9/11 families, supporters, protest NYC trials

9/11 families, supporters, protest NYC trials: "NEW YORK — Several hundred people rallied in the rain near Manhattan’s federal courthouse complex Saturday to protest the plan to put major terrorism suspects on trial in New York City.Demonstrators at the Saturday event included the actor Brian Dennehy and a number of people who lost friends and relatives in the 9/11 attacks.Anger at the Obama administration ran hot in the crowd. One person held up a sign calling Attorney General Eric Holder ‘disgraceful and despicable.’

Another sign said ‘Obama/Holder ... Jihad from within.’Opponents of the plan say that a New York trial could again make the city a terrorism target, and that the five suspects should instead face a military tribunal.Addressing the crowd, Dennehy passed along a message from the father of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who is opposed to a public trial for reputed terror mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.The actor said he also believed the trial would be ‘an uncalled-for ordeal that could be used for political purposes.’‘This will provide the radicals with a huge forum,’ said Dennehy, a Marine Corps veteran. ‘Why should they have the normal constitutional protections?’Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter whose son, also a firefighter, died on 9/11, said he believed the U.S. has been in a state of war since the attacks, and that a military tribunal was therefore the appropriate venue for justice.‘They deserve a fair trial in a military tribunal, not on our soil,’ he said. ‘Guantanamo is where it should be.’Other victims of the attacks disagreed.

Lorie Van Auken, who lost her husband at the World Trade Center, said in an interview before the rally that it was fitting the accused answer charges a short walk from ground zero.‘Opponents of the trial don’t represent all families,’ she said in a telephone interview on Friday.Another supporter of the trial plan, U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, said military commissions have a poor track record when it comes to convicting terrorism suspects.

The New York Democrat expressed confidence that U.S. prosecutors can win a conviction in a regular, civilian court.On Saturday, the protesters included 9/11 families, ground zero rescue workers and former World Trade Center executives.Greg Manning was a senior vice president at Euro Brokers, whose life was spared because he was on business outside the trade center. He said the decision to stage the trial in New York shows the government’s ‘casual attitude towards security.’He said Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the attacks, ‘is not the same as any defendant.’ Manning said that if Mohammed decides to defend himself, ‘he will exploit every right in the Constitution and use the trial as a platform.’"

(Via Air Force Times - News.)

Report: Crew error led to F-15E crash

Report: Crew error led to F-15E crash: "High above Afghanistan, in the dark, Capt. Mark R. McDowell pointed the nose of his F-15E Strike Eagle at a practice target on the ground. He thought the dry lake bed was 4,800 feet above sea level. It was 10,200 feet high.The F-15E went into a 31-degree dive going 515 mph. The jet’s ground collision alarm snapped on, lighting up display screens with arrows pointing up and a computer voice warning four times to ‘pull up.’McDowell and Capt. Thomas J. Gramith, his weapons systems officer, didn’t react. Three seconds after the alarm came on, the jet crashed, killing both airmen. They didn’t try to eject.

The Air Combat Command accident investigation board is attributing the July 18 crash, the first fighter-jet crash in Afghanistan since the war started, to aircrew mistakes.‘It was a tragic, human error,’ Brig. Gen. Harry D. Polumbo, the lead investigator, told reporters in a conference call.McDowell and Gramith, both deployed to Bagram Air Field from the 4th Fighter Wing, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., were in the second jet of a two-jet formation that had spent almost four hours flying on-call close-air support. As the uneventful sortie neared its end, the fighters received permission to practice what Polumbo described as one of the ‘most difficult and challenging things that an aircrew member does’ — a high-angle strafing run at night with the officers wearing night-vision goggles.

The airmen had used the lake bed, about 30 miles west of the town of Ghazni, as a training target before.The first F-15E, flown by pilot Capt. Kenneth Fryar and weapons systems officer Capt. Benjamin Hopkins, led the way to the lake bed. About 10 minutes before reaching the practice target, Hopkins checked its altitude using a digital map.

The computer display read 4,800 feet high and Hopkins relayed the information to McDowell and Gramith.As the Strike Eagles flew over the lake bed, none of the four airmen realized their jets’ radar altimeters and laser rangefinders showed the lake bed was 10,200 feet high, Polumbo said.The lead F-15E made the first run but aborted the attack because the dive was not steep enough. The second F-15E, the one flown by McDowell, started its dive 22 seconds later. And crashed.Fryar and Hopkins have continued to fly and neither faced disciplinary action, Polumbo said.Air Combat Command is reviewing pre-deployment night strafing training.The four airmen were all considered ‘experienced,’ but McDowell and Gramith had limited practice flying night strafing runs.A similar crash June 22 claimed the life of an F-16 pilot in a training mission over Utah."

(Via Air Force Times - News.)

CIA STEPPING UP PREDATOR ATTACKS

Washington (CNN) -- The White House has authorized an expansion of the CIA's program to attack suspected al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with missiles shot from pilotless planes, a U.S. official confirms.

The covert effort is part of the Obama administration's plan to increase the number of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and crack down on suspected terrorists in the region.

Since President Obama took office, there have been reports of more than 40 attacks by Hellfire missiles fired from drones, an increase over the approximately 30 missile strikes launched in 2008 during the Bush administration.

The U.S. official took exception to reports that hundreds of civilians have been killed in the Predator attacks.
The official said the strikes are "extremely precise" against terrorist targets and that only a "small fraction" of those killed have been civilians.

Last May, CIA director Leon Panetta would not discuss the specifics of the air strikes, but he did say they were "very effective" and resulted in few civilian deaths.

USAF confirms Beast of Kandahar is RQ-170 Sentinel.

David A. Fulghum davef@aviationweek.com

Bill Sweetman william_sweetman@aviationweek.com


The U.S. Air Force has confirmed to Aviation Week the existence of the so-called "Beast of Kandahar" UAV, a stealth-like remotely piloted jet seen flying out of Afghanistan in late 2007.

The RQ-170 Sentinel, believed to be a tailless flying wing design with sensor pods faired into the upper surface of each wing, was developed by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), better known as Skunk Works. An Air Force official revealed Dec. 4 that the service is "developing a stealthy unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to provide reconnaissance and surveillance support to forward deployed combat forces."

The UAV had been discussed on the Ares technology blog, as well as elsewhere online, but the USAF statement to Aviation Week was the first to detail the aircraft.

"The fielding of the RQ-170 aligns with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates' request for increased intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) support to the combatant commanders and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz's vision for an increased USAF reliance on unmanned aircraft," says the emailed statement.

The RQ-170 is flown by the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron at Tonopah Test Range, Nev. - home of the F-117 stealth fighter when the program's existence was secret - and falls under Air Combat Command's 432d Wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nev. At Kandahar, the Sentinel was seen operating out of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems' hangar.

The 30th RS was activated as part of the 57th Operations Group on Sept. 1, 2005, and a squadron patch was approved July 17, 2007. The activation - although not the full meaning of the event - was noted among those who watch for signs of activity in the classified world.

The RQ-170 designation is similar to that of the F-117 - a correct prefix, but out of sequence to avoid obvious guesses of a program's existence. Technically, the RQ designation denotes an unarmed aircraft rather than the MQ prefix applied to the armed Predator and Reaper UAVs. The USAF phrase, "Support to forward deployed combat forces," when combined with observed details, suggest a moderate degree of stealth (including a blunt leading edge, simple nozzle and overwing sensor pods) and that the Sentinel is a tactical, operations-oriented platform and not a strategic intelligence-gathering design.

Many questions remain about the aircraft's use. If it is a high-altitude aircraft it is painted an unusual color - medium grey overall, like Predator or Reaper, rather then the dark gray or overall black that provides the best concealment at very high altitudes. The wingspan appears to be about 65-ft., about the same as an MQ-9 Reaper. With only a few Internet images to judge from - all taken from the left side - the impression is of a deep, fat centerbody blended into the outer wings.

With its low-observable design, the aircraft might be useful for flying the borders of Iran and peering into China, India and Pakistan for useful data about missile tests, telemetry as well as gathering signals and multi-spectral intelligence.

Last Man Flying? Not for quite awhile Deptula says.

DEFENSE NEWS: Although the U.S. military has fielded many new unmanned aircraft in recent years, the Pentagon is far from sending the last manned war plane into combat, Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula said Dec.

Air Warfare WUSA
The episode, which focuses on the future of unmanned military platforms, will air in the Washington area on WUSA (channel 9) at 9 p.m. Dec. 8. It will also be available at www.DefenseNewsTV.com. "This Week in Defense News" airs Sunday mornings on WUSA.

As the defense community debates the future of combat tactical aviation, Deptula said during the taping that any possible fielding of a fleet of totally unmanned - and even totally autonomous - combat planes is many years away.

That's because there is no sensor package capable of "360-degree situational awareness that can process information" and decide on how to act upon it better than the human brain, he said.

Vice Adm. Jack Dorsett, deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance and the director of naval intelligence, said the sea service "will walk our way into" unmanned tactical aircraft because "there are some significant challenges ahead."

The Navy continues "early stages" of tests on its X-47B unmanned combat aircraft. A fact sheet from prime contractor Northrop Grumman says the aircraft will demonstrate "carrier-based launch and recovery in the 2011 timeframe," and enter service "in the 2020 timeframe."

Just how the Air Force and the other military services should proceed with the next generation of tactical air frames is under consideration in the much-anticipated 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.

Senior Pentagon brass have been grappling with the issue for some time.

"We're at a real time of transition here in terms of the future of aviation, and the whole issue of what's going to be manned and what's going to be unmanned, what's going to be stealthy and what isn't," and how to address the threats has changed even in the past few years, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May.

At the hearing, Mullen endorsed the notion that the Air Force might be building its last manned fighter jet.

"There are those that see JSF as the last manned fighter," Mullen told the Senate panel. "I'm one that's inclined to believe that."

Deptula, who said the U.S. military is years from having totally unmanned combat planes, nevertheless sees many promising technologies already under development. Among them are "planes the size of a fly operating in this room watching and collecting information on everything we are doing."

Meantime, Deptula and other senior military officials on the special said the four U.S. services are cooperating more than ever in the areas of unmanned systems and sharing intelligence data.

Army Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, futures director at the Army Capabilities Integration Center, said his service - and the others - have reached an unprecedented level of cooperation during the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

The new way of doing business, Vane said, is doing whatever necessary to meet the needs of commanders who are directly engaging enemy forces.