Why drone swarms will buzz to the forefront in the new Pentagon budget

The Army has a ‘critical gap’ stopping drone swarms. Now it’s doing something about it.

The U.S. Army has identified a “critical gap” in its ability to face swarms of drones that could attack small units of soldiers on the battlefield by confusing radar systems, overwhelming larger aircraft or simply exploding when they reach an assigned target. The service has been examining the issue for years, but Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, the service’s vice chief of staff, said Tuesday that defeating such attacks will be essential in the future. Initially the Army must be able to stop single drones from carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance against the United States, but the service must evolve from there to stopping swarm attacks using both new technology and old-school techniques, he said. “For how the Army operates, we expect that we’re going to have to be very, very effective in distributed operations in small units as we move forward,” said Allyn. “The idea that you don’t present a welcoming target to an adversary is something that has served us well from the early days of warfare, and will remain critical. The ability to leverage denial and deception and effective maneuver is going to be equally important as any technological advances we come up with.” It’s another sign that the Pentagon is preparing for combat in which adversaries have access to drone and other cutting-edge technologies. Drone swarms have not yet appeared in combat against the United States, but individual unmanned systems are in use by China, Iran and Russia, among other nations. Allyn, speaking at a breakfast in Washington with journalists, said the Army could counter drone swarms with some combination of directed energy or “kinetic” means, which typically means conventional ammunition. But he hesitated to get specific, an indication that aspects of the research may be classified. The Army has been carrying out experiments on drone swarms in several locations, including White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and Fort Bliss in western Texas. Allyn said he recently visited Fort Bliss and came away impressed with how soldiers are using a combination of commercially available equipment with undisclosed operational maneuvers to take on drones. “You put capability in the hands of soldiers and they’re going to make it sing in ways that we cannot envision from up here at the Department of the Army,” he said. “And that’s why we leverage those opportunities as best we can.”

Veil of secrecy lifted on Pentagon office planning ‘Avatar’ fighters and drone swarms

High over Alaska last summer, the Pentagon experimented with new, secret prototypes: Micro-drones that can be launched from the flare dispensers of moving F-16s and F/A-18 fighter jets. Canisters containing the tiny aircraft descended from the jets on parachutes before breaking open, allowing wings on each drone to swing out and catch the wind. Inch-wide propellers on the back provided propulsion as they found one another and created a swarm. The experiment was run by the secretive Strategic Capabilities Office, a Pentagon organization launched in summer 2012 to figure out how to best counter growing strategic threats from China and Russia. The specifics of what the mini-drones can do are classified, but they could be used to confuse enemy forces and carry out surveillance missions using equipment that costs much less than full-sized unmanned aircraft. Video reviewed by The Washington Post shows the tiny aircraft, which weigh about a pound each, moving in packs and gaining situational awareness after sitting inert in the flare canisters. SCO’s staff labored in the shadows since its inception, with virtually everything it did withheld from the American public. But the shroud of secrecy was lifted partially in recent weeks. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter for the first time disclosed last month the existence of some of the office’s projects while previewing his proposed 2017 budget. He called for $902 million in funding for SCO in 2017 — nearly twice what it received this year, and 18 times what it started with. _[Watch Perdix, the Pentagon’s secretive program dropping tiny drones from fighter jets]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Carter’s disclosures raised some questions in the Pentagon about whether he had revealed classified information while previewing his 2017 budget. But in a rare interview, the director of SCO said the secretary sought a green light to disclose snippets of the mini-drone experiment in Alaska and a few other programs as part of a broader effort to get the attention of potential adversaries. “I have been in the classified, black world for my whole career, so all of this is new for me and I really wish I could go back,” said the director, William Roper, a physicist who previously worked in missile defense. “You can’t win wars if everything is outside the doors, but you can’t deter wars if everything is behind them.” The story of SCO — pronounced “Skoh” — is one that underscores the Pentagon’s efforts to move beyond more than a decade of counterterrorism operations and combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to prepare for new strategic threats. The office initially called the Pentagon home, but was later moved a few miles away to a larger space in the same building in Virginia that houses the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), perhaps the Defense Department’s best known agency focused on futuristic technology. But DARPA and SCO are different organizations with different missions, both Roper and DARPA officials said. DARPA, created during the Cold War in 1958, is focused on looking for ways to revolutionize military operations with new inventions and technology. It has an annual budget of about $3 billion. SCO is charged with creating new “trick plays” for the Pentagon through creativity and engineering, using old weapons, teaming existing equipment together or adding new commercial technology. Roper, 36, compared the U.S. military to a top football team that has been closely studied for years by opponents who want to exploit potential weaknesses they have observed. “Football teams – great football teams, dynasties – don’t throw out their playbook when that happens,” he said. “They say, ‘Alright, well, my opponents have optimized against what I do today, so I’ve got to get surprise and get trickery back on my side.’ So they weave trick plays into their playbooks. They start running when it looks like they’re going to pass, and pass when it looks like they’re going to run. They force their opponent to play honestly by catching them off-guard early in the game. I think that analogue holds very well for us.” DARPA’s director, Arati Prabhakar, said in a statement that SCO’s focus on addressing immediate needs adds to a robust research ecosystem that includes both the public and private sectors. “In a world of fast-morphing technologies and diverse threats, no single military capability or tech development strategy is going to ensure our national security,” she said. _[Infantry overhaul: How DARPA’s new experiments could shake up ground warfare]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico SCO’s public emergence comes as the Pentagon continues to look for new ways to adapt more quickly. Last week, the Defense Department announced it would establish a new  Defense Innovation Advisory Board run by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. It also opened an office in Silicon Valley last spring to strengthen relationships with technology companies there, who have historically not collaborated much with the Defense Department.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico SCO was “essentially built around one smart guy” — Roper — who impressed Carter several years ago, the defense secretary said last week while in San Francisco. Carter, then the deputy defense secretary, challenged Roper to tackle problems confronting the Pentagon and he “found solution after solution after solution,” the secretary recalled. “All of our service chiefs, our Joint Chiefs of Staff, love the guy because he’s providing real solutions ~~~~,” Carter said. “So there are ways that you can be an exception to what I know is the rule of the government: [being] ponderous.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The belief, Roper said, is that U.S. troops are bright enough to find new ways to use existing weapons. And some plans are extremely ambitious: One new project not previously reported is called Avatar, and calls for the Pentagon to pair high-tech “fifth-generation” fighter jets like the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with unmanned versions of older jets like the F-16 Fighting Falcon or F/A-18 Hornet, which would be flown without a pilot for the first time. The Avatar effort was previously called Skyborg by SCO and is known as “the Loyal Wingman” concept in the Air Force, Roper said. The program will require unmanned fighters to act with enough autonomy that the pilot in the manned jet doesn’t have to direct them all the time. “There will be a lot of questions on safety, on reliability of the links between the planes,” Roper said. “All of these things have to be resolved. Bringing up that point is exactly what we try to infuse in the folks in our office. If there’s a question where you say, ‘Oh, we can worry about that later…’ Nope, we’re going to worry about that now.” _[Why drones will buzz to the forefront in the new Pentagon budget]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Another early concept is adapting the Navy’s Standard Missile-6 to be able to strike enemy ships. The missiles, filed vertically from the decks of destroyers and cruisers, were originally envisioned to intercept ballistic missiles high in the atmosphere, but are now considered dual-use following a recent experiment by the Navy. The office also has worked on a concept known as Arsenal Plane. It calls for an undisclosed plane to carry a variety of weapons that can be directed by nearby stealth fighters like the F-22. The Pentagon wants to build a prototype next year, and says it could be ready for combat by the 2020s, Roper said. “We don’t have to develop new planes,” Roper said. “We don’t have to develop fundamentally new weapons. But we have to work the integration and the concept of operation. And then you have a completely new capability, but you don’t have to wait long at all.” The office currently has six full-time government employees and about 20 contractors, Roper said. Many details about the organization remain classified, but it receives technical support from several contractors who specialize in part on simulation and modeling, including Modern Technology Solutions Inc., in Alexandria, Va., and Science Applications International Corp. in McLean, Va. The mini-drones were tested over Alaska last year as part of the military exercise Northern Edge, which focuses on training for crises in the Pacific. The program is named after Perdix, a character in Greek mythology who was changed into a partridge by the god Athena. It costs about $20 million, Roper said. The drones are constructed using 3-D printing — important considering the specific size needed to launch them through an aircraft’s flare dispenser and the toughness needed to survive such a violent birth. Roper said SCO has been testing the mini-drones since 2014, but last year’s experiment during Northern Edge showed that they can find each other while airborne and create a swarm. Perdix drones were tested 150 times during the exercise in Alaska, including 72 from fighter jets. They also can be launched from the ground by U.S. troops, either with a slingshot-like launcher or by hurling them. **More military technology stories on Checkpoint:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Watch LOCUST, the Navy’s new prototype launcher to send drones into the sky    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico DARPA’s new experimental sniper bullet can turn in mid-flight    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Watch how DARPA’s new close air support system works on an A-10 attack jet    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Watch LOCUST, the Navy’s prototype launcher to send drones into the sky

Last year, the Navy detailed a concept in which numerous drone boats would swarm a potential adversary, overwhelming it to protect larger vessels carrying American forces. The craft would be enabled by advanced sensors and software that was initially developed by NASA for use on the Mars rover, Navy officials said. _ **[The Navy wants drone boats to overwhelm the enemy]**_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Navy doesn’t want to just use swarm technology at sea, however. The concept also applies in the air, for which the service is developing a launcher that can rapidly fire drones to provide overhead surveillance and launch strikes from numerous locations. The Office of Naval Research just released this video to explain: The drone launcher is known as the Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology program (LOCUST). It fires the drones from tubes and enables information sharing between the drones, allowing them to work together on both offensive and defensive mission, Navy officials said. The launcher and the drones are both small enough for them to be deployed from ships, vehicles, aircraft and larger drones. The Office of Naval Research has been testing the system at numerous locations in the last month using Coyote drones. They have been used in a variety of missions in the past, including information gathering after one of them, for instance, was flown into Hurricane Eduoard last summer.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _ **[Pentagon agency wants drones to hunt in packs, like wolves]**_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) also has been experimenting with swarm technology. The major emphasis of its Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program is finding a way for pilots to operate more than one drone at a time ????along with his aircraft.

F-35’s ability to evade budget cuts illustrates challenge of paring defense spending

At EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — With an ear-ringing roar, the matte-gray fighter jet streaked down Runway 12 and sliced into a cloudless afternoon sky over the Florida Panhandle. To those watching on the ground, the sleek, bat- winged fuselage soon shrank into a speck, and then nothing at all, as Marine Capt. Brendan Walsh arced northward in America’s newest warplane, the F-35 Lightning II. The F-35 has features that make pilots drool. It is shaped to avoid detection by enemy radar. It can accelerate to supersonic speeds. One model can take off and land vertically. Onboard electronic sensors and computers provide a 360-degree view of the battlefield on flat-panel screens, allowing pilots to quickly identify targets and threats. But its greatest strength has nothing to do with those attributes. The Defense Department and Lockheed Martin, the giant contractor hired to design and build the plane, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, have constructed what amounts to a budgetary force field around the nearly $400 billion program. Although it is the costliest weapons system in U.S. history and the single most expensive item in the 2013 Pentagon budget, it will face only a glancing blow from the sequester this year. And as the White House and Congress contemplate future budgets, those pushing for additional cuts may find it difficult to trim more than a fraction of the Pentagon’s proposed fleet, even though the program is years behind schedule and 70 percent over its initial price tag. The reasons for the F-35’s relative immunity are a stark illustration of why it is so difficult to cut the country’s defense spending. Lockheed Martin has spread the work across 45 states — critics call it “political engineering” — which in turn has generated broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Any reduction in the planned U.S. purchase risks antagonizing the eight other nations that have committed to buying the aircraft by increasing their per-plane costs. And senior military leaders warn that the stealthy, technologically sophisticated F-35 is essential to confront Iran, China and other potential adversaries that may employ advanced anti-aircraft defenses. The biggest barrier to cutting the F-35 program, however, is rooted in the way in which it was developed: The fighter jet is being mass-produced and placed in the hands of military aviators such as Walsh, who are not test pilots, while the aircraft remains a work in progress. Millions more lines of software code have to be written, vital parts need to be redesigned, and the plane has yet to complete 80 percent of its required flight tests. By the time all that is finished — in 2017, by the Pentagon’s estimates — it will be too late to pull the plug. The military will own 365 of them. By then, “we’re already pregnant,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, who oversees F-35 development for the Pentagon. When the F-35 finishes testing, “there will be no yes-or-no, up-or-down decision point,” said Pierre Sprey, who was a chief architect of the Air Force’s F-16 Fighting Falcon. “That’s totally deliberate. It was all in the name of ensuring it couldn’t be canceled.” The Pentagon has long permitted equipment to be produced while it is still being tested, with the intent of getting cutting-edge gear to warriors more quickly, but senior military officials said the F-35 takes the approach to new extremes. Doing so has served as more than a hedge against cuts — it has also driven up the overall price. The 65 aircraft that already have been built, and those that will be assembled over the next few years, will require substantial retrofits that could cost as much as $4 billion as problems are uncovered during testing, the officials said. Initial tests already have yielded serious problems that are forcing significant engineering modifications. The entire fleet was grounded earlier this year because of a crack in the fan blade in one jet’s engine. The Marine Corps’ version has been prohibited from its signature maneuver — taking off and landing vertically — because of a design flaw. And the Navy model has not been able to land on an aircraft carrier because its tailhook, an essential feature to alight aboard a ship, needs to be redesigned. The Pentagon’s top weapons tester issued a scathing report on the F-35 this year that questioned the plane’s reliability and warned of a “lack of maturity” in performance. When the F-35 program was first approved by the Pentagon, Lockheed Martin said it could develop and manufacture 2,852 planes for $233 billion. The Pentagon now estimates the total price tag at $397.1 billion. And that is for 409 fewer planes. The overall program is almost four times more costly than any other weapons system under development. Taxpayers have already spent $84 billion on the plane’s design and initial production. By contrast, the production of 18,000 B-24 bombers during World War II cost less than $60 billion, in inflation-adjusted dollars. To the plane’s backers, including senior leaders of the Air Force and Marine Corps, the benefit is worth the cost. Unlike the infantry, which still accepts battlefield casualties as part of war, military aviators have grown accustomed to a different risk calculus since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when U.S. warplanes quickly established air superiority over Iraq with minimal losses: They want to ensure that, whatever the future conflict, their planes are packed with enough offensive and defensive measures to accomplish the mission and avoid getting shot down. “This aircraft reinforces the way Americans go to war. . . .We don’t want to win 51-49. We want to win 99 to nothing,” said Lt. Gen. Frank Gornec, the assistant vice chief of staff of the Air Force. He said he is convinced the F-35 “will become a superstar in the arsenal of the United States.” Many independent defense analysts do not share that conviction. To them, the plane’s political engineering and buy-before-you-fly procurement mask deep problems with performance and affordability. “It was a bait-and-switch operation; we were overpromised benefits and under-promised costs,” said Chuck Spinney, a former Pentagon analyst who gained widespread attention in the 1980s for issuing pointed warnings about the military’s pursuit of unaffordable weapons. “But by the time you realize the numbers don’t add up, you can’t get out of the program.” The F-35 program, which commenced 12 years ago, was intended to be a model of how to build a modern fighter. The same airframe would be used to produce planes for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, with only modest modifications to address service-specific needs, hence the name Joint Strike Fighter. The commonality, proponents argued, would allow the three services to mount more coordinated wartime missions, and, perhaps more important, it would drive down development, assembly and maintenance costs. That was essential because the Pentagon needs a lot of F-35s. It is supposed to replace thousands of legacy aircraft including the F-16, a workhorse of the Air Force fleet, and every fighter jet owned by the Marine Corps. The F-35 was pitched as the answer because it was supposed to be affordable — in the relative terms of fighter jets — and could be acquired in larger quantities than the F-22 Raptor, the Air Force’s new high-performance fighter. Pentagon officials accepted Lockheed’s claim that computer simulations would be able to identify design problems, minimizing the need to make changes once the plane actually took to the sky. That, in turn, led to an aggressive plan to build and test the aircraft simultaneously. Cautioning that all of those assumptions were flawed, Spinney and other defense analysts urged the Pentagon to see the plane in flight before committing to buy it. But senior Defense Department officials in the George W. Bush administration did not heed the warnings. Within months, the program began veering off course. The Air Force, Marines and Navy all sought additional modifications to meet their needs, reducing commonality among the three models. A bigger problem was the fundamental concept of building one plane, with stealth technology, that could fly as far and fast as the Air Force wanted while also being able to land on the Navy’s carriers and take off vertically from Marine amphibious assault ships. Instead of meeting the original plan of being about 70 percent similar, the three versions now are 70 percent distinct, which has increased costs by tens of billions and led to years-long delays. “We have three airplane programs running in parallel,” Bogdan said. “They are very, very different airplanes.” Even with three variants, the plane’s design has forced serious compromises. To remain stealthy, bombs and missiles must be placed inside a weapons bay, which limits the volume of munitions that can be carried. The use of a single engine, required for the Marine version, restricts speed. With an even more complex engineering challenge than initially envisioned, Lockheed and the Pentagon took a hands-off approach to managing the program, according to several people involved in the process. An electrical engineer who worked as a manager at Lockheed’s F-35 program headquarters in Fort Worth beginning in 2001 said the development effort was beset with “tremendous organizational inadequacies” and “schedule and cost expectations that never were achievable.” In his unit, he said, there were no firm development timetables and no budgets. “It was all on autopilot,” he said. “It was doomed from the beginning.” In 2005, the engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns he will risk job opportunities in the close-knit aviation industry, participated in a two-week-long assessment of the program.“There were reds and yellows across the board,” he recalled. But when he briefed his superiors, “nobody was interested,” he said. And when he gave a copy of the assessment to those at the Pentagon office responsible for the plane, he said, “they didn’t want to hear it.” A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the office “didn’t have the capacity or the understanding to manage such a complicated program” at the time. Lockheed executives also make little excuse for those years. “It was a very different program from what we are executing today,” said Steve O’Bryan, Lockheed’s vice president of F-35 business development. With wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, and military budgets growing year over year, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld paid little attention to the program. His successor, Robert M. Gates, took the same approach during his first few years on the job. In 2007, the Defense Department permitted Lockheed to begin producing the fighter — before the first flight tests had even begun. Frank Kendall, who is now the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, has called that decision “acquisition malpractice.” Early tests uncovered flaws unnoticed by the computer simulations. Key engineering tasks, including the vertical takeoff and landing system, were taking much longer to complete. All the while, costs were rising at supersonic speeds. In 2009, Gates grasped the dysfunction. The following year, he withheld $614 million in fees from Lockheed, fired the two-star Marine general in charge of the program and brought in a Navy vice admiral, David Venlet, to clean house. In 2011, Gates placed the Marine plane on probation, warning that it would be killed if problems with its propulsion system were not fixed quickly. Bogdan, who served as Venlet’s deputy until December, when he took charge of the development effort, was astounded by what he found when he delved into the program. “It was an unimaginable mess,” he said. An imposing former test pilot who wears an olive flight suit to his office in Crystal City, Bogdan spent his first two years on the job analyzing virtually every aspect of how the plane is designed and built. He and Venlet adjusted schedules and assumptions, and they implemented changes that brought the Marine version off probation. New goals call for aggressive testing and modifications over the next five years, and the start of full-rate production by 2018. Bogdan thinks the program cannot afford another do-over. “There is no more money and there is no more time,” he said. To stay on track, he has adopted a get-tough approach with Lockheed and Pratt & Whitney, the contractor building the plane’s engine. Instead of allowing Lockheed to manage the development of millions of lines of software code for the plane — one of the most vexing technical challenges — his office, which has now grown to 2,000 people, is taking charge. “We have forced discipline on them,” he said of Lockheed. Until recently, he said, Lockheed’s software developers worked at computers that were not connected to each other. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. Changes imposed by his office have reduced software revision cycles from 27 days to three. Although enormous technical hurdles remain — designing the tailhook on the Navy’s model, for instance, and writing software to instantaneously fuse reams of data from the plane’s electronic sensors — Bogdan said none of that keeps him up at night. His nightmares are all about the cost: what it costs to design and build the plane, but also what it will cost to operate it over the next 50 years. He has pushed Lockheed to pay for all cost overruns — in the past, the government picked up the tab — and he has insisted that the company share in the expense of modifications to planes that are being built during the testing phase. “What I see Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney doing today is behaving as if they are getting ready to sell me the very last F-35 and the very last engine and are trying to squeeze every nickel of that last F-35 and that last engine,” Bogdan said earlier this month during a visit to Australia, which plans to buy 100 F-35s. “I want them both to start behaving like they want to be around for 40 years. I want them to take on some of the risk of this program. I want them to invest in cost reductions. I want them to do the things that will build a better relationship. I’m not getting all that love yet.” Lockheed and Pratt executives insist they are trying to drive down expenses and increase reliability. “We’ve made enormous progress over the past few years,” said Lockheed’s O’Bryan. “When the professionals look at the facts and they talk to the pilots, they see a program that is accelerating with costs that are rapidly decreasing.” O’Bryan said Lockheed and its suppliers are “committed to working in close partnership” with Bogdan’s office. For Bogdan, an even bigger challenge involves the cost of flying and maintaining the F-35. The Pentagon estimates it could reach as much as $1.1 trillion over the life of the plane. Although unknown variables such as the cost of fuel could drive that figure down, Bogdan said the jet has serious sustainability problems. Chief among them are a greater need for maintenance and replacement parts than projected. “If we don’t do things now to change the game, this airplane will be unaffordable to fly,” he said. He is pushing suppliers to make parts more reliable, and he has put Lockheed and Pratt & Whitney on notice that they should not assume they will be selected to fill the operations and maintenance contracts, which could be worth as much as $500 billion. He wants other firms to compete for parts of the work, reasoning that it will bring down costs. To reinforce his seriousness, he has told Lockheed and Pratt not to wait him out. Unlike other senior officers, who change assignments ever few years, he intends to stay for 10 years. “The only way I’m leaving this program,” he said in the interview, “is if I’m fired.” But Bogdan’s leverage is limited. Behind his feisty language lies an inescapable reality: The services don’t want to shrink their orders, and Congress doesn’t want to clip the F-35’s wings. For many legislators, the F-35 is as much about employment as it is about air superiority. Lockheed has repeatedly emphasized to legislators, particularly those who sit on appropriations committees, that the plane supports 133,000 jobs, many of them at 1,300 subcontractors and parts suppliers spread across 45 states. When full-rate production begins, likely in 2018, the company says the employment figure will grow to 260,000. A Web site established by Lockheed for the plane provides a sample letter for constituents to send to lawmakers. “The F-35 program is a win-win proposition for our national security and our nation’s declining manufacturing base,” the letter states. Despite the lobbying, a few members have spoken out. One of them was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Navy pilot. In December 2011, he took to the floor of the Senate to lambaste the development effort. “In a nutshell, the JSF program has been both a scandal and a tragedy,” he said. The following November, the Marines established their first F-35 squadron in Yuma, Ariz. They invited McCain to the inauguration ceremony. “I am — after many years of frustration and setbacks — encouraged that the overall program is moving in the right direction,” McCain said at the event. He said the program was on track “to produce more achievable and predictable outcomes.” For the generals who lead the Marines, the F-35 is a must-win fight. There is no alternative fighter readily available to replace the service’s current jets, which will soon become too obsolete to fly. “It’s essential for us,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, the Corps’ deputy commandant for aviation. “We don’t have another option.” Thus far, there has been little discussion within the Pentagon or on Capitol Hill about whether the Marines, which are organized to travel by sea and fight small wars, require such a sophisticated aircraft. Compared with the Air Force and Navy versions, the Marine variant has the most engineering challenges and the largest price tag. But the Marines, the smallest service, have long wielded disproportionate influence on the Hill and in the Pentagon. “Nobody wants to say no to the Marines,” a senior Army officer said on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the program. “Nobody around here is asking the fundamental question: Why does the Navy’s army need its own air force?” The Pentagon’s latest five-year budget plan, released last year, calls for a smaller volume of annual purchases to save money. Sequestration-related cuts this year also will defer a few more planes. But the overall purchase of 2,443 jets remains unchanged. Though the F-35 is rarely mentioned by those seeking to rein in federal spending on Capitol Hill, sotto voce discussions are beginning within the walls of the Pentagon. Some senior officers, even those who are enamored of the plane, worry that footing the $400 billion tab in an era of declining defense budgets will require too many other sacrifices and trade-offs. “This aircraft does everything better than anything ever flown,” a three-star general said on the condition of anonymity. “But how many can we afford? How many of them do we really need?” Although Air Force and Marine leaders have held fast, an unofficial reexamination is occurring within the Navy, which is not as desperate for the F-35 because it possesses a relatively new fleet of F/A-18 Super Hornets. While toeing a public line of support for the F-35, some Navy experts are looking at whether it makes sense to reduce its planned order and plow some of the savings into high-speed drones that can operate off aircraft carriers, according to senior military officials. Should that occur, or should Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decide to shrink the overall purchase, it could prompt howls from key U.S. allies, including Britain, Italy and Norway, which all have contributed to the development of the aircraft. Their purchase price has been based on a U.S. order of about 2,500 jets. If that number drops, the per-plane cost will rise for the allies, possibly leading them to buy fewer then planned. For some of them, cost increases and delays over the past decade have been significant enough to prompt a reexamination. Australia is deciding whether to halve its 100-plane order and Canada is reconsidering its plan to buy 65. A smaller total purchase, of course, further increases unit costs for the United States, which likely would increase pressure to cut more. Procurement officers have a term for the phenomenon, borrowed from the world of aviation: a death spiral. That’s what happened to the Air Force’s F-22. The original plan, set in 1991, was to buy 750 of them for $132 million apiece. Increased development costs and budget cuts in the 1990s sent that program into a tailspin. The Air Force eventually wound up with just 187 — at a cost of $422 million per plane. That is why Bogdan is pressing Lockheed so aggressively to reduce costs. He knows the F-35 — despite the jobs it fuels, regardless of the needs of the Marines and Air Force — is a giant, unstealthy presence in the federal budget. His best defense against cuts, he figures, involves showing that the long-troubled program can finally meet its targets — and that more reductions will just mean more-expensive aircraft. “We have to understand there are trade-offs every time we cut spending on the F-35,” he said. “And none of them are very good.”

Watch the Pentagon’s new hive-mind-controlled drone swarm in action

The exercise, put on by Naval Air Systems Command and the Pentagon’s five-year-old Strategic Capabilities Office, involved three F/A-18 multi-role fighters dropping 103 of the tiny remote-controlled aircraft — known as Perdix micro-drones — from specially designed canisters affixed under the aircrafts’ fuselages. The test was first covered by CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday.  The drones, instead of individually being given an order, are instead told to conduct broad tasks, such as observing an enemy airfield. The drone swarm then executes the mission, flying and adapting by communicating with one another with little human input. “Due to the complex nature of combat, Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said William Roper, the director of the Strategic Capabilities Office. Perdix drones were first dropped in 2014 from a F-16 fighter over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., according to the fact sheet. After that, they were used during military exercises in Alaska in 2015. Although the Perdix is billed as a surveillance tool, it would take little to imagine the small devices as half-foot-long bombs launched to overwhelm a target by sheer volume or to decimate an enemy airfield or ship without endangering pilots. In the statement, Roper emphasized that human operators will always “be in the loop” when it comes to the Pentagon’s burgeoning autonomous systems such as the Perdix swarms, meaning that an actual person will have the final say on how the drones and other similar equipment is employed. Although the Perdix is part of the Pentagon’s “future battle network,” according to Roper, it is unclear exactly what that means when it comes to how the small devices will be used. With some human input, though, the Perdix is technically semiautonomous. Drones or weapons that can select and engage targets by themselves — something the Perdix might be able to do in the future — are considered fully autonomous.  “This could be because of hacking, enemy behavioral manipulation, unexpected interactions with the environment, or simple malfunctions or software errors,” Scharre wrote. “Moreover, as the complexity of the system increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to verify the system’s behavior under all possible conditions; the number of potential interactions within the system and with its environment is simply too large.”

CICADAs, LOCUSTs and the new innovation of military infestations

One of the highlights of the Pentagon’s first-ever Department of Defense Lab Day in Washington, D.C. on May 14 was the demonstration of new micro aerial vehicles known as CICADAs. These micro-drones, which can be deployed from military aircraft at altitudes close to 50,000 feet and still fit in the palm of your hand, could represent the next big thing in the way wars are waged. Think military infestations rather than military invasions.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The CICADA (which stands for Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft) is relatively cheap, easy to make and totally disposable. Best of all, they’re as hard to destroy as the cicadas in your backyard during summer – in one test scenario in Arizona, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory released these micro- drones 57,600 feet in the air, let them free fall 11 miles in the sky, and then watched as they glided to within 15 feet of their target destination.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “They’ve flown through trees. They’ve hit asphalt runways. They have tumbled in gravel. They’ve had sand in them. They only thing that we found that killed them was desert shrubbery,” Daniel Edwards, an aerospace engineer at the Naval Research Laboratory, said at the DoD Lab Day event.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For the foreseeable future, most of the work of these CICADAs will be related to surveillance and intelligence-gathering, just as the Black Hornet mini helicopter drones were used by the British Army in Afghanistan to detect Taliban fighting units. Some of the scenarios outlined by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory include dropping CICADA drones tens of thousands of feet above enemy lines, where they can be used to eavesdrop on troop movements once they are equipped with microphones. At the very least, they might provide a clue about traffic or activity at checkpoints on roads leading into and out of difficult terrain. If you add magnetic sensors, they might even be able to pick up the movement of submarines below the water’s surface.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But here’s another thing – the official description of these CICADAs is “an unmanned glider, nearly undetectable, that delivers payloads to precise waypoints.” The word that should have sparked your attention, of course, is “payloads.” Yes, imagine dropping these CICADAs out over enemy territory, each of them armed with a small micro-payload of death. Enemy radars won’t be able to pick them up, and even if you look up into the sky, you’ll just see what appears to be a small bird or insect flying.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The fascinating part of the CICADA program is how these micro drones could eventually be used as part of a “robotic swarm” to overwhelm an adversary. An enemy may be able to defend against several of these drones, but just try to defend against a giant swarm of them launched out of the back of a plane. A separate but related U.S. Navy experiment carried out as part of the SWARM program at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) showcased the potential effectiveness of the new LOCUST (Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology) program. Imagine 30 micro aerial vehicles launched all at once to carry out strikes on enemy territory.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico  And, in fact, there’s a growing literature about so-called “robotic swarms” — which are essentially drones or bots that can be programmed to behave intelligently during combat. And best of all, these bots and drones can form “swarms” without the need for humans to control them. In another related experiment, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory showed how a group of 13 “swarm boats” — all of them without requiring a human drone operator — could be used to protect a high-value naval vessel.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico  And it doesn’t stop there. Imagine giant “aircraft carriers in the sky,” capable of launching whole fleets of mini-drones at one time. Or, better yet, how about underwater aircraft carriers? As Peter W. Singer, an expert on drones and warfare, pointed out about recent DARPA initiatives, “If you are looking at other places where you might see aircraft carriers, don’t look up in the air, look under the water.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Yes, that’s right — underwater aircraft carriers for drones. In yet another experiment, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory showed that it was possible to release a drone from a submerged submarine with the robotic drone shot out of a Tomahawk missile tube. As the drone emerges from the tube, its wings unfold before it speeds off to its destination.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Mind blown. What makes micro aerial vehicles such as the CICADA so attractive, of course, is that they’re cheap to make and simple to operate. By the estimates of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, a single prototype for a CICADA can be produced for less than $1,000. And as more uses are found for these micro-drones, it’s easy to see the price falling further. One scenario being bandied about is using these CICADAS to monitor extreme weather situations, such as tornadoes. Within a few years, as more applications are discovered, that price might drop to as low as $250. In terms of simplicity, they’re basically a “piece of cardboard with a circuit board.” They’re not sophisticated drones that you have to learn how to pilot. You just load them up in a plane, fly really high, and drop them out the back end of a plane. That’s huge, if you take into account the latest report from the GAO, which suggests that there just aren’t enough drone pilots out there to keep up with the military’s use of drones.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Cheap, simple, disposable and without the need for a human operator — it’s no wonder, then, that the military is so interested in the potential applications of these micro CICADA drones. Remember when the future of warfare was bigger — bigger missile payloads, bigger tanks and bigger warplanes? In an era of asymmetric warfare, tiny innovations such as the CICADA are what might be needed to take the fight to the enemy in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine if the U.S. military had been able to drop off hundreds of these CICADAs over mountainous areas of Afghanistan or Pakistan in the search for Osama bin Laden. Forget “boots on the ground,” “insect wings in the sky” might be a better metaphor. If giant swarms of insect-like drones can save the lives of U.S. soldiers abroad, then let the CICADA infestation begin.

The next 25 years in military drone technology, in 1 chart

With so much attention being devoted to commercial drones these days, it's easy to forget that the military's long-term strategy for unmanned systems is still a work in progress. A lot of the funding for drone operations comes from the special budget for the war in Afghanistan — and as the drawdown begins, that money is going to dry up.  The near-term will mostly involve making sure the technology works at all. As we move into the next decade, that will give way to exploiting the real potential of unmanned systems. That's when a lot of the changes to doctrine and strategy will begin to take effect. Advances in commercial technology will help speed that process. So will research being done by the Pentagon itself. But the biggest challenges aren't necessarily technical. Take how humans will be expected to interact with their machines in the field. While it's tempting to think about whole fleets of unmanned ships steaming across the ocean as one, the reality is that people are going to be right alongside them for the foreseeable future. There may be fewer humans than drones in a unit. But you might have, for instance, a human pilot being aided by a set of unmanned wingmen in the air. The military already has a name for this: Manned-Unmanned System Teaming, or MUM-T. Figuring out how much interaction will be needed is going to be an ongoing process. Another problem strategists are predicting is the information overload that comes along with vast amounts of data. Drones right now are great at feeding live images and video back to their operators, but that creates obstacles of their own: The more unmanned systems the Pentagon operates, the more bandwidth they require, and the more money the Defense Department has to spend on commercial satellite contracts to carry those transmissions. What's more, sending pictures back for people to look at is an inherently inefficient way of doing business. It would be much better, the Pentagon reasons, if the drone were smart enough to ping somebody only when it recognized an object of interest. That would cut down on the amount of data flowing back and forth, making it easier to load the system with more drones and freeing up people to do other things. Grappling with that will mean having to sort out what we mean by "automation" — when human pilots are no longer directly controlling the drones remotely, as they do today. There are two ways to think about that: execution and performance. "The difference between execution and performance," the report notes, "is that the former simply executes a preprogrammed plan whereas performance is associated with mission outcomes that can vary even during a mission and require deviation from preprogrammed tasks." It takes a smart machine to recognize and respond to changing conditions. Part of the solution lies in building drones — and equipping them — in adaptable ways. Weapons of the future won't be repurposed from helicopters but designed specifically for drone fleets themselves. These drone-specific munitions might be capable of different yields that can be adjusted before use; they might be ultra lightweight; or they be able to adjust their own trajectory in mid-flight. Even further down the road — into the 2020s and 2030s — the military expects to learn more about nanoparticles and their potential for creating much larger explosions than today's ordnance. The Air Force is already experimenting with an aluminum powder that may prove promising, according to the report.

Video: The Navy wants drone boats to overwhelm the enemy

The bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 by al-Qaeda fighters killed 17 American sailors and underscored the difficulty of protecting U.S. Navy vessels from terrorist attacks. The service is now working on new technology that may help, however: drone boats that can swarm an incoming craft and destroy it if it doesn’t turn away. The Office of Naval Research released information about the technology over the weekend, saying the Navy is “unleashing a new era in ship protection.” The swarms are designed to give extra protection to Marines and sailors who are on board larger ships. The drone boats are enabled by advanced sensors and software that was initially developed by NASA for use on the Mars rover, Navy officials said. “When we look at autonomous swarm, we’re not talking about a single vessel. We’re talking about multiple, multiple vessels that can be in a defensive posture and then — when called upon — can become offensive, surround an adversary and let them know that you are coming no closer to our ship,” Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder said in a new video outlining the technology. “But of course, if an adversary then decides to come closer we can give them another warning, or potentially we can say, ‘You’ve come to close. We’re now going to destroy your vessel.’ ” The computers on board can be added to nearly any boat, allowing the system to operate autonomously, Navy officials said. Here’s a .gif showing a computer model of a swarm: The Navy demonstrated the swarm boats in a project on the James River, near Fort Eustis in Virginia, in August. Drone boats escorted a vessel, with some of them breaking off to stop another ship. Navy officials hope to be able to begin operational testing for the program within a year.

Video: New Navy laser can shoot down drones, is headed for the Persian Gulf

The Web and the defense community are abuzz over a video of the U.S. Navy’s new laser weapon system (LaWs), which shows a destroyer-mounted laser dramatically shooting a drone out of the sky. This type of laser, which Admiral Jonathan Greenert debuted during the Navy’s annual conference in D.C. today, has been heralded by a congressional report as a “game changer ... comparable to the advent of shipboard missiles in the 1950s.” Per the Navy’s Office of Information, it is hoped that the system will work especially well against small boats and aerial targets. The technology also has big cost implications, Bloomberg reports: Each shot is estimated to cost about $1, versus the much higher price tag for individual missiles.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But the most interesting thing about the new system might be its next port of call. Next year, the system is headed for the Persian Gulf with the USS Ponce, a transport ship recently retrofitted as a staging base. And as Spencer Ackerman points out at Wired, that proximity to Iran doesn’t seem like coincidence:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In January 2012, Gen. Ataollah Salehi demanded that a U.S. carrier and its accompanying ships stay out of the Gulf or risk unspoken consequences. After the U.S. refused — the Navy has committed to keeping the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf open, and operates a major base in Bahrain — Iran beefed up its retaliation capabilities, adding more accurate short-range missiles, honing its “swarm” operations with armed patrol boats and vowing reprisals for any strike on the country’s nuclear facilities.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The latest provocation came last November, when Iran shot down an unarmed U.S. drone over the Persian Gulf.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In light of those incidents, it’s hard to see the laser system — and its accompanying media fanfare — as anything but a tacit warning. Especially when you have Rear Adm. Thomas Eccles, a top Navy engineer, saying things like this:

Despite Pentagon spending cap, projects such as Growler jet get another chance at funding

It wasn’t looking good for the Growlers. The Boeing-made fighter jets, used to jam enemy radar, were left out of the Pentagon’s budget for next year. And with spending strictly limited by a budget cap, the plane seemed headed for extinction. But in reality, the Growlers aren’t dead yet. Like dozens of other programs, the EA-18G Airborne Electric Attack Aircraft, as they’re officially known, have ended up on something called the “unfunded priorities list,” an inventory of what the Pentagon would like to buy if it had several extra billion dollars to spend. Securing a spot atop the Navy’s list has given Boeing hope, and the company has launched an aggressive lobbying campaign, in the media and on Capitol Hill, where it has urged lawmakers to come up with $2.1 billion for the 22 airplanes the Navy has said it would like to buy. As Congress begins to wade through the Pentagon’s budget this week, deciding what stays and what goes, lawmakers will face a temptation that it has not seen in the past few years: robust wish lists, loaded with all sorts of shiny, new things they supposedly cannot afford to buy. Former defense secretary Robert Gates had all but banned the lists, which allow the services to bypass the secretary’s office and go directly to Congress. But now, in an election year, they are back — resurrected by a member of Congress — stark reminders of how even in an era of tightened budgets, defense spending exerts a powerful pull. Critics say dangling page upon page of ships, aircraft and training programs before Congress can act as a gateway to the kind of out-of-control spending that lawmakers have vowed to curtail. If the items were such a priority — or a “requirement,” as they are sometimes called — then they would have been funded in the first place, they say. Or put another way, said American University’s Gordon Adams, an expert on defense spending, they are like telling a 4-year-old he absolutely can’t have a lollipop and then asking: But if you could have a lollipop, what flavor would you want? “The services game the system with the expectation that there will be more money,” Adams said. “So they don’t make the hard choices. Nothing has been done to truly suppress the appetite of the services. . . . It’s an undisciplined and chaotic process right now.” For the second year in a row, the base defense budget is held under a strict budget cap, $496 billion, that is supposed to force Congress and the Pentagon to make tough choices about what to fund. That figure is several billion dollars lower than just a few years ago. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, requested the supplemental lists earlier this year, saying that “defense funding is substantially underfunded to meet national security requirements.” He wanted his fellow members to see what options were available as they begin marking up the budget starting Wednesday. “You can’t really understand the trade-offs until you see what landed on the cutting-room floor,” said Claude Chafin, a spokesman for the committee. Budget experts say that if Congress wants to give in to the temptation of the list, it has a mechanism for freeing up cash to buy things: The Overseas Contingency Operations fund, which pays for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, can be used as a buffer. Even though the wars have wound down, the war fund has remained robust. Last year, it hit about $85 billion, nearly $6 billion more than the Pentagon asked for. And Congress has used that additional money to make room for items in its base budget, said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He estimated that the Defense Department last year moved $20 billion worth of expenditures from its base budget to the war fund, and then Congress shuffled over $10 billion more. That freed up $30 billion in buying power for the base budget. “It’s a big shell game, but Congress wrote this loophole into the law and both Congress and the Pentagon have shown they are willing to use it,” he said. This year, the war-funding budget has not been set yet. But the Obama administration has put in a placeholder for about $80 billion. Boeing says it does not know where Congress would get the money to pay for the Growlers — only that it should come up with the funds somehow. The planes serve a crucial function, company officials say, jamming enemy radars so that U.S. planes can attack without being detected. In lobbying for its planes, Boeing has taken aim at Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II, the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft that has become the most expense weapons system in the Pentagon’s history and is eating up much defense spending. Boeing says that only the Growler can provide true “stealth,” because it can help planes fly undetected across the electromagnetic spectrum. And as radar detection becomes more sophisticated and prevalent, company officials say, the Growlers are vital components of air combat. “It’s become increasingly important for the U.S. and its allies to be able to control and dominate the radio frequency waves if you’re going to protect your troops and win a fight,” said Mike Gibbons, a Boeing vice president. “There is no other asset like it.” The company has lined up support in Congress, including Sen. Claire McCaskill (D), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. She represents Missouri, the state where the Growlers are manufactured, but said her support has nothing to do with parochial interests. The need for what is called electronic attack “is going to explode,” she said during a recent congressional hearing. “And I just can’t imagine this isn’t going to be one of our highest priorities in terms of our readiness and capability for decades to come, because of the potential that’s there.” Lockheed has pushed back against accusations that its aircraft can be outperformed in any aspect, saying in a statement that the “package of capabilities in the F-35 is unprecedented in military aviation. Extensive analysis and flight test of the survivability of the F-35 with its combination of stealth, advanced sensors, data fusion, sophisticated countermeasures, and electronic attack demonstrate conclusively its advantages over earlier generation aircraft.” The Bethesda-based company also has support in Congress, including more than 100 members who wrote to McKeon this month, urging his committee to restore funding for the eight F-35s that were left out of President Obama’s budget request because of the spending cuts known as sequestration. While not mentioning the Growler, the letter lauded the F-35’s “unmatched stealth” as a key part in “achieving air superiority in future surface-to-air and air-to-air” fights. Boeing says that if its request goes unfunded this year, it will not be able to sustain production and will have to shut down the entire line, which includes the F/A-18 Hornet, the primary fighter plane for the Navy. That would mean if the Pentagon decided it did want more Growlers in years to come, they would not be available. In an interview, Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said funding the full request “is going to be extremely difficult to accomplish in the budget environment.” But he said he does think that Congress “can come up with a number to keep the line alive.” Related stories: Navy to award contract for Marine One helicopter despite previous failure Air Force plan to get rid of A-10s runs into opposition With budget tightening, disputes over federal contracts increase

Air Force struggles to keep pace with explosion in the use of combat drones

CREECH AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — Under a searing desert sun, a man in silhouette is pacing sentry-like around a cluster of buildings, a dark object slung over his shoulder. “Yeah, it looks like a gun,” says an American drone pilot, peering into a gray-tone screen in a darkened, distant trailer. The pilot, who Air Force officials asked be identified only as Capt. Bert, is talking to ground headquarters through a headset. He then counts off the half-minute until one of the drone’s Hellfire missiles strikes its target, throwing the man to the ground with a flash of light. The ground controller’s voice comes back in a static burst. “ _Confirmed: enemy killed in action.”_ But this target is not a suspected militant on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan. He’s a U.S. airman, role-playing in the desert outside Las Vegas, and the missile strike was a training simulation at the Nevada air base that coordinates U.S. drone flight overseas. Air Force officials hope to provide more training missions like this for drone operators as the U.S. military cuts back the pace of drone operations overseas. They say increased training for new and existing pilots, along with steps to improve pilot recruitment and retention, is crucial to maintaining the effectiveness of an overstressed force and would help the Air Force meet future demand for remotely piloted flight. The plan to reduce drone capacity to a maximum of 60 simultaneous combat flights by this fall, which the Air Force made public this spring, is the centerpiece of an effort to make the pace of Air Force drone operations more sustainable, and to help heal the stresses caused by a decade of frenetic expansion. But with renewed operations in Iraq against the Islamic State, a new campaign of strikes against the group in Syria and continued operations in Afghanistan, the demand for unmanned aircraft’s surveillance and combat powers is higher than ever. Col. James “Cliffy” Cluff, the top Air Force commander for remotely piloted aircraft, said the service had expected demand for drone flights to fall off as the United States wrapped up its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That plan “was overcome by the enemy,” he told reporters in a rare media visit to Creech Air Force Base, where Cluff commands 3,000 pilots and support personnel. Since last summer’s dramatic advances by Islamic State militants, U.S. aircraft have conducted 3,600 strikes in Iraq and Syria, many of them conducted by unmanned planes. The remotely piloted aircraft program burst into action in the decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2001, the Air Force was only capable of keeping two drones flying combat missions at a time. Behind every drone in the air conducting a combat air patrol, there are hundreds of personnel required to maintain active and reserve aircraft and amass intelligence and even special teams deployed overseas dedicated to takeoff and landing of aircraft. By 2010, during President Obama’s surge of troops to Afghanistan, the program’s flight capacity had reached 39. It peaked at 65 in 2014. The growth has complicated challenges the Air Force has faced in fielding and retaining pilots for the program, which has often been seen by pilots as an unattractive alternative to piloting manned aircraft. Today, the Air Force needs to produce 300 new drone pilots a year. Because of recruitment and training constraints, it is only producing 180.The Air Force also loses 240 drone pilots each year as airmen return to other duties or they leave the service altogether. The 500 pilots and 500 sensor operators at Creech, nestled among bare hillsides an hour’s drive from Las Vegas, have pushed themselves hard in recent years to keep pace with the demands of overseas operations. While they typically work shifts of at least eight flight hours, five days on and then two to three days off, they are often called in for a sixth consecutive day because of personnel shortages. The strains of that pace are “why we’re attacking the manning problem today.” As commander of Creech, Cluff is in the odd position of touting the effectiveness of the skills of the airmen of his 432nd Wing and 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing and their arsenal of more than 130 Predator, Reaper and Sentinel aircraft while also pushing for recognition that the pace of their operations must be eased. Earlier this year, the Air Force announced plans to address gaps in drone pilots, including larger retention bonuses and greater use of reservists, National Guard personnel and contractors. A reduction in U.S. drone flights comes as other nations seek to accelerate their own unmanned flight programs, which has the potential to ease the future burden to U.S. operations. The United States is also moving to allow the sale of lethal American drone technology to certain allies. Kelley Sayler, an associate fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said the reduction in flight capacity would “necessarily degrade” U.S. intelligence capabilities. In the long run, she said, the Air Force must increase promotions and other opportunities available to drone pilots and consider making the job accessible to enlisted personnel or others with a lesser level of training. “If the Air Force simply maintains its current course, we’re likely to see continued problems with retention, which could in turn result in further reductions in [flight capacity] and negatively impact future military operations,” she said. The job is made personal for Shantae, a sensor operator who like other personnel asked to be identified only by her rank and first name. The daughter of an active duty Marine, the senior airman takes pride in a mission she sees as primarily about keeping American personnel safe overseas. Air Force officials said the vast majority of unmanned flight hours are dedicated to surveillance, including watching over American troops as they conduct operations overseas. But she acknowledged that events on the battlefield sometimes “weigh heavy on you.” The flight demands are made more striking by the fact that drone operators, like a small number of U.S. military personnel stationed in the United States, are “deployed in place.” While they may take part in combat operations during the day, most airmen get into their cars after their shifts conclude and make the 50-minute drive back to Las Vegas, with its lights and revelry. “Every single day this base is at war,” Cluff said. While the dissonance of remote warfare is real, a 2012 survey showed that what drone operators struggled with the most were familiar challenges: the demands of shift work, long hours, lack of sleep and inadequate staffing. To address both kinds of stress, in 2011 the base stood up a “human performance team” including experts in air physiology, psychology and flight medicine, and chaplains, all of whom have top-level security clearances. The Air Force is now trying to replicate the team elsewhere, officials at the base said. In 2014 alone, officials at the base said, they made 13 “suicide saves,” or interventions with service members who were contemplating suicide. The suicide rate is no higher among drone personnel than other Air Force personnel. While in other parts of the Air Force medical personnel might focus on training pilots on coping with high altitudes, those who operate unmanned aircraft must instead find ways to counteract the fatigue associated with long shifts sitting in trailers, their eyes glued to screens. Maj. Maria Elena Gomez-Mejia, who focuses on operational physiology, said many airmen struggled to adjust to regular changing work schedules that could keep them at Creech all or part of the night. Over time, Air Force officials also hope to upgrade equipment in ways that will lessen the toll of long pilot hours. Now, pilots and their sensor operators must contend with a crowded array of 14 different screens, which provide information on everything from the aircraft’s position and course to area topography. To communicate with personnel on the ground or in the air, they can use radio, online chat or phone. The cluttered arrangement has not changed significantly in 15 years, Col. Matthew Finnegan said. A next-generation cockpit now under development will merge those screens and streamline communications.

Mr. Obama’s defense budget reflects a new age of military deterrence

JUST A few years ago, in the Obama administration’s fiscal 2013 defense budget summary, the word “Russia” was mentioned briefly in the context of the new strategic arms treaty. By contrast, in the fiscal 2017 summary, President Obama proposes spending increases for “countering Russian aggression,” including the quadrupling, to more than $3 billion, of funds for deploying a persistent Army brigade in central and eastern Europe, with training and prepositioning of combat gear. The shift is late, and the funding only a down payment. But the recognition that Russia has evolved from hoped-for partner to serious threat is welcome. The intent of the increased spending is to reassure allies made nervous in the face of Russia’s new aggressiveness and “send a strong message of deterrence.” Russia and its militia proxies are occupying parts of three former Soviet republics — Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine — and its military has taken the initiative in Syria, propping up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Across Europe the Russians are waging a nasty information war, using overt and covert methods to undermine NATO and the European Union. Many Western officials believe that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is deliberately exacerbating the refugee crisis that threatens European unity, a tactic they refer to as the “weaponization of migration.” Meanwhile, while the U.S. military concentrated on counterinsurgency warfare during the past decade, Russia was making impressive advances in electronic warfare and other military technologies. Like China, Russia has a smaller defense budget than that of the United States but has been sinking resources into weapons systems that are “asymmetric,” meaning that a relatively small investment can undermine a formidable conventional U.S. capability. Russia, for example, has reportedly developed a new unmanned nuclear-capable underwater drone, while China is improving its anti-satellite capability. Both have leapfrogged technology hurdles, in some cases by stealing blueprints from the United States. How to respond? Obama’s budget doubles Air Force offensive cyber-operations from $12.8 billion to $25 billion, according to Defense One. The budget contains money for research and development on railguns and lasers, swarming autonomous vehicles, guided munitions, electronic warfare and more technology wonders that remain in classified budgets. While Western allies must continue the fight against the Islamic State and other forces of instability, they also must recognize that, through no choice of their own, a new age of deterrence has dawned. The United States must strive to hold on to technological superiority and make clear to Russia that further aggression would impose an unacceptable cost. **Read more about this topic:** The Post’s View: Playing politics with defense spending E.J. Dionne Jr.: Obama’s budget challenges Republicans to spend smartly Michèle Flournoy and Eric Edelman: Cuts to defense spending are hurting our national security The Post’s View: Russia’s new underwater nuclear drone should raise alarm bells David Ignatius: The next president will face tricky military questions

U.S. military drone surveillance is expanding to hot spots beyond declared combat zones

The steel-gray U.S. Air Force Predator drone plunged from the sky, shattering on mountainous terrain near the Iraq-Turkey border. For Kurdish guerrillas hiding nearby, it was an unexpected gift from the propaganda gods. Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, filmed the charred wreckage on Sept. 18 and posted a video on YouTube. A narrator bragged unconvincingly that the group had shot down the drone. But for anyone who might doubt that the flying robot was really American, the video zoomed in on mangled parts stamped in English and bearing the label of the manufacturer, San Diego-based General Atomics. For a brief moment, the crash drew back the curtain on Operation Nomad Shadow, a secretive U.S. military surveillance program. Since November 2011, the U.S. Air Force has been flying unarmed drones from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey in an attempt to suppress a long-simmering regional conflict. The camera-equipped Predators hover above the rugged border with Iraq and beam high-resolution imagery to the Turkish armed forces, helping them pursue PKK rebels as they slip back and forth across the mountains. As the Obama administration dials back the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. military is shifting its huge fleet of unmanned aircraft to other hot spots around the world. This next phase of drone warfare is focused more on spying than killing and will extend the Pentagon’s robust surveillance networks far beyond traditional, declared combat zones. Over the past decade, the Pentagon has amassed more than 400 Predators, Reapers, Hunters, Gray Eagles and other high-altitude drones that have revolutionized counterterrorism operations. Some of the unmanned aircraft will return home with U.S. troops when they leave Afghanistan. But many of the drones will redeploy to fresh frontiers, where they will spy on a melange of armed groups, drug runners, pirates and other targets that worry U.S. officials. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the U.S. Air Force has drone hubs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to conduct reconnaissance over the Persian Gulf. Twice since November, Iran has scrambled fighter jets to approach or fire on U.S. Predator drones that edged close to Iranian airspace. In Africa, the U.S. Air Force began flying unarmed drones over the Sahara five months ago to track al-Qaeda fighters and rebels in northern Mali. The Pentagon has also set up drone bases in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Seychelles. Even so, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa told Congress in February that he needed a 15-fold increase in surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence- gathering on the continent. In an April speech, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said the Pentagon is planning for the first time to send Reaper drones — a bigger, faster version of the Predator — to parts of Asia other than Afghanistan. He did not give details. A Defense Department spokeswoman said the military “hasn’t made any final decisions yet” but is “committed to increasing” its surveillance in Asia and the Pacific. In South and Central America, U.S. military commanders have long pined for drones to aid counternarcotics operations. “Surveillance drones could really help us out and really take the heat and wear and tear off of some of our manned aviation assets,” Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, chief of the U.S. Southern Command, said in March. One possible destination for more U.S. drones is Colombia. Last year, Colombian armed forces killed 32 “high-value narco-terrorists” after the U.S. military helped pinpoint the targets’ whereabouts with manned surveillance aircraft and other equipment, according to Jose A. Ruiz, a Southern Command spokesman. The U.S. military has occasionally operated small drones — four-foot-long ScanEagles, which are launched by a catapult — in Colombia. But with larger drones such as Predators and Reapers, U.S. forces could greatly expand the range and duration of their airborne searches for drug smugglers. In the fall of 2011, four disassembled Predator drones arrived in crates at Incirlik Air Base in southern Anatolia, a joint U.S.-Turkish military installation. The drones came from Iraq, where for the previous four years they had been devoted to surveilling that country’s northern mountains. Along with manned U.S. aircraft, the Predators tracked the movements of PKK fighters, sharing video feeds and other intelligence with the Turkish armed forces. The Kurdish group has long fought to create an autonomous enclave in Turkey, launching cross-border attacks from its hideouts in northern Iraq. Turkey has responded with airstrikes and artillery attacks but has also sent ground troops into Iraq, further destabilizing an already volatile area. The Turkish and U.S. governments both classify the PKK as a terrorist group. Turkey’s leaders had feared that U.S. cooperation against the PKK would wither after the Americans left Iraq. So they invited them to re-base the drones on Turkish soil and continue the spying mission from there. Neither side has been eager to publicize the arrangement. The Obama administration has imposed a broad cone of silence on its drone programs worldwide. Pentagon officials declined interview requests about Operation Nomad Shadow. The Turkish government has acknowledged the presence of Predators on its territory, but the robotic planes are a sensitive subject. A global survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center found that 82 percent of Turks disapprove of the Obama administration’s international campaign of drone attacks against extremists. Officials with the Turkish Embassy in Washington declined to comment for this report. The drones occupy a relatively tiny corner of the sprawling base at Incirlik, according to interviews with other officials and public documents that shed light on Nomad Shadow. The operation is staffed by about three dozen personnel from the U.S. Air Force’s 414th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron and private contractor Battlespace Flight Services. The drones, which began flying in November 2011, are sheltered in an unobtrusive hangar converted from an abandoned “hush house,” a jet-engine testing facility outfitted with noise suppression equipment. “It was tight, but we could fit four aircraft inside the hangar and close the doors,” said a former Air Force official involved in Nomad Shadow who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation. For most of their time aloft, the remote-control Predators are flown via satellite link by pilots and sensor operators stationed about 6,000 miles away, at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. While in Turkish airspace, the drones cannot spy and must turn off their high-tech cameras and sensors, according to rules set by the Turkish government. It takes the sluggish Predators, with a maximum air speed of 135 mph, about five hours to reach the Iraqi border. The Iraqi government permits the overflights. Once in Iraq, the Predators usually fly a rectangular route known as “the box” for up to 12 hours each mission as they beam video and other intelligence to Missouri. U.S. analysts view and evaluate the footage before transmitting it to a joint U.S.-Turkish intelligence “fusion cell” in Ankara, the capital. There’s usually a built-in delay of at least 15 to 20 minutes. That would give a drone enough time to leave the vicinity if Turkish authorities decided to launch artillery rounds or airstrikes against detected PKK targets, the former Air Force official said. From the outset, some U.S. officials have worried about the potential for botched incidents. In December 2011, Turkish jets bombed a caravan of suspected PKK fighters crossing from Iraq into Turkey, killing 34 people. The victims were smugglers, however, not terrorists — a blunder that ignited protests across Turkey. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that American drone operators had alerted the Turkish military after a Predator spotted the suspicious caravan. Rather than ask for a closer look, Turkish officials waved off the drone and launched the attack soon after, the paper said. Turkey’s leaders denied the report, saying they decided to attack based on their own intelligence. The incident exacerbated simmering frustrations among officials in Ankara and Washington. The Turkish government has long pressed the Obama administration to devote more flight hours to the operation and to sell Turkey a fleet of armed Reaper drones. But U.S. officials and lawmakers have resisted both requests. The Pentagon has expressed concern that the Turkish military wants the fruits of the drone surveillance but has been unwilling to consult with Americans on the best ways to exploit it. “There have been a lot of U.S. attempts to help the Turks get better at fusing the intelligence with an operation,” said a former U.S. defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a candid assessment. At the same time, the former U.S. official called Nomad Shadow an overall success. The constant stream of surveillance footage has prevented PKK attacks, he said, and has enabled the Turkish military to carry out more- limited, precise counterterrorism operations instead of sending large numbers of troops into northern Iraq. “It’s been extremely effective in preventing cross-border operations by the Turks,” the former official said. On Sept. 17, 2012, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Ankara to see Gen. Necdet Özel, chief of the general staff of the Turkish armed forces. As other Turkish officials had done in previous talks, Özel pressed Dempsey for more help against the PKK, including more drone flights, according to Turkish media accounts of the meeting. The next day, in a fit of unlucky timing, a Predator on a routine patrol experienced a sudden and complete loss of power. Drone operators at Whiteman Air Force Base could not communicate with or control the aircraft. The drone nose-dived, dropping 11,000 feet in about four minutes before crashing into an uninhabited region, according to a U.S. Air Force accident investigation report obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act. Before releasing the report, the Air Force redacted all geographic references to the location of the crash or where the drone was based. But parts of the report contain clues that make clear that the drone was on a Nomad Shadow mission in northern Iraq. Transcripts of interviews with the drone’s ground crew mention that they were deployed to Incirlik with the 414th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron. Another document identified the lost aircraft as NOMAD 01. But the strongest evidence can be found in an appendix to the report with photographs of the accident site. The images are outtakes from the propaganda video that the PKK posted on YouTube the day after the crash. The photos show several damaged Predator pieces. U.S. military censors carefully blocked out the faces of guerrillas posing with the wreckage.

Book review: “Sting of the Drone,” by Richard A. Clarke

In the decade I have been covering terrorism, the plot that seemed to inspire the most derision was one that involved some model airplanes and a Northeastern University graduate named Rezwan Ferdaus. Ferdaus planned to attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol with radio-controlled planes filled with C-4 explosives. The FBI arrested him before any of his flights got off the ground, and in 2012 he pleaded guilty to two terrorism charges. In the end, he was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison. The joke making the rounds at the time was that the only things the tiny model planes could have destroyed were tiny models of the Pentagon and the Capitol. But terrorism expert Richard Clarke, in his latest novel, “Sting of the Drone,” will make naysayers reassess the model-plane attack. “At first it seemed like the B-52 was some distance away,” Clarke writes, as terrorists begin to take their revenge on the people involved with the drone program in the United States. “But her brain quickly flashed to the conclusion that it was just outside the window, a miniature B-52. In the nanosecond that her conscious mind understood what was happening, she saw a metal rod extending from the nose of the aircraft smash through the floor-to-ceiling glass window. As glass crashed into her suite, the B-52 erupted into a fireball that chased the glass inside, flash-burning everything in the room.” “Sting of the Drone” explores a premise that members of the intelligence community have been kicking around for years: What would happen if the targets on the receiving end of a killer drone decided to strike back? “Flies can be swatted. Men can be killed,” a powerful tribal leader tells a terrorist plotter named Ghazi, who lost his father in a drone attack. “These drones can be stopped. Ghazi, I want you to do this. You will understand how and I will give you all that you need.” Ghazi manages to assemble a terrorist dream team that includes not just a Pakistani clan that lives under the constant threat of drones in the tribal area between Pakistan and Afghanistan (a thinly veiled version of the Haqqani network), but also two Ukrainian hackers and various al-Qaeda sympathizers already living in the United States. Ghazi’s plot: to hack into the guidance systems of the Predator drones and turn them against the very people who fly them. The premise is not so far-fetched: Iran claims that it captured a CIA stealth drone in 2011 by spoofing the GPS signals it was receiving. Iranian pilots were able to land it safely in Iran. Clearly, Clarke is borrowing from real life. In fact, as you read “Sting of the Drone” you get the sense that it isn’t fiction at all. Clarke has written a classic in the genre of what is known as insider fiction — a novel or, more often, a thriller inspired by real episodes to which government officials were privvy when they were working their day jobs. Former CIA case officer Robert Baer (on whom the film “Syriana” is based) is probably the best known in this genre. He tried his hand at fiction in 2006 with a book about an alternate 9/11 scenario called “Blow the House Down.” Three years later, Nicolle Wallace, formerly of the George W. Bush White House and Sen. John McCain’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, wrote “Eighteen Acres,” about the first female president. Those fiction efforts — and a roster of titles from FBI agents turned novelists — have had little impact on the American literary canon. Rather, these books are successful when readers are left asking, “Could this really happen?” Clarke’s book, for its part, reads like a typical fast-paced thriller: It switches back and forth between discussions at the White House and terrorist meetings in the desert, and captures the banter between military officials and bureaucrats at the Creech Air Force base outside Las Vegas, where the drone pilots are based. The jump-cuts will feel familiar to anyone who buys Bond-like books at the airport. But where “Sting of the Drone” stands above the rest, and what makes it important for those who have a tendency to shy away from this genre, is in its level of detail. In Clarke’s hands, readers are taken through the entire bureaucratic process that governs the drone program. He writes about secure conference calls by a Kill Committee, in which officials from the Defense, State and Justice departments discuss targets and weigh the pros and cons of pulling the trigger. (We know that the Obama administration uses a version of this committee, and we may learn more about the legal justification of targeted killing soon, as the administration just announced that it will comply with a court order to release a crucial memo related to the operations.) Clarke writes about mistakes, judgment calls and the terrorists’ adaptations as they begin to piece together America’s rules of engagement. This, too, has been occasionally alluded to in the headlines. As a result, all this is riveting reading. There is also some rich detail to be gleaned about the drones themselves. Clarke discusses their ability to follow targets for hours (which we knew) and how the bottom of the aircraft can be programmed electronically to take on the color of the sky — blue on sunny days, grey on cloudy ones — which, if true, most of us didn’t know. These kinds of tidbits make it necessary for readers to remind themselves that this is fiction — or at least is billed as such. Clarke is better known as the author of the 2004 nonfiction bestseller “Against All Enemies,” in which, among other things, he says President George W. Bush asked him about Iraq’s role in the 9/11 attacks while the towers were still smoldering. The only thing that detracts from “Sting of the Drone” is what ails the insider genre more generally — the writing style. Clarke still needs to develop his voice and those of his characters. The men and women in the book sound the same. The dialogue is often hobbled by lame jokes and sexual innuendoes that sometimes fall flat. In one especially egregious example, one of the directors of the drone program walks into his wife’s office and confuses the receptionist when he says: “Tell her Mustang is here. . . . Go ahead. Ask her if she wants to ride a Mustang.” The receptionist is so uncomfortable that she can only tell the wife that a man named Mustang is there and he won’t go away. And the wife replies: “Oh dear. . . . Well, then ask him if I can ride him.” These kinds of clunkers, however, are more than offset by the meaty morsels about the secretive drone program. One also has to wonder how much of this book is a Washington confessional. Clarke, who served three presidents as a terrorism czar, bears some responsibility for the decision to use drones against terrorists in the first place. In 2000, he wanted to deploy Predator drones, unarmed at the time, to fly over Afghanistan to help in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. On its fourth flight, Clarke says in an author’s note, the Predator located the al-Qaeda leader. Clarke says he pushed to have the drones armed. The CIA and the Defense Department opposed it, he contends. “Finally, on September 4, 2001, the Principals’ Committee met in the White House Situation Room,” Clarke writes in his note at the end of the book. “CIA Director George Tenet and the DOD leadership both spoke out against the use of armed Predators to get bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership. They were not overruled. A week later we were attacked.” **Dina Temple-Raston** , NPR’s counter-terrorism correspondent, has spent the past year as a Nieman fellow at Harvard studying the intersection of big data and intelligence. She has written four books and will return to NPR in June. **STING OF THE DRONE** By Richard A. Clarke Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s. 294 pp. $25.99

Five myths about Obama’s drone war

_Mark R. Jacobson is a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. From 2009 to 2011, he served with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan._ At least since Pope Innocent II banned the use of crossbows against Christians in 1139, new military technologies have always created strategic and ethical dilemmas. And armed drones — the weapons of choice for today’s battlefield without boundaries — are no exception. Do drone strikes provide a compelling option when battling terrorist networks, or do the controversy they generate outweigh the benefit? Debates about technology, targeting and transparency have muddled an already complicated matter, so let’s take aim at some of the most common misperceptions. **1. Drones are immoral.** Drones are neither autonomous killer robots nor sentient beings making life-or-death decisions. Yet, with the “Terminator”-like connotations of the term, it is easy to forget that these vehicles are flown via remote control by some 1,300 Air Force pilots. Drones are an evolution in military technology, not a revolution in warfare. From a moral and ethical standpoint, drones are little different from rifles, bombers or tanks. Decisions about how and when to use them are made by people. No doubt, the distance between the human warfighter and the battlefield has never been longer, but the psychological proximity can be closer for drone pilots than for other military personnel. Intense surveillance makes these pilots so familiar with their targets — when they sleep, eat and see their families — that some have reported difficulty reconciling that intimacy after they’ve pulled the trigger. The toughest moral question is not about technology but about targeting and transparency: When militants plotting against America operate globally, don’t wear uniforms and may even be U.S. citizens, who can be targeted and where? The White House recently released to members of Congress a Justice Department memo providing details of the targeting process — this may alleviate, but not eliminate, those concerns. **2.Drone strikes cause inordinate civilian casualties.** Armed drones are some of the most precise weapons used in conflict; we hit what we aim for. But any lethal force results in some civilian casualties, and the use of drones beyond “hot battlefields” means that the civilian-combatant distinction is harder to make. The New York Times has reported that the Obama administration counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants — an approach that would underreport civilian casualties. But the New America Foundation’s Peter Bergen argues that, since 2008, the civilian casualty rate from drones has declined dramatically and as of last summer was “at or close to zero.” While many dispute this figure, civilian casualties in drone strikes are clearly fewer than if massive bombs were used instead. Armed drones can strike fear in the hearts of America’s adversaries and provide a military edge. But Washington may have to deal with blowback. John Bellinger, a former State Department legal adviser in the George W. Bush administration, worries that drones might “become as internationally maligned as Guantanamo.” Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal has said that U.S. drone strikes are “hated on a visceral level.” If drones are perceived as unjust, or if the deaths of innocents are attributed to them, correctly or not, America’s larger strategic objective — defeating al-Qaeda and the ideology that feeds it — could be at risk. **3.Drones allow us to fight wars without danger. ** The allure is simple: A drone swoops in while its operator is safe, thousands of miles away, and the precision-guided ordnance hits a target, with little risk to our troops. But drones should not give us a false sense of security. After all, the intelligence required for targeting may require U.S. boots on the ground. And drone attacks will not improve governance in a nation that offers a haven to terrorists. Yes, drones can attack a target accurately, quickly and stealthily while reducing the danger to the pilot. But they cannot train foreign troops, engage with tribal leaders or strengthen local governments — the centers of gravity in most U.S. conflicts today. The exaggerated promise of drones risks substituting targeting for strategy. **4. Drones are technologically complex weapons that only rich nations can afford.** Armed drones are neither as simple as model airplanes nor as complex as high-performance fighter jets. Of course, a remote-controlled helicopter that you can build in your garage is certainly not as capable as the $26.8 million MQ-9 Reaper, the primary U.S. hunter-killer drone. But drones are much less expensive than fighter aircraft, and in an age of increasing austerity, it is tempting for nations to consider replacing jet fleets with armed drones. More than 50 countries operate surveillance drones, and armed drones will quickly become standard in military arsenals. The challenge is to consider what international rules, if any, should govern the use of armed drones. The United States is setting the precedent; our approach may define the global rules of engagement. Of course, we cannot expect other nations to adopt the oversight and restrictions we have. What doors are we opening for other nations’ use of drones? What happens when terrorist groups acquire them? The United States must prepare for being the prey, not just the predator. **5. Obama will be remembered as the drone president.** The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq compelled the United States to boost the speed and accuracy with which it targets terrorists. But it was not until the Obama administration that U.S. technology and intelligence caught up with the need to take down terrorist networks rather than just individual leaders. As a result, there have been three to six times more drone strikes under Obama than under Bush. While the use of drone warfare has come of age under Obama, whether he comes to be defined by this weapon is very much a political question. The tool kit of the war on terror includes far more than armed drones, but for a modern president, perception is reality. Drone strikes generate enormous controversy. For some, even the nomination of John Brennan — the public face of the administration’s drone program — to run the CIA indicates the centrality of drones to an “Obama Doctrine.” In his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, Brennan emphasized his commitment to Congress’s oversight of overt and covert programs. It will remain critical for him and the White House to continue to articulate their overall approach to combating terrorism, making the case that drones are part of the strategy, not a substitute for it. **mjacobson@gmfus.org **

Robots, swarming drones and ‘Iron Man’: Welcome to the new arms race

In his quest to transform the way the Pentagon wages war, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has turned to Silicon Valley, hoping its experimental culture, innovation and sense of urgency would rub off on the rigid bureaucracy he runs. Carter has made several trips to the Valley and appointed Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company to an advisory board. And recently he sat down at the Pentagon with Elon Musk to see what suggestions the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX might have to make the nation’s military more efficient and daring. Musk’s answer? “Having an incentive structure that rewards innovation is extremely important,” he said in an interview after the meeting. “It’s economics 101. Whatever you reward will happen.” The Pentagon finds itself in a new arms race, struggling to keep pace with forms of combat that are fought with bytes as well as bullets. The technological advancements disrupting established business sectors are now shaking up the world of war — where robots, swarming drones and weapons enhanced by artificial intelligence might one day rule the skies and seas. And just like in industry, the advantages may be fleeting. The Pentagon is seeking “an enduring competitive edge that lasts a generation,” said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant who serves at the Lexington Institute, a think tank based in Arlington. “But generations in technology these days are measured in months.” Harnessing the latest technology to upgrade the Defense Department’s arsenal is a top priority for Carter, who recently said, “The race now depends on who can out-innovate faster than anyone else.” The effort has a renewed energy in the waning months of the Obama administration, which is trying to embed the effort into the bureaucracy — and budget. The Pentagon is turning to start-ups and steering billions of dollars to its own laboratories and project teams to develop prototypes for the kind of promising technologies it may need in the future. It is testing autonomous ships that can remain at sea for months without a crew, an electromagnetic railgun that fires a projectile that can travel at seven times the speed of sound, and increasingly powerful laser weapons that sizzle their targets. At a recent conference put on by Defense One, a website that provides news and analysis on defense and national security, highlighted an effort to produce “revolutionary textiles that combine fibers with electronics to create fabrics that can sense, communicate, store energy, monitor health, change color, and much more.” The Pentagon speaks of its “Third Offset Strategy,” a way to offset shrinking budgets and transient technological superiority. The first offset was the use of nuclear deterrence to keep the Soviets at bay starting in the 1950s. The second was the advent of new precision munitions and stealth to overwhelm robust air and ground forces of adversaries. The Pentagon hopes that this is the dawn of a third technological revolution, even if the conditions are markedly different. Instead of trying to offset the advantages of a single, traditional adversary, the Pentagon faces challenges on multiple fronts, including large, technologically advanced nations such as Russia and China, smaller, aspiring powers such as North Korea, and independent non-state actors such as the Islamic State. As part of the earlier offset campaigns the Pentagon adopted military capabilities that emerged from its own labs. But big advances in robotics, biotechnology and computing are coming out of the commercial sector, much of which wants little to do with the Pentagon. This round has gotten off to a fitful start, if for no other reason than the skepticism aroused by the late-term push of an outgoing administration. There are also doubts about nurturing a start-up mentality in a bureaucracy that must hew to drawn-out and unpredictable budget cycles. Some companies are “watching to see how serious this is,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “Is this a fad? Is this going to last beyond this administration? And part of the problem is the acquisition system impedes this sort of development.” Musk said he and Carter had a “high-level” discussion not about procurement programs but about innovation. One of Musk’s suggestions was that the Pentagon needs to embrace failure. “Whenever you do try to do things that are new, and you’re in unchartered territory, there will be failures because you don’t know the path,” Musk said. “There should be no penalty for a failure where it was thoughtful and considered.” But in a massive and often risk-averse bureaucracy, that might be easier said than done.  Nevertheless, the Pentagon plans over the next five years to invest $18 billion in the Third Offset, including about $6 billion in the classified “black” budget, according to Mackenzie Eaglen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on defense issues. The Defense Department opened an outreach center in Silicon Valley to encourage some of the most innovative start-ups to turn their attention to national security. And when that effort showed mixed results in its first year, Carter moved unusually fast to overhaul it, installing new leadership that reports directly to him. He also announced that the Pentagon would open a similar office in Boston. The shake-up in Silicon Valley was done specifically “to signal to the bureaucracy that this is of the highest priority to the department,” Eaglen said. “The entire president’s budget was built around the Third Offset and the threats that Carter believes the U.S. military should be prepared to confront.” After decades of unmatched superiority, the Pentagon fears that potential adversaries have benefited from the proliferation of commercial technology and have caught up with the United States. The Pentagon is preparing for what Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work called “network-on-network warfare” against more traditional rivals, such as China and Russia, after more than a decade of counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. The idea is that “advances in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems [are] going to lead to a new era of human-machine collaboration and combat teaming,” he said during a recent event at the Atlantic Council, an international-affairs think tank. The goal is not “killer robots that roam the battlefield,” said Work, a self-proclaimed science fiction fan. “I think more in terms of ‘Iron Man’ — the ability of a machine to assist a human, where the human is still in control in all matters, but the machine makes the human much more powerful and much more capable.” Much of the work is being done in the Pentagon’s top-secret labs, at places such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Office of Naval Research and the secretive Strategic Capabilities Office. The ONR is based in a nondescript office building in Arlington, Va., just down the block from DARPA. The low-profile agency employs 4,000 scientists around the world and funds research at universities and throughout industry. At any given time, about 12,000 projects are underway, and the agency produces 350 to 400 technical patents a year, said Rear Adm. Mathias Winter, the chief of naval research. In 70 years in existence, the agency has funded 60 Nobel laureates. “We want to do the impossible, can’t-be-done, there’s-no-way-that’ll-ever-happen problems,” Winter said in an interview. “That’s what scientists do. We do magic. And the engineers have to do the miracle.” Next month, the magic will come in the form of a swarm of 30 small drones that will fly together like a flock of birds, “break off a cadre to be able to potentially go attack something . . . and then come back and regroup and go,” Winter said. Lasers — yes, think Star Wars — are another priority. In 2014, the Navy deployed a $40 million, 30-kilowatt laser that was mounted on the deck of the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf. Service members practiced taking out drones and small boats using a video-game-like controller. Now it is fully operational, and the Pentagon could record its first kill with a laser. The technology is moving fast, and by 2018, ONR plans to test a 150-kilowatt laser on a ship that will be five times more powerful than one on the USS Ponce.  At DARPA, the Third Offset is viewed differently from the previous offset strategies, which gave the United States a firm lead over its adversaries for decades. This time, the effort is seen as much more dynamic, using technologies that evolve quickly over time, said Arati Prabhakar, the agency’s director. Sometimes that will come through software that’s easy to upgrade. Or through artificial intelligence, so that machines will be able to learn and adapt on their own. “Where are the breakthroughs going to come from?” she said. “A theme is if you combine access to leading-edge commercial technology and deeply integrate it with DOD [Department of Defense] secret sauce, that’s where you get phenomenal advancements in capabilities.” One example is DARPA’s 132-foot-long autonomous ship. From the outside, it looks like another military ship. But without a crew, it can venture into hostile territory without the risk of human casualties, and it is “designed to go many thousands of nautical miles and has a tiny fraction of the operating cost of a destroyer,” Prabhakar said. Despite the push to attract the talent and technology of Silicon Valley, traditional defense contractors say they continue to innovate. BAE Systems, for example, is working on “cognitive electronic warfare,” which helps aircraft defend against radar systems, often adapting to threats in the moment. Raytheon, a big defense contractor based outside Boston, has advanced artificial intelligence by creating small robots, Hercules and Athena, that run on solar power but are programmed to stay out of the light. That conflict created what scientists likened to hunger, and a life-death balance that the machines had to sort out on their own. The company also has developed a tablet computer that could call in an airstrike with as few as three clicks — when not engaged in more familiar tasks, such as enabling soldiers in the field to chat as if they were sitting at their desks or share maps and video. Another version of the software, Jump Master, is designed to give paratroopers information on wind direction and targets on the ground. The goal is to “drive speed” in an effort to help soldiers make better decisions faster, said Tom Kennedy, Raytheon’s chief executive. The information streaming on the tablet will help soldiers decide “what type of weapons to use, where the threats are located, what’s the best maneuver to be able to win and defeat the threat.” But to provide innovative technology with a secure pipeline to the battlefield, the Pentagon has to institutionalize the program so that it can survive a change in administration, analysts said. That is why the senior leadership has given speech after speech about the strategy, and why they have rushed to get these technologies in development. Eaglen, at the American Enterprise Institute said, “They’ve planted the seeds that will be sprouting for the next team.”

Obama’s new drone policy leaves room for CIA role

Four years ago, as a new al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen was proving itself a potent adversary, the Obama administration made plans to attack it with airstrikes just as the United States had been doing to the terrorist network’s core in Pakistan. But this time, the White House decided there would be a key difference: The strikes in Yemen would be carried out by the U.S. military, not the CIA. Two years later, in mid-2011, a mysterious construction project began to emerge in the Saudi desert, an elongated compound with a ribbon of concrete running parallel to the ridgelines of the surrounding dunes. CIA drones were about to enter the skies over Yemen after all. The change was driven by a number of factors, including errant strikes that killed the wrong people, the use of munitions that left shrapnel with U.S. military markings scattered about target sites and worries that Yemen’s unstable leader might kick the Pentagon’s planes out. But President Obama’s decision also came down to a determination that the CIA was simply better than the Defense Department at locating and killing al-Qaeda operatives with armed drones, according to current and former U.S. officials involved in the deliberations. Even now, as the president plans to shift most drone operations back to the military, many U.S. counterterrorism officials are convinced that gap in capabilities has not been erased. The issue has taken on heightened significance as Obama imposes new rules on U.S. counterterrorism operations that are designed to give the Pentagon the lead in the targeted killing of terrorism suspects overseas, reducing and perhaps eventually replacing the role of the CIA. In a major speech Thursday, Obama talked of the seductive appeal of a weapon whose precision and secrecy offer a shield from accountability, saying it can “lead a president and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism.” Turning to Pentagon drones was described as a way to move the campaign out of the shadows of covert operation. But even those who agree with the decision said it may prove more difficult for Obama to dismantle the CIA’s drone program than it was to shutter its secret prisons, because of the agency’s expertise as well as circumstances that at times enable the CIA to operate in places off-limits to the Defense Department. “You have to go into this with some concern,” a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official said of the plan. “It didn’t work before. Will it work this time?” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, raised a related concern earlier this year when word of the administration’s plan began to surface. Feinstein said that she had seen the CIA “exercise patience and discretion specifically to prevent collateral damage” and that she “would really have to be convinced that the military would carry it out that well.” Critics contend that, despite Obama’s claims of accuracy, the CIA has killed hundreds of innocent civilians, along with as many as 3,000 militants, most of them low-level fighters, in Pakistan and Yemen. A Yemeni activist, Farea al-Muslimi, testified before Congress last month that the campaign has been indiscriminate, causing anti-U.S. sentiment to surge. “What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant,” he said. “There is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.” Since 2009, when Obama became president, the United States has carried out more than 360 strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, according to data compiled by the Long War Journal Web site. The CIA has accounted for the vast majority of those, including all 293 in Pakistan, where only the agency flies armed drones. The drone campaign in Pakistan began under President George W. Bush and escalated after Obama took office. But from the outset, Obama administration officials expressed discomfort with the fact that an intelligence service had absorbed a lethal mission that had traditionally been the responsibility of the military. In an interview in late 2010, a senior Obama administration official stressed that the CIA was running the drone campaign in Pakistan mainly because the agency was first to develop the technology after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and because Pakistan’s government insisted on secrecy so that it could deny any U.S. operations on its soil. “It has been in Yemen a different story, a different history, a different evolution,” the official said, making clear that the administration regarded the CIA campaign as an anomaly and saw lethal operations as the province of the military. The U.S. military’s elite Joint Special Operations Command was already flying drones over Yemen from a base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. Using drones, warships and conventional aircraft, JSOC had already launched a flurry of strikes against al-Qaeda targets. The first had come on Dec. 17, 2009, just three days after al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. That initial attack, which involved missiles fired from a U.S. warship, was inauspicious. The strike killed 14 al-Qaeda operatives but also 35 women and children, including several who later died after stepping on unexploded cluster munitions, according to Amnesty International and other outside accounts. A week later, on Christmas Day, AQAP attempted a strike of its own when a Nigerian trained and equipped by the group boarded a transatlantic flight for Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underwear. The plot might have killed hundreds if the device hadn’t failed to detonate. The JSOC airstrikes intensified after the plot, but costly mistakes and misses piled up. In May 2010, the United States thought that it had a senior al-Qaeda fighter in its sights but killed Jabir al-Shabwani, a deputy governor of a Yemeni province who reportedly was meeting with militants in an attempt to get them to make peace. The most consequential miss came a year later, when JSOC drones and Harrier jets fired a series of shots at Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric who had become a senior AQAP figure and was seen as a driving force in the organization’s plots against the United States. The pickup in which Awlaki was traveling emerged intact from two strikes, barreling through a remote stretch of Shabwa province. A third strike finally destroyed the truck, but only after Awlaki had switched vehicles and escaped. In Washington, U.S. counterterrorism officials were dismayed. “You’re only going to get so many shots at high-value targets, and you have to make them count,” the former senior U.S. counterterrorism official said. “I never fully understood why they struggled so much,” the former official said, referring to the Pentagon’s problems. “Of all the pieces, the kinetic piece at the end was what they should have been good at.” By then, the secret CIA base in Saudi Arabia was beginning to take shape. U.S. and Saudi officials said the kingdom had been pushing the United States to ramp up its involvement in neighboring Yemen, particularly after an August 2009 attempt by a suicide bomber to kill Saudi counterterrorism official Muhammed bin Nayef. Two years later, when White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and other U.S. officials presented a plan to build a drone base in Saudi Arabia, the royal family didn’t flinch, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern officials involved in the discussions. The idea was a provocative one. A founding grievance for al-Qaeda was the presence of U.S. military forces in the Islamic Holy Land in the 1990s. Now the United States was about to install its signature counterterrorism weapon, the symbol of a campaign that had inflamed anti-American sentiment among millions of Muslims. Saudi officials were undaunted and even conjured a plausible cover story. If the facility were discovered, the kingdom would say it was a delivery station for construction materials needed to build a fence along the Saudi-   Yemen border. “There was no worry or thinking of blowback,” a Middle Eastern official said. “There was the urgency of turning around a situation in Yemen that was very dangerous.” The contours of the base blend into the desert topography so inconspicuously that the facility is nearly impossible to detect from wide-angle satellite images. But magnifications reveal a lengthy runway and clamshell hangars used at other airstrips by the United States to house drones. The Saudi government imposed conditions, including full authority over the facility and assurances that there would be no U.S. military personnel on site. The operation would be run by the CIA and Saudi intelligence, who for years had jointly operated a fusion center in Riyadh. Feeding targeting intelligence to JSOC drones was not seen as a valid option, in part because doing so would require military approvals that could bog down a process requiring split-second decisions, officials said. “The military’s culture is very uncomfortable with someone not in the chain of command handing them a target package and saying, ‘Hit this,’ ” said Jeremy Bash, who served as a senior aide to Panetta at the Pentagon and the CIA. The first CIA flights began in August 2011. Six weeks later, Awlaki was killed in a CIA strike. U.S. officials cited a list of factors that contribute to the agency’s lethal efficiency. Among them is its expertise at penetrating terrorist groups through networks of informants, and the expertise of officers and analysts who tend to stay in their assignments longer than their military counterparts. The head of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center has been in the job for more than seven years, a time frame in which JSOC’s command has changed hands three times. Bash said that those advantages are not insurmountable but that “for DOD to become the best in class at these types of operations will require it to invest significant resources in training, capabilities and new doctrines.” A second senior administration official said drone operations have been precise and accurate, regardless of whether they were carried out by the CIA or military. “This is not about one agency versus another,” said the official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified operations. “This is about strengthening a proven national framework for continued success against our terrorist enemies.” In many ways, the push to restrain the CIA is driven by the perceived costs of its counterterrorism emphasis, concern that the agency’s focus on lethal operations has diverted it from its traditional intelligence-gathering and analysis mission. Brennan, who became director in March, was a driving force in drafting Obama’s new guidelines. But Brennan was also among the senior officials who initially favored putting JSOC in charge of the campaign in Yemen before turning to the CIA. Officials noted that the guidelines establish a “preference” for the military to handle drone strikes but don’t rule out a continuing role for the CIA. The number of U.S. strikes in Yemen rose to 42 last year but they have tapered off since. After a flurry of attacks in January, there have been only three. The latest, on May 18, reportedly killed four militants but no senior operatives and was carried out by the CIA.

Book review: ‘Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution’ by Richard Whittle

_Craig Whitlock covers the Pentagon and national security for The Washington Post._ Twenty years ago this summer, a revolution in aviation began inauspiciously on a runway in El Mirage, Calif. An insect-shaped aircraft, which may or may not have been named after an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, performed miserably on its maiden flight — staying aloft for barely 14 seconds, just two seconds longer than Orville Wright managed at Kitty Hawk in 1903. The results, however, were good enough for the Pentagon. The military had signed a contract to buy 10 of the experimental reconnaissance aircraft and wanted to rush them to the Balkans. Known as the Predator, it stood out for one thing it didn’t have or need: a pilot on board. The Predator drone was ugly, slow and unreliable. Despite those drawbacks, the aircraft quickly exceeded expectations; within a decade, it had transformed the very nature of warfare and spawned a lucrative new defense industry. Today, the Pentagon has 10,000 drones of varying types, from the size of a child’s toy to that of a Boeing 757. Compared with newer models, the Predator has become technologically outdated. The Air Force plans to phase it out by 2018. But it remains an iconic warplane, one that has enabled the U.S. government to hunt down al-Qaeda leaders and other enemies of the state by remote control. Critics see it more darkly, as a weapon that the United States has wielded to assassinate people without accountability. The unlikely circumstances that led to the birth of the Predator are narrated in fresh and authoritative detail by Richard Whittle, a longtime military journalist and former defense correspondent for the Dallas Morning News. Whittle spent five years cultivating access to insiders from the Defense Department and General Atomics, the Predator’s publicity-averse manufacturer. His reporting in “Predator” is methodical and credible, no small feat given the lid of silence that the Air Force, the CIA, the Obama administration and General Atomics have welded onto their drone operations, even the trivial parts. I’ve covered secretive military drone programs for years, and I’ve always wondered how the Predator was tagged with such a fearsome name. Other early-model drones sounded non-threatening, almost comical: the Gnat, the Albatross and the Lightning Bug. When the Predator was invented, it was envisioned solely as a harmless spy plane — a new way to conduct surveillance with high-tech cameras. The idea of turning it into a killer drone by arming it with Hellfire missiles didn’t emerge until several years later. So why the menacing name? According to Whittle, one General Atomics executive wanted to call a prototype the Birdie, because “birdies go cheep, cheep, cheep” and affordability was its selling point (price back then: $1.5 million apiece — the equivalent of a rounding error in the Pentagon budget). Another General Atomics official, retired Navy Adm. Thomas Cassidy, nixed Birdie in favor of Predator. In an interview with Whittle, Cassidy was cagey about why. But he insisted it was only a coincidence that he dreamed up the name at the same time that Hollywood released a Schwarzenegger flick titled “Predator,” featuring a bloodthirsty extraterrestrial monster. Regardless, the name stuck. Early versions of the drone looked as if they had been cobbled together in somebody’s garage — which, according to Whittle, was pretty much the case. The aircraft was powered by a four-cylinder engine that had the same horsepower as an old VW Beetle and flew only slightly faster. “As aircraft go, the new Predator’s name was the sexiest thing about it,” he writes. In a harbinger of problems to come, the drone had trouble staying in the air. Its first combat deployment came in July 1995, when the Air Force packed three Predators into crates and shipped them to an old communist military base in Albania to spy on Serb forces in the Balkans. Within a month, the Serbs had shot down one Predator, and a second had crashed into a mountain after its engine conked out. The drone’s performance record gradually improved, but from a safety and reliability standpoint, it was a flawed aircraft. According to a recent Washington Post investigation, nearly half of all Predators bought by the Air Force since then have been involved in major aviation accidents. Whittle’s best material appears in the final chapters, when he delivers action-packed details about how the CIA and the Pentagon used armed Predators to hunt for al-Qaeda leaders immediately after 9/11. Based on interviews with numerous participants, he describes how the CIA operated the Predators from a remote-control ground station disguised as a double-wide construction trailer outside headquarters in Langley. A joint CIA-Air Force team thought it had Taliban boss Mohammad Omar in its sights in Kandahar, Afghanistan, but interference from a muddled chain of command screwed up the mission. Redemption came a few weeks later when the Predator team helped track down al-Qaeda’s military chief, Muhammad Atef, in Kabul and he was apparently killed in a missile attack. Much of the book, however, dwells on bureaucratic rivalries and the sausage-making of defense acquisition. While such issues may have preoccupied the military officers, spies and contractors who gave us the Predator, Whittle has less to say about some more-profound questions that drones pose. Is it ethical to fight a war by remote control, with uniformed Air Force pilots blowing up targets on the other side of the world from their safe, air-conditioned work stations? And what happens when the Pentagon inevitably invents a flying robot that can decide on its own, without a human at the controls, to launch a Hellfire missile? **Craig Whitlock** is covers the Pentagon and national security for The Washington Post. **PREDATOR** **The Secret Origins   of the Drone Revolution** ****By Richard Whittle Henry Holt. 353 pp. $30

Only in Washington: Drone lobby throws free OK Go concert to promote responsible flying

In the latest OK Go video, members of the rock band ride around on robotic unicycles amid a crowd of umbrella-wielding women creating geometric patterns. A camera attached to a drone flies overhead, with each umbrella becoming a mere dot as it soars through the sky. "If we had tried to shoot that here, we would have been killed -- by the government," OK Go lead singer Damian Kulash told the audience in the middle of a set at the 9:30 Club in Northwest Washington on Wednesday night. "That drone went up 700 meters in the sky, which is so fully ...  illegal here." OK Go made their drone video in Japan. The fight over allowing commercial drones into national airspace has reached beyond the halls of Capitol Hill and into the packed venue in Washington's U Street corridor. While drone enthusiasts wait for the Federal Aviation Administration to issue rules for using unmanned vehicles, the industry is looking for fresh ways to drum up support. Drone advocates are eager to get OK Go involved in the debate after the popularity of the drone-shot video for "I Won't Let You Down," which has already been watched more than 17 million times on Youtube. At its recent concert, the music even seemed to match the soaring theme.  “I just want to get you high tonight,” Kulash crooned as cannons unleashed waves of confetti raining down on the audience during the song “The Writing's On the Wall.” Kulash also offered to trade backstage passes at an upcoming show for a drone and struggled to figure out how to turn on a quadcopter. But Kulash's drone obsession was no accident -- and this was no ordinary show. The OK Go concert was free (except to government employees) and sponsored by a group of unmanned aerial vehicle enthusiasts and businesses hoping to promote commercial uses of the flying machines. The event raised at least $35,000 for “Know Before You Fly” campaign, said Small UAV Coalition executive director Michael Drobac. The money, Drobac said, came primarily primarily from sponsors -- including Google X and the Motion Picture Association of America. (It’s unclear how much money went to renting out the 9:30 Club, a major D.C. venue, and paying the band.) The crowd was a mixtures of drone enthusiasts -- some of them wearing blue shirts saying “Small UAVs, Big Deal,” others in suit and ties -- and OK Go fans. It was a quintessentially D.C. event mixing policy obsession and pop culture, where the singer’s jokes about the government murdering drone entrepreneurs hit almost too close to home for a group frustrated by the slow progress on rules for commercial use of unmanned aerial vehicles. The FAA is developing rules for the commercial use of drones but has not given an exact date for when the industry might expect the rules to drop.  The lack of regulations is giving other countries a head start on their commercial UAV industry, Drobac said, citing OK Go’s decision to make their music video in Japan.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The band is known for making quirky, highly coordinated videos that take off online. It has been involved in technology policy debates before -- most notably on net neutrality. Kulash, who grew up in the Washington area, wrote an editorial in support of strong net neutrality standards for The Washington Post in 2010 and has testified on the issue before Congress.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But the band also had a personal connection to drone policy beyond their own use of a flying robot to shoot a video: Drummer Dan Konopka is old  friends with someone who works at one of the UAV groups that organized the concert, publicist Bobbie Gale told The Post. “Overall the band is very pro-tech, pro-innovation, pro-nerd," Gale said, "and having just used a drone to make their latest video, “I Won’t Let You Down,” this seemed like a natural fit.” But the band's support does have its limits. OK Go, for example, doesn't encourage drones being used as spyware, Gale said.

The future of counterterrorism: Fewer drones, more partnerships

_Linda Robinson is a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corp. and the author of“One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare.” _ The use of drone strikes against terrorist targets has become one of the most controversial aspects of President Obama’s national security efforts. Critics on the left have called Obama the “drone president,” and even the celebrated 16-year-old Pakistani activist, Malala Yousafzai, chided him in the White House recently, telling him that “drone attacks are fueling terrorism.” Yet drones are just one of three principal U.S. counterterrorism tools, and not necessarily the most important. Special Operations forces are now relying on a more balanced mix of tactics: Launching raids and developing partner forces offer more versatility than drone strikes and will probably become the wave of the future as America’s big wars wind down. The outlines of Obama’s new approach, which he sketched in his May speech at the National Defense University, have become clearer in recent months, especially in the twin raids in Libya and Somalia on Oct. 5. The first raid snatched up Anas al-Libi , an al-Qaeda member indicted in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The second was an unsuccessful attempt to capture Ikrima , a member of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabab group who is reputedly responsible for plotting attacks around East Africa. Raids have several advantages over drones. The targets can be interrogated for further intelligence, laptops and other physical evidence can be scooped up, and perhaps most important, the capture can result in what operators call a “judicial finish,” with the terrorist tried and convicted in a court of law. Of course, Special Operations forces, along with the CIA, will still use drones when a threat is deemed so imminent that taking out a suspect is the best way to stop an attack on vital U.S. interests. That was the case in August when a barrage of drone strikes pummeled the nether provinces of Yemen to foil a reported plot on oil terminals and ports by the most active terrorist group today, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula . But the drone’s disadvantages, primarily political and diplomatic, are now widely recognized. Even if a strike takes out a target, the apparent unilateralism of the attack (local leaders often give tacit support) can lead to popular resentment against the United States. In Yemen, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has publicly endorsed drone strikes, but such a stance can undermine a leader’s legitimacy at home. Finally, even if civilian casualties are minimal, just a few deaths can tarnish America’s image — and fuel terrorist recruitment. The third tool in the anti-terrorism toolkit is the use of partnered forces. Somalia is a good example: Special Operations troops have worked with a variety of partners to retake the country from al-Shabab, restoring government there for the first time in two decades and creating a network of allies to push al-Qaeda out of East Africa. Amid a wider peace enforcement operation, U.S. troops have helped train forces from Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Djibouti. High-end Ugandan units played a key role in pushing al-Shabab out of Mogadishu, and SEAL-trained Kenyan boat units and infantry conducted a joint operation to retake the port city of Kismayo from al-Shabab, thus denying the terrorist group a key revenue source. Partner forces also reportedly played a role in the raid two weekends ago. Today, Special Operations forces are engaged in some level of partnering in more than 70 countries, with an increasing focus on joint operations — or even raids conducted mainly by partners with a supporting U.S. role — to capture or kill terrorists. The bulk of America’s 33,000 uniformed Special Operations forces, including the most elite units, will be engaged in partnering, but need time to develop their partners’ combat skills and intelligence capacity. This quiet partnering gets less attention than drone attacks, but it is the long game that will ensure that U.S. troops can go home and leave behind forces capable of keeping the peace in bad neighborhoods. In Somalia, the training, advising and assisting of partner forces has helped bring some order to one of the most famous ungoverned spaces on the planet. Of course, just as drone attacks have their downsides, raids and partnering don’t always work. The Somalia raid revealed the inherent risk in putting even highly skilled combat troops on the ground. The SEALs did not lose anyone in the heavy fighting, but they did abort the mission rather than call in airstrikes, which would have certainly killed Somali civilians. The tactical failure was not compounded by a strategic blunder, and the SEALs will continue to track their quarry for another try, with the support of partner forces. There are many challenges to partnering. Skeptics doubt the capacity of countries such as Somalia, Kenya and Afghanistan to defend themselves, and they rightly criticize the rights abuses that can occur while local forces are not fully professionalized. It takes a long time for U.S. Special Operations troops to impart ethics and competence to their partners. Sometimes the United States has taken an expedient approach, with dismal results. This was the case in the Cold War, when the United States armed the Afghan mujahideen through Pakistan’s intelligence service — the same mujahideen who fueled an internecine war and fed the ranks of al-Qaeda a decade later. But in the most recent chapter of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, the results of Special Operations partnering have been vastly underplayed. In a major commitment, more than four dozen Special Ops teams spread out over the country’s insurgent belt from 2009 to 2012 to raise volunteers for a civil defense force to guard villages — a force that is now more than 25,000 strong. Special Operations troops have also trained Afghan commandos, special forces and rangers in their own image. This effort may not continue if the two countries cannot reach an agreement on U.S. troop presence in the coming months, but it does show what a concerted partnering effort can produce. The Afghan special operations forces are the best units in the Afghan military, and key parts of the insurgent belt, such as Konar province and Paktika province, are now secure largely thanks to the civilian defense initiative. Most significant, after years of focusing on unilateral drone strikes and raids, U.S. Special Operations forces have regained a critical skill set of working with local populations, as they did in Vietnam, where they raised thousands of civil defenders in the central highlands. This is a highly transferable tool; many troubled countries have vast rural areas where terrorists find ready sanctuary, and lending a helping hand to those who find the courage to fend off attackers is one of the most productive uses of our Special Operations forces. It relieves the United States of the burden of doing so or intervening abruptly in a crisis. The partnering approach may not be easy, and it does take years to produce results, but it is the most sustainable security solution around. The United States still needs to develop credible means of measuring the effectiveness of this approach, but don’t be surprised if it becomes the future of America’s fight against terrorism.

DOD wants to build drones that can buzz into bad guys’ doorways

At some point in the near future, the first clue that an Osama bin Laden might have that he's been tracked down inside his Abbottabad compound might not be the sound of helicopters outside, but the buzzing of a bird-size drone in his bedroom doorway. The Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is asking researchers to help develop drones capable of flying up to 45 mph indoors and small enough to slip into a building through an open window.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The inspiration for the program? The goshawk, a bird of prey with a remarkable ability to navigate through dense woodlands without, as DARPA program manager Mark Micire puts it, "smacking into a tree." The avian-influenced project is being called the Fast Lightweight Autonomy Program. Or, yes, that's right, FLAP. Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, are used extensively by the military outdoors, both to get an overhead read on urban environments or to survey unstable disaster zones. But seeing inside a building typically requires a soldier to enter a confined space where he or she could be vulnerable. Some structures are impossible to enter at all, whether that's because they're protected by enemy soldiers or because they are too damaged to walk around in safely. (The use of drones, of course, has raised questions about the ethics of killing someone remotely; it's unclear whether these indoor drones could ultimately be weaponized.) What DARPA wants researchers to develop are so-called autonomy algorithms that would make it possible for drones to quickly find their way around corners and through indoor obstacles without human intervention. The agency is also interested in drones with the ability to learn from their past travels. The new indoor devices, says DARPA, should have the capacity to answer intuitively, "Have I been here before?" Small indoor drones already exist, but they're dependent on both human operators and GPS-based navigation. These new flyers would be operated by a remote pilot who could be sitting miles away, but the drone still must be able to make minuscule, split-second decisions to navigate a room on its own.  Moving more than 60 feet per second, they should be fast enough to stay one step ahead of soldiers or those they are pursuing, according to DARPA. DARPA plans to award several grants and contracts worth up to $5.5 million each to get FLAP off the ground. The agency declined to comment on details of the program beyond those contained in an announcement of the project. Technology developed by the military, of course, often gets transferred into civilian life. But in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration has long delayed issuing rules that would allow drones to be used widely for commercial purposes. Those rules are expected to finally come next year, but in the meantime the FAA has made exceptions for filmmakers who use camera-equipped drones to create impressive outdoor video takes. Imagine what they'll be able to do once those cameras are capable of following the shot indoors, too. _Correction: An earlier version of this story contained a reference to pilots "sitting millions of miles away" from the drones they are operating. That detail has been changed to reflect the fact that such a thing is, of course, impossible._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Can state laws protect you from being watched by drones?

For most of the public, the word "drone" calls up the sleek, automated killing machines that the Obama administration routinely deploys against suspected terrorists and that Rand Paul (R-Ky.) filibustered on the floor of the Senate. But those aren't the only drones around. Because drones are cheap, light and don't require a pilot, they can be put in the air for a fraction of the cost of a traditional airplane. That has created new opportunities for everyone from real estate firms to oil and gas companies to PETA  -- anyone, in fact, who might have use for an eye-in-the-sky, but doesn't have the money to hire a pilot and a plane. But the dawning era of cheap, private surveillance is leading a lot of states to ask how these private drones should be regulated. Animal rights groups, for example, have announced plans to use drones to monitor farms for cruelty to animals. Some farmers are upset about the potential invasion of their privacy. So earlier this year, the Idaho legislature passed a drone privacy bill that specifically requires a farmer or rancher's permission before a "farm, dairy, ranch or other agricultural industry" can be monitored with an unmanned aerial vehicle.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Does such a prohibition violate the First Amendment rights of animal rights advocates? There's a good chance the answer is "yes," but the courts have yet to consider the question. They'll get plenty of opportunities in the coming years. Congress ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to open the skies to private drones by 2015. But while the FAA will develop safety regulations for this fledgling industry, neither the FAA nor any other federal agency was given jurisdiction over privacy issues. And so instead of national privacy rules, we're getting a patchwork of state regulations.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Domestic drone privacy bills have been introduced in a majority of state legislatures this year. On Friday, Gov. Rick Perry's signature made Texas at least the sixth state to regulate drone use. Illinois will become the seventh if Gov. Pat Quinn signs the bill that's now on his desk.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The legislation that states have enacted so far fall into two categories. Bills in Florida, Montana, Tennessee and Virginia, as well as the pending Illinois bill, focus on drone surveillance by law enforcement. Most bills prohibit images gathered with drones from being used in court, and some prohibit (with various exceptions) public agencies from using drones altogether.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In contrast, Idaho and Texas have passed bills that regulate drone surveillance by public _and_ private parties.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Texas legislation illustrates the complexity of regulating private drone use. The legislation that Perry signed on Friday features a broad prohibition on public and private drone use followed by a long list of exceptions. For example, Texas allows drones to be used by "a Texas licensed real estate broker in connection with the marketing, sale, or financing of real property." Oil and gas companies can use drones for "inspecting, maintaining, or repairing pipelines." Utility companies can use drones for "assessing vegetation growth for the purpose of maintaining clearances on utility easements." The legislation enumerates at least 19 circumstances where drone use is allowed. This approach assumes the Texas legislature can anticipate all of the beneficial uses for drones. That's probably not a good assumption — people often discover unanticipated applications for new technologies, and it will be cumbersome to amend the law every time someone thinks of a new drone application. Margot Kaminski, a scholar at Yale Law School, describes the Texas approach to regulating privately operated drones as "kind of a disaster." She warns that regulations of private drone use could raise First Amendment problems. For example, "if you have a news organization hovering over a protest and videoing cops beating protesters, that's really valuable for the First Amendment," she says. The courts have already said that private citizens have a First Amendment right to video-record the activities of public officials. The same reasoning suggests that aerial recording of police conduct would be constitutionally protected.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But while Kaminski is critical of the kinds of prohibitions enacted in Texas and Idaho, she doesn't favor the federal government preempting them. Instead, she argues the state-by-state trial-and-error process is necessary for the nation to navigate the complexities of drone regulation. She worries that federal legislation would strike the wrong balance, imposing a poorly crafted law on the entire country.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "There's really not all that much out there that shows how the First Amendment and privacy law are supposed to intersect," she says. She believes states like Idaho and Texas are "likely to end up with a ruling that says this doesn't pass First Amendment muster." That will give other states feedback about how to craft legislation that is consistent with the Constitution. And in the long run, it should lead to better laws across the country. **Correction:** I changed "Fourth Amendment" to "privacy law" in the last paragraph at Kamisnski's request.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Cut the pork but hold the sequestration, protesters say

Protesters with a 20-foot tall inflatable pink pig are set to demonstrate in downtown Washington Wednesday against wasteful Pentagon spending, but appearances aside, the group sponsoring the event says it opposes automatic defense budget cuts threatened by sequestration. “Frankly, it’s a stupid way to govern,” said David Elliot, communications director for USAction, the group organizing the “Pull the Pork from the Pentagon” protest. “We absolutely support reining in defense spending, but you don’t do it with a meat cleaver, you do it strategically.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Failure by Congress and the White House to reach a budget deal by Friday will trigger automatic cuts that could force the Pentagon to cut $46 billion from its budget this year, an amount that senior defense officials warn will force furloughs of hundreds of thousands of civilian workers and harm the U.S. military.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “This could hurt troop readiness, and nobody’s for that, not even lefties,” said Elliot. The protest scheduled for 12:30 p.m. in front of the lobbying headquarters of defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin near L’Enfant Plaza is one of 34 events supposed to take place Wednesday in two-dozen states as part of a national day of action, according to the group. Elliot said the group’s protest is aimed at defense programs, not defense workers. “I concede it’s a messaging challenge,” he said. “We don’t want contractors to be furloughed and their families hurt, or to hurt the troops, or to have their benefits cut in any way.” Elliot pointed to the F-35 fighter jet, built by Lockheed Martin, as an example of a program that should be cut. “Do we even need an F-35?” he asked. “We just fought two wars without it.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “We have to stop paying for the things we can’t afford so that we can afford the things our families really need,” said USAction Program Director Alan Charney. “We have to stop this meat-ax budget-cut approach to our families and communities. Instead, we can pull the pork from the Pentagon and make millionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.”

Former defense secretary Gates warns against lure of drone warfare

Former defense secretary Robert M. Gates warned Wednesday that the seductive power and precision of armed drones had led many in the White House and Congress to view war as a “bloodless, painless and odorless” affair. “Remarkable advances in precision munitions, sensors, information and satellite technology and more can make us overly enamored with the ability of technology to transform the traditional laws and limits of war,” Gates said in a speech to a group of current and former soldiers, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “A button is pushed in Nevada and seconds later a pickup truck explodes in Kandahar.” Too often, Gates said, U.S. defense experts have come to view war as a “kind of video game or action movie. . . . In reality, war is inevitably tragic, inefficient and uncertain.” The former defense secretary, speaking at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, suggested that the infatuation with technology had led some politicians and defense experts to believe that the military’s budget can be cut deeply with little harm. He called on Republicans and Democrats to put aside partisan fighting to solve the budget crisis and reverse plans to reduce defense spending by almost $1 trillion over the next decade. Gates was especially harsh in his critique of the political climate, saying that “the biggest threat to U.S. national security is the political dysfunction within two square miles of Washington, D.C.” “My hope — and it is a faint hope — is that the remaining adults in the two political parties will make the compromises necessary to put this country’s finances back in order, end the sequestration of military dollars, and protect military capabilities that are as necessary today as they have been through the last century,” he said. Gates’s remarks were certain to be warmly received in the Army, which faces the deepest cuts of all the military services. Leaders in both Congress and the White House have spoken of the need to reduce ground troops and shift the focus to Asia, where air and sea power are thought to be more important. The former defense secretary also called on the military to hold on to the hard lessons it had learned during the long stretch of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially lessons involving how to fight low-tech, guerrilla wars. “It is too easy to forget that there are still tens of thousands of soldiers serving in Afghanistan; too easy to forget the tremendous sacrifices that led to the security progress of recent years,” he said.

The exotic new weapons the Pentagon wants to deter Russia and China

Little noticed amid the daily news bulletins about the Islamic State and Syria, the Pentagon has begun a push for exotic new weapons that can deter Russia and China. Pentagon officials have started talking openly about using the latest tools of artificial intelligence and machine learning to create robot weapons, “human-machine teams” and enhanced, super-powered soldiers. It may sound like science fiction, but Pentagon officials say they have concluded that such high-tech systems are the best way to combat rapid improvements by the Russian and Chinese militaries. These potentially revolutionary U.S. weapons systems were explained in an interview last week by Robert Work, the deputy secretary of defense, and Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their comments were the latest in a series of unusual recent disclosures about what, until a few months ago, was some of the military’s most secret research. “This is how we will make our battle networks more powerful, hopefully, and inject enough uncertainty in the minds of the Russians and the Chinese that, you know, if they ever did come to blows with us, would be able to prevail in a conventional [non-nuclear] way. That, for me, is the definition of conventional deterrence,” Work explained. Within the Pentagon, this high-tech approach is known by the dull phrase “third offset strategy,” emulating two earlier “offsets” that checked Russian military advances during the Cold War. The first offset was tactical nuclear weapons; the second was precision-guided conventional weapons. The latest version assumes that smart, robot weapons can help restore deterrence that has been eroded by Russian and Chinese progress. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, voiced an early warning during his confirmation hearing in July when he said that Russia posed the greatest “existential” threat to the United States. Work said in a recent speech that because the United States has focused on the Middle East since 2001, “our program has been slow to adapt as these high-end threats have started to re-emerge.” The Pentagon’s 2017 budget includes some money to prime the high-tech pump: $3 billion for advanced weapons to counter, say, a Chinese long-range attack on U.S. naval forces; $3 billion to upgrade undersea systems; $3 billion for human-machine teaming and “swarming” operations by unmanned drones; $1.7 billion for cyber and electronic systems that use artificial intelligence; and $500 million for war-gaming and other testing of the new concepts. The Obama administration, sometimes chided for being slow to respond to Russian and Chinese threats, seems to have concluded that America’s best strategy is to leverage its biggest advantage, which is technology. The concepts are reminiscent of President Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative, but 30 years on. The high-tech resurgence got a boost last year from the blue-ribbon Defense Science Board, which conducted a “summer study” of autonomous, robot weapons. “Imagine if we are unprepared to counter such capabilities in the hands of our adversaries,” the board warned. The game partly is about messaging the Russians and Chinese. Work has described Russia as “a resurgent great power” and China as “a rising power with impressive latent technological capabilities [that] probably embodies a more enduring strategic challenge.” In a Feb. 2 budget announcement, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter spoke of Russian “aggression” in Europe and said: “We haven’t had to worry about this for 25 years, and while I wish it were otherwise, now we do.” Carter raised some eyebrows in that budget message when he described the Pentagon’s “Strategic Capabilities Office,” a highly classified initiative that he began in 2012 when he was undersecretary. He noted that the office was working on advanced navigation for smart weapons using micro-cameras and sensors; missile-defense systems using hypervelocity projectiles; and swarming drones that are “really fast, really resistant.” Work illustrated the new willingness to discuss exotic weaponry. During the interview, he showed off a small “Perdix” micro-drone, less than a foot long, which flew with 25 of its mates in a tight grid last summer after being launched from a large plane. These organized drones are part of the Pentagon’s vision of future combat. The Ukraine and Syria battlefields have offered sobering demonstrations of Russian capabilities. In the interview and other public comments, Work catalogued Russian military advances that include automated battle networks, advanced sensors, drones, anti-personnel weapons and jamming devices. “Our adversaries, quite frankly, are pursuing enhanced human operations,” Work warned a gathering at the Center for a New American Security in December. “And it scares the crap out of us, really.” _Read more fromDavid Ignatius’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more about this topic:** David Ignatius: A frightening preview of the rise of killer robots Editorial: Vladimir Putin lays out a menacing choice for the West Mark Jacobson: Five myths about Obama’s drone war

Pentagon program seeks to retain U.S.’s technological edge against foreign rivals

Concerned that America is losing its technological edge as defense budgets shrink, the Pentagon is launching a new initiative to encourage industry innovation. The Defense Department plans to make greater use of prototypes in future research and development efforts, develop technology incrementally and encourage companies to experiment more. In addition, it plans to structure contracts in a way that creates incentives to reward companies that bring fresh approaches to meet program goals. The nation’s investment in new technology has slowed in recent years because of constraints put on government spending in the wake of the Great Recession. At the same time, foreign adversaries such as Russia and China are making impressive leaps in their technological capabilities, according to Pentagon officials. The new program is a fresh iteration of the Defense Department’s four year-old “better buying power” initiative, which focuses on reducing costs by increasing competition for defense programs. Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, outlined the major principles of ‘Better Buying Power 3.0’ — as the latest program is known — at a think tank event Friday morning. What sets 3.0 apart from previous versions is its emphasis on targeted research and development, greater use of commercial technology and more incentives for companies to innovate while keeping costs low, Kendall said. Under the new program, the Defense Department plans to act more like a private sector buyer, pushing companies to assume the risks of research and development for potential greater rewards, Kendall said. The initiative will try to remove barriers that prevent the Pentagon from using commercial technology, for example. The new program also emphasizes incentive-type contracts, which reward contractors for meeting cost or schedule requirements or penalize them when they do not. That’s a shift from the department’s past practice of awarding contracts to the lowest bidder, a trend that contractors say discourages innovation. Kendall noted that the department will look for whichever contract best suits a project, regardless of cost or incentive. Industry groups had mixed reactions to the new inititiave. The program outlines some of the common concerns that government and contractors have, but it doesn’t include any of the ideas to drive innovation or improve the skills of the workforce that companies have shared with the Pentagon, said Stan Soloway, president and chief executive of the Professional Services Council, which represents technology contractors, many of which are based in the Washington area. “What’s not in there is a really bold vision of how we’re going to transform the system to address the department’s needs,” he said. The National Defense Industrial Association took a more favorable view of the program. “Everybody gets caught up in the specifics, but if you step back and look at it, there’s a rare alignment of all the stakeholders in this area,” Arnold Punaro, chairman of the association’s board said, referring to the Pentagon, Congress and industry members. The chief motivation behind Better Buying Power 3.0 is the threat of advanced capabilities from Russia and China. Both Kendall and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel have touched on that concern in public comments. Russia and China are investing in anti-ship and anti-air technology as well as electronic warfare systems, all of which could pose a threat to U.S. military capability, Kendall said at a recent industry conference. That fact, combined with the country’s shrinking defense budget and cuts to research and development are equivalent to “delaying modernization,” he said. Hagel has urged American companies to innovate in order to keep pace with the rest of the world. Better Buying Power 3.0 carries forward most of the principles contained in parts one and two, such as reducing bureaucracy, promoting competition and improving the professionalism of the Pentagon’s acquisition workforce. But despite its good intentions, the effectiveness of the program has been hard to measure, Kendall acknowledged at a media roundtable earlier this week. “We have struggled, frankly, to figure out how to measure the performance of our [research and development] activities, but we need to do it,” he said. The department has released reports on the financial and schedule performance of its acquisition system in the past. For version 3.0, Kendall said a potential metric to measure success could be the number of patents that result from innovation. The new program will collect comments from industry members and other stakeholders for the next three months. The final version is expected to roll out in January. Related: What defense contractors should know about the Pentagon’s new program **More from Capital Business:** For a daily rundown of Washington area business news, sign up for the “CapBiz A.M.” e-mail newsletter.

DARPA’s next-gen drones will launch and land on other airplanes. While they’re moving.

The Pentagon says it's going to bring together the best minds in aerospace design this fall to help build a fleet of small, robotic airplanes. These won't be your ordinary unmanned drones, though. Instead, the idea is to launch a veritable swarm of these tiny planes from the back of a much bigger plane. That's right: The military wants to turn large C-130 cargo planes into makeshift aircraft carriers. And not only will the small drones, known as Gremlins, launch themselves, but they'll also be able to return to the mothership on their own after completing their mission. [ _FAA records detail hundreds of close calls between airplanes and drones_ ]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Researchers at DARPA — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — put out a call last year for ways to turn this into reality. And on Friday it announced it'll hold a workshop in September for potential "proposers."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Small drones could be useful for any number of applications, according to the military. They could help conduct reconnaissance for ground troops. They could carry bombs or supplies. If need be, they could also be turned into self-propelled missiles — though part of the point is that they'd be more versatile and reusable than as a kind of weapon in themselves. In fact, Gremlins would offer a kind of middle ground between missile-like disposable weapons and piloted aircraft, which are heavy, expensive and complex.

Use of weaponized drones by ISIS spurs terrorism fears

Late last month, a pair of Islamic State fighters in desert camouflage climbed to the top of a river bluff in northern Iraq to demonstrate an important new weapon: a small drone, about six feet wide with swept wings and a small bomb tucked in its fuselage. The two men launched the slender machine and took videos from a second, smaller drone that shadowed its movements. The aircraft glided over the besieged city of Mosul, swooped close to an Iraqi army outpost and dropped its bomb, scattering Iraqi troops with a small blast that left one figure sprawled on the ground, apparently dead or wounded. The incident was among dozens in recent weeks in a rapidly accelerating campaign of armed drone strikes by the Islamic State in northern Iraq. The terrorist group last month formally announced the establishment of a new “Unmanned Aircraft of the Mujahideen” unit, a fleet of modified drones equipped with bombs, and claimed that its drones had killed or wounded 39 Iraqi soldiers in a single week. “A new source of horror for the apostates!” the group’s official al-Naba newsletter declared. While the casualty claim is almost certainly exaggerated, U.S. officials confirm that the terrorist group appears to have crossed a threshold with its use of unmanned aircraft. Two years after the Islamic State first used commercially purchased drones to conduct surveillance, the militants are showing a growing ambition to use the technology to kill enemies, U.S. officials and terrorism experts say. The threat to troops is serious enough to prompt U.S. and Iraqi commanders to issue warnings to soldiers near the front lines. But a far bigger worry, U.S. officials say, is the potential for future attacks against civilians. Islamist militants have long discussed the possibility of using drones as remote-controlled missiles that can deliver explosives or even unconventional weapons such as deadly nerve agents. In recent weeks, the notion of terrorist drones has moved a step closer to reality, terrorism experts say. “They’re now showing that these devices can be effective on the battlefield,” said Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington nonprofit group that analyzed dozens of incidents for a new report on Islamist militant groups’ use of drones. “With the way these groups use social media, my worry is that they’re also putting the idea into people’s heads that this is something you can now do.” To be sure, the lightweight, relatively inexpensive drones in the militants’ fleet are nowhere close to matching the sophistication and lethal power of the Predators and Reapers used by the U.S. military. The drones displayed by the Islamic State are too small to carry heavy bombs and rockets, and they lack the guidance systems used by U.S. pilots to steer missiles toward their targets. Still, even a small bomb, such as the three-pound mortar shells typically used against Iraqi government troops, can have an effective blast radius of 30 to 45 feet, enough to kill or injure dozens of people if dropped in a crowded area. Pentagon officials say the drones have scant military significance and will not affect the Iraqi government’s timetable for recapturing Mosul, the northern city that fell to the Islamic State in 2014. “Although dangerous, and effective as a propaganda tactic, it has limited operational effect on the battlefield and will not change the outcome,” Air Force Col. John L. Dorrian, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition opposing the Islamic State, said at a news briefing last week. But a second Pentagon official acknowledged that coalition troops had been forced to take countermeasures against drones — steps that include early-detection systems and electronic jamming — while also stepping up the search for factories and staging areas where the aircraft are being readied for use on the battlefield. “The coalition takes this threat seriously,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity in discussing the military’s response to the new threat. As recently as a decade ago, drones were the province of a few advanced industrialized countries, with the United States as the pioneer and lead practitioner in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to target and kill suspected terrorists overseas. Today, dozens of countries, including Israel, China and Iran, manufacture and operate military-grade UAVs. At the same time, a rapidly growing commercial drone industry has made the technology available to private consumers almost anywhere in the world. Online shoppers can pick from hundreds of models, from sparrow-size “nano” drones that can be controlled from a smartphone to larger aircraft that cost thousands of dollars and can carry small payloads. The sudden availability of cheap, remote-controlled flying machines did not escape the notice of terrorists groups. The Islamic State is only the latest in a long line of militant organizations that have acquired drones and attempted to modify them for their own purposes. The Iranian-backed group Hezbollah has repeatedly used drones to probe Israel’s air defenses, and the group released video last summer that appeared to show a drone dropping Chinese-made bomblets on Syrian rebels. Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan commissioned an avionics engineer to build small attack drones and conducted at least one successful test flight before the program was discovered by police in 2013. There have also been plots involving drones by lone-wolf actors in the United States. In 2011, a physics graduate and model hobbyist from Massachusetts was accused of planning to launch small drones with bombs against the Pentagon and the Capitol, according to an FBI affidavit. The Islamic State’s efforts have been comparatively crude. In August 2014, the terrorist group began using drones to gather battlefield intelligence and to document the effects of suicide bombings, often broadcasting the videos online to bolster morale, according to the report by MEMRI. Occasionally the group would strap an explosive onto a small drone and try to land it near a military outpost, as happened in October when a booby-trapped toy aircraft exploded as Kurdish fighters were examining it near the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. Terrorist leaders last year put out appeals for scientists and engineers to travel to Iraq and Syria to work on weapons programs, including drones. In March, a group of pro-Islamic State technicians used the social-media platform Telegram to discuss how common engine parts might be adapted for use in missiles or in military-style attack drones, according to a transcript of the discussion provided by MEMRI. “What does success look like?” asked one of the participants, using a nickname but describing himself as an American with a microelectronics background. “Are we talking about an actual guided missile or a drone which can drop payload?” At least a few technical experts appear to have responded to the call. When government troops recaptured the Iraqi provincial capital of Ramadi last year, they discovered a small workshop where workers were attempting to manufacture drone parts from scratch. Photographs from inside the facility show homemade wings and fuselage parts as well as electronics, camera controllers and gyro sensors used to control flight, according to an analysis by Conflict Armament Research, a London-based nonprofit group that investigates weapons trafficking. Similar factories built to modify commercial UAVs have been found in liberated parts of Mosul in the past few weeks, all pointing to an “increasing use by ISIS of weaponized drones,” said James Bevan, executive director of Conflict Armament Research, using an acronym for the Islamic State. Bevan’s analysts found that the group initially favored small helicopter-like drones with four rotors and sufficient heft to carry a small bomb — usually a mortar shell or similar device with stabilizing fins and a point-detonating fuse built to explode on impact. But some of the more recent attacks have involved fixed-wing drones of uncertain origin, U.S. officials said. When Iraqi troops captured drone facilities in Mosul earlier this year, they discovered scores of documents detailing an elaborate procurement system for purchasing the aircraft and parts, as well as extensive procedures for altering and testing the equipment. The records “speak to the group’s efforts to secure, modify and enhance the range and performance of its drones,” said a report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, N.Y., which published some of the documents. When the siege of Mosul began in the fall, Islamic State fighters stepped up their use of small surveillance drones to gather intelligence and showcase their efforts to defend the city, producing mini-documentaries with aerial footage of successful suicide attacks on Iraqi troops. The shift to weaponized drone attacks began late last year and was ramping up dramatically at the time of the group’s formal announcement of the program on Jan. 24. “The army of the Islamic State has revealed its use of the unmanned aircraft weapon for the first time,” the group’s al-Naba newsletter said. It described an “aerial bombardment” of Iraqi forces around Mosul and said that “most of the hits were precise, and inflicted losses in the ranks of the apostates.” Since then, the group’s social-media pages have carried dozens of videos showing strikes using small bombs and rockets. Not all the bombs find their targets, but the drone attacks have become a daily threat for residents in some parts of liberated eastern Mosul, Iraqi news accounts show. Iraqi troops also have been forced to scan the skies for tiny aircraft and to take cover when they appear. Videos released by the Islamic State show multiple instances in which bombs were dropped close enough to Iraqi troop positions to cause injuries. Some of the footage appears to show wounded figures on the ground after the attacks, although there has been no official confirmation from Iraq of the terrorists’ claim of dozens killed and wounded. Regardless of the actual numbers, the campaign appears to have raised the spirits of some of the group’s supporters. The Jan. 24 announcement triggered euphoric discussions on social-media platforms used by Islamist militant groups, as well as predictions that armed drones would soon be deployed elsewhere. One Feb. 3 post on the Telegram messaging site called the early attacks “a drop in the sea.” “The coming days will reveal a lot more, Allah permitting,” the post said, according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, a private company that monitors militant websites. “After the planes, there are still a lot more surprises.”

Graduates with drone skills are going to be in demand soon. Here’s why.

Next year around this time, we may be talking about an explosion of interest by employers for recent college grads who know how to operate drones. That’s right – the same way that we currently hear about the IT skills gap in hot areas such as mobile and the cloud and big data – we may be hearing about the need for IT workers with skills and experience related to drone technology. One key factor is the relentless growth of new business opportunities for drones. It is almost a certainty that the ability to build, pilot and monitor these drones is going to be hugely important once commercial drones get the go-ahead from the FAA. Sure, there are the high-profile business cases – such as the Amazon retail delivery drones or the Domino’s pizza delivery drones – but there are also everyday use cases that extend from filmmaking and aerial photography to fields such as real estate, farming and pipeline maintenance. Journalists want to work with them. As do meteorologists. And, yes, the Pentagon is definitely interested in the future of drones, too.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday According to a 2013 report from the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, FAA approval of commercial drones could lead to the creation of 70,000 new U.S. jobs within the next three years, and 100,000 new U.S. jobs by the year 2025. Many of these early jobs, most likely, will be involved in integrating commercial drones into commercial airspace. At any time, there are thousands of commercial aircraft airborne in U.S. airspace, and it’s possible that there will be just as many drones within a few short years. Some predict drones to become an $80 billion business opportunity by 2025.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Already, we’re starting to see the first testing of commercial drones at FAA test sites in places such as New York, North Dakota, Alaska, Nevada, Texas and Virginia. The goal of these new FAA sites is to test out drones in a variety of climates, environments and use cases. The drones in New York, for example, are meant to test out ways to integrate commercial drones into congested Northeastern air space. (So that we avoid incidents like this) And the drones in North Dakota are going to be used to test out approaches related to farming management and agriculture research.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday To keep up with this projected demand for drone skills, there is now a growing number of official programs and academic opportunities for drone operators. Once companies start hiring, they’re probably going to pass on recent engineering grads with a theoretical knowledge of machine propulsion or navigation systems, in favor of candidates with hands-on experience who know how to get a drone airborne from a dead start, and maneuver it around for photos. When Amazon starts hiring drone operators, for example, it probably won’t want to build a drone-training program from scratch.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Which might explain why we’re starting to see some very innovative types of academic programs for the drone technology experts of tomorrow. It’s the basic law of supply and demand at work. The Unmanned Vehicle University in Phoenix, for example, can set you up with a variety of career options — piloting a drone, becoming an aerial drone photographer, or starting a career as a UAV systems engineer. The Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University offers a bachelor’s degree in Unmanned Aircraft Systems Science. The University of North Dakota offers a four-year program for future Unmanned Aerial Vehicles pilots, while Kansas State offers an undergraduate degree in Unmanned Aircraft Studies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday What’s interesting is how all this might change the employment landscape for technology. Most of the big technology employment hubs — places such as New York and Boston — thrive on urban density. Entrepreneurs like to cluster together. With drone technology, it’s the opposite. Most of the big drone- testing sites are in out-of-the-way locations: North Dakota not New York. Even the test site in New York state is located far from Manhattan or Brooklyn, meaning that Brooklyn hipsters are about to be replaced by upstate rural residents as the arbiters of tech cool.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Of course, all this sounds a bit fantastical. North Dakota hopes to eventually become the new Silicon Valley? Really? And there are obviously a lot of safety factors to keep in mind before commercial drones hit the mainstream. Yet, the next time you hear your neighbor talking about buying a Parrot Bebop quadcopter and Oculus Rift VR headset, don’t be so quick to dismiss him or her. Getting an early jump on these consumer drone technologies may be the secret to a six-figure job offer later, even if it means moving to a place like Kansas or North Dakota. The same way that tech companies now complain about a lack of talent in areas such as mobile or big data, they may be talking about a drone talent gap within a few years.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday _Disclosure: Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

The trouble with drones

The Nov. 2 editorial “Drone war” noted a troubling dependence on the use of drones. Indeed, drones could make it easier to conduct a war — and possibly even to go to war. Drone use is often positioned as potentially saving lives that would have otherwise been committed to action — and dollars are easier to expend than human lives. However, with drone employment we could begin to lose a consciousness of the human cost of war — something that has generally guided our thinking regarding conflicts for the last century. Let us not lose that sense. ****Yolan LaPorte** , Fairfax**

Congess adds to the Pentagon’s budget bloat

Walter Pincus hit the nail on the head with his Aug. 27 Fine Print column, “The defense appropriations shuffle.” There are still billions of wasted dollars floating around the Pentagon, and it is past time for lawmakers to trim the fat. Concerns about the Pentagon’s so-called sequester woes tend to diminish once you get a closer look at how our taxpayer dollars are spent. Take, for example, the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter. The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to increase program funding, even though the jet — the most expensive weapons system in history — has suffered from technical failures, delays and cost overruns. And it still is not combat- ready. Lawmakers could save hundreds of billions simply by replacing this failed program with cheaper, more effective and proven aircraft. Congress shouldn’t be adding to the Pentagon’s budget bloat by forcing the military to spend billions on pet projects that it doesn’t want and that do nothing to help our troops. As the budget battle heats up next month, Pentagon spending cannot be sacrosanct. Lawmakers must ensure our tax dollars are being spent effectively on defense programs we need. ****Steve Ellis** , Washington ** The writer is vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Why defense spending mysteriously surged 13% last quarter — and boosted GDP

On Friday, the government announced that the economy had grown at a 2 percent annual pace between July and September. That stunned many analysts, who were expecting much weaker growth. So what happened? The Pentagon happened. Government defense expenditures surged by 13 percent between July and August. You can see the breakdown at the Bureau of Economic Analysis site. The Pentagon spent significantly more on weapons, training, operations, and maintenance. (Ammunition purchases, for instance, doubled.) Had these expenditures not occurred last quarter, the U.S. economy would have grown at a mere 1.36 percent pace. So was this surge in spending unusual? Not necessarily, say defense analysts. The first thing to note is that defense expenditures and investment are incredibly noisy from quarter to quarter. Some of that is due to the fact that military spending is "lumpy" — a big aircraft order will show up all at once. Here's a graph of the quarterly change in defense spending since 2010. Note the big ups and downs: Still, the huge uptick last quarter was unusual. So what happened? Here's one explanation: "In the Pentagon, you have to use it or lose it by the end of the fiscal year in September," says Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense now at the Center for American Progress. "You see this a lot. 'We've got to fly a lot this month for training, otherwise Congress will take back the money they gave us.' " Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, concurs that defense expenditures often rise just before the end of the fiscal year in September. Every year, Congress provides the Pentagon with a certain amount of budget authority. If the military _doesn't_ spend the full amount, there's the risk that lawmakers could come back the following year and reduce the defense budget. "The Pentagon wants to show that the money's well spent," says O'Hanlon. "But they can also fall out of favor with Congress if they spend too little." But then why was the surge in military so unusually large this past quarter, compared with previous Septembers? Two reasons. First, the Pentagon is facing the prospect of sharp budget cuts at the end of the year as part of the looming sequester. There's been some talk that the military could even lose money that's already been budgeted but hasn't been spent yet — so the Pentagon has additional incentive to spend funds now that have been budgeted over multiple years. The other factor, Korb and O'Hanlon note, is that Congress was late in setting the defense budget for fiscal year 2012: The budget was finally patched together through continuing resolutions in the winter. So, for a significant period, the Pentagon was unsure exactly how much it could actually spend. That could help explain why defense expenditures and investments were relatively anemic earlier this year and then skyrocketed right before the fiscal year ended in September. "It looks like what we're seeing is a confluence of budget and political factors," says O'Hanlon. This past quarter was, in essence, an excellent time for the military to sign a bunch of contracts and spend its funds. And that's exactly what happened.

What does the Pentagon’s latest call for innovation mean for contractors?

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced a new, long-term measure to spur innovation within the Defense Department last week, marking the Pentagon’s latest and most wide-ranging attempt to address what officials call America’s diminished technological superiority in the military arena. The new program, known as the Defense Innovation Initiative, aims to set up a research and development arm to explore cutting-edge technologies and systems that the military should invest in, such as 3-D printing, robotics, and big data, Hagel said in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. In addition, the Pentagon will look into new approaches to war fighting, military education and leadership programs, he said. Hagel did not provide specifics on how much money the Pentagon plans to invest in the program, saying only that as the initiative matures, he “expect its impact on [the Defense Department]’s budget to scale up in tandem.” While the department’s other measures — such as its Better Buying Power initiative to improve acquisition — have specific consequences for contractors, the picture isn’t as clear with Hagel’s program. Acknowledging that the Pentagon is no longer the birthplace of innovation, Hagel said the new program will “actively seek proposals from the private sector,” including from companies and academic institutions “outside its traditional orbit.” Without more details, contractors may be slow to embrace the initiative, according to defense analysts. “The department is still deliberating on how much money will be shifted or applied to these technology areas, and we do not think defense companies will chase these technologies until there is a better understanding of the payoff,” Roman Schweizer, a defense policy analyst at Guggenheim Securities, wrote in an analyst note. In the short term, smaller companies are more likely to benefit from the program, Schweizer said. “It’s very possible that the Pentagon will shift hundreds or tens of millions in [research and development] spending that will move the needle for smaller firms working on specific technologies,” he wrote. The push for innovative technology could also spur more big defense companies to acquire small ones, he said. Such consolidation is already evident in the government contracting market. Lockheed Martin has made seven acquisitions so far this year, including its purchase of satellite company Astrotech Space Operations, energy start-up Sun Catalytix and health technology company Systems Made Simple. Consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton bought two health-care companies last month. The Pentagon has said that it will release more details about the innovation plan in coming weeks. In the near term, the innovation program will invite “some of the brightest minds from inside and outside government” to assess what technologies the Pentagon should develop over the next three to five years, Hagel said. The Pentagon also plans to set up a panel led by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work intended to present ideas to preserve the military’s competitive edge. Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official and the person behind Better Buying Power, has repeatedly called for the need to invest in new technology. The latest iteration of his program, released in September, has a research-heavy emphasis that includes provisions for small businesses and incentives to reward companies that spend money on research and development. The two programs are designed to work with each other, according to the Pentagon. While Hagel’s program sets a big-picture agenda for the Pentagon over the next decade, Kendall’s effort “helps to implement that strategy,” a department spokeswoman said in an e-mail. Hagel touched on the difference between the two in his speech. The aim of Kendall’s effort is to work with Congress and “overhaul the legal framework” for military acquisitions “by reducing unnecessary paperwork so that we can focus on key, strategic priorities,” he said. Related: Commentary: Why Pentagon’s innovation strategy matters **More from Capital Business:** For a daily rundown of Washington area business news, sign up for the “CapBiz A.M.” e-mail newsletter.

Navy grants $750,000 to develop bomb-sniffing locusts

Locusts came to fame as agents of destruction during the eighth plague of Egypt in the Bible, but some researchers envision a new occupation for the humble insects: cyborg bomb detectors. Yes, you read that correctly. The Office of Naval Research has given Washington University in St. Louis associate biomedical engineering professor Baranidharan Raman and his team a $750,000, three-year grant to continue his research into turning ordinary locusts into military tools. The idea is simple, even if the execution is not. Like most insects, locusts are equipped with an exponentially more powerful and sensitive olfactory system than anything humans can artificially replicate — so why not use this preexisting system to hunt for bombs, rather than attempting to create what will inevitably be a pale imitation?  So the first step is harnessing those antennae. And that requires the implantation of sensors, which can record and decode certain neural activity, into the locusts’ brains.  These sensors have been used in Raman’s research, but for the locusts to be useful in the field, they’ll need to be mobile. The plan is to hook those sensors to a small “backpack,” which will contain a transmitter to send signals to a receiver hooked up to an LED. If there are explosives, it will light up red. If there aren’t any, the light will shine green. That, though, will be only half of the battle during the next three years. The other half will be actually learning how to guide locusts to the areas that might contain bombs. That’s where the tattoos come in.     Raman said he is not as concerned with the practical battlefield usage of the locusts at this point — the team is currently focused on reaching a point where that’s a concrete concern. But, at the tune of three-quarters of a million dollars, the Navy certainly seems invested in the idea.

Preparing for electronic warfare; more troops to Afghanistan; and it’s budget day.

**PREPARING FOR ELECTRONIC WARFARE.** The United States has a plan for staving off the sort of attacks that might seem more suited to doomsday movies than current threats – stuff like electromagnetic pulses that could disrupt GPS systems, scramble radio communications or disrupt power transmission. But the Pentagon doesn’t have the funding or the gear to actually carry it out.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Getting funding to prepare for an invisible threat that few can quantify is difficult when the United States is becoming more engaged in hard conflicts and there is a fight for nearly every dollar of the defense budget. Nonetheless, the concern remains that if the United States doesn’t step up its electronic warfare capabilities, it will lose pace to Russia and China. **MORE TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN.** U.S. military advisers are heading to Afghanistan to try to rebuild Afghan forces struggling against the Taliban in Helmand province, the site of punishing battles as Taliban fighters move to reclaim strategic territory.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The addition of a few dozen new forces comes during a planned military rotation, and as the head of the Afghanistan operation, Army Gen. John F. Campbell, is preparing to depart. In recent congressional testimony, Campbell declined to put exact figures on how many troops were needed in Afghanistan and for how long, but he stressed that the United States needed to be doing more to improve the situation in Afghanistan. **   **    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **BUDGET DAY.** It’s budget day in Washington, D.C. How much sway the president’s budget request will hold in a lame-duck year is highly debatable, but the official White House proposal is usually a conversation starter, at least. What to look out for? We know the Obama administration will be asking for more money to fight the Islamic State, more money to enhance cybersecurity, and likely more money to help NATO allies in Europe stave off new threats. The Pentagon is also expected to announce an expansion to its unmanned aerial vehicle program.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

The insidious effect of our paranoid drone culture

If America doesn’t get over its collective drone paranoia, it could lose any chance of becoming a global innovation leader in an industry that some say could become an $80 billion business opportunity by 2025. The most obvious symptom of this drone paranoia is to interpret every new unexplained drone sighting as further proof that the U.S. military-industrial complex has upped its game to make a total surveillance state a reality.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Take, for example, the latest incident of the X-37B “space drone” that everyone’s talking about. Nobody really knows what the unmanned space shuttle look-alike was doing up in orbit over the past 674 days before it landed on Oct. 17 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And the U.S. government isn’t saying, which has people surmising about all kinds of conspiracy theories. Maybe the X-37B was part of a U.S. master plan to take out global terrorists? Maybe it was used to spy on the Iranian nuclear program? Or maybe it was part of a sinister military strategy to capture enemy satellites in orbit?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The scary thing is, once drones do go mainstream, we can expect even more of these paranoid drone stories to circulate. Anytime we look up in the sky, we’ll have fodder for the next wild drone conspiracy theory. For now, drones are basically limited to military and government use, but there are plenty of people champing at the bit to use drones for just about everything – from monitoring crops to delivering packages. That means drones will soon be everywhere, not just patrolling borders or helping to put out wildfires. Hollywood producers already have the go-ahead to use them for film production, and signs point to the FAA will finally approve drones for commercial use by the end of 2015.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And, unlike the X-37B space drone that was orbiting in space, well out of view of anyone, the next generation of drones will be flying low enough to watch us in ways that will feel a lot more creepy. That’s bound to increase the potential for drone paranoia, especially among the political class, which has already latched on to drones as a possible campaign issue. Sen. Rand Paul famously summarized what drone paranoia feels like to many Americans: “I just don’t like the concept of drones flying over barbecues in New York to see whether you have a Big Gulp in your backyard or whether you are separating out your recyclables according to the city mandates.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The problem is, all this drone paranoia could have a chilling effect on innovation. Instead of devising new uses for drones, we’ll spend all our time devising anti-drone technology. We’ll be walking around in anti-drone camouflage, carrying around special personal drone detection systems and reaching for special devices that can disable the video cameras and infrared capabilities of drones. The more money that companies need to spend lobbying for drones, the less money they’ll have to pump into drone R&D.; And that will be bad for innovation.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For now, the best way to address all the safety and privacy concerns is to have as much transparency as possible about who has drones and why. Since the Pentagon and Homeland Security account for most of the drones being flown today in the United States, it means that the greatest transparency has to start with the very people who probably want the least transparency possible when it comes to drones. That being said, there have been some encouraging signs. For example, organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have successfully forced the federal government to open up about its drone fleets. And now comes signs that the White House is about to sign an executive order forcing all federal agencies to detail how and why they are using drones.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Until we get total transparency from the federal authorities, we’ll continue to harbor drone paranoia. We’ll think that every new X-37B is part of some international conspiracy plot. Partly this is true because of the history of drones: any innovation that starts out with military applications first is bound to come with its share of psychological baggage. And, let’s face it, when products have names like “Predator” and “Gorgon Stare” and “Constant Hawk,” it’s hard to pretend that they are being used for anything other than counterterrorism and law enforcement purposes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico However, as Benjamin Wallace-Wells pointed out in a New York magazine cover story on the current drone zeitgeist, there’s another big reason why so much drone paranoia exists: There has always been a fundamental human belief that objects capable of flying above us and having a “God’s-eye view” of the world must inevitably look down on us and view us as just objects rather than people. With this “dehumanization” comes a “threat,” an essential disconnect between man and machine.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico To get over this psychological hurdle, the next round of drone innovation will need to convince people that drones can do a lot of good in areas not even tangentially related to warfare. Drones will have to become “humanized.” Imagine delivering packages to out-of-the-way places in the world; ultra- intelligent farming drones reducing the cost of irrigating crops; or search- and-rescue drones saving lives in remote locations. That type of do-good innovation with a human face to it might just be the only to prevent drone paranoia from crippling the future of drone innovation. The best and brightest should be inventing new and productive uses for drones, not spending their time finding ways to keep them out of the sky. Maybe then we’ll learn to stop worrying and love the drones.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Little lobbying opposition to bill opening up U.S. airspace to drones

Big things can happen in Congress — as long as no one is watching. Lobbying records released last week show that there wasn’t much opposition this winter when Congress quietly opened up U.S. airspace to aerial drones, which some advocates for civil liberties say raise a host of concerns about privacy. Drone technology, advanced by the military for surveillance and elimination of terrorists in war zones, is set to come back to the home front in a big way in coming years, with possible uses for law enforcement, first responders, and agriculture and environmental monitoring. Select companies and local governments around the country already have permission to test drones, which can sometimes stay aloft for days at a time at a fraction of the cost of helicopters and airplanes. Several big manufacturers of “unmanned aircraft,” as the industry prefers to call them, each spent millions of dollars during the first quarter of this year, in part lobbying for language tucked inside the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration requiring the agency to allow drones into airspace with other planes in the next three years. Another big push came from the military, which is preparing to bring home drones that were used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under current law, the military is restricted in moving drones around the country and using them for training operations. The opposition to the bill was negligible, leaving its outcome virtually predetermined. The American Civil Liberties Union, which spent $500,000 on lobbying during the first quarter, listed privacy concerns with the bill among hundreds of other issues it was tracking. It was the only organization to do so. “You can’t call it a fight if the other side doesn’t know about it,” said Peter Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who studies drones. “The privacy caucus didn’t even realize until it was passed and they are now playing catch up.” In a letter this week, the two chairmen of the Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus asked the FAA how it will license drones. With a rapidly slimming defense budget, commercial drones could be a major new revenue generator for military contractors. Among those pushing for the provision was Textron Inc., which spent $2.2 million lobbying in the first quarter on a variety of issues. The company makes military surveillance drones and has designed an unmanned ship for the Navy. “We understand the concerns that the public has about privacy and safety,” said Stephen Greene, a company spokesman. “We really believe that a responsible plan is needed going forward.” Other groups lobbying for the bill included the city of Mesa, Ariz., which is hoping to score one of six test sites, and the University of North Dakota, which has an undergraduate program in unmanned aircraft. A representative for the main trade group representing manufacturers, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, said that local jurisdictions were the best place for laws protecting privacy because different communities could have different standards. “As far as privacy is concerned, I’m not aware of any debate when the bill was being considered,” said Ben Gielow, government relations manager for the group. Critics of the legislation, which was passed in February, say the FAA is not equipped to regulate the issues raised by drones, which might carry cameras able to cover several square miles. “The big concern is that drones can be used for good or bad,” said Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They’re just a perfect vehicle for surveillance.” Unmanned aircraft can be fitted with technology to intercept wireless communications or take pictures of a crowd that can be combined with facial recognition to identify individuals, Lynch said. Other issues outside of the FAA’s traditional arena could arise from the use of unmanned aircraft, which in some cases have been adapted to commit crime and acts of terror. In one case last year, the FBI accused a Massachusetts man of plotting to fly explosive-laden drones into the Capitol and the Pentagon.

So China seized a U.S. drone submarine? Welcome to the future of international conflict.

Get used to this. Attacks on remotely controlled vehicles — drones — may become a new currency for coercive diplomacy, enabling nations to challenge rivals without hurting an opponent’s military personnel — and so without risking significant escalation.           Second, the public probably wouldn’t support going to war over a lost machine. As part of an ongoing project, I surveyed 1,210 Americans about their perceptions of drone operations. Unsurprisingly, I found that Americans are less likely to call for hawkish retaliatory measures if a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance drone is shot down than if the same happens to a spy plane with a pilot aboard. Third, for many of the same reasons, Americans and observers internationally may see retaliation over the loss of a drone as excessive, a disproportionate use of force.    In short, there’s a big difference between a military machine and a military machine with a living person on it. Drones are increasingly viewed as an attractive and low-risk means of replacing manned ships and planes on dull, dirty and dangerous missions. China’s recent drone seizure, however, may prompt policymakers and military commanders to consider more carefully whether rivals will be more likely to attack drones.

Everything you need to know about the drone debate, in one FAQ

This is well outside Wonkblog's normal bailiwick, but if nothing else, Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) filibuster against CIA director nominee John Brennan — launched as a protest against the administration's drone policy, which Brennan has steered for the past four years — uncovered a hunger for a broader conversation on the topic. So what does the drone program actually entail, and why are Paul and others criticizing it? **What is a drone?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Technically called "unmanned aerial vehicles" (UAVs), drones are just aircraft without human pilots onboard, encompassing everything from reconnaissance vehicles to unmanned crop dusters. In common parlance, though, "drone" has come to refer to unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), which are UAVs equipped with combat capabilities, most commonly the ability to launch missiles. **How long has the U.S. government been using them?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, the most famous UCAV in the U.S. arsenal, first saw combat in 1995 as part of the NATO intervention in Bosnia, but at that time was solely a reconnaissance tool and carried no payload. On Feb. 16, 2001, the Predator #3034 became the first to be successfully fitted with a Hellfire missile, and to fire it in a trial flight. Predators were deployed to Afghanistan almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and on Oct. 7, 2001 they conducted their first armed mission there.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In addition to the Predator, the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, a larger UCAV capable of carrying a higher payload, has seen service starting in 2007. The current program is jointly administered by the CIA and the Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Where do we send them?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Primarily Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. According to a _Washington Post_ database, compiled with the help of the New America Foundation and Long War Journal, strikes in Pakistan have been occurring since 2004 and picked up in pace starting in summer 2008. Apart from a November 2002 strike in Yemen, the Somalia and Yemen campaigns began in 2011. There have been reports of strikes in the Philippines, though information there is sketchy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Additionally, drones have seen service in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the Unites States's more traditional military campaigns in those countries. **How powerful is a drone attack?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Predator drones can carry up to two Hellfire missiles. Those have warheads of about 20 pounds, which are designed to pierce tank armor; their damage outside of the vehicle targeted is limited. An alternative warhead, which manufacturer Lockheed Martin touts as featuring "high lethality and minimum collateral damage," also is in service.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Reapers are another story. They feature a maximum payload of 3,000 pounds, or 1.5 tons. That means they can carry a combination of Hellfires and larger 500 pound bombs like the GBU-12 Paveway II and GBD-38 JDAM. Those have an "effective casualty radius" of about 200 feet. That means that about 50 percent of people within 200 feet of the blast site will die. Those odds improve -- or worsen, depending on how you look at it -- the closer you get, obviously.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University So imagine if you took a football field and shrunk it by a third. A Reaper attacks one endzone with a GBU-12. If you're on the field, you have a 50 percent chance of dying. _Update: I apparently forgot the distinction between yards and feet since middle school. Corrected._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **How many drone attacks have we launched to date?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University According to the Post database, there have been 347 in Pakistan, 53 in Yemen and 2 in Somalia. From 2008 through October 2012, there were 1,015 strikes in Afghanistan, 48 in Iraq, and at least 105 in Libya according to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism. That does not include strikes in Libya past September 2011, strikes from 2001 to 2007 in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those since October 2012. The New York Times' Mark Mazzetti reported that at least one strike has happened in the Philippines.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **What sort of people have we targeted?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Primarily al-Qaeda and its affiliates. That includes al-Shaabab in Somalia, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (which works in Yemen), and the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Philippines strike was intended to kill Umar Patek, a leader of the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah who helped orchestrate the 2002 attacks in Bali that killed 95 people. Patek is now serving a 20-year sentence in Indonesia.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Have we killed U.S. citizens this way?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University We've killed four, at least. Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born al-Qaeda operative in Yemen, was killed in a drone strike in 2011, as was his American- born 17-year-old son (in a subsequent strike) and Samir Khan, a North Carolina native who died in the same strike as the elder al-Alaki. Ahmed Hijazi, also an American citizen based in Yemen, was killed in 2002. _Note: paragraph updated to correct spelling of al-Awlaki's name and include Hijazi._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University To clarify the Obama administration's exact policy on killing Americans without a trial, Eric Holder wrote the following letter to Sen. Rand Paul: "Dear Senator Paul: It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: 'Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?' The answer to that question is no." The dispatch followed an earlier, more equivocal note from Holder on the subject, which seemed to indicate Holder believes the president has the authority to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil if he judges them a threat.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **How many people have died in drone attacks?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Sen. Lindsey Graham estimated the death toll of the Pakistan/Somalia/Yemen program at 4,700. That's higher than most estimates; Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations puts the number at closer to 3,500.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **How many of those were civilians?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Cora Currier at ProPublica helpfully compiled a number of estimates in January. New America puts the civilian death total in Pakistan and Yemen between 276 and 368, of which 118-135 were under the Bush administration. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism puts the number between 446 and 978, increasing to 993 if you include Somalia. Of those, 179 to 209 were children, BIJ estimates. A Stanford/NYU study suggests that the strikes have inflicted considerable psychological trauma on residents of Pakistan, and deterred relief workers from serving areas targeted. Funerals and rescue workers have been targeted in past strikes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **What's the process for deciding when and where to launch them?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As my colleague Greg Miller has reported, the administration uses something called the "disposition matrix" to determine targets for drone strikes. Miller describes it as a "single, continually evolving database in which biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations are all cataloged. So are strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols…The database is meant to map out contingencies, creating an operational menu that spells out each agency’s role in case a suspect surfaces in an unexpected spot."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) will prepare lists of potential targets, which will be reviewed every three months by a panel of intelligence analysts and military officials. They are then passed along to a panel at the National Security Council, currently helmed by CIA director nominee Brennan, and then to Obama for final approval. The criteria for addition to the list are determined personally by Obama, who also must personally approve all strikes outside Pakistan. Pakistan strikes are approved by the CIA director. **What's the case for using drones?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There's some political science to suggest that "decapitation strikes," like these drone attacks, are actually quite effective at reducing the ability of terrorist groups to operate effectively. The RAND Corporation's Patrick Johnston and UCLA's Anoop Sarbahi have found preliminary evidence that the drone program specifically is effective at degrading the operations of targeted groups. Zack Beauchamp has a good overview of this literature here.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But that's a case for strikes, not for drone strikes specifically. There is, however, substantial evidence that the percentage of casualties borne by civilians is much lower with drone strikes than with just about any other kind of military intervention, even if one accepts high estimates of the percent of killed who are civilians.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Is Congress kept in the loop?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University To some degree. As part of Brennan's confirmation process, Senate Intelligence Committee members were granted access to Justice Department memos justifying the use of drones, and a similar white paper was shared last year. The Committee and its House counterpart are also allowed to review individual strikes, including the intelligence behind them and video obtained during their commission. But they have not tried to limit the program in any way. "I don't know that we've ever seen anything that we thought was inappropriate," one Congressional aide told the _Los Angeles Times_.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **How about the courts?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Nope. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) has proposed establishing a specialized court to approve drone strikes based on FISA courts that approve surveillance of suspected foreign intelligence in the U.S., but that is, for now, just an idea. Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under Obama, has called for an oversight board placed within the executive branch.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Is this legal?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Justice Department certainly thinks so, though the reasons why are classified, and lawsuits to expose them have proven unsuccessful. The clearest window we've gotten into their reasoning as relates to the killing of U.S. citizenscomes from a white paper leaked to NBC News last month. It derives the authority for the strikes from the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in the wake of 9/11, which grants the government broad powers against al-Qaeda. What's more, the white paper argues that drone strikes somehow don't run afoul of Executive Order 12333, the ban on assassinations as a tool of policy that has existed since the Ford administration, as they are used for "self-defense." See also Brennan's speech here defending the program more broadly.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Administration critics aren't impressed, with the ACLU's Jameel Jaffeer noting the white paper, "argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen." **Does it violate international law?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Justice Department memo cites the UN Charter, which allows states to make war in the interest of self-defense, an interest also invoked by Brennan. Critics, like UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heyns, say that this defense is a stretch, and the killings plainly run afoul of the laws of war and international human rights treaties.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Are other countries using drones this way?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Only the United States and the United Kingdom (which assists in the Pakistan drone effort) currently use drones in combat, but many other countries have acquired drone technology, including China, Russia, India, Iran and Israel. The U.K. uses Reapers and Predators while most other countries use the Israeli Aerospace Industries Heron or similar Israeli models. Drones saw combat use in Israel during the Gaza war of late 2008. Even Hezbollah has acquired reconnaissance drones. All told, the GAO estimates that 76 countries, at least, have drone technology.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **What do our allies think about it?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University European allies other than Britain generally refrain from using drones to attack al-Qaeda, but frequently share intelligence that assists the drone program in selecting targets.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **What about the countries where we send drones? What do they think?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University They're very mad. The Pakistani government has condemned the drone strikes as a violation of sovereignty, though there's evidence they're tacitly allowing the strikes to happen. The Yemeni government quietly agreed to the strikes, though murmurs of opposition have emerged of late. Citizens in both countries deplore the campaigns.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Is it actually weakening al-Qaeda?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University New America estimates that 1,967 - 3,236 militants were killed in Pakistan and Yemen, meaning the overwhelming majority of casualties were intended targets. That said, the share of deaths who were "high-profile targets" was 11 percent under Obama and 33 percent under Bush according to New America. And there are deeper doubts as to whether the strategy is recruiting more militants than it kills, by turning local populations against the United States. The attempted Times Square bomber, for instance, cited drones as a motivating force.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It could also be a bad idea even if it _is_ weakening al-Qaeda. Many have noted that the money spent on anti-terrorism efforts might save more lives if devoted to tackling more mundane threats, like auto accidents.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University _Thanks to Zack Beauchamp for research help throughout._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

CIA remains behind most drone strikes, despite effort to shift campaign to Defense

When missiles fired by CIA drones slammed into Yemen and Pakistan last week, the attacks ended a period of relative quiet for the Obama administration’s lethal counterterrorism program. They also served as a reminder that the CIA is not ready to relinquish its role in the drone war. Six months after President Obama signaled his desire to shift the campaign to the Defense Department, the CIA’s drone operations center in Langley, Va., is still behind the vast majority of strikes. And although senior CIA and Pentagon officials have held meetings in recent months aimed at finding a way for the military’s elite U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to take over the job, U.S. officials said the White House vision is a distant goal. The emerging plan is likely to allow the CIA to maintain its drone fleet and stay deeply involved in targeted killing operations, even if the final step in any strike sequence is eventually handled by someone wearing a U.S. military uniform, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. U.S. officials said the discussions between the CIA and the Pentagon have involved CIA Director John Brennan; his deputy, Avril Haines; and Michael G. Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who previously worked at the CIA. The talks are focused on finding a way to merge key aspects of the CIA’s drone operations with those of JSOC, so that both sides are deeply and simultaneously involved in nearly every strike, officials said. “The goal is a find, fix and finish process that features seamless cooperation and robust integration between CIA and DOD,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said, using terminology that has become nearly ubiquitous among CIA and U.S. military operatives for the three-step sequence of lethal strikes. Even if JSOC takes over sole responsibility for the “finish,” the intelligence official said, “Brennan has said from the very beginning that the agency contributes important tools to the nation’s counterterrorism capacity . . . the so-called find and fix.” The effort is beset by technical snags. Despite their overlapping “orbits” in Yemen, the CIA and JSOC employ different surveillance equipment on their drone fleets. They also rely on separate and sometimes incompatible communications networks to transmit video feeds and assemble intelligence from multiple streams in the moments before a strike. Brennan met twice with senior officials at the Pentagon this month “to better integrate CIA and DOD counterterrorism efforts,” the intelligence official said. The push to get the CIA out of large-scale lethal operations “is a goal broadly shared within the administration” but “proving difficult to accomplish,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Even when it happens, he said, “it isn’t going to mean that either the intelligence community or the Department of Defense make a clean break.” That prospect could undermine a main rationale for the switch: the conviction among many senior administration officials that the CIA should return its focus to its mission of intelligence-gathering. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee this year, Brennan described the drone program as “an aberration” from the agency’s historic role and seemed to signal that he intended to preside over an unambiguous shift back. “The CIA should not be doing traditional military activities and operations,” he said. The lack of significant progress toward that aim has raised questions among some about whether Brennan’s enthusiasm for ending CIA strikes has waned since he made the switch from senior White House adviser to CIA director. One senior administration official said Brennan had “gone native” since moving into the director’s office on the CIA’s seventh floor. U.S. officials close to Brennan disputed that characterization, saying he remains committed to the White House goal. But they acknowledged that there is no timetable for reaching it and that Brennan never envisioned a complete CIA withdrawal from the drone program. When Brennan speaks of “traditional” military activities, he “is referring to the military conducting lethal ‘finishing’ operations, i.e. ‘dropping ordnance,’ ” the intelligence official said, meaning the agency would remain involved in tracking terrorist groups and identifying targets even if it ultimately surrendered its authority to execute strikes. “There has been no change in policy since the president’s speech in May” at the National Defense University, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. “I’m not going to speculate on how long the transition will take, but we’re going to ensure that it’s done right and not rushed.” The outcome has significant implications for U.S. counterterrorism strategy, as well as the CIA’s identity. The agency, which rarely carried out lethal operations during most of its history, was transformed into a paramilitary force over the past 12 years, with its own fleet of armed aircraft. Since 2004, the United States has launched 433 drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, according to the Long War Journal Web site. The CIA has carried out the vast majority of them, killing more than 2,200 militants and as many as 400 civilians in Pakistan alone, according to a recent report by a United Nations human rights investigator. U.S. officials have insisted that the civilian casualty count is far lower but have never released a figure. In his confirmation hearing, Brennan voiced concern that the drone war had absorbed too much of the agency’s resources and attention, creating potential gaps in the nation’s understanding of critical developments overseas, including the political turmoil that has swept across the Middle East as part of the Arab Spring. “The principal mission of the agency is to collect intelligence,” Brennan testified, adding that one of his first priorities as director would be to examine “whether or not there has been too much of an emphasis on the CT front.” U.S. officials said that Brennan, now in his eighth month on the job, is continuing to assess the agency’s posture and allocation of resources, and has made significant adjustments. But current and former U.S. officials said they have seen little indication that the CIA’s counterterrorism focus and its role in targeted killing have been curtailed. “It has been business as usual,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with CIA operations overseas. The number of strikes has declined this year, in part because of stricter targeting criteria imposed by Obama in May. But at a time when U.S. spy agencies are facing their first budget cuts in more than a decade, the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center — which swelled to about 3,000 employees after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — has been shielded from reductions in resources or personnel. And although Brennan has made personnel moves across most of the CIA’s major divisions, he has left the leadership ranks of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center intact. Among those still in place is the chief of the center, who has led the CIA’s drone operations for the past seven years and is described as fiercely opposed to giving up the agency’s role. Agency veterans who were directly involved with the drone program said the “finish” stage of counterterrorism operations is the least labor-intensive of the three. By contrast, confirming the coordinates of al-Qaeda operatives and keeping them under surveillance until all the criteria are met for a strike is painstaking work that often involves dozens of analysts tracking a single target for weeks. Others, however, said that moving the CIA even one step away from the trigger could help alter a military mind-set that has spread across the agency’s ranks. As the drone campaign intensified during Obama’s first term, his CIA directors routinely fielded calls in the middle of the night from counterterrorism operatives seeking permission to proceed with a strike. “I think a lot of it is about the culture in the building,” said Daniel Benjamin, a former counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department who is now at Dartmouth University. “How much of the director’s time is going to be taken up by targeting? How much is going to be focusing on questions of analytic product? Those issues are absolutely key.” Karen DeYoung and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Congress wants the Pentagon to develop a long-range, deadly superdrone

The revolution in unmanned aerial flight has advanced quickly and in dramatic leaps, perhaps none more momentous than the historic landing of an autonomous Navy drone on an aircraft carrier. That happened for the first time two years ago, when Northrop Grumman’s X-47B, which looks more like a UFO than a military aircraft, took off and landed on the USS George H.W. Bush. _[Video: The Navy’s X-47B drone reaches a new milestone]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It made history again last year, when it flew alongside F/A-18 fighter jets, the first time a drone flew in concert with piloted planes off a carrier. And later this month, the X-47B is expected to attempt what would be another aerial triumph: refueling midair by a tanker plane. But despite those breakthroughs, some powerful members of Congress and leading military think tanks say the Pentagon is being too cautious in its development of a technology that they think could push the boundaries of unmanned flight—and the future of warfare. In what has become a made-for-Washington drama, a group of Congress’ most influential members are pushing the Pentagon to develop what to some sounds like sci-fi fantasy: drones that could not just take off from carriers, but fly for days at a time, covering hundreds, if not thousands, of miles, and perhaps most importantly, haul a hefty arsenal of bombs deep into enemy territory. That might sound like a tall—and expensive— order, especially at a time when congressionally mandated budget caps are forcing the Pentagon to balance wish lists against necessities. _[Don’t look now, but the plan for massive drones on aircraft carriers is coming]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But proponents of a more ambitious approach, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), fear that the Navy’s plan to primarily use the drones as eyes in the sky designed to fly around the carriers and detect incoming threats, is misguided. Potential adversaries have developed advanced anti-ship missiles, pushing aircraft carriers well off shore, beyond the striking distance of piloted fighter jets, such as the F/A-18 and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. To counter that, the carriers need stealthy, unmanned aircraft that can fly long distances, in a combat environment, they say. Without that ability, the U.S.’s long-held air dominance is lost and its fleet of aircraft carriers, long a symbol of the U.S.’s ability to project power from wherever, whenever, is at risk of obsolescence. “If you take the most elementary missiles the Chinese have developed they have already pushed our carriers to a standoff of about 1,000 miles,” said Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.). “If our carriers get set back that far the F/A-18 and the F-35 are not going to get us where we need to go.” _[Meet the most fascinating part of the F-35: The $400,000 helmet]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In a letter last month, McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter “to ensure that the Navy’s first unmanned combat aircraft is capable of both providing persistent ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and conducting strike missions from the carrier at standoff distances in contested environments.” But defense consultant Loren Thompson said that if the program becomes too expensive, the Navy might decide it can’t afford to pursue it. “If you ask for too much, it either won’t work or it will be the size of a B-52 Bomber,” he said. “Every time Congress tries to add another requirement to this program, it undercuts support in the Navy for what was supposed to be a relatively modest effort.” He also said that the Pentagon has plenty of aircraft that can attack from long distances, and noted that it is close to awarding a contract for what’s known as the Long Range Strike Bomber, which would have nuclear capabilities. _[Pentagon’s $55 billion mystery plane is secret but debate over cost is appearing]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Last year, Congress held up funding for the X-47B program until the Pentagon figures out what it exactly it wants. And now the Defense Department is doing a review that would determine whether it should be able to strike at long distances or primarily a surveillance aircraft. Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, predicted that the review would find that there are “a lot of other aircraft that can do surveillance around the carrier.” While creating a drone that can fly long distances, while also carrying a heavy weapons payload, sounds like a massively complicated endeavor, he said that the X-47B “has been so successful it seems like building an aircraft like that is not as risky a proposition as we had thought.” Forbes said he was glad the Pentagon was taking a deliberate approach. The decision it makes “will lock us in to the direction we will go for the next 20, 30 years,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important …we make the right decision now.” **Related:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Arsenal: Inside the Pentagon’s Weapons Programs    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

McCain responds angrily to report on drones

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) sharply criticized congressional appropriators Thursday for secretly slipping language into the omnibus spending bill that preserves the CIA’s role in lethal counterterrorism operations.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University McCain was responding to a report in Thursday's Washington Post that revealed that Congress is on the verge of blocking President Obama’s plan to shift control of the U.S. drone campaign from the CIA to the Defense Department. The measure, buried within the 1,500-page, $1.1 trillion federal budget plan, would restrict the use of any funding to transfer unmanned aircraft or the authority to carry out drone strikes from the CIA to the Pentagon, officials said.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Waving around a copy of The Post while speaking on the Senate floor, McCain blasted his colleagues on the Senate and House Appropriations committee for making such a key decision without formally and publicly consulting the authorizing committees for the CIA and Defense Department. “The Appropriations Committee has no business making these decisions," he said. "The job of the Armed Services Committee and the job of the Intelligence Committee is to authorize these things. There was no hearing on the Intelligence Committee. There was  no hearing on the Armed Services Committee." "The appropriations have gotten into the business of the authorizing committees," he added later. "That is a violation of every procedure and process that this Senate is supposed to be pursuing." Indeed, the provision regarding drones is an unusually direct intervention by lawmakers into the way covert operations are run and will likley impede the administration's plans to return the CIA’s focus to traditional intelligence gathering and possibly bringing more transparency to drone strikes. Several lawmakers on the intelligence panels and their aides declined to confirm or comment publicly on the move in recent days.

White House budget: Boost for defense with cost-control caveat

The Defense Department would receive an overall boost in spending of about 4 percent next year to more than $585 billion, after several years of flat or declining budgets under the Obama administration. But the increase comes with a big asterisk. It assumes that Congress and the White House will agree on a way to circumvent automatic spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act, which is hardly a sure thing. Under Obama’s budget proposal, the Pentagon would see its base budget for fiscal year 2016 increase to $534.3 billion, up from $496.1 billion this year. That budget would include a 1.3 percent pay raise for 1.3 million active-duty troops – the same percentage raise allotted for federal civilian workers next year.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico At the same time the Pentagon’s special war fund, known as the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, would shrink to $50.9 billion, down from $64.2 billion this year – reflecting the continued reduction in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The Defense Department has said it wants to phase out the special war budget by 2020. In addition to paying for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, that budget covers a large portion of the cost of training and maintaining Afghan security forces and a host of other expenses around the world, including the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and money to help European allies boost defenses against Russia. The base defense budget includes $10.6 billion for military to buy 57 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters – the most advanced, and expensive, fighter jet in the Defense Department’s arsenal. It also allocates $3.4 billion to buy 16 P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft and $3.0 billion to buy 12 KC-46 refueling aircraft that are a backbone of the Air Force. The Navy would get nine new ships and the Army would get money to help modernize its helicopter fleet. Some proposals embedded in the defense budget have met with fierce resistance from Congress in the past, and are likely to do so again. The Pentagon will seek authority to save money by realigning and closing military installations in the United States, even though defense officials acknowledge that lawmakers – who like having bases in their districts – are hostile to the idea. The Air Force will also keep trying to retire its fleet of A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, a close-air support fighter jet also known as the Warthog, despite opposition on Capitol Hill.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Following program cancellation, military starting new presidential helicopter effort

As Congress and the president wrangle over impending budget cuts, the Pentagon is reviving its effort to purchase a new presidential helicopter fleet, a high-profile initiative that was canceled in 2009. The program — known as the “VXX” aircraft or Marine One — is nearly certain to attract congressional and public attention, given the high visibility of the project and the ongoing debate over government spending. “Any time you build something for the president, the stakes are higher,” said August Cole, an adjunct fellow at the American Security Project. “That includes the politics, the requirements and the scrutiny.” The previous effort, won by Lockheed Martin and run out of its Owego, N.Y., facility, was shut down by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates after its requirements and costs ballooned, making it a poster child for a broken military procurement process. This time around, the Pentagon is promising to keep a tighter leash on the project. “What it means is that the government probably won’t buy the ideal helicopter; they’ll buy the right trade-off of price with performance,”said Loren Thompson, an industry consultant. Indeed, in a statement, the Navy said its “acquisition approach has changed” as it plans to buy about two dozen helicopters. Rather than develop a new aircraft from scratch, the government hopes “to hold development to an absolute minimum on the VXX Program and focus the program effort on integration of mature subsystems on a mature platform,” according to a draft solicitation. “While minor changes to the platform . . . are inevitable, change to major components such as drive train, rotors, engines and basic structure is highly discouraged.” The program comes as the Pentagon has been promising to work within its budget and accept less advanced equipment — if it means a lower price tag and a greater likelihood that the manufacturer will stay within its estimated price and schedule. Critical to the strategy is competition. In its statement, the Navy said it anticipates multiple bidders. Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin has said it will team with Sikorsky to offer a version of Sikorsky’s S-92 helicopter. “We’re being . . . supportive of the Navy’s approach in this environment,” said Samir Mehta, president of Sikorsky Military Systems. “The last thing that contractors want are long-term, exotic, uncapped risk development programs, especially given the history on this specific program.” Falls Church-based Northrop Grumman will be partnering with AgustaWestland — owned by Italian firm Finmeccanica — on its bid. The two plan to propose a U.S.-built helicopter based on the AgustaWestland’s AW101 helicopter. A “significant portion of the technical and programmatic risk . . . is behind us . . . We don’t have to develop a new helicopter; we have to modify it,” said Paul Meyer, vice president and general manager of advanced programs and technologies at Northrop’s aerospace unit. “That takes a lot of burden off of industry and the customer.” In a statement, Boeing said it is “reviewing the requirements” against two of its aircraft and plans to attend an upcoming industry event. To succeed this time around, the Pentagon must keep to a minimum what’s known as “mission creep” — or a growing laundry list of roles a technology must perform, said Richard Aboulafia, a defense analyst with the Teal Group. Cole said the Navy and Defense Department will also have to keep politics out of the program. “The VXX program will be a really important test of how hard Congress will fight for defense jobs in lawmakers’ districts,” he said. “In this day and age, everyone is going to be fighting for the jobs.”

Paying for defense: Who has a plan?

When the GOP presidential candidates talk about defense spending, they usually limit their remarks to criticism of the president for “hollowing out defense.” At least Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have indicated that the defense sequestration caps must go. Congress ducked the issue this year by throwing more money into the Overseas Contingency Operations account, but as many former defense officials and outside defense experts point out, this is no way to run national security. Rachel Hoff writes: “It satisfies neither the need to compromise with GOP deficit hawks by offsetting increased defense spending with cuts elsewhere in the budget nor with Democrats by offering parallel increases to domestic spending. A better approach to the problem would involve compromise with both Republican deficit hawks and the Democratic administration.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico More important, it fails to provide certainty to military budget planners, who must decide which weapons systems to fund, what troop levels can be maintained and how much to set aside for research and development. A budgetary yo-yo makes this impossible and leads to the very sort of waste that budget hawks deplore. So what should the GOP contenders and pro-defense lawmakers be saying? It seems there are two ways to go — a macro plan or a mini-plan. The macro plan would take account of how we got where we are. Rising long-term debt and the accompanying payment on the debt are swallowing the budget and will squeeze out other budget items and economic growth as a whole. The chosen solution in 2011 — to squeeze discretionary spending — is unwise and ineffective. It neglects to see national security as a higher priority in federal spending and clamps down on other useful items (e.g. the National Institutes of Health). Moreover, it hasn’t stemmed the accumulation of debt. A macro plan to fix defense is therefore a macro plan to fix our debt problems, force lawmakers to prioritize and return defense spending to an appropriate level. That is going to take selective cuts and reforms in discretionary spending (e.g. sending some programs to the states; getting rid of Davis-Bacon, which hikes contract costs), addressing entitlements and increasing revenue. The latter might be in the form of a pro-growth tax plan or simply closing “tax expenditures.” But contrary to the wishes of pure supply spenders, not all the added revenue can be used to reduce rates; some must go toward paying down the debt so that defense can rise moderately. The problem with this is obvious: The two sides have repeatedly failed to reach a “grand bargain,” and the GOP insists any plan be revenue-neutral, thereby failing to help solve our defense spending and budget problems. Nevertheless, a new president may have more sway, although any “mandate” will be harder to come by if the winner refuses to lay out his or her scheme. In any event, politicians obsessed with a “balanced budget” should realize that annual budgets aren’t the problem (long-term debt is), so a balanced budget will inevitably require a tax hike or defense cuts. At the very least, candidates should talk about **_rebalancing_** the budget.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico If that is too much to hope for, then the mini-plan needs to be considered. This would take into account the current trajectory and the trajectory that defense experts agree is the bare minimum, the so-called Gates budget. The difference between those two needs to be made up elsewhere. If there is a GOP president and GOP majorities in both houses, that might be accomplished strictly by discretionary and entitlement reforms and cuts. (No doubt this would need to be done via reconciliation to avoid a Senate filibuster.) But even some Republicans may balk at that. It might take — gasp! — closing some tax subsidies and narrowly directed tax breaks (picking winners and losers is the idea behind these). Does the GOP have the stomach for what some will label as a tax “hike”? The tradeoff for some steps toward entitlement reform (e.g. raising the retirement age gradually) and restoring defense spending, I would argue, would be more than worth it. In any event, whether they go big picture or small, presidential candidates who decry defense cuts should be obligated to tell us how they are going to restore spending to Gates budget levels. Do they have the nerve? Listen: If they are too risk-averse to do it in a campaign, they probably are not going to do it if elected. Keep an eye out for the brave soul(s) who have the political courage to advance a macro or mini-plan. They are presidential material.

Congress proposes fixes to troubled Pentagon acquisition system

The consequences of the cost overruns that plague so many Pentagon procurement programs have traditionally been limited to tongue lashings from Congress, bad press and not a whole lot else. But under a proposal from the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, the services would have to cough up real cash — 3 percent of the amount of the overrun — when the costs of their programs go overbudget. The measure is part of what Senate committee chairman, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), called “the most sweeping acquisition reforms in a generation,” another in a series of attempts to fix the way the Pentagon spends billions of dollars on weapons and other programs annually. The issue has gotten increased attention from Capitol Hill because major programs continue to go way overbudget and slip years behind schedule. The Pentagon spent $46 billion on at least a dozen programs, including a new fleet of presidential helicopters, between 2001 and 2011 that never became operational, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But officials are also concerned that the Pentagon’s acquisition system is so flawed that it threatens national security. Potential enemies have been able to catch up with the United States, which can no longer always count on having a huge advantage in the sophistication of its weaponry, defense officials say. And they are particularly concerned with the pace at which the nation’s cyberdefenses are moving. “If it takes us years to field technology, then the threats will outpace us and we could lose lives as a result,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview. “Being more agile means we will be more effective in dealing with the huge array of challenges we face.” One of the main features of the effort is to give the heads of the services, such as the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps, more responsibility for their programs, instead of the power residing with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Now there are too many people involved in the process, with program managers spending “more time running between cubicles [in the Pentagon] than managing their own programs,” said a senior congressional staffer not authorized to speak publicly about the proposed legislation. “There are all these people in the back of the bus who all have their own steering wheels and brakes. And they drive you into the ditch.” In addition to the 3 percent penalty, the proposal would automatically transfer oversight of programs to the Pentagon if they suffer a 15 percent cost overrun, or what’s called a “Nunn-McCurdy breach.” The idea behind those consequences is to force the services to make more realistic cost estimates of their programs. Too often, officials say, the estimates come in too low in an effort to win congressional approval. And then, once the program has already started, the Pentagon asks for more money. The proposal would also temporarily double the pay for some program managers, from roughly $150,000 to $300,000, in an effort to attract top talent and make government work competitive with the private sector. The Pentagon has also been wooing companies, particularly those in Silicon Valley, which traditionally have not wanted anything to do with the Pentagon’s dense bureaucracy. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter visited the Valley in an attempt to work with companies such as Google and Apple the way it does with Lockheed Martin and Boeing. To bolster those efforts, the proposal would allow commercial companies to keep their intellectual property and streamline the red tape that typically goes with government contracts. “Our military must be able to access emerging innovations in cyber, robotics, and more that are increasingly likely not to come from the defense establishment,” McCain said in a statement. The effort also seeks to streamline the paperwork involved. For example, the Pentagon requires officials to fill out paperwork ensuring that their ships could sail without succumbing to corrosion. But the anti-corrosion effort spread, and eventually the Pentagon required the corrosion paperwork for everything it bought, even computer software. “We specifically eliminated that,” Thornberry said.

Pentagon cuts to hit nearly every part of defense industry

The budget cuts the Pentagon proposed Thursday stand to hit nearly every part of the defense industry, from makers of fighter jets and warships to providers of services such as information technology support. Facing rising political pressure to trim spending, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta proposed cutting the budget by $487 billion over the next decade. He detailed the first five years of that plan, worth $259 billion in savings, in a Pentagon briefing Thursday afternoon. If approved, the cuts would result in slower production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and fewer purchases of the new Littoral Combat Ship and the Joint High Speed Vessel. An Army combat vehicle initiative also would move more slowly than originally envisioned, in part because of contracting issues. There were notable exceptions to the austerity. The Pentagon is seeking to protect spending for building unmanned systems and for developing new ones. Funding for an unmanned Army system known as Gray Eagle would be spared, and the Pentagon vowed to invest in sea-based intelligence systems like Fire Scout, a Northrop Grumman-made drone, and in space systems. The Pentagon also is seeking to improve cyberwar capability, both defensive and offensive, which should help boost an industry growing near Fort Meade, Md., where U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency are based. But the overall impact on the defense industry from Thursday’s proposed cuts would be substantial, even for contractors that have expected shrinking budgets, said Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant. “If an administration is willing to make these kinds of cuts during an election year, imagine what kind of cuts might occur in the years following the election,” he said. David F. Melcher, president and chief executive of McLean-based defense contractor ITT Exelis, said the plan is a mixed bag. While Exelis would benefit from increased spending on electronic warfare and cybersecurity, the company is part of the Joint Strike Fighter program and would be hurt by its slowed production. “It would be unfair to say these kinds of cuts don’t hurt. Obviously, they do,” Melcher said. “We won’t be immune to it, but I like the way our portfolio lines up with the stated priorities.” Matt O’Connell, chief executive, president and director at GeoEye, a Dulles- based provider of satellite imagery, said he sees opportunity in the priority given to intelligence and surveillance. The plan calls for retiring 27 aging planes known as C-5As, large aircraft used for moving troops and supplies, and for retiring 65 of the oldest C-130s, used for dropping troops and equipment by air. The Pentagon said it found more than $60 billion in savings through an effort to spend its money more carefully, including increasing contractor competition, making better use of information technology systems and reducing contracted services. The plan, however, provided limited dollar figures, and a full budget is not slated for release until next month. “The devil is still in the details,” said Roman Schweizer, an aerospace and defense policy analyst at Guggenheim Securities. The plan “doesn’t really lay out the pure winners and losers.” In earnings calls this week, defense contractors General Dynamics of Falls Church and Lockheed Martin of Bethesda both reported that 2011 profit declined from 2010 levels. But they said their companies have long been adjusting to the anticipated cuts. “The changes have been here for us — not just now,” Robert J. Stevens, Lockheed’s chairman and chief executive, said Thursday in response to a reporter’s question about whether budget changes are starting to hit home. “It’s been very real for us for a while.”

Why Hagel is a smart pick for the Pentagon

This morning the Post makes an excellent point about Chuck Hagel’s role in the Obama administration. If confirmed by the Senate, his job will be to shepherd the Pentagon through the “nearly $500 billion in reductions to the defense budget over the next decade,” and likely more, given the current appetite for deficit reduction. First, a little context. Over the last decade, the United States defense budget has ballooned to accommodate the war on terror, as well as our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the September 11th attacks, Defense Department spending has risen from just under $300 billion in 2001, to $527.5 billion for the current fiscal year. If you include the wars, Pentagon spending rises to $616.5 billion, or nearly 4 percent of GDP. By contrast, at the peak of Cold War spending during the Reagan administration, the Pentagon’s budget topped out at 6 percent of GDP. But with the wars winding down, and Washington’s current focus on debt reduction, there have been moves to reduce defense spending from its current highs. The 2011 Budget Control Act, for example, will rein in Pentagon spending on military bases at home and abroad, and the sequester — passed as part of the “fiscal cliff” — contains $1 trillion in defense cuts over the next decade. Even if the sequester is averted, odds are good that lawmakers will find further cuts to make to the Pentagon. And indeed, Hagel’s background — in 2011, he told the Financial Times that the Defense Department was “bloated” — makes him a good choice for implementing this course of action. With all of that in mind, it’s no surprise that Republicans are eager to derail the former senator’s nomination. By choosing Hagel to lead the Pentagon through its period of belt tightening, Obama helps creates the perception of bipartisan support for defense cuts. It gives him cover that the GOP doesn’t want to provide, _and_ challenges their debt-cutting bona fides. After all, if Republicans are so eager to reduce deficits, they should support sensible cuts to the Pentagon’s budget. Which is to say that if Hagel is confirmed, his nomination will have been a savvy political choice by the president. Whether or not those budget cuts will happen, of course, is another question entirely. _Jamelle Bouie is a staff writer at _The American Prospect_, where he writes a _blog_._

A U.S. ‘ally’ fired a $3 million Patriot missile at a $200 drone. Spoiler: The missile won.

But according to an Army general, a U.S. ally recently used one to shoot down a different target: a $200 drone aircraft.  “We have a very close ally of ours that was dealing with an adversary using” small quadcopters, Perkins said, indicating the situation was not a drill. “They shot it down with a Patriot missile.” “The Patriot won,” he added with a grin. “That quadcopter that cost 200 bucks from Amazon.com did not stand a chance against the Patriot.” A disproportionate response? No doubt. But that’s exactly why Perkins brought up the anecdote in his talk, which focused on how military commanders should deal with new threats. Though the Patriot easily took out the encroaching drone, he said, it wasn’t a very cost-effective way of dealing with the problem. “I’m not sure that’s a good economic-exchange ratio,” Perkins said. “In fact, if I’m the enemy, I’m thinking, ‘Hey, I’m just going to get on eBay and buy as many of these $300 quadcopters as I can and expend all the Patriot missiles out there.’ ” Developed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, Patriot missiles have been purchased by 13 countries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Israel, since they came into service in the 1980s. The missiles are guided by radar, making them ideal for locking onto other projectiles, as well as fast-moving aircraft. Drones, for what it’s worth, would seem to fall into that category.  While there’s something laughably absurd about a retail quadcopter taking on a surface-to-air missile designed for full-scale war, the threat of weaponized drones is no joke. In recent months, Islamic State fighters have used consumer-grade drones loaded with explosives to attack Iraqi security forces and Western troops in Iraq.  Still, the incident related by Perkins seemed to invite a degree of mockery.   “While a fly buzzing around is a nuisance,” he wrote, “a fly swatter is a better solution than a shotgun.”

Northrop won the bomber contract. Now comes the battle to defend it.

It just won a huge contract to build the next Air Force bomber, triumphing in a years-long battle against Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractors in the world. But in the business of Washington, winning the contract is sometimes just the first step. The second step is defending the first one. Northrop now faces the expected legal challenge. If it wins that, it will have to overcome relentless lobbying and the yearly competition for funding among major weapons programs, a process that places enormous pressure on the federal budget. And so, as it celebrates one of the most significant moments in company history, Northrop Grumman is girding for a counterattack. Within hours of winning the contract to build the Long Range Strike Bomber, the Falls Church-based company unveiled a Web site to support the $80 billion program, urging visitors to “take action” by signing a form letter to the White House and Congress. It held celebration parties across the country, featuring friendly members of Congress, including Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.). Still, within days of the Air Force’s announcement, Boeing and Lockheed fired the first salvo in what will probably be a protracted feud, filing a protest of the contract award, essentially a legal challenge that could hold up the program for at least an additional 100 days. Even if Northrop survives the protest and keeps the bomber contract, it will probably have to fight Boeing and Lockheed every year for congressional funding. As the bomber program enters a critical development stage, the Air Force’s other top-priority programs — Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Boeing’s KS-46 tanker (for refueling other aircraft) — will also be chasing funding from a limited pool. “The question becomes: Can the Air Force afford all three of those?” said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are going to be in competition with one another because peak funding for these programs overlaps in the 2020s.” The Pentagon faces spending caps made more severe by automatic cuts known as sequestration, and it has to prioritize all sorts of demands on the defense budget. Those demands include major expenditures for aircraft, such as a new Air Force One, a new training aircraft known as the T-X, and a fleet of aircraft, known as JSTARS, which can track battle movement on the ground from great distances. And that’s just the Air Force’s acquisition budget. The Pentagon also plans to replace its Ohio-class submarines, build a new fleet of presidential helicopters and buy 55,000 new ground vehicles for the Army and Marine Corps, intended to replace the Humvee eventually. Never mind paying for ongoing operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. “You don’t like to pick favorites among your kids,” Harrison said, “but I think they’re going to have to.” The programs’ constituencies within the Pentagon and Congress face off year after year. “No one powerful special interest cares about the total amount spent each year on the military,” wrote the authors of a recent report by the American Enterprise Institute. “Various interest groups lobby for particular programs in the budget that are meaningful to them.” In an interview at the Reagan National Defense Forum, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) said that “because we have not adequately funded defense for some time, we have lots of bills coming due at the same time.” If the defense budget isn’t increased, the Pentagon may not be able to afford as many aircraft as it wants to buy, and then the cost for each individual aircraft will go up. “Choosing between long-range strike, short-range tactical fighters, and a robust air refueling capability is like trying to choose which limb to remove. Whatever you decide, the body won’t be in good shape,” said Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime critic of the F-35 program, recently said the Pentagon may have to cut the number of F-35s it buys. “The number they are now quoting — there’s just not going to be that many,” he said. Northrop has gone to great lengths not only to win the competition but also to protect the bomber program for years to come. During the competition, it took out a Super Bowl ad in two markets (Washington and Dayton, Ohio, home to the Air Force’s aviation contracting team) touting its experience and legacy. And it hired an all-star team to work exclusively on the bomber program, including Roger Zakheim, a lawyer and consultant at Covington & Burling, who is the former general counsel and deputy staff director of the House Armed Services Committee. “You measure the intensity of these campaigns by how often does an office get pinged by the companies involved, and what is the level of firepower of lobbyists,” said one congressional aide, who is not authorized to speak publicly about corporate lobbying efforts and, therefore, spoke on the condition of anonymity. Northrop’s team “shows how serious they are. . . . They were very quick to come in and make sure they are weighing in and always very responsive to anything in the news,” the aide said. Northrop also highlighted the congressional muscle it had lined up to help fend off its competitors’ attacks on Capitol Hill. “You all won that competition hands down,” Nelson reportedly said at a celebration in Florida. And he predicted that the company would also win the protest: “Northrop will be left standing.” Wes Bush, Northrop’s chief executive, meanwhile, recently hosted Thornberry at the company’s manufacturing site in Palmdale, Calif. But Lockheed and Boeing have extensive lobbying networks, strong ties to influential members of Congress and lots of experience defending controversial programs under fire. Bethesda-based Lockheed spent an average of nearly $14.5 million a year on lobbying from 2010 to 2104, and it has spent more than $10 million so far this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The company has some of the top D.C. lobbying firms on its side, including the powerful Podesta Group. Boeing’s lobbying budget has often topped $15 million, according to the center, and the company has spent nearly $17 million so far this year. It counts among its supporters Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, where Boeing wants to manufacture the bomber. She recently told reporters that she would take “a look at the competition, making sure that there wasn’t any unfairness — that it was done in a way that was fair to Boeing and Lockheed.” Despite cost overruns and schedule delays, Lockheed has protected its controversial $400 billion F-35 program. Air Force officials have said repeatedly that the bomber program should not have those problems, making it less vulnerable to the congressional ax. But the last time Northrop built a bomber, the B-2, the number to be made was slashed after costs rose and the end of the Cold War changed the nation’s threat outlook. It’s a bit of history Northrop’s opponents will probably brandish in a fight that can be expected to go on for a long time. The jockeying has already begun. In a statement announcing their protest, Boeing and Lockheed said that the selection process for the bomber project “was fundamentally flawed” and that its proposal came in at a cost “that uniquely defies the prohibitively expensive trends of the nation’s past defense acquisitions.” Harrison, the defense analyst, said such issues are not likely to go away soon. “They don’t just have to sell Congress on this once,” he said. “They have to sell them on this every year. And they’ll have to do that for about two decades if they want to be successful.”

The drone lobby isn’t excited about the latest White House fence hopper

A small drone flew onto White House grounds in the wee hours of Monday morning -- and the drone lobby isn't happy about it.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico "This incident represents a clear misuse of [unmanned aerial systems] technology," Brian Wynne, president of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, told the National Journal. "Flying any aircraft around the White House is a serious violation of the restricted and prohibited airspace in Washington, D.C. We hope the individual or individuals responsible are found and held accountable."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A Secret Service statement identified the erstwhile craft as a "quad copter" -- a commonly available type of unmanned aerial vehicle with four propellers. The incident comes at an inconvenient time for drone supporters, who staged a charm offensive last week -- storming Capitol Hill for meetings with legislators, flying a drone in a congressional hearing, and offering a free concert by band OK Go at the 9:30 Club.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But it's not the first time that a drone has infiltrated the 3-mile no-fly zone that surrounds the White House -- in fact, there have been at least three other incidents involving drones in that airspace within the last six months.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

The CIA first tested drones in Area 51 because of course they did

Two unmanned aerial reconnaissance programs operated by the CIA during the Cold War may have anticipated the rise of military drones by a half-century, according to newly declassified government documents. The two programs, known as AQUILINE and AXILLA, took shape during the early 1960s when mounting losses of U-2 spy planes convinced agency officials of the need for small, undetectable aircraft capable of conducting limited flyovers and bombing sorties.  AQUILINE was developed first. In 1965, two engineers from the Office of Research and Development issued a request for proposals for a small, unmanned drone. Douglas Aircraft was the only company to respond. "The AQUILINE prototype developed by Douglas Aircraft . . . was essentially a powered glider with an 8.5-foot wingspan," the documents read. "The aircraft weighed only 105 pounds. AQUILINE's tail-mounted engine drove a two-bladed propeller." A 3.5-horsepower engine originally meant for chainsaws was responsible for driving the propeller. Even as AQUILINE was moving forward, the CIA was developing another drone prototype. The AXILLARY project looked much more like a conventional aircraft: AXILLARY wound up being too large and loud for covert missions, the CIA determined, but considered using it as a peacetime device or as a way to deliver warheads over short ranges. To turn the drone into a self-guided missile, the CIA installed an autopilot system for $50,000 and added radar-homing equipment. AXILLARY would likely have been deployed to North Vietnam — presumably to disable surface-to-air missile sites, according to the documents. "The radar homing system proved successful as AXILLARY sought out and destroyed a radar during testing at China Lake Naval Air Station," the documents read. "However, the end of US involvement in Vietnam in early 1973 led to the cancellation of DoD funding." AQUILINE was ultimately also canceled in 1971. Despite being near invisible to chase aircraft in flight tests, the cost of the project was turning out to be a major boondoggle — especially because the drone could only be recovered by crashing it into a net near the ground. "One or more of the aircraft was always being repaired, and eventually three of the five AQUILINE prototypes were destroyed in testing," said the documents.  The United States still spends vast amounts on drone programs. The Predator project alone cost $2 billion, and the Reaper program nearly $12 billion. But unlike their predecessors nearly 50 years ago, today's machines are vastly more lethal, undetectable and sustainable.

Blowing up Missile Defense Agency leadership

**President Obama** has nominated Navy Rear Adm.  **James D. Syring** for appointment to the rank of vice admiral and for assignment as director of the Missile Defense Agency, at Fort Belvoir. The move, announced Monday by Defense Secretary **Leon Panetta** , made no mention of the fate of Lt. Gen. **Patrick O’Reilly** , the current MDA director, who was sharply criticized in a May 2 inspector general’s report for having an abusive management style. We reported July 24 that Syring, the program executive officer for Integrated Warfare Systems, was under consideration for the job. With the Senate in recess until early September, it was not immediately clear whether the White House might put Syring in the directorship on an acting basis. The Pentagon inspector general found that O’Reilly, in the job since November 2008, had bullied and “yelled and screamed at subordinates in both public and private settings,” and had violated Pentagon ethics regulations. “We recommend the Secretary of the Army consider appropriate corrective action with regard to Lt. Gen. O’Reilly,” the three-month-old report concluded. Secretary of State **Hillary Rodham Clinton** ****knows a thing or two about creating a buzz and getting stung by the media. But those metaphors became a bit more real Monday when Clinton’s trip to Malawi reportedly ended with a hastened goodbye prompted by a swarm of bees. Local media outlets reported “a mini panic at the international airport after bees thronged the area.” A witness told the Nyasa Times that people “scampered” in all directions to avoid the critters and that Clinton made haste to board the plane to avoid them. But a State Department spokeswoman played down Clinton’s reported brush with the dangerous insects. “No panic or fleeing at all,” spokeswoman **Victoria Nuland** told Buzzfeed. Just “normal bees.” And our colleague **Anne Gearan** , who was traveling in the motorcade behind Clinton, confirms that the tales of swarms of killer bees are highly exaggerated. Some bees were on the tarmac, but “no one was ever in any danger,” she assured us. Still, just to be on the safe side, Clinton — who is on an  11-day tour of Africa and stopped in Malawi to meet with the country’s first female president — might want to rethink any bees-with-honey diplomacy. It seems that what happens in the Maryland suburbs doesn’t stay in the Maryland suburbs. A Food and Drug Administration official’s arrest in Laurel on charges of soliciting a prostitute has one watchdog group questioning his work for the agency. Last month, **William Maisel** , deputy director at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, was arrested on four counts of soliciting a prostitute and one count of disorderly conduct. He’s facing a Sept. 20 trial. That would be bad enough. But now things are getting really ugly. The National Whistleblower Center, which was already unhappy with the FDA, is using the arrest to ask whether Maisel’s alleged crimes might have affected his work — particularly his involvement in a scandal in which FDA officials spied on agency scientists who had expressed concerns about the safety of medical devices. Maisel, according to the whistleblower group, was responsible for the final decision to fire **Ewa Czerska** , one of the targets of a surveillance operation in which the agency monitored the computers and communications of scientists who were subsequently fired or left the agency. The scientists later sued. In a letter to the FDA last week, the whistleblower group questioned the propriety of a person accused of such a crime snooping around the “intimate” details of another employee. The group also raised a wide range of queries, including whether the FDA had conducted a background check on Maisel and whether it plans to investigate him and his work in light of the charges. Maisel did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The FDA insists that the arrest is a private matter. And Maisel is still employed at the agency. “We consider this a personal matter that has nothing to do with the work he does at the agency,” FDA spokeswoman **Erica Jefferson** tells the Loop. The Senate on Tuesday will begin its “pro forma” sessions — in which a nearby Democratic senator comes in while the lawmakers are on vacation to gavel the Senate open for business and then gavel it closed a few seconds later. Senate Majority Leader **Harry Reid** ****(D-Nev.), the godfather of the pro- forma ploy, began the practice in 2007 to block **President George W. Bush** from making recess appointments. But this time won’t have quite the same aura. Rather than sitting on the dais in the Senate chamber to do the honors, the presiders will sit on the dais of the decidedly less historic Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room in the Hart Office Building while restoration work goes on in the Senate chamber. This would not be a first, the Senate Historical Office tells us. The “earthquake session” last August saw the first official Senate session outside the Capitol since 1819, when reconstruction after a fire in 1814 was completed. There have been actual — not pro-forma — sessions in other places in the Capitol, especially in the Old Senate Chamber during renovations, but that, too, is undergoing repairs. **With Emily Heil** The blog: washingtonpost.com/   intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.

A military defense budget based on hope

IF, AS the Obama administration is convinced, the United States will no longer conduct “long and large stability operations” in foreign countries, then the defense budget it has proposed for next year makes some logical choices. Troop strength, particularly in the Army, is being cut — to the lowest level since before World War II — so that money can be spent on new technology, cyber operations and special operations forces, which will be expanded. Weapons systems good for fighting ground wars, like the A-10 Warthog plane, are being eliminated in favor of strategic systems like the new F-35 plane and development of a new long-range bomber. Funding for missile defense is staying roughly level while the old U-2 spyplane is being grounded. The Pentagon is also making another run at trimming the excessive personnel and basing costs that are displacing needed spending on troops and readiness as the overall budget decreases. Modest increases to the health-care payments asked of troops and retirees, trims in subsidies for housing and commissaries and another round of base closings all are justified and desperately needed. Mostly likely, though, Congress won’t agree to those, which brings us to the not-so-rational aspects of the administration plan. It counts not only on politically tough decisions legislators are unlikely to make in an election year, but also on large new increases in defense spending above the level agreed on in the last bipartisan budget deal. For next year’s budget, the administration is hoping Congress will approve $26 billion in extra defense spending over the $496 billion request as part of a $58 billion “opportunity, growth and security initiative.” Since President Obama proposes to fund this in part by closing tax loopholes, its prospects are not good. Pentagon plans for the following year call for a $35 billion spending increase, to $536 billion. Overall the administration counts on $115 billion in additional funding through 2019 above the levels currently written into the law. What happens if the sequester returns after next year? Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and the service chiefs don’t appear to have a plan, other than to warn of dire consequences. We don’t disagree with their assessments. As it is, even if the requested budget for next year is fully funded the administration’s ability to pursue its biggest strategic priority — a “pivot” to Asia — will be weakened. The Navy will continue to shrink, with a net loss of five ships, and 11 cruisers will be placed in “reduced operating status” while they are being refurbished. The full 11-group aircraft carrier fleet will be kept but maintenance on one, the George Washington, is being deferred; if the $6 billion cost cannot be found in the next year the ship could be retired. In sum, the new defense budget is a patch constructed on the hope that funding needed to sustain even this administration’s constrained strategic objectives can be found in future years. And what if Mr. Obama is wrong, and the United States is forced into a large land operation — in Syria, Iran, Korea or maybe Eastern Europe? The chances might be small; but if the worst occurs, the United States will not be ready. **Read more about this topic:** Michael Gerson: The U.S. retreats Rachel Maddow: A nuclear weapons strategy that’s stuck in the past Charles Lane: Tricare the untouchable The Post’s View: Saving taxpayer money on Tricare

Kendall, Hagel stress innovation to maintain military superiority

America’s position as a leader in technological innovation is in danger, according to Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official. That’s why the Defense Department’s next big initiative — known as “Better Buying Power 3.0” will emphasize innovation, technical excellence and speed, Kendall said in remarks delivered at an industry conference Wednesday. Kendall, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, has been an advocate of improving the defense acquisition system through his “Better Buying Power” program, which seeks to make the Pentagon more efficient at buying products and services from contractors. The first iteration focused on improving business practices and the second one was about making more informed decisions during the procurement process. But 3.0 was going to be a bit different, Kendall said. “3.0 is going to get us back to our products,” he said. “It’s going to be on technology speed to market, and things we can do to get capability in the hands of warfighters more quickly.” Kendall offered few details about the program, which he plans to elaborate on soon. In his speech, Kendall said the acquisition process, which has been blamed for slowing down the pace of government programs, was not as big a concern as investment in new technology, especially in light of foreign competition. Russia and China are “building things that are designed to be effective against the power projection capabilities of the United States and of our allies,” he said. “And they’re doing a reasonably good job of it, particularly China.” The shrinking defense budget and cuts to research and development in particular are a source of deep concern to him, Kendall said. Such cuts were tantamount to “delaying modernization,” he said. “As we delay modernization, we basically lose the time that it takes us to get things into the force,” he said. Kendall also added that the Pentagon’s budget would try and invest more in technology that moves capabilities forward. His remarks echoed those of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who spoke on the same topic at a conference in Rhode Island Wednesday. Hagel also stressed the need for American companies to innovate in order to keep pace with the rest of the world. “We cannot assume, as we did in the 1950s and ’70s, that the Department of Defense will be the sole source of key breakthrough technologies,” he said. **More from Capital Business:** For a daily rundown of Washington area business news, sign up for the “CapBiz A.M.” e-mail newsletter.

Popular Science and 25 reasons to love drones

A team of reporters takes on drones in the August issue of Popular Science magazine, pointing out that the Federal Aviation Administration is working on regulations that would set off the widespread development and use of small, unmanned aircraft. The FAA’s progress has been slower than expected, but eventually drones are expected to fill the skies. “The truth is, we’re witnessing a Kitty Hawk moment — the start of an era in which drones will change the world and the way we live in it,” the authors write. Today drones may be best known for their military use; the FAA has prohibited most commercial flights until it can figure out how to make them safe. About 50 military drones have crashed on training flights in the United States since 2001, and about 24 civilian ones have been in accidents over the past year, The Washington Post reported in June. Eventually drones will help expand Internet access around the world, enable crop spraying that can improve farming and keep tabs on the weather, the magazine says. They’ll also be fun and useful, the authors say, giving you the opportunity to take great photos from overhead and speeding up deliveries to your doorstep. Of course, drones have their drawbacks. They could be misused, and crowded skies might mean more accidents — and what about privacy? “In a world where drone operators will include police and paparazzi, it will be hard to escape from probing eyes in the sky,” Popular Science says. Read more: Crashes mount as military flies more drones in the U.S.

Slack budgeting at Defense

For a reminder of how much money is sloshing around within the Defense Department, read the Senate Armed Services Committee’s 514-page report on the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill, which was released Tuesday. Despite complaints about belt tightening — and God forbid any further reductions come from across-the-board cuts mandated by sequestration — the committee found hundreds of millions of dollars to move around from one program to another in approving $525.8 billion for the department’s core budget. By the way, that is $500 million above President Obama’s request, although the panel made up part of that by cutting $300 million from the separate $88.5 billion requested for overseas operations such as the fighting in Afghanistan. Let’s start with cost overruns. Does any other branch of government get away with having its programs balloon the way Pentagon weapons systems do, with no end in sight? The best example is the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, the planned 2,443 fifth-generation stealth fighter-bombers that the country could be buying for the next 20 years. In the push to get the first planes, there was — according to the project’s executive officer quoted in the report — a “miscalculation.” That miscalculation was concurrency — the overlap between developing advanced, complex avionics and computer systems for the F-35 and testing them while at the same time beginning production. It has cost taxpayers an additional $7.9 billion and delayed overall development by almost three years. And concurrency costs are not over. The report notes that the panel refused to reprogram about $771 million to pay for those costs on the first three lots of F-35s. Where did the Pentagon find that cash? “From other [Defense Department] programs,” said the report. An additional $523 million concurrency cost is coming on the fourth-bloc purchase of F-35s. Where will that money be found? Of course, when the House looked for additional funds for its defense spending bill, it took money from welfare and other programs for the poor. And now congressional Republicans want to fund lower interest rates for college loans by slicing state Medicaid reimbursements or by increasing federal workers’ retirement payments. Only the Defense Department can find big sums by squeezing its own programs. The Pentagon could find about $188 million next year to help pay for the F-35 overruns by accepting an amendment by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) to limit spending on military bands to $200 million a year, a proposal in the House-passed fiscal 2013 authorization bill. The Senate helped kill a similar McCollum amendment last year, and its Armed Services Committee refused to deal with it this year. But the committee found a lot of loose Pentagon money. For example, it found $97 million in the Army account used to buy 30mm and 40mm ammunition for a variety of weapons. The Government Accountability Office, in a private study for the panel, predicted the rate of use for the rounds and determined that the Army was asking $37 million too much for 30mm ammunition in 2013 because of a pricing change. In addition, it found that $75 million in excess 40mm ammo from 2011 was returned to the Army Budget Office to be reprogrammed. Instead, the panel said, it could be used “to cover the Army’s entire fiscal year 2013 procurement budget request for 40mm ammunition,” which was $60.1 million. What other government department has $75 million left over from last year that hasn’t been already put to another use because of budget cuts? Or how about the ammunition for the Excalibur 155mm precision-guided extended-range artillery round? It is designed to use the Global Positioning System to guide it to targets out of the normal artillery shell range, hitting armored vehicles or reinforced bunkers. The Army requested $110.3 million to procure these shells in fiscal 2013 but more recently told the committee there was a scheduling delay. So the panel cut $55 million from the request. An additional $14.3 million was picked up out of the Army’s overall fiscal 2013 request of $1.7 billion from ammunition for the Spider network program. Spider is part of the Army’s new anti-personnel land-mine program. Unlike traditional land mines, a Spider can be recovered and redeployed and even deactivates itself after a set time. But the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation “expressed concerns” about the system, and so the committee cut all but $3.1 million from the original Army request of $17.4 million. There are scores of other examples to be found in the committee report. The panel cut $30 million from an airborne and maritime fixed radio program because it was unlikely that the equipment would be ready for integration into Army helicopters before 2014. You may ask what happens to these reductions — $30 million here, $55 million there. Most often the funds go to programs that committee members like and the Pentagon does not. The panel, as proposed by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and others, added $91 million to keep open plants working on the M1A2 Abrams tank program, a production line that the Pentagon wanted to close. One plant is in Lima, Ohio. Congress has pet projects, illustrated by the $100 million the panel added to the $98.5 million requested by the administration for three U.S.-Israeli cooperative missile defense programs. It’s a step the House had already taken. Also, the panel authorized an additional $210 million for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range rocket defense system in anticipation of an administration request for such funding. The $310 million that the Senate committee added is on top of $3.1 billion in military assistance annually provided Israel in other legislation. While other departments and agencies have to be listened to when they complain about budget pressures, it’s hard after reading the fine print in this committee report to show much sympathy to moans from the Pentagon. For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage. Read more national security news: Congress vows to stop leaks of secrets U.S. strike killed al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader Remains of WWII U.S. airmen lost in Himalayas to return to U.S.

President Obama just used the one word drone makers hate most

When the president adopts the word "drone," it's time to admit the industry's big attempt at rebranding has failed. In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, Obama reminded Americans of his "prudent limits on the use of drones." For months, companies that make remotely piloted vehicles have waged a quiet campaign to stop people from using the word "drone" — a term businesses fear ties them too closely to the Obama administration's controversial program of targeted strikes in foreign countries. As an alternative, many have been pushing awkward jumbles like "unmanned aerial systems" and its corresponding acronym, UAS.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The idea is to promote the impression of drones — sorry, unmanned systems — as a technology that leads to more than just explosions. A surging international business in this stuff has recently drawn a great deal of attention in the United States, helped along by announcements from Amazon.com concerning drone-based parcel delivery. Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration is working on policies to integrate drones into the national airspace, or NAS. (Using only technologically neutral terms underscores how cumbersome it can be to talk about drones: "The FAA is integrating UAS into the NAS.")  It's much simpler, and more accessible, to use the word everyone else does. If you're among the people worried about that — don't. Definitions change. And now that Obama has very consciously dropped the word in a major televised speech, there's no going back. "Drone" is here to stay.

Defense contracts are hard to kill. Does that show up in lobbying totals?

Over the weekend, my colleague Marjorie Censer published a story that tells us a lot about why the U.S. military costs so much: Legislators won't let the people in uniform spend less money, even when expensive programs outlive their usefulness. In this case, it's the iconic tank, which BAE Systems has built in York, Pa., since the 1960s. Though modern warfare requires more long-range systems like drones and missiles than overwhelming force on the ground, Congress has continued to give the Army more money than it's even asked for to keep building expeditionary fighting vehicles.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University So it appears, from this one example of procurement stickiness, that investments in lobbying can pay off for a long time. But does that show up in the numbers? To find out, using the Opensecrets.org database, I compared money spent on lobbying with money awarded in contracts for the biggest arms manufacturers (for procurement totals, click on their names).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University BAE Systems' contracts fell off sharply after 2008, but its lobbying declined more slowly:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Northrop Grumman took a rest after 2008 but then tried to resuscitate its business: Lockheed Martin actually did better than its lobbying expenditures would suggest:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Same with Boeing:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University General Dynamics, though, continued to spend even after its contracts declined: Same with Raytheon:         *[WSU]: Wayne State University There's some variation, but overall it appears that the amount of money a company spends on lobbying correlates roughly with how much it pulls down in contracts -- and that lobbying continues even after contracting dollars start to fall, not the other way around. So while there may be lots of examples of programs sticking around because of resistance to taking away jobs, in the aggregate, it doesn't amount to contracts being renewed simply out of inertia (recognizing that these are very top-line numbers and lots of other factors may be at play, including the amount these companies spend on elections).

What defense contractors should know about the Pentagon’s new program

The Pentagon has rolled out its latest program targeted at defense contractors: Better Buying Power 3.0. This is the third iteration of the government’s effort to streamline how it purchases defense programs, following the release of version 1.0 in 2010 and version 2.0 in 2012. The policies outlined in Better Buying 3.0 are expected to guide the Defense Department’s acquisition efforts going forward. The department’s top acquisition official, Frank Kendall, says this round is different from its predecessors because it places emphasis on technological advancement to keep pace with rivals such as Russia and China. So if you do business with the government, what can you actually expect from the program? Here are four major takeaways: **Incentive-based approach.** The basic idea of version 3.0 is to give companies business reasons to innovate and invest more in research and development, Kendall said, because the Pentagon’s own budget constraints make it less able to do so. In Kendall’s words, the Pentagon wants a “lean, capable but creative industry.” That means the Pentagon wants contractors to use more prototyping and experimentation while they develop products or services. In return, the government will reward companies that bring a fresh approach to their programs. One way the Pentagon aims to reward companies is by increasing the use of incentive-based contracts, a new item featured in version 3.0. The department will use these specific kinds of contracts on a more regular basis, Kendall said. The Pentagon will also expand its Superior Supplier Incentive Program across the Defense Department. The Navy, which was the first branch of the military to try the program this year, created a list of its top suppliers to highlight those who performed well and motivate those who weren’t on the list to improve. Contractors were ranked on their cost, scheduling and quality performance over the past three years. **More emphasis on research and development.** The new program stresses research and development above all. The department will make smarter, more targeted investments in areas of technology that matter most and increase its long-term R&D planning, according to Kendall. Steve Welby, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant defense secretary for systems engineering, will lead a team to oversee that effort, he said. To spur industry research, Kendall said the Pentagon plans to give companies earlier drafts of technical requirements. By doing so, it hopes to collect feedback from companies and involve them more closely during the shaping of program requirements. For small-business owners, the government plans to increase the returns on its small business innovation research program under version 3.0. However, the Pentagon is going to take a closer look at increasing the productivity of internal research and development (IR&D), which is the research that it reimburses contractors for doing. Kendall said IR&D cost the government at least $4 billion annually, so it wants to “make sure that’s being done as effectively as possible.” That means contractors can expect more scrutiny of their research projects. ******Thinking commercially.** A shortage of defense dollars has already pushed many contractors into exploring the commercial market. The Pentagon wants to make the most of existing technology by purchasing off-the-shelf products that would result in cost savings, such as the Army has done with tactical radios. The other side of a more commercial approach is to act like a commercial buyer, Kendall said. He cited the space launch sector as an example, which has seen the entrance of new players offering the department more affordable options. “The idea of [Better Buying Power 3.0] is to look for more opportunities like that,” he said. The Pentagon will remove some of the barriers to commercial purchases under the new program. Kendall said the department plans to step up its use of a regulation that allows the acquisition of commercial technology with a lesser degree of cost scrutiny than normal purchases. **Don’t forget competition.** The basic tenets of Better Buying Power 3.0 are not all that different from the first two versions. That means competition is still the name of the game in the acquisition process. In fact, Kendall said he is unhappy with the level of competition across defense programs and wants to see it increase. Related: Pentagon effort seeks to retain U.S.’s technological edge **More from Capital Business:** For a daily rundown of Washington area business news, sign up for the “CapBiz A.M.” e-mail newsletter.

Are drones a useful tool or toys that need to be regulated?

Drones: a useful business tool or playtime toy? The question will arise again Wednesday on the floor of the Senate as lawmakers consider how much regulation is needed for a burgeoning industry that is projected to supply 2.8 million drones this year, with a bottom line rapidly approaching $1 billion in annual sales. The risk drones pose to people and privacy has unfolded gradually as the fun-to-fly gadgets have become a must-have item for those who can afford them. Drones have buzzed planes in flight, endangered military aircraft and peered over the neighbor’s hedges with mini video cameras. The counterbalance to drones as a hobby is a multitude of commercial uses as mapping and construction tools that speed projects along and save workers from risky tasks, such as climbing cell towers for inspections. The prospect that they will be used for package deliveries is on the drawing board. As the technology moves at warp speed, state and federal lawmakers and regulators have sprinted to keep up. Calculating the correct dose of regulation to rein in the exuberant hobbyist without stifling commercial use or industry growth has been the challenge at the Federal Aviation Administration and on Capitol Hill. Drone “technology is developing rapidly, much faster than our country’s capacity to develop the necessary regulations,” Brian Wynne, president and chief executive of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, told the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship last week. The FAA’s new drone registration program has recorded 400,000 drone owners, and the agency’s B4UFly app continues its effort to educate operators about the rules for flying them. Now the Senate will consider directing the FAA to do more, including requiring an online test for drone operators and requiring manufacturers to install uniform safety features. The Senate, in a larger bill that would renew authorization for the FAA, also wants to provide funding for better drone enforcement and clarify the role of state and local lawmakers who have stepped in with their own laws. Giving the FAA supremacy to dictate drone regulations would give manufacturers and companies that want to use drones for deliveries a single agency for their proposals, rather than requiring state-by-state submissions. “The patchwork of state and local laws under consideration in many jurisdictions will create additional hurdles for small businesses,” Wynne said last week. “Industry just wants rules,” said Nancy Egan, general counsel for the drone manufacturer 3D Robotics. “People want rational rules, but the fact is that at this point they want any rules, because there are so many amazing things that can be done with a drone to make the world safer.” The FAA this spring is expected to issue regulations covering drones weighing up to 55 pounds. The agency said there were 764 drones sighted near airplanes last year, despite current guidelines against flying drones near planes or within five miles of an airport unless the control tower has been contacted first. Drones also are supposed to fly below 400 feet, stay away from stadiums and remain in sight of the operator. There are industry concerns that lawmakers, eager to corral the handful of hobbyists who misuse their drones, will inhibit their development and use. “We must allow our innovators to fully realize drones’ potential as a truly life-changing technology,” said Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association, a trade group. “We will continue to work with members of Congress to ensure that the FAA adopts rules that allow small businesses to get the maximum benefits from drone technology.” Egan worries that the Senate bill will require the FAA to begin its regulatory process anew. “My concern with the Senate bill is that it ignores what the FAA has already done,” Egan said. “It essentially says, ‘FAA, you need to start over.’ ” She co-chairs an FAA panel working on regulations specific to drone flights over people who have no relationship with the drone operator. “What the FAA’s already studied, and taken public comment on and considered in depth, is what kind of flight is safe,” she said. “I’m not sure why we’re starting over.”

The Pentagon’s newest weapons look like something out of ‘Star Wars’

One of the newest weapons in the Pentagon's vast arsenal is a concentrated beam of light, a laser that zaps and burns, delivering destruction by the kilowatt, as if in "Star Wars." Under development for years by the military and the defense industry, lasers have moved from science-fiction fantasy, to the laboratory and, just recently, to the Persian Gulf. They sizzle rather than go boom, providing pin-point accuracy that proponents say can prevent the kind of collateral damage that's unavoidable with missiles or bombs. And they represent the Pentagon's most aggressive efforts to use technology to bolster brute force, as it develops fighter pilots helmets designed to see through the body of the plane, uniforms with fabric that conducts electricity, and Ironman-like exoskeletons.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In announcing a Defense Innovation Initiative last month, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that in order to keep its battlefield edge, the military needs to move with the urgency of a Silicon-Valley start-up in developing breakthroughs in technologies such as robotics, autonomous systems, big data and 3-D printing. While the U.S. has focused on fighting wars for more than a decade, he said that potential enemies have taken the time to innovate. "Countries like Russia and China have been heavily investing in military modernization programs to blunt our military's technological edge," he said. Last week, the Navy announced a big step in that direction. For months, sailors tested a $40 million, 30-kilowatt laser mounted on the deck of the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf. Using a video-game like controller, service members practiced taking out drones and small boats. And now the weapon, which looks like a giant telescope, is ready to take out real threats if necessary, officials said, meaning the Pentagon could soon record its first kill with a laser.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico "The captain of that ship has all of the authorities necessary if there was a threat inbound to that ship," said Rear Adm. Matthew L. Klunder, chief of naval research. "To protect our sailors and Marines, we would defend that ship with this laser system." Unlike missiles, lasers travel at the speed of light, so they hit their target almost instantaneously. Once built, their expense is essentially limited to the cost it takes to fuel it. Navy officials said the USS Ponce's laser, for example, costs 59 cents a shot, while the cost of some missiles that would perform the same attack can cost in the millions of dollars. As long as there is power, lasers can also keep firing with an "unlimited magazine" that never needs to be reloaded, which is especially helpful for a ship at sea. The power of lasers can also be changed. A low-energy pulse may disable a drone's sensors, a maneuver known as "dazzling." Crank it up, though, and drone soon becomes fireball. But laser beams fire dead straight and can't bend or easily change directions, so there has to be a clear line of sight to the target. And if it's raining, or even cloudy, the moisture in the atmosphere can make them less effective. Smoke and pollution can cause problems, as well. And the enemy doesn't always attack on clear, sunny days. "If you want to know the problem with lasers, try using a flashlight in the fog," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst and consultant. For years, lasers have been a key focus for many of the biggest defense contractors--including BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. And the industry has been making advancements toward mounting them on trucks, tanks, aircraft and even drones, analysts said. In recent years, laser technology has reached a "tipping point," said Rick Hunt, director of Raytheon's Navy/Marine Corps Programs, and soon could be widespread. "This isn't something in a Buck Rogers comic book," said Tom Captain, a vice chairman at Deloitte who leads the consulting firms aerospace and defense sector. "It's being deployed now." As scientists and engineers make them smaller, more efficient and powerful, lasers will become a "top 10 acquisition" priority for the Pentagon within five years, predicted Ray Johnson, Lockheed Martin's Chief Technology Officer. Boeing has developed a massive truck it calls a High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator for the Army with a laser designed to take out rockets, mortars and drones. During a recent demonstration, the laser targeted a dime-sized beam on the 10-inch mortar, and fried it until the mortar exploded mid-air.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It could also protect against rockets and missiles that travel even faster, officials said. While many of the lasers in development would be used for relatively short distances, within a few years companies will start producing far more powerful weapons capable of much longer ranges, officials said. And their precision could make them valuable in counterterrorism. Captain said he could envision the day when a drone spots a terrorist on the ground. But the terrorist happens to be next to a playground filled with kids. You can't "fire a Hellfire missile and blow up the 50 kids on the playground," Captain said. But a laser could be quick and deadly--without the collateral damage, he said. Developing the rules of engagement for lasers took top Pentagon officials a year, Klunder said. And he said that the Defense Department would comply with the Geneva Convention, which prohibits weapons that blind. "We are going to honor the conventions with this laser system," Klunder said. "We're not going to use it to directly point and kill people." The weapon is more effective, he said, when it's used to destroy the engines or sensors of ships and drones. Patrick Wilcken, a trade and human rights researcher at Amnesty International, said that lasers should be "very strictly regulated and controlled so that it is never used against a human target where there is a risk of eye damage." Despite the advancements, many think that lasers won't replace guns, cannons or missiles, but rather augment them. That's a problem at a time when the defense budget is shrinking - not growing. "The main budgetary drawback is that no one is proposing they replace existing weapons," said Thompson, the defense analyst. "They're saying why don't we have lasers, too. But it's an addition in a budget that can't grow." That hasn't stopped companies from developing lasers, which many think will become a must-have technology for the Pentagon. BAE Systems, for example, has showcased what it calls a Future Technology Demonstrator, a tank-like vehicle that has both a machine gun and a laser. In other words, it can go sizzle and boom.

Obama announces new, leaner military approach

The U.S. military will steadily shrink the Army and Marine Corps, reduce forces in Europe and probably make further cuts to the nation’s nuclear arsenal, the Obama administration said Thursday in a preview of how it intends to reshape the armed forces after a decade of war. The downsizing of the Pentagon, prompted by the country’s dire fiscal problems, means that the military will depend more on coalitions with allies and avoid the large-scale counterinsurgency and nation-building operations that have marked the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, the Pentagon will invest more heavily in Special Operations forces, which have a smaller footprint and require less money than conventional units, as well as drone aircraft and cybersecurity, defense officials said. The military will also shift its focus to Asia to counter China’s rising influence and North Korea’s unpredictability. Despite the end of the Iraq war, administration officials said they would keep a large presence in the Middle East, where tensions with Iran are worsening. The strategy review was unveiled by President Obama in a rare visit to the Pentagon, where he was flanked by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, the Joint Chiefs and other officials who sought to project an image of undiminished military power even as they gird for an era of austerity that will necessitate a more restrained use of military force and more modest foreign policy goals. “Yes, our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats,” Obama said. Obama and Pentagon leaders said their new military strategy, contained in an eight-page document, will guide wrenching decisions on defense cutbacks. Details will be made public in the next few weeks as the White House finalizes its proposed federal budget for the next fiscal year. In a deficit-reduction deal reached with Congress in August, the White House agreed to cut projected defense spending over the next 10 years by about $480 billion, or about 8 percent of what the Pentagon had planned on. Although Pentagon officials have portrayed those cuts as painful, Obama said the defense budget is still expected to increase slightly — at about the rate of inflation — each year for the next decade. “I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand, that we can keep our military strong and our nation secure with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined,” he said. What really worries Pentagon leaders, however, is that their fiscal problems might well be about to get worse. Under a separate deal with Congress, an additional $500 billion in defense cutbacks will be triggered unless lawmakers can agree on an alternative plan to trim the deficit by the end of the year. Gordon Adams, a former national security budget official in the Clinton administration, predicted that lawmakers would find a way to avoid that trigger, which Panetta has called a “doomsday” scenario for the Defense Department. But Adams said other defense cutbacks are likely as Congress tries to find ways to improve the national balance sheet. “That’s inevitable,” he said. “Only one shoe has fallen here. There’s another shoe to fall.” Some Republican lawmakers ripped Obama’s military strategy, saying it would weaken America’s standing in the world. “This is a lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America,” said Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Republican contenders to run against Obama in November have also heightened their criticism of his national security record. But with the GOP reluctant to endorse higher taxes, some Republican candidates and legislators have said the defense budget should not be exempt from further cuts. In contrast to past Pentagon reviews, the new strategy offers some clear guidance to the military services about which missions to eliminate and which areas of the sprawling defense establishment to scale back. The approach recognizes that military and intelligence agencies will have to continue the battle against al-Qaeda and other global terrorist groups. But instead of using conventional Army and Marine Corps forces in long counterinsurgency wars, the Obama administration wants to focus more heavily on “tailored capabilities appropriate for counter-terrorism and irregular warfare.” The strategy does not formally reject the idea that U.S. military forces will be called on in the future to bring order to fractured societies in the developing world. But it suggests that any stability operations similar to those conducted during the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan will be of short duration and have far more limited goals. “Nowhere in the document does it say we’re not going to fight land wars. It doesn’t say we’re never going to do stability operations,” said Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It’s a matter of scope and scale, time, risk, reversibility.” Obama insisted that any cuts to the military will not come at the expense of an expanding U.S. presence in Asia, which he dubbed a “critical region.” To pay for those increases, the strategy suggests a need for significant cuts to the size of U.S. military ground forces in Europe, which has been a major Army operation for decades. European allies, many confronting even more austere times than the United States, have been bracing for a reduction in the 80,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Europe. British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, who visited Washington on Thursday to meet with Panetta and other U.S. officials, said NATO countries will have to do more to pool their diminishing resources. “We Europeans need to reassure the U.S. that we are serious about defense,” Hammond said in a speech to the Atlantic Council, a transatlantic think tank. “The U.S. need to reassure Europe that you are not going away.” Top Obama administration officials revealed few details about which weapons programs will be cut and how many troops will be pared. In the past decade, the Army has grown to about 570,000 troops, up from 482,000 before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Current plans call for the Army to shrink to about 520,000 troops, although senior Army leaders said they expect their forces to be cut further. The strategy document also foreshadows cutbacks in the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, stating: “It is possible that our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force.” Defense officials declined to elaborate, but they said they would offer more information when they release next year’s proposed Pentagon budget. The United States has about 5,000 nuclear warheads in its arsenal. The New START nuclear pact with Russia, ratified by the Senate in December 2010, mandates that each country reduce the number of nuclear weapons deployed on long-range missiles and bombers to 1,550. The Obama administration also signaled the scaling back of another Cold War strategic construct. For decades, the military has adhered to a policy of maintaining enough forces to fight two regional wars at once. The new strategy commits the Pentagon to being able to fight a single large-scale war while retaining enough forces to deter or impose “unacceptable costs on an opportunistic aggressor in a second region.” The strategy also cites the need for the Pentagon to trim personnel costs by reducing the amount of money the department spends on pay, health care and other benefits. Cutting those costs has been a major goal of the Pentagon for most of the past decade. But the effort has consistently run into a buzz saw on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have resisted even small reductions to military pay and benefits. **More world news coverage:** \- Bombs targeting Iraqi Shiites kill 72 \- Syrian media awaken despite risks \- Settlers temporarily banned from West Bank \- Read more headlines from around the world

How crashing drones are exposing secrets about U.S. war operations

Crashing drones are spilling secrets about U.S. military operations. A surveillance mission was exposed last week when a Predator drone crashed in northwest Syria while spying on the home turf of President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. officials believe the drone was shot down, but they haven’t ruled out mechanical failure. Regardless, the wreckage offered the first hard evidence of a U.S. confrontation with Assad’s forces. The mishap in Syria follows a string of crashes in Yemen, another country where the U.S. military keeps virtually all details of its drone operations classified. Yemeni tribesmen have reported three cases in the past 15 months in which U.S. drones have fallen from the sky, pulling back the curtain on likely surveillance targets. Air Force spokesmen said they could not confirm any crashes in Yemen, but Air Force records obtained by The Washington Post show the dates match up with official acknowledgments of accidents that occurred in classified locations. Since January 2014, the Air Force has reported 14 crashes of Predator and Reaper drones that either destroyed the aircraft or inflicted more than $2 million in damage. Three of the accidents took place in Afghanistan, but six happened elsewhere in classified or undisclosed sites, a sharp increase from prior years. The far-flung nature of the accidents reinforces how U.S. drone operations have spread well beyond the established war zone in Afghanistan. In November, a Reaper drone crashed in the Sahara while returning to a new U.S. base in Niger. At the start of last year, a Predator plunged into the Mediterranean Sea after conducting a secret mission over Libya, a rare tangible sign of U.S. surveillance operations there. U.S. military drones are also based in Turkey, Italy, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Djibouti, a small country on the Horn of Africa. In addition, the CIA has its own drone bases in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. The demand for U.S. military drones that are capable of conducting airstrikes continues to soar. Last year, Predators and Reapers flew more than ever: 369,913 flight hours, or six times the figure for 2006, according to Air Force statistics. The Predator alone logged the third-most hours of any plane in the Air Force, ranking narrowly behind the F-16 fighter jet and the workhorse KC-135 refueling tanker. Military planners had expected the opposite, that demand for drones would drop as U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Instead, the Pentagon became embroiled in a new conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, other terrorist threats have flared in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa, further taxing the U.S. drone fleet. “We simply underestimated the continued demand,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work told a defense conference last week in Washington. “They quickly got sucked up in the unexpected campaign in Iraq and Syria.” Commanders’ appetite for drones and other surveillance aircraft, he added, “remains very, very high and continues to outstrip our supply.” In addition to keeping pilots out of harm’s way, drones such as the Predator and Reaper can instantly transmit full-motion video to intelligence analysts — a critical technology in modern warfare. Video from drones “has become fundamental to almost all battlefield maneuvers,” said Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the overall commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan, in a prepared statement this month to the House Armed Services Committee. He said allies were chipping in with their drones and other reconnaissance aircraft but that “shortages do remain that will need to be addressed.” The Pentagon is asking Congress for $904 million next year to buy 29 Reapers, more than double the number it had sought for this year. The Air Force says it has an acute need to replace drones that have crashed and to phase out the Predator, an older model that has less firepower and range than the Reaper. The surge in drone flights has also strained the crews that operate them from the ground, forcing many to work six days a week. Faced with a shortage of remote-control pilots, the Air Force has stepped up recruiting and is planning to offer retention bonuses. Reliability has long been the Achilles’ heel of drones. Although they malfunction less often than they used to, they still crash at a higher rate than other military aircraft. Of the 269 Predators acquired by the Air Force over the past two decades, more than half have wrecked in major accidents, records show. Predators and Reapers generally fly at altitudes above 18,000 feet — too high for militants to shoot them down with small arms. But the slow-moving aircraft can be easy marks for missile batteries operated by regular armies. On March 17, the U.S. Air Force lost contact with a Predator that had been flying a nighttime sortie near Latakia, Syria. While Assad’s forces had been happy to allow U.S. drones to target Islamic State fighters in other parts of the country, Latakia is an Assad stronghold. Syrian state-run media reported that government air defenses shot down “a hostile aircraft” and showed pictures of the wreckage, including a stamped label from General Atomics, the California-based manufacturer of the Predator. U.S. officials have not disputed that the drone could have been hit by a missile, but they have not ruled out other potential causes. A loss of electrical power and severed communications links are two other common factors in drone accidents. The crash revealed something else. It would be extremely difficult for U.S. drones to reach northwestern Syria from their primary bases in the Persian Gulf. That meant the Predator had almost certainly entered Syrian airspace from Turkey. The U.S. Air Force has Predators stationed at Incirlik Air Base, but the Turkish government has long insisted those drones are limited to flying surveillance missions over northern Iraq. The crash in Latakia was a clear sign that Turkish officials had secretly relaxed that rule and were permitting the Pentagon to use their territory for operations in Syria.

Pentagon rolls out new strategy to help keep America’s technological edge

The Pentagon formally rolled out an updated acquisition strategy Thursday that streamlines how the department buys technology and allows greater room for experimentation by defense contractors. The program, known as “Better Buying Power 3.0,” emphasizes the role of research and development to spur innovation and outlines steps for the Pentagon to better harness commercial technology in order to cut costs. It is part of a multi-year effort to help the nation maintain its technological advantage at a time when defense budgets are shrinking. Pentagon officials including former defense secretary Chuck Hagel and acquisition chief Frank Kendall have stressed the need for the department to tap into emerging technology trends and encourage innovation by the commercial sector, citing the renewed investments being made by its foreign rivals. “The technological superiority of the United States is now being challenged by potential adversaries in ways not seen since the Cold War,” Kendall wrote Thursday in a memo about the new program. Companies that do business with the Pentagon can expect more incentives to innovate but also increased scrutiny of their internal research and development projects. For example, the Pentagon plans to release guidelines next month that increase the role the government will play in reviewing companies’ internal research decisions. The program also includes a new section dedicated to cybersecurity, an area of concern for government agencies and contractors that have been the target of increased cyberattacks. “All our efforts to improve technological superiority will be in vain if we do not provide effective cybersecurity throughout the product lifecycle,” the Pentagon said in its release. As part of its cyber strategy, the department plans to review its current security design processes, identify areas for improvement and work with law enforcement, intelligence agencies and other parts of government to protect classified and unclassified information. The results of the initial review and recommendations are expected in the fall. Better Buying Power 3.0 also reiterates the Pentagon’s goal to promote competition and use a carrot-and-stick approach to reward high-performing contractors. The program expands the Pentagon’s “superior supplier incentive program,” which recognizes companies that perform well on cost and on schedule. Industry members had mixed reactions to the program. The guidelines place too many hurdles on the use of commercial technology, said Stan Soloway, president and chief executive of the Professional Services Council, an Arlington, Va.-based contracting trade group, whose members include technology companies. Defense company Boeing welcomed the initiative. “A more open and deliberate dialogue . . . is critical for industry to understand the military’s requirements and future modernization priorities,” Boeing said in a statement.

A military medal for drone strikes? Makes sense.

_Peter W. Singer is the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and the author of“Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.” Follow him on Twitter: @peterwsinger._ It is an odd medal indeed that “may not be awarded for valor in combat under any circumstances.” But that definition is precisely what drives the need for and the controversy surrounding the military’s new Distinguished Warfare Medal. Announced by Leon Panetta this past week in one of his final acts as defense secretary, the medal recognizes achievements in post-Sept. 11 military operations, accomplishments “so exceptional and outstanding as to clearly set the individual apart from comrades or from other persons in similar situations.” But what makes the medal so noteworthy is that there is no geographic limit on where the action took place. It was created to catch up to the military’s growing use of unmanned systems (i.e., drones) and cyber-warfare tools, and can therefore be awarded “regardless of the domain used or the member’s physical location.” Before this medal, a Predator pilot carrying out an important mission, such as the 2006 operation that found the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, or a cyber-warrior taking down a key enemy network couldn’t receive such a high recognition. The notion of granting medals to those who don’t physically go into harm’s way has elicited indignation (“Awarding war medals to those who operate America’s death-delivering video games” was the headline on a column by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald) as well as mockery (“Medals have jumped the shark when drone operators get higher medals than dudes on ground,” tweeted defense blogger Jason Fritz). Yet, a medal of this kind was bound to come about eventually. New technologies have changed the operations and makeup of the military; a growing segment of our warriors are fighting from afar. Over the past decade, we’ve gone from a mere handful of unmanned systems to more than 20,000 in the air and on the ground. The Air Force now trains more unmanned-systems operators than it does manned fighter and bomber plane pilots combined. And military spending on cyber-operations measures in the billions of dollars, with Cyber Command set to quintuple in size. In the past, personnel in these growing fields weren’t eligible for traditional forms of recognition, such as medals, reflecting something of an identity crisis in the armed forces. These new fields are seen as the future of war, but their career prospects remain dicey in the present. Over the past five years, the likelihood of an Air Force major in the unmanned-systems community receiving a promotion has declined by 13 percentage points compared with his military peers, whether they are meteorologists or fighter pilots. At higher levels, the pool is so small as to be statistically insignificant; only 43 of approximately 4,500 Air Force colonels have experience in unmanned systems. New weapons of war have also continually reshaped our idea of the skills a soldier should have. When guns came along, for instance, one nobleman in the 1500s complained of “so many brave and valiant men” shot by “cowards and shirkers who would not dare to look in the face the men they bring down from a distance with their wretched bullets.” Or as a French general commented after the Battle of Verdun in 1916: “Three men and a machine gun can stop a battalion of heroes.” Like all important matters, this evolution is best illustrated with Mel Gibson movies. In the days of swordplay, individual ferocity often carried the day in battle and so was the most admired skill of a warrior (think Mel Gibson in “Braveheart”). With the invention of gunpowder, the ultimate value instead became steadfastness. Courage was redefined as standing in a line, with passive disdain for the bullets flying (think Mel Gibson in “The Patriot”). But when the machine gun arrived in war, this old definition of courage became not just tragic (think Mel Gibson in “Gallipoli”) but sheer insanity (think Mel Gibson in “Mad Max”). New technologies are moving the point of action, and danger, for today’s forces, geographically and chronologically. If you are fighting from a computer far from the front line, there is no real threat other than carpal tunnel syndrome. And there is not merely greater distance from personal risk — as we saw with previous technologies, from the bow and arrow to the manned bomber flying above a city — but a revolutionary disconnection from risk. Moreover, the “exceptional and outstanding” achievement the new medal is to recognize may be accomplished days, months or even years before the missile is fired or the computer virus kicks into action. Regardless of the timing and location, however, those who fight from afar still make tough and consequential decisions that both save and cost lives. That is why such new forms of recognition are appropriate; indeed, they are overdue. But another, more important kind of recognition is also necessary. It is not just our old concepts of medals that must shift but also our traditional notions of war. While President Obama has declared that “a decade of war is now ending,” the reality is that these new technologies enable a different kind of warfare to proceed, the “shadow wars” and not-so-covert operations that range from Pakistan to Yemen. Congress has yet to catch up with these new wars, substituting questions at confirmation hearings for tough votes on these campaigns. The Distinguished Warfare Medal perfectly encapsulates how war, though changing, in many ways remains the same. Just as it was 5,000 years ago, war today is a story both tragic and glorious, an arena where terrible things take place but individuals distinguish themselves through extraordinary acts. New technology is rewriting major parts of that story, however — the who, the how, the where and even the why of those terrible things and extraordinary acts. We can decry it, we can mock it, or we can simply recognize that this is the reality of our strange new world of robotic planes, computerized weapons and medals that aren’t for valor in combat. **outlook@washpost.com **

Why Trump’s nonsensical budget matters

His budget is wholly unacceptable even to members of Trump’s own party and will go nowhere. But does it matter, if Trump’s budget, like President Obama’s budgets, won’t see the light of day after landing in Congress? In some meaningful ways, it does. For starters, the ludicrous numbers must demoralize Cabinet members like Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, who is being told the president would just as soon see his department and American diplomacy more broadly hollowed out. His department employees see how little importance the White House places on what they do and the lack of real resources their secretary will have. Even if not passed, the budget is a morale-crusher. That in turn may spark more resignations — and more leaks — as foreign service veterans rebel against the destruction of their department.

Pentagon’s $55 billion mystery plane is secret, but debate on cost is appearing

The closest it’s come to a public debut was a prime-time tease during a Super Bowl ad that showed its svelte outline veiled beneath a sheet, but revealed not a glimpse of the Pentagon’s most mysterious plane. Highly classified, the program is one of the Air Force’s top priorities — and its most expensive. The service estimates it will cost $55 billion to build as many as 100 of what it calls the Long Range Strike Bomber, which is designed to fly deep into enemy territory undetected until the mushroom cloud begins to bloom. In the coming months, the Air Force is expected to award a contract for the next-generation bomber, which would begin flying in the mid-2020s, have the potential to fly manned or unmanned and give the military the ability to hit any target “at any point on the globe.” But that’s about all the Air Force will say about the program, which has been cloaked in a veil of secrecy rivaling the jet’s stealthy ability to creep past enemy lines. _[This mysterious Super Bowl ad highlights a new bomber plane you’re not allowed to see]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico With so little known about it, there is growing concern about the system’s cost. And given the Pentagon’s vast history of cost overruns on major weapons systems, experts worry that even though a contract has yet to be awarded, it is already facing the same troubling problems that have plagued other programs. The Air Force has estimated each new bomber will cost $550 million apiece, but that figure was set in 2010 without counting for inflation and is already five years outdated. It’s also significantly less than the cost of its predecessor, the B-2 bomber, and not that much more than some high-end commercial jets. Coming in at such a low price will be difficult, if not impossible, analysts said. _[The Air Force bomber competition is as mysterious as ever]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “I’m afraid they’re heading down a path here where they have set themselves up politically to not succeed,” said Todd Harrison, the director of defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “They’ve come out with these cost estimates that are surprisingly low, and they seem to be doubling down on the idea that they can build this bomber cheaper than the last one.” The contract comes amid tightening budgets that are forcing the Defense Department to change the way it does business. In an effort to keep costs down, it has worked to increase competition and incite new companies typically averse to the headaches of government bureaucracy, to bid on contracts.  But while technology has disrupted industries from taxi service to the media and retail, the exceedingly complex combat aircraft industry has been immune from new players forcing change and efficiencies. There is no Uber for the Pentagon; Amazon.com has yet to record its first fighter jet sale. Even space has seen startling innovation, driven in large part by a new class of young and feisty start-ups led by billionaire entrepreneurs. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for example, has upended the space market, winning lucrative contracts to ferry cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station. It’s also fighting to compete to launch military satellites , which has been a virtual monopoly held by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of defense industry titans Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Given the steep barriers to entry, it is not surprising that no one has disrupted the combat aircraft market, Harrison said. Unlike the space launch industry, which also flies commercial satellites, the market for combat aircraft is dominated by a single customer: the U.S. government. The technical challenges are great, the costs high, the industry highly regulated. And barriers to exit are low: Lose one major contract and you could be out of an industry forever. All of which is why many companies have left the business but “nobody has entered the business of building aircraft since 1969 to any meaningful degree,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group. And so while Silicon Valley innovation and verve upends industry after industry, the companies vying for the bomber contract are the same stalwarts that have dominated military aviation for decades. Northrop Grumman is facing off against Boeing, which has teamed up with Lockheed Martin for a competition that will involve three of the world’s largest defense contractors with decades-long legacies of building planes for the Pentagon, including Northrop’s B-2 bomber, Lockheed’s F-35 and F-22 and Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet. The new bomber will no doubt be a more advanced iteration of its predecessors — Pentagon officials have talked vaguely about how it is actually part of a “system,” indicating the program could involve more than just single aircraft. But while the plane would be a step up, the process through which the Pentagon is buying them is virtually unchanged. And the Defense Department’s recent record of buying expensive, complicated weapons systems has been abysmal. When it initially conceived of the B-2 bomber, the stealthy Batman-like plane, it planned on buying 132. Instead, with costs skyrocketing and the Cold War ending, it bought 21 for about $2 billion each. The F-22 program was cut after 187 of the planes were built — far fewer than originally planned. And after costs doubled and President Obama called it “an example of the procurement process gone amok,” the Pentagon killed the Marine One program, after spending $3.2 billion with no usable helicopters to show for it. To those who have seen one troubled procurement program after another, it is a familiar script that begins with a promise of savings, rosy pledges of streamlined efficiency, of valuing modest improvements over radical redesign. And then: “The money goes in and nothing comes out,” said John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, who calculated that the B-2 literally cost its weight in gold before the Pentagon slashed the program. “Everybody gets a promotion. The program implodes, and you have to start over.” One of the few aspects of the bomber program the Air Force will talk about, however, is how it plans to keep the cost of the program down. The service has “set affordable, achievable, realistic requirements balanced by cost considerations,” it said in a statement. It has pledged to guard against what’s known as “requirements creep,” where planners continue to add more bells and whistles to the program: The bomber, it said, “does not have to do everything.” But many who closely monitor the Pentagon’s purchases aren’t buying it. The estimated costs “are as close to meaningless numbers can be,” Pike said. “I would go to Las Vegas and bet on cost overruns for this system,” said Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. The true costs of the program may be unknown. Some analysts believe the Pentagon has secretly pushed development further along than it has acknowledged, funding the bomber through its clandestine “black budget.” Last summer, Jeremiah Gertler, a well-regarded military aviation expert with the Congressional Research Service, released a report that showed how funding for the program would increase more than 10-fold in a few years. That, he said, indicated that, “significant development has already been completed, presumably in classified budgets.” With such a highly sensitive project, it is not unusual that the Pentagon would keep the new bomber so tightly under wraps, “making it harder for enemies to prepare and counter it,” said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant with the Lexington Institute. But there’s another consequence as well: “It’s also harder for Congress to practice oversight,” he said. “And I wouldn’t discount the greater freedom from congressional oversight afforded by secrecy as a secondary motive.” Still, the intense lobbying efforts by the companies has started to seep into public view. Northrop offered a high-profile tease of its design with the Super Bowl ad that ran in Washington and Dayton (home to the Air Force contracting command). Lockheed executives recently told reporters that their experience making the F-35 makes them very well suited for the contract. “That’s about all I can say about it,” Marillyn Hewson, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, told investors recently after not really saying anything about it.  Whoever wins, the contract has the potential to reshuffle the industry. A loss for Northrop would mean it would no longer be the lead contractor on any military airplanes, and investors could try to force it to sell its military aviation business to Boeing, said Aboulafia, the aerospace consultant. A win would solidify its status as the premier bomber manufacturer, but that could also make it an attractive acquisition for Boeing, which then would be pushed out of the game. Beyond the bomber, the industry’s prospects are hazy. The competition for the next fighter jet will not come for at least 20 years, but the players are likely to be the same. Possibly, minus one. **Read More:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Inside one of the most intense, and unusual, Pentagon contracting wars    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Grounded: Left behind in the contracting race to restore Americans to space    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Pentagon’s electromagnetic “rail gun” makes its public debut    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Banning drones won’t solve the problem

The Federal Aviation Administration recently released a report detailing more than 190 safety incidents involving drones and commercial aircraft. In response, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has vowed to push legislation that would crack down on the commercial use of drones, also called Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). India’s Directorate General for Civil Aviation has already banned all use of drones in the country — even for civilian purposes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico There are valid concerns that the proliferation of drones will endanger commercial flights and cause serious accidents. The U.S. military is rightfully worried that drones will be weaponized as killing machines and become autonomous flying IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that target a specific individual by means of facial recognition. Banning commercial drone use will not solve these problems; it will just give us a false sense of comfort and kick the can further down the road. About two years ago, I wrote a _Washington Post_ column in which I argued that we need to prepare ourselves for the “drone age.” It isn’t just the United States that is developing drone capabilities; governments and DIYers all over the world are doing the same, particularly the Chinese. This isn’t all bad; there are many good uses for drone technologies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico To start with, there isn’t yet a clear consensus on what a drone is. Is it something that flies and is remote controlled? If that is the case, should the FAA also ban remote-controlled airplanes and helicopters that hobbyists have flown happily and relatively safely for many years? The drone encounter that Senator Feinstein cited in a Senate Commerce Committee hearing as a reason to regulate commercial drone flights was reportedly just a pink toy helicopter.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Then there is the practicability of enforcement. If the government should institute restrictions and penalties, who will enforce them? Will the police buy high-performance drones to shoot down illicit drones? Can we scramble the Air Force to blow a flock of $300 quadcopters out of the sky? Should we equip legions of young children with air rifles? Proposing laws without realistic hope of enforcement does nothing to solve the problems at hand. Let’s first acknowledge that drones will be common in our skies and that they will play an integral role in our economy and society. We know that drones are saving money and improving safety on many types of remote inspection such as that of distant pipelines and tall broadcast towers. Documentary filmmakers use drones to get aerial shots that are not affordable with a regular plane or helicopter. As well, start-ups like Matternet are pioneering the use of drones to deliver critical medical supplies to remote parts of the developing world. Drones could be used as long-haul cargo-delivery vehicles, allowing for more efficient point-to-point delivery of goods and materials. Then of course, companies such as Google and Amazon are developing drone delivery services that provide within-the-hour delivery of ordered goods—without putting any more traffic onto the streets or carbon into the skies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So if we don’t ban the drones, what can we do to prepare for them and weave their capabilities into a broader picture of economic development? First, there needs to be a core technology framework for collision avoidance. This is no small problem. Even the best computer-vision algorithms struggle to navigate complex cityscapes. The vehicles in NASA’s DARPA challenge weighed thousands of pounds and carried serious computational and sensor firepower. Yet they could barely navigate barren wastelands without flipping themselves over or running into a wall. So how will a drone the size of a shoebox carry enough intelligence to avoid hitting a building, a person, a car, a power line or, worst case, a commercial aircraft? It’s a wonderful engineering challenge and worth the focus of some of our best minds. Assuming we have collision-avoidance systems in place, how can we build a system of distributed air-traffic control for drones? It would obviously need to be computer-driven and automatic, and to include safety measures and emergency kill switches or other mechanisms to bring down a drone that is malfunctioning or poses a danger. We would need to plan for specific air corridors in city areas that are dedicated to drones and confine the drones to those places. Again, this is a huge engineering challenge, but not one that is insurmountable. We also need to build private and commercial air-defense systems, just as the military is developing, to shield our schools, homes, and businesses from drone surveillance or attack. I wonder whether force fields such as we saw on Star Trek may become a practical reality. Beyond the technical issues, we need to debate what is socially acceptable and to create legal frameworks. Should the cameras of delivery drones be recording and saving all video footage as they enter into the airspace of a customer’s home? For that matter, should drones be allowed to fly over private property at all — or should they be limited to public roads between droneports? Should we have the right to shoot down unauthorized drones on our property? If the Second Amendment grants the right of gun ownership to individuals for self-defense, then does it allow them to fly their own defensive drones? These are issues we need to tackle—and soon. The drones are coming, whether we are ready or not.

To avoid a government shutdown in the fall, Congress needs to act now

When it comes to politics, attention is now being lavished on the 2016 presidential campaign. When it comes to economics, the bright lights are on the Greek crisis. The nation’s capital seems almost sleepy, a relief from the bitterness of manufactured showdowns and an actual shutdown. All of which could be a false dawn of comity and relatively rational governance. Unless Republicans in Congress begin negotiating in earnest this summer with their Democratic colleagues and the president, this fall could again be dominated by fiscal Armageddon. A crisis is completely avoidable. The need to scrap the irrational budgeting process dictated by “sequestration” — a dreadful word that refers to artificial boundaries on what government should and shouldn’t spend money on — is obvious. This doesn’t mean we’ll dodge the crisis or finally toss sequestration into the fiscal dustbin. Republicans, who suffered politically after every shutdown since the Clinton years, ought to be eager to forge a middle-of-the-road budget agreement and make life easier for their 2016 presidential candidates. If they can elect a president, they’ll have much more freedom to work their will. But for many in the GOP, the temptation to repeat the past is irresistible. With control of both houses of Congress, they hope the House and Senate can agree on a budget and either force it on President Obama or blame him for a shutdown. Let’s count the flaws in this thinking. Republicans still lack complete control of the legislative process. The GOP used the Senate filibuster rules requiring 60 votes on bills to wield power with a minority of seats during Obama’s first six years. Democrats are doing the same thing in the final two. The crucial event, little noticed, came on June 18 when Democrats mustered all but one of their 46 caucus members to block consideration of the defense appropriations bill. Enough Democrats support the higher levels of defense spending the bill provided that Republicans thought they could get to 60 votes. But as Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) explained in an interview, even the staunchest pro-defense Democrats understood that Republicans were trying to box Democrats in on negotiations over other spending by passing the defense bill first — and by boosting military spending levels with budget gimmicks. It makes little sense to lift spending caps for defense but to keep them in place for everything else and force steep cuts in what Schumer called “bread-and-butter priorities.” “We’re not waiting for the end,” said Schumer. “We’re heading them off at the pass.” This means that the key to preventing a crisis is to negotiate on the whole budget and not pretend it can be passed in pieces. By making their position clear early on, said Schumer, who is expected to become his party’s Senate leader after the 2016 elections, Democrats have left plenty of time to reach agreement this summer on a compromise similar to the fiscal plan amicably worked out in 2013 by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “Let’s sit down and negotiate the way Murray and Ryan negotiated,” Schumer said. The notion that Democrats, including Obama, could ever agree to what the Republicans are proposing is, well, absurd. As Jonathan Weisman reported in the New York Times this week, the Republicans are, among other things, proposing to cripple the Affordable Care Act, eliminate the federal government’s main family planning program, block enforcement of a variety of environmental regulations and stop the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules. And Shaun Donovan, Obama’s budget director, has made clear in a series of letters to Congress that the administration can never agree to the sharp reductions the GOP would make, for starters, to education spending, college loans, Head Start, federal enforcement of labor and worker safety standards, Social Security administration and national service programs. Republicans may control the House and Senate, but Democrats still have the White House and plenty of power. In these circumstances, some Republicans are level-headed enough to see that negotiations starting immediately are the only way to sidestep tomfoolery. “The reality is we still live in a divided government,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told Weisman. “It’s time to sit down and see if we can make a deal.” With Europe in turmoil and China confronting a stock market crash, Congress should do all it can to keep our economy steady. Draconian budget cuts and shutdown threats are not only bad politics but also a deeply flawed and irresponsible approach to governing. The time to make a deal is now. _Read more fromE.J. Dionne’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more here:** Greg Sargent: Will GOP pay any political price for budgetary hocus-pocus? Greg Sargent: What the GOP budgets really rell us about the GOP economic agenda Robert J. Samuelson: Partners in budget posturing Ann Telnaes: No core strength in the House Republicans’ budget proposal

Drone crashes mount at civilian airports overseas

The U.S. Air Force drone, on a classified spy mission over the Indian Ocean, was destined for disaster from the start. An inexperienced military contractor in shorts and a T-shirt, flying by remote control from a trailer at Seychelles International Airport, committed blunder after blunder in six minutes on April 4. He sent the unarmed MQ-9 Reaper drone off without permission from the control tower. A minute later, he yanked the wrong lever at his console, killing the engine without realizing why. As he tried to make an emergency landing, he forgot to put down the wheels. The $8.9 million aircraft belly-flopped on the runway, bounced and plunged into the tropical waters at the airport’s edge, according to a previously undisclosed Air Force accident investigation report. The drone crashed at a civilian airport that serves a half-million passengers a year, most of them sun-seeking tourists. No one was hurt, but it was the second Reaper accident in five months — under eerily similar circumstances. “I will be blunt here. I said, ‘I can’t believe this is happening again,’ ” an Air Force official at the scene told investigators afterward. He added: “You go, ‘How stupid are you?’ ” The April wreck was the latest in a rash of U.S. military drone crashes at overseas civilian airports in the past two years. The accidents reinforce concerns about the risks of flying the robot aircraft outside war zones, including in the United States. A review of thousands of pages of unclassified Air Force investigation reports, obtained by The Washington Post under public-records requests, shows that drones flying from civilian airports have been plagued by setbacks. Among the problems repeatedly cited are pilot error, mechanical failure, software bugs in the “brains” of the aircraft and poor coordination with civilian air-traffic controllers. On Jan. 14, 2011, a Predator drone crashed off the Horn of Africa while trying to return to an international airport next to a U.S. military base in Djibouti. It was the first known accident involving a Predator or Reaper drone near a civilian airport. Predators and Reapers can carry satellite-guided missiles and have become the Obama administration’s primary weapon against al- Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Since then, at least six more Predators and Reapers have crashed in the vicinity of civilian airports overseas, including other instances in which contractors were at the controls. The mishaps have become more common at a time when the Pentagon and domestic law-enforcement agencies are pressing the Federal Aviation Administration to open U.S. civil airspace to surveillance drones. The FAA permits drone flights only in rare cases, citing the risk of midair collisions. The Defense Department can fly Predators and Reapers on training and testing missions in restricted U.S. airspace near military bases. The pressure to fly drones in the same skies as passenger planes will only increase as the war in Afghanistan winds down and the military and CIA redeploy their growing fleets of Predators and Reapers. Last year, the military began flying unarmed Reapers from a civilian airport in Ethiopia to spy in next-door Somalia. In a Nov. 20 speech in Washington, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the Pentagon would expand its use of the unmanned attack planes “outside declared combat zones” as it pursues al-Qaeda supporters in Africa and the Middle East. “These enhanced capabilities will enable us to be more flexible and agile against a threat that has grown more diffuse,” Panetta said. The Air Force says that its drones are safe and that crash rates have declined as the military fine-tunes the new technology. Mishap rates for Predators have fallen to levels comparable to F-16 fighter jets at same stage in their development, according to the Air Force Safety Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. In Djibouti, five Predators have crashed since the Air Force began ramping up drone operations there to combat terrorist groups in nearby Yemen and Somalia. Many of the mechanical breakdowns have been peculiar to drones. On May 7, 2011, an armed Predator suffered an electrical malfunction that sent it into a death spiral about a mile offshore from Djibouti City, the capital, which has about 600,000 residents. “I’m just glad we landed it in the ocean and not someplace else,” a crew member told investigators. Ten days later, another Predator missed the runway by nearly three miles and crashed near a residential area. The aircraft was carrying a live Hellfire missile, but it did not detonate and no one was injured. Another close call came March 15, 2011. An armed Predator came in too steep and fast for landing, overshot the runway and slammed into a fence. Investigators attributed that accident to a melted throttle part, but they also blamed pilot error. They said the remote-   control pilot was “inattentive” and “confused” during the landing. Because he was isolated inside a ground-control station, the report added, he did not notice the wind rush or high engine pitch that might have warned a pilot in a manned aircraft to slow down. In Djibouti, the Air Force drones operate from Camp Lemonnier, a fast-growing U.S. military base devoted to counterterrorism. The base is adjacent to Djibouti’s international airport and shares a single runway with passenger aircraft. That has led to miscommunications and tensions with Djiboutian civil aviation officials. One unidentified U.S. officer told investigators last year that he often had to sternly remind his fellow troops that civilians were in charge of the site. “There is a need to understand the urgency that this airport doesn’t belong to us,” he said. “Every time that we cause a delay or they miss flight times and connecting flights, there’s a big backlash and repercussion.” In addition to the five Predator wrecks in Djibouti, the officer said he had witnessed three emergency landings that narrowly avoided catastrophe. “I have no illusions that this won’t happen again, whether it’s an MQ-1 or otherwise,” he said, referring to the military code name for a Predator. Meanwhile, U.S. drone crews complained to investigators about the Djiboutian air-traffic controllers, saying they speak poor English, are “short-   tempered” and are uncomfortable with Predators in their airspace. According to the crew members, the Djiboutian controllers give priority to passenger planes and order drone pilots to keep their aircraft circling overhead even when they are dangerously low on fuel. In the Seychelles, an idyllic archipelago that lured Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, for their honeymoon, the U.S. military began flying Reapers in 2009. Crews set up shop at an unmarked hangar at the international airport outside the capital, Victoria, named after another British royal. The operation started with four Reapers that spied on pirates at sea and terrorism suspects on land in Somalia, about 800 miles away. It was also an experiment to test new technology for operating the drones. Normally, Reapers and Predators are flown through satellite links by pilots based in the United States, while local ground crews handle the takeoffs and landings. In the Seychelles, however, the flights did not require a satellite link; details of the new technology remain classified. Starting in September 2011, records show, the U.S. Air Force took the unusual step of outsourcing the entire operation to a Florida-based private contractor, Merlin RAMCo. By then, the Seychelles operation had dwindled to two Reapers after the other aircraft were redeployed. The military drew up the surveillance missions, but Merlin RAMCo hired its own remote-control pilots, sensor operators and mechanics, and dispatched them to the islands. The arrangement was overseen at a distance by the Air Force’s secretive 645th Aeronautical Systems Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The unit, also known as Big Safari, develops and acquires advanced weapons systems — many of them classified — for Special Operations Forces. A spokesman for the Big Safari program declined to comment on the Reaper operations in the Seychelles or its contract with Merlin RAMCo, citing “security concerns.” Lt. Col. Brett Ashworth, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon, said the service does not “currently” use contractors to fly drones on “combat operations,” but he declined to elaborate. Merlin RAMCo, based in Jacksonville, Fla., is a privately held company that was incorporated in 2006, records show. The firm’s vice president and general manager, Robert A. Miller Jr., did not return phone calls or an e-mail seeking comment. The company supports Air Force missions and other government contracts with more than 80 employees at 14 locations in the United States and five sites overseas, according to the Air Force. The contractor was subjected to little direct oversight in the Seychelles, records show. The Air Force posted two officials on the islands to coordinate flights and serve as a liaison with the contractor, but neither had experience operating drones. Underscoring the secrecy of the operation, neither official was allowed to have a copy of Big Safari’s contract with Merlin RAMCo. “You can imagine it’s awful hard to hold somebody accountable for compliance with a contract that you physically can’t see,” one of the Air Force representatives told investigators. The other liaison officer told investigators that the whole idea of outsourcing drone flights made him uneasy. “In hindsight, it appears it may not have been the best way to conduct business,” he said. After Merlin RAMCo took charge, the two Reapers deployed to the Seychelles quickly became hobbled by problems. In November 2011, the Air Force liaison officers grounded the drones after discovering that they had not received required mechanical upgrades. Just days after the aircraft resumed flying, on Dec. 13, one of the Reapers ran into trouble. Two minutes after takeoff, the engine failed. The pilot was unable to restart it and tried to execute an emergency landing. But the aircraft, which was not armed at the time, descended too quickly and landed too far down the runway. It bounced past a perimeter road, over a rock breakwater and sank about 200 feet offshore. Investigators blamed the crash on an electrical short and concluded that the pilot made things worse by botching the landing. In February, the remaining Reaper was struck by lightning while in flight. The crew was able to steer it home safely, but mechanics grounded the plane for a month to make repairs. A few days after resuming operations, a different Merlin RAMCo pilot, with limited experience in takeoffs and landings, erred in every way imaginable during the brief flight before crashing the Reaper. Contractors worked for days to fish all the parts out of the water. The Seychelles and U.S. governments announced a suspension of drone flights afterward, but they didn’t mention that there wasn’t much choice — no intact Reapers were left on the island. U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who met with Seychelles officials a few days later, pledged a “thorough and fully transparent” investigation of the crash. The accidents, nonetheless, stirred worry among some islanders. In a letter to the Seychelles Nation newspaper, resident James R. Mancham questioned whether civil aviation officials had “seriously examined the implications” of allowing drones to fly from Seychelles International Airport. “What guarantee do we have that never will one of these drones crash upon or collide with an approaching or departing plane or crash on the air-control tower itself?” Mancham wrote. Tom Saunders, a spokesman for the U.S. military’s Africa Command, said the Air Force has not flown drones from the Seychelles since April. He declined to comment on whether it planned to resume the flights. Jean-Paul Adam, the foreign minister of the Seychelles, said the U.S. military has not shared the results of the crash investigations. He said the U.S. government has indicated that it would like to restart the operations but has not said when. Adam cautioned that the Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority would need to review the investigation results but said his government was amenable toward a return of the drones. “The two crashes were obviously of concern,” he said in a telephone interview. “But I would say the approach we’ve had with the United States has been one of good cooperation.”

White House touts defense budget growth plan despite criticism it isn’t enough

The Trump administration touts its new proposed budget for the Defense Department as one of the largest single-year increases in defense spending in U.S. history, fending off comparisons to earlier spending sprees by saying that they occurred during the country’s largest wars. The administration argues in 2018 budget documents that spending $639 billion on defense, a $52 billion increase from the previous year, would lead to a stronger military and address concerns about how well-equipped and cared for the military is. The budget request comes after Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, criticized the president last month for not boosting defense spending enough. The Trump administration had said it was planning to boost defense spending to $603 billion, after McCain proposed spending about $640 billion in January. The Trump administration said in new budget documents that its proposed increase “is exceeded only by the peak increases of the Reagan Administration and a few of the largest defense increases during the World Wars and the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.” Unlike past spending increases, the money proposed would “primarily invest in a stronger military,” rather than being consumed in combat operations, the administration said. But the president must make that case while also expanding operations in several combat zones. Since Trump took over, the military has sent hundreds of troops to Syria in anticipation of an offensive on the city of Raqqa, launched dozens of airstrikes and a controversial ground raid in Yemen, and considered giving Special Operations units authority to launch missions in Somalia and Libya. Hundreds more U.S. troops may still be sent to Syria in coming weeks, and senior military officials are debating sending thousands more to Afghanistan. The budget proposal documents include few specifics about how defense spending will be allocated but repeat administration promises to accelerate the military campaign against the Islamic State and boost cyberwarfare capabilities. A senior military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the budget ahead of its rollout, said Pentagon officials also are anticipating the release Thursday of a budget amendment that will add $30 billion in defense spending in 2017.

Democrats begin appropriations blockade, filibustering defense bill

Senate Democrats on Thursday officially threw down the spending gauntlet, blocking consideration of the annual defense appropriations bill as part of a strategy to force Republicans to agree to greater funding levels for domestic programs. Senate Democrats are promising to filibuster any fiscal 2016 spending bill until Republicans agree to renegotiate the budget caps put in place  in 2013 as a result of of the 2011 Budget Control Act, also known as the sequester. The defense spending bill was the first test of the plan. In recent days GOP leaders have tried to pressure Democrats by arguing they are holding up money for the troops in order to win more spending for agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service. But Democrats say they aren’t concerned about the politics of blocking military funding and believe that ultimately Republicans will have to come to the negotiating table. “I think they thought they could win this vote and they haven’t,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). “I hope this vote convinces them that we want to sit down and negotiate, we don’t want to head to a crackup which is where they’re headed.” Democrats successfully blocked the motion to begin consideration of the defense appropriations bill in a 50 to 45 vote, falling short of the 60 votes required to open debate. One Democrat, Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), voted with Republicans. The Senate Democrats’ plan has the backing of the White House and President Obama has vowed to veto spending bills that adhere to the Republican budget in an effort to boost funding for domestic programs, such as those concerning health research, environmental protection and law enforcement. The next step in the spending stand-off remains unclear, but Republicans on Thursday said they weren’t going to budge. Appropriations Committee member Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), told reporters that he wants to force Democrats to keep blocking bills so they can be blamed for obstructing the funding of the government. “It is time for these bills to be on the floor and certainly my advice to [Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ] would be to continue to bring the bills to the floor,” Blunt said. “Let the minority stand in the way of debating the bills and funding the government.” Neither party particularly likes the spending cuts mandated by the sequester but Republicans are tapping a war funding account to allay their concerns about the impact of these caps on Pentagon programs. McConnell has repeatedly vowed to fund the government through the regular order by passing a budget and voting on each of the 12 funding bills produced by the Appropriations Committee. Democrats are betting McConnell will be forced to abandon the strategy when it becomes clear regular order is impossible. Schumer, Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wrote to McConnell ahead of the vote to reiterate that goal. “Simply put, sequestration was — and still is — a mechanism that is supposed to precipitate bipartisan negotiations,” they wrote. “We respectfully request you schedule the first round of these important negotiations as soon as next week.

Lawmakers seek to stymie plan to shift control of drone campaign from CIA to Pentagon

Congress has moved to block President Obama’s plan to shift control of the U.S. drone campaign from the CIA to the Defense Department, inserting a secret provision in the massive government spending bill introduced this week that would preserve the spy agency’s role in lethal counterterrorism operations, U.S. officials said. The measure, included in a classified annex to the $1.1 trillion federal budget plan, would restrict the use of any funding to transfer unmanned aircraft or the authority to carry out drone strikes from the CIA to the Pentagon, officials said. The provision represents an unusually direct intervention by lawmakers into the way covert operations are run, impeding an administration plan aimed at returning the CIA’s focus to traditional intelligence gathering and possibly bringing more transparency to drone strikes. The move also reflects some lawmakers’ lingering doubts about the U.S. military’s ability to conduct strikes against al-Qaeda and its regional affiliates without hitting the wrong targets and killing civilians. Those apprehensions were amplified after a U.S. military strike in Yemen last month killed a dozen people, including as many as six civilians, in an 11-vehicle convoy that tribal leaders said was part of a wedding procession. U.S. officials said that the strike was aimed at a senior al-Qaeda operative but that reviews of the operation have raised concern that it failed to comply with White House guidelines requiring “near certainty” that no civilians would be harmed. On Wednesday, there were reports that another U.S. strike had killed a farmer in Yemen. The extent of the restrictions contained in the drone provision remained unclear. The measure was included by members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the legislation. Other senior lawmakers and congressional officials declined to comment on the contents of the classified annex, which details funding for U.S. spy agencies. Still, senior lawmakers have been vocal in expressing concern about the prospect of the CIA ceding responsibility for drone strikes to the military. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Appropriations Committee, said last year that she had seen the CIA “exercise patience and discretion specifically to prevent collateral damage” and that she “would really have to be convinced that the military would carry it out that well.” Feinstein declined to comment on the budget measure this week. But a senior aide said that the senator “stands by her earlier statements” and that the Intelligence Committee has “recently reviewed this issue, and Senator Feinstein believes her views are widely shared on the committee.” Asked about the scope of that review, the aide said the panel “took stock of” the program and “came to a conclusion” but would not elaborate. Among Feinstein’s colleagues on the Intelligence Committee is Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who is chairman of the appropriations panel responsible for the budget bill. A spokesman for that committee declined to comment. There is no mention of the drone provision in the hundreds of pages of the budget blueprint released to the public. A section outlining $572 billion in Pentagon spending notes that “adjustments to classified programs are addressed in the accompanying classified annex.” A person familiar with the omnibus bill confirmed that the annex includes language on the drone program but would say only that the provision is more complicated than merely withholding money to prevent drone operations from being transferred to the Pentagon. Former U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence appropriations process said that aside from placing restrictions on funding, Congress could create other obstacles — for example, requiring the Pentagon to certify that it has matched the CIA’s capabilities and targeting methodology before it is allowed to proceed. Spokespeople for the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon declined to comment. The spending bill sets budgets for agencies across the federal government for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. The measure cleared the House late Wednesday. It is expected to be approved by the Senate this week and delivered to President Obama for his signature as soon as Saturday. The move by Congress carries implications for the course of the U.S. efforts against al-Qaeda at a time when its affiliates in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria have become more worrisome to American counterterrorism officials than the terrorist organization’s traditional core. Also at issue is the fundamental mission of the CIA, which during the past decade has morphed into a paramilitary force. Senior officials, including CIA Director John O. Brennan, have warned that the agency’s emphasis on lethal operations deviates from its traditional mission and could impair its ability to focus on gathering intelligence. The administration first signaled its intent to shift control of drone operations to the Pentagon last year, when Obama announced new guidelines for counterterrorism missions — including a pledge of greater transparency — during a speech at the National Defense University. At the time, administration officials briefing reporters said there would be “a preference for the Department of Defense to engage in the use of force outside war zones.” The remark was a reference to Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — countries beyond the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States has carried out drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets. Obama’s policy shift was expected to mainly affect Yemen, where the CIA and the elite U.S. Joint Special Operations Command conduct overlapping drone campaigns. The overall pace of strikes has diminished significantly in Pakistan and Yemen, and Brennan has held secret meetings with Pentagon officials in recent months to work out logistical challenges and other impediments to shifting control of drone operations. But the CIA still carries out the majority of strikes, and the collateral damage that has accompanied some JSOC strikes has generated growing opposition to removing the agency from such operations anytime soon. The Pentagon has refused to release any details on the Dec. 12 strike carried out by JSOC in Radaa, a district that has become a stronghold for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. Yemen initially insisted that only militants had been killed, but it later acknowledged civilian casualties. The government then delivered rifles and other compensation to victims’ families — payments that a Yemeni official described as a “deposit” to encourage clan leaders to take part in tribal mediation and accept further compensation rather than seek retaliation against the Sanaa government. “There was a [legitimate] target, and then something happened, a misfire,” the Yemeni official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding U.S. strikes. “I’ve never been aware of any incident before where a strike targeted such a large convoy of vehicles.” AQAP is responsible for near-miss attacks on the United States, including the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in 2009. The terrorist group has been driven out of territory it had gained over the past two years but is still considered by U.S. officials to pose a serious threat to the United States. In a meeting with U.S., European and Middle Eastern diplomats last week, Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi described the security situation as unstable and warned specifically of indications that potential al-Qaeda recruits from European and other Western nations were seeking to enter the country, according to U.S. and Yemeni officials. Lori Montgomery and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.

No beer delivery drones, FAA? This is why we can’t have nice things!

This is why we can’t have nice things! The FAA has batted down a Minnesota microbrewery’s plan for Lakemaid Beer drones to deliver beer to lake ice fishermen. This is a shame. Keyed to fishers’ GPS locations, the drones would swoop in with a fresh twelve-pack to gladden their spirits through a long day of fishing in a relatively civilian- free zone. What could have gone wrong? A light hop with some light hops! They really missed an opportunity for great PR. What better way to start incorporating the drones into our daily lives than by having them bring us beer? If the Machines begin their Rise with brews in hand, I for one will welcome our new robot overlords.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As yet, commercial drone operation is banned, even with beer involved. And there won’t be commercial drone regulations until 2015. Even if the FAA is being a terrible spoilsport, I give it some points for all the puns FAA spokesman Les Dorr made when telling ABC news about their dispiriting decision. (“The media just hops on it. I hope things finally have come to a head.”)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Still, of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are: there could have been peaceful drones delivering us beer.

Two books explore the high cost of killing by drone

_Karen J. Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School and the author of “The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days.”_ By Andrew Cockburn Holt. 309 pp. $28 By Grégoire Chamayou New Press.   292 pp. 26.95 New centuries tend to announce themselves with transformative leaps. The 20th century arrived brandishing the new pace and power of air travel and telecommunications. The 21st century rode in on the explosion of the Internet and all that it unleashed: instant connectivity across the globe, invasive surveillance powers and newly powerful missile systems. After the trauma of 9/11 seized Americans, the ensuing war on terror became the justification for untethered use of these new powers almost at the same moment that they appeared on the scene. Supercharged surveillance systems and long-distance missile delivery systems came to serve the most basic human drive — the survival instinct — in its most modern, aggressive and unaccountable form. Nowhere has this been truer than with the use of drones as weapons of destruction in this never-ending war. In 2009, President Obama ramped up the use of “killer drones” as a mainstay of U.S. counterterrorism policy. Since 9/11 and primarily under Obama, more than 500 drone strikes have killed nearly 4,000 individuals both in hot war zones, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and in countries containing terrorist havens — including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. For years, critics have railed against the injustice and capriciousness of killer drones, citing the lack of due process in selecting targets, the collateral civilian casualties that invariably accompany the strikes, and the backlash from the growing numbers of families and communities that have been radicalized by experiencing the strikes. But beyond these tangible consequences, the combination of technology and the policy of targeted killing has challenged some of the more basic ways in which human beings and political powers exist in relationship to one another. Now two new books suggest that the costs of killing by drone are much higher than we might have thought. Both begin with transcripts from drone operators working in remote locations continents away from their targets and trying to decipher what they are seeing. In both, the “stick monkeys” have trouble distinguishing women and children from the high-value targets they are seeking. The limbs of the innocent explode alongside the suspected, while the drones ravenously target as enemies “the squirters,” those fleeing the original hit. But the human toll is just one aspect of the destructive impact loosed on the world by the use of drones. According to Andrew Cockburn’s “Kill Chain,” the problems with drone warfare only begin with the pitiful ratio of terrorists killed to civilian casualties. Cockburn pulls back the camera to provide a wider historical perspective, setting the policy of targeted killing via drones within the larger context of the American military-industrial complex. From the repeated failures of the stealth bombing campaigns in the Kosovo and Vietnam wars, to the way in which the drug wars stepped in to perpetuate the security bureaucracy of the Cold War, Cockburn sees America’s killer drone policy as the culmination of a historical pattern of lies, deception and greed in the deployment of lethal military force around the world. Failing miserably to achieve the country’s stated goal of enhanced security, according to Cockburn, the policy simultaneously undermined the democratic process. For Cockburn, the post-9/11 policy of targeted killing, far from being a departure, was but a continuation of previous U.S. assassination policy, observable, for example, in Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, where “the appearance of precision and progress” was “misleading.” Despite large numbers of killings, the targets often escaped, while innocents were killed in their stead. It was, to Cockburn, “an embarrassment, if not a war crime.” In every one of these engagements, he sees the military-industrial complex as living up to President Dwight Eisenhower’s ominous prediction of dire consequences for democracy from handing unaccountable power to the CIA and other agencies, and to government contractors that can benefit from plunging the country into conflicts where the connection to U.S. national interests is often tenuous. Cockburn argues that, starting in 2006, the CIA’s “principal occupation had become assassination” as counterterrorism and extrajudicial execution became allies. To sugarcoat assassination, which is patently illegal, the CIA renamed the policy “targeting,” making it a mainstay of the agency’s counterintelligence mission. Three days into his first term, Obama weighed in heavily in support of the targeted-killings program, authorizing two separate drone strikes in Pakistan. Both missed their intended high-value marks, but the arm’s-length style of warfare that has characterized his presidency was thereby launched. For Cockburn, the policy of killing by drone not only ignored lessons from the past, it also deceptively failed to own up to current mistakes. One of his many examples is Gorgon Stare, the “hit of the year” in 2011, a “revolutionary airborne surveillance system” that could be mounted on a killer drone and could scan an entire village through multiple cameras at the same time. The problem was that, according to Air Force tests and the Senate Armed Services Committee, this wonder-weapon simply didn’t work. It was nevertheless fully funded, and over the next few years, several billion dollars in contracts went to the well-connected aerospace company Sierra Nevada, which had devised the system with the expectation of being granted the lucrative contract. Similarly disastrous has been the persistent pattern of bogus intelligence and the improvised coverups that inevitably follow. When killer drones miss their marks, as they often do, the instinctive response has been to lie to the public and to insist, until proved otherwise (which is next to impossible in some geographically remote areas), that the intended targets were actually struck. The pursuit of the Taliban leader Mohammed Amin, also a suspected leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, led to the killing instead of Zabet Amanullah, a man helping his nephew campaign in the elections of 2010. His death was particularly poignant because he had spent much of his life being tortured by various groups in Afghanistan in prior wars and was now participating in a democratic election. Amanullah was misidentified through a faulty intelligence analysis of personal information stored on a cellphone. Despite clear evidence of the wrongful killing, top U.S. officials continued to insist that Amin, who was actually killed months later, had indeed been killed in that earlier strike. These policies, Cockburn says, have not reduced hostilities but have led to a seemingly unstoppable strengthening of radical insurgencies worldwide, a premise that the French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou shares in “A Theory of the Drone.” For Chamayou, the killer drone is “a dream of a weapon” resulting in confrontation without combat, no prisoners and no sure expectation of victory. It ultimately exposes the trend toward the “material and political automatization of the bodies of armed men,” toward a new — and inhumane — form of warfare. Chamayou begins by trying to imagine the larger impact of drone warfare on the human condition. He concludes that this kind of assault has radically changed the fundamental principles of war in a way that is harmful not only for those under attack but also for the attackers. Drone warfare takes away the traditions of battle, which by nature is limited and allows for reciprocity — the result being that killing is not a crime but an act of war. In drone warfare, the whole world is a “hunting ground,” the target is unable to retaliate, no quarter can be given in case of last-minute surrender, and only one side risks being killed. Ultimately, drones are the opposite of warfare as we have long understood it: a warrior culture in which readiness to kill has been inseparable from willingness to die. With drones, the ethics of warrior cultures have been superseded, and the warriors have turned into invulnerable, cold-hearted executioners. In addition, the rules and values of counterterrorism have replaced those of counterinsurgency, blithely exchanging the so-called battle for hearts and minds with a staccato delivery of death from above. With drone warfare, there is no victory, just perpetual elimination, a “periodic reaping” that Special Forces operatives, Cockburn tells us, cynically call “mowing the grass.” Chamayou tries to predict the long-term consequences of this policy on the human species and sees nothing but darkness. The use of drones to conduct warfare has destabilized the rules of war and weakened the moral fiber of warriors. Chamayou is troubled by drone warfare’s impact on the basic concept of reciprocity that underlies the laws of armed conflict, as well as further considerations such as distinction and proportionality. Ultimately, he reasons, the right to assassinate from the air is a “forceful distortion of the law of warfare.” By eroding the all-important principle of distinction, mixing up “combatants and noncombatants,” and defanging accountability for assassination, drone warfare has caused “a profound crisis in the legal theory of war.” The revolution is astonishing to behold, he says, for we are now living in an unprecedented age of “one-way-only armed violence,” that is, “war without combat.” Applying “norms designed for a conflict to slaughtering practices” makes for “categorical errors” and “ratifies a fatal confusion of genres,” Chamayou concludes. Though vastly different in their approaches — Cockburn, the righteous political leftist carrying the torch of the antiwar crusade into current debates, and Chamayou, the moral philosopher looking ahead to the costs for a human society that has delegated its decision-making powers, and potentially its battlefield judgments, to killer robots — both writers see the same worst-case scenario unfolding. As military insiders have warned, tactics have swallowed strategy. Assassination by robot is bound to inspire rather than curtail extremism. In Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the war on terror generally, the lesson has been this: “Once you knock them off, a day later you have a new guy who’s smarter, younger, more aggressive and is out for revenge.” All told, drone warfare is a crucial force in “generating chaos,” Cockburn writes, “a hard habit to break.” One could almost have predicted the emergence of the Islamic State from this chaos — hopeless, fearless and violent. Having helped to generate the crisis, America and its allies find themselves sadly — but not surprisingly — lacking a novel and effective response.

Drone warfare heads under the seas as U.S. seeks advantage over rivals

As unmanned aerial drones have become a critical part of modern warfare, the Pentagon is now looking to deploy autonomous robots underwater, patrolling the sea floor on what one top Navy official called an “Eisenhower highway network,” complete with rest stops where the drones could recharge. Although still in the development stages, the technology has matured in recent years to be able to overcome the vast difficulties of operating underwater, a far more harsh environment than what aerial drones face in the sky. Saltwater corrodes metal. Water pressure can be crushing at great depths. And communication is severely limited, so the vehicles must be able to navigate on their own without being remotely piloted. Despite the immense difficulties, the Navy has been testing and fielding several new systems designed to map the ocean floor, seek out mines, search for submarines and even launch attacks. While the unmanned crafts are now able to stay out for days or weeks, the goal is to create an underwater network of service stations that would allow the vehicles to do their jobs for months — and eventually years. Military officials say there is a sense of urgency because the undersea domain, while often overlooked, could one day be as contested as the surface of the sea, the skies — and even space. While Russia and China are investing in their submarine fleets, the Pentagon has sought to seize an advantage by introducing new technologies, especially those where humans team up with highly capable robots and autonomous systems. In 2015, the Navy appointed its first deputy assistant secretary for unmanned systems. And the Pentagon plans to invest as much as $3 billion in undersea systems in the coming years. Last month, the Navy participated in the multi-nation Unmanned Warrior exercise off the coast of Scotland. Autonomous subs worked in concert with aerial drones to pass along intelligence that could be relayed from undersea to the air and then to troops on the ground. It’s too early to tell how the Trump administration might view the plans. But Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said advancements in undersea warfare should continue to be a priority for the Navy. “The Pentagon feels like the U.S. is well positioned to do undersea warfare and anti-submarine warfare better than any other country,” said Clark, the author of a report titled “The Emerging Era in Undersea Warfare.” “What’s changing, though, is other counties are developing the ability to deny above the water. . . . So the U.S. is thinking it’ll have to rely much more on under the water.” The goal is to have the unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) deploy from manned submarines or even large autonomous drone subs the way fighter jets take off from aircraft carriers, he said. The Chinese and others have built sensors that can detect large manned submarines, but the military could still send in small, hard-to-detect drone subs. The Office of Naval Research (ONR), which looks to develop advanced technologies, is seeking to “build the Eisenhower highway network on the seabeds in the seven oceans,” Rear Adm. Mathias Winter, head of the office, said at a conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies this year. The ultimate goal is to “have large-scale deployments of UUVs,” he said. “We want them to go out for decades at a time.” While the project is still in the conceptual stages, the Navy would one day like to build service stations underwater, similar to highway rest stops. There is even a name for them: forward-deployed energy and communications outposts. “A place where you can gas up or charge your underwater vehicles, transfer data and maybe store some data,” said Frank Herr, the head of the ONR’s ocean battlespace sensing department. While that may be a long way off, the Pentagon is testing vehicles that are capable of going out for weeks or even months at a time. In recent years, Boeing has developed the Echo Ranger and Echo Seeker, autonomous vehicles capable of carrying out days-long operations. This year, it debuted the Echo Voyager, a 51-foot-long autonomous submarine with the ability to stay out for months; it isn’t dependent on a support ship the way others are. “You don’t need to have a support ship involved, and that drastically reduces the daily operational cost,” said Lance Towers, director of sea and land at Boeing’s Phantom Works division. This year, General Dynamics boosted its underwater offerings when it acquired Bluefin Robotics, which makes several types of underwater robots. Its 16-foot-long Bluefin-21 vehicle is capable of launching what the company calls “micro UUVs,” known as SandSharks, that weigh only about 15 pounds. The SandSharks could scan an enemy shoreline and pop up to the surface to relay data to aircraft flying overhead. The Bluefin-21 could even launch a tube that goes to the surface, sticks up like a large straw and then shoots out an unmanned aerial vehicle like a spitball. While there are still huge hurdles to overcome, especially when it comes to battery life, underwater-vehicle technology is about where drone technology for aircraft was in the 1990s, said Carlo Zaffanella, General Dynamics’ vice president and general manager for maritime and strategic systems. Signal processing is improving. So is autonomy, Zaffanella said. And the advancements are coming “at a time when underwater warfare is becoming more important.” The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a plan to plant 15-foot-tall pods across the ocean floor that could sit there for years waiting to be awakened. When they received a signal, they would float to the surface and release aerial drones, which could perform surveillance over shorelines. Raytheon, meanwhile, is working on a torpedo that instead of blowing things up would be the military’s eyes and ears underwater, scouting for mines or enemy submarines, mapping the ocean floor and measuring currents. The new generation of undersea vehicles would require powerful computer brains. “The undersea environment is particularly challenging and unpredictable,” Navy Rear Adm. Bill Merz said at a recent conference. “I would even go out on a limb here to say we are truly the unmanned of the unmanned vehicles, and in most cases we don’t even have a man in the loop. So what we field and put in the water is on its own until we hear from it again.”

The case for not banning drone flights in the Washington area

The irony of living in the District of Columbia just keeps getting richer. Residents of the capital of the world’s leading democracy already have no voting representatives in Congress. Now their ability to fly drones — restricted to a level unmatched across the United States — is about to get even more limited.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico On Wednesday, DJI — the manufacturer of the popular Phantom drone — announced a firmware update that will make it impossible to fly a Phantom across greater Washington. The move complies with the no-fly zone over the metro area, which was enacted after 9/11 to allow time to intercept a terrorist-controlled flight. Late Thursday Ehang, maker of the Ghost drone, told me it will follow DJI’s footsteps and soon update its software so its drones can’t take off in or fly in the greater D.C. area.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Although there are other no-fly zones around the country — generally airports and military bases — no major city has a situation like D.C.’s no-fly zone that extends on a 15-mile radius from downtown. But Washington’s unparalleled restrictions on drone usage don’t make high- value targets such as White House safer, instead they only hamstring local entrepreneurs and innovators.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Somebody who wants to use a drone maliciously is not going to be thwarted by technology that restricts everyone’s use,” said Brendan Schulman, head of commercial drone law at Kramer Levin. “While it makes sense to have a ring around Washington, D.C. for manned aircraft so they can be intercepted by the Air Force, the same type of provision doesn’t necessarily make sense for small consumer drones.” The DJI news comes on the heels of a drunken government worker crashing a Phantom on the White House lawn. The crash reinforced concerns about a security hole at the White House.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Flying drones in the D.C. area has long been technically illegal, but generally not enforced. The DJI and Ehang updates could more effectively ground drones in the area since they won’t even be able to turn on in the GPS coordinates covered by the no-fly zone. Hobbyists flying Phantom and Ghost drones indoors — where the no-fly zone doesn’t apply — will also be affected. The news could lead to more manufacturers following suit and making their products powerless in the greater D.C. area. Other drone manufacturers that market to U.S. consumers, Hubsan, Parrot and 3D Robotics, did not respond to requests for comment. “This would be like saying we shouldn’t let anyone drive a car in the D.C. area simply because one idiot might use it to drive into the White House fence,” said Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “The idea that the entire Washington, D.C. metro area should be a drone-free zone is hugely troubling. We might as well put a huge sign up at the edge of town that says ‘Innovators not allowed.’ ” While terrorists could build their own drones with custom software that’s not impacted by D.C.’s no-fly zone, local researchers and entrepreneurs who respect the rules will be the ones to suffer. Take for example the D.C. Area Drone User Group. President Christopher Vo says the group hasn’t flown in several months because it struggles to find a place to fly legally. Vo calls DJI’s move “a good thing” as it will improve safety for new pilots. One spot his club has flown is in Southern Maryland, two hours from Vo’s home in the Virginia suburbs. Because of D.C.’s sprawling no-fly zone, a search-and-rescue operation couldn’t use a drone to help find a lost child in the area. Researchers can’t use drones to study marine life on the Potomac or Anacostia rivers. “At the point we’re at now, I don’t see that it’s a huge impact on our abilities, but it definitely would be for civil and commercial uses in the future,” said Matthew Scassero, director of the University of Maryland UAS test site. The university’s campus in College Park is inside the restricted flight zone, so Scassero tests elsewhere in Southern Maryland. In addition to abiding by the FAA guidelines, he cited the benefit of testing away from the dense campus for safety reasons. Maryland professor Thomas Snitch, who uses drones in Africa to prevent poaching, called the DJI news a good thing. “It’ll keep the average person from doing something stupid,” Snitch said. “But for someone determined to breach the White House, they probably wouldn’t fly a Phantom,” because quadcopters lack the speed of fixed-wing aircraft. According to his research, a fixed-wing drone, loaded with explosives and launched from a vehicle parked on Constitutional Avenue, could reach the White House balcony in 34 seconds. Current regulations — which restrict a law-abiding high school robotics class in the city’s suburbs from flying a drone for education purposes — would do nothing to stop such an attack. “Right now I don’t see any technical solution to keep someone from flying a UAV into the White House compound,” Snitch said.  “If you ask how to stop that, I don’t know. I don’t know. You might have some type of net that you would pop up.” So while a lot fewer drones are likely to appear over Washington’s skies, the most dangerous ones may still fly free.

The X-47B: Score one for the away team

It appears that the future of warfare will revolve around unmanned drones that are armed to the teeth, fighting wars for their human masters based on computerized algorithms. Not convinced? On July 10, the U.S. Navy landed the X-47B, the prototype for an unmanned, computer-controlled fighter plane, on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier located off the coast of Virginia. There was no pilot with a joystick controlling the drone – this was truly a robotic aircraft able to fly and land on its own, based on some earlier computerized algorithms.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This is a big deal. It’s such a big deal that the U.S. Navy was practically gushing about what a game-changer it was. In a prepared statement, the Secretary of the Navy noted, “It isn’t very often you get a glimpse of the future.” And kudos to them. They had just spent eight years and over $1.4 billion in funding, so it’s no wonder they talked about the X-47B as the future of robotic aviation. This is kid-at-Christmas excitement — that moment when they unwrap a wonderful toy. Except, in this case, that toy is a weapon capable of vanquishing all the other weapons on the block the next time they decide to play war.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Not only is this drone unmanned and capable of carrying a payload of bombs and missiles, it also sports a unique bat-winged configuration — “a giant stingray without a tail” – that makes it a perfect candidate to join the next generation of U.S. stealth fighter planes. The dimensions and capabilities of the X-47B are truly impressive: by the early 2020s, it is is supposed to be able to fly combat missions as far as 1,200 miles away totally unmanned. It should also be able to refuel in-air autonomously. (In fact, one could envision a scenario of one unmanned drone refueling another unmanned drone in mid-air while Navy sailors sleep peacefully below deck.) In the video of the X-47B landing on the deck of the _USS George H.W. Bush_ , there’s absolutely no way to determine that it was a robotic pilot making the carefully- orchestrated, perfectly-executed “tailhook” landing.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Imagine that – an unmanned fighter drone with considerably more wingspan than a conventional Predator, the lethal strike capability of a modern fighter jet, the computer brains of the world’s best fighter pilots, and total stealth impenetrability to an enemy’s radar defenses. This may be totally OTT for a place like Afghanistan, but think about what the X-47B could do in hotspots around the world.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Once the American public wakes up to what’s happening with our military’s push into unmanned drone warfare, one of two things will happen: they will either turn unmanned drones in the military into the target of huge protest similar to those against nukes during the Cold War … or they will applaud vigorously. Given how many people today grew up playing video games and thinking of technology as a modern cure-all, the latter scenario is probably more likely. Now that France, England, China and Russia appear to be working on their own versions of the X-47B unmanned stealth fighter, it will be hard to put the genie back into the bottle. The rest of the world isn’t going to sit idly by while the U.S. turns over its armed forces to assassin robots in the skies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And that’s a scary prospect, isn’t it? The next generation of warfare will be played out like a global video game, with computer programmers as the new four-star generals. The only problem is, there will be no “reset” button if the game doesn’t play out as we hope it will — or if the machines decide they’d rather play another game.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Biggest obstacle for delivery drones isn’t the technology: It’s you and me

When Missy Cummings thinks about self-flying delivery drones — the kind that tech companies have been touting as being just around the corner — she likes to imagine the reaction of her 8-year-old son to a drone landing in her back yard. “He’d like to throw rocks at it — because it’s there,” said Cummings, a Duke professor and director of the university’s Humans and Autonomy Lab. “It’s just human nature.” Others might fire potshots at the unmanned aerial vehicles, just for fun, as they do at rural traffic signs, Cummings said. Pet dogs could be expected to run straight for drones. Curious children would try to grab them. So would adults: A video clip popular in drone circles shows singer Enrique Iglesias bloodying his hand as he grabs for a helicopter-like drone at a concert in May last year. Cummings, one of the nation’s top drone researchers, doesn’t doubt the technology. She believes these autonomous machines already possess the ability to accurately and reliably do their jobs. They could fly today. The technical issues have been solved. The biggest hurdles — and there are a colorful assortment of them — are what Cummings calls “socio-technical.” People are the problem. And people present massive, often glossed-over stumbling blocks for delivery drones ever getting off the ground. While small drones already have been a retail hit — selling an estimated 700,000 units last year alone — some experts fear that people problems could delay the widespread adoption of more advanced, autonomous delivery drones by several years, dwarfing what many think of as the final obstacle for commercial drones: federal airspace regulations, which are expected later this year. “I’m just not that optimistic,” Cummings said. Drone researchers call these challenges the problem of “the last 50 feet,” said Parimal Kopardekar, principal investigator for NASA’s Unmanned Aerial Systems Traffic Management program. A drone, like any aircraft, is most vulnerable during takeoffs and landings, Kopardekar said. But airplanes use defined airports. Drones will probably enjoy similar protections when taking off from a warehouse, for example. But landing will be a very different story — and one that changes with each residence. Not only are people unprepared for drones, but the infrastructure needed to accommodate small flying delivery vehicles also is missing. Houses today have mail slots and curbside mailboxes to accommodate the traditional flow of mail and packages. Nothing yet exists to make the drone’s job easier. How is a drone going to deliver to a high-rise apartment building? Researchers are working on answers, “but I don’t think any of this is foolproof yet,” Kopardekar said. The potential solutions are fanciful, revealing just how much work remains. Kopardekar suggested 10-foot-tall mailboxes — perfect for landing drones where people and their fingers won’t interfere. Or transforming chimneys into delivery chutes for drone-dropped packages. Others imagine installing delivery lockers on the roofs of apartment buildings. The companies pushing hardest to use delivery drones are tight-lipped about their plans. Amazon.com, Google and a start-up called Flirtey all declined to comment for this article. They prefer to drop hints through promotional videos showcasing the technology — online ads that are devoured by millions eager for the service to arrive. But these clips also reveal the technology’s shortcomings. The filmed test flights from all three companies were staged in suburban or rural settings. The landing zones were unobstructed. Dense urban landscapes still appear too challenging. That’s why drone experts expect that when delivery drones do eventually appear, they will begin in small towns or suburbs, turning the usual tech-adoption pattern (cities first, with outward expansion) on its head. “In the short term, I think that’s going to be the answer,” said John Greene, associate director of Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science. Companies are testing different methods for cracking the problem of the last 50 feet. Google Project Wing’s drone used a tether to lower a package of dog treats to a customer in Australia’s outback, a backdrop almost comically devoid of obstacles. In the same vein, a video from Flirtey showed a drone using a wire tether to drop medical supplies to a remote clinic in Wise, Va., last summer, marking the first government-sanctioned drone delivery in the United States. Only Amazon Prime Air’s drone showed a suburban landing. The clip, seen by 5.6 million people on YouTube alone, was released in late November, a full year after Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos (who owns The Washington Post) said that regulation, not technology, was the project’s biggest problem. The Federal Aviation Administration has banned commercial delivery drones while it hashes out the rules for their operation. In Amazon’s latest video, a homeowner placed a special mat on the grass as a landing target. The drone was shown making an uneventful flight from the warehouse. Meanwhile, the homeowner was prompted to make sure her yard was clear for delivery. The drone then landed safely on the mat, dropping off a box of soccer cleats and flying away. It looked like magic. Matthew Waite was among the millions who watched the clip. He runs the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. And he has an acute interest in drone technology and the FAA’s regulations, which grounded his lab’s drones in 2013. He expects that one issue for delivery drones will be air rights. Homeowners are generally assumed to own the airspace above their properties. So can an Amazon drone fly low over your neighbor’s back yard to get to your house? It remains unclear, Waite said. Watching the video, he was caught by the homeowner signing off that her yard was clear. “I want to see the terms of service on that,” Waite said. He imagined the legalese precluded holding Amazon accountable for an accident or mishap. But, Waite said, any number of things could go wrong, from curious children to nosy neighbors. And what if you have a dog? “You know darn well a dog is not going to leave that thing alone,” he said. “Amazon is going to lose a drone, or a dog is going to lose a snout.” The machines seem ready to perform flawless automated flights, a stunning advancement — if only people and pets and pranksters stay out of way. “It captures the imagination because it feel like the future,” Waite said. “But the future is a lot harder than they make it out to be.”

When drones turn on the operators

Regarding the Sept. 4 front-page article “Al-Qaeda takes aim at drones”: Drone technology is an amped-up computer game, enabling faraway controllers to direct explosive devices at specific targets. However, more than three years ago, using inexpensive software, Iraqi insurgents intercepted live feeds from our drones. Drones present a far greater danger than having an enemy know your intended targets. That danger lies in an enemy’s redirection of drone-delivered weapons back to the command station that gave it a specific target, or to the embassies of our allies. Or worse. With today’s technology, if something can be imagined, it can be done, making it only a matter of time before drone weapons could be redirected. When such capability exists, war will morph from the good old days into the routine use of a new and deadly option, raining destruction on unintended targets, including the United States. ****Laurence Hutner** , Palmyra, Va.**

Rogue drones a growing nuisance across the U.S.

Rogue drone operators are rapidly becoming a national nuisance, invading sensitive airspace and private property — with the regulators of the nation’s skies largely powerless to stop them. In recent days, drones have smuggled drugs into an Ohio prison, smashed against a Cincinnati skyscraper, impeded efforts to fight wildfires in California and nearly collided with three airliners over New York City. Earlier this summer, a runaway two-pound drone struck a woman at a gay pride parade in Seattle, knocking her unconscious. In Albuquerque, a drone buzzed into a crowd at an outdoor festival, injuring a bystander. In Tampa, a drone reportedly stalked a woman outside a downtown bar before crashing into her car. The incidents are the byproduct of the latest consumer craze: cheap, easy-to-fly, remotely piloted aircraft. Even basic models can soar thousands of feet high and come equipped with powerful video cameras — capabilities that would have been hard to foresee just a few years ago. Reports began surfacing last year of runaway drones interfering with air traffic and crashing into buildings. But the problem has grown worse as drone sales have surged. “I’m definitely getting much more concerned about it,” Michael P. Huerta, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said in a phone interview Monday. He said the FAA is particularly worried about a surge in reports of drones flying dangerously close to airports. The latest incident came Sunday, when four airline crews reported a brush with a drone on a flight path into Newark International Airport. Huerta added that the recent interference by drones with California firefighters was “really a wake-up call for a lot of people. This kind of thing has got to stop.” Most new drone models are aimed at novice fliers who are often “blissfully unaware” of aviation safety practices, said Michael Braasch, an electrical engineering professor and drone expert at Ohio University. “Unfortunately, there’s also going to be a small percentage of users who are just going to behave badly.” The Consumer Electronics Association, an industry group, estimates that hobbyists will buy 700,000 of the remote-controlled aircraft in the United States this year, a 63 percent increase from 2014. Although the vast majority of drone enthusiasts fly solely for recreation, authorities worry about the potential for a new airborne menace. In a July 31 intelligence bulletin, the Department of Homeland Security said it had recorded more than 500 incidents since 2012 in which rogue drones hovered over “sensitive sites and critical installations,” such as military bases and nuclear plants. In one well-publicized case in January, a drone crashed onto the White House grounds. Another unnerving scenario emerged last month when a Connecticut man posted an Internet video of a drone he had armed with a handgun, firing shots by remote control as it hovered in the air. Local police and the FAA determined that no laws had been broken. In general, drone misadventures are happening in a regulatory vacuum. The FAA has banned most commercial drone flights until it can finalize new safety rules — a step that will take at least another year. But people who fly drones for fun aren’t regulated. Under a law passed in 2012 that was designed in part to protect model-airplane enthusiasts, the FAA cannot impose new restrictions on recreational drone owners. As a result, they are not required to obtain licenses, register their aircraft or undergo training. To protect regular air traffic, the FAA has issued guidelines requiring that consumer drones stay at least five miles away from airports and below an altitude of 400 feet. Those standards are widely flouted, however; in the past month alone, airline pilots have reported close calls with drones near airports in New York, Charlotte, Minneapolis and Phoenix. In neighborhoods nationwide, the buzz of drones is becoming a common sound, as well as a source of conflict. Police blotters contain an increasing number of reports from residents complaining about uninvited drones hovering over their back yards. For the most part, such flights are legal — a fact that is prompting a backlash from anti-drone vigilantes. In Hillview, Ky., last month, a homeowner blasted a drone out of the sky with a shotgun, saying he was trying to protect his daughters from being spied on. He was charged with criminal mischief; police did not take action against the drone owner. Similarly, in May, a judge ordered a man from Modesto, Calif., to pay a neighbor $850 for peppering his drone with buckshot. In September, a man from Cape May, N.J., was charged with shooting down a neighbor’s drone as it filmed houses along Seashore Road. In other cases, however, authorities have been more sympathetic toward drone haters. In June, for example, prosecutors did not take action against a crew of firefighters in Orange County, N.Y., who used their water hoses to knock down a drone that had been filming them as they battled a house blaze. In California last month, state legislators introduced a bill that would grant immunity to emergency responders who damage a drone that gets in their way. The measure was prompted by several incidents in which amateur paparazzi drones swarmed around wildfires, crowding the skies and forcing firefighters to ground their tanker aircraft to avoid a midair collision. “Cars were torched on the freeways because drones made aerial firefighting efforts impossible,” state Sen. Ted Gaines (R-El Dorado), a sponsor of the measure, said in a statement. “This is maddening and I can’t believe that hobby drones are risking people’s lives to get videos on YouTube.” Although the FAA lacks the authority to license recreational drones, it does have the power to impose civil fines on anyone who recklessly interferes with air traffic or endangers people on the ground. Yet the agency has levied fines in only a handful of cases, saying it does not have the staff to investigate most complaints. Huerta, the FAA chief, said Monday that the recent spate of risky incidents prompted the agency to revisit its approach and that it will adopt “more stringent enforcement” measures in cooperation with state and local officials. For months, FAA officials had focused almost exclusively on trying to educate drone operators. The agency has partnered with the drone industry and others on a public awareness campaign aimed at hobbyists called Know Before You Fly. The FAA has also co-sponsored public service announcements to discourage drone use at special events and locations, such as the Super Bowl, the California wildfires and a no-fly zone that covers much of the Washington region. FAA officials said they are encouraging major retailers to provide drone-safety information to holiday shoppers this year. The agency also is testing a software application for Apple devices that would inform drone users whether it is safe or legal to fly at a specified location. Drone manufacturers have made it easy for consumers to fly the robotic aircraft right out of the box. But companies need to take more responsibility for educating their customers by adding warning labels, devising software fixes to limit where drones can fly and taking other steps, said James H. Williams, a former manager of the FAA’s drone integration office. “In a lot of ways, it’s up to the manufacturers to warn people about flying too high, flying too close to airports, flying too close to airplanes,” said Williams, now an aviation consultant for Dentons, a major law firm. “It’s important that they step up and do more than they are.” Brian Wynne, the president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry group, said that “there’s always room” for drone companies to expand education efforts. But he said there is only so much the industry can do to prevent reckless behavior. “I frankly just don’t think there’s any excuse for anyone flying a [drone] anywhere near an airport or near a runway,” he said. “We have got to enforce our laws.”

Videos: Behold, the new ‘Transformer’ military jet — and other future wonders

Picture this: a single large, soaring jet is roaring over the countryside, heading into an uncertain situation in which targets must be bombed, supplies must be dropped and reconnaissance photographs must also be gathered. How does it happen quickly? If the defense contractor BAE Systems has its way, it sends in a single “Transformer” jet that splits apart in the air, and then merges back together when the work is done. Check out this new video, released July 6: That’s only one of the new, futuristic concepts that BAE Systems is promoting ahead of the massive Farnborough International Air Show in Great Britain, which begins July 19. The company also released video of a conceptual aircraft it calls “The Survivor,” which BAE officials say will use lightweight adhesive fluid inside a network of nanotubes to “heal” an aircraft mid-flight. The video shows a plane’s wing bursting into flames, and then patching itself up: In another new video, the company promotes the possibilities of 3-D printing, which it says will be able to design drone aircraft that can be suited for the mission at hand. In this case, one is rescuing a man while a volcano erupts nearby: And finally, there’s a new video of a notional aircraft outfitted with a directed-energy weapon capable of taking out an enemy missile in flight over a city: These concepts aren’t all new. The Navy, for example, has been interested in using directed-energy weapons for years, and plans to deploy one for the first time on a ship this summer. Still, videos like these always jump-start the imagination. We’ll be watching for more of them that companies release as the air show nears.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday

Military push for emergency robots worries skeptics about lethal uses

It’s 6-foot-2, with laser eyes and vise-grip hands. It can walk over a mess of jagged cinder blocks, cut a hole in a wall, even drive a car. And soon, Leo, Lockheed Martin’s humanoid robot, will move from the development lab to a boot camp for robots, where a platoon’s worth of the semiautonomous mechanical species will be tested to see if they can be all they can be. Next month, the Pentagon is hosting a $3.5 million, international competition that will pit robot against robot in an obstacle course designed to test their physical prowess, agility, and even their awareness and cognition. Galvanized by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power disaster in 2011, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — the Pentagon’s band of mad scientists that have developed the “artificial spleen,” bullets that can change course midair and the Internet — has invested nearly $100 million into developing robots that could head into disaster zones off limits to humans. “We don’t know what the next disaster will be, but we know we have to develop the technology to help us to address these kinds of disaster,” Gill Pratt, DARPA’s program manager, said in a recent call with reporters. The competition comes at a time when weapons technology is advancing quickly and, with lasers that can shoot small planes out of the sky and drones that can land on aircraft carriers, piercing the realm of science fiction. But some fear that the technological advancements in weapons systems are outpacing the policy that should guide their use. At a meeting last month, the U.N. Office at Geneva sponsored a multi-nation discussion on the development of the “Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems,” the legal questions they raise and the implications for human rights. While those details are being hashed out, Christof Heyns, the U.N.’s special rapporteur, called in 2013 for a ban on the development of what he called “lethal autonomous robots,” saying that “in addition to being physically removed from the kinetic action, humans would also become more detached from decisions to kill — and their execution.” Mary Wareham, the global coordinator for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a consortium of human rights groups, said the international community needs to ensure that when it comes to decisions of life and death on the battlefield, the humans are still in charge. “We want to talk to the governments about how [the robots] function and understand the human control of the targeting and attack decisions,” she said. “We want assurances that a human is in the loop.” Organizers of the DARPA Robotics Challenge are quick to point out that the robots are designed for humanitarian purposes, not war. The challenge course represents a disaster zone, not a battlefield. And although the robots may look like the Terminator and move with the rigidity of Frankenstein’s monster, they are harmless noncombatants, with the general dexterity of a teetering 1-year-old. During the challenge, DARPA officials expect a few of the robots to end up on their keisters looking more helpless than threatening. Their cognitive ability is not very advanced, either. Even though they are loaded with thousands of lines of code and able to communicate wirelessly with their human overseers, the robots are limited to simple tasks, such as opening doors or walking up stairs. But although the aim of the contest is to help develop robots to use in humanitarian missions, such as sifting through the rubble after the earthquake in Nepal, officials acknowledge that as the technology advances, they could, one day, be used for all sorts of tasks, from helping the elderly, to manufacturing, and, yes, even as soldiers. “As with any technology, we cannot control what it is going to be used for,” Pratt said. “We do believe it is important to have those discussions as to what they’re going to be used for, and it’s really up to society to decide that. But to not develop the technology is to deny yourself the capability to respond effectively, in this case to disasters, and we think it’s very important to do that.” After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, workers inside the plants tried to vent the hydrogen that was dangerously building up in the reactors. But with workers’ exposure to radiation building, they were forced to evacuate. The Pentagon had helped dispatch robots to the scene to address this situation — to go where it was too dangerous for humans and turn the valves that could have dissipated the hydrogen, potentially preventing the explosions. But the officials quickly realized that it would be difficult to direct the robots to do something like turning valves in a remote location from what had been their primary mission: defusing roadside bombs, Pratt said. Further, it took weeks to train the personnel on how to use them for those new purposes. And by the time the robots were deployed to the scene, it was too late for them to do anything but survey the damage. That served as a wake-up call at the Pentagon and, particularly, at DARPA, where officials felt as if robots should be able to help more in such situations. And so two years after the nuclear meltdown, DARPA held the first stage in its Robotics Challenge, a virtual competition in which teams moved their robots through a computer-animated world. Then, a few months later, it held another contest, with real obstacles and tasks. But the finals, to be held June 5-6 in Pomona, Calif., will be far more difficult — with times to perform the tasks cut drastically and with communications between the teams and their robots at times limited — a testament to how far the technology has advanced since the last competition. With their “human supervisors” sequestered in a remote location, unable to see the course, the robots will first drive an all-terrain vehicle to the course while avoiding barriers set in their path. Then they’ll come to a door, which they’ll have to open and walk through. Inside will be tasks such as turning a valve, cutting a hole in a wall, walking over uneven terrain and climbing stairs, all designed to simulate a disaster zone. There will be eight tasks in all, including one that’s a surprise, and the teams will have 60 minutes to complete them. Most of the entrants resemble humans, with two arms and two legs, and could be cast in Hollywood’s next futuristic blockbuster. But there is also “CHIMP,” developed by Carnegie Mellon University, a squat, long-armed machine that uses wheeled treads to get around. Another, named “RoboSimian,” is a four-legged “ape-like” creature developed by NASA that, depending on how its limbs are situated, is also strikingly arachnid-like. In all, there are 25 teams from all over the world, from companies, academic institutions and government agencies, all vying for the $2 million first prize. (Second is $1 million; third is $500,000.) Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, has pulled together a team of engineers and scientists to develop Leo, an Atlas robot made by Boston Dynamics that several of the teams are using. Although the robotic skeletons are similar, the technological DNA inside the robots is vastly different. Leo sees with a combination of radar that uses lasers to detect the world around it and cameras that give the team a view of what’s immediately in front of the robot. It also has the ability to make limited sense of its environment, such as opening a door or navigating stairs. “Like, ‘Oh, I see a valve. I know that valves can be turned,’ ” said Todd Danko, the principal investigator for Lockheed Martin’s team TROOPER. “And a human operator can say, ‘Turn the valve.’ And the robot knows what turning means. And it knows that turning is associated with valves. And it knows what valves are. And so it can go ahead and just do that.” At one point during the testing, though, Leo lost its balance and started to fall face first until its harness caught it and held it up. It hung there, helpless, slumped like a drunk using the wall as a crutch. Vegas oddsmakers might make Running Man the favorite to win next month. It finished second in the 2013 competition, and since then, developers at the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition in Florida have been formulating a “whole body control algorithm” to help it walk and balance better and find “the sweet spot for human and machine teamwork.” But they also received a boost when Google announced last year that its Schaft robot, which won the 2013 competition, was pulling out of the contest. Google declined to comment on why it dropped out. But many in the robotics community immediately suspected that the decision was tied to a reluctance to work with the Pentagon. Whether that is true, DARPA is keenly aware that the fast-moving technology raises “difficult societal, ethical and legal questions,” DARPA spokesman Rick Weiss said. That’s why it has sponsored another competition, this one for high school students who were asked to make a video discussing the role robots should play in society. The contest was specifically geared toward young people because, he said, they will likely come of age as the technology matures and become “the first generation that will probably grow up in and live in a society that is so fully infused with robotic technologies.”

‘Fox & Friends’ Carlson: Why are Democrats upset about drones?

Those unfamiliar with the folkways of “Fox & Friends” might just suppose that the remarks of tri-co-host Gretchen Carlson today on the drone controversy were an active attempt to sabotage her own program. After the drone discussion surfaced, Carlson said, “I’m just wondering why this is suddenly a topic of discussion.” When reminded that White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, an architect of the drone program, was being nominated to head the CIA, Carlson responded, “I know, I get that.” Additional reasons why this is a topic of discussion: secrecy, the Constitution, the public’s right to know, the efficacy of targeted killings and so on. Later in the segment, Carlson asked, “My question is, are the Democrats upset because innocent civilians are being killed in these drone strikes or are they upset because the alleged terrorists are actually being killed?” Keep pursuing that one, Carlson.

This general ‘takes umbrage’ at the notion the U.S. military has been gutted

On the presidential campaign trail, the U.S. military is frequently cast as a victim. Gov. Jeb Bush (R.-Fla.) has insisted that “every weapon system has been gutted” by the Obama administration. Donald Trump has said that “our military is a disaster.” And Ben Carson suggested during a debate that the Marines are not ready to deploy. On Tuesday, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was asked to comment on political rhetoric along those lines as the Pentagon unveiled its proposed $582.7 billion budget for fiscal 2017. “I won’t be argumentative, but I will take umbrage with the notion that our military has been gutted,” Selva said. “So I stand here today a person that’s worn this uniform for 35 years. At no time in my career have I been more confident than this instant in saying we have the most powerful military on the face of the planet.” _[In the Pentagon’s new budget, the Air Force won and the Navy lost]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Selva added that the military still has challenges and is facing a global set of threats, including terrorism that “consumes the readiness of our force to do the other tasks that we are given as part of our mission.” But he added that “we are far from gutted,” and said that the Pentagon has “the most flexible and determined Air Force on the planet, the most capable Navy on the planet, and a Marine Corps no one can match.” Added Selva: “I don’t engage in politics. This is the reality of the men and women that serve in our Army, our Navy, our Air Force and our Marine Corps. They’re the best the world has to offer, and we’re going to keep them that way.” The budget released by the Pentagon on Tuesday is essentially flat when compared to the current $580.3 billion in spending. But for the second year in a row, it includes significant increases when compared to funding adopted from fiscal 2013 through fiscal 2015, when congressionally mandated budget cuts known as sequestration were adopted to save the federal government money. On Capitol Hill, Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that while Congress will review the Pentagon’s new budget request, “it is already clear that this request is inadequate to address the national security threats we face and the growing demands they impose on our men and women in uniform.” McCain added that by adhering to the minimum funding allowed by the Bipartisan Budget Act passed late last year, President Obama has left the Defense Department with $17 billion less than what the Pentagon originally planned for in 2017. When considering inflation, the budget is actually smaller than the one Congress approved last year, he said. “Rather than request an increase in defense spending that reflects what our military really needs, the President’s request attempts to pay for these increased costs by shorting other important defense needs – cutting 15,000 current Army soldiers and 4,000 sailors, reducing major modernization programs, and proposing a pay increase for service members much lower than what is needed to compete with private sector wages,” McCain said. The Army is in the process of shrinking from 490,000 active-duty soldiers at the height of the Afghanistan war to 450,000 by the end of 2018. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it will cut about 4,000 sailors along with an entire carrier air wing that was temporarily deactivated in 2013.

Don’t look now, but the plan for massive drones on aircraft carriers is coming

The Navy landed a 44,000-pound drone aircraft on the USS George H.W. Bush for the first time last summer, a technical feat that was hailed by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus at the time as a historic development in a program that would “radically change the way presence and combat power are delivered from aircraft carriers.” And indeed, the bat-winged X-47B remains intriguing: Flown by the click of a computer mouse, it would offer surveillance and reconnaissance of broad swathes of the ocean, and — unlike typical drones — refuel in the air when needed.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Check out video of it in action: The X-47B is seen by many as a precursor to an even larger fleet of drone aircraft that will be unlike anything the U.S. military has. Known as the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS), it calls for “persistent, aircraft carrier-based intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting, and strike capability to support carrier air wing operations,” according to the Navy. But its future is anything but certain: As USNI News and others have pointed out, there has been a spirited debate about just how much strike capability the UCLASS drones should have.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Arming it to the teeth would make it potent weapon for the Navy when it has to fly aircraft into contested airspace to take out enemy targets. Doing so could potentially reduce casualties in situations where U.S. fighter pilots might otherwise be shot down. But the more bells and whistles it has, the more expensive it becomes — not ideal in an era when the Pentagon is looking to cut costs. The Navy is set to release a Request for Proposals soon, the head of the program, Rear Adm. Mathias Winter told reporters at the Farnborough International Airshow in London on Monday, Breaking Defense reported. Winter said Joint Staff officials have had divergent views about what the UCLASS should include, increasing curiosity about what will be in the RFP.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The War on the Rocks blog tackled the issue Wednesday. Shawn Brimley and Bryan McGrath — both military analysts with significant experience in Washington politics –suggested the main concern is that the UCLASS’s requirements will aim “too low” when it comes to lethality. The Navy already has manned and unmanned aircraft that can perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, they argue, including the P-8 Poseidon and E-2D Advance Hawkeye planes and the MQ-4C Triton and MQ-8C Fire Scout drones.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The two analysts argue that the rise of China’s military, among other potential adversaries, means the United States must prepare to fly into contested airspace. “A good example is China’s DF-21D missile, one that some analysts term a game- changing ‘carrier-killer’ due to its ability to fly beyond the unrefueled range of a U.S. carrier’s strike aircraft,” Brimley and McGrath wrote. “Enabling U.S. aircraft carriers to strike effectively over ranges much larger than the radius of an adversary’s anti-ship missiles is a _sine qua non_ for U.S. maritime power projection.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Potential contenders for the UCLASS program include Northrop Grumman, which made the X-47B, as well as three other companies with drones with muscular-sounding names. They include… Lockheed Martin’s Sea Ghost: Boeing’s Phantom Ray: … and General Atomics’ Sea Avenger The crazy electronica music on the latter is not included, of course.

Is anyone paying attention to the budget?

President Trump’s daily meltdown, rising tension with North Korea and the lack of GOP accomplishments have used up most of the political oxygen lately. Another problems sits on the horizon, however, and if not addressed will become one more calamity for the administration.  The wall is not the only dispute, of course. Defense hawks want to break the sequester budget limits to build up the Pentagon budget. Democrats might be willing to trade that for higher domestic spending, but the Freedom Caucus is unlikely to go along with that. A shutdown, however undesirable, might be inevitable. While the last thing Republicans on the Hill need is another example of their total incompetence, the White House seems to be cheering on a confrontation. Levin recalls: “Back in May, Trump tweeted that ‘Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!’ If he still thinks so, it’s certainly in his power to make that happen.” Trump backed down on funding the wall once before but –in case you hadn’t noticed — he is less than rational and remains obsessed with retaining the affection of his base to the exclusion of all else. He might think a shutdown really is a swell idea, or simply miscalculate the reaction of Democrats whose votes will be needed to fund the government.

ISIS’s killer drones are a threat, but the Pentagon is bracing to face more-advanced ‘suicide’ aircraft

The Pentagon, concerned about the danger that small, armed drones pose to U.S. troops, is moving forward with a project that looks beyond remote-control aircraft used by the Islamic State to an even more complex problem: an aerial raid of autonomous suicide bombers. The unmanned bombers have not yet appeared in combat, but defense officials already are researching how to stop them. Laden with explosives or other dangerous materials, they would operate by crashing into U.S. troops in a combat zone and would not be as easy to detect as existing drones used by the Islamic State, because they would not rely on radio frequencies for remote controlling. Instead, they would be programmed to carry out a specific mission, making them especially hard to see coming. The effort to stop the aircraft is known as the Mobile Force Protection Program and is overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which examines ways that technology can help the U.S. military. DARPA anticipates awarding contracts within weeks for the first of three phases of testing and research, said J.C. Ledé, who oversees the program. “Right now, the best way of detecting that there is an unmanned airplane is by listening for that radio signal,” Ledé said. “Once they stop emitting that radio signal, they’re going to get a lot harder to find.” Early stages of the research were launched in October with a solicitation to industry, and final proposals for the first phase are due in January, according to DARPA documents. The program is focused specifically on going beyond using electronic jamming to stop unmanned planes and helicopters of to 200 pounds. Each company picked is expected to get about $3 million in the first phase, with the possibility of continuing on to two subsequent phases of work that are longer and more lucrative. Ledé said he and his team focused on defending a convoy with important cargo aboard, because it is more complicated than defending a stationary target and because what is learned will apply in other circumstances. Unmanned aircraft are now “sufficiently inexpensive” that the U.S. military must anticipate some of them may be flown directly into U.S. troops or vehicles as part of an attack, he said. “If you are going to attack a high-value convoy, I think they would be willing to commit the hardware to it,” he said. “At most, it’s a few thousand dollars worth of hardware for a UAV.” The effort comes as the U.S. military more broadly examines an array of ways to take out potential enemy drones. Marine Lt. Col. Dave Sousa, who examines the problem for his service, said shotguns, sniper rifles, water cannons, mini-rockets and lasers all have been considered, and the services increasingly are working together on the problem. “When you’re more than a couple hundred meters out, you can’t tell what that thing is carrying,” Sousa said of unmanned aircraft. “You can’t tell if it has a GoPro camera. . . . You don’t know what it is. So you’ve got to detect, track and ID, and then there’s how you’re going to deal with that threat.”  Army officials said in a strategy paper published in October that enemy drones could be stopped in some cases with cyber or electronic warfare or concealment through methods such as smokescreens but that small units of U.S. troops will probably face them at some point. In those cases, direct fire may be necessary, the paper said. “Some threat UAS will be difficult to defeat left-of-launch or at standoff ranges,” the paper said. “These lines of effort will be focused largely on the individual and small unit levels.” The new DARPA project countering autonomous drones acknowledges those concerns but specifically forbids any option that could cause harm to U.S. troops or civilians as incoming drones are engaged. The prohibited options include high-powered directed-energy weapons, high-caliber weapons with “uncontrolled projectile trajectories,” live animals and anything that does not fit on a tactical vehicle such as a Humvee or on a small naval riverine craft. Ledé said Phase 1 of the project could begin in May. It is expected to take about a year and will be followed by an 18-month phase with the top two competitors in the first part of the project. The third and final phase of the project will take about 21 months and focus specifically on countering a large raid of autonomous, unmanned drones.

Why the Pentagon is wooing Silicon Valley (and the valley is playing hard to get)

With a fast-moving culture that rewards impatience, reveres obsession and views failure as a temporary speed bump, Silicon Valley couldn’t be more different than bureaucratic Washington. For years, tech companies have shunned the federal government’s cumbersome procurement system, even though it’s worth billions. But Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is hoping to bridge the chasm dividing Washington and California with a visit this week to the valley—the first from a sitting defense secretary in 20 years, the Pentagon says. In a speech at Stanford University and meetings with venture capitalists and tech executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Carter is hoping to break down some of the barriers that have long prevented spunky startups from working with what they view as a stifling and sclerotic bureaucracy. _ **[Ash Carter’s long history with military technology]**_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The effort is a top priority for Carter, who has a long history moving through the Pentagon’s ranks but also has worked closely with the tech sector, as a senior executive at the Markle Foundation and working with MITRE Corp. and Draper Labs. The Pentagon is increasingly concerned that it is losing its long-held technological superiority, as other nations invest in new technologies and software. In a speech at Stanford on Thursday, Carter is set to announce new initiatives designed to lure Silicon Valley companies to work with the Pentagon, including opening an office in the valley where uniformed officers and defense civilians will try to foster relationships with innovative startups and more established technology stalwarts. The move is part of a broader attempt to lure America’s best and brightest into government work, especially in national security, where sophisticated, state-sponsored cyber attacks are creating new fronts in warfare. Earlier this week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced that the agency was also opening a satellite office in California to “convince some of the talented workforce here in Silicon Valley to come to Washington.” But convincing the valley’s young talent that it should work with the federal agencies seen as more stodgy than disruptive will be difficult. “They just couldn’t be farther apart,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonprofit, non-partisan economic development group. The Pentagon’s procurement process is “archaic. It’s frustrating. There’s no patience for it here,” Hancock said. “There’s a reluctance to take on the federal government as a customer because there’s so much red tape.” In addition to the cumbersome processes, there is a huge cultural divide that has prevented tech companies from working with the federal government. “We fail all the time,” Hancock said. “And out of the smoldering ash you come out with another idea. There has to be that idea of experimentation. And when you have all these audit requirements that’s harder to do.” While the Pentagon is saying all the right things, it has also sent mixed messages to the private sector, said Stan Soloway, the president of the Professional Services Council, which represents government contractors. Instead of opening up the definition of what is a commercial product that the Pentagon could purchase more simply, it has repeatedly sought to tighten the definition, thus making it more difficult, he said. “There is a lot of talk about driving innovation,” he said. “But there’s been a fair amount of backsliding.” For a sense of the cultural divide, and the tensions that go with it, just look at how Elon Musk’s space company, SpaceX, has tangled with the Air Force over contracts to send military satellites into orbit. Musk, the billionaire co-founder of Tesla and PayPal who embodies the valley’s fast, obsessive personality, sued the Air Force, saying SpaceX should be allowed to compete for the contracts. Then he continued to criticize what he said was a painfully slow process to certify his company’s rockets to perform the work. With its own research and development, the military used to drive much of the country’s technological innovation—from the development of the Internet to global positioning systems. But now, much of the advancements come from the commercial sector, which often wants nothing to do with the government—and, as former deputy defense secretary William J. Lynn III noted in an essay in Foreign Affairs last year, they don’t need the government’s money. “Google may not need defense contracts, but the Pentagon needs more and better relationships with companies like Google,” he wrote. “Only the private sector can provide the kind of cutting-edge technology that has given U.S. troops a distinct advantage for the past 70 years.”

Why drone makers have declared war on the word ‘drone’

When is a drone not a drone? When the people who manufacture them say so.   Developers at all stages of the drone supply chain are involved in the unofficial messaging push. Jonathan Downey is  CEO of Airware, which develops autopilot controllers for commercial drone makers. Downey said that with the right equipment, an agricultural drone flying above a vineyard can tell which grapes will yield the best wine. In one case, he told me, one winery was able to boost its profits by setting aside the highest-quality grapes for a special batch instead of unknowingly mixing them into a lower-quality product.  "Unmanned aerial vehicles are a great alternative," said Tom Hallman, an aerial cinematographer. "Just throw them in the back of a truck and drive out there. You can fly through bridges, flying very close."   Before that can happen, however, the FAA is required to establish a number of test sites where officials can demonstrate that drones are safe to fly. Two dozen states are currently competing for the right to host the sites.  Among the other tools the graduates developed is a sticky sensor that can be fired from a paintball gun. The projectiles, which attach to surfaces using fishhooks and are packed with infrared and audio equipment, are designed to provide real-time intelligence about who might be pinned under rubble or trapped in a room. Once the rules on drones become more clear, industry proponents argue, it'll set off a burst of innovation as entrepreneurs who are currently working by themselves start collaborating with others. "A lot of people are going to roll up their garage doors," said Hallman, "and out will pop a lot of creative alternatives." If "alternatives" and "systems" are the new codewords for "drone," the industry's leading spokespeople are doing a good job nudging the discourse in that direction. But not everyone is being so subtle. At the conference's press center, the Wi-Fi network password took a knowing — and perhaps somewhat exasperated — tone. What did the conference organizers settle on? "Dontsaydrones."

Pentagon interest in cybersecurity may ease contractors’ pain from cuts

Plans by the Pentagon to invest more in cybersecurity and space-based capabilities may ease the blow for defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin that are facing cuts in other programs. The Defense Department intends to beef up spending on computer network protections and satellite intelligence systems while targeting troops for cuts under a global strategy released last week. Funding levels, which were not specified, will be detailed in next month’s federal budget proposal. President Obama is balancing the need to counter cyberthreats from China and give the military the latest technology with plans to cut almost $490 billion in defense spending through 2021. Contractors may look to expand cybersecurity and space businesses through acquisitions as the nation winds down two wars and buys fewer bullets and bombs. “Large prime contractors who may be at risk of losing significant revenue from decreases in major weapon systems are looking to go where the dollars are,” said John Hagan, director of aerospace, defense and government services for BB&T Capital Markets in Reston. Major contractors have about $40 billion available for acquisitions, Hagan said. “You are seeing a lot of transactions taking place with regard to cyber and space because that’s where the growth is going to be,” he said. The increased emphasis on cybersecurity and space-based technologies is spurring the creation of start-ups, some of which will be acquired by established contractors, said Rodney Joffe, senior vice president for NeuStar, a Sterling-based data manager. “When it comes to cyberspace, much of the innovations are occurring at small companies,’’ Joffe said. Raytheon said Dec. 29 that it bought Henggeler Computer Consultants for an undisclosed amount, the 10th cybersecurity acquisition for the Waltham, Mass., company since 2007. CACI International of Arlington paid $61.5 million for Paradigm Holdings on Sept. 19 and purchased Pangia Technologies on July 1 for an undisclosed sum. “Our mergers-and-acquisition program is accelerating our momentum in the high-growth cyber arena,” Paul Cofoni, chief executive of CACI, said in a Nov. 2 statement. U.S defense cybersecurity spending totals $10 billion to $11 billion, Howard Rubel, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. in New York, said in an interview. That spending may increase faster than many other military programs, he said. Increased reliance on satellites and drone aircraft may raise vulnerability to hackers and other disruptions that are expanding with technological sophistication. The United States will “invest in new capabilities to maintain a decisive military edge against a growing array of threats,’’ Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in introducing the plan. The National Counterintelligence Executive, an advisory panel of senior U.S. intelligence officials, blamed China and Russia in a Nov. 3 report for stealing sensitive U.S. economic and commercial data. The report said that the pace of cyberespionage is accelerating and threatening an estimated $398 billion in spending on research and development. Northrop chief executive Wes Bush said during an Oct. 26 conference call that the Falls Church-based company considers cybersecurity important “because of the just ever-growing recognition of the threat and the ever-growing magnitude of the threat.” Northrop is the Defense Department’s largest supplier of unmanned systems and the government’s biggest cybersecurity provider, spokesman Randy Belote said in an e-mail. Linking cybersecurity and space systems is “encouraging because it reflects reality that we need to be doing more on both sides of the coin,” said Roger Cressey, senior vice president for Booz Allen Hamilton, a McLean-based security and intelligence consulting firm. The Pentagon requested about $10.2 billion this fiscal year for its space initiatives, including about $5.8 billion for satellites and $2 billion in launch costs. Two of the space programs are being developed by Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin: the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite and the Space Based Infrared System, a network of satellites. Another is the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, a satellite system using medium- and heavy-lift rockets that the Pentagon requested about $1.7 billion for this year. It’s run by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Chicago-based Boeing. Increases in space-defense expenditures may lag behind those in the faster-growing cybersecurity area, said Mark Gunzinger, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington and former deputy assistant secretary of defense. NeuStar’s Joffe agrees, saying the United States should create “what our enemy already has, really good offensive cyber capabilities. We should be able to get enormous leverage from investments in offensive cybersecurity.” ** — Bloomberg Government  **

More Air Force drones are crashing than ever as mysterious new problems emerge

A record number of Air Force drones crashed in major accidents last year, documents show, straining the U.S. military’s fleet of robotic aircraft when it is in more demand than ever for counterterrorism missions in an expanding array of war zones. Driving the increase was a mysterious surge in mishaps involving the Air Force’s newest and most advanced “hunter-killer” drone, the Reaper, which has become the Pentagon’s favored weapon for conducting surveillance and airstrikes against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other militant groups. The Reaper has been bedeviled by a rash of sudden electrical failures that have caused the 21/2-ton drone to lose power and drop from the sky, according to accident-investigation documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Investigators have traced the problem to a faulty starter-generator, but have been unable to pinpoint why it goes haywire or devise a permanent fix.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico All told, 20 large Air Force drones were destroyed or sustained at least $2 million in damage in accidents last year, the worst annual toll ever, according to a Washington Post investigation. The Pentagon has shrouded the extent of the problem and kept details of most of the crashes a secret. The aircraft losses pose another challenge for the Air Force as it struggles to provide sufficient drone coverage for counterterrorism operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Mali and Cameroon, among other countries. Despite a surge in requests from field commanders, the Air Force last year had to curtail its drone combat missions by 8 percent because of an acute shortage of pilots for the remote-controlled aircraft. Things have gotten so bad that the Air Force is offering retention bonuses of up to $125,000 to its drone pilots, who have long complained of overwork. The Air Force also has contracted out more drone missions to private companies to meet what one general called “a virtually insatiable appetite” from military commanders for airborne surveillance. While Air Force leaders have publicly bemoaned a lack of personnel and resources, they have said little about the high number of drone crashes, a long-standing vulnerability that worsened substantially last year.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Ten Reapers were badly damaged or destroyed in 2015, at least twice as many as in any previous year, according to Air Force safety data. The Reaper’s mishap rate — the number of major crashes per 100,000 hours flown — more than doubled compared with 2014. The aircraft, when fully equipped, cost about $14 million each to replace. The Air Force’s other primary drone model, the Predator, also suffered heavy casualties. An older and less capable version of the Reaper, the Predator was involved in 10 major accidents last year. That’s the most since 2011, when the U.S. military was simultaneously surging troops into Afghanistan and withdrawing ground forces from Iraq. Although the Defense Department has a policy to disclose all major aircraft mishaps, it did not publicly report half of the 20 Reaper and Predator accidents last year. In five other cases, U.S. military officials provided confirmation only after local authorities reported the crashes or enemy fighters posted photos of the wreckage on social media.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico According to the military, only one drone was downed by hostile forces: a Predator that was hit by Syrian air defenses near Latakia on March 17.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico All but one of the 20 Air Force drone accidents last year occurred overseas. Six drones crashed in Afghanistan. Four crashed in the Horn of Africa, near a U.S. military base in Djibouti. Three crashed in Iraq. There were also crashes in Kuwait, Turkey, Syria and Libya. In two cases, Air Force officials would not identify the country where the mishaps occurred. In addition to the Air Force, the Army operates its own drone fleet. It is preparing to expand the number of combat missions it flies to help compensate for the Air Force’s cutbacks. Last year, the Army reported four major drone crashes, each involving the Gray Eagle — a model identical to the Predator. Three of the Army’s accidents occurred in Afghanistan. One happened in Iraq. Although the military’s drone programs are largely unclassified, the Obama administration rarely discusses details of the key role they fill in its counterterrorism strategy. The CIA runs its own drone operations on a covert basis, and the secrecy surrounding those missions often seeps into the Pentagon. [ _Crashing drones are exposing secrets about U.S. war operations_ ]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Lt. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence and surveillance programs, acknowledged in an interview that there has been a spike in Reaper accidents. Many cases remain under investigation, but Otto and other Air Force officials blamed the Reaper’s flawed starter-generator for causing at least six major crashes since December 2014. “We’re looking closely at that to determine what is the core issue there,” Otto said. Although the drone pilot shortage has compelled the Air Force to reduce the number of combat missions, Otto said the aircraft mishaps have not forced additional cuts. The Air Force has enough replacement drones on hand, he said, and already had orders in place to buy dozens more Reapers over the next few years. “Any impact to operations has been negligible to barely noticeable,” he said. Field commanders, however, have long complained of a drone deficit. In March, the four-star commanders of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Africa both told Congress that the Pentagon has provided less than one-quarter of the drones, other aircraft and satellites that they need for reconnaissance and surveillance missions. “The Predator has been our most effective weapon in our campaign against the global jihadists,” said Michael G. Vickers, the Pentagon’s former top civilian intelligence official, at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Jan. 12. But he cautioned that the size of the drone fleet “will remain a critical limiting factor in the conduct of our campaign.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Drones going ‘stupid’**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Military drones have been dogged by persistent safety and reliability problems since the first Predator was deployed to the Balkans on a combat mission two decades ago.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Of the 269 Predators purchased by the Air Force since then, about half have been destroyed or badly damaged in accidents, records show. Air Force officials describe the Predator as an experimental aircraft that was rushed into war zones, particularly after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. They say it has lasted much longer than expected and that, at a cost of$4 million apiece, is relatively expendable in the event of a crash. The Air Force has about 140 Predators left and plans to retire them all by 2018. They are gradually being replaced by the Reaper. Introduced in 2007, the Reaper can fly twice as far as the Predator and carry more bombs and missiles. Until recently, it also had a much better safety record. Over the past three years, however, some production models of the Reaper have been hobbled by an outbreak of electrical failures. Investigators and engineers have traced the problem to the starter-generator. It powers the drone but is prone to conking out, for reasons that remain unclear. The Reaper carries an emergency battery backup system. But the batteries last only for about one hour. If a malfunctioning drone needs more time than that to reach an airfield, it is in trouble. In such emergencies, the drone pilot usually has no choice but to intentionally crash the aircraft in a remote area, such as a mountainside or a waterway, to avoid striking people on the ground. No one has died in a military drone accident, though many catastrophes have been narrowly averted, documents show. “Once the battery’s gone, the airplane goes stupid and you lose it,” said Col. Brandon Baker, chief of the Air Force’s remotely piloted aircraft capabilities division. “Quite frankly, we don’t have the root cause ironed out just yet.” The Reaper and the Predator are both manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, a San Diego-based defense contractor. In addition to the Air Force, other customers who have purchased the Reaper include the Department of Homeland Security, NASA, and the British, French and Italian armed forces. The CIA also flies Reapers. General Atomics officials declined requests for an interview or to provide data on the Reaper’s history of starter-generator failures. In an emailed statement, General Atomics spokeswoman Kimberly Kasitz said the firm “stands behind the proven reliability” of the Reaper. She added that Reapers have recorded more than 2.2 million flight hours and have “been very effective for multiple customers.” The Reaper’s starter-generator is built by Skurka Aerospace of Camarillo, Calif. Skurka executives referred requests for comment to their parent corporation, Transdigm Group of Cleveland. A Transdigm spokeswoman did not respond to phone calls or emails. **Averting disaster**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Government agencies other than the Pentagon have also run into problems with their Reapers. Shortly before midnight Jan. 27, 2014, an unarmed Reaper was flying a surveillance mission near San Diego for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Suddenly, an alarm sounded, signaling that the starter-generator had stopped working. The crew flying the drone from a remote-control ground station in Corpus Christi, Tex., inputted commands to restart the generator, but their attempt failed. The pilot made quick calculations and concluded that the Reaper lacked enough battery power to make it back to its launch point, at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., according to an aircraft accident report by Customs and Border Protection. Worried that the Reaper might otherwise crash into a heavily populated part of Southern California, the pilot commanded the drone to head out to sea, where it was ditched about 23 miles west of Point Loma, Calif. The drone sank about 4,200 feet to the ocean floor. Ten days later, most of the wreckage, including the intact starter-generator, was recovered from the depths by a Navy salvage team. According to the accident investigation report, it was the 18th time in nine months that a starter-generator had failed on a Reaper. Disaster was averted in most cases, but in three of the incidents, the drone crashed. Working with engineers from General Atomics, investigators identified three parts of the starter-generator that were susceptible to breakdowns. But they couldn’t figure out why they were failing. No pattern was apparent. Older units had failed, but so had brand-new ones. There was no correlation with operating locations or conditions. The Customs and Border Protection investigation blamed an “unknown factor” that was “likely external.” The report noted that, unlike most aircraft, the Reaper lacked a backup, or redundant, power supply system. Calling it a “design weakness,” the report recommended that Reapers be equipped with a permanent backup electrical supply. Two days after the crash near San Diego, General Atomics issued an alert bulletin to its customers, advising them to limit “non-essential” Reaper operations to keep the drones within one hour’s flight of an air base in case of an emergency. The bulletin, however, did not apply to combat missions. **Crashes pile up**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico General Atomics engineers made little headway in identifying the mechanical gremlin that was plaguing the starter-generators. Meanwhile, Reapers kept crashing. On Dec. 12, 2014, a Reaper armed with missiles and bombs experienced a starter-generator failure about 90 minutes after it took off from Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan. As the batteries drained, the crew intentionally flew the drone into a mountain. The wreckage was not recovered. “I thought it was a very prudent place to ditch it, onto a high mountain top,” the unidentified mission crew commander told Air Force investigators, according to the accident-investigation report. “Our deal is we try to do it into high mountain tops.” Less than two months later, on Feb. 4, 2015, an Air Force Reaper had to cut short a surveillance mission over Somalia when its starter-generator died. The flight crew tried to rush the drone back to its base in Djibouti. But with about 30 miles to go, the battery ran out and the Reaper was ditched in the sea, according to the Air Force’s accident investigation report. In an appendix to the report, General Atomics noted that it had completed the development of a “more robust” starter-generator in response to the string of mishaps. The appendix, which was heavily redacted, did not give further details. In March, the Air Force’s program manager for its Reaper fleet filed a report with the Pentagon noting that there had been “a dramatic increase” in starter-generator failures since 2013. Col. William S. Leister informed Pentagon officials that investigators from the Air Force, General Atomics and Skurka had investigated the problem for more than a year. The team, he said, had identified “numerous manufacturing quality issues” yet had been unable to determine the exact cause of the failures. “But, I am pleased to report that we may have light at the end of this dark tunnel,” he added, promising unspecified “corrective actions in the very near term.” He declined to comment further for this article. Other Air Force officials said the service began installing a secondary generator on its Reapers in July that can provide up to 10 extra hours of electricity in case the first one fails. The Air Force determined that 60 Reapers in its fleet were carrying the buggy starter-generators. So far, the new backup part has been installed on 47 of those aircraft, according to Baker, the colonel in charge of the drone capabilities division. Since then, Baker said, there have been 17 “saves” — or incidents in which the primary generator failed mid-flight. In each case, he added, the backup generator kicked in and the drone was able to land safely.

Can Mattis make peace through technology?

_“To change anything in the Navy is like punching a feather bed. You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching.”_ **—Franklin Roosevelt, 1940 ** SAN DIEGO What the former assistant secretary of the Navy said is descriptive of the entire military. Each service’s culture, and interservice rivalries, and bureaucratic viscosity are resistant to reform. Which is why the next secretary of defense, retired Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis, has the most difficult management challenge in American government. He comes from a service whose core mission, small-unit combat, involves conflict at its most granular. He will now rely on companies such as General Atomics here, whose business is leveraging technology to produce maximum potential military lethality with minimal costs. The president-elect ardently advocated substantially increased defense spending, and just as ardently favors unrestrained entitlement spending. For about $500,000 in expenditures, the 9/11 attackers did more than $2 trillion in damage to the United States and the world economy. The linked physical and cyber infrastructures of complex societies are vulnerable to such asymmetries. General Atomics’ scientists toil to redress this imbalance with, for example, the Predator and other remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs). But they bristle at the word “drone,” which they think falsely suggests mindlessness on the part of aircraft that perform three “ISR” missions — intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance. RPAs can hover for 40 hours over a Middle East target and deliver, with Hellfire missiles, a munitions payload equal to an F-16’s. The “fast movers” — F-16s and the like — must refuel coming and going from the Persian Gulf, and most have returned to their aircraft carriers without expending their ordnance. A Reaper, another type of RPA, can deliver what an F-35, the most expensive fighter aircraft, can. The Reaper is only half as fast, but is speed — aviation’s expensive goal since World War II — so important? An increasing amount of the Reaper’s and the F-35’s work, including sensing and jamming, is done at the speed of light, which is roughly 560,000 times faster than the F-35’s airspeed. RPAs, which have logged more than 4 million flight hours looking, listening and attacking, can discover what the enemy is planning and doing, and can deliver precision strikes with minimal collateral damage. They could have been an inexpensive and low-risk way of intervening in Syria by enforcing a no-fly, no-movement zone that would have protected President Bashar al-Assad’s enemies and victims. But because RPAs are unmanned, they clash with important components of the military culture. Marine jets from Air Station Miramar roar over General Atomics, making what has been called “the sound of freedom,” but some scientists here call it the sound of obsolescence. The Navy is using high-powered electromagnetic energy to replace steam catapults to launch 80,000-pound aircraft off carriers with less stress on the planes, and hence lower maintenance expenses. Now the Navy is acquiring rail guns that use such energy to fire 15- to 25-pound, 18-inch projectiles at 5,000 miles per hour. They hit with the impact of a train slamming into a wall at 100 miles per hour. The high-speed, hence high-energy projectiles, which cost just $25,000, can radically improve fleet-protection capabilities: A barrage of them could counter an enemy’s more expensive anti-ship missiles. The daunting challenge posed by defense against the proliferating threat of ballistic missiles is that it is prohibitively expensive to be prepared to intercept a swarm of incoming missiles. New technologies, however, can revolutionize defense against ballistic missiles because small, smart projectiles can be inexpensive. It takes 300 seconds to pick up such a launched missile’s signature, the missile must be tracked and a vector calculated for defensive projectiles. A single 25-pound projectile can dispense more than 500 three-gram tungsten impactors and be fired at hypervelocity by electromagnetic energy. Their impact force — their mass times the square of their velocity — can destroy expensive missiles and multiple warheads. Mattis will be trying to take control of the often uncontrollable Pentagon, with its interservice rivalries and intricate problems of matching slowly developed weapons to rapidly metastasizing threats. The good news, such as it is, is this: The nation just experienced a raucous presidential campaign during which there was silence about the crisis of the entitlement state — an aging population’s pension and health-care entitlements swallowing government resources, with alarming national security implications. But technology, pursued determinedly, has the potential to make peace through making deterrent strength less expensive. _Read more fromGeorge F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook._ **Read more here:** The Post’s View: The pros and cons of a general’s general Fred Hiatt: How to defend America’s democracy Phillip Carter and Loren DeJonge Schulman: Trump is surrounding himself with generals. That’s dangerous.

Capitol Hill hearings show rough times ahead for White House over its proposed defense cuts

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has joked that he wants a combat badge “with clusters” for his three days on Capitol Hill last week spent fighting off critics of the Obama administration’s fiscal 2013 defense budget. During his appearances before the Senate and House Armed Services committees and the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, Panetta — a former eight-term House member himself — defended the $45.3 billion in proposed trims meant to meet provisions of the August 2011 Budget Control Act. No member called for deeper reductions. Instead, Panetta faced member after member who questioned the stretching out of purchasing aircraft, or the cancellation of a weapons system, or the changing of pay or health care or retirement costs, or the possible shift of mission or closing of a base or a National Guard or reserve unit. Panetta confessed Friday afternoon during a town hall meeting at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana: “I’ve been in hearings for the last three days. . . . I think I should get some kind of award going through that. . . . [Laughs.] “I mean, I told — I told General [Martin] Dempsey [the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who appeared with him] I need a new, you know, combatant — a new combat badge [laughter] for going to Capitol Hill — with clusters [laughter].” But there are serious fiscal lessons from this first week of hearings on defense. First, forget about the sequestration threat to take an additional $500 billion from Pentagon spending in the next 10 years. It’s not going to happen. Congress has to find some additional revenue streams — a war tax, for example — or cut spending somewhere else. These initial hearings clearly showed that the administration will have its hands full just maintaining the proposed 2013 reductions. Take the decision to halt procurement of one version of the unmanned, long-range surveillance aircraft, Global Hawk Block 30. The Pentagon will buy 21 and not the previously planned fleet of 31. Fourteen of these unmanned aerial vehicles are in service, four are in production, and three more have been funded at roughly $200 million each. The administration’s plan is to put the 21 in storage and continue using piloted U-2 aircraft for intelligence and surveillance missions. Both the Global Hawk and the U-2 have two basic sensors — one for imagery, another to intercept electronic messages. The latter sensors are roughly equal, but imagery on the U-2 is “far superior,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Larry O. Spencer of the Joint Staff. “It would be cost prohibitive to try to get the Global Hawk to be as capable as the U-2,” he said. “The Block 30 Global Hawk has fundamentally priced itself out of our ability to afford it when the U-2 gives in some cases a better capability and in some cases just a slightly less capable platform,” Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee. Panetta repeatedly had to defend his support of unmanned systems when asked about the Global Hawk decision. Before the House subcommittee, he said, “When you look at the cost effectiveness here, actually the U-2 provides an even better picture at a lesser cost and does the job.” He even pointed out that other elements of Global Hawk — the Block 40 version, which provides a unique ground surveillance capability — are still being procured from Northrop Grumman. If you think the Block 30 battle is over, think again. According to the Feb. 13 issue of the San Diego-based North County Times, Northrop spokesman Jim Stratford said “the Air Force has told us that there is no change to the contract and that we are to continue work as contracted.” Northrop, which disputes the claim that the Global Hawk is too expensive, has the option of making its arguments directly to Congress. “So it really is too early in the process to speculate on any reductions,” Stratford told the North County Times. Another procurement change that drew repeated questions related to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the highly complex, fifth-generation aircraft with stealth capability and highly sophisticated, new offensive and defensive technologies. About 2,400 are to be bought over more than a decade. It is the Pentagon’s most costly procurement program. The decision was made to slow down production schedules because planes were being built while development work was still being done on key systems. For example, software controlling the F-35’s major war-fighting functions, the most complex ever planned for an airplane, has been delayed so that the last block will not be introduced to the aircraft until at least June 2015. While 29 F-35s will be funded in 2013, 179 fewer aircraft will be produced in the next five years, saving about $15.1 billion. The 179 will be bought in later years. More than once, Panetta had to answer questions from lawmakers who argued that when you delay production in large acquisition programs such as the F-35, your costs increase. Slowing production, Panetta explained to the House subcommittee, would allow the manufacturer to “incorporate the changes that have to be made and make it less expensive when it comes to full production, as opposed to go into full production and then [later] having to make horrendous changes that are going to add to the cost.” When the same question came up later in the same hearing, Panetta was briefer: “We want to make damn sure that we don’t wind up . . . redoing these planes and adding to the cost. That’s what I’ve got to be careful of, and that’s why we slowed the production of these planes.” Let’s give Panetta another oak-leaf cluster, but don’t bet he’s going to come out a total winner in this particular war.