Next-Gen Terror Watchers Go Deep Into Al-Qaida, Tweet a Lot

Tawfik Hamid talks for a 2009 documentary about extremism. Image: Screenshot/'In The Red Chair'

Most counterterrorism scholars will never meet Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida, let alone pray with him. As a teenage extremist, Tawfik Hamid did.

Back when Hamid was a youth in Cairo, studying at a medical school, his religious fervor compelled him to associate with terrorists. 'One of the mosques at the school was reserved for Gemaa Islamiyah,' Hamid casually explains over a burger in Arlington, Virginia. Before Hamid decided that he'd prefer not to assassinate the police officer that Gemaa Islamiyah wanted him to kill, he shared mosque time on a few more occasions with the man who would succeed Osama bin Laden. Now senior U.S. generals refer to him as a 'treasure.'

Similarly, most counterterrorism analysts will never interview one of the seminal figures in Islamic extremism. Yet Abu Walid al-Masri, an associate of al-Qaida figures stretching back to the 1980s Afghanistan jihad, eagerly exchanged e-mails with an obscure Australian academic named Leah Farrall. al-Masri didn't grant the interview with a major newspaper or television network. He wanted it posted on her blog.

Hamid and Farrall don't have much in common; he's working on a new translation of the Koran, she's writing essays for Foreign Affairs. But they're united in their rigor, and their structural focus, when it comes to studying terrorism. That puts them ' Farrall more than Hamid ' in line with a rising group of counterterrorism scholars, many of whom are under 40 and are more likely to debate on Twitter than on the New York Times op-ed page.

'A lot of us have either lived in the region or we've also got at least one of the languages ' Arabic, French, which helps [study] North Africa, and many of us come from a non-political science or terrorism studies or security studies background,' explains Aaron Zelin, a Brandeis graduate now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 'Many of us either did history or did area studies in the Middle East or Islam in terms of our actual academic background'. We understand it's not just 'This is Islam'; we've studied what Islam actually is.'

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Failure to Launch: Darpa's Drone Contest Ends Unconquered

Last year, the Pentagon asked DIY-drone enthusiasts to come up with the spy drone of the future. Twelve months later, it looks like they might need a little more time.

In an announcement posted online yesterday with little fanfare, Darpa announced that its UAVForge competition had ended ' with none of the 140 teams emerging victorious in the quest to create a better spy drone. 'The teams brought creativity and enthusiasm to the competition,' Jim McCormick, the Darpa program manager in charge of the contest, said in the statement. 'The competition was more constructive than you might expect; there were many examples of teams helping each other.'

The idea behind Darpa's challenge was this: DIY drone-builders would congregate online at UAVForge.net, team up, and create portable, affordable drones able to, among other tasks, 'fly to and perch in useful locations at several kilometers' range for periods of several hours, and provide continuous, real-time surveillance without dedicated or specialized operators.'

The crowdsourced challenge saw several milestones over the last year: Each team was first asked to upload a YouTube video meant to 'advertise their skills,' followed by another clip to 'demonstrate early flight behaviors' of their drone.

After that, the agency held a live video demo, and went on to pick nine teams that'd partake in a 'fly-off' competition at Ft. Stewart, which simulated a real surveillance mission. The winning team was supposed to score $100,000, the chance to strut their drone's stuff in a military exercise, and an opportunity to 'work with a government-selected UAV manufacturer' to produce additional copies of their winning drone.

Initially, the challenge seemed to be off to a solid start. Teams, comprised of 3,500 people from around the world, posted YouTube videos of some remarkable, creative drone designs. They included the XL-161 Trinity, a solar- and fuel-powered drone allegedly able to 'destroy any aircraft or missile within a wide range,' along with the Falcon, a modular drone decked out with a rotating camera and (as conveyed by the video soundtrack) inspired by the sweet sounds of Metallica. And lest we forget the Pogo 2010, an aptly named drone designed to be launched from a rocket.

The agency's fly-off challenge (for which neither Metallica-drone nor Pogo-drone made the cut) was held in May. Each drone was required to complete a vertical take-off, navigate beyond line of sight, then land on a structure and capture surveillance footage before returning to the starting point. The competing drones managed take-off and navigation fairly well, according to Darpa, but not a single one successfully landed on a structure to snag video.

Darpa's own UAVForge online hub offers a play-by-play of each drone's fly-off defeat. 'UAVs recovered with the help of fishermen on the lake; cease operations,' read the mission notes from an attempt by the ATMOS drone, a combination of a quadrotor with a flying wing. 'Before team arrives, UAV makes rapid descent to pavement with significant damage on impact,' recount the notes on another competing drone, DHAKSHA, which featured a rotorcraft design. And, from drone NAVYEOD, another rotorcraft: 'UAV down behind cemetery.'

Of course, it would be premature to sound the death knell for this DIY drone challenge. While Darpa's enjoyed rapid success with plenty of its crowdsourced projects, including its infamous red balloon hunt and this year's shredded-paper reassembly contest, the agency has also funded competitions that have taken years to yield winning results. Most notable is the agency's Grand Challenge ' a competition, first held in 2004, to spur the development of robotic vehicles. In its inaugural year, the contest saw none of the competing vehicles even complete the assigned route. In 2005 and 2007, however, several teams navigated difficult courses and finished successfully. Today? Robo-cars for civilians are just around the bend.

Plus, the requirements to win UAVForge were ' as even Darpa admitted early on ' difficult to meet. 'You know, this isn't a sure thing,' McCormick told reporters last year. 'We're trying something new, and it has a lot of promise. But we're going to have to work through.'

More specifically, the agency wanted drones that could fit inside a rucksack and cost less than $10,000 apiece. That part, for DIY-drone designers, was easy ' drone aficionados have been creating small, low-cost vehicles for years now. But the technical elements ' including sustained surveillance for three hours, vertical takeoff and noise reduction features ' were much, much tougher, especially when combined with a wee size and a tiny price tag.

The agency hasn't announced whether or not it'll host a second round of the DIY-drone competition. Here's hoping it does ' because based on what we know about the future of drones, that contest winner is no doubt flying just beyond the horizon.

Mexico's Next President Won't Slow The Drug War

At this point, there's little doubt who is likely to win Mexico's presidential election on Sunday. That would be Enrique Peña Nieto, who polls show leading with double-digits over his rival candidates. He's also calling for a (subtle) shift in the fight against the cartels: don't bother as much with stopping drugs and taking down drug lords, but focus on stopping violence and kidnapping. But as far as big changes go, don't expect much if Peña Nieto wins, at least not soon.

First, the little things. Last week, Pieña Nieto recruited Colombian General Oscar Naranjo ' a veteran of the war against the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar ' as his top security adviser. Peña Nieto wants to boost Mexico's Federal Police, and he's for creating a new national paramilitary police force to fight the cartels.  His campaign has also been 'highly solicitous' of the United States, notes Patrick Corcoran of InSight, an organized crime monitoring group. This could mean a bigger U.S. role. Naranjo is also reportedly close to U.S. officials.

This is while the cartels still exercise draconian rule over cities throughout many parts of the country, especially along the border. Ciudad Juárez, which came to define Mexico's drug violence when viewed from outside the country, has seen a drop in murders to 2007 levels, Corcoran adds. But other cities, like Nuevo Laredo, experienced lower and lower levels of violence only for gangland killings to spark anew. The cartels have also spread to new areas.

'If you noticed, none of the presidential candidates broke openly with [outgoing President Felipe Calderón's] strategy ' the farthest they went was to criticize the level of violence,' César Martinez Espinosa, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas and a specialist in Mexican national security issues, writes in an e-mail. 'This is because they recognized that a majority of people (outside of Mexico City) approves Calderón's fight against the cartels (some polls have tracked that), especially the participation of the military in it and because they might not have that much room to maneuver once they are in power.'

Reducing violence by legalizing drugs? Not likely in the least. A darker suggestion floated as a possibility in press reports is some kind of deal with the cartels, but Pieña Nieto has ruled out negotiating a truce.

The reason why a truce is brought up: Peña Nieto's political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (or PRI), formerly maintained uninterrupted single-party rule for most of the 20th century. But when it lost power 12 years ago, it also lost a patronage system between regional party bosses and the cartels. This system meant drugs were allowed to flow relatively freely, provided physical disputes between the cartels didn't get out of hand. But losing a (note: corrupt) system of checks and balances, beef between cartels escalated.

Nor is it likely that such a deal could be made today. In some states that maintained PRI rule, these networks were maintained but still failed to stop the surge in violence. Some of the state-level politicians with ties to the cartels are now being purged. In any case, the PRI will be governing a different Mexico: one in which corruption is still a major problem, but in which a single party is not able to maintain control over the entire governing apparatus. Another problem is that today's cartels are smaller, a lot more numerous and increasingly decentralized. With so many cartels operating in Mexico today, who do you cut a deal with?

'Should he win, Peña Nieto will surely seek some cosmetic changes, and he may push the philosophy underlying Mexico's crime strategy in a new direction. But the obstacles to a different approach are enormous; as a result, for better or worse, the shifts are likely to be marginal,' notes Corcoran.

Another option is to eliminate some local police forces and 'consolidate them into stronger state forces,' says Martinez. Elsewhere, the new president will have to keep up economic growth and push reforms through the courts and a chaotic, badly-run prison system. But for the time being, and for whoever wins, the war with the cartels will continue.

Jamming Grenades, Micro-Missiles: Israel's Latest War Tech, Uncovered

Paris in June. Some come for the shopping, the museums, the sidewalk cafes, the romantic evening strolls through the city of light. And then there's the crowd that's jonesing for the hangar-and-asphalt vibe of Eurosatory, the massive biannual military bazaar that sprawls over the exhibition grounds near Charles de Gaulle airport. The exhibition is designed to be a showcase for European land systems companies, but it is also the best hands-on venue for the latest technology and innovations in Israel's often-secretive defense industry.

Jammer Grenade

Winning the "and now for something completely different" award, Tel Aviv-based Netline Communications Technologies introduced one of the smallest jammers ever made for stopping improvised explosive devices. Perched on the counter of the modest company booth was the modestly named Portable Jammer Pack (PJP), a roundish object about the size and shape of a medieval fire-pot grenade and intended for use in urban spaces. For IED suppression, "urban operations are tricky because of access issues to crowded streets and tightly packed buildings and the need to get jammers to places where equipment with regular antennas cannot go," explained Loreen Haim-Cayzer, a Netline executive. Enter the PJP, which can be deployed via the Mark I overhand grenade toss through a window (e.g., before a building intrusion) or down an alley (e.g., ahead of a patrol). But if you need to hurl it across the block or over that three-story building, best to hand it off to the former high school pitcher in your squad, since it still weighs in at a solid 2.5 pounds.

Netline developed the PJP after a NATO customer asked for a "handball sized" jammer that elite units like special forces could carry in an urban operation, said Haim-Cayzer. To produce something small enough to clip on a belt, engineers needed to miniaturize existing jamming modules and print the antennas on the circuit boards inside the unit. Designers cushioned the system with rubber to absorb impact. Since it can blast away for an average of 30 minutes on its rechargeable batteries, this led to some overheating issues, so the engineers added a heat-absorbing element in the internal battery compartment.

In the field, the user turns on the PJP by pulling its safety catch, hand-grenade style. After landing, the jammer weeble-wobbles upright and throws 'trons to disrupt any nearby communications device being used as a remote IED trigger, like a jury-rigged cell phone. Tech support would have programmed the unit beforehand (it plugs into a laptop) to block specific channels and define other parameters customized to the mission. If all goes well, the user can scoop it up and bring it home to be reprogrammed for the next mission.

That's the theory, at least. The PJP currently is undergoing operational tests, said Haim-Cayzer. Danger Room was curious about the effective radius of the PJP and the risks of communications fratricide in a close-quarters signal environment, but Netline declined to elaborate on these issues.

Photo: Netline

Next Gen Terror-Watchers Go Deep Into Al-Qaida, Tweet a Lot

Tawfik Hamid talks for a 2009 documentary about extremism. Image: Screenshot/'In The Red Chair'

Most counterterrorism scholars will never meet Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida, let alone pray with him. As a teenage extremist, Tawfik Hamid did.

Back when Hamid was a youth in Cairo, studying at a medical school, his religious fervor compelled him to associate with terrorists. 'One of the mosques at the school was reserved for Gemaa Islamiyah,' Hamid casually explains over a burger in Arlington, Virginia. Before Hamid decided that he'd prefer not to assassinate the police officer that Gemaa Islamiyah wanted him to kill, he shared mosque time on a few more occasions with the man who would succeed Osama bin Laden. Now senior U.S. generals refer to him as a 'treasure.'

Similarly, most counterterrorism analysts will never interview one of the seminal figures in Islamic extremism. Yet Abu Walid al-Masri, an associate of al-Qaida figures stretching back to the 1980s Afghanistan jihad, eagerly exchanged e-mails with an obscure Australian academic named Leah Farrall. al-Masri didn't grant the interview with a major newspaper or television network. He wanted it posted on her blog.

Hamid and Farrall don't have much in common; he's working on a new translation of the Koran, she's writing essays for Foreign Affairs. But they're united in their rigor, and their structural focus, when it comes to studying terrorism. That puts them ' Farrall more than Hamid ' in line with a rising group of counterterrorism scholars, many of whom are under 40 and are more likely to debate on Twitter than on the New York Times op-ed page.

'A lot of us have either lived in the region or we've also got at least one of the languages ' Arabic, French, which helps [study] North Africa, and many of us come from a non-political science or terrorism studies or security studies background,' explains Aaron Zelin, a Brandeis graduate now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 'Many of us either did history or did area studies in the Middle East or Islam in terms of our actual academic background'. We understand it's not just 'This is Islam'; we've studied what Islam actually is.'

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Holder Held in Contempt of Congress, Which Means Almost Nothing

Attorney General Eric Holder. Photo: DoJ

The House has voted, and Attorney General Eric Holder has been held in contempt for failing to hand over documents related to the disastrous gun-walking sting, Operation Fast and Furious. Problem is, at this point, there's almost nothing left for Congress to do.

The vote tally was largely along partisan lines: 255 yeas, 67 nays, with one present. Democrats walked out nearly en masse before the vote: 110 representatives did not vote.  Today's vote is also different from last week's contempt citation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which set the layup for today's full House vote. This one's the real deal. But even with Holder now officially held in contempt, he is not likely to be prosecuted, according to an analysis of likely outcomes by CNN. The reason is fairly simple: what Congress is asking the Justice Department to do is to prosecute itself.

It begins with allegations by Republicans (and some Democrats) that Holder knew ' and approved ' an alleged plan by the ATF's Phoenix Field Division to allow firearms to 'walk' into Mexico, and into the hands of the cartels. The ATF pulled the plug after the shooting death of Border Patrol tactical officer Brian Terry by border bandits in December, 2010. An AK-47 variant rifle found at the scene was traced to Fast and Furious. Thousands of internal DoJ documents requested by congressional investigators were never turned over, though Holder was ordered to by a subpoena. But the documents may never be seen due to Obama administration's assertion of executive privilege hours before last week's citation.

But first, let's break down what the House voted to do, exactly. One, the House today authorized criminal charges to be filed against Holder. But the decision to file criminal charges is left up to Ronald Machen, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia ' who answers to Holder. (Machen is also an Obama administration appointee.) The chances of Machen filing charges against his boss? Around zilch. And even then, the administration has sent the documents down the memory hole, meaning Holder is immune from prosecution.

There's also a history (perhaps unsuspectingly) of not following through with prosecution when administration officials are held in contempt. In 2008, a Democratic Congress held White House Counsel Harriet Myers and Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in contempt for failing to turn over documents related to the dismissal of federal prosecutors. Neither Miers or Bolten were charged by the Bush administration's Justice Department. The last time an administration official was prosecuted for contempt, EPA official Rita Lavelle, was in 1983.

The other option, and more likely, is that House Republicans will move forward on civil charges. If House Republicans pursue this option, some documents may be turned over, but this would likely be long after public interest has waned. The civil case against Miers and Bolten was resolved in 2009, after Bush had gone into retirement, and the public ' and political ' notice given was minor. Obama's assertion of executive privilege also makes it slim investigators will get what they want, too.

'Just by going to court, the House guarantees it loses,' Josh Chafetz, a law professor at Cornell University, told CNN. 'Even if (the House) wins, it's going to be years from now. This Congress will be out of office and Obama may be out of office. If they wind up going to court, it will actually be to the great detriment of the House's oversight role.'

And all of this will occur as the details of Fast and Furious are subject to greater scrutiny. Katerine Eban of Fortune reported Wednesday that instead of intentionally allowing guns to walk, the ATF's Phoenix office was instead paralyzed by incompetence, internal conflicts and weak gun laws that allowed smugglers to move freely. Though, in at least one case, an ATF agent reportedly used taxpayer money to buy pistols for a weapons trafficker.

Such disclosures could be one of Holder's primary defenses if a civil suit goes forward. If failures over gun-walking was isolated to Phoenix, then Holder is insulated. But if documents reveal that Holder knew about the plan (or perhaps e-mails by Holder in the early days of the scandal's disclosure), then he ' or at the least, his job ' could be in trouble.

That is, emphasis on could be in trouble. Now, that doesn't mean we won't see any documents arising out of a civil suit. But don't hold your breath, and don't expect any charges.

Despite Asia Talk, Navy Will Send Newest Ships to Mideast

The U.S.S. Ponce, recently transformed into a new Afloat Forward Staging Base, in port at Norfolk, Virginia on June 1. Ships like these are the future of the Navy's Mideast fleet, according to the Navy's top admiral. Photo: U.S. Navy

The Navy is eager to build up its presence in Asia and the Pacific. But the so-called 'Asia Pivot' doesn't tell the full story. Over the next four years, the Navy will conduct a greater ship surge in the Middle East ' which is also where it'll send its newest, latest kinds of surface ships.

That's what Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Navy's top officer, told Pentagon reporters on Wednesday. The Pacific 'rebalancing' ' the Pentagon doesn't call it a 'pivot' anymore ' is still on. But in order to move its traditional aircraft carriers, destroyers and cruisers to the far East, the Navy's going to put its newer kinds of surface ships in the Persian Gulf.

In fact, over the next few years, the Navy's biggest muscle movement will be to the Gulf, not to the Pacific. Between now and 2017, the Navy will add nine more ships to the Gulf and northern Indian Ocean; it'll add five to Asia. By 2020, the Navy will bring an additional three ships to the western Pacific, and add no more to its anticipated hyper-modern Gulf fleet.

'What you'll see here [in the Middle East] is the evolution of the Afloat Forward Staging Base coming online, combined with Littoral Combat Ships coming online and deploying, combined with mobile landing platforms coming online,' Greenert said. 'So these are newer ships and different ships that will add to the [Persian] Gulf inventory.'

The arrival of those newer ships to the Middle East will enable a 'metamorphosis' of the Navy's Asia presence, Greenert continued. Into the Pacific go aircraft carriers ' more on them in a second ' destroyers, cruisers and minesweepers. Littoral Combat Ships, with their plug-and-play modular payloads of sensors and weapons, will come into the Gulf, along with the new Afloat Forward Staging Base like the retrofitted U.S.S. Ponce, a new kind of ship that can ferry commandos, helicopters, drones and Osprey tiltrotors.

But it would be wrong to say the Mideast gets all the new ships and Asia gets all the old ones. Singapore is going to provide a home port for Littoral Combat Ships in a few years. And despite the 'metamorphosis,' Greenert said that at all times in the foreseeable future, the Navy will keep at least one aircraft carrier in the Gulf. One carrier 'is the plan, and we'll take it from there,' surging more if the U.S. Central Command chief needs it.

Similarly, 'the capabilities that will bring to the Arabian Gulf today we will sustain,' Greenert said.

'The theory is this,' the chief of naval operations explained, 'if I have Arleigh Burke [-class] destroyers or I have cruisers conducting counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden or in and around Somalia today and I can do this mission with a Littoral Combat Ship ' which I can ' in the future, or another vessel, such as an Afloat Staging Base using aircraft from it or rotary-wing from it, then I can supplant that mission and I can now deploy that Arleigh Burke elsewhere, and the Asia-Pacific [region] would be an option.'

Another caveat: Greenert only discussed surface ships, not submarines. The Navy won't discuss where its submarine fleet goes.

Still, the Navy's Mideast moves are consistent with its current surge in the Gulf. The Navy is speeding everything from minesweepers to drones to missiles, plus commandos, to Mideast waters. Most importantly, for the time being, it's sustaining two aircraft carrier battle groups in and around the Gulf, to send Iran an unsubtle message. The upgraded stuff will simultaneously maintain that pressure and implicitly tell Gulf Arab allies that the tilt to Asia won't come at their expense.

But the move raises questions about whether the Navy's newer surface fleet in the Gulf will perform at the same level as the current one, Greenert's assurance notwithstanding. Fewer aircraft carriers and cruisers in the Gulf mean fewer Harriers, F/A-18 Super Hornet jets and missile defense capabilities. When (and if) the Navy finally gets its carrier-ready F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, they'll be too large for the Afloat Forward Staging Bases in the Gulf, since they don't host jets. And as much as the Navy wants the Littoral Combat Ship to be its new minesweeper, there are question marks around its survivability.

Accordingly, the Pacific fleet of the future will be familiar, but it'll arguably be more capable. It will inarguably be larger by 24 ships ' nearly twice the size of the Gulf fleet, same as today. In the Pacific, the Navy will 'lean forward in air-to-air [attack], electronic attack, electronic warfare, anti-submarine warfare, and our capabilities in anti-ship ballistic missile and anti-ship cruise missile defeat,' Greenert said ' just in case there was any doubt about where the Navy's focus will be in the years to come.

Russia Preps Mach 7 Missiles ' With India's Help

A BrahMos supersonic cruise missile variant on display at the International Maritime Defense Show in Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2007. Photo: Wikimedia

Russia and India are already testing a new supersonic cruise missile, which is pretty cool, we guess. But going Mach 2 or thereabouts isn't all that fast these days. Everything has to go faster. That's why the two countries are also developing a hypersonic missile capable of traveling more than five times the speed of sound. Problem is even building the engines, let alone missiles, is extremely hard to do.

If it works, the missile ' called the BrahMos 2 ' is expected to travel up to Mach 7 from sea-, land- and air-launched platforms. And it's supposed to be ready for flight tests in 2017, which is overly optimistic, at best. 'I think we will need about 5 years to develop the first fully functional prototype,' Sivathanu Pillai, CEO of India-based BraHmos Aerospace said in Moscow on Wednesday. Pillai also suggested the missile already exists, and that BrahMos has conducted 'lab tests [of the missile] at the speed of 6.5 Mach.'

'There's little doubt India and Russia are pursuing hypersonic weapons technology, though it remains to be seen whether such an ambitious timescale as suggested for 'Brahmos 2' could be met,' Douglas Barrie, an air warfare expert for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, writes in an e-mail to Danger Room. 'The original Brahmos is basically a Russian missile, the NPO Mashinostroenia 3M-55 Onyx (NATO designation SS-N-26), so it will be interesting to see the extent to which Brahmos 2 might draw on previous Russian hypersonic research and development.'

For one, they'll probably need to build a scramjet engine, which is still a long way from being anything but experimental. The concept, though, is surprisingly simple. As the missile ' or whatever vehicle the scramjet is attached to ' accelerates through the air, the engine begins to suck in oxygen. Stored fuel, such as hydrogen, is then mixed with the oxygen and burned before being accelerated and pumped out through a nozzle. This motion then speeds up the missile to hypersonic speeds. The catch: Getting it to work is really difficult.

There's the sheer heat generated by traveling at such speeds. And getting a scramjet into missile-form is even harder. You'd need sophisticated guidance tools, sensors and navigation equipment to keep it in the air and to its target, while also making it small enough to launch from a conventional aircraft. And you still have to solve the propulsion problems.

Just ask the Pentagon. Its experimental pizza-shaped hypersonic weapon capsule, Falcon, failed its test in August before plunging into the Pacific Ocean. The Air Force's scramjet ' the X-51 WaveRider ' has a better record, but was bruised by a test last summer when its engine failed. The Air Force is pressing on, however, with a new hypersonic missile for its stealth fighters. The Army's Advanced Hypersonic Weapon has also been successfully tested, but it's nowhere close to a deployable weapon.

'You ask the question, how hard is it? The answer is, it's really hard,' says Mark Lewis, formerly the Air Force's chief scientist. 'It's not a matter of simply taking a supersonic thing and flying it a little bit faster. The physics work against you, the temperatures get higher, everything really does get harder.'

Hypersonic and scramjet research in the United States also goes back to the early days of the Cold War. But it wasn't until 1991 when Russia became the first country to successfully test a scramjet. More tests followed, and with the help of NASA, Russia successfully flew a hydrogen-fueled scramjet at up to Mach 6.4 over Kazakhstan in 1998. In 2001, U.S. defense analysts took notice of a mysterious ultra-high-speed Russian missile test suspected of being powered by a scramjet. The first successful solo American scramjet tests didn't occur until the 2000s, though they were some of the first tests to use engines that operated entirely as scramjets. The earlier Russian tests were hybrid ramjets ' slightly different, with oxygen only moving at subsonic speeds inside the engine.

Also, don't think it's a coincidence that Russia now wants a hypersonic missile of its own. In May, Russian defense industry chief Dmitry Rogozin called the decline of research into hypersonic weapons since the Soviet era 'a treasonable act to our national interests,' and that developing hypersonic weapons was necessary to respond to U.S. developments. Nor are cruise missiles the only area where Russia is afraid of falling behind even more than they already are. It's why Russia is preparing to open up its own version of the far-out research agency Darpa ' while also planning a new stealth fighter, directed-energy guns and radars (to help shoot down our stealth planes). Russia also wants new ICBMs (though they flop on launch).

Another reason is that the technology is just really cool. 'I think the applications are profound and really could be game-changing,' Lewis says about hypersonics. It's flying higher and faster, and not surprising people want it.

Solyndra Scandal Could Haunt Next Darpa Chief

Two names have emerged in the search for the next director of the Pentagon's premiere research agency. Problem is, one of them has ties to Solyndra, the controversial solar energy firm that embroiled the White House in a scandal. And this isn't exactly the time for another controversy at the top of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

According to four knowledgable sources, Arati Prabhakar and Reginald Brothers are among the leading candidates to succeed Regina Dugan as the leader of Darpa. Both are agency veterans with serious geek cred. Either would be a landmark appointment: Prabhakar would be the first Indian-American Darpa director, and Brothers would be the first African-American to hold the job.

Brothers, who has a PhD in optical communications and spectroscopy from MIT, is an senior official in the Defense Department's Acquisitions, Technology & Logistics directorate, in charge of science and technology programs. He's also a Darpa alum: a former program manager in the Strategic Technology Office and then the director of advanced programs and technology, he spent time at defense giant BAE Systems before returning to the Pentagon.

Prabhakar, who earned a PhD in applied physics from Caltech, founded the agency's Microelectronics Technology Office before decamping to Silicon Valley in the '90s. An adviser to the Department of Energy, Prabhakar recently left a job at the venture capital firm U.S. Venture Partners. The company bet big on Solyndra, a failed clean-energy concern that reaped hundreds of millions from government loans after its investors opened their wallets to President Obama.

While she worked on clean-technology investments before leaving the firm last fall, according to the Wall Street Journal, it's 'unclear whether Prabhakar was directly involved with the firm's Solyndra stake.' Still, this is a presidential election year, and appointing Prabhakar would breathe new life into the Solyndra scandal, merited or not.

Reginald Brothers is in the running to lead Darpa. Photo: Department of Defense

The short version of that scandal: Solyndra, a now-defunct solar-energy company based in California, received over half a billion dollars in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy beginning in 2009. But when doubts emerged about the company's financial viability, the Energy Department unusually restructured the terms of the loan so that private investors in the Solyndra, not the taxpayers, would be repaid first if the company went bottom-up. Last year, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy protection ' after Obama declared 'the future is here' during a visit to Solyndra's factory floor.

That wasn't all. ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity reported that one of the firm's major investors, George Kaiser, raised over $50,000 for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. (Kaiser isn't tied to U.S. Venture Partners.) Mitt Romney, Obama's Republican challenger, called the Solyndra affair an example of 'crony capitalism.'

Even if this wasn't a presidential election year, it's not exactly an opportune time for Darpa to have a director who was touched by a scandal. The last one, Regina Dugan, owned a firm, RedXDefense, that won $400,000 in contracts from Darpa while Dugan was director. Dugan recused herself from anything having to do with RedXDefense, but in the financial disclosure forms she filed upon assuming the directorship in 2009, she noted that she continued to own stock in RedX, and the firm owed her a quarter of a million dollars. That spurred a wide-ranging inquiry from the Pentagon's inspector general into how Darpa awards its contracts. The investigation had yet to conclude when Dugan defected to Google earlier this year.

Again, it is unclear what ties Prabhakar actually has to Solyndra, or whether they ought to be a stumbling block for her prospective tenureship at Darpa. Both Prabhakar and Brothers are clearly qualified to run the blue-sky research agency. (Top Pentagon spokesman George Little declined to comment for this story.) But Darpa's main function is to assess the far-out defense needs of the United States; explore how to meet those needs with emerging or even undeveloped technology; and pick promising companies to develop it. And that sounds uncomfortably like the Solyndra debacle.

U.S. Could Dump Shadow War Ally Over Gay Persecution

A Ugandan soldier in Mogadishu in 2007. Photo: David Axe

In the past four years, the Pentagon and State Department have forged a close, and largely unreported, alliance with the Ugandan military. A force of 120 American advisers based in Uganda provides training, weapons and supplies ' $100 million worth since 2011 ' and in exchange Ugandan soldiers bear the brunt of the close fighting in Somalia, a stronghold for Islamic militants.

The Ugandans' 'superb' fighting ability 'was directly responsible' for driving militants out of Somalia's capital city of Mogadishu this year, according to one American official close to the U.S. train-and-equip program. But there's a ticking time bomb inside the outwardly strong alliance. Uganda's escalating crackdown on its gays, lesbians and transgenders has the U.S. indicating that it might just cut off that military aid. 'LGBT issues' are a 'caveat on U.S. support,' says the official, who spoke to Danger Room on condition of anonymity.

Uganda's gays, lesbians and transgenders have long faced persecution. Homosexuality has been against the law since Uganda's colonial days. But twice in recent years hardline legislators have proposed laws that would make homosexuality a capital offense. These so-called 'Kill the Gays' bills have drawn harsh criticism from Washington and other governments. The official White House strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa, released this month, specifically prioritizes human rights, including 'opposing discrimination based on disability, gender or sexual orientation.'

As Kampala cracks down on the LGBT community, the American military has grudgingly embraced it. President Barack Obama ended the '90s-era Don't Ask, Don't Tell law in 2010, a move that top Marine general James Amos called a 'non-event.' Today the military reacts swiftly to punish gay-bashing. And in a landmark event this week, the Pentagon officially celebrated its gay and lesbian troops.

The growing LGBT schism between the U.S. and Uganda threatens one of the most remarkable alliances in recent years. Since the deaths of 18 American troops in Mogadishu in 1993 ' the Black Hawk Down incident ' the U.S. has been reluctant to deploy significant forces onto Somali soil, even as Islamic militants took advantage of a devastating civil war to seize huge swaths of the East African country.

Instead, Washington recruited proxy armies to do American bidding in Somalia. The Pentagon's direct involvement includes naval bombardments, air strikes and deadly commando raids launched from a constellation of secret bases. But U.S.-trained and -supported African troops do most of the hard fighting, and almost all of the dying, in the grinding battle against Somali Islamists. America's Somalia intervention isn't just a shadow war ' it's a proxy shadow war.

Starting in 2007, the U.S. government footed the bill for an African Union force comprising thousands of Ugandans, Burundians, Djiboutians and other African nationalities. The Ugandans provided the battlefield commanders and operated most of the heavy weaponry, including T-55 tanks. The AU troops stormed Mogadishu and, at the cost of 500 deaths, gradually recaptured the ravaged city over a period of five years. None of the supporting U.S. troops have died in combat, though accidents in the region have claimed several American lives.

The official sees a bright future for U.S.-backed security operations by Kampala. The country is 'well on its way' to becoming the second-most powerful in East Africa, after Ethiopia, the official says, adding that U.S. support will remain 'at a high level' as long as Ugandans are shouldering the major burden of fighting in Somalia. Ugandan troops are already helping in U.S. efforts to track down the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group in Congo.

Meanwhile, an empowered Uganda could front American efforts in another possible war in Africa. Like the U.S., Uganda strongly supports an independent South Sudan as a bulwark against aggression by Khartoum. 'They [the Ugandans] will, without question, intervene if Sudan invades and threatens Juba,' the official says. To prepare for combat with Sudan, the Ugandans spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money on a fleet of Russian-made Su-30 fighters, giving them the most powerful air force in the region ' and an important proxy asset for the U.S.

But Kampala's persecution of gays could compel Washington to end the alliance before it has a chance to expand beyond the Somalia campaign.

Top CIA Spy Accused of Being a Mafia Hitman

The cover for Evan Wright's How to Get Away With Murder, available at Byliner. Illustration: Byliner

Enrique 'Ricky' Prado's resume reads like the ultimate CIA officer: veteran of the Central American wars, running the CIA's operations in Korea, a top spy in America's espionage programs against China, and deputy to counter-terrorist chief Cofer Black ' and then a stint at Blackwater. But he's also alleged to have started out a career as a hitman for a notorious Miami mobster, and kept working for the mob even after joining the CIA. Finally, he went on to serve as the head of the CIA's secret assassination squad against Al-Qaida.

That's according to journalist Evan Wright's blockbuster story How to Get Away With Murder in America, distributed by Byliner. In it, Wright ' who authored Generation Kill, the seminal story of the Iraq invasion ' compiles lengthy, years-long investigations by state and federal police into a sector of Miami's criminal underworld that ended nowhere, were sidelined by higher-ups, or cut short by light sentences. It tracks the history of Prado's alleged Miami patron and notorious cocaine trafficker, Alberto San Pedro, and suspicions that Prado moved a secret death squad from the CIA to Blackwater.

'In protecting Prado, the CIA arguably allowed a new type of mole ' an agent not of a foreign government but of American criminal interests ' to penetrate command,' Wright writes.

In this sense, there are two stories that blur into each other: Prado the CIA officer, and Prado the alleged killer. The latter begins when Prado met his alleged future mob patron, Alberto San Pedro, as a high school student in Miami after their families had fled Cuba following the revolution. Prado would later join the Air Force, though he never saw service in Vietnam, and returned to Miami to work as a firefighter. But he kept moonlighting as a hitman for San Pedro, who had emerged into one of Miami's most formidable cocaine traffickers, according to Wright.

San Pedro hosted parties for the city's elite, lost a testicle in a drive-by shooting outside of his house, rebuilt his house into a fortress, tortured guard dogs for sport, and imported tens of millions of dollars' worth of cocaine into the United States per year, Wright adds. His ties reportedly included an aide to former Florida Governor Bob Graham, numerous judges, lobbyists and a state prosecutor. His ties also included a friendship with former CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, then a local TV reporter.

Prado, meanwhile, was dropping bodies, alleges Wright. Investigators from the Miami-Dade Police Department's organized crime squad suspected him of participating in at least seven murders and one attempted murder. He attempted to join the CIA, but returned to Miami after not completing the background check (due to his apparent concern over his family ties). But was admitted after the Reagan administration opened up a covert offensive against leftist Central American militants, where he reportedly served training the Contras.

More startling, the Miami murders allegedly continued after Prado joined the CIA. One target included a cocaine distributor in Colorado who was killed by a car bomb. Investigators believed he was killed over concerns he would talk to the police.

Years later, in 1996, Prado was a senior manager inside the CIA's Bin Laden Issue Station, before the Al-Qaida mastermind was a well-known name. Two years later, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania elevated Prado to become the chief of operations inside the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, headed by then-chief Cofer Black, later an executive for the notorious merc firm Blackwater. 'As the title implied, the job made Prado responsible for all the moving pieces at the CTC ' supervising field offices on surveillance, rendition, or other missions, and making sure that logistics were in order, that personnel were in place,' according to Wright.

Prado was also reportedly put in charge of a 'targeted assassination unit,' that was never put into operation. (The CIA shifted to drones.) But according to Wright, the CIA handed over its hit squad operation to Blackwater, now called Academi, as a way 'to kill people with precision, without getting caught.' Prado is said to have negotiated the deal to transfer the unit, which Wright wrote 'marked the first time the U.S. government outsourced a covert assassination service to private enterprise.' As to whether the unit was then put into operation, two Blackwater contractors tell Wright the unit began 'whacking people like crazy' beginning in 2008. Prado also popped up two years ago in a report by Jeremy Scahill of The Nation, in which the now ex-CIA Prado was discovered to have built up a network of foreign shell companies to hide Blackwater operations, beginning in 2004. The Nation also revealed that Prado pitched an e-mail in 2007 to the DEA, explaining that Blackwater could 'do everything from everything from surveillance to ground truth to disruption operations,' carried out by foreign nationals, 'so deniability is built in and should be a big plus.'

But it's hard to say where Prado's alleged criminal ties end. It's possibly his ties dried up, or moved on. Even mobsters, like Alberto San Pedro, retire. Another theory has it that Prado wanted to break his ties to the Miami underworld ' and San Pedro ' all along, and sought out legitimate employment in the military, in firefighting and the CIA as an escape. But, the theory goes, he stayed in because he still owed a debt to his patrons.

The other question involves the CIA itself. It's no secret the agency has associated with dubious types, but the agency is also 'notoriously risk averse,' Wright writes. Yet the agency is also protective. And letting Prado on board wouldn't be the agency's first intelligence failure.

Army Dumps All-Seeing Chopper Drone

The A160 Hummingbird chopper-drone during a test flight. Photo: Boeing

This month, the Army planned to deploy to Afghanistan an unusual new drone: an unmanned eye-in-the-sky helicopter programmed to use high-tech cameras to monitor vast amounts of territory. But now the drone might be lucky to be deployed at all, as the Army has moved to shut down production ' possibly ending the program forever.

That drone would be the A160 Hummingbird, which the Army planned to equip with the powerful Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, or Argus. But earlier this month, the Army issued a stop-work order ' one step away from termination ' to the drone's developer Boeing. The reason? A high 'probability of continued technical and schedule delays,' costs and risks that have 'increased so significantly that program continuation is no longer in the best interest of the government,' said Donna Hightower, the Army's acting product manager for unmanned aerial systems modernization.

The A160 was set to be one of the Army's most radical new drones. The chopper-drone could loiter for 20 hours at up to 15,000 feet, with a range of 2,500 nautical miles. It could observe up to 36 square miles, thanks to its Argus sensors. Also, Argus has a 1.8 gigapixel camera. Viewed through 92 five-megapixel imagers and 65 video windows for zooming in at ultra-high resolution, the the A160 drone would have been well-suited for spying on enemy fighters in vast and remote terrain like in Afghanistan, where three of the drones were scheduled to deploy this month. The A160 has also been sent on special operations workouts.

But the drone had issues. There were delays due to problems with the wiring and 'the need for ground testing to get the Argus sensor suite functioning' on the drone, according to Inside Defense (subscription required). On April 17, an A160 crashed during a test flight in California. As the drone was flying between 4,000 and 5,000 feet and around three miles from its runway, 'excessive vibration' caused a transmission mount to fail, which caused the drone's engine to lose power. The drone then went into autorotation mode ' a backup in case of engine failure ' and crashed, the report adds. Boeing 'voluntarily suspended' the program after the crash.

Failures caused by excessive vibration were not supposed to happen, either. The reason is because of the drone's design: what was supposed to make the A160 different from standard choppers.

Whenever a helicopter changes speed, or (really) when a helicopter changes how fast its rotor blades are moving, there is a risk of potentially fatal vibration. But for standard choppers, rotor blades compensate by being flexible. The number of revolutions per minute is also set at a fixed rate. And normally changing speeds isn't that much of a problem, because standard helicopters usually have the throttle cranked up during flight.

The A160, however, was designed with light and stiff blades made of tailored carbon fiber. The rotor also had a larger diameter than standard helicopters, among other features. Basically, allowing the drone-chopper to operate in different modes without worrying about vibration. It could travel quickly while transiting, or slow down and loiter ' quietly ' for long periods. That is, in theory. But if the drone crashed because of vibration, then it could just be promising more than it was able to deliver.

But the Army isn't giving up on unmanned helicopters. The Marine Corps has its own robot supply helicopter, the K-MAX; and the Army, Navy and Air Force are interested in buying.

The K-MAX is not designed with Argus in mind, though. Years ago, there were rumors Argus could be attached to the Air Force's Blue Devil 2 airship, in a perfect match of the sensor suite's panopticon-spying powers and the airship's ability to stay afloat for days. But then the Blue Devil 2 is being deflated, literally. Earlier this month, the Air Force ordered the airship to be disassembled.

That could leave Argus without a home, packing such a powerful camera, but with no way to use it. A bit like its namesake, then: Argus Panoptes, a giant from Greek mythology known for his all-seeing eyes, until he was blinded and slain.

Defense Industry Shill: Give Lockheed Credit for Bin Laden Kill

Loren Thompson from the Lexington Institute speaks at a 2008 conference. Photo: Reuters/Corbis

Shed a tear for the executives at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and the rest of the sprawling defense industry. Yes, they benefit from billions in taxpayer dollars while millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet. But they're not getting the praise they deserve for killing Osama bin Laden. Wait, what?

That is an actual argument made by Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a Beltway research group that reliably represents the interests of defense contractors. Thompson wants President Obama to tip his cap to the defense companies whose hardware and software SEAL Team Six and the CIA used to kill Osama bin Laden. '[I]s it really asking too much for some sort of official acknowledgement of the role that private enterprise played in the Bin Laden raid?' Thompson asks in a Monday op-ed.

Boeing's Chinook helos, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman's sensors, Lockheed Martin's stealth drone ' all these things the SEALs carried, Thompson writes, so it's time the defense industry got its due.

Yes, the SEALs had impressive gear for the raid, from stealth helicopters to powerful satellites. But if you gave, say, me every piece of equipment that the SEALs had, I regret to inform you that bin Laden would still be alive. Louisville Slugger did not win last year's World Series. Mario Manningham's cleats did not keep him in bounds for one of the greatest receptions in Super Bowl history. Even the haters must recognize that LeBron James' NBA Finals performance is not attributable to Nike or Gatorade.

In truth, defense corporations receive a different form of acknowledgement for their services: giant Defense Department contracts. Unlike SEALs, the defense industry's reward isn't always based on performance.

And if Thompson wants to give 'some sort of official acknowledgement' to defense corporations, why stop there? Why not honor the welders who assembled the helicopters; the designers of the algorithms that underlay the sensor processors; or the laborers who mined the metals from the earth contained in the stuff the SEALs used on the raid? Alternatively, why not credit the defense industry's gear for the success of routine patrols in Afghanistan?

Thompson is a defense consultant for profit as well as a military analyst, an inherent conflict of interest. His writing, like that of Lexington's, more broadly, consistently cheerleads for the defense industry. And it's especially conspicuous that Thompson's op-ed is published on the same day that Politico reports Lockheed Martin is threatening to throw thousands of people out of work before a presidential election unless Congress rolls back hundreds of billions of dollars in defense cuts that its failed deficit-reduction gambit teed up.

The defense industry makes valuable things for troops, and it makes dubious things. It offers the promise of future US military supremacy and overpriced, lucrative boondoggles, sometimes all at once. It acts selflessly and it acts shabbily. If the industry feels slighted for a lack of public recognition in any military operation, they'll just have to console themselves with giant stacks of taxpayer money.

Small-Town Cops Pile Up on Useless Military Gear

Small police departments across America are collecting battlefield-grade arsenals thanks to a program that allows them to get their hands on military surplus equipment ' amphibious tanks, night-vision goggles, and even barber chairs or underwear ' at virtually no cost, except for shipment and maintenance.

Over the last five years, the top 10 beneficiaries of this 'Department of Defense Excess Property Program' included small agencies such as the Fairmount Police Department. It serves 7,000 people in northern Georgia and received 17,145 items from the military. The cops in Issaqua, Washington, a town of 30,000 people, acquired more than 37,000 pieces of gear.

In 2011 alone, more than 700,000 items were transferred to police departments for a total value of $500 million. This year, as of May 15, police departments already acquired almost $400 million worth of stuff. Last year's record would have certainly been shattered if the Arizona Republic hadn't revealed in early May that a local police department used the program to stockpile equipment ' and then sold the gear to others, something that is strictly forbidden. Three weeks after the revelation, the Pentagon decided to partly suspend distribution of surplus material until all agencies could put together an up-to-date inventory of all the stuff they got through the years. A second effort, which gives federal grants to police departments to purchase equipment, is still ongoing, however. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, since 9/11, the grants have totaled $34 billion.

Which means billions of dollars' worth of military gear are in the hands of small-town cops who neither need the equipment nor are properly trained to use it, critics charge. At best, it's a waste of resources (since the gear still has to be maintained). At worst, it could cost lives.

Take the 50-officer police department in Oxford, Alabama, a town of 20,000 people. It has stockpiled around $3 million of equipment, ranging from M-16s and helmet-mounted infrared goggles to its own armored vehicle, a Puma. In Tupelo, Mississippi, home to 35,000, the local police acquired a helicopter for only $7,500 through the surplus program. The chopper, however, had to be upgraded for $100,000 and it now costs $20,000 a year in maintenance.

The Nebraska State Patrol has three amphibious eight-wheeled tanks. Acquired almost three years ago, their highest achievement has been helping with a flood last year and with a shooting a couple of weeks ago. Overall, it has been deployed five times. At least, officers love driving them. 'They're fun,' said trooper Art Frerichs to the Lincoln Journal Star in 2010. And the ride, according to Patrol Sgt. Loveless, 'is very smooth.'

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Putin Wants a Darpa of His Own

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits a science and technology exhibit. Photo: AP/RIA-Novosti

In recent years, the US government has created research agencies for homeland security, intelligence, and energy ' all modeled on the Pentagon's mad-scientist arm, Darpa. Now Russia has gotten the bug, too.

Russian industry and defense leaders announced plans last week to bankroll the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects in the Defense Industry. Russia's newly re-coronated president, Vladimir Putin, has already sent a bill to parliament to authorize the agency, which will be tasked with keeping track of projects that 'can ensure Russian superiority in defense technology,' according to news service RIA Novosti.

One possible location is near the Gromov Flight Research Institute ' an experimental aircraft test base ' to Moscow's southeast. The future site, though, may also resemble the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a sort of Silicon Valley for Russia's high-tech companies located on the city's opposite end. But instead of focusing on civilian IT and biotech like at Skolkovo, the companies near Gromov would take charge of 'all high-risk and fundamental research projects in the military-industrial complex,' Dmitry Rogozin, chief of Russia's defense industry, said.

Basically, Russia wants to modernize, and needs its own far-out research department to do it. Its military is getting old and risks becoming dependent on other (read: more advanced) countries. It's also a part of a larger Russian push for more military tech. And there's no telling what projects the agency could come up with. Perhaps the agency, when open for business, can take on the task of controlling our minds and constructing robots that will keep the human brain alive forever.

It's also necessary if Russia is serious about moving forward on plans to build advanced drones and new long-range bombers. Russia has a stealthy new fighter, the PAK FA (or T-50), but it probably doesn't have the radar, avionics and other advanced technology like the F-22. Russia is interested in making directed energy weapons, like the Pentagon's Active Denial System, while at the same time being more willing to use them to zap crowds. There are plans to upgrade submarines and stealth-killing radars.

There is also competition from China, which is boosting its defense budget and has its own Darpa-like tech programs. China has a stealth fighter of its own: the J-20. China's navy may not be alarming, but its missiles are increasingly lethal, and Beijing is catching up in space.

Another problem is that Russia has traditionally built its military around quantity, not quality. It's been slow to modernize, and the civilian sector has historically been left out, nor did it compete for contracts. That's changed, but scattered private firms without oversight can also bog down development.

Russia's missile-defense-dodging Bulava ballistic missile was prone to delays and test failures during development. Officials blamed the hundreds of subcontractors supplying parts, with varying degrees of quality. Russian defense subcontractors are also prone to duplicating work because Russia has no centralized database to track research projects.

Still, it won't be as easy as building a database. The agency comes just as Russia is preparing a major arms build-up after nearly two decades of austerity. That means Darpaski has some catching up to do.

No, You Can't Use a Drone to Spy on Your Sexy Neighbor

Illustration: Señor Salme

What are the laws against drones'and their masters'behaving badly? Turns out, there are few that explicitly address a future where people, companies, and police all command tiny aircraft. But many of our anxieties about that future should be assuaged by existing regulations. We asked Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, to weigh in on some of the issues.

Can I use a drone to spy on my sexy neighbor?

Ogle at your own risk, but the fact that you're spying by plane shouldn't make a difference. Peeping Tom laws say you can't view a fully or partially nude person without their knowledge, so long as they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Chances are, if you need a drone to see her, your neighbor is justified in thinking she's alone.

If you do spy, she can likely sue for 'intrusion upon seclusion.' There are limits: The conduct must be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and courts often dismiss cases where the plaintiff can't show any real harm. Still, if you want to see your neighbor naked, the safest technology remains your imagination.

Can I use a drone to deliver a cup of coffee?

No'at least not yet. The Federal Aviation Administration, policeman to the nation's skies, prohibits most commercial use of drones. Hobbyists can fly them outside of populated areas, provided the drones stay within sight and below 400 feet. But delivering a product for compensation is not allowed.

The good news for drone (or latté) enthusiasts is that Congress recently required the FAA to reexamine its policy, under a new law that demands a 'comprehensive plan' to allow private-sector drones by fall 2015. Still, technical hurdles cast doubt on whether airborne baristas are the most likely application. The smart money is on robotic paparazzi.

Could a police drone look in my windows for drugs?

Maybe. The law generally doesn't recognize privacy rights regarding anything that cops can spy from a public vantage. Officers in a helicopter can already look into your backyard without a warrant.

That said, the courts often treat the interior of a home as off-limits. For example, the Supreme Court has rejected the use of thermal-imaging devices to search for indoor grow lights (often used in marijuana cultivation), for fear that the officers might discover 'intimate details' such as the time when 'the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and bath.'

In that case, the court thought it important that thermal imaging was not in 'general public use.' But as drones become common, courts may say we should draw our curtains if we want to maintain an expectation of privacy.

Could the police follow my car with a drone?

Yes, but if it follows you long enough, the police might need a warrant. Generally speaking, officers can follow a vehicle without getting the courts involved'for instance, by driving behind it. But in a recent Supreme Court case, on whether officers need a warrant to affix a GPS device to a car for a month, a majority of justices expressed concern about the length of time. Ultimately, the Court decided the case on a different ground, holding that a warrant was required to attach any object to a car. But police drones might prompt them to revisit just how much public surveillance is too much.

Flying-Robot Cops, Farmers, and Oil Riggers Get to Work

How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom

Open source drones, like this ArduCopter Quad from 3D Robotics, now outnumber military drones in the US. Photo: Misha Gravenor

At last year's Paris Air Show, some of the hottest aircraft were the autonomous unmanned helicopters'a few of them small enough to carry in one hand'that would allow military buyers to put a camera in the sky anywhere, anytime. Manufactured by major defense contractors, and ranging in design from a single-bladed camcopter to four-bladed multicopters, these drones were being sold as the future of warfare at prices in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In May, at a different trade show, similar aircraft were once again the most buzzed-about items on display. But this wasn't another exhibition of military hardware; instead, it was the Hobby Expo China in Beijing, where Chinese manufacturers demo their newest and coolest toys. Companies like Shenzhen-based DJI Innovations are selling drones with the same capability as the military ones, sometimes for less than $1,000. These Chinese firms, in turn, are competing with even cheaper drones created by amateurs around the world, who share their designs for free in communities online. It's safe to say that drones are the first technology in history where the toy industry and hobbyists are beating the military-industrial complex at its own game.

Look up into America's skies today and you might just see one of these drones: small, fully autonomous, and dirt-cheap. On any given weekend, someone's probably flying a real-life drone not far from your own personal airspace. (They're the ones looking at their laptops instead of their planes.) These personal drones can do everything that military drones can, aside from blow up stuff. Although they technically aren't supposed to be used commercially in the US (they also must stay below 400 feet, within visual line of sight, and away from populated areas and airports), the FAA is planning to officially allow commercial use starting in 2015.

What are all these amateurs doing with their drones? Like the early personal computers, the main use at this point is experimentation'simple, geeky fun. But as personal drones become more sophisticated and reliable, practical applications are emerging. The film industry is already full of remotely piloted copters serving as camera platforms, with a longer reach than booms as well as cheaper and safer operations than manned helicopters. Some farmers now use drones for crop management, creating aerial maps to optimize water and fertilizer distribution. And there are countless scientific uses for drones, from watching algal blooms in the ocean to low-altitude measurement of the solar reflectivity of the Amazon rain forest. Others are using the craft for wildlife management, tracking endangered species and quietly mapping out nesting areas that are in need of protection.

To give a sense of the scale of the personal drone movement, DIY Drones'an online community that I founded in 2007 (more on that later)'has 26,000 members, who fly drones that they either assemble themselves or buy premade from dozens of companies that serve the amateur market. All told, there are probably around 1,000 new personal drones that take to the sky every month (3D Robotics, a company I cofounded, is shipping more than 100 ArduPilot Megas a week); that figure rivals the drone sales of the world's top aerospace companies (in units, of course, not dollars). And the personal drone industry is growing much faster.

Why? The reason is the same as with every other digital technology: a Moore's-law-style pace where performance regularly doubles while size and price plummet. In fact, the Moore's law of drone technology is currently accelerating, thanks to the smartphone industry, which relies on the same components'sensors, optics, batteries, and embedded processors'all of them growing smaller and faster each year. Just as the 1970s saw the birth and rise of the personal computer, this decade will see the ascendance of the personal drone. We're entering the Drone Age.

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#Warlord: Chechnya's Boss-for-Life Joins Twitter

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, right, alongside former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in June, 2010. Photo: Press and Information Office of President of Russia

Twitter is where you hang out with friends and meet new people. Now you can hang out with brutal pro-Kremlin warlord Ramzan Kadyrov.

According to Russian news wire RIA Novosti, the Chechen president created a Twitter account Wednesday after meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's prime minister and former president. (Medvedev is an advocate of social media.) Kadyrov only sent two tweets the first day under the handle @RKadyrov. The first announced that Kadyrov was preparing to 'meet with young people,' with no word on the results. Several hours later, Kadyrov announced he was taking questions.

Kadyrov also apparently had a problem with Twitter impostors. A statement from the Chechen government said the account is official, and 'has nothing to do with other accounts in social networks attributed to the head of the Chechen Republic.'

It could also be an attempt to rebrand an image tainted by allegations of widespread human rights abuses, including using death squads to carry out abductions, torture and the killing of dissidents. Chechnya is also particularly mean to women, and Kadyrov's public persona is less than desirable. He's known for his taste (or lack of) in fast cars and gold pistols. His 35th birthday party 'was held on a floating stage on the River Sunzha,' reported The Telegraph, with ceremonies featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Hilary Swank. Grozny ' the Chechen capital that was bombed nearly flat in two wars with Russia but has since seen a construction boom ' 'was bedecked with portraits of a smiling Mr Kadyrov.'

Kadyrov had experimented with blogging. He kept up a LiveJournal account until last July, where he wrote posts about soccer, reconstructing battle-scared buildings in the capital and expanding the Chechen birth rate. In one post from last year, Kadyrov noticed a Twitter imposter, though with 'good intentions.' Yes, he writes about Twitter, 'I am going to start. When? Later.'

He must have been preoccupied. The war in Chechnya, which began as a conflict between separatists and Moscow, then later morphed into a war between separatists and Islamists against a pro-Kremlin regime controlled by the Kadyrov clan, was only declared over by Russia's National Antiterrorism Committee in 2009. Though the region continued to be marred by killings.

Last Friday, Kadyrov was the target of a suspected assassination plot that ended when two militants carrying firearms and explosives were reportedly killed by Chechen police while entering Grozny from a nearby forest. The militants were said to be carrying out orders from separatist leader Doku Umarov. Though there are questions the two militants may have just been on a routine mission.

Maybe someone should ask Kadyrov about that. Kadyrov is already up to around 6,000 followers, but it looks like only a few people have fielded him questions. A Moscow blogger asked, 'Why do [Russians] relate to you better than you do for us?' No response. It'd be worth checking in later to see how many questions come from Chechens themselves.

'Institutional Failures' Led Military to Teach War on Islam

A slide from Army Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley's course on Islam at the Joint Forces Staff College. The course is canceled and Dooley has been fired from the college, but its influence may remain.

A class urging senior US military officers to wage 'total war' on Islam wasn't just the work of one misguided teacher. According to an inquiry ordered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was the result of 'institutional failures in oversight and judgment' at one of the military's top educational institutions.

Those are the results of a months-long, military-wide review into the US armed forces' educational programs, prompted by a series of Danger Room articles on counter-terrorism training that sought to portray the world's billion-plus Muslims as enemies of the United States.

The worst of those courses was taught at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. Titled 'Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,' the course began years ago as an inoffensive examination of the roots of violent extremism. But in later years, the class was 'modified to adopt a teaching methodology that portrayed Islam almost entirely in a negative way,' said Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesman for Gen. Martin Dempsey, the nation's top military officer.

The instructor of the course, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, spent weeks arguing that the US was at war with the Islamic faith. In planning for that war's next phases, Dooley invited his students to use the lessons of 'Hiroshima' to wipe out whole cities at once, and to target the 'civilian population wherever necessary.'

Dooley has now been stripped of his teaching position at the college and formally reprimanded ' but not cashiered from the Army. Two civilian officials at the college are being reviewed for possible 'administrative or disciplinary action,' according to Lapan. 'A second military officer will receive administrative counseling.'

With the exception of Dooley's class, however, the Pentagon review 'confirmed that adequate academic standards for approving course curricula, presentations and selecting qualified guest lecturers were in place' at the rest of the military's teaching centers, Lapan added.

That brings the inquiry to a close ' without resolving several questions about the course. Nor will the officers exposed to the anti-Islam message receive retraining to correct what the military itself considers an inappropriate and offensive instruction.

Dooley's course, first reported by Danger Room, explicitly encouraged the lieutenant colonels, colonels, lieutenant commanders and captains to reduce Islam to 'a cult status' and consider the Geneva Conventions against protecting civilians in wartime 'no longer relevant.' Dooley discussed apply 'the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki' to achieve the 'destruction' of Islam's holiest cities.

Lapan did not explain exactly how the elective turned into what Dempsey's deputy for military education called an 'inflammatory' course. The inquiry found that the institutional failings were limited to the Joint Forces Staff College, not the rest of the military's education complex, and any future elective courses on Islam at the college will be 'redesigned to include aspects of US policy,' Lapan said ' namely, that the US isn't at war with Islam.

The inquiry recommended the college strengthen its procedures for 'reviewing and approving course curricula while improving oversight of course electives,' Lapan said. Additionally, it recommended potential disciplinary action against two unnamed civilian officials and one other unnamed military officer at the college.

As for Dooley himself, he's awaiting his next posting from the Army's assignment branch, weeks ahead of his previously scheduled August 2012 departure from the college. It's unclear what his future holds. He's received an official reprimand, Lapan confirmed ' but officers have the right to appeal reprimands. Lapan did not disclose the sort of reprimand Dooley received, so it is difficult to say if the measure will prevent Dooley from future promotions, which is tantamount to firing an officer in the military's 'up or out' personnel system.

Yet Dooley's influence may endure. 'There are no plans for 'retraining' those who took the elective,' Lapan told Danger Room. Nor did the military disclose how many officers had been exposed to the anti-Islam instruction, or even how long the offensive materials were taught, although Dempsey's office previously told Danger Room the inquiry would resolve those questions.

The lack of retraining means that Dooley may ultimately succeed in indoctrinating members of the next class generals and admirals. And the military has undertaken larger retraining efforts. After troops at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Field burned Korans in February, their commander, Marine Gen. John Allen, ordered nearly 100,000 of them re-instructed in how to treat religious materials respectfully. There will be no such effort to ensure that senior US officers disregard Dooley's encouragement to kill civilians.

Special Ops Commander Sacked After Tiltrotor Crash

An Air Force Osprey refuels during training. Photo: Air Force

The head of an Air Force Osprey tiltrotor squadron has reportedly been fired following the near-fatal crash of one of the unit's aircraft on June 13. 'The commander of the 8th Special Operations Squadron was relieved because of a loss of confidence in his ability to effectively command the unit,' Col. James Slife, 1st Special Operations Wing chief, told Inside Defense (subscription required).

Slife did not give the squadron commander's name, but an Air Force press release identifies him as Lt. Col. Matt Glover of Austin, Texas. Glover assumed command of the flying branch's first Osprey squadron in May last year. His goal, he said at the time, was to 'grow and improve the CV-22 force,' using the designation for the Air Force version of the tiltrotor.

'The challenges of the 8th Special Operations Squadron's demanding mission require new leadership to maintain the highest levels of precision,' Slife told Inside Defense. The implication is that the Air Force is attributing the crash to squadron procedures or the readiness level of its aircrews.

The 1st Special Operations Wing's public affairs office did not answer a phone call on Thursday morning. An email to the office also went unanswered.

If confirmed, Glover's sacking would make him at least the second tiltrotor commander relieved of duty since the controversial hybrid aircraft, made by Bell and Boeing, entered testing in the 1990s. In 2001 the Marine Corps commandant fired Lt. Col. Odin Lieberman, head of the Corps' Osprey training squadron, after Lieberman was accused of falsifying maintenance records in order to mask the tiltrotor's design flaws.

An early version of the V-22, which takes off and lands like a helicopter but cruises like an airplane, crashed four times during testing between 1991 and 2000, killing 30 people. Since entering frontline service in 2009, three of the Air Force's roughly 20 V-22s have been destroyed or badly damaged in accidents, at the cost of four lives. Likewise, in the last 10 years the Marines' fleet of some 200 Ospreys has suffered around a dozen major accidents resulting in several destroyed aircraft and no fewer than three deaths.

The Marines, who tout the Osprey as their 'safest tactical rotorcraft,' have used semantic games and fudged statistics to obscure the V-22's true safety record. The V-22's rotating engine nacelles are notoriously complex, its engines hot and over-powered and its aerodynamic qualities unforgiving compared to a traditional aircraft.

Still, Glover's firing at first might seem to absolve the CV-22 of any fault in the June 13 crash, which left the aircraft on its back and burning in a field north of Hurlburt Field, a major Special Operations Forces flying base in Florida. Five people were injured. Slife told Inside Defense that the cause of the accident remains unknown, but added that there was no reason to suspect a design flaw.

But the Air Force has a history of blaming people even when its warplanes malfunction. The flying branch tried to pin the 2010 fatal crash of an F-22 Raptor stealth fighter on the pilot, Capt. Jeffrey Haney, even though the accident was clearly related to the F-22's ongoing oxygen-system woes. When a CV-22 crashed in Afghanistan in 2010, killing four occupants, the lead investigator Brig. Gen Donald Harvel initially attributed the incident in part to engine failure. But Harvel said the Air Force brass leaned on him to blame the pilots, instead.

With 37 people dead and at least two careers shattered, the controversial V-22, through mechanical failure or otherwise, continues to wreak havoc on its passengers, crews and commanders.

Russian Ship, Loaded With Attack Helos, Turns Away From Syria

A Russian-made Mi-24 Hind used by Macedonia. A Russian ship bound for Syria and loaded with export versions of these helos is reportedly turning back. Photo: Wikimedia

A transport ship the U.S. believes is carrying attack helicopters to Syria is now heading back to Russia. Ostensibly, the MV Alaed turned around after its insurance coverage was pulled. But the ship's return coincides with a meeting between Obama and Vladimir Putin ' a sign the two leaders may be starting to cooperate on what to do about Syria's deadly war.

According to press reports, the Alaed, with its load of Mi-25 attack helos, had its insurance yanked by its British insurer, Standard Club, on Monday. The insurer had been reportedly approached by British security services and informed that providing insurance to the Alaed, which is owned by Russian cargo line Femco, violated European Union sanctions prohibiting arms sales to Syria. The insurer pulled its coverage, and the ship then turned back toward the Russian port of Kaliningrad. The ship had earlier stopped about 50 miles off Scotland's northwest coast.

'The foreign secretary made clear to Russian foreign minister [Sergey] Lavrov when they met on 14 June that all defence shipments to Syria must stop,' a British Foreign Office statement read. The Foreign Office added that it is 'working closely with international partners' to 'stop the Syrian regime's ability to slaughter civilians being reinforced through assistance from other countries.'

But it's not clear if the ship was also ordered to return to port by Russian authorities. EU sanctions, for one, do not have jurisdiction over Russian ships. If Russia really wanted the ship to continue to Syria, and remained complicit in the slaughter of civilians, then it's unlikely anyone could have stopped them. But letting the ship continue on its way would also contradict statements made by Vladimir Putin on Monday during the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. During the leaders' two-hour meeting, which is the first time the two have met as presidents, Putin and Obama agreed to a 'peaceful' resolution to Syria's bloodshed.

'In order to stop the bloodshed in Syria, we call for an immediate cessation of the violence and we pledged to work with other international actors, including the United Nations, Kofi Annan, including the movement towards a political transition to a democratic, pluralistic political system, which would be exercised by the Syrians in the framework of the sovereignty, independence, unity and the territorial integrity of Syria,' a joint statement issued by the two presidents read.

But there was no agreement on what to do about Bashar Assad. Russia won't go so far as to throw one of its oldest allies out of power. Nor was there even a peep about endorsing any kind of military intervention to stop the massacres, which would entail overthrowing Assad like NATO overthrew Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. On the other hand, Moscow has agreed in the past on some (limited) steps: telling Assad to withdraw artillery and other heavy weapons from urban areas, and endorsing a cease fire.

Meanwhile, Putin's reception to NATO's missile interceptors in Europe was frosty. Putin asked for a legal guarantee from Obama that the interceptors will not target Russia's own nuclear forces (the missile 'shield' is ostensibly directed at Iran). Despite disagreements, a joint statement read, the United States and Russia agree 'to continue joint search for ways to resolve controversial issues in the area of missile defense.' The two leaders also agreed to strictly implement the new START treaty, which limits deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe.

The timing also coincides Tuesday with more denials from the Russian Defense Ministry that amphibious landing ships loaded with marines were headed to the Syrian port of Tartus, where Russia maintains its only warm water port outside of the former Soviet Union. A Defense Ministry spokesman told RIA Novosti that the ship, the Kaliningrad (not to be confused with the port of the same name), 'is currently taking part in the Celtic Week [festival] and will soon return to its home port,' the spokesman said. Another landing ship, the Caesar Kunikov, was also rumored to be heading to Syria. Russian officials said it's really participating in a routine exercise.

If only the two leaders could see eye-to-eye on Assad. But sending attack gunships like the Hind back to port, well, that's a start.

Washington's 5 Worst Arguments for Keeping Secrets From You

Military patches, courtesy of milspecmonkey.com

The government's vast secrecy bureaucracy does two things with great frequency. The first, of course, is keeping secrets. The second is devising elaborate reasons why you can't know what those secrets are.

It's hardly a secret that the government overclassifies basic information about what it does. What often gets overlooked is that the reasons it cites are often absurd. Sometimes they're craven cover-ups learned years after the fact. Sometimes they're ironic ' or cynical ' invocations that disclosure would aggravate the very problem it's supposed to solve. Sometimes they're bald contradictions of established policy or routine procedure.

Either way, the government has left a long, twisted trail of pretzel logic when it comes to all of the reasons you can't know what it's doing. Here are some of the lowlights.

Nuclear Experiments on People Would Have 'Adverse Effects on Public Opinion'

Government secrecy is perhaps at its most pronounced with nuclear weapons. And most people would probably agree that discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to the US's most dangerous arsenal. But that leeway probably doesn't extend to atomic experiments on human beings. Still, back in the 1940s, the Atomic Energy Commission decided you couldn't know about anything of the sort.

We now know that at the dawn of the nuclear age, the commission indeed used human guinea pigs to learn what the effects of atomic blasts and lingering radiation would be on the human physiology. In 1947, the commission wanted word that it was, among other things, feeding irradiated food to handicapped children kept very quiet. Its rationale was straightforward in its brazenness: We don't want to be sued by an outraged public.

'It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effects on public opinion or result in legal suits,' Army Col. O.G. Haywood Jr. wrote to fellow commission personnel on April 17, 1947. The memo's title itself is an artifact of the days when government personnel felt safe to engage in a baldfaced cover-up: 'Subj: MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS ON HUMANS.' (.pdf)

Haywood succeeded. Word of these atomic Tuskeegee Airmen ' a practice that continued for another 15 years ' came to light only after a savvy reporter named Eileen Welsome began exhuming long-forgotten documents at Kirtland Air Force Base in 1987. What she uncovered after a six-year inquiry would later compel President Clinton to form a major commission that ultimately led to official compensation for some of the family members of nuclear test subjects. Even Haywood couldn't keep everything a secret.

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NSA: It Would Violate Your Privacy to Say if We Spied on You

Gen. Keith Alexander, center, the head of the National Security Agency, visits Afghanistan, 2010. Photo: ISAF

The surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won't tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency as part of its sweeping new counterterrorism powers. The reason: it would violate your privacy to say so.

That claim comes in a short letter sent Monday to civil libertarian Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. The two members of the Senate's intelligence oversight committee asked the NSA a simple question last month: under the broad powers granted in 2008's expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, how many persons inside the United States have been spied upon by the NSA?

The query bounced around the intelligence bureaucracy until it reached I. Charles McCullough, the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the nominal head of the 16 U.S. spy agencies. In a letter acquired by Danger Room, McCullough told the senators that the NSA inspector general 'and NSA leadership agreed that an IG review of the sort suggested would further violate the privacy of U.S. persons,' McCullough wrote.

'All that Senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law, and it is disappointing that the Inspectors General cannot provide it,' Wyden told Danger Room on Monday. 'If no one will even estimate how many Americans have had their communications collected under this law then it is all the more important that Congress act to close the 'back door searches' loophole, to keep the government from searching for Americans' phone calls and emails without a warrant.'

What's more, McCullough argued, giving such a figure of how many Americans were spied on was 'beyond the capacity' of the NSA's in-house watchdog ' and to rectify it would require 'imped[ing]' the very spy missions that concern Wyden and Udall. 'I defer to [the NSA inspector general's] conclusion that obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of his office and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA's mission,' McCullough wrote.

The changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008 ' which President Obama, then in the Senate, voted for ' relaxed the standards under which communications with foreigners that passed through the United States could be collected by the spy agency. The NSA, for instance, no longer requires probable cause to intercept a person's phone calls, text messages or emails within the United States as long as one party to the communications is 'reasonably' believed to be outside the United States.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, as it's known, legalized an expansive effort under the Bush administration that authorized NSA surveillance on persons inside the United States without a warrant in cases of suspicion of connections to terrorism. As my colleague David Kravets has reported, Wyden has attempted to slow a renewal of the 2008 surveillance authorities making its way through Congress. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to address the FISA Amendments Act on Tuesday, as the 2008 law expires this year.

Longtime intelligence watchers found the stonewalling of an 'entirely legitimate oversight question' to be 'disappointing and unsatisfactory,' as Steve Aftergood, a secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists told Danger Room.

'If the FISA Amendments Act is not susceptible to oversight in this way,' Aftergood said, 'it should be repealed, not renewed.'

Even though McCullough said the spy agencies wouldn't tell the senators how many Americans have been spied upon under the new authorities, he told them he 'firmly believe[s] that oversight of intelligence collection is a proper function of an Inspector General. I will continue to work with you and the [Senate intelligence] Committee to identify ways we can enhance our ability to conduct effective oversight.'

Iranian Missile Engineer Oversees Chavez's Drones

The Karrar drone, Iran's first long-range unmanned bomber, goes on display at an undisclosed location on Aug. 22, 2010. Photo: Iranian Defense Ministry

The manager of Venezuela's drone program is an engineer who helped build ballistic missiles for Iran. The engineer's identity raises new questions about the purposes behind Venezuela's drone program. But it's also only one part of a mystery involving drones shipped from Iran to Venezuela while hidden in secret cargo containing possibly more military hardware than just 'bots.

According to El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language sister paper of The Miami Herald, US officials believe Iran shipped drones to Venezuela hidden in cargo containers. The date and specific port are not known, but Venezuela only received six drones ' in a shipment of 70 containers carrying each more than 24,000 pounds of cargo. The cargo was camouflaged as material 'from Venirauto (Venezuelan-Iranian Automotive) through a Chilean company,' a source told the newspaper.

The containers were headed for a Venezuelan air base and the location for the M2 drone project, named after the Mohajer, a light surveillance drone manufactured by Iran. The supervisor, Ramin Keshavarz, is member of the Revolutionary Guards and former employee of Iran's Defense Industry Organization, a firm embargoed by the United States for overseeing Iran's ballistic missile program. The stealthy cargo, the Iranian missile engineer, and more than a million pounds of unaccounted weight, was not all. 'Excessively high' amounts of money are paid for the drone program, much higher than the total cost of the 'bots.

Also under investigation is a Parchin Industries site in Morón, Venezuela. Parchin is believed to make fuel for Iran's mid-range missiles and has been accused by the International Atomic Energy Agency of conducting explosive tests inside a containment chamber located in Iran. Morón also houses a joint Iranian-Venezuelan gunpowder factory. Venezuela is also testing six Iranian drone models, with three under 'special suspicion' for being not what they seem: the Justiciero, Vengador and Venezolano drones. In other words, US officials believe these drones could be more than just drones.

Last week, Venezuela's president and potentate Hugo Chavez acknowledged the drone program. 'Of course we're doing it, and we have the right to. We are a free and independent country,' Chavez said. He added that Venezuela does not 'have any plans to harm anyone,' and that it is just one of many programs built 'with the help of different countries including China, Russia, Iran, and other allied countries,' he said.

The drones also appear to be primarily used for surveillance, with limited ' if any ' ability to carry weapons. The Mohajer, which is used by Venezuela, does not carry weapons but can guide missiles by laser. And drones are meant to loiter, not travel long distances, which means it's exceedingly unlikely that Venezuela and Iran will be able to team up and invade the United States with a fleet of robotic aircraft any time soon.

Or even reach Florida. The maximum range ' about 1,200 miles ' of an (unnamed) Venezuelan drone revealed in March might reach Florida, but no further, and even the former possibility is theoretical. Chavez also weighed in on the concerns. 'Pretty soon someone is probably going to say there's an atomic bomb on the tip of it,' he joked.

To understand Chavez's comment, and to whom it's directed, it's important to note one common but poorly supported explanation for why Venezuela and Iran cooperate with each other. The explanation has Iran using Venezuela as a forward base against the United States. In this view, Venezuela is a location to store Iranian military assets, possibly even missiles. Therefore, it's just a matter of time before Iran either lets loose with the hidden nukes, or provokes another Cuban Missile Crisis.

But the evidence for any military relationship ' beyond defense projects like drones ' is circumstantial, at best.

Venezuela and Iran have other reasons to cooperate. For one, it suits rhetoric from both Venezuela and Iranian leaders. Chavez's political identity is partly defined by a demagogic opposition to the United States. Iran does not share Chavez's socialist policy goals, but there is a common foe. And Iran uses Chavez as means to build international support against the sanctions.

But could the drone program also be a way to subvert the sanctions? Venezuela doesn't have to be housing materials directly related to Iran's nuclear program. Relocating ballistic missile development, which indirectly ties into a potential nuclear weapon, could bypass the embargo. It's also another way to avoid the prying eyes of IAEA inspectors.

It's also possible the secret, unaccounted cargo is not so subversive after all. A Venirauto office is reportedly located next to the air base where the containers were first spotted. In January 2011, a nearby arms depot exploded. But there is also speculation the site could be the location of a sensitive military project. But it couldn't be a drone project, or could it? Adding to the mystery, a drone factory built at the site was never put into operation.