RPG downed Chinook - killed 38 CENTCOM says

(CNN) -- The August downing of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan that killed 38 people, including 17 U.S. Navy SEALs, was caused by a rocket-propelled grenade, fired by insurgents, that struck the aircraft's aft rotor blade, the U.S. Central Command officially confirmed on Wednesday.

An investigation determined that the "operational planning and execution" of the ill-fated August 6 mission in Wardak Province "were consistent with previous missions, and that the forces and capabilities were appropriate given the agility required to maintain pressure on insurgent networks," CENTCOM said in a news release issued Wednesday.

"There was no evidence of a pre-planned ambush," CENTCOM said.

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America to Iran - that was not nice - go to your room!

Washington (CNN) -- With many sanctions already in place, the U.S. government is poised to take an even stronger stance Wednesday against Iran amid allegations that Tehran was behind a plot to assassinate a Saudi envoy on U.S. soil.

A naturalized U.S. citizen holding Iranian and U.S. passports is in custody, and another -- a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard -- is likewise charged in the alleged murder-for-hire scheme targeting Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that elements of Iran's government directed the plan.

The accusations have rankled many throughout Washington.
Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, called carrying out such a scheme an "act of war" five times during a five-minute CNN interview.

Iranian amb: Terror plot is 'big lie' Iran diplomat denies terror plot King: Terror plot 'an act of war' Iran, Saudi Arabia tensions escalating
While outlining several other steps that Washington may take, he insisted that no options be ruled out.

"We should not be ... automatically saying we're not going to have military action," King said Tuesday night, saying that this "flagrant and notorious" alleged plot brought already testy relations between the United States and Iran to a "very precipitous level."

"Everything should be left on the table when you are talking about a potential attack (in) the United States, an act of war."

Mohammad Khazaee, Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations, said Tuesday night that he was "shocked to hear such a big lie."

He said the chain of events outlined by U.S. authorities was an "insult to the common sense" of people everywhere.

A senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday that there has been no change in U.S. military posture in reaction to the alleged terror plot.

No U.S. Navy ships, for example, have been repositioned and there currently are no plans to do so.

"The act is already done," the official said, noting the plot purportedly has been disrupted and calling it "much more of a law enforcement matter" than a military one.
"One of the people involved is still at large, but the other principal is in custody. So what does changing military posture do?"

Already, the U.S. government has numerous sanctions against Iranian interests, amid continuing concerns about Tehran's budding nuclear program and its alleged ties to terrorism.

The focus on this front will be to urge other nations to join Washington and get tougher on Iran, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior diplomatic officials will place calls to foreign leaders and U.N. Security Council representatives, the official said.

That includes reaching out to key figures from countries, such as Russia and China, which have diplomatic relations with both Washington and Tehran.
Senator condemns alleged Iranian plot Rep. Rogers: Terror plot a big deal Iran calls plot 'fabrication' Iran accused in other terror plots.

The United States also plans on getting in touch with leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council (a coalition of Persian Gulf nations), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which consists of 56 Islamic states and promotes Muslim solidarity) and the Arab League, said two Obama administration officials.
"It is a tremendous opportunity for the United States and the world to create pressure (on Iran)," Sen. Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, said on Tuesday. "We have the opportunity to change the dynamics."

The idea is to push others to enforce existing sanctions, implement new ones, cut ties with Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard and generally join the United States in a "chorus of international condemnation," according to the State Department official.
"(They'll) go to other countries and say this is a serious escalation of Iran's use of political violence," a senior Obama administration official added.
If there is an international debate, Iran fired its first salvo Tuesday night. Khazaee wrote U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to "express our outrage" over what he called "fabricated and baseless allegations."

"As the Secretary-General of the United Nations you have an important responsibility in enlightening the international public opinion about the dangerous consequences of warmongering policies of the United States government on international peace and security," the Iranian envoy wrote.

Yet such rhetoric has not appeared to have much of an impact, as of yet, in Washington, with politicians from both major parties insisting that the entire Iranian government be held responsible.

al Qaeda - blah -blah - revenge - blah -blah - Al-Awlaki so on and so forth.

This story brought to you by SEAL TEAM SIX.


CNN) -- The terrorist group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has confirmed the death of U.S.-born militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, calling him a martyr, according to a statement posted Sunday on jihadi internet forums.

Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen on September 30, but American officials said internet postings following his death indicated many who share his ideas did not believe he had been killed and were seeking confirmation.

Another American named Samir Khan and two other people also died, officials said. Khan was the co-editor of the terrorist network's English-language online propaganda and recruiting magazine, Inspire.


The AQAP "eulogy" states that while the United States killed al-Awlaki, it "cannot kill his ideas," according to an English translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi forums.

The statement also picks up on a theme being discussed in the United States: whether the United States had the right to target and kill al-Awlaki without a legal trial and guilty verdict. The controversy is complicated by the fact al-Awlaki was a U.S. citizen.

The message said the United States killed al-Awlaki and Khan but "did not prove the accusation against them, and did not present evidence against them." The statement claims such actions go against the values the U.S. espouses.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the Justice Department prepared legal guidance in the summer of 2010 which said the United States could kill al-Awlaki if it was not possible to capture him.

In Sunday's message, AQAP also promised to "retaliate soon" for the deaths of al-Awlaki and the three others. The U.S. issued a worldwide alert earlier this month warning of "the potential for retaliation against U.S. citizens and interests" following al-Awlaki's killing.

Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, al-Awlaki lived in the United States until the age of 7, when his family returned to Yemen. He returned to the United States in 1991 for college and remained until 2002.

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Huge flying egg - is super spy drone blimp

WIRED DANGER ROOM:



That teeny-weeny, toy-looking thing to the left? An 18-wheeler truck. The giant egg to the right? The biggest spy drone anyone has ever made.

The optionally manned airship — known by the cumbersome code name of “Blue Devil Block 2” — was first inflated with air in early September. Last week, at a hangar in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, the blimp was filled with helium, and began to float.

By the middle of next year, the Air Force hopes, the airship will be hovering in the skies over Afghanistan, where it will use a supercomputer and a pile of surveillance gear to look down on the battlefield — 36 square miles at a time.

“It could change the nature of overhead surveillance,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, the former Air Force intelligence chief now in charge of Mav 6, the company building the blimp.

If the thing works as planned, it’ll park itself in the air for five days at a time, at a height of 20,000 feet or more. Wide-area cameras and advanced eavesdropping gear will be able to watch (and listen) to militant suspects for miles around. Information on their location will be beamed down to U.S. forces with a laser. Like everything else in this project, that laser will be gigantic.

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Computer virus infects military drones

A fleet of U.S. military drones on a Nevada Air Force base has been infected by a keylogger virus that tracks every key and button their pilots press, Wired.com reported Friday -- and top Air Force sources strongly contested.

The virus was first noticed by officials at Creech Air Force Base nearly two weeks ago using the base's security system. It logged every keystroke of the pilots in the control room on the base as they remotely flew Predator and Reaper drones on missions over Afghanistan and other battle zones.

There has been no confirmation of information being lost or sent to an outside source, but the virus has been resistant to military efforts to clear it from the system.

"We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back," a source told Wired.
It's not immediately clear whether the virus hit the system intentionally or by accident. But the existence of ordinary-seeming computer viruses on what should be the most extraordinarily secure of military systems is far from shocking, said Anup Ghosh, a former scientist with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and chief scientist with security company Invincea.
They're just computers, after all.

"[The drones] are controlled by standard PCs," Ghosh told FoxNews.com. "None of this should be surprising." The system should be replaced or "re-imaged" with a virus-free, bit-for-bit copy of the data on the drive in order to get rid of the infection, he said..

"If they are connected to a larger network they will be infected again," he said.
A senior Air Force source with knowledge of the drone program and familiar with the virus that was caught in recent weeks told FoxNews.com that Wired's story is "blown out of proportion" and "vastly overwritten."

"The planes were never in any jeopardy of 'going stupid'," the source said, and the virus "is not affecting operations in any way ... it showed up on a Microsoft-based Windows system. We have a closed-loop system and heavily protected cockpits -- the planes were never in jeopardy."
The virus was introduced when the Air Force was transferring data maps between systems using external hard drives, he said. Very quickly the Air Force protective network tracked the virus.
"The system worked," the Air Force official said.

In the last 12 hours the Air Force ran some clearing software to make sure the viral agents weren't lying dormant in the system. They found some non-descript viral agents at what was described as a "third- or fourth-level function" and dealt with them.

The U.S. military has increasingly been relying upon drones to conduct surveillance and air strikes on enemy targets. The Air force currently uses 150 MQ1 Predator drones and 50 MQ9 Reaper drones over Afghanistan and Iraq.

Drone planes similar to the ones infected were recently used in a CIA-directed strike against American-born terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen on September 30.
This is not the first time that U.S. drones have been infected. In 2009, U.S. troops discovered drone footage on the laptops of Iraqi insurgents. The insurgents had stolen the video with easy to access software that cost $26, Wired reported.

In the fall of 2008, a cyberworm inched its way through military networks as well. The effort to erase it was dubbed Operation Buckshot Yankee.

"It may have to be determined if this new threat was an original attack or a residual from Buckshot Yankee," Ghosh told FoxNews.com.


Read more HERE