VIDEO: B-2 at 20

VIDEO: B-2 at 20: "For those of'us who weren't there, Northrop Grumman has posted a quite nicely edited video of the July ceremony at Palmdale to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the B-2's first flight. Still not sure I like the stealth bike, though...

Video: Northrop Grumman"

(Via Ares.)

Cannon col. wants more housing in Clovis area

Cannon col. wants more housing in Clovis area: "CLOVIS, N.M. — A Cannon Air Force Base commander says he would like to see Clovis and Portales build at least 440 new homes in the next five years to house military families.Col. Stephen Clark, commander of the 27th Special Operations Command Wing, says the base is quickly reaching capacity on housing it has for the base’s transition.Clark says Cannon is expected to undergo major changes over the next two years. The base projects its manpower will be 4,900 people.Clark expects two-thirds of Cannon personnel to live off-base. He says Cannon’s dormitories are at 98 percent capacity.Base officials expect to fill 1,053 housing units by January. These units are at 76 percent capacity now.Cannon expects to spend nearly $218 million next year, and up to $256 million by 2015."

(Via Air Force Times - News.)

Stealth Bomber Upgrades Detailed

Stealth Bomber Upgrades Detailed: "The drive to sustain the 20-strong fleet enjoys 'good support across the board' says Brig. Gen. Robert Wheeler"

(Via AviationWeek.com Defense Channel.)

Good news: Pakistan's Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud killed

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – Pakistan's Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government, has been killed in a U.S. missile strike, a militant commander and aide to Mehsud said Friday.

Taliban commanders were meeting to decide on his successor, intelligence and militant sources said.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said intelligence showed Mehsud had been killed in Wednesday's missile strike on his father-in-law's house in Pakistan's lawless tribal area, but authorities would travel to the site to verify his death.
Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials said the CIA was behind the strike. All spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

"I confirm that Baitullah Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan," Taliban commander Kafayat Ullah told The Associated Press by telephone. He would not give any further details.
Mehsud's demise would be a major boost to Pakistani and U.S. efforts to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaida, but would not necessarily deal a definitive blow to the Taliban in Pakistan. Mehsud has deputies who could step into his place.

Pakistani intelligence officials and Taliban sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Taliban commanders were meeting in the lawless tribal areas Friday to choose a replacement. It was unclear when they might reach a decision.

Three Pakistani intelligence officials said the likeliest successor was Mehsud's deputy, Hakim Ullah, a commander known for recruiting and training suicide bombers. Two other prominent possibilities, the officials said, were Azmat Ullah and Waliur Rehman, also close associates of Mehsud.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Whether a new leader could wreak as much havoc as Mehsud depends largely on how much pressure the Pakistani military continues to put on the network, especially in South Waziristan in Pakistan's tribal belt. The mountainous region has a leaky border with Afghanistan and fiercely independent, heavily armed tribes hostile to interference by outsiders. The Pashtun tribes from which the Taliban draws most of its fighters straddle both sides of the border.

Although Mehsud's stronghold in South Waziristan does not directly border Afghanistan, he was known to have ties to other commanders acting on the frontier and was believed to give refuge to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan who move freely back and forth across the border.

Mehsud has al-Qaida connections and has been suspected in the killing of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan views him as its top internal threat and has been preparing an offensive against him.

For years, the U.S. considered Mehsud a lesser threat to its interests than some of the other Pakistani Taliban, their Afghan counterparts and al-Qaida, because most of his attacks were focused inside Pakistan, not against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

That view appeared to change in recent months as Mehsud's power grew and concerns mounted that increasing violence in Pakistan could destabilize the U.S. ally and threaten the entire region.

The Pakistani intelligence officials said Mehsud's body was buried in the village of Nardusai in South Waziristan, near the site of the missile strike.

VIA FAS: AN UPDATED INTELLIGENCE REVIEW FROM THE DNI

"Implementation of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI)," the notoriously secretive program "which was established by President Bush in National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 in January 2008, continues at this time."

That interesting reminder was mentioned in passing in newly disclosed answers to questions for the record (pdf) submitted by the Director of National Intelligence to the Senate Intelligence Committee in April 2009 following the DNI's annual threat briefing last February.

Some other notable observations from the DNI's forty pages of wide-ranging answers to Senators' questions include:

* "Iran is covertly supplying arms to Afghan insurgents while publicly posing as supportive of the Afghan government." "Iran's policy calculation in Afghanistan currently emphasizes lethal support to the Taliban, even though revelation of this activity could threaten its future relationship with the Afghan government and its historic allies within Afghanistan."

* Based on counterinsurgency principles, the DNI said, it would require "roughly 818,000 security personnel to secure Afghanistan" including 325,000 personnel to secure the Pashtun areas where most insurgents are located. But there are currently only 83,094 soldiers in the Afghan National Army. To grow to 325,000 soldiers would require $946 million annually, well above the FY2008 Afghan defense budget of $242 million.

* While Iran has made significant progress in uranium enrichment technology, the State Department's intelligence bureau (INR) "continues to assess it is unlikely that Iran will have the technical capability to produce HEU [highly enriched uranium] before 2013. INR shares the Intelligence Community's assessment that Iran probably would use military-run covert facilities, rather than declared nuclear sites, to produce HEU. Outfitting a covert enrichment infrastructure could take years."

* "Some analysts believe that Iraq is more fragile, the ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] less capable, and the impact of a drawdown [of U.S. forces] more destabilizing than the majority of the Intelligence Community."

* "Hizballah remains the most technically capable terrorist group in the world." But "Al Qa'ida is the terrorist group that historically has sought the broadest range of CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear] attack capabilities, and we assess that it would use any CBRN capability it acquires in an anti-U.S. attack, preferably against the Homeland."

* In March 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency created a new daily intelligence publication called the Economic Intelligence Brief (EIB), which is "the most visible step we have taken to increase reporting and analysis" on the global economic crisis and its impact on U.S. national security.

* "Moscow has been in the process of restoring some of the military capabilities it lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union as it downsizes and reorganizes its forces." "Despite its still considerable capabilities, the Russian military is a shadow of its Soviet predecessor." "Russia has consistently kept its defense spending at less than three percent of GDP, avoiding the huge defense burden that ultimately choked the Soviet economy."

Some of the DNI's statements are surprisingly flimsy. For example, he declares (question 17) that "In 2003, the Russian military prepared for an exercise that included attacking U.S. satellites to disrupt the NAVSTAR global positioning system, the Keyhole optical-electronic reconnaissance satellites, and the Lacrosse radar reconnaissance system with the intent of 'blinding' the Pentagon and denying it the opportunity to use precision weapons against Russia."

This is an odd assertion, first, because intelligence officials rarely if ever use the old Keyhole or Lacrosse satellite names in unclassified public statements. And on closer inspection, it turns out that the DNI's statement was simply lifted, almost word for word, from a news story that appeared in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on May 14, 2003. (It was also picked up by the online Newsmax.com on May 18, 2003.) The Russian story lazily attributed its claim regarding the anti-satellite exercise to "certain reports." The DNI repeated the Nezavisimaya Gazeta item nearly verbatim, presenting it as an established fact, with no attribution at all.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has renewed the valuable tradition of submitting unclassified questions for the record to senior intelligence officials following the annual threat briefing to the Committee. Unfortunately, the congressional publication schedule is such that the answers to the questions often do not appear for one or even two years after they are prepared. The latest DNI responses to questions for the record, transmitted in April, were obtained by the Federation of American Scientists this week through the Freedom of Information Act.


LINK to FAS HERE