New Stealth Sub Is Fully Networked, But Cut Off From the Outside World

UNDERWAY ON THE U.S.S. MISSISSIPPI ' Practically every system aboard the Navy's newest fast attack submarine is state of the art. Unlike earlier subs, the U.S.S. Mississippi's control room, a hive of classified software and hardware, places sonar technicians and weapons specialists barely five feet apart. The periscope is mostly virtual: fiber optics allow the control room to see the surface world, rather than a physical tube running down from the bridge. But for all the advancements aboard the Mississippi, there's one persistent challenge ' staying connected to the outside world.

Bandwidth on subs is practically a throwback to the era of Magic cards, Discmans, and the best Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episodes. To send and receive messages, the U.S. submarine fleet needs to rise to a depth shallow enough to raise periscopes and antennas; aboard the Mississippi, periscope depth is 60 feet. While there are exceptions to that rule, it sets up a basic tradeoff. To remain undetected and ready to complete their missions, submarine commanders have to be prepared for long periods of silence.

'There are some missions or taskings where you don't go to periscope depth frequently and put antennas out of the water,' says Cmdr. Aaron Thieme, the deputy commander of Submarine Squadron 4, which includes the Mississippi. 'There are some missions or taskings where you spend all your time at periscope depth with your antennas out of the water. There are some that require us not to transmit at all.'

The subs receive their internet access from bandwidth provided by satellites, same as the Navy's surface ships. But unlike aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates, submarines can't augment their connectivity with 4G networks. And once the subs go below periscope depth, they're effectively cut off from the outside world.

All this makes bandwidth on the subs an even scarcer resource than it is aboard the surface fleet. On the Mississippi, red Ethernet cables dangle from the ceilings of the officer's wardroom. Only when the sub rises to periscope depth do officers plug the cables into their laptops, allowing them to access the Navy's classified networks. That doesn't happen often. The Mississippi has the capability to stay submerged ' and silent ' for up to 90 days.

For all the Navy's formidable technological advancements, many of which are visible aboard the Mississippi, connectivity lags behind. The Navy has yet to overcome some basic physical limitations. The deeper the sub dives, the harder it is for it to access a satellite. Thieme confirms that there is a depth beyond which the submarine fleet is totally disconnected, but understandably declines to disclose what that depth is. And like surface ships, the further the fleet disperses on or under the open water, the harder it is to keep the subs in contact.

And there's an additional communications challenge for subs. Allowing sailors to e-mail their families risks compromising the stealth that's central to the subs' missions.

'Any time you transmit energy, whether it be electromagnetic or acoustic, fundamentally, it could be detected,' Thieme explains. 'At some point, there could be a technology developed that can identify that energy source. Just as we go to great efforts to minimize the acoustic energy we put into the water, we go to efforts to minimize the counter-detectability of the electromagnetic energy that we transmit when we communicate.'

But don't let that conjure up visions of rogue sub commanders, à la The Hunt for Red October. The chain of command informs the submarine how frequently and even when it needs to reach periscope depth to check in or receive orders. And the command has technical mechanisms ' which the crew of the Mississippi will not discuss ' for augmenting the bandwidth available to submarines in an emergency. More regularly, a text-only e-mail program called SailorMail allows sub crews to send and receive e-mails over an unclassified network ' provided those e-mails are free of attachments, and sailors don't mind waiting for transmissions at speeds slower than dial-up. For morale, the sub can stream news programs and sports when it's at periscope depth.

Still, the Navy's lack of consistent bandwidth for submarines could complicate some its broader plans. Its new super-concept for working seamlessly with the Air Force might founder if fighter jets can't talk to Navy subs.

But underway on the Mississippi, officers are convinced bandwidth deserts are a manageable problem ' and one that feeds into the culture of submarine warfare.

'It's in our DNA to be able to go out and do a mission by ourselves without somebody looking over our shoulder,' says Thieme. 'If the capability gets developed so that, regardless of whatever speed or depth we are we can maintain a communications tether or connectivity path, I [still] don't see submariners becoming less autonomous.'

Mexican Cartel Declares War on Cheetos

The logo for Sabritas, a Mexican snack chip subsidiary of PepsiCo, which saw dozens of vehicles and five warehouses burned by a drug cartel this month. Photo: chrizar/Flickr

Mexican drug cartels are not strictly drug cartels. One of their fastest-growing markets is extortion of private citizens and businesses. Don't pay, and you can be threatened ' or worse. But largely, the cartels target small businesses and individuals, and stay away from the larger industries. Now several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time the cartels have targeted a multinational corporation.

That corporation would be PepsiCo. According to press reports, masked men attacked five warehouses and vehicle lots on Friday and Saturday nights belonging to the U.S. snack and soft drink giant. More specifically, PepsiCo's Mexican subsidiary: Sabritas. Dozens of yellow delivery trucks ' which transport Sabritas chips and Fritos, Cheetos and Ruffles (among other brands) for the Mexican market ' were burned. The good news: No one was injured or killed. At least one member of the Knights Templar cartel was reportedly arrested. Video has also emerged of firefighters battling the blazing trucks and the European Pressphoto Agency released images of Sabritas' smiley-face mascot illuminated by the flames.

'What we cannot allow is for this kind of isolated case to become generalized,' Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexico's Business Coordinating Council, told the Associated Press. 'The authorities have to take forceful action.'

What's already generalized is kidnapping, carjacking and extortion of private citizens. Corporations are simply too large, too complex, and it's not easy ' from a cartel's perspective ' to determine who within a corporation should be threatened in an extortion attempt. (Sabritas dominates the Mexican snack food market with about 75 percent market share.) If you're looking to coerce the manager who is writing the checks, you might as well try to threaten a computer database. Mexico's state-owned oil company, Pemex, has been subject to attacks on its oil pipelines. But this is due to theft, not extortion. Maquiladora factories ' the duty-free workshops that sprawl along the U.S.-Mexico border ' have largely been spared. So why did the cartel attack PepsiCo?

Again, it's probably an extortion attempt. But another explanation involves rumors originating in the western states of Michoacán and Guanajuato ' where the arson attacks occurred ' that allege some of the company's 14,500 delivery trucks are used by the federal security services for undercover intelligence operations. PepsiCo even issued a denial: 'We repeat that in accordance with our code of conduct, all of our operations are carried out in the current regulatory framework and our vehicles and facilities are used exclusively to carry our products to our customer and clients,' read a company statement.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of the story: the perpetrators. A smaller splinter group of the western La Familia cartel, the Knights Templar have emerged only recently as a self-styled Christian military order. Before the March visit to Mexico by Pope Benedict XVI, the cartel pledged to cease fighting for the duration of the pontiff's visit. The cartel has also sought to boost its appeal to the public through populist rhetoric, and has claimed it convinced Michoacan meat and tortilla vendors to lower their prices under 'no pressure, no blackmail, much less charging fees.'

Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official for CISEN (Mexico's equivalent to the CIA), suggested to the AP that the Knights Templar 'have to be more aggressive in their use of extortion and alternative sources [of income] than practically any other cartel, except the Zetas,' he said. Based in land-locked Michoacán, the Knights Templar is cut off from the lucrative drug-trafficking routes along Mexico's western and eastern coastlines, so its operatives seek easy money elsewhere.

Knights Templar propaganda likewise paints them as a muscle-bound medieval knights. Who are now at war with Cheetos ' and Pepsi. Read that again. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Exclusive Pictures: Inside the Navy's Newest Spy Sub

UNDERWAY ON THE U.S.S. MISSISSIPPI ' The Navy's newest fast-attack submarine is speeding down the Florida coast, on its way to its commissioning ceremony in its namesake state, at 15 knots. And it's getting outraced by dolphins.

Hours before the U.S.S. Mississippi dives several hundred feet beneath the Atlantic, its sail juts proudly into the warm, whipping southern air. Submariners allow me to see the highest point on the sub for myself ' provided I can keep my balance up three steep levels' worth of ladder and hoist myself out onto a platform the size of a fancy refrigerator. A harness hooked to an iron bolt on the sail keeps me from falling to my death. There's no land in sight, just blue water turned white around the sub's wake, a tall BPS-16 military radar spinning in front of us, and a family of dolphins jumping out of the surf in front of the 377-foot boat.

Apparently it's typical. Where subs travel in the southern Atlantic, dolphins tend to tag along, eager to say hi to their large, silent playmate. 'Dolphins like to sing,' notes Petty Officer Joshua Bardelon, a 32-year old from Pascagoula, the site of the Mississippi's destination, who supervises the boat's sonar systems.

Those systems are part of why Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is eager to take possession of his newest Virginia-class submarine when it formally joins the fleet on June 2. As much time as it spends listening to dolphin symphonies, the Mississippi is everything from a weapon to destroy other ships to an electronic-attack system to a stealthy transport for Navy commandos.

The multiple sonar arrays allow the submarine to detect other ships before it's detected itself. Underway, the boat is dead silent except for the hum of the air conditioning, an indication of the classified tools that mask the Mississippi's acoustic and electronic signatures to maintain its exceptional stealth. Then comes the boat's electronic warfare capabilities ' which its crew will discuss only vaguely.

'If I'm at periscope depth and I stick my periscope out of the water, people who are looking for me will be using a radar system to find me,' says the sub's commander, Capt. John McGrath, a 20-year submarine veteran. 'But I will know that that radar is in the area and I will use that to my advantage.'

Some of its other weapons are more traditional. The torpedo room, down in the deepest level of the boat, hosts 16 intimidating metal tubes, each wider than bicycle wheels, the bays for its 28-foot torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles. The room looks like a machinist's workshop, except for the exercise bikes and the racks where the torpedomen sleep beside their weapons ' the primary means for the Mississippi to complete its future missions: hunting and destroying enemy ships and subs.

'There are two types of ships in the Navy,' explains Chief Nathan Holmes. 'We have submarines, and we have targets.'

Even though the Mississippi isn't on a combat mission ' which is why the Navy allows me to tag along on a boat overflowing with classified systems ' McGrath is eager to demonstrate that his boat is a predator, not prey. After I climb down from the sail, he orders the boat's pilot to dive to 155 feet, a way-station depth that's far enough underwater to avoid sea traffic but shallow enough so he can get surface rapidly should something go wrong. When nothing does, McGrath orders the pilots to continue on to a depth of 400 feet. The faster the captain wants to go, the deeper he dives.

The dive is surprisingly imperceptible. Even though we've just dropped 400 feet in a minute, I barely lean forward. If I had been drinking anything, it wouldn't have spilled.

That's the case during my entire four-day stint on the boat. With the exception of a 20-minute exercise in dipping the Mississippi up and down ' a queasy affair nicknamed 'Angles and Dangles' ' I've had rockier trips aboard surface ships. The fast-attack submarine is downright placid, even at 20 knots.

The steadiness will be an asset for one of the Mississippi's other missions: aiding Navy SEALs. There's a special bay, called a lockout trunk, that allows a tinier sub to dock and deposit a small number of SEALs onboard. Once they're aboard, the Mississippi will become a Navy special warfare platform ' as are many subs that don't carry nuclear missiles ' performing reconnaissance missions and getting SEALs stealthily in and out of where they need to go. The Virginia class' smaller size allows the sub to 'be more maneuverable in a littoral,' says Master Chief Bill Stoiber, the chief of the boat, or senior enlisted man aboard, making it particularly useful for SEAL insertion missions. After the summer, the Mississippi will head for southern Florida to test its special-warfare skills.

As much as the Mississippi is the newest in new for Navy subs, not everything aboard is super-advanced. Satellite connectivity is limited. Submariners like to stay autonomous when they're below the waves, but that means that information aboard the sub largely stays on the sub, and outside information doesn't always reach the boat quickly. The Mississippi rises to periscope depth ' that is, shallower than 60 feet below, so its periscope can stick its neck out of the water ' in order to fire off e-mails or receive communications through classified and unclassified-but-secured networks. Even so, submariners roll their eyes at how slow their connection speeds are. (Think dial-up. In the late '90s.)

When the sub needs it, it can request extra satellite bandwidth from the Navy ' often to send off a video or larger data file. But that 'spot beam' is only for special occasions, and it's a one-off event. Persistent, available undersea bandwidth is a challenge the Navy hasn't yet figured out how to solve.

Then there are the traditional joys of life aboard a submarine. The Mississippi is home to 138 men, who have to get very comfortable with each other, since there's nowhere to go for privacy. The halls are barely wide enough for two people hugging the walls to traverse. Submariners are billeted up to 47 per room, stacked up in threes on narrow racks. A typical deployment entails six months of living in these cramped conditions, and the Mississippi is capable of staying underwater for 90 days at a stretch.

Still, the ship makes a virtue out of solitude. The food is unexpectedly excellent. It's difficult to store bread underneath the sea without it molding or going stale ' and there's no place to buy more ' so the kitchen bakes it fresh every day. It's tempting to forego a lunchtime hot dog just to eat a delicious empty roll an hour old.

The most striking demonstration of the crew's tightness comes in the control room. Unlike older subs, the Virginia class doesn't hive away its sonar stations. The dark room, illuminated by dozens of screens displaying torrents of highly classified data, joins up the pilots, navigators, weapons experts and sonar technicians. Five sonar techs stare at screens filled with green representations of the sounds of the ocean while they listen through headphones. Should they hear an enemy ship they're hunting, they can holler at the fire control station on the other side of the control room that it's time to attack.

For now, one of those techs passes me his cans. When I put them on, all I hear is a high-pitched squeak that sounds a little like a squeal of glee. Dolphins.

Photos: Mark Riffee/Wired.com

This Rock Could Spy on You for Decades

America is supposed to wind down its war in Afghanistan by 2014. But U.S. forces may continue to track Afghans for years after the conflict is officially done. Palm-sized sensors, developed for the American military, will remain littered across the Afghan countryside ' detecting anyone who moves nearby and reporting their locations back to a remote headquarters. Some of these surveillance tools could be buried in the ground, all-but-unnoticeable by passersby. Others might be disguised as rocks, with wafer-sized, solar-rechargeable batteries that could enable the sensors' operation for perhaps as long as two decades, if their makers are to be believed.

Traditionally, when armies clash, they leave behind a horrific legacy: leftover mines which can blow civilians apart long after the shooting war is over. These 'unattended ground sensors,' or UGSs, won't do that kind of damage. But they could give the Pentagon an enduring ability to monitor a one-time battlefield long, long after regular American forces are supposed to have returned home.

'Were going to leave behind a lot of special operators in Afghanistan. And they need the kind of capability that's easy to put out so they can monitor a village without a lot of overt U.S.-made material on pathways and roadways,' says Matt Plyburn, an executive at Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense contractor.

The U.S. military has used unattended ground sensors in one form or another since 1966, when American forces dropped acoustic monitors on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Tens of thousands of UGSs have been emplaced around Afghanistan and Iraq, forming electronic perimeters around combat outposts and keeping tabs on remote locations. It's a way to monitor the largest possible area with the smallest number of troops.

'You use them to cover up your dead space ' the areas you're concerned about but can't cover with other ISR [intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance] assets,' says Lt. Col. Matt Russell, an Army program manager overseeing the deployment of unattended sensors.

But earlier UGSs ' even ones of the recent past ' were relatively large and clunky, prone to false alarms, and had lifespans measurable in days or weeks. 'What we found in the field was significant under-usage,' Russell tells Danger Room. Plans to incorporate them into every combat brigade fizzled as the Army's proposed $200 billion revamp, Future Combat Systems, went south.

The new models are dramatically smaller and consume far less power, enabling them to operate for months ' maybe even years ' at a time with only the slimmest chance of being detected. Lockheed calls them 'field and forget' systems for 'persistent surveillance.'

And they won't just be used overseas. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol today employs more than 7,500 UGSs on the Mexican border to spot illegal migrants. Defense contractors believe one of the biggest markets for the next generation of the sensors will be here at home.

'They could be used for border security or even around corporate headquarters,' Plyburn tells Danger Room.

In early 2011, commanders in Afghanistan issued an 'urgent operational needs statement' for better sensors. In response, the Army shipped a new line of about 1,500 'expendable' UGSs to the warzone. The size of a few stacked hockey pucks with a four-inch antenna, these sensors are easily hidden, and can 'pick up wheels or footprints' for up to three months at a time, Russell says. It's a perfect surveillance tool for the remote valleys of eastern Afghanistan.

Soon, when one of the sensors picks up a signal, it'll queue a spy blimp to focus in on the spot. 'That's a capability coming to a theater near you soon,' he adds.

Even more sophisticated are the UGSs being tested northeast of Norfolk, Virginia, at a Lockheed proving ground. Arrays of up to 50 palm-sized acoustic and seismic sensors form a mesh network. When one sensor detects a person or a vehicle passing by, it uses unlicensed radio frequency bands to pass an alert from one node to the next. The alert finally hits a communications gateway, which can send the signal via satellite, tactical radio network, or Wi-Fi to a command and control center. That signal can tip off additional sensors ' or it can send a Twitter-like message to an intelligence officer's phone or tablet.

When they're not picking up signals or passing along messages, the sensors are all-but-shut-down, barely consuming any power. That allows them to last for weeks, buried underground. Or the sensors can be encased in hollow 'rocks' equipped with miniature solar panels. A quick recharge from the sun will allow the sensor to 'get through the night anywhere on Earth that U.S. forces operate,' says Plyburn.

Plyburn claims that the sensor's battery, about the size of a postage stamp, has been able to go through 80,000 recharges, compared to a few hundred cycles for a typical lithium-ion battery. Even if he's off by a factor of 10, the sensor's battery could keep the machine operational for nearly twenty-two years.

Russell is skeptical of these assertions of longevity. 'I'm sure there are a lot of claims by contractors,' he says. 'My experience is: the longer the lifespan, the bigger the battery.'

Nor does Lockheed currently have a contract with Defense Department to mass-produce the sensors. But Plyburn says there has been interest around the armed forces, especially since the system is relatively cheap. Plyburn says each sensor could cost as little as $1,000 each ' practically expendable for a military paying $80,000 for a single guided artillery round.

Lockheed isn't the only company claiming that its sensors can operate for years on end. U.S. Special Operations Command has handed out at least $12 million in UGS contracts to tiny Camgian Microsystems, based out of Starksville, Mississippi. Company CEO Gary Butler, who spent years developing ultra-low power integrated circuits for Darpa, was awarded in March a patent for such a next-gen unattended sensor suite.

Rather than relaying alerts from node to node, each of Butler's sensors is designed to send signals directly to a satellite ' speeding up notifications, and cutting down on power consumed. Rather than a simple acoustic or seismic detector, the sensor relies a steerable, phased-array radar and moving-target indicator algorithms. That could give it a much greater ability to detect people and vehicles on the run. High-powered solar cells provide will enable up to '500,000 recharge cycles' could give the sensor a '10-20 year life,' according to the patent.

Butler won't say how U.S. special operators are using his research, if at all. But when I ask him about the possibility of leaving UGS networks behind after American troops have officially left, Butler calls that 'plausible. Very Plausible.'

Camgian's patent claims that the sensor's ease-of-use and small size means it 'is easily emplaced in difficult areas, using airborne assets such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.' Edward Carapezza, who has been overseeing UGS research for more than two decades, says drones are already dropping unattended sensors into hostile locations.

'In certain areas, we certainly are using unmanned vehicles and unattended sensors together,' says Carapezza, who now works at the defense contractor General Atomics. He declined to name where these operations were being conducted. He simply gave the rationale for the missions. 'Instead of sending patrols of our guys in, we send in drones and unattended sensors ' dropping arrays, locating bad guys, and then putting weapons on target.'

The 'MicroObserver' UGS from defense contractor Textron has been in the field since 2008. The U.S. Army is currently using the sensors in Afghanistan. 'Another customer ' we're not allowed to say who or where ' used it as part of a comprehensive border security program in a Middle Eastern country,' says Patty Shafer, a Textron executive.

Textron's seismic sensors come in two varieties. The smaller, three inch-long model, weighing 1.4 pounds, will last about a month. The bigger system, a 4.4 pound spike, can be buried in the ground and gather intelligence for more than two years. It can detect and characterize people from 100 meters away, and vehicles from three times that distance, Shafer says. A conformal antenna allows it to communicate with a gateway five kilometers away.

Northrop Grumman employs a family of sensors for its Scorpion surveillance network.

'Seismic sensors work well detecting vehicles on bumpy roads, but lose range as the road becomes smoother, or the vehicle lighter. Typically, magnetic sensors sense only large vehicles at fairly short distances. The range of acoustic sensors depends upon environmental conditions such as humidity and surroundings. Most sense engine exhaust noise or other periodic pulse trains and measure the period to determine numbers of cylinders and classify the source,' explains a Northrop presentation to an academic conference on unattended sensors.

The Army has purchased over a thousand of the original versions, with an average of four sensors, each. The vast majority have been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 20 Scorpion II systems were recently bought by the Army Research Lab. The sensors can today spot people from 800 meters away, and vehicles from 2,100 meters. The sensors' batteries wear out after a month.

These might have been eye-popping results, not long ago. But the U.S. military now has plans to keep its network of tiny, hidden spies going for much longer than that.

Army Wants Flame-Retardant Texting Gloves

Brig. Gen. John Uberti, center, shows off some apps on his smartphone to Army Secretary John McHugh and Lt. Gen. Michael Ferriter, January 2012. Photo: U.S. Army

The Army's mad for smartphones. It's testing Android devices it bought from the local electronics store to see how they operate on its experimental, homebrewed data network. And one thing it seems to have forgotten to buy for the dismounted soldiers who'll have to furiously tap the screens to send data during firefights: texting gloves.

A recent request for information from the Army says that there's a need for a 'capacitive touch screen compatible Army combat glove.' It's a simple request: a 'combat survivable' glove with enough stuff on the fingertips to ensure the 'tactile accuracy' of troops mashing the screens on their handsets.

Combat survivable, in this case, means flame-retardant. As anyone who has ever served in the Army or spent time with those who have knows, you're not getting off the base, into a truck and onto a mission unless your hands are wrapped in gloves that can withstand extreme heat. Taking off the gloves to text is not an option.

The Army is still working out all the details of how to equip soldiers with smartphones. The Android OS has the likely edge, largely owing to relative cheapness of devices running Android. But it's still unclear if every soldier will someday use smartphones as a standard piece of kit. It's also unclear how soldiers will get the phones ' that is, if the Army will play favorites and require soldiers to purchase a specific phone; or if it'll give soldiers a renewable stipend to purchase upgradable handsets, provided they meet Army standards for securing data. (Recent remarks from a top official in the Army smartphone program suggest the latter option has an edge.)

But the Army's query about what texting gloves are on the market contains one new clue about how soldiers will one day use smartphones. The devices 'will reside inside a protective case making the corners of the capacitive touch display difficult to reach,' the Army's request reads. Prepare for some amazing auto-corrections.

Still, it's a necessary question, and one that gets the Army thinking about something it doesn't always consider: the user experience.

Senate Panel Cuts Off Navy's Biofuel Buys

An F/A-18 from the Blue Angels demonstration squadron is fueled with a biofuel blend. Photo: U.S. Navy

The Navy's ambitious renewable-energy plans aren't sunk quite yet. But they took a major hit Thursday, when the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to all-but-ban the military from buying alternative fuels.

The House Armed Services Committee passed a similar measure earlier this month. But the House is controlled by Republicans, who are generally skeptical of alternative energy efforts. Democrats are in charge of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And if anything, the Senate's alt-fuel prohibition goes even further than the House's. If it becomes law, if would not only sink the Navy's attempt to sail a 'Great Green Fleet,' powered largely by biofuels. It would also sabotage a half-billion-dollar program to shore up a tottering biofuels industry.

Like their counterparts in the House, senators prohibited the Pentagon from buying renewable fuels that are more expensive than traditional ones ' a standard that biofuels may never meet. In addition, the committee blocked the Defense Department from helping build biofuel refineries unless 'specifically authorized by law' ' just as the Navy was set to pour $170 million into an effort with the Departments of Energy and Agriculture to do precisely that.

The measures ' amendments to the Pentagon's budget for next year ' were pushed by two Republicans. Sen. James Inhofe has long been one of the Republican's fiercest critics of renewable energy efforts; Sen. John McCain has in recent years turned away from long-held eco-friendly positions.

'Adopting a 'green agenda' for national defense of course is a terrible misplacement of priorities,' McCain told National Journal Daily on Tuesday, calling it 'a clear indication that the president doesn't understand national security.'

Which Democrats joined McCain in passing the amendments is unclear; the vote was held in a closed session of the committee.

This was supposed to be a moment of triumph for Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who pledged to get half of the service's energy from sources other than oil by 2020. Late next month, the Great Green Fleet was supposed to go on its inaugural, two-day demonstration voyage, with the destroyers plowing through the Pacific and F/A-18 jets will screaming into the air, thanks to a 50/50 mixture of bio- and fossil fuel. A full mission is planned for 2016.

'The Great Green Fleet doesn't have an environmental agenda. It's about maintaining America's military and economic leadership across the globe in the 21st century,' Mabus told a Senate hearing in March, noting that every time the price of oil goes up by a dollar per barrel, it costs the Navy $31 million.'When anyone says we can't afford to invest in developing alternative sources of energy, my reply is, 'We can't afford not to.' We can't afford to wait until price shocks or supply shocks leave us no alternative.'

In the short term, though, biofuels were going to cost significantly more than petroleum. After all, the biofuel industry is tiny, compared to the massive, century-old oil business. The science behind biofuels is relatively new. The Navy is still buying cupfuls off the stuff, compared to tanker-loads of oil it gets every day. In December, the Navy spent $12 million for 450,000 gallons of biofuel for the Green Fleet ' paying about four times its price for fossil fuel.

Opponents pounced, calling it a waste of money in a time of relative austerity. 'Wouldn't you agree that the thing they'd be more concerned about is having more ships, more planes, more prepositioned stocks?' Rep. Randy Forbes asked during a February hearing with Mabus. The alt-energy foes found justification in some of the Navy's own studies, which openly questioned whether biofuels would ever be as cheap as oil products.

Then came the House vote. And now, the Senate.

'It is a disappointment that a slim majority of the Senate Armed Services Committee has chosen to restrict efforts by the Department of Defense to reduce dependence on foreign oil.  Today's vote will hurt the DoD's efforts to protect its budget from oil price shocks, diversify its energy mix and ensure security of supply,' Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate, said in a statement. 'This is a step backwards.'

Food Fight: Contractor Accused of $750 Million Overcharge for Wartime Grub

Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Dearborn guides a truck carrying boxes of food at Patrol Base Alcatraz, Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2011. Photo: DVIDS

In 2008, the Pentagon began investigating whether the main supplier of food to troops in Afghanistan overcharged taxpayers. Since then, there have been audits, recriminations and the discovery that the supplier may have overbilled the military as much as $756.9 million. Now lawmakers are squeezing both the Pentagon and the contractor in an attempt to find out what happened.

That's according to a statement released today from the two heads of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations. The congressmen want documents and information within 10 days from both the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the Switzerland-based company, Supreme Foodservice GmbH. This might be difficult, because the Pentagon has alleged Supreme Foodservice ' which has been paid $5.5 billion since 2005 to supply food to more than 250 bases and outposts ' did not maintain invoices and truck manifests (.pdf) while transporting food, water and other materiel; nor did the company provide data to investigators on fuel costs, price estimates and even correct flight plans.

'It is outrageous that DLA could ever be in the position of possibly overpaying any vendor by three quarters of a billion dollars ' especially at a time when troop levels are being scaled back because funding is tight,' said subcommittee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz in a statement. 'The Subcommittee will work with the Department of Defense to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding this apparent lack of oversight.'

Supreme, meanwhile, maintains the high costs reflect the difficulty of operating in Afghanistan. The contractor also claims it is owed more than $1 billion by the Pentagon beyond the billions already paid, which when combined with the Pentagon's own claims, 'raises serious concerns regarding DLA's contracting oversight,' according to the congressmen. It also calls into question the Pentagon's consideration of Supreme Foodservice for another contract in December, worth a massive $10 to $30 billion over the next five years.

'The American taxpayers refuse to accept a government contractor that bills more than $750 million in unsubstantiated charges, and they refuse to accept the Pentagon's failure to manage this contract properly,' Rep. John Tierney, the  ranking member on the committee, said in a statement.

A majority of the unaccounted costs ($455 million) involved airlifting fresh fruits and vegetables from the United Arab Emirates to Afghanistan and onto bases and isolated outposts ' without oversight. The Pentagon claims the contractor also billed for nonexistent cargo and overcharged $124.3 million for 'transportation and corrugated packing boxes,' according to Bloomberg.

Supreme also grew too big, too fast. The original contract between Supreme and the Pentagon applied to only four Afghanistan bases. Within months, Supreme grew to supplying 64 bases. Today, the number of bases and outposts supplied by Supreme exceeds 250. Just getting fuel and food in and out of the country alone is a challenge ' let alone supplying the goods to a slew of different military organizations.

'It was hard enough to locate appropriate items when we had to make substitutions in the goods we delivered and cope with other anomalies in the field,' Gaurav Kumar, Supreme's information technology director, said in a June 2009 promotional 'case study' for Microsoft's Dynamics AX resource planning suite, which Supreme adopted in 2009. 'But we also constantly struggled with invoices not matching the goods delivered, containing errors, and inconsistent data.'

Kumar added then: 'When I looked at our inventory module, I saw that it had no checks built in for handling inventory management and addressing the principles of warehousing, such as systematic stock management and stock traceability, which are especially important with food service,' he said. 'We tried to program some functionality to that end, but the effort was extremely frustrating and produced inconsistent outcomes.'

Supreme's resource software was also designed by a German company ' in German. This meant few of Supreme's international workforce, which speaks English as a common language, could understand it. Tracking fuel costs were prone to errors, given the effect of changes in temperature and monetary value to the price of gas. 'Tracking changes in volume was difficult, and price management for us was inelegant, time-consuming, and error-prone,' he said.

The Microsoft promo suggests Supreme mostly resolved its logistics problem. But this also needs a heaping dose of skepticism. And with an upcoming contract worth tens of billions, and with pressure from Congress, it'd be a wonder if the military renews with the company again.

Special Ops Chief Denies Helping Bin Laden Filmmakers

The filming of Act of Valor. Photo: Relativity Media

TAMPA, Florida ' Adm. William McRaven, America's top commando officer, loves movies about his special operators. 'My introduction to Special Operations Forces was the movie The Green Berets,' he tells Danger Room, referring to the classic 1968 John Wayne flick set in Vietnam. But that doesn't mean McRaven is eager to spill the secrets of Special Operations Command to today's filmmakers. And in the case of one controversial upcoming movie about the May 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, McRaven says he and his command provided no assistance whatsoever.

'We don't have a partnership' with the filmmakers, McRaven says. 'I have no interaction and no one on my staff has any interaction with ' what's her name? Bigelow?'

McRaven is referring to director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, who are making the movie Zero Dark Thirty about the bin Laden takedown. They're the same creative team that was behind the 2008 Iraq War flick The Hurt Locker, which benefited from high levels of military support but still ended up disappointing many viewers for its sensationalistic portrayal of Army bomb squads.

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the White House, Defense Department and CIA all offered rare, if not unprecedented, access to Boal and Bigelow. The access included a guided tour of a secret CIA planning facility called The Vault and linking Boal up with what a Defense Department official described as 'a planner, SEAL Team 6 operator and commander.' The only restriction was that Boal not disclose the SEAL's name.

Defense Department Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Douglas Wilson stressed that Bigelow's and Boal's access would be unique. 'We need to be careful here so we don't open the media floodgates on this,' Wilson wrote in an e-mail obtained by Judicial Watch.

The government-Hollywood collusion has at least one lawmaker up in arms ' especially considering that Zero Dark Thirty was originally timed to hit theaters right before the November elections, potentially giving Pres. Barack Obama, who ordered the bin Laden raid, a big PR boost. The movie has since been bumped back to December, but Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, still considers the administration's collaboration with the filmmakers 'dangerous' and 'troubling.'

McRaven insists his command will not get involved in anything even remotely partisan. 'We are completely apolitical,' he says.

Col. Tim Nye, Special Operations Command's top media handler, tells Danger Room he did receive an informal inquiry regarding possible cooperation between the filmmakers and the command. Nye says no one ever followed up on the informal inquiry ' and besides, he says, Special Operations Command would not have agreed to help out on the movie unless specifically directed to do so by higher authority. That didn't happen, and the command sat out entirely from any government collaboration with Bigelow et al., Nye says.

Nye explains that it would have been bad form for McRaven to be involved in the film, as McRaven oversaw the forces involved in the bin Laden raid. 'He'd be approving a movie about himself,' Nye says.

The White House and CIA apparently had no such qualms. And according to McRaven and Nye, whatever access Bigelow and Boal had to special operators occurred outside of Special Operations Command ' and without the command's knowledge.

Which is not to say Special Operations Command would never help out with a Hollywood production. Navy SEALs under McRaven's command actually starred in the recent Act of Valor movie. Beyond that, Nye says the command is advising filmmakers on no fewer than 11 current productions that don't represent the conflict of interest that Zero Dark Thirty does. Nye even lists movies he says are good examples of joint military-Hollywood productions. At the top of the list: 2001's Blackhawk Down ' and all three Transformers flicks.

Combat Exoskeleton Marches Toward Afghanistan Deployment

TAMPA, Florida ' Dial down the god-awful soundtrack and try to ignore the choppy camera work, but re-watch Lockheed Martin's promo video depicting its two-year-old Human Universal Load Carrier exoskeleton. Because inside of the year, an improved version of this combat exoskeleton could be headed to Afghanistan for combat trials. That's right: cyborg soldiers might, might just be months away from becoming a front-line reality.

At least, that's what a Lockheed rep indicated today at a Special Forces trade show in Tampa. Asked if there were plans to deploy the HULC exoskeleton overseas following its next round of Army testing, Lockheed's special operation program manager Keith Maxwell nodded yes and said, 'after that.'

Maxwell was wearing what he described as a 'smaller, lighter, more energy-efficient' version of the battery-powered external skeleton, complete with an unloaded machine gun on a pivoting mechanical arm. He asked us not to photograph the exoskeleton, but he was happy to discuss it.

In essence, HULC adds an artificial, external spine, hips, legs and the aforementioned pivoting arm to a soldier's flesh and bones. The machine extremities, powered by a lithium-ion battery, redistribute and transfer up to 200 pounds of weight down and off the wearer's body, allowing him to carry more, longer. 'There's a 10 percent metabolic cost for the benefit of a heavy load removed,' Maxwell says.

Add loads of food, water, batteries and other supplies, and you become a human pack mule for your squadmates. Swap them out for a heavy machine gun and you transform into what Maxwell calls a 'one-man crew-served weapon.' Maxwell says he live-fired his machine gun just before the trade show and 'felt the recoil eliminated down to one-third.'

Lockheed originally rolled out HULC in 2010, but in a heavier, bulkier form that tended to run down its batteries in just an hour. The current model can go for up to eight hours 'on the march,' and lasts 'days and days' on a single charge if you're just standing guard with a machine gun. Lockheed is still working on a fuel cell meant to provide 72 hours of power in even the most strenuous conditions.

Two summers ago the Army paid Lockheed $1.1 million to test HULC at the Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts. There, Lockheed discovered that training was critical. Maxwell says soldiers who expected to strap on the exoskeleton and leap into action without training on it first generally disliked the system. But with 90 minutes of instruction on 'the right series of movements,' wearers were able to move comfortably.

In September the Army will take the improved exoskeleton out for field tests in the United States. If all goes well and Lockheed can get the required safety certifications, HULC will head to a deployed location for a front-line trial. (These days 'deployed' almost always means Afghanistan.) That won't leave HULC much time for testing in a combat environment, as regular U.S. forces are accelerating their withdrawal after 11 years of war.

But Special Forces are slated to remain in Afghanistan for years to come. If they adopt the exoskeletons, we could be seeing (one-sided) cyborg combat on a growing scale in the near future.

Clinton Goes Commando, Sells Diplomats as Shadow Warriors

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference on May 23. Photo: Luanne Dietz/Wired.com

TAMPA, Florida ' The Special Operations Forces Industry Conference had a surprise guest on Wednesday ' one that had some here scratching their heads. At a black-tie dinner following the day's panel discussions, product displays and tech demos, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived behind a phalanx of State Department and Special Operations Command security. Clinton's presence seemed incongruous at the gaudy Tampa Convention Center packed with weary-looking commando staffers, paunchy industry reps and chipper media handlers. Special Operations Forces are a big deal, sure, but it was still just a trade show.

Then Clinton, wearing pearls and a silver and black blouse, climbed the stage and began to speak. And soon it all made more sense. She had an idea to sell ' and to defend ' to some of the people she's counting on to make it happen.

In a 30-minute speech preceding a dinner of beef tenderloin and roasted red potatoes, Clinton first heaped praise on Adm. William McRaven, chief of Special Operations Command and her host at the conference. Then she described a vision in which shadowy U.S. and allied Special Operations Forces, working hand in hand with America's embassies and foreign governments, together play a key role preventing low-intensity conflicts. And where prevention fails, the same commando-diplomat team goes on the attack, combining the Special Operations Forces' fighting prowess with the language and cultural skills of State Department officers.

She cited the U.S. intervention in Yemen and the American-led manhunt for rebel leader Joseph Kony in Congo as early examples. In Congo, diplomats met with Congolese officials, preparing the ground for commando manhunters months in advance. In Yemen, the State Department counters extremists' propaganda with its own pro-government messages while Special Operations Forces partner with Yemeni troops to attack the insurgents.

This new inter-agency Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, housed at the State Department, got into an online advertising war with the local al-Qaida affiliate recently, Clinton revealed. A couple of weeks ago, that group 'began an advertising campaign on key tribal web sites bragging about killing Americans and trying to recruit new supporters. Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaida attacks have taken on the Yemeni people. We can tell our efforts are starting to have an impact because extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the internet.'

In principle what Clinton described is the same 'smart power' that she's been advocating for years ' only now it's smarter, and more powerful, than ever before. 'Special Operations Forces exemplify the ethic of smart power,' she said. 'Fast and flexible. Constantly adapting. Learning new languages and cultures. Dedicated to forming partnerships where we can and acting alone when we must.'

For its part, the State Department has stood up a new bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which Clinton said 'is working to put into practice lessons learned over the past decade and institutionalize a civilian surge capacity to deal with crises and hotspots.' Together, Special Operations Forces and State's new Conflict Bureau are the twin arms of an expanding institution for waging small, low-intensity shadow wars all over the world.

But rumor has it Clinton's vision has its detractors ' and that its implementation in hotspots such as Yemen and Congo has made some Special Operations Forces officers very unhappy. In Yemen, in particular, some commando officers look upon the State Department's expanding shadow-war powers as a bureaucratic intrusion on what should be military territory. A source tells Danger Room that in Yemen State has effectively hijacked all U.S. counter-terrorism funding, requiring a labyrinthine approval process for even small expenditures. According to detractors, the funding control is a way of cementing State's expansion into the Special Operations Forces traditional remit.

McRaven does not share the officers' objections. The admiral has enthusiastically widened and deepened his command's alliances with commando forces from allied nations ' all in a bid to build what he calls the 'global SOF partnership.' The Army 10th Special Forces Group's ongoing deployment to Afghanistan is a perfect example: 10th Group's Afghanistan task force includes commandos from Poland, Romania and several other countries. In a sense, McRaven is becoming more of a diplomat as Clinton becomes more of a warrior. Meeting in the middle, they've apparently chosen to be allies instead of rivals.

In that context, Clinton's appearance at an otherwise minor military trade show is an important signal. McRaven is showing his officers that if he and America's top diplomat can get along, then they can get along with their own State Department counterparts, as well. An evolving vision of American warfare is counting on it.

Meet 'Robbie': Darpa's Seeing, Feeling, Two-Armed Robot

It's only been three months since the Pentagon's latest robot ' the one able to staple paperwork and answer phone calls with a single autonomous arm '  demonstrated some of those amazing skills. Now, the freaky humanoid 'bot is back. And this time, he has two arms. And a name.

Meet Robbie. This particular robot was designed by RE2, a robotics firm in Pittsburgh, who showed him off to IEEE Spectrum at their International Conference on Robotics and Automation last week. RE2 was one of six teams initially contracted by Darpa, the Pentagon's robo-loving research agency, to work on their Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program. Launched two years ago, the program aims to develop robots that can perform complex tasks with minimal input from their human overlords.

Initially, Darpa gave each of the six teams a one-armed robot to work with. With the program entering its next phase, according to RE2's Patrick Rowe, the playing field has narrowed to three groups. And ' as evidenced by the video above ' Darpa's asked them to work with 'bots who boast two roving arms instead.

Both of Robbie's arms move with seven degrees of freedom, along with a rotating wrist and multiple, dexterous fingers. Those fingers also incorporate pressure sensors, allowing Robbie to touch and sense its environs in a manner akin to humans. And take a good look at the 'bot's head. That gaping mouth is actually a LIDAR camera. Behind those beady eyes lurks a stereo-vision camera. And what look like ears are, in fact, microphones.

With features like that, there's no doubt that Robbie has plenty of skills to show off. Already, the one-armed version of the robot can perform 18 tasks with relative autonomy. This latest video doesn't include demos of any fantastical new abilities, but Rowe says that Darpa wants the 'bot to 'perform two-armed tasks'something like changing a tire on a small car.'

The ARM program is only one of several recent Darpa initiatives to develop robots with enhanced skills and greater autonomy. In its latest contest, the agency is asking robotics aces across the country to develop a bipedal robot that can do things like drive cars, make repairs and traverse rough terrain. And let's not forget AlphaDog, a behemoth four-legged 'bot meant to rove for miles while lugging tons of gear, or the Cheetah, an uber-speedy robot being designed to 'zigzag to chase and evade.'

Fortunately, Cheetah-Bot is still confined to a laboratory treadmill. But later this year, robot aficionados just might get to see Robbie's abilities up close and personal. A version of the robot is being shipped off for a display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. And the 'bot already seems to be getting ready: At video's 1:40 mark, Robbie actually holds the videographer's camera and adeptly films his own 'bod. Impressive, and also astute. As any model would attest, if you're gonna be on display, you've gotta know your best angles.

Darpa, Venter Launch Assembly Line for Genetic Engineering

Darpa's "Living Foundries" program is looking to "transform biology into an engineering practice." Photo: VA

The military-industrial complex just got a little bit livelier. Quite literally.

That's because Darpa, the Pentagon's far-out research arm, has kicked off a program designed to take the conventions of manufacturing and apply them to living cells. Think of it like an assembly line, but one that would churn out modified biological matter ' man-made organisms ' instead of cars or computer parts.

The program, called 'Living Foundries,' was first announced by the agency last year. Now, Darpa's handed out seven research awards worth $15.5 million to six different companies and institutions. Among them are several Darpa favorites, including the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology. Two contracts were also issued to the J. Craig Venter Institute. Dr. Venter is something of a biology superstar: He was among the first scientists to sequence a human genome, and his institute was, in 2010, the first to develop an entirely synthetic organism.

'Living Foundries' aspires to turn the slow, messy process of genetic engineering into a streamlined and standardized one. Of course, the field is already a burgeoning one: Scientists have tweaked cells in order to develop renewable petroleum and spider silk that's tough as steel. And a host of companies are investigating the pharmaceutical and agricultural promise lurking ' with some tinkering, of course ' inside living cells.

But those breakthroughs, while exciting, have also been time-consuming and expensive. As Darpa notes, even the most cutting-edge synthetic biology projects 'often take 7+ years and tens to hundreds of millions of dollars' to complete. Venter's synthetic cell project, for example, cost an estimated $40 million.

Synthetic biology, as Darpa notes, has the potential to yield 'new materials, novel capabilities, fuel and medicines' ' everything from fuels to solar cells to vaccines could be produced by engineering different living cells. But the agency isn't content to wait seven years for each new innovation. In fact, they want the capability for 'on-demand production' of whatever bio-product suits the military's immediate needs.

To do it, Darpa will need to revamp the process of bio-engineering ' from the initial design of a new material, to its construction, to its subsequent efficacy evaluation. The starting point, and one that agency-funded researchers will have to create, is a library of 'modular genetic parts': Standardized biological units that can be assembled in different ways ' like LEGO ' to create different materials.

Once that library is created, the agency wants researchers to come up with a set of 'parts, regulators, devices and circuits' that can reliably yield various genetic systems. After that, they'll also need 'test platforms' to quickly evaluate new bio-materials. Think of it as a biological assembly line: Products are designed, pieced together using standardized tools and techniques, and then tested for efficacy.

The process, once established, ought to massively accelerate the pace of bio-engineering ' and cut costs. The agency's asking researchers to 'compress the biological design-build-test cycle by at least 10X in both time and cost,' while also 'increasing the complexity of systems that can be designed and executed.'

No doubt, Darpa's making some big asks of the scientists tasked with this research. And not everyone's convinced they'll pull it off. 'The biology will fight them,' Daniel Drell, a program manager with the U.S. Department of Energy, predicted last year. Which suggests it might be a few years, at least, before Darpa's bio-creations try to fight us.

In First, Navy Will Put 4G Network on Ships

Navy communications tech has come a long way since this IT2 Alex Pattios manned the comms at the Military Sealift Operations Center in 2002. In a few months, the Navy's installing its first wireless network on three ships in the Mideast. Photo: U.S. Navy

Bandwidth on Navy ships is a scarce, expensive commodity. For sailors using non-essential systems, like recreational computers? Dial-up speeds ' if they're lucky. But by the end of the year, for the first time, the Navy will put a 4G LTE wireless network aboard some of its ships, giving a whole new communications tool to sailors and Marines: their smartphones.

By the end of 2012, the Navy confirms, three ships will receive a brand-new microwave-based wireless wide area network (WWAN): the amphibious assault ship U.S.S. Kearsarge, the amphibious transport dock U.S.S. San Antonio and the dock landing ship U.S.S. Whidbey Island. The ships' communications systems won't operate on the network ' their connectivity will continue to come from satellites. Instead, Android smartphones operated by individual sailors would run on the network, something currently impossible out at sea.

But the mobile devices won't be aboard ships so sailors can play Words With Friends (or won't just be aboard for that purpose). The idea is to allow sailors and Marines with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit to take part in what the Navy calls the network's first at-sea 'planning vignette' ' that is, boarding an ersatz vessel hijacked by 'pirates' to send real-time data ' including videos ' back to the mothership.

'What we've collectively developed is a ruggedized, ocean-going LTE network similar to what you'd find with telecom providers like Verizon or AT&T,' says Phillip Cramer, a vice president at Indiana-based BATS Wireless, which built the network for the Navy along with partner companies Oceus and Cambium. 'The biggest difference being that it can expand, contract, and move seamlessly; delivering critical data and communications to the soldiers who need it most.'

Right now, the Navy's communications infrastructure at sea is reliant on satellites to provide connectivity. That's a necessity for keeping in contact across vast oceans. But it's also a scarce resource, especially as the Navy nets fill up with data from shipboard drones, and adding bandwidth is expensive. For their part, the Marines are experimenting with a new satellite network to increase their communications to a range of 250 nautical miles.

The WWAN won't supplant the ships' satellite connections. It'll supplement it. And it couldn't replace satellite comms if the Navy wanted it to: It works from distances of up to 20 nautical miles. That's not useful for keeping the fleet connected. But it's very useful for keeping a naval task force connected, or a Marine expeditionary team, or an aircraft carrier battle group.

And there's a fair amount of throughput for data over the network. BATS says its network will be able to provide 300 megabits per second's worth of data. Depending on the number of users, that should be enough to share video files as well as text and voice.

'From a speed standpoint, our aggregate throughput of 300Mb is much greater when within line of sight than the existing satellite communications,' says Doug Abbotts, a spokesman for the Navy's Naval Air Systems Command, which has been working on the WWAN since 2009.

This is a big shift for the Navy. Last year, the outgoing chief of naval operations, Adm. Gary Roughead, told Danger Room that the Navy simply lacked the onboard infrastructure to follow the Army's strides into mobile communications.

It also gets the Navy into the smartphone and tablet market for the first time. According to BATS, the Navy is going to purchase the devices off the shelf and work with the National Security Agency to secure them for transferring classified information. Like the Army, the Navy likes Android devices: Among other things, they're comparatively cheap.

It's unclear what the impending arrival of the WWAN network onto ships will mean for any broader Navy embrace of wireless networks or mobile tech. Being on a ship isn't like being out on foot patrol: A ship always has a communications infrastructure aboard; and mobile devices seem less necessary.

Still, it's hard not to imagine the Navy not seeing this initial deployment as a test case. And the more the Navy adopts off-the-shelf wireless networking tools, the more satellite bandwidth will be freed up. And for the Navy's new giant, overarching initiative to play Ricky Bobby to the Air Force's Cal Naughton Jr. ' known as AirSea Battle ' it might not be so long before imagery from, say, an Air Force RQ-170 stealth drone hits a Navy destroyer via satellite and a sailor aboard pings it to his buddy's secured Galaxy Nexus on a different ship via a WWAN.

Abbots says that the sea trial will be a test case for the first-ever Navy wireless network. 'There are several agencies interested in the evaluation of the system in a Maritime environment,' he tells Danger Room. For now, though, chances are the Navy's new shipboard wireless networks will at least mean YouTube is about to see an influx of faux-pirate blooper reels.

Army Readies Its Mammoth Spy Blimp for First Flight

The U.S. Army's massive Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle. Illustration: Northrop Grumman

TAMPA, Florida ' Sure, it took an extra year or so, but Northrop Grumman has finally penciled in the first flight of the giant surveillance airship it's building for the U.S. Army. The Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle ' a football-field-size, helium-filled robot blimp fitted with sensors and data-links ' should take to the air over Lakehurst, New Jersey, the first or second week of June. K.C. Brown, Jr., Northrop's director of Army programs, crows: 'We're about to fly the thing!'

It's fair to say Northrop and the Army are crossing their collective fingers for the flight to actually take place, and smoothly. Giant airships promise huge benefits ' namely, low cost and long flight times ' but it's proved incredibly hard to build and equip the massive blimps with military-grade sensors and communications ' and fill them with helium.

The Air Force's highly computerized (and potenitally missile-armed) Blue Devil 2 airship recently ran into integration problems, forcing the flying branch to cancel a planned test run in Afghanistan. (Although the service had never been too hot on airships in the first place.) The Navy meanwhile grounded its much smaller MZ-3A research blimp for a lack of work until the Army paid to take it over. The LEMV seemed to be losing air, too, as Northrop and the Army repeatedly delayed its first flight and planned combat deployment originally slated for the end of 2011.

As recently as last month Northrop and the Army declined to comment on the airship's new flight schedule. Northrop VP Brad Metzger's boast from last summer that the $500-million LEMV prototype would 'redefine persistent surveillance' seemed hollow.

But at a special forces industry conference here in Tampa, Northrop's Brown surprised Danger Room with a hard date range: LEMV will lift off between June 6 and 10, he says. After a brief trial around Lakehurst, the 300-foot-long airship will motor south to Florida to be mated up with a custom-designed gondola containing the blimp's cameras and radios.

If the gondola fits as planned and all the gear functions, the pilotless LEMV will cross the Atlantic in 'early winter,' bound for 'a theater' for a front-line demonstration, Brown says. We're sure the 'theater' in question is Afghanistan. If war commanders like what they see in their new giant spy blimp, the Army could order up more copies, Brown says.

Never mind airworthiness and sensor integration: The biggest danger, according to Brown, is the weather. Airships are 'subject to buffeting by winds and by thunderstorms.' Operators have to plan carefully to keep their airships away from storms.

Despite airships' checkered past, Northrop is optimistic the LEMV will survive the elements and its combat debut. The company is already looking beyond the initial Afghanistan trial. The LEMV can do more than hover and spy. It's also a potentially useful cargo carrier. The current model can carry 20 tons of supplies. A scaled-up version could carry hundreds of tons ' and at a fraction of the cost of fixed-wing airplanes.

Noting Pakistan's continuing blockade of roads into Afghanistan, Brown proposes that the LEMV could help the Army remove its weapons and gear from from the landlocked country as U.S. troops withdraw. 'It presents an attractive alternative.'

Yes, if the giant airship actually flies in June ' and works as advertised.

Leaked Memo: Afghan 'Burn Pit' Could Wreck Troops' Hearts, Lungs

A bulldozer dumps a load of trash into a burn pit just 300 yards from the runway at Bagram Airfield, January 2012. An Army memo from 2011 found the burn pit is associated with "long-term" health effects on soldiers at Bagram. Photo: U.S. Army

For years, U.S. government agencies have told the public, veterans and Congress that they couldn't draw any connections between the so-called 'burn pits' disposing of trash at the military's biggest bases and veterans' respiratory or cardiopulmonary problems. But a 2011 Army memo obtained by Danger Room flat-out stated that the burn pit at one of Afghanistan's largest bases poses 'long-term adverse health conditions' to troops breathing the air there.

The unclassified memo (.jpg), dated April 15, 2011, stated that high concentrations of dust and burned waste present at Bagram Airfield for most of the war are likely to impact veterans' health for the rest of their lives. 'The long term health risk' from breathing in Bagram's particulate-rich air include 'reduced lung function or exacerbated chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, atherosclerosis, or other cardiopulmonary diseases.' Service members may not necessarily 'acquire adverse long term pulmonary or heart conditions,' but 'the risk for such is increased.'

The cause of the health hazards are given the anodyne names Particulate Matter 10 and Particulate Matter 2.5, a reference to the size in micrometers of the particles' diameter. Service personnel deployed to Bagram know them by more colloquial names: dust, trash and even feces ' all of which are incinerated in 'a burn pit' on the base, the memo says, as has been standard practice in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade.

Accordingly, the health risks were not limited to troops serving at Bagram in 2011, the memo states. The health hazards are an assessment of 'air samples taken over approximately the last eight years' at the base.

The memo's findings contradict years of U.S. military assurances that the burn pits are no big deal. An Army memo from 2008 about the burn pit at Iraq's giant Balad air base, titled, 'Just The Facts,' found 'no significant short- or long-term health risks and no elevated cancer risks are likely among personnel' (.pdf). A 2004 fact sheet from the Pentagon's deployment health library ' and still available on its website ' informed troops that the high particulate matter in the air at Bagram 'should not cause any long-term health effects.' More recently, in October 2010, a Pentagon epidemiological study found 'for nearly all health outcomes measured, the incidence for those health outcomes studied among personnel assigned to locations with documented burn pits and who had returned from deployment, was either lower than, or about the same as, those who had never deployed' (.pdf).

Over the years, thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have experienced respiratory and cardiopulmonary problems that they associate with their service. Some have sued military contractors for exposing them to unsafe conditions. For months, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) has urged the military to create a database of vets suffering neurological or respiratory afflictions, a move that's winding through the legislative process. But the military has argued it doesn't have sufficient evidence to associate environmental conditions on the battlefield with long-term health risks ' and it argued that months after this memo is dated.

'As recently as April, in correspondence with the Defense Department and in discussions with my staff, the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs both continued to maintain that research has not shown any long-term health consequences due to burn pits,' Akin tells Danger Room. 'They also maintained that remaining burn pits in Afghanistan were away from military populations to reduce exposure. It is disturbing to discover that at least at Bagram the military concluded that burn pits posed a serious health risk.'

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) has collected 'hundreds' of anecdotes from vets complaining of health problems connected to serving near burn pits. 'It's good to see someone in the military is acknowledging there are going to be long-term problems with burn pits, but it's disturbing that this memo is more than a year old and it doesn't seem like the military has done anything about it,' says Tom Tarantino, IAVA's deputy policy director, who deployed to Iraq in 2005 as an Army captain. 'I lived next to a burn pit for six months at Abu Ghraib. You can't tell me that was OK. That was pretty nasty. While I was there everyone was hacking up weird shit.'

Any visitor to the sprawling Bagram airfield knows the burn pit ' if not by sight, then by smell. It's an acrid, smoldering barbecue of trash, from busted furniture to human waste, usually manned by Afghan employees who cover their noses and mouths with medical breathing masks. Plumes of aerosolized refuse emerge from what troops refer to as 'The Shit Pit,' mingle with Parwan Province's already dust-heavy air, and sweep over the base. In February, that was where soldiers at the nearby Parwan detention facility accidentally incinerated the Koran.

At the time of the memo's issuance, it noted that the affected population on the base contemporaneously was '40,000 Service Members and contractors.' Hundreds of thousands have cycled through the giant base since the U.S. seized it in 2001. Bagram is a major transit and logistics hub for the Afghanistan war, and one of the first bases the U.S. took and continuously operated during the war. Millions more have served in Iraq and Afghanistan near similar burn pits.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, studies conducted on the effects of breathing in Particulate Matter 10 and 2.5 have determined 'a significant association between exposure to fine particles and premature mortality.' The Army memo reports that Bagram's air had twice the amount of Particulate Matter 10 than the federal National Ambient Air Quality Standard, and more than three times the amount of Particulate Matter 2.5 as the standard.

Burn pits remain in use across Afghanistan. And although a study by the Institute of Medicine and sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs found last October that there is insufficient data to correlate those pits with health risks, troops' cardiovascular problems are clearly on the rise: There were 91,013 cases reported in 2010, up sharply from 65,520 in 2001. A 2010 study found half of a small sample of soldiers who struggled to run two miles had undiagnosed bronchiolitis. Hundreds of troops have sued the pits' contractor operators after experiencing chest pains, asthma and migraines. For years, the U.S. government has pled ignorance about the causes of those veterans' ailments. And unless the military formally acknowledges that the burn pits pose a long-term health risk, it will be difficult for veterans to receive long-term health care for associated respiratory and cardiopulminary ailments from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

'The acknowledgement that air-sampling data is now indicating that burn pits may pose a risk of chronic illness to our servicemen and women validates the need for the national burn pit registry that I have proposed,' Akin says. Tarantino backs him up: 'We don't want another Agent Orange scenario, where it takes 40 years for the military to admit the stuff was bad and then has to spend all this effort tracking down affected servicemembers.'

The U.S. Army and the NATO military command in charge of the Afghanistan war did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Even casual visitors to Bagram know that the air is a menace. Within days of my most recent reporting trip there, in August 2010, I developed a disgusting, productive cough that kept me from sleeping comfortably. Airmen and soldiers joked with me about catching 'Bagram Lung.'

But for at least a year, the U.S. military has known that 'Bagram Lung' won't stay at Bagram. There's a significant chance that it will plague a generation of Afghanistan veterans for the rest of their lives.

'Battle-Kites' Eyed for Afghan Spy Duty

The Pentagon's fondness for bigger, blinged-out blimps hasn't exactly gone as planned. The Navy recently 'deflated' plans for their MZ-3A airship. The Air Force's ambitious mega-blimp endeavor has been all but cancelled. And the Army's HALE-D airship crashed into a Pennsylvania forest before even making it overseas.

Maybe the military will have a little more luck with something simpler. The latest addition to their blimp arsenal? A 'battle-kite' of war.

Yes, they're one part blimp and one part kite. Called Helikites, the aerostats are now being tested by Army officials, according to a report published today by Stars & Stripes. The Helikite's design is pretty much what you'd expect from a blimp-kite hybrid: A round, helium-filled blimp is strapped onto the back of a kite, and then unleashed into the air by a human operator.

The Helikites, which are already used by the British Army, are also rather wee: The vehicles currently range in size from 6 to 24 feet in length. For comparison's sake, consider that the Air Force's much-contested Blue Devil 2 blimp, which might one day soar the skies above America instead of Afghanistan, measures a whopping 370 feet.

Compared to some of the wilder blimps that the Pentagon's recently considered for duty (blimp helicopters, anybody?), there's no question that the Helikite is actually pretty tame. It can't track cruise missiles from 370 miles away. Nor can it run on internal solar panels. But what it lacks in audacity, the simple little Helikite just might make up for in actual practicality.

The military's eying the battle-kites for two main purposes: surveillance and communications in far-flung regions. And their unique design should make the Helikites well-suited to both gigs.

Blimps rely on helium to get them off the ground and keep them airborne. By adding a kite to the mix, the Helikite boasts an enhanced flying ability ' one that'd increase its ability to haul cargo, which is likely to include plenty of surveillance gear. A 24-foot Helikite, according to its parent company, Allsopp Helikites, can lug 30,000 pounds of equipment. That's five times the weight that aerostats of a similar size can lift. All that, and the Helikites can fly as high as 6,000 feet ' keeping them safely out of range from gunfire or grenade attacks.

The military is also testing the battle-kite's ability to help with communications in far-flung regions. A hovering battle-kite, equipped with communications gear, could offer mobile networks that'd vastly improve the sketchy wireless linkages currently available in remote realms of combat. According to the company, a Helikite elevated to 600 feet should be able to yield 113 square miles of Wi-Fi coverage.

And the Helikites, which cost an estimated $50,000 apiece, also have a key advantage over the other aerostats in the military's array: Because they're so small, and benefit from the wind-catching powers of a kite, they require way, way less helium.

That's good news for the Pentagon, which is already facing potential helium shortages from keeping so many aerostats aloft. In a report issued just last year, the Defense Logistics Agency lamented that 'industry cannot keep up with the increased [helium] demand' required by all those blimps. Guys: Have you considered attaching them to kites?

5 Nuclear Sites That Could Launch War With Iran

This week, the U.S. and its allies will sit down with some of their arch-nemeses: the Iranians. The meeting in Baghdad is the definition of high stakes, as 2012 has been characterized by frequent speculation that Israel would bomb Teheran to prevent it from going nuclear, launching a war that would inevitably draw the U.S. in. That's something the U.S. doesn't want ' the Air Force chief of staff has publicly questioned the wisdom of a bombing campaign ' but big, unresolved questions persist about Iran's nuclear program, which Iran swears exists just to produce peaceful nuclear energy.

In particular, those questions primarily concern five installations that trouble the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world's nuclear watchdog. And unless you're a nuclear wonk, you probably don't understand them.

But you should. Granting the IAEA unfettered access to these five sites ' some of which concern the IAEA more than others ' is probably the most important step Iran could take to avert a war. Getting Iran to "Yes" will be an arduous diplomatic process that likely involves international economic sanctions, a U.S. military buildup off its shores, some prospect for improved relations with the world ' and, arguably, the threat of a war. And there's an additional X-factor: nuclear sites that the IAEA doesn't know Iran even has. But watching what happens over the following five sites, during the Baghdad talks and afterward, will go a long way to determining if the U.S. will be dragged into its third mideastern war in a decade.

Fordow (Qom)

Fordow is a uranium enrichment facility not far from the clerical hotspot of Qom. (That's why the facility is often referred to as "Qom.") Under construction since 2009, when Iran was already under tight IAEA scrutiny, the existence of the facility was a secret until Western intelligence agencies uncovered it. Not surprisingly, in a November report, the IAEA said that "additional information from Iran is still needed in connection with this facility."

Here's what the IAEA thinks it knows about Fordow. There are a variety of centrifuge cascades, or arrays of centrifuges for enriching uranium, totaling 696 centrifuges. The IAEA initially understood that Fordow would only enrich uranium to a 5 percent standard, which is too low for use in a bomb. But the IAEA had to confirm that the Iranians had a change of heart, and began enriching to 20 percent.

To be clear, the enrichment process is a method to get rid of most of the atoms in uranium, yielding the fissile isotope Uranium-235. Twenty percent enrichment isn't sufficient for bomb-grade fuel, which is 90 percent enriched uranium. But as the Arms Control Association clarifies, "such material can be further enriched to weapons-grade levels relatively quickly." The U.S. called the extra enrichment a provocative act of bad faith, which will almost certainly be revisited in Baghdad.

Photo: Institute for Science and International Security

The Rocket Factory ' SpaceX Builds Them From top To Bottom

The commercial space race is about to begin. Early Saturday morning at 4:55 a.m. EDT, the first privately designed and built spacecraft destined for the International Space Station is expected to lift off from the historic Cape Canaveral Air Force Station not far from the Atlantic Ocean on Florida's east coast. The Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule are designed and built by Space Exploration Technologies -- the company better known as SpaceX -- at the company's factory not far from the Pacific Ocean in Hawthorne, California.

Tomorrow's scheduled launch puts an exclamation point on a new era of space transportation. If the first era of space flight focused on a Cold War-driven race to show what could be done, and the second era focused on making space flight and delivering orbiting payloads routine, this new era is focused on making all of the above a lot less expensive.

SpaceX is leading the charge to bring down the cost of flying to space. Driven by a personal desire to make life multi-planetary -- aka travel to Mars -- the company's founder and leader Elon Musk has built a program with about $4 billion worth of contracts and launch orders already on its books. But it has only launched a few customer payloads so far.

With just a handful of launches under its belt, SpaceX has yet to successfully prove its business case of dramatically reducing the cost of delivering payloads into orbit. And both its founder Elon Musk, and current customer NASA, rarely miss an opportunity to emphasize the challenging nature of the upcoming ISS mission. But the company is on target for backing up its low cost promise and is managing to achieve this goal by spending hundreds of millions, rather than billions of dollars.

Musk honed his business skills in the internet startup arena of the late 1990s. He makes no secret that one of the keys to reducing the cost of space flight is operating an efficient company that is nimble and lacks the bloated layers that exist in many of the large, veteran aerospace companies that have been building rockets and spacecraft for the past 50 years. SpaceX has received large investments from private sources -- including a hundred million from Musk himself -- as well as funding from NASA. But the company operates more like a lean startup despite the fact it should soon overtake Russia as the number-one producer of rocket engines in the world.

Like at most startups, employees often wear multiple hats. Engineers, including Musk, work in an office-free open cubicle layout less than a minute's walk from where technicians are building rocket engines and machines are welding together space capsules. Leave your desk, walk past a conference room, open a door and you step into a giant rocket factory. Actually the first thing you walk past on the factory floor is open floor space that is the cafeteria, which is right next to the mission control room, then a few steps after that you walk by the rocket engine assembly line.

During lunch you can watch the software team rehearsing the upcoming mission to the ISS a few feet away to your right. You can hear the construction of aluminum-lithium being formed and machined into the cylinders that will form the body of the Falcon 9 rocket just out of sight in front of you, or watch the complex circuitry of the flight hardware and avionics being inspected under a microscope to your left.

More than 80 percent of the Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft are built in-house. From the combustion chamber and nozzle at the bottom of the engine, to the capsule and its protective shield at the top. SpaceX designs and builds just about everything itself in a factory at the Hawthorne Airport where Jack Northrop built his legendary airplanes including flying wings and fighter jets. Just a handful of years ago, this same building was home to a factory making panels for Boeing 747s, today it is a self-contained space program hoping to make space flight as inexpensive and reliable as possible.

Photo: Jason Paur/Wired

Surprise! China's Stealth Jets Are 2 Years Ahead of Schedule

China's second J-20 stealth fighter. Image: David Cenciotti and fyjs.cn

Last year, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was greeted in Beijing by China's experimental stealth jet buzzing over his head. Gates didn't sweat it: He proclaimed that the J-20 wouldn't be ready until at least 2020. Oops.

The Pentagon's top China official has now revised that estimate. The J-20, China's first stealth jet, will be operationally ready 'no sooner than 2018,' David Helvey, deputy secretary of defense for East Asia and Asia Pacific Security Affairs, told reporters Friday.

The new anticipated timetable for the J-20 hardly augurs the end of American military dominance. But it wasn't the only Chinese military development that took the Pentagon by surprise last year.

According to the Pentagon's new report (.pdf) on the Chinese military, China's got three nuclear-powered submarines ' an advance that Helvey conceded the U.S. military didn't anticipate. China also fielded an 'improved' amphibious assault vessel last year, while the U.S. Marine Corps is having trouble upgrading its own.

And that's just the stuff that the Pentagon can see. Helvey speculated that the Chinese military keeps its research, foreign military acquisitions and nuclear modernization off its books. The report estimates that China's declared $106 billion annual military budget is really more like $120 to $180 billion.

None of that means China's military will overtake America's anytime soon. China won't, for instance, have a global communications and navigation satellite network until 2020, which means it doesn't have a prayer of having a truly global Navy until at least then ' even if it starts building its own aircraft carriers. Helvey disclosed that China still has neither built nor acquired any armed drones, and the spy robo-planes it has are the Harpies that Israel sold it nearly a decade ago. And while China may have an amphibious ship, the report says it can't actually invade or hold nearby Taiwan, let alone any target further away or better defended.

At the same time, it's hard not to notice that America's own stealth fleet keeps racking up #fails.

First there's the Air Force's F-22 Raptor. It's choking its pilots, and the Air Force doesn't know why. Gates' successor, Leon Panetta, this week restricted Raptor flights and hurried up an installation of a backup oxygen system onto the jets ' which won't be complete until at least 2014. Panetta did not ground the F-22, so the nearly 200 planes will definitely be in Air Force's arsenal ahead of the J-20. But until the mysterious oxygen problems are decisively fixed, pilots may be wary of flying them, and the Air Force leadership may be wary of ordering it into combat.

Then there's the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a family of jets for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. It's already the most expensive weapons program in human history ' current estimates peg the F-35's lifetime costs over decades at $1.1 trillion-with-a-T ' and not a single one of the advanced, powerful stealth jets is in the air. The Marines' variant was so riddled with cost-overruns that it was put on a timeout in 2011; it's off probation now. But testers keep finding expensive engineering flaws with the family of jets, and the Pentagon has given up predicting when it will actually patrol the skies.

The U.S. doesn't want conflict with the Chinese, whose economy is inextricably tied to its own. But it might not see one coming. Especially not if China's stealth planes are advancing while its own are stalling.

Cell Doors 'Incapable of Locking' at Giant Afghan Jail

Detainees at Afghanistan's largest U.S.-built prison were able to literally kick through their poorly constructed cells, according to a new Pentagon report. Photo: Defense Department Inspector General

The detention facility that the U.S. built in Afghanistan is state-of-the-art. Except for all of the faulty hinges on the cell doors. Or the locks that are, in the words of a new report from the Defense Department's inspector general, 'incapable of locking either manually or electronically.' Or the construction that's deemed 'not up to the standard suitable for a detention facility.'

The worst part? U.S. military commanders have known about these flaws since the prison opened its doors.

Built in 2009, the Detention Facility in Parwan is a sprawling campus of 14 buildings, capable of housing ' once a planned expansion is completed ' some 2,000 detainees. The U.S. spent $60 million to construct it, to demonstrate the professionalization of detention operations after years of scandals in Iraq and Afghanistan. What the U.S. military didn't reveal was that it has known from the start that the building has serious engineering flaws ' flaws that lead to security liabilities. And all of this was the result of lackadaisical oversight of contractors hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The magnetic sensors and electronic locks on the 'access doors' that prevent detainees from traveling between cell blocks, are 'defective' and had to be removed, according to a report the Defense Department's inspector general released on Thursday. That removal caused the electronic systems integrating and remotely controlling the doors to be 'ineffective.'

'The integration system was supposed to monitor the status of all doors with electronic locks and magnetic sensors, thereby electronically monitoring the status of all detainees entering and exiting the secured areas,' the inspector general found. 'The lack of a final functional test on the building integration system was considered a deficiency when the building was accepted. However, [Pentagon inspector general] engineers noted during their inspection in July 2010 that the integration system was still not functioning. Instead of ensuring that the doors had magnetic sensors and locks so that the Integration System would work properly, a soldier was required to stand and guard the door, as a means of securing the rooms.'

Senior U.S. military officers tour the detention facility in Parwan, April 2012. Photo: U.S. Army

The doors themselves are shoddily built, too. The hinges on them were 'incorrect,' according to the inspector general. 'The poorly constructed cell doors allowed detainees to damage the doors easily by repeated kicking,' the report states. There are also problems with the fire-prevention and sewage systems that the inspector general says pose a 'health and safety risk' to detainees.

The damage was not limited to minor areas of the prison, either. 'The construction quality was not up to the standard suitable for a detention facility,' the report concludes, 'and ' the quality of construction of greatest interest was the areas where the detainees spent most of their time such as detention cells and the recreation yard.'

No detainee appears to have escaped as a result of the construction woes. But that may be a matter of time. Afghan detainees have been able to literally tunnel out of another prison in the country ' twice. And while the leadership of the prison reports that it doesn't have problems with the cells anymore, other construction problems with the prison persist: 'The access doors
are still in disrepair and will be replaced as soon as new prison grade doors arrive in
theater from the United States.'

Except that the U.S. won't run the Parwan prison for much longer. The Afghans signed a deal with NATO in March to take control of it by September. That means Afghan troops, less capable on average than their U.S. counterparts, will soon be in charge of hundreds of detainees in a giant prison with chronic security vulnerabilities.

That prison isn't in an isolated area. It's on the outskirts of Bagram airfield, one of the U.S.' major bases, housing over 10,000 U.S. troops. Bagram is about an hour's drive from the capital city of Kabul.

The Army basically pled nolo contendere to the Pentagon inspector general. While picking at nits, a senior Army Corps of Engineers official wrote to the inspector general on April 2 that his department 'concurs with all but one' of the recommendations in the report ' some of which are as simple as urging 'continuous oversight' on the facility.

These days, Parwan is infamous for being the site where U.S. troops accidentally burned Korans, a February debacle that caused days of countrywide rioting. Needless to say, it wasn't supposed to be this way. I took a tour of the detention facility in August 2010, and officials boasted of the sophisticated security systems that would allow guards to humanely and firmly monitor and control detainee activity.

But this is the legacy that a decade's worth of U.S. detention operations will leave in Afghanistan: locks that don't lock. And across Afghanistan, even as U.S. troops withdraw from the country, the U.S. is still building jails.