer, to lead the probe of the incident, and said he must include input from the NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, as well as representatives from the Afghan and Pakistani governments.

Nadeem said the Pakistani army had little faith that any investigation will get to the bottom of the incident and may not cooperate with it. He said other joint inquiries into at least two other similar — if less deadly — incidents over the last three years had "come to nothing."

Nadeem made the remarks during a briefing with Pakistani journalists and defense analysts in army headquarters. Foreign media were not invited, but two attendees relayed Nadeem's comments to The Associated Press.

According to the U.S. military records described to the AP, the joint U.S. and Afghan patrol requested backup after being hit by mortar and small arms fire by Taliban militants.

Before responding, the joint U.S.-Afghan patrol first checked with the Pakistani army, which reported it had no troops in the area, the military account said.

Some two hours later, still hunting the insurgents — who had by then apparently fled in the direction of Pakistani border posts — the U.S. commander spotted what he thought was a militant encampment, with heavy weapons mounted on tripods.

The joint patrol called for the airstrikes at around 2:21 a.m. Pakistani time, not realizing the encampment was apparently the Pakistani border post.

Records show the aerial response included Apache attack helicopters and an AC-130 gunship.

U.S. officials are working on the assumption the Taliban chose the location for the first attack to create just such confusion and draw U.S. and Pakistani forces into firing on each other, according to U.S. officials briefed on the operation.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama considers the Pakistani deaths a tragedy, and said the administration is determined to investigate.

The Pentagon released a four-page memo from Mattis directing Clark to determine what happened, which units were involved, which ones did or did not cross the border, how the operation was coordinated, and what caused the deaths and injuries.

Mattis also asked Clark to develop recommendations about how border operations could be improved, and said the final report should be submitted by December 23.

The details of the airstrike emerged as aftershocks were reverberating across the U.S. military and diplomatic landscape Monday, threatening communications and supply lines for the Afghan war and the success of an upcoming international conference.

While U.S. officials expressed regret and sympathy over the cross-border incident, they are not acknowledging blame, amid conflicting reports about who fired first.
The airstrike was politically explosive as well as deadly, coming as U.S. officials were working to repair relations with the Pakistanis after a series of major setbacks, including the U.S. commando raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden in May.

In recent weeks, military leaders had begun expressing some optimism that U.S.-Pakistan military cooperation along the border was beginning to improve. U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Daniel Allyn told Pentagon reporters just last Tuesday that incidents of firing from Pakistan territory had tapered off somewhat in recent weeks.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Pentagon press secretary George Little stressed the need for a strong military relationship with Pakistan.

"The Pakistani government knows our position on that, and that is we do regret the loss of life in this incident, and we are investigating it," said Little.

The military fallout began almost immediately.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT USATODAY

First F-35 EMALS launch

2011-11-28T11:46:00.001-08:00

Pakistan: "no more business as usual"

2011-11-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Tensions among Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States jumped a notch Monday, with Pakistan's prime minister warning there would be "no more business as usual" with Washington after NATO aircraft killed two dozen Pakistan troops.

The Pakistani Taliban urged Pakistan to respond in kind to the airstrike, which NATO called a "tragic unintended" event.

The Pakistani military insisted Monday it had not fired first in the incident, and it said it had told NATO its aircraft were firing on friendly troops.

Meanwhile, a top adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned that Afghanistan and Pakistan could be on a path to conflict.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in an exclusive interview with CNN Monday that Pakistan was re-evaluating its relationship with the United States.
He said the South Asian nation wanted to maintain its relationship with the United States as long as there was mutual respect and respect for Pakistani sovereignty.
But Gilani highlighted incidents such as the killing of the Pakistani troops and a U.S. raid into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden as violations of his country's sovereignty.

The prime minister also said Pakistan had not yet decided whether to boycott next month's Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan.

Pakistan turned back 300 trucks carrying NATO supplies and fuel into Afghanistan Monday, government officials Syed Ahmed Jan and Mutahir Zeb told CNN.
Pakistan is a vital land supply route into Afghanistan for the United States and its allies.

Separately, Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas denied the reports that Pakistani troops opened fire first on the NATO helicopters.

US Special Operations Command: "Target Geronimo a fabrication."

2011-11-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

The Guardian: The US special operations command has called a former Navy Seal's book claiming to describe the real version of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden a "fabrication". "It's just not true," spokesman Colonel Tim Nye said. "It's not how it happened."

Filled with conspiracy theories and attacks on the Obama White House, Chuck Pfarrer's Seal Target Geronimo claims the White House issued a fictional and damaging account of the raid that made the Seals looks inept. He says Barack Obama's quick acknowledgement of the raid was a craven political move that rendered much of the intelligence gathered useless. In Pfarrer's account, commandos shot Bin Laden within 90 seconds of arriving at the Pakistan compound where the al-Qaida leader was holed up.

Describing the book as a "fabrication", Nye issued an on-the-record denial on behalf of Admiral Bill McRaven, who was in charge of special forces operations at the time of the raid. Nye said McRaven was concerned that the book, which broke into Amazon's top 20 list in the US last week, would lead Americans to doubt the administration's version of events.

"We have never come forward and gone after an author and said, 'That is a lie'," Nye said. "That tells you how far off the mark we believe this book is."

Nye said Pfarrer had no access to any troops connected with the mission. He said there would be no investigation into whether individual Seals spoke to Pfarrer because his account is so wide of the mark.

"I have truth on my side," Pfarrer said in an interview. "I spoke to the guys on the ground and in the secondary bird," he said, referring to the aircraft carrying a second Seal team that was there to rescue the first if it came under attack inside Pakistan's borders.

Pfarrer insisted the stealth helicopter that the White House said crashed within moments of launching the raid actually crashed later. He said the Seals were able to launch their raid as they had planned it, by landing on top of the building while another team attacked from below.

Pfarrer also said the way the White House described the Seals shooting Bin Laden – that he was unarmed but trying to evade them – amounted to murder. He said his version, which has Bin Laden reaching for a gun, makes the killing legal. Officials involved in the raid say Pfarrer is out of date on the post-9/11 laws of war, which sanction targeting al-Qaida with deadly force.

Pfarrer defended the book as a patriotic way to laud the "heroes of the Bin Laden mission". He said the money he earns will barely cover his medical bills for a long battle with colon cancer.

Pfarrer claims in his book that he is still part of the Seals' fighting network, even intimating that he played a part in preparations for the Bin Laden raid.

"In the weeks and months leading up to Neptune's Spear [the code name for the mission], it was my privilege to help troops and platoons train for submissions and run parallel HVT [high-value target] missions," Pfarrer writes.

"That is categorically incorrect," Nye said. "He was not involved in mission planning, execution or close mission analysis."

Pfarrer responded that he conducted training for the Seal team's parent organisation, the Naval Special Warfare Command, through his defence security company Acme Ballistics. He refused to describe how it was related to the raid, saying the contracts were classified.

Pfarrer has frequently claimed that his accounts come from a top-secret world, and that readers must take his word on faith.

Iran claims to have arrested 12 CIA agents

2011-11-27T14:49:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- An official Iranian news agency quoted an Iranian legislator Thursday as saying that Iran's intelligence ministry had arrested 12 CIA "spies."
The report could not independently confirmed.

Parliamentarian Parviz Sorouri said the alleged spies were trying to cripple Iran in the nuclear, military and security areas, Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Sorouri did not mention the nationalities of the people arrested or say when and where they were arrested, IRNA reported.

"It's possible that Iran sees this as an opportunity to just jump on the bandwagon after Hezbollah-related stories earlier this week," said a U.S. official who was not authorized to talk on the record. "They'll do anything to try and get international pressure and attention off of them, but it won't work."

The CIA declined to comment on the report.
The news comes after the reported capture this week of several CIA informants in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a group closely aligned with Iran that the United States views as a terrorist organization.

A U.S. official confirmed this week that Hezbollah had captured of CIA informants in Lebanon, but the official did not say how many were detained.
"Collecting sensitive information on adversaries -- who are aggressively trying to uncover spies in their midst -- will always be fraught with risk. Good CI (counterintelligence) can mitigate risks, but won't eliminate them all," the source said.

In May, the Iranian intelligence minister, Heidar Moslehi, said that more than 30 U.S. and Israeli spies had been discovered, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Thursday.

Sukhoi PAK T-50-3 takes maiden flight ...

2011-11-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

Breaking: Standoff at Colorado air base

2011-11-21T13:12:00.001-08:00

(CNN) -- An airman armed with a handgun barricaded himself inside a building at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, base officials said in a statement Monday.

No shots had been fired and no injuries reported, according to a spokeswoman at the base's public affairs office.

The airman, assigned to the base's 50th Security Forces Squadron, was barricaded inside a building where personnel get paperwork and equipment before being deployed, according to the base. No weapons are normally stored in the building, the spokeswoman said, but the airman was armed with a personal handgun.
The building was evacuated and law enforcement units had responded, said the statement posted on the air base's website.

"Our first responders are trained to handle situations such as this and we are working with our community partners to resolve this situation as quickly and safely as possible," Col. James P. Ross, 50th Space Wing commander, said in the statement.
No operations on the base were immediately affected, according to the base, which is home to the 50th Space Wing, the unit responsible for satellite command and control for the Department of Defense.

Hypersonic weapon tested ...

2011-11-17T16:44:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Thursday held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour.

Launched by rocket from Hawaii at 1130 GMT, the “Advanced Hypersonic Weapon,” or AHW, glided through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific “at hypersonic speed” before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.

Kwajalein is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii. The Pentagon did not say what top speeds were reached by the vehicle, which unlike a ballistic missile is maneuverable.

Scientists classify hypersonic speeds as those that exceed Mach 5 — or five times the speed of sound — 3,728 miles (6,000 kilometers) an hour.

The test aimed to gather data on “aerodynamics, navigation, guidance and control, and thermal protection technologies,” said Lieutenant Colonel Melinda Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

The US Army’s AHW project is part of the “Prompt Global Strike” program which seeks to give the US military the means to deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within an hour.

On August 11, the Pentagon test flew another hypersonic glider dubbed HTV-2, which is capable of flying 27,000 kilometers per hour, but it was a failure.

The AHW’s range is less than that of the HTV-2, the Congressional Research Service said in a report, without providing specifics.

The Pentagon has invested 239.9 million dollars in the Global Strike program this year, including 69 million for the flying bomb tested Thursday, CRS said.

Another day - another drone strike.

2011-11-17T05:37:00.000-08:00

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- A suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's tribal region killed six suspected militants on Thursday, intelligence officials told CNN.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials said the suspected drone fired four missiles on a militant hideout in the area of Razmak in North Waziristan, one of the seven districts of Pakistan's volatile tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Based on a count by the CNN Islamabad bureau, Thursday's suspected drone strike was the 64th this year compared to 111 in all of 2010.

The intelligence officials asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.