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Military Matters
(1) News From Nellis
(2) Israel's secret drone aircraft
(3) More Nellis News (4) Jane’s Defence News
(1) News From Nellis
F-16s had come and gone, dropping a pair of 500-pound satellite-guided bombs on an insurgent safe house in Iraq's Sunni Triangle. Now it was up to Major Shannon Rogers to see whether they had hit their target. With a tug of the throttle, he brought his plane to 10,000 feet for a closer look. Typically, it takes hours, even days, to get an accurate idea of the damage bombs have caused in a war zone. GIs on the ground have to make their way to a target and report back. But Rogers can get the job done in minutes. As his plane passed over the site of the safe house, dawn was breaking - a clear, sunny morning that had yet to give way to the August heat. But for Rogers, it was after sunset. He was operating his Predator unmanned aerial vehicle - a drone - from a secure terminal at Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas. Tracking the feed from the Predator's camera, Rogers could see rubble where the safe house had been. He and a sensor operator on his crew watched a crowd gather to ogle the destruction. Then a white Dodge pickup rolled up with a .50-caliber heavy machine gun in the back. Five men climbed out, ran into the house, and returned to move the truck to a secluded alley. They began loading ammunition and arc-welding the .50-cal's mount. Back at Nellis, Rogers wasn't limited to just assessing battle damage. He could also inflict it; his Predator was equipped with two Hellfire laser-guided missiles. Rogers, who flew F-15s (call sign: Smack) before switching to drones, radioed for authorization to destroy the Dodge. He got it. "We left their truck one big smoking hole," he remembers. "My heart was pumping as we were doing our business. It felt just as real to me, however many thousands of miles away, as if I was sitting right there in that cockpit." Rogers' Predator is one of more than 1,200 UAVs in the US military arsenal; three years ago, there were fewer than 100 in the field. Today drones as small as a crow and as big as a Cessna are searching for roadside bombs, seeking out insurgents, and watching the backs of US troops. They're cheap, they can stay in the air longer than any manned aircraft, and they can see a battlefield better - all without risking a pilot. Those capabilities tell only part of the story. UAVs give rank-and-file soldiers powers once reserved for generals. They push generals into the thick of battle. And they're blurring the lines between the fighter jocks and the grunts on the ground. Firmly entrenched hierarchies don't change easily, but drones are reshaping military culture. Private Joel Clark doesn't have any macho dogfight stories. He doesn't have a cool call sign or the swagger of a guy who has pulled 9 gs. In fact, Clark has never held a throttle. He did, however, flunk high school English. And that's how the milky-pale 19-year-old became one of America's newest pilots. Clark had planned to join the Army as a Blackhawk helicopter mechanic. But that F kept him from graduating on time, forcing him to reapply. The second time around, his recruiter suggested he try instead to be a "96 Uniform" - Army-speak for a UAV operator. Clark had never considered becoming a pilot. But the idea of running a robot spy plane sounded pretty rad. Now he's one of 225 soldiers, reservists, and National Guardsmen training on a lonely airstrip at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, a 125-year-old outpost 10 miles from the Mexican border. In a sense, Clark has been prepping for the job since he was a kid: He plays videogames. A lot of videogames. Back in the barracks he spends downtime with an Xbox and a PlayStation. When he first slid behind the controls of a Shadow UAV, the point and click operation turned out to work much the same way. "You watch the screen. You tell it to roll left, it rolls left. It's pretty simple," Clark says. But this is real life. "So you have to take it more seriously. If you crash one of these, you have to bleed and piss" - in other words, take a drug test. Clark has no intention of nose-diving, however. Crashing a $550,000 Shadow isn't as catastrophic as riding a $4.5 million Predator into the ground (or a $55 million F-15, for that matter). But Clark has gamed away the past 11 months in Arizona, and today, finally, is his last "check ride." After this takeoff, he'll be certified to fly the Shadow 200. He'll spend a few months at Fort Hood, Texas, training with the 4th Infantry Division. Then he'll ship off to what his sergeant calls the Big Sandbox: Iraq. "Striker 1-5, we have lights. Are we clear to launch?" Clark asks into his headset. The low buzz from the plane's engine shifts into a high-pitched, 105-decibel whine. "Departure approved," the control tower squawks back, barely audible over the din. "Outstanding," Clark smiles, checking his instrument panel one more time. "Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Launch, launch, launch!" he says, as the plane jumps into the Arizona morning. The flat gray Shadow gets propelled skyward on a nitrogen-pressurized rail; when Clark is ready to land, a hand-sized antenna dish on the side of the runway will guide the plane to the ground by transmitting coordinates a lot like GPS. Sitting in a Humvee, Clark flies the Hunter by using a mouse to point and click pixelated dials and sliders modeled after the ones in a physical cockpit. Alternatively he can just click a route on a map, or program a destination and let the plane figure it out. Clark doesn't have a throttle, and he can't see out the front of the plane. In fact, there is a camera, but the soldier sitting to Clark's left is working the joystick to take the pictures that make the whole mission worthwhile. Clark is just driving the bus.
(2) Israel's secret drone pilotless aircraft latest response to Hamas mortars, rockets
The IDF has been debating how best to respond to the new rocket threat. The drone is one answer. Aside from the drone, as WND first reported, military experts have been developing a "remote control" border with Gaza that includes unmanned sensor patrol cars and computerized observation posts that would automatically spot and kill terrorists. Israel the past two weeks has been utilizing a secret device to counter the growing threat of mortars and Qassam rockets Hamas regularly launches at the Jewish communities of Gaza – a pilotless drone that identifies and takes out militants and their equipment before they can fire the rockets, senior Israeli security sources told WND.
The Israel Air Force Monday fired three missiles at two teams of Palestinian militants planning a mortar attack in a Gaza refugee camp. Palestinian residents told reporters Israeli drones fired the missiles near where a group of militants was gathering. The IDF only confirmed that missiles destroyed both launchers, but would not reveal which kind of aircraft was used in the operation. A week earlier, Israel fired missiles at a Hamas crew preparing to launch a Qassam rocket against Neve Dekalim, the main Gaza Jewish community, from the Khan Younes cemetery in the southern Gaza Strip. Again, residents said they saw a drone, and the IDF was silent. An IDF spokeswoman told WND she "cannot reveal or discuss operational methods or means used in combat." But security officials said the recent operations utilized an advanced aerial pilotless drone equipped with precision-guided missiles capable of taking out stationary and moving targets with minimal collateral damage. The officials wouldn't identify the exact drone Israel has been using, but said it is a modified version of a model similar to America's MQ-1 Predator, a system guided by a ground control station that receives several real-time video feeds from sensors located on the drone as well as images from a Predator-linked satellite. The Israeli drone, which can remain in the air for up to 24 hours, is equipped with a color nose camera, a daytime-applicable TV lens, a variable infrared camera for low light and night, and a synthetic radar for looking through smoke, clouds or haze. The cameras produce full motion video as well as still frame radar images. America has used the Predator, as well as a more sophisticated system, the American Global Hawk UAV, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. used a drone May 8 to kill a wanted al-Qaida operative in North Waziristan. "Use of this drone should send shivers down the spines of terrorists planning further attacks," said an Israeli official. "Israel is using it to serve as a deterrent for further attacks. It provides us with constant intelligence in real time from afar, and enables us to respond immediately and forcefully." Rannan Gissin, a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told WND: "I can't talk specifics. The method used is not important, but I can say if Palestinians do not stop attacks, we will have to do it. And we will use methods that will be effective." Hamas has been launching almost daily rocket and mortar attacks against the Jewish communities in Gaza slated for evacuation this summer. Analysts have warned the attacks will escalate as the Gaza withdrawal draws closer so Hamas can claim it has driven Israel from the area. Israel has been reluctant to conduct ground operations inside Gaza in keeping with a cease-fire agreement signed with the Palestinians in February. "The drone shows we can still operate without being there," said a security source. Some worry after the Gaza evacuation, Hamas will use the territory gained to stage rocket attacks deeper inside Israel. Since February, the Palestinians have smuggled multiple rockets and five anti-aircraft missile batteries into Rafah from across the Egypt- Gaza border, reports Israel's Center for Special Studies. Hamas also recently started manufacturing a new rocket, the Nasser 3, capable of reaching further than the currently used Qassam 2 rockets, which, unlike the Nasser, have improvised fuses and warheads that don't always explode on impact. "The Nasser 3 brings things to a whole new level of warfare," a security source previously told WorldNetDaily. "Hamas knows they can't get inside Israel because of the security fence, and they are setting the stages for a major shift in tactics from suicide bombings to firing effective rockets from Palestinian areas deep inside Israel." The IDF has been debating how best to respond to the new rocket threat. The drone is one answer. Aside from the drone, as WND first reported, military experts have been developing a "remote control" border with Gaza that includes unmanned sensor patrol cars and computerized observation posts that would automatically spot and kill terrorists. An army think tank, working with Israel's high-tech sector, has put together a computerized observation system that will identify "hostile elements" for the IDF, and upon human authorization, will fire deep into Gaza. The system itself will recommend the most appropriate weapon to use to hit a specific target. The technology was quietly built years ago by Israeli firms and is now in the testing and approval stages. Said Gissin: "Rockets may be the latest threat, but Israel will neutralize it." By Aaron Klein writing in the World Net Daily
(3)More Nellis NewsMaintaining fighter planes by Wi-FiPut the paper work on line - and don't make anything go boomhttp://www.techworld.com/security/features/index.cfm?featureid=692&Page=1&pagePos=7 An airman with the 57th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron powers up a portable air conditioner to cool down an F15E's avionics, then ducks under the jet's wing to escape the broiling Nevada sun. He opens a laptop to access the fighter's maintenance history over a wireless LAN, checks the airframe's flight hours and schedules maintenance on the right engine's utility hydraulics pump. The laptop is a state-of-the-art ruggedized device from Itronix: You can submerge it in jet fuel and still type in commands. But the secure WLAN that connects technicians with data and application servers on the Nellis Air Force Base network is made up of off-the-shelf Cisco 802.11b access points and bridges. Nellis was the incubator and first site for a WLAN model that is now being rolled out at 50 air bases across the US. It's a key element in a programme intended to speed aircraft maintenance by letting technicians finish more work right at the aircraft. This minimises travel over miles of runways and taxiways and pares down time-consuming paperwork at the end of work shifts that can last 10 to 12 hours. The Nellis maintenance WLAN grew out of early wireless experimentation by a team of Air Force innovators with the 57th. These 900 people pump gas, change tyres, load rockets and bombs and oversee maintenance schedules for half a dozen types of warplane. They work on the flight line, where the jets are parked along Nellis' 3-mile-long runways, and in special concrete retaining areas where live munitions are stored and loaded. The WLAN now blankets this entire area, giving all flight line maintainers instant access, at 5 Mbit/s to 11 Mbit/s, to Nellis' Core Automated Maintenance System (CAMS), a database that stores all kinds of data about each aircraft. The CAMS data is now updated faster, right from the flight line, and more accurately, says Master Sergeant Mark Howarth, the squadron's network administrator. Users no longer have to collect and restore tools, and then wait for a ride back to an office to use a computer.
Taking the WLAN to Afghanistan The deployment server has been shipped to units working with the Predator pilotless drone, which was used in Afghanistan, and its jet-powered counterpart, Global Hawk. Both are based at Nellis.
Eventually, the WLAN will access digitised technical data, Howarth says. The Air Force is phasing out the bulky, printed maintenance manuals, often with 2-foot-long foldouts of complex schematic diagrams, planning to replace them with digital data on servers and sometimes CD-ROMs. That's already being done partially for some aircraft, such as engines for the F15 fighter, and completely for the pilotless drones. A recent news story reported that Lockheed Martin Corp.'s plan to introduce electronic manuals for the F16 Fighting Falcon, to replace 50,000 printed pages in 250 volumes, would save US $500 million over the remaining life of this aircraft. A key figure in the evolution of the WLAN project is former Sergeant Steven Carlson, now a senior WLAN administrator with Telos, still working at Nellis. In 1998, he persuaded his superiors to invest $95,000 in WLAN access points and bridges to cover about 90 percent of the flight line and another $5,000 on WLAN gear to be used instead of running fibre to the distant ordinance loading area, a project that would have cost $1.2 million. "My people did the install, the troubleshooting and all that, and we stayed within USAF regs for security and management," he says. "We were pretty much writing those regs as they are now for wireless policy."
Military-grade security Eventually, says Telos' Chief Wireless Architect Rob Smith, there will be a single sign-on capability, a full 802.1x implementation and a public-key infrastructure. "Full-blown PKI requires a hardware token, like a smart card, but the government hasn't sorted that out yet," Smith says. Howarth and Carlson are proud that the Air Force's Network Intrusion Team, dubbed the Red Team, has been unable to crack the WLAN's existing security. "They said it was a significant improvement (in WLAN security) over the previous generation of wireless," Carlson says. One issue not faced by most enterprise networks was ensuring safety in the sites. "We checked the output power and frequencies to make sure we wouldn't make anything go boom," Carlson says. (4)
Jane’s Defence News
AIR FORCES NEWS - 5
AUGUST 2005
India plans air
force boost among major challenges
US DoD plans
autonomous refuelling demo
USAF awards BAE
Systems RWR contract for C-130Js
AIR-TO-AIR WEAPONS -
Aiming for the high ground
Greece buys F-16s
from US
DEFENCE HEADLINES -
5 AUGUST 2005
Bowman add-on
package recast
Early entry for
Javelin system into UK service
GENERAL RAY HENAULT
- CHAIRMAN OF THE NATO MILITARY COMMITTEE
Greek industry
progresses privatisation
Finnish Defence
Forces' radio demonstrator nears testing
Elisra launches
'all-in-one' DAS/ESM solution
Finnish Defence
Forces set to land first ASRAD-R systems
SECURITY NEWS - 5
AUGUST 2005
North Korea
- no progress
Terror peril from
Sinai
Saudi prospects
after Fahd
Dialogue of the
(selectively) deaf in Cyprus
Oil at heart of
renewed UAE-Saudi border dispute
Senegal
stakes a claim to Guinea-Bissau's stability
What next for the US
in Central Asia?
Argentina
prepares for polls
West moves to
protect Ceyhan pipeline from Islamist foes
Fiji
fails to reconcile its differences
Fears that Cossack
revival may inflame racial tensions
The role played by
funding in the Iraq insurgency
Stuck in traffick:
gangs profit from global trade in sex slaves |