The “star wars” arms race was began in January 2007 when China shocked the White House by shooting down one of its weather satellite 530 miles above the Earth.

The strike, which resulted in thousands of pieces of debris orbiting the earth, raised fears that the Chinese had the power to cause chaos by destroying US military and civilian satellites.

In February 2008, America launched its own “test” strike to destroy a malfunctioning American satellite, which demonstrated to the Chinese it also had the capability to strike in space.

America stated at the time that the strike was not a military test but a necessary mission to remove a faulty spy satellite.

The leaked documents appear to show its true intentions.

The Army’s equipment development and procurement office, Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier, was kind enough to invite Wired’s Nathan Hodge to the Aberdeen Proving Ground to test a variety of toys including the XM25 (25mm) grenade launcher, a non-lethal green laser, improved night-vision goggles, a new easily-changed (no headspace or timing adjustment needed) barrel for the ever-popular M2 .50 caliber Browning machine gun, and a Modular Accessory Shotgun system, consisting of a straight-pull bolt-action 12-gauge shotgun that can be used as a standalone weapon or as an under-barrel accessory on a rifle or carbine. The shotgun makes a useful tool for opening locked doors and is an effective close-range definitive argument as well.

Let’s hope PEO Soldier adds NYM to its list of journalist invitees next time. I’m not too far from Aberdeen.

The United States has diverted a shipment of bunker-busters designated for Israel.

Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases.

“This was a political decision,” an official said.

In 2008, the United States approved an Israeli request for bunker-busters capable of destroying underground facilities, including Iranian nuclear weapons sites. Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Since taking office, Obama has refused to approve any major Israeli requests for U.S. weapons platforms or advanced systems. Officials said this included proposed Israeli procurement of AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, refueling systems, advanced munitions and data on a stealth variant of the F-15E.

“All signs indicate that this will continue in 2010,” a congressional source familiar with the Israeli military requests said. “This is really an embargo, but nobody talks about it publicly.”

Obama’s recent creation of a relations crisis with Israel is, of course, yet another flagrant example of the open and insolent implementation of precisely the kind of hard-left ideological policy agenda that he assured the voting public back in 2008 played no part in his future governing intentions. Good-bye, moderation once again.

The Wall Street Journal reports on an interesting feat of technical ingenuity by the enemy.

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.

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. 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.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America’s enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.

Unfortunately dim 0:30 video

The Escapist describes the mysterious sign that appeared in the Norwegian skies, appropriately timed to mark Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Astronomers and Norwegian citizens alike have been baffled by the appearance of a strange blue spiral light in the sky above the Scandinavian country last night: Was it aliens, evil Russians, or just a Dante’s Inferno marketing stunt? ...

Witnesses in the north of the country reported an unusual atmospheric phenomenon that began when “what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate … Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre – lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely.”

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was hammered by a flood of telephone calls after the light show had concluded, though astronomers say that the startling display was not connected to the Aurora Borealis.

Daily Tech reports that Russian news sources have identified the source of the phenomenon, and it had nothing to do with peace.

on Thursday the Russian newspaper Vedomosti cited a military source as saying the phenomenon was caused by a failed test launch of a intercontinental missile, dubbed Bulava. Past launches had failed on the first stage, but this launch reportedly went off without a hitch, before experiencing the strange failure on the third stage.

The Russia armed forces initially denied these reports. However, another source, stationed in Severodvinsk, told newspaper Kommersant that the Russian nuclear sub “Dmitri Donskoy” launched Monday for a program of test launches at sea. The “Dmitri Donskoy” is reportedly the only sub capable of launching the Bulava missile.

On Thursday, more than 24 hours after the incident Russia decided to take responsibility for the incident. The Ministry of Defense’s press service told ITAR-TSS that the strange show was indeed generated by a third stage failure of the missile.

There are still unexplained details about the event that are sure to excite conspiracy theorists. First of all the blue-green light would suggest the presence of copper(II) chloride in the rocket flame. However, copper chloride, while commonly used in pyrotechnics, isn’t hasn’t traditionally been used in rocket fuel (though it has been reportedly investigated as a catalyst in propellant reactions). Also strange is that a similar spiral and explosion occurred over China last year, according to the Daily Mail. If it was indeed the third stage that caused the scene over Norway, and no previous launch had made it past the first stage, it’s unclear what might have caused the similar scene in China.

Wired tells us Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) film accurately predicted a system put on-line in 1985 by the Soviets that would assure an automatic Soviet response to a Western first strike.

The Cold War ended years ago, but apparently the Russians never turned off their Doomsday device.

Valery Yarynich glances nervously over his shoulder. Clad in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel is hunkered in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington, DC. It’s March 2009—the Berlin Wall came down two decades ago—but the lean and fit Yarynich is as jumpy as an informant dodging the KGB. He begins to whisper, quietly but firmly.

“The Perimeter system is very, very nice,” he says. “We remove unique responsibility from high politicians and the military.” He looks around again.

Yarynich is talking about Russia’s doomsday machine. That’s right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called “the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination.” Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.

The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn’t matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret. With the demise of the USSR, word of the system did leak out, but few people seemed to notice. In fact, though Yarynich and a former Minuteman launch officer named Bruce Blair have been writing about Perimeter since 1993 in numerous books and newspaper articles, its existence has not penetrated the public mind or the corridors of power. The Russians still won’t discuss it, and Americans at the highest levels—including former top officials at the State Department and White House—say they’ve never heard of it. When I recently told former CIA director James Woolsey that the USSR had built a doomsday device, his eyes grew cold. “I hope to God the Soviets were more sensible than that.” They weren’t.

The system remains so shrouded that Yarynich worries his continued openness puts him in danger. He might have a point: One Soviet official who spoke with Americans about the system died in a mysterious fall down a staircase. But Yarynich takes the risk. He believes the world needs to know about Dead Hand. Because, after all, it is still in place.

Read the whole thing.

Russia’s top general said on Monday that plans to deploy missiles in an enclave next to Poland had not been shelved, despite a decision by the United States to rethink plans for missile defense in Europe. ...

President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a land-based missile defense system has been welcomed by Russia, which had threatened to deploy short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad if the United States refused to drop the plans.

The Kremlin always said Russia would only deploy the missiles as a counter-measure if Washington went ahead with its missile shield. Moscow said the shield threatened its national security and would upset the strategic balance in Europe.

On Saturday Russian deputy defense minister Vladimir Popovkin said in an interview that “naturally we will scrap the measures that Russia planned to take” in response to the shield and specifically named Iskander deployment as one of them.

When asked about the matter on Monday, the chief of Russia’s general staff, Nikolai Makarov, said: “There has been no such decision. It should be a political decision. It should be made by the president.”

“They (the Americans) have not given up the anti-missile shield; they have replaced it with a sea-based component,” Makarov told reporters on a plane from Moscow to Zurich.

The general was accompanying President Dmitry Medvedev on a trip to Switzerland.

Mystery has surrounded the ship, officially carrying a cargo of timber worth £1.3 million from Finland to Algeria, since its crew first reported a boarding in Swedish waters on July 24 after a raid by 10 armed English-speaking men posing as anti-narcotics police officers.

It was eventually recovered off the coast of west Africa on August 17. Russia has since charged eight men from Estonia, Latvia and Russia with kidnapping and piracy.

Russian officials have said the alleged pirates demanded a $1.5 million ransom but speculation has grown that the freighter was carrying contraband cargo.

Israeli and Russian security sources have questioned The Kremlin’s official explanation, instead arguing that the ship was carrying S-300 missiles, Russia’s most advanced anti-aircraft weapon, while undergoing repairs in the Russian port of Kaliningrad, a notorious Baltic smuggling base.

According to reports, Mossad is said to have briefed the Russian government that the shipment had been sold by former military officers linked to the black market, and Russia then dispatched a naval rescue mission. Those who believe Mossad was involved point to a visit to Moscow by Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, the day after the Arctic Sea was recovered.

Crew members of the Arctic Sea have since told Russian news reporters that they have been told not to disclose “state secrets” further fuelling the speculation.

A Russian military source told The Sunday Times: “The official version is ridiculous and was given to allow the Kremlin to save face.

“I’ve spoken to people close to the investigation and they’ve pretty much confirmed Mossad’s involvement. It’s laughable to believe all this fuss was over a load of timber. I’m not alone in believing that it was carrying weapons to Iran.”

S-300PMU2 Favorit

Russian news agency RT News (Moscow) has the same story on this 4:42 video

Spook 86 explains, on the basis of a Russian defense analysis described in Aviation Week, how Russian air losses in the brief war with Georgia last summer were twice as bad as were reported, and Russian air defense systems were responsible.

In its latest assessment, (Russia’s Center for the Analysis of Strategy and Technology) CAST confirms that Russian forces lost eight aircraft to adversary air defenses and fratricide. The four additional aircraft—which the Russian Air Force has reported as combat losses—include the following:
—SU-24MR Fencer E reconnaissance aircraft, shot down on 8 August—SU-25 Frogfoot CAS aircraft, lost on 9 August—SU-24M Fencer frontal strike aircraft, downed on 10 or 11 August—Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship (loss date undetermined)

CAST also reports that Georgian air defenses damaged at least three other SU-25s, which managed to return to base.

Officially, Moscow has claimed that it lost only four aircraft during the Georgian campaign, a TU-22M Backfire bomber and three SU-25s, all shot down on the first day of the war (8 August). Russian Air Force officials say the four jets were downed by Georgian SA-11 SAM batteries.

As for those “other” losses, CAST claims the Fencers fell victim to shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles while the SU-25 was downed by friendly fire—specifically, a MANPAD SAM launched by a Russian ground unit.

The think tank also repeats its assessment that Russian Air Force units were unprepared for operations against a relatively modern air defense system. We second that notion, and believe it’s worth repeating a related point, which we made last August. Moscow’s lack of preparation is largely inexcusable, since it already knew that Tiblisi had purchased the SA-11 (and other air defense systems) from Ukraine. The embarrassment is compounded by the fact that the systems which knocked down those Russian aircraft were originally designed—and built—in Russia (emphasis ours). ...

For 50 years, Russian scientists and engineers have produced some of the world’s most lethal air defense systems. But Moscow never believed its pilots would have to fly against Russian-built SAMs. That’s one reason the Russian Air Force learned a hard lesson in Georgia last summer.

The New Scientists calls it a rifle, though it’s really a new grenade launcher. The XM25, developed by Heckler & Koch and Alliant Techsystems, has a range-finder and the ability to determine the range at which the projectile will explode. I bet it’s easier to use, but they used to be able to do the same thing back in the black powder era, simply by cutting fuses to pre-determined lengths. In the old days, of course, they lacked hand-held miniature howitzers, and they had to estimate the range by eye, the hard way.

A rifle capable of firing explosive bullets that can detonate within a metre of a target could let soldiers fire on snipers hiding in trenches, behind walls or inside buildings.

The US army has developed the XM25 rifle to give its troops an alternative to calling in artillery fire or air strikes when an enemy has taken cover and can’t be targeted by direct fire. “This is the first leap-ahead technology for troops that we’ve been able to develop and deploy,” says Douglas Tamilio, the army’s project manager for new weapons for soldiers. “This gives them another tool in their kitbag.”

The rifle’s gunsight uses a laser rangefinder to calculate the exact distance to the obstruction. The soldier can then add or subtract up to 3 metres from that distance to enable the bullets to clear the barrier and explode above or beside the target (see diagram).

As the 25-millimetre round is fired, the gunsight sends a radio signal to a chip inside the bullet, telling it the precise distance to the target. A spiral groove inside the barrel makes the bullet rotate as it travels, and as it also contains a magnetic transducer, this rotation through the Earth’s magnetic field generates an alternating current. A patent granted to the bullet’s maker, Alliant Techsystems, reveals that the chip uses fluctuations in this current to count each revolution and, as it knows the distance covered in one spin, it can calculate how far it has travelled.

The rifle would allow a soldier faced with a sniper firing from a window to take a distance measurement to the window, add a metre, fire through the window, and have the round detonate 1 metre inside the room. The same method could be used to fire behind a wall or over a trench. ...

“This airburst shell gives the close-combat capability of a grenade launcher, combined with the ability of indirect fire weapons to hit stuff on the other side of the wall,” says John Pike, a defence analyst with Washington DC think tank GlobalSecurity.org.

The CIA is equipping Pakistani tribesmen with secret electronic transmitters to help target and kill al-Qaida leaders in the north-western tribal belt, in a tactic that could aid Pakistan’s army as it takes the battle against extremism to the Taliban heartland.

As the army mops up Taliban resistance in the Swat valley, where a defence official predicted fighting would be over within days, the focus is shifting to Waziristan and the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.

But a deadly war of wits is already under way in the region, where tribesmen say the US is using advanced technology and old-fashioned cash to target the enemy.

Over the last 18 months the US has launched more than 50 drone attacks, mostly in south and north Waziristan. US officials claim nine of the top 20 al-Qaida figures have been killed.

That success is reportedly in part thanks to the mysterious electronic devices, dubbed “chips” or “pathrai” (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination.

“Everyone is talking about it,” said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. “People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it.”

According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders.

Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. “There are body parts everywhere,” said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike.

Declan Walsh reports on 5:27 audio

Wall Street Journal:

Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project—the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever—according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.

Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.

The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together. The revelations follow a recent Wall Street Journal report that computers used to control the U.S. electrical-distribution system, as well as other infrastructure, have also been infiltrated by spies abroad.

Attacks like these—or U.S. awareness of them—appear to have escalated in the past six months, said one former official briefed on the matter. “There’s never been anything like it,” this person said, adding that other military and civilian agencies as well as private companies are affected. “It’s everything that keeps this country going. ...

The intruders compromised the system responsible for diagnosing a plane’s maintenance problems during flight, according to officials familiar with the matter. However, the plane’s most vital systems—such as flight controls and sensors—are physically isolated from the publicly accessible Internet, they said.

The intruders entered through vulnerabilities in the networks of two or three contractors helping to build the high-tech fighter jet, according to people who have been briefed on the matter. Lockheed Martin is the lead contractor on the program, and Northrop Grumman Corp. and BAE Systems PLC also play major roles in its development. ...

Investigators traced the penetrations back with a “high level of certainty” to known Chinese Internet protocol, or IP, addresses and digital fingerprints that had been used for attacks in the past, said a person briefed on the matter.

One might think that if one believed it appropriate to spend federal money just to create jobs that jobs for Lockheed Martin workers would be at least as worthy of creation as jobs for community organizers and social workers. It could be argued as well that investing in long-term American Air Supremacy is far more likely to contribute to the welfare of the nation than funding uneconomic energy projects or pouring more dollars into Amtrak. Of course, as decisions on spending priorities are made, it isn’t very likely that Barack Obama is going to look at it that way.

In the Atlantic, Mark Bowden discusses the meaning and consequences of the probable termination of F-22 purchases.

[US] complete dominance is eroding. Some foreign-built fighters can now match or best the F‑15 in aerial combat, and given the changing nature of the threats our country is facing and the dizzying costs of maintaining our advantage, America is choosing to give up some of the edge we’ve long enjoyed, rather than pay the price to preserve it. The next great fighter, the F‑22 Raptor, is every bit as much a marvel today as the F‑15 was 25 years ago, and if we produced the F-22 in sufficient numbers we could move the goalposts out of reach again. But we are building fewer than a third of the number needed to replace the older fighters in service. After losing hope of upgrading the whole F‑15 fleet, the Air Force requested 381 F‑22s, the minimum number that independent analysts said it needs to retain its current edge. Congress is buying 183, and has authorized the manufacture of parts for 20 more at the front end of the production line, enough to at least keep it working until President Obama decides whether or not to continue building F-22s. Like so many presidential dilemmas, it’s a Scylla-and-Charybdis choice: a decision to save money and not build more would deliver a severe blow to a sprawling and vital U.S. industry at a time when the nation is mired in recession. And once the production line for the F-22 begins to shut down, restarting it will not be easy or cheap, even in reaction to a new threat. Each plane consists of about 1,000 parts, manufactured in 44 states, and because of the elaborate network of highly specialized subcontractors needed to fashion its unique airframe and avionics, assembling one F-22 can take as long as three years. Modern aerial wars are usually over in days, if not hours. Once those 183 to 203 new Raptors are built, they will have to do. Our end of the fight will still be borne primarily by the current fleet of aged F‑15s.

When Obama unveiled his national-security team in December, he remarked that he intended “to maintain the strongest military on the planet.” That goal will continue to require the biggest bill in the world, but the portion that bought aerial dominance for so long may have become too dear. ...

The Air Force fears that the dominance of U.S. airpower has been so complete for so long that it is taken for granted. The ability of the United States to own the skies over any battlefield has transformed the way we fight. The last American soldier killed on the ground by an enemy air attack died in Korea, on April 15, 1953.

Russia, China, Iran, India, North Korea, Pakistan, and others are now flying fourth-generation fighters with avionics that match or exceed the F‑15’s. Ideally, from the standpoint of the U.S. Air Force, the F‑22 would gradually replace most of the F‑15s in the U.S. fleet over the next 15 years, and two or three more generations of American pilots, soldiers, and marines would fight without worrying about attacks from the sky. But that isn’t going to happen.

“It means a step down from air dominance,” Richard Aboulafia, an air-warfare analyst for the Teal Group, which conducts assessments for the defense industry, told me. “The decision not to replace the F‑15 fleet with the F‑22 ultimately means that we will accept air casualties. We will lose more pilots. We will still achieve air superiority, but we will get hurt achieving it.”

Now with the world economy contracting, production, demand, and commodity prices falling, Russia is going to be experiencing a shortage of cash, so competing with the US on a strategic triad (land, air, and sea-based strategic weapons) is going to be much more difficult. And things haven’t been going all that satisfactorily right now.

SF Chronicle:

Russia’s new sea-based ballistic missile has failed in a test launch for the fifth time, signaling serious trouble with the highly advertised key future component of the nation’s nuclear forces.

The Bulava “self-destructed and exploded in the air” after a launch from the Dmitry Donskoy nuclear submarine beneath surface of the White Sea, said Navy spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo.

Russia has been making an aggressive effort in recent years to upgrade its missile forces after years of post-Soviet underfunding and a lack of testing.

The Kremlin has hailed the missile as capable of penetrating any prospective missile defenses. ...

The Bulava is reportedly designed to have a maximum range of about 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) and carry six individually targeted nuclear warheads. It is expected to equip three new Borei-class nuclear submarines that are under construction.

“This is a serious blow to Russia’s military plans to deploy the Borei submarines,” said independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. “The failure delays (Bulava’s) production and deployment indefinitely.”

Russian news agencies said that Tuesday’s test was the fifth failure out of 10 launches since 2004.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. nuclear weapons program has suffered from neglect. Warheads are old. There’s been no new warhead design since the 1980s, and the last time one was tested was 1992, when the U.S. unilaterally stopped testing. Gen. Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, has been sounding the alarm, as has Defense Secretary Robert Gates. So far few seem to be listening.

The U.S. is alone among the five declared nuclear nations in not modernizing its arsenal. The U.K. and France are both doing so. Ditto China and Russia. “We’re the only ones who aren’t,” Gen. Chilton says. Congress has refused to fund the Department of Energy’s Reliable Replacement Warhead program beyond the concept stage and this year it cut funding even for that. ...

“We’ve done a pretty good job of maintaining our delivery platforms,” the general says, by which he means submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles and intercontinental bombers. But nuclear warheads are a different story. They are Cold War legacies, he says, “designed for about a 15- to 20-year life.” That worked fine back when “we had a very robust infrastructure . . . that replenished those families of weapons at regular intervals.” Now, however, “they’re all older than 20 years . . . . The analogy would be trying to extend the life of your ‘57 Chevrolet into the 21st century.”

Gen. Chilton pulls out a prop to illustrate his point: a glass bulb about two inches high. “This is a component of a V-61” nuclear warhead, he says. It was in “one of our gravity weapons”—a weapon from the 1950s and ‘60s that is still in the U.S. arsenal. He pauses to look around the Journal’s conference table. “I remember what these things were for. I bet you don’t. It’s a vacuum tube. My father used to take these out of the television set in the 1950s and ‘60s down to the local supermarket to test them and replace them.”

And here comes the punch line: “This is the technology that we have . . . today.” ...

The general stresses the need to “revitalize” the infrastructure for producing nuclear weapons. The U.S. hasn’t built a nuclear weapon in more than two decades and the manufacturing infrastructure has disappeared. The U.S. today “has no nuclear weapon production capacity,” he says flatly. “We can produce a handful of weapons in a laboratory but we’ve taken down the manufacturing capability.” At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. produced 3,000 weapons a year. ...

these already-old weapons aren’t going to last forever, and part of the general’s job is to prepare for their refurbishing or replacement. “Think about what it’s going to take to recapitalize or replace those 2,000 weapons over a period of time. . . . If you could do 10 a year, it takes you 200 years. If you build an infrastructure that would allow you to do 100 a year, then you could envision recapitalizing that over a 20-year-period.”

There’s also the issue of human capital, which is graying. It’s “every bit as important as the aging of the weapon systems,” the general says. “The last individual to have worked on an actual nuclear test in this country, the last scientist or engineer, will have retired or passed on in the next five years.” The younger generation has no practical experience with designing or building nuclear warheads.

Read the whole thing.

And Matt Drudge links their story and adds an alarming photo of a missile launch.

(Oh no, Russia is already sending nukes our way!)

Was Russia really threatening to launch ballistic missiles or order some of its Combined-Arms Armies westward in the direction of the Fulda Gap?

No. Not really.

What the actual story said was:

Moscow argues that the missile shield would severely undermine the balance of European security and regards the proposed missile shield based in two former Communist countries as a hostile move.

“We will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Obviously, Russia was merely alluding darkly to its own capabilities of using technical methods to gain an ability to defeat defensive missiles. Russia is threatening a particular kind of arms race not a nuclear first strike or an invasion of Western Europe.

National Enquirer-style misleading headlines may win Drudge and the London Times a few more readers today, but they certainly do not increase readers’ respect for those particular sources. I’d say that they are only trading future readers for some extra ones today.

A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said. Full details were not immediately available.

It happened just after 10:30 p.m. EST.

Two officials said the missile was launched successfully. One official, who is close to the process, said it hit the target. He said details on the results were not immediately known.

The goal in this first-of-its-kind mission for the Navy was not just to hit the satellite but to obliterate a tank aboard the spacecraft carrying 1,000 pounds of a toxic fuel called hydrazine. ...

Officials said it might take a day or longer to know for sure if the toxic fuel was blown up.

If Navy missiles can hit falling satellites, they can probably also hit descending ICBMs. Anybody else remember all the derisive hoots from the liberals about the absolute impossibility of developing a missile defense system? “Star Wars,” the establishment media labeled Ronald Reagan’s proposal derisively.

Well, today, it’s here, and it clearly works. So much for the wisdom of the liberals.

Russian diplomacy and her relations with neighboring states evidently naturally exist in a state of affairs in which Russia has the strategic arms equivalent of a loaded gun, cocked, and aimed at those neighboring states’ cities and civilian populations. Russia possesses a natural right in her relations with other states to all the advantages possessed by the armed mugger pointing a pistol at his unarmed interlocutor’s head.

If the United States was proposing to install a new system of offensive weapons in Poland, whose location could facilitate a rationally imaginable new Western invasion of the Russian motherland, clearly he would have cause to protest and declare a new arms race underway, but these violent protestations about defensive missiles, missiles clearly specifically intended as a defense against impending Middle Eastern threats resemble nothing so much as the burglar complaining bitterly about the householder buying a gun.

President Vladimir Putin declared the onset of a “new arms race” yesterday and vowed to expand Russia’s military strength to ward off predatory foreign powers.

In a televised address to the State Council in Moscow, Mr Putin delivered the belligerent rhetoric which has become his hallmark.

Appraising global events, the president said: “It is already clear that a new phase in the arms race is unfolding in the world.”

He added that “no steps towards compromise” had yet been made on America’s plan to station a missile defence shield in Europe.

“There has been no constructive response to our well-founded concerns,” said Mr Putin. Consequently, he has vowed to modernise Russia’s armed forces.

“We are being forced to take retaliatory steps. Russia has and always will have a response to these new challenges. In the near future, Russia will start production of new weapons systems that will not be inferior and in some cases excel those held by other countries.”

This was necessary to defend Russia from unnamed foreign powers who, he claimed, were bent on controlling the world’s natural resources.

“Foreign policy actions and diplomatic moves smell of oil and gas,” said Mr Putin.

CBS 5 is shocked.

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley’s Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

“The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another,” Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

The Edge has a more complete article, noting that the story is old, going back to 2005, but was resurrected by Huffington Post blogger Larry Arnstein.

Air Force Report

The joke’s on them. They already developed it, and tested it on the San Francisco Bay area.

An Army Times article by Mathew Cox describes the problems still afflicting the US military’s primary long arm, and identifies Heckler & Koch’s 416 as the generally desired, but unavailable, alternative.

Ever since the Army’s adoption of the M16 in the mid-1960s, a love-hate relationship has existed between combat troops and the weapon known as the “black rifle.”

It’s accurate and easy to shoot. Plus, the M16’s light weight and small caliber helped soldiers carry more ammunition than ever before into battle.

The M16, however, has always required constant cleaning to prevent it from jamming. The gas system, while simple in design, blows carbon into the receiver, which can lead to fouling.

The Army has decided to replace most of its M16s with the newer M4 carbine. The Army started buying M4s in the mid-1990s but mainly reserved them for rapid-deployment combat units. Its collapsible stock and shortened barrel make it ideal for soldiers operating in vehicles and tight quarters associated with urban combat.

Experts, however, contend that the M4 in many ways is even less reliable than the M16.

Special Operations Command documented these problems in a 2001 report, “M4A1 5.56mm Carbine and Related Systems Deficiencies and Solutions: Operational and Technical Study with Analysis of Alternatives.”

The M4 suffers from an “obsolete operating system,” according to the report, which recommended “redesign/replacement of current gas system.” It describes the weapon’s shortened barrel and gas tube as a “fundamentally flawed” design and blames it for problems such as “failure to extract” and “failure to eject” during firing. “The current system was never designed for the rigors of SOF use and training regimens — the M4 Carbine is not the gun for all seasons,” the report concluded.

Read the whole thing.

HK 416 Wikipedia article

Built to destroy the French Maginot Line fortifications, this monstrous 800 mm railroad gun was completed too late to be used in the campaign against France (in which the Maginot Line was bypassed anyway). It was finally used at Sebastopol where it fired 48 7-ton shells over 13 days, demolishing Soviet forts with great thoroughness.

80cm ‘Gustav’ in Action

Wikipedia

Hat tip to Ellie.

North Korea has already manufactured several nuclear weapons and is ready to deploy these in the event of a war, a high-ranking North Korean defector claimed on Thursday.

Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the Workers Party of Korea and one of the North’s top theorists, said the reclusive nation signed a pact with Pakistan in 1996 on the transfer of uranium-based nuclear technology.

US intelligence has detected an explosion of less than one kilotonne in magnitude in North Korea but has not been able to determine whether it was nuclear or not, a senior intelligence official said.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said that first-time nuclear tests historically have been in the several kilotonne range.

“We are aware that there was a sub-kilotonne explosion in North Korea,” said the official. “We have not been able to determine at this point whether it was in fact nuclear.”

Hat tip to Richard Fernandez, who wonders:

Could this one have been a suitcase bomb?

While others think it was a fake.

But, at least the Russians are impressed. Russian news release.

Useful summary from Q&O.

Aram Bakshi says it’s all George W. Bush’s fault. And Tim F., John Cole’s pocket-edition Grima Wormtongue, agrees.

Ben Johnson blames Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

I think you can go right back to Harry Truman on this one. He should have allowed MacArthur to win the war. Truman provided the still commonly-implemented model of wasting American money and lives in pursuit of lesser objectives than victory. In the case of Vietnam, avoiding aiming at victory ultimately produced defeat. The original version of the policy was so good a choice, that, technically speaking, we’re still engaged in Harry Truman’s unfinished war.

Russian News and Information Military Commentator Viktor Litovkin pays tribute to the technical skill and strategic cunning of Veniamin Yefremov, general designer of the Almaz-Antei Air Defense Concern, who passed away September 16th.

Working at R&D Institute No. 20 (NII-20), renamed the Electrical Mechanical R&D Institute (NIEMI) and (after 1983) known as NPO Antei, Efremov was the General Designer of a number of highly effective mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems for the Sovet Army’s air-defense forces.

The list of such weapons includes the world-famous Osa-AKM SAM system with an effective horizontal range between 1,500 meters and 10 km. This system, which can hit targets at an altitude of 6 km, was supplied to 25 countries.

Yefremov also developed the self-contained army-level Tor-M1 SAM system with a horizontal range of 1-12 km and a vertical range from 100 meters to six km. Apart from Russia, the Tor-M1 system is used by China and Greece.

One should also mention the Krug medium-range SAM system and its modified versions with a horizontal range of four to 50 km and a vertical range from 150 meters to 25 km, the S-300V long-range SAM system (horizontal range: 7-100 km; vertical range: from 250 meters to 25 km).

Yefremov’s greatest achievement is the Antei-2500 theater-level anti-ballistic missile (ABM), which (as Litovkin takes great satisfaction in noting) far surpasses the capabilities of the US Raytheon-manufactured Patriot Missile System.

His latest invention was the little-known Antei-2500 theater-level anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, which can destroy aircraft and ballistic missiles at a range of up to 200 km and 40 km, respectively. The system’s vertical range is 250 meters to 30 km.

Most importantly, the Antei-2500’s range considerably exceeds that of its predecessor. This is the world’s only defensive SAM system which can destroy aircraft and helicopters, including AWACS surveillance planes, Stealth-type fighters and bombers, as well as non-strategic medium-range and short-range ballistic missiles. The Antei-2500 has a horizontal and vertical range of 200 km and 30 km, while the corresponding ranges for the S-300V were only 100 and 25 km, respectively.

In addition, the Antei-2500 can destroy ballistic missiles with a range of up to 2,500 km flying at 4,500 meters per second, and this explains the system’s official name.

These missiles are China’s Dunfen-3, Dunfen-15 and Dunfen-25, the United States’ ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) and Pershing, France’s Ades, the Iraqi Scud-S and Israel’s Jericho-2. Incidentally, obsolete Scuds and Pershings are still in service all over the world.

The S-300V could destroy ballistic missiles with a range of 1,000 km and a speed of 3,000 meters per second, whereas the Patriot PAC-2 missile, which was widely advertised during both Gulf Wars, has a maximum horizontal and vertical range of just 40 km and 24 km. The defense company Raytheon estimates that the PAC-3 missile’s horizontal and vertical ranges were increased to 150 km and 25 km after an upgrade last year. The PAC-3 can destroy missiles with a 1,000-km range.

But it is unclear whether U.S. designers will manage to cope with the Patriot system’s main drawback. Patriot missiles usually hit enemy-missile bodies and sustainer engines, rather than their warheads, which usually reach preset targets. Ninety percent of the 65 Scud missiles launched by Iraq in the first Gulf War hit their targets. However, during the second Gulf War Iraqi air-defense units missed numerous U.S. missiles that were launched from the sea.

In addition, Patriot missiles are launched at a certain angle to the horizon and cannot therefore hit targets approaching from the opposite direction. Consequently, at least four Patriot launchers are needed to cover a 360-degree sector, whereas only one Antei-2500 system is needed to do the same. Its vertically launched missiles streak in the direction of the target at 60-100-meter altitudes.

Most importantly, the highly accurate Antei-2500 and S-300V warheads can hit any missile warhead with a 100% success rate. Each Antei-2500 system can simultaneously fire at 16 ballistic missiles, including even those with small Stealth-type echo areas. This makes it unique in the world.

Ironically, as Litovkin gloatingly recounts, Yefremov successfully overcame the Russian military’s bankrupty and inability to fund his development efforts in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism, with US funding (!). He managed to arrange the sale of a less-than-complete version of the S-300V system to Washington.

The S-300V system was officially removed from a factory in the presence of officials from the FSB, other export-control agencies and The S-300V system was officially removed from a factory in the presence of officials from the FSB, other export-control agencies and Rosvooruzheniye (State Company for the Export and Import of Armaments and Military Equipment) . The United States received only two batteries, including an all-round radar, a command center, two Gigant launchers and two Gladiator launchers with 23 missiles, rather than the standard 144-missile reserve, for $90 million.

True, NPO Antei received only $45 million because the Pentagon and Rosvooruzheniye were playing some mysterious game apparently involving the Russian and U.S. secret services.

Anyway, Rosvooruzheniye never sold the system’s core element, the sector-scanning radar, to Washington. But Yefremov did not care because he had received enough money to streamline the Antei-2500 system, which has now been tested and placed on combat duty.

May the earth lie lightly upon a worthy adversary.

Dr. Robert Beeman, founder of Beeman’s Precision Airguns, has produced a fascinating paper on the intriguing question of the identity of the repeating air gun, mentioned 39 times in the expedition’s journals, carried on the 1804-1806 Voyage of the Corps of Discovery by Captain Merriwether Lewis.

Colonel Thomas Rodney, en route to the Mississippi Territory where he had been appointed by Thomas Jefferson as federal judge, met Lewis at Wheeling (now in West Virginia) on September 8, 1803, and witnessed a demonstration of the air gun, which he recorded in his diary.

Visited Captain Lewess barge. He shewed us his air gun which fired 22 times at one charge. He shewed us the mode of charging her and then loaded with 12 balls which he intended to fire one at a time; but she by some means lost the whole charge of air at the first fire. He charged her again and then she fired twice. He then found the cause and in some measure prevented the airs escaping, and then she fired seven times; but when in perfect order she fires 22 times in a minute. All the balls are put at once into a short side barrel and are then droped into the chamber of the gun one at a time by moving a spring; and when the triger is pulled just so much air escapes out of the air bag which forms the britch of the gun as serves for one ball. It is a curious peice of workmanship not easily discribed and therefore I omit attempting it.

Beeman concludes that the Lewis’ air gun must have been one of the 1500 air guns produced for use by the Austrian Army upon the design of the Tyrolean clockmaker Bartolomeo Girandoni between 1787 and 1801, when the weapon was withdrawn from service.

A repeating rifle capable of firing 22 balls from a pre-loaded magazine was a revolutionary advance, but this complex technology undoubtedly required more maintenance and care in operation than the ordinary soldier operating in the field could typically supply. Perhaps, also, threats from the French adversary of denial of quarter to troops found using this unconventional weapon helped bring about its withdrawal from service.

The Beeman article.

A Curious Piece of Workmanship by Joseph Mussulman.

Lewis & Clark demonstrating the airgun to the Yankton Sioux. Warren Lee, 2005.

The Turkish Press reports:

A new armor-busting rocket-propelled grenade believed to be of Iranian origin has shown up in Iraq in what may be “a hint about things to come,” the commander of US forces in the Middle East said Tuesday.

General John Abizaid said the weapon, an RPG-29, has a dual warhead and has proved effective against most types of armored vehicles.

“The first time we saw it was not in Iraq. We saw it in Lebanon. So to me it indicates, number one, an Iranian connection,” he told defense reporters here.

“It`s hard to say in our part of the world that we operate in as to whether or not people have given us a hint about things to come,” he said.

He said only a single RPG-29 has turned up in Iraq so far, and it was unclear how it was smuggled into the country.

But he said it was the latest in a number of new and more sophisticated weapons that appear to be moving onto the region`s battlefields from Iran.

He said longer-range Chinese rockets that looked new also have been found in Iraq.

Abizaid said he believed the Chinese rockets ca
me from Iran although they may have been taken from the arms inventories of the former Iraqi regime and cleaned up.

“It looked brand new to us,” he said.

The new weapons are in addition to more sophisticated roadside bombs with explosively shaped charges that the US military has long charged are being manufactured in Iran and brought into the country by Iran`s Revolutionary Guards-Quds Force.

Andre Pachter does not believe these are old inventory weapons:

Military experts tell China Confidential that Iran supplied the rockets and that they are in fact brand new, Chinese-made weapons.
Energy-starved China and oil-rich, Islamist Iran have deepening economic, political, and military ties. Beijing, as we have reported for months, is firmly committed to blocking meaningful sanctions against America’s arch-enemy. And Chinese arms have been instrumental in Iran’s military modernization.

Abizaid also said that a new, armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade has turned up in Iraq. The weapon, which was first used in Lebanon by Iran’s Shiite proxy, Hezbollah, in its month-long war with Israel, has a dual warhead and has proved effective against most types of armored vehicles.

Citing links between Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq, the US commander said the RPG could be “a hint of things to come.”

The American EW experts are interested in four areas. 1. The Israeli EW systems’ failure to block Hizballah’s command and communications and the links between the Lebanese command and the Syria-based Iranian headquarters. 2. How Iranian technicians helped Hizballah eavesdrop on Israel’s communications networks and mobile telephones, including Israeli soldiers’ conversations from inside Lebanon. 3. How Iranian EW installed in Lebanese army coastal radar stations blocked the Barak anti-missile missiles aboard Israeli warships, allowing Hizballah to hit the Israeli corvette Hanith. 4. Why Israeli EW was unable to jam the military systems at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, which hosted the underground war room out of which Hassan Nasrallah and his top commanders, including Imad Mughniyeh, functioned.

Until the watershed date of July 12, 2006, when the Hizballah triggered the Lebanon War, Israel was accounted an important world power in the development of electronic warfare systems — so much so that a symbiotic relationship evolved for the research and development of many US and Israeli electronic warfare systems, in which a mix of complementary American and Israeli devices and methods were invested.

In combat against Hizballah, both were not only found wanting, but had been actively neutralized, so that none performed the functions for which they were designed. This poses both the US and Israel with a serious problem in a further round of the Lebanon war and any military clash with Iran.

DEBKAfile’s military sources add: Both intelligence services underestimated the tremendous effort Iran invested in state of the art electronic warfare gadgetry designed to disable American military operations in Iraq and IDF functions in Israel and Lebanon. Israel’s electronic warfare units were taken by surprise by the sophisticated protective mechanisms attached to Hizballah’s communications networks, which were discovered to be connected by optical fibers which are not susceptible to electronic jamming.

American and Israeli experts realize now that they overlooked the key feature of the naval exercise Iran staged in the Persian Gulf last April: Iran’s leap ahead in electronic warfare. They dismissed most the weapons systems as old-fashioned. But among them were the C-802 cruise missile and several electronic warfare systems, both of which turned up in the Lebanon war with deadly effect.

The SF Examiner is grateful that President Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense system is as operational as it is today, and it knows who resisted its development.

North Korea’s threatening spate of missile launches — including an unsuccessful try with an advanced version of its Taepodong 2 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile that is capable of hitting the United States — has sparked a cacophony of talk from leaders and foreign policy experts around the world.

As they debate and discuss various options at the United Nations and in capitals around the globe, the rudimentary U.S. missile defense system is poised to shoot down anything launched from North Korea that threatens the American homeland or the critical interests of our regional allies like Japan and Australia.

Noticeably absent are the voices of those who, since President Reagan first proposed such a system in 1984, have fought development and deployment of the missile defense system the U.S. must now depend upon in dealing with North Korea. These folks have claimed over and over that the system they derisively call “Star Wars” can’t possibly work, would be too expensive, would incite a new world arms race, etc., etc. Names that come to mind in this regard include senators like Joe Biden, D-Del., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., and the Clinton-Gore administration that delayed and dilly-dallied with work on missile defense for most of the ’90s.

It is important that the American people understand two aspects of the current crisis as it relates to missile defense. First, the system President Bush recently ordered advanced from its testing stage to operational status when the North Koreans began preparing the Taepodong 2 launch is extremely rudimentary because it is still being developed. The system now includes only 11 ground-based launch sites in Alaska and California capable of knocking out long-range missiles like the Taepodong 2, and four Aegis-class Navy destroyers equipped with missile defense battle management systems and Standard-3 missiles capable of hitting medium range threats.

Second, they will no doubt protest to high heaven, but “Star Wars” critics must bear the major burden of responsibility for the delays and setbacks that have prevented the missile defense system from becoming fully operational long before the present crisis with North Korea. There have been technological problems, especially in the very early stages, but those were temporary and subject to American technological prowess.

Far more serious have been the setbacks engineered by the critics — like then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s maneuvers to kill the first Bush administration’s Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (G-PALS) plan, the Clinton-Gore gutting of the Strategic Defense Initiative office in 1993 and the delaying tactics used by Senate Democrats in the first years of this decade to reduce the current program’s funding.

It is a sobering thought to wonder how much more secure the United States and its allies would be today in the face of madness like North Korea’s launches if instead of a limited defense still in development we could depend upon the robust protection first proposed many years ago.