U.N. Drone Inquisitor Says It's Time to End Robot War in Pakistan

After days of meeting with Pakistani officials, the United Nations official investigating Washington's global campaign of drone strikes attacked the legal and strategic basis for the robotic war in its biggest battlefield. And he raised doubts over whether Americans operating the drones can actually distinguish terrorists from average Pakistanis.

Ben Emmerson spent much of the week in Pakistan soliciting the views of senior government and elected officials about the drone strikes, part of his ongoing effort to investigate the relatively new method of targeted killing. He said in a statement on Friday that he also met with representatives of the tribal areas of western Pakistan that have borne the overwhelming brunt of the drone campaign. The officials underscored to Emmerson that Pakistan doesn't consent to the U.S. drone effort, and denied extending the tacit consent that its military ' with whom Emmerson did not consult ' has previously provided.

'As a matter of international law the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan is therefore being conducted without the consent of the elected representatives of the people, or the legitimate Government of the State,' Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, said in the statement. 'It involves the use of force on the territory of another State without its consent and is therefore a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty.'

Emmerson's statement is carefully worded. He portrays himself as conveying Pakistan's concerns, rather than vouching for their particulars. But it's still the strongest statement yet by an international official calling for an end to a campaign of targeted killing that briefly flared back up earlier this year. And to call the strikes an unwarranted violation of Pakistan's sovereignty is tantamount to saying the U.S. is waging a war of aggression.

'The Pashtun tribes of the FATA area have suffered enormously under the drone campaign,' Emmerson's statement continues, referring to the tribal areas. 'It is time for the international community to heed the concerns of Pakistan, and give the next democratically elected government of Pakistan the space, support and assistance it needs to deliver a lasting peace on its own territory without forcible military interference by other States.'

If the drone strikes continue into the next Pakistani government, Emmerson warned, the U.S. drone effort could further destabilize the nuclear power, undermining a key U.S. strategic goal at the heart of the drone strikes. He urged patience with a Pakistani military effort to eradicate al-Qaida's allies in the tribal areas ' one that official Washington has long since written off as unserious.

Significantly and subtly, Emmerson raised doubts over repeated U.S. claims that the targeting efforts behind the drones kill terrorists and spare civilians. Last month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a staunch drone advocate, claimed that the drones kill only 'single digits' worth of civilians annually. Many of the CIA's strikes, termed 'signature strikes,' kill people believed to fit a pattern of extremist behavior, rather than killing specific, known terrorists.

Emmerson's tribal contacts gave reason to doubt that westerners unfamiliar with the area would even be able to tell a terrorist from an average resident.

'In discussions with the delegation of tribal Maliks from North Waziristan the Special Rapporteur was informed that drone strikes routinely inflicted civilian casualties, and that groups of adult males carrying out ordinary daily tasks were frequently the victims of such strikes,' Emmerson continued. 'They emphasized that to an outsider unfamiliar with Pashtun tribal customs there was a very real risk of misidentification of targets since all Pashtun tribesmen tended to have similar appearance to members of the Pakistan Taliban, including similar (and often indistinguishable) tribal clothing, and since it had long been a tradition among the Pashtun tribes that all adult males would carry a gun at all times. They considered that civilian casualties were a commonplace occurrence and that the threat of such strikes instilled fear in the entire community.'

As much as Emmerson will rely on the Obama administration for access concerning the drones during his inquiry, he's given a major international platform to the victims and the critics of its robotic campaign. Emmerson told Danger Room last month that he endorsed John Brennan to run the CIA out of confidence that Brennan will rein in the drone effort. Now that Brennan's at Langley, Emmerson will soon have his theory tested, having delivered a major public challenge to Washington.

U.S. Military Neglects Huge Data Trove of Iraq War: The Iraqis Themselves

More than the U.S. military ever knew, the Sunni tribes in Iraq prevented America's long, searing occupation from descending into an even bigger fiasco than it was. That's just one lesson the U.S. is missing by not taking advantage of the biggest data trove of the war: the accounts of Iraqis who lived through it.

In the popular American conception of the Iraq war, the tribes didn't play a significant role in the war until around 2006, when they abruptly defected from the Sunni insurgency to stand with U.S. forces during the surge. The brutality of al-Qaida in Iraq ' who would punish the ostensible sin of cigarette smoking by chopping off the fingers of the Sunnis they claimed to protect ' compelled one of the most momentous strategic shifts of the war.

That is nowhere near the complete truth, according to Najim Abed al-Jabouri. Jabouri was a two-star general in Saddam Hussein's army who became one of America's most prominent and heralded partners against the extremist forces in Iraq that killed nearly 4,500 U.S. troops. Jabouri was the key Iraqi partner for U.S. Army then-Col. H.R. McMaster in Tall Afar, a city that became a proving ground for the counterinsurgency strategy that Gen. David Petraeus would later implement and make famous.

'For a long time after the invasion,' Jabouri recollects for Danger Room, 'the tribal leaders were telling people, 'Shut up, shut up, don't cause problems.' There was a big expectation of inclusion.' That expectation kept more of Sunni Iraq out of the insurgency than the U.S. understands, for years, as the Sunnis tribal leaders thought that it was inevitable that Americans 'would be like the Brits when they occupied Iraq. We thought they would reach out to the tribes, work with the established order.'

As a result, the Sunni insurgency ' one of the main hotbeds of resistance to the U.S. occupation ' was never as deadly as Jabouri believes it could have been. Tribal leaders that Jabouri knew from his army days 'had weapons caches in the desert. They were getting ready.'

Even with those caches remaining in reserve, the Iraq war was agony for the soldiers and marines tasked with pacifying unfamiliar Sunni areas in Baghdad, Ramadi and Baquba. In 2006, according to statistics kept by the Pentagon's bomb squad, insurgents manufactured and detonated 30,822 homemade bombs, often from ordnance harvested and repurposed from the weapons depots that ex-officers like Jabouri relied on during their service. Not only did the Iraqis frustrate American efforts at defeating the bombs, their homebrewed arsenal created a weapons template for insurgencies worldwide.

To Jabouri, the insurgency, al-Qaida included, was a lame, unimpressive fighting force. With merely equivocal backing from the tribal power structure, the inevitable resistance to the occupation 'was more emotional and random,' he says. 'There were a lot of different movements on the ground, and they weren't organized with each other.' Saddam Hussein's military, contrary to a strain of conventional American thinking, was not relying on a post-invasion insurgency as a Plan B.

Two months before the 2003 invasion, Jabouri says, the Iraqi defense minister, Sultan Hashem, assembled his top generals in Baghdad to discuss the impending American incursion. 'He told us we can't confront America and win,' Jabouri, then despondent over the invasion, recollects. But there was never a discussion, let alone an order, to melt away into the populace once the invasion occurred.

'There wasn't planning for resistance,' Jabouri remembers. 'The Iraqi leadership, if they were to announce that or plan for that, it would mean that we would be defeated! It's not a sign of strength.' Not only did that limit participation in the resistance from Saddam's Baathist forces ' contrary to years of statements from the Washington ' it set a tone to the officers that the remnants of Saddam's leadership structure was a spent force, and so 'we returned to our tribes.' Jabouri took his family to Mosul, in the north, recognizing a center of power and influence that Americans never fully understood.

They still might not, ten years after the invasion. The premiere repositories of institutional U.S. military knowledge have few studies of the Iraq war through Iraqi eyes. The Army's Center for Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Ks., one of the its main memory banks, 'does not, in fact, have any lessons learned materials from Iraq from the insurgents' perspective,' Bill Ackerly from the center's Army parent organization tells Danger Room. That's despite volumes of human-terrain studies and detainee interrogation reports; access to tens of thousands of ex-insurgents who ended up siding with the Americans; and a general, vague U.S. understanding that human networks are decisive in insurgencies. West Point's Combating Terrorism Center has a tremendously informative trove of documents captured from al-Qaida in Iraq, but it sheds most of its light on non-Iraqi terrorists.

The Marines do better. Marine Corps University compiled and published a multi-volume oral history of the Anbar Awakening, the major Sunni tribal uprising that began in 2006 against al-Qaida, complete with Iraqi perspectives. 'It's a very good place to start, but it's not a complete view,' says Sterling Jensen, a 35-year old researcher at National Defense University who seeks to fill the gap.

Jensen is writing his Ph. D on the Iraqi insurgency ' from the insurgents' perspective. Stretching back to interviews he first conducted as a contract translator in Ramadi in 2006, Jensen has spent years collecting Iraqi accounts of their varied experiences at resistance, insurgency and terrorism, centering on mostly-Sunni organizations like the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Ansar al-Islam, and even the Islamic State of Iraq, as al-Qaida's local chapter likes to call itself.

From Jensen's perspective, the tribes 'didn't really want to fight the Americans.' Some did, but it was mostly transactional, as they hewed to the belief that they could make money off the insurgency than they could working with the largely Shia government or the Americans. 'The tribes weren't working against the Americans from the start,' Jensen tells Danger Room.

And the story of the Anbar Awakening isn't the typical 'surge' narrative of the Americans suddenly revamping their tactics and protecting the population. It's a story of al-Qaida vastly overplaying its hand and attacking the tribes ' and the Americans finally being savvy enough to take yes for an answer from a Sunni power structure it had long antagonized. 'Had al-Qaida not overreached,' Jensen says, 'then the Sunni community would not have joined with the U.S. It doesn't matter what COIN [counterinsurgency] you use.'

It remains unclear how interested the U.S. is in hearing the Iraq war told from Iraqis, something sure to be an uncomfortable experience. Ackerly says he expects an impending revision of the Army's now-iconic counterinsurgency manual, expected by the end of the year, will have information on the organization, structure and tactics of the insurgency 'from the perspective of the insurgent' in Iraq. But that's not finalized, and it's also something of a circumscribed perspective.

'If we had a better understanding of what went on in Iraq, based on what the Iraqis were saying,' Jensen contends, 'we would learn how to better [military] engagements in the future. We won't be as timid because we'd have a little bit more confidence that we understand what's going on on the ground. We'd be more effective.'

Not of that helps Jabouri ' and it certainly doesn't help the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis. The 57-year old former officer has lived in the United States since late 2008, after becoming a target for al-Qaida and the Shiite government for working closely with the Americans. While he concedes that 'many people feel it was better under Saddam,' Jabouri says he's optimistic about Iraq's future and wants to return someday.

'Maybe after we have a democracy in Iraq,' he says.

Our Security Models Will Never Work ' No Matter What We Do

A core, not side, effect of technology is its ability to magnify power and multiply force ' for both attackers and defenders. One side creates ceramic handguns, laser-guided missiles, and new-identity theft techniques, while the other side creates anti-missile defense systems, fingerprint databases, and automatic facial recognition systems.

The problem is that it's not balanced: Attackers generally benefit from new security technologies before defenders do. They have a first-mover advantage. They're more nimble and adaptable than defensive institutions like police forces. They're not limited by bureaucracy, laws, or ethics. They can evolve faster. And entropy is on their side ' it's easier to destroy something than it is to prevent, defend against, or recover from that destruction.

For the most part, though, society still wins. The bad guys simply can't do enough damage to destroy the underlying social system. The question for us is: can society still maintain security as technology becomes more advanced?

I don't think it can.

Because the damage attackers can cause becomes greater as technology becomes more powerful. Guns become more harmful, explosions become bigger, malware becomes more pernicious ' and so on. A single attacker, or small group of attackers, can cause more destruction than ever before.

This is exactly why the whole post-9/11 weapons-of-mass-destruction debate was so overwrought: Terrorists are scary, terrorists flying airplanes into buildings are even scarier, and the thought of a terrorist with a nuclear bomb is absolutely terrifying.

As the destructive power of individual actors and fringe groups increases, so do the calls for ' and society's acceptance of ' increased security.

Rethinking Security

Traditional security largely works 'after the fact'. We tend not to ban or restrict the objects that can do harm; instead, we punish the people who do harm with objects. There are exceptions, of course, but they're exactly that: exceptions. This system works as long as society can tolerate the destructive effects of those objects (for example, allowing people to own baseball bats and arresting them after they use them in a riot is only viable if society can tolerate the potential for riots).

When that isn't enough, we resort to 'before-the-fact' security measures. These come in two basic varieties: general surveillance of people in an effort to stop them before they do damage, and specific interdictions in an effort to stop people from using those technologies to do damage.

But these measures work better at keeping dangerous technologies out of the hands of amateurs than at keeping them out of the hands of professionals.

And in the global interconnected world we live in, they're not anywhere close to foolproof. Still, a climate of fear causes governments to try. Lots of technologies are already restricted: entire classes of drugs, entire classes of munitions, explosive materials, biological agents. There are age restrictions on vehicles and training restrictions on complex systems like aircraft. We're already almost entirely living in a surveillance state, though we don't realize it or won't admit it to ourselves. This will only get worse as technology advances ' today's Ph.D. theses are tomorrow's high-school science-fair projects.

Increasingly, broad prohibitions on technologies, constant ubiquitous surveillance, and Minority Report-like preemptive security will become the norm. We can debate the effectiveness of various security measures in different circumstances. But the problem isn't that these security measures won't work ' even as they shred our freedoms and liberties ' it's that no security is perfect.

Because sooner or later, the technology will exist for a hobbyist to explode a nuclear weapon, print a lethal virus from a bio-printer, or turn our electronic infrastructure into a vehicle for large-scale murder. We'll have the technology eventually to annihilate ourselves in great numbers, and sometime after, that technology will become cheap enough to be easy.

As it gets easier for one member of a group to destroy the entire group, and the group size gets larger, the odds of someone in the group doing it approaches certainty. Our global interconnectedness means that our group size encompasses everyone on the planet, and since government hasn't kept up, we have to worry about the weakest-controlled member of the weakest-controlled country. Is this a fundamental limitation of technological advancement, one that could end civilization? First our fears grip us so strongly that, thinking about the short term, we willingly embrace a police state in a desperate attempt to keep us safe; then, someone goes off and destroys us anyway?

If security won't work in the end, what is the solution?

Resilience ' building systems able to survive unexpected and devastating attacks ' is the best answer we have right now. We need to recognize that large-scale attacks will happen, that society can survive more than we give it credit for, and that we can design systems to survive these sorts of attacks. Calling terrorism an existential threat is ridiculous in a country where more people die each month in car crashes than died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

If the U.S. can survive the destruction of an entire city ' witness New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or even New York after Sandy ' we need to start acting like it, and planning for it. Still, it's hard to see how resilience buys us anything but additional time. Technology will continue to advance, and right now we don't know how to adapt any defenses ' including resilience ' fast enough.

We need a more flexible and rationally reactive approach to these problems and new regimes of trust for our information-interconnected world. We're going to have to figure this out if we want to survive, and I'm not sure how many decades we have left.

Here's Why The Navy Doesn't Have Its Own Fleet of Killer Attack Dolphins

Whatever, Ukraine. Your claims of arming a fleet of dolphins with pistols and knives are dubious. This is why you can't transform man's favorite adorable aquatic buddy into sea mammals of death.

Dolphins are fantastic, intelligent creatures. They've got a sensing ability, echolocation, that's akin to 'natural biological sonar,' as Ed Budzyna of the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program puts it. Yes, as we've reported in the past, the Navy trains dolphins and sea lions for harbor and port security tasks that nature has endowed them well to perform.

Those tasks are not attack tasks. And yet, a story has resurfaced that the Ukranian Navy has strapped its military working dolphins with knives and pistols to their heads. It smelled funny to us the first time we encountered it in the fall. This time around, the allegedly-armed Ukranian dolphins have apparently gone rogue, swimming away from their Sevastopol handlers, apparently spurred to sea by a frenzy of lust. That account is already looking shady.

But fits of romance are not what stand in the way of your fleet of killer dolphins. It's easy enough to train dolphins and sea lions to hunt for mine-like objects on the sea floor or mark unidentified swimmers for security personnel to investigate. The Navy does it through typical repetitive positive reinforcement, like rewarding the marine friends with food for successful performance. What the Navy doesn't do is train them to distinguish people or objects in the water.

'You can't leave it up to a marine mammal to decide who's a friend and who's a foe. You can't train them for that,' Budzyna, a spokesman for the Navy program, tells Danger Room. 'How would they know which is which down there? You can't leave it up to them to make those judgment calls.'

And yet there are persistent rumors that dolphins ' American and Soviet ' have been equipped for battle. In the '70s, a Navy employee alleged that some of the U.S.' dolphins carried hypodermic syringes containing pressurized carbon dioxide that could potentially cause a diver to 'literally blow up,' as our David Hambling reported in 2007. More baroque stories involve the Russians dual-purposing their own harbor-security dolphin fleet with an weapon similar to the Farallon Shark Dart.

Budzyna insists the Navy doesn't take any such gamble with its sea lions and dolphins. In addition to the lack of 'operational sense' in arming a creature that can't figure out the right person to attack, he says, the danger to the animals' safety would be far too great.

What the Navy's dolphins and sea lions do without weaponry is sophisticated enough. Every day at San Diego, Navy sea-mammal handlers teach the dolphins to alert their human partners if there's a suspicious object at the bottom of the sea floor. If their echolocation picks up an undersea signature that could be a mine, the dolphin taps a disc-like pad on the side of its handlers' boat. The handler passes the dolphin a device to mark the suspicious object's location ' either a beacon or something that emits a sound or releases a balloon ' and then Navy explosive-ordnance disposal divers descend to take care of it.

Similarly, the Navy harnesses sea lions' ability to see in low levels of light to check out suspicious divers who might want to damage a pier. If the sea lion sees a nighttime diver, it would swim to the location and drop off another such marker for the authorities to investigate. 'They work with Navy divers so that no one gets hurt,' Budzyna says, either man or beast. Training such creatures typically takes two to four years.

But what the mammals don't do, perhaps the robots will, someday. The Navy's working on an undersea robot that basically fools a mine into detonating before a Navy ship is in range. There's no plans to arm it; and the Navy will have its hands full designing a robot that can outperform a dolphin's natural echolocation. But the Navy is more likely to weaponize a fleet of robotic dolphins than it is to form up a lethal armada of the real thing.

That's No Train! Air Force Eyes Subway for Nuclear Missiles

The Air Force wants to upgrade its aging nuclear missiles and the hundreds of underground silos that hold them. One idea it's exploring: the construction of a sprawling network of underground subway tunnels to shuttle the missiles around like a mobile doomsday train. As one does.

As first reported by Inside Defense, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center will award several study contracts next month worth up to $3 million each to research the idea. A broad agency announcement from the Air Force describes the hair-raising concept, intended to keep the weapons secure through 2075, as a system of tunnels where nuclear missiles are shuttled around on rails or some undefined 'trackless' system.

The advantage of the world's deadliest subway: During an atomic holocaust, mobile missiles are harder for an adversary to target than a static silo. Missiles could be positioned at launch holes placed at 'regular intervals' along the length of the tunnels.

'The tunnel concept mode operates similar to a subway system but with only a single transporter/launcher and missile dedicated to a given tunnel,' stated the notice. 'The tunnel is long enough to improve survivability but leaving enough room to permit adequate 'rattle space' in the event of an enemy attack.'

The Air Force hasn't given specifics on where the tunnels could be built, or how long they'd need to be. But they'll probably have to be jumbo-sized to 'minimize impact from attack during all phases of missions/operations,' the notice stated. The Air Force requires that all research proposals address ways to 'minimize likelihood' that unauthorized persons could sneak in, while keeping the system working safely and not sacrificing the doomsday train's ability to 'conduct world-wide operations.'

The project would likely be gigantic, expensive and take decades to build ' all things that cut against cut against these relatively lean times at the Pentagon. But the U.S.' silo-launched nuclear arsenal of 420 Minuteman III ballistic missiles are some of the oldest weapons still in service with the military, and they're only getting older. (Not to mention the upkeep the military has to perform on the other two legs of the nuclear triad, submarine-launched Trident II missiles and the air-dropped B61 nuclear weapon.)

The Air Force has spent billions upgrading the Minuteman's guidance systems, rocket motors and power systems to keep them serviceable through 2030. In a March 5 posture statement (.pdf) to the House Armed Services Committee, U.S. Strategic Command chief General Robert Kehler said the Minuteman IIIs are 'sustainable through 2030 and potentially beyond with additional modernization investment.' But to sustain the missiles until 2075, the service has to come up with new ideas.

The subway of doom isn't the Air Force's only option for revamping its silos. Others include 'super-hardened' silos, or ground-based 'transporter erector launchers' ' really large trucks that can haul nuclear missiles around the country, including on public roads and even off-road. The trucks have their downsides: who knows how well they can cross bridges; people would freak out if they encountered nuclear missiles on their morning commute; and they're way more expensive than silos.

Last year, nuclear analyst and Danger Room pal Jeffrey Lewis estimated that building a fleet of 500 such mobile launchers would cost about $52 billion. 'Apparently, building a 200,000 pound truck with rad-hard electronics and capable of withstanding nuclear blast effects is expensive,' he blogged. Lewis also noted that the mobile nuclear launchers were too expensive during the Cold War when, y'know, full-scale nuclear war was a big threat.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, thinks the Air Force is stuck with plain old static silos. 'The nuclear subway ICBM is, I think, a pie in the sky and more included to have a review process entertain a range of options so it can land on the most sensible,' Kristensen tells Danger Room. 'The costs associated with developing and operating such a system would be enormous and completely out of sync with the fiscal realities of this nation. Even a mobile system is probably unrealistic. I think the most likely, and probably only realistic option short of scrapping the land-based leg of the deterrent, is to simply extend the life of the existing Minuteman III ICBM.'

Then again, maybe the Air Force defies logic and builds the death tunnels that it says it wants. Tomorrow's Armageddon could ride to work on rails.

China's Newest Stealth Fighter May Head to Sea, State Media Says

China's latest stealth fighter prototype could be deployed aboard the Chinese navy's first aircraft carrier, eventually allowing Beijing to deploy radar-evading warplanes all over the world ' although it'll have to overcome some serious constraints.

The twin-engine J-31, which made its public debut in blurry photographs snapped at the Shenyang Aircraft Company airfield in northeastern China in late October, 'may become China's next generation carrier-borne fighter jet,' according to the government-owned Global Times newspaper. 'News' from China's state media, including Global Times, essentially can be read as official announcements.

But Sun Cong, the J-31's chief designer, implied that the new stealth jet will need to be enhanced to become carrier-compatible, according to Global Times. In other words, the J-31 won't be headed to sea any time soon, however much Chinese state media signals the rising power's interest in taking its stealth jet out to the open water.

In any event, the prospect of a maritime future for the J-31 places China in rarefied company. Of the dozen or so countries that possess flattops, only a handful are developing carrier-based stealth warplanes; and none have deployed them yet. The U.S. Navy is working on the F-35C ship-compatible version of the Joint Strike Fighter; the U.K. and Italy are also acquiring F-35s for their carriers ' in their cases, the vertical-landing B-model of the next-generation jet that the U.S. Marines will use.

With a years-long head start, the Western countries are likely to field their carrier-launched stealth fighters well before the Chinese could. Beijing is only beginning to develop its naval aviation capability, a century after the U.S. formed its own seagoing air force.

There has long been speculation about the J-31's naval destiny. Observers noted during its debut that the first J-31 prototype has the extra-tough twin nose wheels that are typical of carrier-based planes, which tend to land hard on their comparatively small floating airstrips.

But judging from high-resolution photos of the J-31 prototype, the new plane apparently lacks other key features of naval fighters, including a tailhook (for snagging the arresting wire on the carrier deck) and folding wings (for compact storage below deck). It's these additions and others that Cong was likely referring to when he said the carrier-based J-31 would have to be an improved model.

There's little need for hastiness on Beijing's part. China's sole carrier, the ex-Soviet Liaoning, began sea trials in the summer of 2011 and landed her first planes in November. State media claims Liaoning will sail on her first long-range voyage sometime this year, with the goal of entering frontline service within two years. (China's ongoing construction of naval tanker ships, meant to refuel the carrier on long deployments, seems to corroborate this timeline.)

Beijing is also planning its first homebuilt carrier, with construction reportedly beginning this year.

Liaoning already possesses the components of a basic air wing, including non-stealthy J-15 fighters and several types of helicopter. There is some evidence Beijing is also developing a carrier-launched radar plane similar to the U.S. E-2. But Liaoning lacks the steam catapults that are standard on large American flattops ' and this limits the ship's ability to launch large, heavy planes in the class of the E-2.

The absence of catapults could also have some bearing on any future, maritime version of the J-31. Since they must launch off the ship's deck strictly under their own power, China's carrier planes are constrained in the amount of fuel and weapons they can carry. For all its potential stealthiness, a naval J-31 could sneak into a battle zone with only a handful of missiles and very little fuel for maneuvering ' though to be fair, the U.S. F-35 also has a fairly small weapons loadout while in stealth mode.

If the J-31 goes to sea, it could allow Beijing to deploy high-tech air power almost anywhere in the world within reasonable flying range of the coast. But not any time soon. And not without plenty of limitations.

Syrian Rebels Launched 401 Homemade Bomb Attacks Last Year

The signature weapon of the post-9/11 era is showing up in Syria in a major way. Syrian rebels detonated 401 homemade bombs in 2012.

That's according to the Pentagon's bomb trackers at the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. Statistics disclosed to Danger Room indicate that the opposition to dictator Bashar Assad killed 970 people in the second year of its uprising and wounded another 2,456.

The 401 Syrian bomb attacks is still nowhere near the 3,000-plus attacks that occurred last year in Iraq, the birthplace of the improvised explosive device, let alone the 16,000 in Afghanistan. But they do underscore how the cheap, easily adaptable weapon has become a fixture of contemporary irregular warfare. And the data also provides a glimpse into how a durable insurgency, one with a significant terrorist component, is using the bombs.

Overall, 49 percent of the Syrian bombs ' 197 of the 401 attacks ' caused any casualties. That's a higher success rate than in Afghanistan; although Assad's forces don't have the experience (or the gear) that U.S. troops have thwarting bomb manufacturers.

The overwhelming 'target types' tallied by JIEDDO are civilians, who were the victim of the attacks 47 percent of the time, a wide plurality. Syrian police were on the receiving end of 11 percent of the bombs; the Syrian loyalist military was hit 10 percent; and joint police and military installations received 6 percent of the bomb assaults. Generic 'infrastructure' represented 6 percent of targets.

JIEDDO didn't provide further breakdowns of data on the bombs, such as where they're most prevalent or the level of technical sophistication the Syrian insurgency's bombs employ. Syrian rebels have previously boasted of getting bomb recipes from the internet.

But the Syrian rebels are big on DIY weaponry, and frequently repurpose artillery looted from Assad's military into their own rockets, mortars and bombs. That's in addition to the weapons pipeline flowing in from the Gulf Arab states through Turkey.

Civilian casualties are part and parcel of attacks with homemade bombs, which don't necessarily detonate when rebels or insurgents might want them to detonate, particularly when they're activated by pressure from travelers. But the large proportions of civilians killed by the rebel bombs is significant, as the rebels are fighting against a dictator who's got the blood of at least 60,000 Syrians on his hands. Typically, the rebels portray their bomb attacks as a way to even the odds against Assad's mechanized forces and their heavy artillery. But clearly their bombs are killing more than just soldiers.

It shouldn't be surprising that homemade bombs have found a place in the Syrian rebel arsenal. The family of homebrewed weapon was born next door, in Iraq, and al-Qaida's Iraq branch is heavily invested in the Syrian Nusra Front, which the U.S. recently designated as a terrorist organization.

U.S. Spies Want to Play Alternate-Reality Games (For Work, They Swear)

Alternate-reality games are no longer just for geeks and corporations that want to sell you stuff. America's intelligence agents now think these interactive games could make for a better way to study human psychology and social behavior.

The intelligence community's blue-sky researchers, the Intelligence Advanced Research Agency (IARPA), announced they're seeking designers for alternate-reality games, or ARGs. It's for work, they swear. The project, which goes by the name UAREHERE (as in 'you are here'), 'may provide capabilities that allow for high-quality, externally valid social, behavioral and psychological research in near-real world contexts,' according to a request for information released this week.

Alternate reality games emerged in the last decade as a form of transmedia storytelling, or the practice of using multiple forms of media ' particularly the internet ' to craft a narrative structure. The directors of an ARG typically start by developing a story, litter clues on the internet, and when the players solve them, the players are led to further clues or a staged event featuring live actors. Many ARGs require dozens or hundreds of people to play out, and the games are interactive: Players can shape the course of a story by their actions. It's also become a means to market products, whether musicians teasing a new album, or a movie studio promoting a new film.

While the ostensible purpose of the game is to research human behavior, the specific intelligence function served here is a mystery. Nor does the agency specify who the players would be: The info request notes that recruiting and screening players will be a challenge. Another: determining whether an ARG would even work as a research tool, let alone how to design an ARG.

One idea: build a game that combines 'controlled data collection as well as periods of 'free play' and interactions.' The agency also makes a quick reference in the request to this WIRED article about Conspiracy for Good, an ARG developed by TV show Heroes' creator Tim Kring. The game, which played out online and in London in 2010, fused puzzle-solving with live events, and counted more than 4,000 members assigned to take down a fictional conspiracy.

How far IARPA can go depends on whether the agency will get enough funding. James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday that budget cuts will mean the intel community must 'scale back cutting-edge research that in the long term helps us maintain a strategic advantage.'

IARPA is cautious to note that privacy and anonymity of the players is a concern, along with providing informed consent to participants. Another problem, the request notes, is the potential for a priming effect to occur when explaining the purpose of a game to its players, which could skew the results. Which doesn't make for good intelligence.

North Korea Trolls American Poverty In Greatest Propaganda Video Ever

Living in tents. Drinking coffee made from snow. This is your life in America, filtered through the incisive prism of North Korean propaganda.

The world's most militarized society is shaking its head over what it describes as an epidemic of Americans 'buying guns to kill each other, especially children.' North Korea's latest propaganda video ' released this week and packed with stock footage that would impress Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim ' brings trolling to the next level.

Fun facts about America, according to North Korea: there are no more birds in the U.S., as they've all been eaten by the starving masses. American houses 'blow down very easily,' leaving the American Red Cross to supply emergency housing only thanks to humanitarian aid (including tasty cakes) from Pyongyang. Other parts of America are 'often disguised as foreign countries in Europe.' (Just go with it.) Most Americans are entitled to a single cup of coffee daily, made from snow. This what Dennis Rodman is telling new bro Kim Jong-un?

'They this is how they live in modern-day America: huddled together,' says the video, showing a supposed American homeless shelter of spartan metal bunk beds, 'the poor, the cold, the lonely, and the homosexual.' Presumably, these are heavily armed poor, cold, lonely homosexuals, ready to kill children.

As with much great trolling, North Korea is taking some of its great weaknesses ' the grinding poverty, food shortages and official bellicosity ' and projecting them onto its adversary. The low-budget production values and occasional cinematic inaccuracies (that pay phone in the subway doesn't look like an American model) give the effort a certain inadvertent flourish.

You certainly wouldn't know from the video that North Korea's threatened its southerly neighbor with nuclear annihilation after unilaterally withdrawing from the armistice that has kept a fragile peace on the Korean peninsula for over half a century. Recent successes in its missile tests and nuclear detonations, mixed with a new young leader and tougher international economic sanctions appear to have prompted a surge in Pyongyang threats.

The North has done nothing so far, short of releasing videos portraying its soldiers' Beatlemania-esque love for Kim and threatening an annual U.S.-South Korean military exercise. The Navy says its routine presence on and near the peninsula ' destroyers, anti-ballistic missile cruisers and the aircraft carrier USS George Washington ' is on watch, and thus far has no plans to augment it.

In Manifesto, Mexican Eco-Terrorists Declare War on Nanotechnology

Over the past two years, Mexican scientists involved in bio- and nanotechnology have become targets. They're not threatened by the nation's drug cartels. They're marked for death by a group of bomb-building eco-terrorists with the professed goal of destroying human civilization.

The group, which goes by the name Individualidades Tendiendo a lo Salvaje (ITS), posted its manifesto to anarchist blog Liberacion Total last month. The manifesto takes credit for a failed bombing attempt that month against a researcher at the Biotechnology Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. And the group promises more.

'We have said it before, we act without any compassion in the feral defense of Wild Nature,' the manifesto states. 'Did those who modify and destroy the Earth think their actions wouldn't have repercussions? That they wouldn't pay a price? If they thought so, they are mistaken.' The group threatens more bombings against Mexican scientists because 'they must pay for what they are doing to the Earth.'

A violent fringe group with anarcho-primitivist views ' its name roughly translates to 'Individuals Tending to Savagery,' although 'Tending to the Wild' might be more exact ' ITS sees technology and civilization as essentially doomed and leading humanity to an ecological catastrophe. Technology should be destroyed; humans should revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; and all of this, ITS says, is for our own good. Nanotechnology is a particular scourge: Self-replicating nanobots will one day escape from laboratories to consume the Earth; and weaponization of nanotech is inevitable.

The group first attracted attention in August 2011, when a package bomb mailed to the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico City exploded, seriously injuring a robotics researcher and bursting the eardrum of a computer scientist. An earlier version of ITS's manifesto was found charred among the debris. Police have yet to make arrests in the case.

Late last month, ITS claimed responsibility for the 2011 shooting death of a biotechnology researcher, also of the National Autonomous University, boasting that Ernesto Mendez Salinas' murder was the group's 'first fatality.' But there are reasons to doubt the claim. ITS is late to claim responsibility, and police believe the murder occurred during an attempted carjacking unrelated to the group. But at the very least, ITS wants to send the message that it's willing to kill for its agenda.

ITS is nowhere near as deadly as the narco-terrorism that has plagued Mexico for years. It's claiming responsibility for seven bomb attempts that have injured three people and killed no one. It's also suspected of mailing two unclaimed bombs that exploded during shipping in the same period, injuring a total of four people. The most recent bomb exploded on Feb. 21 inside a mailbox, injuring a maintenance worker.

If all this sounds like an updated, Mexican version of the Unabomber, it should. According to Roger Griffin, a political scientist at Oxford Brookes University and author of Terrorist's Creed, the manifesto's language has 'very strong parallels' to the anti-technology pamphlet Industrial Society and Its Future by Ted Kaczynski.

'Kaczynski became persuaded that the technocracy was destroying the world,' Griffin tells Danger Room. 'He became a radical ecologist, he lived in the wild, he lived in a hut, he read people like [technology critic] Jacques Ellul, and anarchists, and a whole load of stuff. And against the background of the 1960s hippie rediscovery of the mystic relationship with the environment, he developed a lone wolf version of ITS.'

Two intersecting trends appear to account for the new wave of attacks on Mexican scientists: booming research in nanotechnology, and spillover violence from the drug wars. 'Along with other Latin American countries that have invested in the field ' Brazil and Argentina, in particular ' Mexico views nanotechnology as a pathway to a more powerful research and industrial base,' Nature's Leigh Phillips wrote in August. According to Nature, the boom coincided with the spread of a 'violent eco-anarchist philosophy' among some radical groups.

For Griffin, it's logical that eco-terrorists would focus on targeting biotech and nanotechnology. 'If you've got a paranoid mindset about technology, if you enter this Manichean mindset, a nanotechnology which gets into the very fabric of nature is the most incredibly threatening technology, because it's insidious,' he says. If you're a paranoid extremist, it's not enough that they are out to get you ' they're out to corrupt and control you from within, too.

But Griffin is cautious when asked whether Mexico's history of social and political turmoil ' and violence ' could contribute to a growth in eco-terrorist groups. Mexico has a revolutionary history, with numerous guerrilla wars and violence of both left-wing and right-wing stripes, but most Mexican citizens obviously don't commit violent acts. Plus, he says, one precondition for a would-be terrorist to become radicalized is a feeling of anomie, or feeling alienated from society's values, which can happen anywhere.

'Paradoxically, the Sod's law of anomie is that it can either thrive where nothing's happening,' Griffin says, 'just out of a sheer suburban boredom, where in the most prosperous areas people really have objectively no cause for anguish at all so just basic existential ennui ' or in societies which are objectively chaotic and falling apart.'

ITS is also eager to portray itself as more extreme than other environmental extremists. Its manifesto criticizes Finnish writer and fisherman Pentti Linkola, for instance, who has called for an ecological dictatorship. Linkola, who supports the use of nuclear weapons to literally bomb the world back into the Middle Ages, is accused by ITS of not going far enough in destroying civilization, since a dictatorship would still require some technology to enforce authoritarian rule.

'But what also has to be clear, is that there will be more attacks on those scientists,' the manifesto warns 'There will be more attacks on their labs and institutions, they must pay what they are doing to the Earth, must accept and take responsibility for their actions and minutes after a bomb explodes in their face (if they survive) say: ' I deserve it.'

Navy Wants You to Write Algorithms That Automatically ID Threats

It remains the dream of military imagery analysts who stare at surveillance footage all day: sensors and cameras that alert their human masters to looming threats. The Navy's next research program wants to make it an overdue reality.

It actually wants to do much more than that, according to a Monday research announcement. But at a minimum, the Navy's mad scientists want you to help them write stronger, more robust algorithms that can fold different data sets from different sensor systems into a single, unified picture that gives sailors a deeper understanding of the dangers they face.

Or, as the Navy puts it, better algorithms that can enable the development of 'key technologies that will enable rapid, accurate decision making by autonomous processes in complex, time varying highly dynamic environments that are probed with heterogeneous sensors and supported by open source data,' according to a new call for papers from the Office of Naval Research.

This is something of a white whale for the military. In 2011, the blue-sky researchers at Darpa began exploring ways to automatically pre-select camera imagery for viewing, so analysts wouldn't drown in a tsunami of data from ever-more-powerful surveillance tools. 'We're collecting data at rates well above what we had in the past,' Air Force Secretary Michael Donley lamented last year, warning that it will take 'years' for human eyes to catch up to all the services' robotic ones.

Enter the Office of Naval Research. One of its new special program announcements for 2013 identifies software algorithms as a major point of concern: It wants more robust logic tools play nicely across hardware and software platforms, pre-assembling a mosaic of threats. Don't bother writing them better search tools for sifting through their data archives: The Navy expressly rules that out. It wants the imaging equipment of pre-cut vegetables in a salad bag.

One subset of that research is called Sensor Management and Allocation. Its goal: to 'optimally task and re-task large sensors networks [sic] based on current picture and sensor availability to understand the battle space and maintain dynamic persistent surveillance.' A related effort, called Automated Image Understanding, gets more explicit. It's about 'detection and tracking of objects on water or in urban areas and inferring the threat level they may pose' ' sharply enough that the algorithm should be able to pick out 'partially occluded objects in urban clutter.' All this has to happen in real time.

Notice that the Navy isn't talking about developing new hardware that can automatically spot the dangerous, partially concealed things in water or in urban areas. It's got that stuff already, and on deck, particularly when it comes to spotting what lurks underwater. The new algorithms are about making all of that gear much, much smarter, and more deeply integrated ' or, at least, it might, if defense hardware manufacturers' software weren't proprietary.

Lurking behind all this is a wicked problem: figuring out how to represent distant objects caught within a field of vision as threatening; calculating the degree of threat; and weighting those threats when integrating them with either different images or images of the same field at an earlier time. Narrow your field too finely and you'll miss threats; widen it too much and you'll be awash in information.

The Navy's advice is to embrace uncertainty. 'If the process is to be automated and timely relative to a mission,' the Office of Naval Research states, 'then algorithms must be implemented that can sense, interpret, reason and successfully act in an open world with uncertain, incomplete, imprecise, and contradictory data.' That's something human analysts know very well ' and for which they're always trying to compensate.

Tiny, Suicidal Drone/Missile Mashup Is Part of U.S.' Afghanistan Arsenal

U.S. troops may be winding down their war in Afghanistan, but they're now also operating one of the most bleeding-edge lethal drones available.

Afghanistan is the trial by fire of the Switchblade, AeroVironment's much-hyped miniature mashup of drone and missile. Most killer drones are designed like aircraft and fire missiles at a target. The Switchblade is the missile.

Unveiled to much fanfare in 2011 ' it even got its own weird Taiwanese animation ' as of last fall, Army soldiers in Afghanistan had yet to use the six-pound Switchblade they paid some $10 million to procure. But the U.S.-NATO military command there says they're loving what they're seeing from it.

'Switchblade is in use in Afghanistan and has proven to be a very effective tool in our campaign,' the 3rd Infantry Division's Lt. Col. Ben Garrett, a spokesman for U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan, confirms to Danger Room.

But that's all the military will confirm. It's not saying anything about 'deployment,
effectiveness, distribution or tactical employment' of the system, Garrett says, beyond an assurance that the Switchblade is 'very effective.' Nothing about how many times it's been operate; nothing about the breakdown between its surveillance missions and its lethal ones; and certainly nothing about its accuracy.

This is getting to be a thing with the International Security Assistance Force. The U.S.-NATO military command recently opted to stop publishing data on Taliban attacks. Danger Room has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with U.S. Central Command to learn more about the Switchblade.

Still, the specs alone on the Switchblade make it worth watching. Unlike every other drone in military use, the Switchblade only looks like an aircraft once its wings unfold, following a launch from a tube. Once in the air, the Switchblade's size limits its flight time, but its cameras send a video feed back to a remote operator who could be a dismounted soldier. AeroVironment bills it as a tool for pursuit of an adversary on the move or for close air support-in-a can for troops pinned down by enemy fire. That's because once a target comes into view, the operator can send the Switchblade on a one-way mission, careening it into an enemy position to detonate. It can also be pre-programmed to hit a set target.

While little battlefield information on the Switchblade has emerged, the Army already wants more than the 75 units it's sent to Afghanistan, as Danger Room pal Paul McLeary of Defense News reports. Ultimately, the Army wants to acquire a 'Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System' of tiny Switchblade-like drones ' possibly based on the Switchblade itself ' to spot and kill a target from six miles away. Much hinges on just how effective the Switchblade's trial by fire in Afghanistan actually is.

Navy Might Lose Its Technological Testing Ground ' The Drug War

Budget cuts have forced the Navy to cancel its deployments to Latin America supporting the drug war. And what happens in Latin America doesn't stay in Latin America. The region is one of the Navy's premier technological testing grounds, meaning what the U.S. doesn't do south of the border today could limit what it can do around the globe tomorrow.

U.S Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is best known as the hub for the Pentagon's part in interdicting drug traffickers. In that fight, the Navy has tested some of its most cherished new technology in the hunt for 70-knot 'go-fast boats' full of illicit pharmaceuticals and cocaine-laden drug submarines.

Before the U.S.S. Freedom left for Singapore on March 1, the Navy's high-speed Littoral Combat Ship ran down drug traffickers in the Caribbean in 2010. The same year, in one of its first deployments, a Fire Scout drone helicopter flown from the U.S.S. McInerney in the Pacific coast of Central America loitered in darkness and spotted a fishing vessel packed with cocaine. In 2011, the robo-copter deployed to northern Afghanistan before hunting pirates off the eastern African coast.

'When they're out there doing this kind of testing,' Capt. William Ipack, deputy chief of SOUTHCOM's counter-narcotics division, tells Danger Room, 'not only can they get valuable data, they're doing something real.'

But that testing is in jeopardy. This year's cuts to the defense budget strip the Navy of $9 billion for operations in 2013. And they've hit SOUTHCOM ' already a military backwater ' hard. 'SOUTHCOM has not been the main effort for quite some time,' said Norberto Santiago, with SOUTHCOM's surveillance and reconnaissance arm. All that means the Navy is pulling back from sending its best on-the-bubble tech to South America for a real-world workout.

Earlier this month, the Navy said it wouldn't replace two frigates tasked with drug patrols once they return from SOUTHCOM. Future deployments attached to missions in the theater, like the current mission of the catamaran HSV-2 Swift, are also at risk.

Swift, an angular aluminum catamaran, was leased in 2003 as an experimental platform to test concepts of high-speed, low-draft ships for the Navy. Swift's ability to cruise at 30 knots and sprint at 45, far faster than most warships, informed requirements for the Littoral Combat Ship and the Joint High Speed Vessel. The ship has also served as a platform for testing throughout the Navy.

This time around, Swift is fielding a tethered aerostat balloon laden with sensors to supplement a ship's radar and vastly expand its electronic vision. 'You put [a radar] on top of the mast and you can see 20, 40, 60 miles out there,' Ipack explains. 'You put one of these things up on a line and it goes up a couple hundred feet, then you have increased by an order of magnitude the amount of area you can surveil'. That's a piece of equipment we expect great things from.'

SOUTCOM had been expecting deployments of the Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance drone ' a tricked-out Global Hawk ' and the new P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance plane. 'But we can all probably agree those plans are all being rewritten as we speak,' Ipack laments.

As cuts keep coming, SOUTHCOM will have to adjust from state of the art to the art of the possible. In meetings the last several days, Ipack's boss, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Vincent Atkins, SOUTHCOM's director of operations, has told his troops they have to get creative.

'The admiral said, 'The fight we were in yesterday is not the fight we are in today, and we have to go and figure out how we are going to do this job,'' Ipack said.

But just as resources for the drug war are on the decline, the Navy's ability to test its tech in a real-world crucible is shrinking, too. In the end, SOUTHCOM and the Navy may have to do less with less.

Climate Change Is The Biggest Threat In The Pacific, Says Top U.S. Admiral

North Korea just annulled the 1953 armistice ending its war with South Korea. China and Japan are locked in a dispute over an island chain. But the greatest long-term threat to the peace of East Asia and Pacific Ocean ' the part of the world at the heart of the Obama administration's aspirational defense strategy ' is climate change, according to the admiral in charge of U.S. military operations there.

Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III is no smelly hippie. He became chief of U.S. Pacific Command last year after running the maritime portion of NATO's 2011 war against Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. To Locklear, the consequences of a warming planet are likely to 'cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.'

'You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level,' Locklear told Danger Room pal Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe over the weekend. 'Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.'

So the greatest threat in the Pacific region isn't a military one, despite the fresh provocations from nuclear North Korea; the Chinese missile buildup; and the hardening responses by the nations that feel threatened by both regional military powers. All this has right-leaning naval analyst Bryan McGrath shaking his head that Locklear's jumped the shark.

And yet Locklear's forces frequently have to respond to the destructive weather events that are growing more frequent as the earth's climate shifts. Whether it's a typhoon in the Philippines, a hurricane in Burma or an earthquake in Indonesia, climate change is putting a greater operational strain on U.S. forces in the Pacific than most other threats facing a region experiencing what Locklear recently described as 'relative peace.' These are just the immediate-term consequences of climate change, not the ones that will manifest over the coming decades in a region where half the world's trade occurs.

'I'm into the consequence management side of it,' Locklear told Bender. 'I'm not a scientist, but the island of Tarawa in Kiribati, they're contemplating moving their entire population to another country because [it] is not going to exist anymore.'

If North Korea decides to nuke South Korea this week or if China and Japan go to war over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, then Locklear's focus might be called into question. But his point about the long-term consequences of climate change in the Pacific will stand. There's a reluctance in some circles to consider climate change a national security threat: the CIA last year shuttered its short-lived climate change office after conservative legislators criticized it for draining agency attention and resources away from more immediate threats. But as leader of the response agency of first resort in the entire area, Locklear isn't drawing any such distinctions.

Air Force's Accountability for Sexual Assault: Not Promoting Convicted Officer

A military jury found Lt. Col. James Wilkerson guilty of groping a sleeping woman's breasts and vagina. But the Air Force wasn't done with the 'superstar' F-16 pilot. It reinstated Wilkerson to active duty and wiped away his conviction ' but, to save face, is pledging not to promote him to full colonel.

The incident has infuriated Senators and military-survivor advocates, who say that Wilkerson's case underscores just how clueless the Air Force remains to the persistent epidemic of uniformed sexual assault.

Wilkerson's conviction at his court martial last year led to a sentence of a year in jail, the forfeiture of his pay and a dismissal from service. But last month, the commander of the Third Air Force, Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, who presided over Wilkerson's case, overturned the verdict, wiped away Wilkerson's conviction from his record, and returned him to active duty. All this occurred in the wake of the Air Force's pledge to crack down on servicemember sexual assault following the Lackland Air Force Base scandal, in which trainers repeatedly abused, molested and raped female cadets.

Now the embarrassed Air Force is looking for a face saving way out of its institutional mess. Its answer thus far, reports Stars & Stripes, is to remove Wilkerson's name from its promotions list. There's an opportunity for Wilkerson to appeal the decision.

In the military's 'up-or-out' officer system, stopping Wilkerson from getting promoted is a bureaucratic, passive-aggressive way of encouraging him to retire. Thanks to Franklin, Wilkerson would be able to leave the military without a stain on his record, without the Air Force doing a thing to address the proven abuses committed by an officer termed an 'Air Force superstar' by his last performance review.

'The Air Force could do an administrative separation action and try for a lower discharge characterization, but given the notoriety the case has attracted that's unlikely,' says retired Col. Morris Davis, a former Air Force lawyer. 'It would require in essence another mini-trial unless he did a waiver in lieu of a discharge board. He could also face a grade determination at retirement that would retire him in a lower grade.' But that's about it for additional discipline.

All this has advocates wondering if abused servicemembers can find justice inside the military, however loudly the Pentagon insists it's taking the issue seriously.

'This case sends a horrible message to victims of sexual assault in our military that are thinking about coming forward,' Nancy Parrish, president of the Protect Our Defenders support network, tells Danger Room. 'Why bother to put the investigators, prosecutors, judge, jury and survivors through this if one person can set justice aside with the swipe of a pen?'

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) is calling on the Air Force to fire Wilkerson and removing Franklin from his leadership position. 'This stunning decision demonstrates a total disregard for the survivors of sexual assault and for the findings of the military justice system,' she wrote to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley this week.(.pdf)

Parrish supports McCaskill. 'The authority to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate must be taken outside the chain of command,' she says. 'And Commanders should not have the authority to set aside a conviction or sentence by a judge or jury.'

The Senate Armed Services Committee plans a big hearing on Wednesday into military sexual assault. Expect to hear much more about Lt. Col. Wilkerson then.

Army's First Interactive iPad Book Lets You Finger-Swipe Through Afghanistan

The Army has no shortage of battlefield maps. But until Friday, it didn't have many that animate troop movements or enemy positions at the touch of a fingertip. Now, explains Command Sgt. Major Joe B. Parson, Jr., 'if I flick a finger, you don't change the page, you change the picture.'

That's the added value of Vanguard of Valor, a platoon-level recent history of the Afghanistan war published by the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, part of the ground force's brain trust. There's a musty paper edition. But the Army's more excited about the iPad edition that debuted on Friday in the iTunes store.

Vanguard of Valor is primarily a teaching tool, meant to instruct the mid-career officers who pass through the Center about the lessons learned from years of grueling war in Afghanistan. The enhanced iPad edition is a step up from previous Army digitized books: It's the first immersive, interactive Army e-book, replacing the simple PDF-style scans with dynamic animations of the warzone. Maps shift, videos load, audio plays and pictures scroll to complement the text.

The book digitizes and updates the traditional Army practice of recounting 'lessons learned' from its conflicts. The eight stories it contains recount the experiences of platoons deployed to Afghanistan's rugged southern and eastern regions, mostly on the border with Pakistan and mostly during the 2010-12 troop surge. 'These are lessons that could easily be lost,' says the Combined Arms Center's Parson, whose historians and developers created the book. 'When children aren't around, it's a telltale sign that something bad is about to happen. That's something to be aware of, the change in our environment.'

Parson said the physical book is already taught in the Combined Arms Center, but the Center will at shifting up its curriculum to incorporate the iPad version. Soldiers, like other students, bring their iPads to class anyway.

Much as Vanguard of Valor is primarily a tool for military education, nothing's stopping any military history buff with an iPad from downloading the book. (It's free.) 'If you've got no military affiliation, it'll give you a sense of how difficult this fight has been,' Parson says. 'If nothing else, you'll gain empathy for the situation individuals were placed in.'

Vanguard of Valor is an iOS phenomenon for now, but the Army's looking at creating immersive editions for tablets running other operating systems, too.

Two Drug Busts Made the FBI Think Insane Clown Posse Fans Were a Gang Threat

All it took were two arrests in Utah to turn the Juggalos from much-ridiculed Insane Clown Posse fans into a nationwide gang threat.

Newly disclosed documents reveal the genesis of one of the strangest recent tales of the volatile mixture of clown makeup, youth culture, drugs and law enforcement ' one that prompted a 14-month FBI investigation that was ultimately fruitless.

In 2011, the FBI curiously listed the Juggalos in its 2011 report on national gang activity. Juggalos were more than just goofy kids who sprayed themselves with soda at Insane Clown Posse festivals. In the bureau's eyes, they were a 'loosely-organized hybrid gang' that's 'forming more organized subsets and engaging in more gang-like criminal activity.' But it gave little reason for understanding the concern.

Muck Rock, a Massachusetts company that built a web tool to help journalists, activists and lawyers file Freedom of Information Act requests, sought to answer the question. Its discovery: local Utah police arrested two Juggalos on drug charges in March 2011, leading an FBI agent in Salt Lake City to open a sprawling investigation into 'the structure, scope and relationships pertaining to the captioned violent street gang.'

The drugs, and the amounts of them, are unspecified in the disclosure. Nor is it clear if individuals wore Juggalo makeup at the time of their arrests.

An unnamed agent in the Salt Lake City FBI's Safe Streets/Gang Unit wrote to his or her superior on March 15, 2011 that 'Juggalo crimes' in several states included 'drug sales, possession and child endangerment,' which fit a pattern of 'crimes typically seen by gangs or gang members.'

'Insane Clown Posse can't get its music on the radio,' the agent explained, 'but claims to have 1 million devoted fans who call themselves 'Juggalos' or 'Juggalettes,' and sometimes paint their faces to look like wicked clowns. Some continue the dress by carrying small axes, like the cartoon hatchet man associated with the band.' Among the 'recurrent themes' of the Insane Clown Posse's music: 'murder, rape and and suicide.'

The agent proposed an investigative plan to use 'a variety of lawful methods' to learn more about the gang activities of the Juggalos. '[I]nvestigators must start with and work at length at street-level drug purchases of smaller amounts of drugs, surveillance, gang member debriefs, witness debriefs, confidential human source recruitment, and other traditional or non-sophisticated techniques,' the agent wrote.

The Salt Lake City office informed the central Washington bureau of the investigation. Seven months later, the FBI's nationwide gang task force warned that, among other fears, 'social networking websites are a popular conveyance for Juggalo sub-culture to communicate and expand.'

And yet the FBI couldn't pin so much as a shoplifted Faygo on the Juggalos. On May 4, 2012, the Salt Lake City division 'recommended the captioned cases be closed.' Next to 'outlaw motorcycle gangs' 'Surenos Gang Sets' and 'Nortenos Blood Gang Sets': 'Juggalos.'

It remains to be seen if the FBI will continue to warn of a gang threat from the Juggalos. But the Insane Clown Posse actually sued, fruitlessly, to get the bureau to disclose the basis for investigating its fans.

'It's cool that ICP really cares enough to hold the FBI accountable,' says Tom Nash, Muck Rock's news editor. 'They never approached us. But we'd be very interested in working with them.'

Test Pilots: Stealth Jet's Blind Spot Will Get It 'Gunned Every Time'

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the military's expensive main warplane of the future, has a huge blind spot directly behind it. Pilots say that could get them shot down in close-quarters combat, where the flier with the better visibility has the killing advantage.

'Aft visibility could turn out to be a significant problem for all F-35 pilots in the future,' the Pentagon acknowledged in a report (.pdf) obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C. watchdog group.

That admission should not come as a surprise to observers of the Joint Strike Fighter program. Critics of the delayed, over-budget F-35 ' which is built in three versions for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps ' have been trying for years to draw attention to the plane's blind spot, only to be dismissed by the government and Lockheed Martin, the Joint Strike Fighter's primary builder.

The damning report, dated Feb. 15, summarized the experiences of four test pilots who flew the F-35A ' the relatively lightweight Air Force version ' during a September-to-November trial run of the Joint Strike Fighter's planned training program at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The report mentions a number of shortfalls of the highly complex F-35, including sensors, communications and aerial refueling gear that aren't yet fully designed or just don't work right.

No aspect of the report is more damning than the pilots' critiques of the F-35's rearward visibility. 'All four student pilots commented on the out-of-cockpit visibility of the F-35, an issue which not only adversely affects training, but safety and survivability as well,' the report states. The Joint Strike Fighter is a stealth plane designed to avoid detection by radar, but if it ends up in a short-range dogfight, a distinct possibility even in this high-tech age, it's the pilot's eyes that matter most.

Meant to replace almost all of the military's jet fighters at an initial cost of more than $400 billion, the F-35 has a clamshell-style windshield with a good view to the front and sides. But it's got no line of sight to the rear, which is blocked by the pilot's seat and the plane's upper fuselage spine. Today's A-10s, F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s and F-22s, by contrast, have so-called 'bubble canopies' with good all-round vision.

The limitations of the F-35's canopy are 'partially a result of designing a common pilot escape system [a.k.a. ejection seat] for all three variants to the requirements of the short-take-off and vertical landing environment.' In other words, the Joint Strike Fighter's windshield is constrained by the need to fit a standard ejection seat and the downward-facing engine of the Marine Corps variant, which allows that model to take off and land vertically and is located directly behind the cockpit.

The pilots, who formerly flew A-10s and F-16s, didn't seem interested in excuses. Their comments, quoted in the report, are scathingly direct.

'Difficult to see [other aircraft in the visual traffic] pattern due to canopy bow,' one said.

'Staying visual with wingman during tactical formation maneuvering a little tougher than [older] legacy [jets] due to reduced rearward visibility from cockpit,' another added.

Said a third, 'A pilot will find it nearly impossible to check [their six o'clock position] under G [force].'

'The head rest is too large and will impede aft visibility and survivability during surface and air engagements,' one pilot reported.

Most damningly: 'Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned every time' during a dogfight.

The pilots' sentiments echo warnings by Pierre Sprey, one of the original designers of the A-10 and F-16. Joined occasionally by former national security staffer Winslow Wheeler and ex-Pentagon test director Tom Christie, Sprey has repeatedly spoken out against the military's tendency to downplay pilot visibility in recent warplane design efforts. At a presentation in Washington six years ago, Sprey told Danger Room that the F-22, also built by Lockheed Martin, featured a more limited view from the cockpit than the company's older F-16 ' and that the F-35, then still in early design and testing, would be far worse still.

Lockheed and the military's response has been to tout the benefits of the Joint Strike Fighter's sensors, which Lockheed vice president Steve O'Bryan last year characterized as 'world-beating.' The F-35 has six wide-angle cameras installed along the fuselage that are supposed to stream a steady, 360-degree view directly to the pilot's specially designed helmet display. In essence, the warplane should see for the pilot.

But the helmet display doesn't work yet, another shortfall highlighted by the Pentagon report. For now ' and perhaps forever if the display's problems don't get resolved ' Joint Strike Fighter pilots rely solely on their eyes for their view outside the jet. And their vision is incomplete owing to the F-35's design compromises.

'There is no simple relief to limitations of the F-35 cockpit visibility,' the report states. Instead, the Pentagon admits it is more or less hoping that the problem will somehow go away on its own. 'It remains to be seen whether or not, in these more advanced aspects of training, the visibility issues will rise to the level of safety issues, or if, instead, the visibility limitations are something that pilots adapt to over time and with more experience.'

But wishful thinking is no basis for warplane design. Especially when the plane in question is supposed to form the backbone of the entire U.S. air arsenal.

Taiwan's Massive, Mega-Powerful Radar System Is Finally Operational

This weird, sloped 10-story green building gives the tiny island nation of Taiwan something that it's wanted for 15 years: early warning of ballistic missiles and warplanes launched from over 3,000 miles away.

For Taiwan, it's a must-have. Neighboring China has over a thousand ballistic and cruise missiles pointed at it. Once launched, the missiles will slam onto the breakaway Chinese province within 10 minutes. Taiwan needs as much early warning as humanly possible if those missiles ever reach the air.

This 105-foot system is about as advanced as early-warning radar arrays get. Known as PAVE PAWS, for Phased Array Warning System, the slopes of the building shown above are huge antennas built into the facade. Unlike a mechanical antenna, you don't have to physically aim a phased-array early warning system, as its 'beam steering' is done electronically. The system creates a 240-degree virtual eye, allowing Taiwan to see deep into China, and even into Japan and North Korea. Only a handful of countries ' the U.S., Russia, maybe China itself ' have this kind of early-warning system.

It's very, very valuable to Taiwan. Constructed on the top of a mountain in the country's north, the Raytheon-built system cost approximately $1.4 billion. Purchasing the system from the United States stretches back to the Clinton administration, with lots of setbacks along the way. Taiwan was so freaked out last year when PAVE PAWS popped up on Apple Maps that it prevailed upon Apple to obscure the image of the system.

But with little international notice, Taiwan declared its PAVE PAWS operational last month. Air Force Lt. Wu Wan-chiao boasted that Taiwan would now have 'more than six minutes' warning in preparation for any surprise attacks.'

Chances are, it's not just benefiting the Taiwanese. 'I would expect the U.S. would have made a deal that the U.S. gets satellite surveillance from the Taiwan radar,' Allen Thomson, a former CIA China analyst, tells Danger Room. 'Most of time it's sitting there watching satellites, and that's about it. The U.S. could certainly could use that information.'

Of course, in an actual war with China, early warning only buys you so much time (minutes, basically). And the PAVE PAWS is an obvious military target for an early wave of a Chinese strike. 'It's a very important system, sitting there on a mountain,' Thompson continues. 'But 10 minutes before it gets blown up, it'll provide warning.'

More Jets, Jamming Make Air Force's Toughest War Game Even Tougher

The world's most difficult air-war simulation just got a lot tougher.

The Air Force's Red Flag war game, held several times a year since 1975 at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, has added much more powerful 'enemy' defenses. Among them: more opposition 'Red Force' jet fighters and electronic jamming capable of interrupting satellite-based communications and GPS navigation, all in what a Nellis spokesman called a 'contested, degraded and operationally limited environment.' For the first time, the good guys in the three-week combat simulation ' the 'Blue Force' ' must gather actual intelligence on ground targets before unleashing mock attacks, a task previously performed for them by exercise managers.

The result is greater degree of realism for an air combat training event already renowned for its difficulty. A pilot returning from a bombing run over Iraq in 1991 famously quipped that the real combat was 'almost as intense as Red Flag.'

The exercise enhancements underscore the Pentagon's ongoing shift away from counterinsurgency and towards high-tech warfare, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, where China is developing air defenses arguably equal to those portrayed in Red Flag. 'What is going on is the recognition that we need to be prepared to succeed across the spectrum of conflict, not just one part of it,' retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, a former F-15 pilot and Air Force intelligence chief, told Danger Room. 'That means exercising to perform against realistic threats that are rapidly acquiring increases in capability that reduce the advantages in the air domain that we have experienced over the last 20-plus years.'

Twice a day ' once at noon and again at 6:00 p.m. ' up to 125 jets launch from Nellis for mock combat, remaining in the air for up to five hours at a time, according to the Air Force. More flying than usual is taking place at night, when both Red and Blue sides must rely more on night-vision goggles, infrared cameras and radars. Most of the actual shooting is simulated using electronic systems, although some bombing runs include live munitions.

The Blue Force in Red Flag 13-3, which kicked off on February 25 and ends March 15, includes U.S. F-15, F-16, F-22 and A-10 fighters; Typhoon and Tornado fighters from the U.K.; and U.S. B-1 and B-2 bombers. Flying low and fast, the fighters and bombers must push through a defending screen of Red Force F-15s, F-16s, F-5s and T-38s ' collectively known as 'aggressors' ' before finding Red Force ground targets and conducting mock bombing runs.

That task is harder than ever thanks to the extra layers of Red Force defenses. Aviation blogger David Cenciotti, who staked out Nellis for several days last week to photograph launching and landing warplanes, counted the Red Force fighters and compared his tally to previous exercises. 'Considering the amount of aggressors launched during the sorties I witnessed, I strongly believed that, compared to [Red Flag] 12-3 [last year], the air threats were noticeably higher,' Cenciotti told Danger Room.

The boost in Red Force fighter numbers likely reflects the Pentagon's increasing worry over China's fast-growing air force and the development of stealth fighters by China and Russia. The flying branch did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Assisting the attackers in Red Flag 13-3 is an armada of specialized surveillance, reconnaissance and electronic warfare planes ' one of the most diverse collections of such aircraft ever assembled outside of an active war zone, and an unusually large one for Red Flag. It includes radar-hunting EC-130s, EA-18Gs, EA-6Bs and F-16s plus MC-12W, RC-135 and P-3 spy planes and E-3, E-8 and Australian E-7 radar planes. Aerial tankers and rescue planes and helicopters round out the support force.

The specialist planes' jobs are, if anything, harder than those of the Blue Force fighters. Not only do the electronic warfare and spy planes have to contend with prowling Red Force fighters, they're also required to actually find and verify ground targets on the sprawling, 5,000-square-mile Nellis training range before the Blue Force planes can attack.

Before, it was considered too difficult to replicate actual intelligence collection at Red Flag. Instead, the specialist planes would only pretend to search. 'Intelligence had to be faked, or what we call 'white carded,'' Maj. Christopher Keown, from the 526th Intelligence Squadron, told an Air Force reporter . 'In the old days you would literally write down the event or intelligence action on a white card and hand it to an analyst.' The analyst would then pass targeting data to the fighter and bomber pilots before takeoff.

Two years ago, the Air Force designated the 526th to improve the realism of Red Flag's intelligence aspect. The current exercise is the culmination of that effort.

While they're hunting ' for real, this time ' the recon planes are also being bombarded by simulated electronic jamming, another relatively recent introduction to Red Flag meant to reflect the increasing high-tech capabilities of countries such as China.

For the current exercise, Air Force Space Command has deployed satellite controllers from Colorado able to deliberately 'degrade' electronic signals between spacecraft and jets. 'We'll be replicating GPS and [satellite communication] electronic warfare threats,' said Capt. Eric Snyder from the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron.

Snyder's interference could force the specialist planes to revert to line-of-sight radio relays for communication, essentially handing radio messages from plane to plane until they reach the intended recipient. For navigating, the Blue Force might have to rely on old-school map-reading and other methods instead of simply trusting in GPS.

Bombing could get harder, too, with GPS-guided munitions put out of commission from the interference. The Pentagon favors GPS weapons but possesses several types of back-ups, including laser- , image- and radar-homing munitions plus unguided models requiring high degrees of pilot skill.

A comprehensive electronic monitoring system at Red Flag 'scores' hits and misses in the air and on the ground. But the war game 'is not about keeping score,' Lt. Col. Robert Reville from the 92nd Information Warfare Aggressor Squadron told Air Force Times in 2005. 'It is about making people better.'

With rival air forces getting better by the day, potentially eroding America's technological advantage, the Pentagon is working hard to preserve the U.S. training advantage ' hence the recent ramp-up of Red Flag's difficulty level.

If there's a downside to the increasingly realistic exercise, it's the cost: each Red Flag costs some $19 million in fuel alone. The flying branch has warned it might cancel future Red Flags in light of ongoing automatic budget cuts at the federal level. In the worst case, that could reverse the progress the Air Force has made in boosting the war game's realism ' and give America's aerial rivals more of a chance to catch up.

Low on Targets, Obama Considers Killing Friends of Friends of Al-Qaida

Thought the post-9/11 law that gave the president power to wage a global war against terrorists was expansive? Wait till you see the 2.0 upgrade.

According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration is reconsidering its opposition to a new Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, the foundational legal basis of the so-called war on terrorism. That short document, passed overwhelmingly by Congress days after the 9/11 attacks, tethered a U.S. military response to anyone who 'planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.' Nearly all of those people are dead or detained.

There are two ways to view that circumstance. One is to say the United States won the war on terrorism. The other is to expand the definition of the adversary to what an ex-official quoted by the Post called 'associates of associates' of al-Qaida.

And that's the one the administration is mooting. 'Administration officials acknowledged that they could be forced to seek new legal cover if the president decides that strikes are necessary against nascent groups that don't have direct al-Qaeda links,' the Post reports. Examples of the targets under consideration include the extreme Islamist faction of the Syrian rebellion; the Ansar al-Sharia organization suspected of involvement in September's Benghazi assault; and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed terrorist who broke with al-Qaida but is believed to be behind the January seizure of an Algerian oil field.

Ansar al-Sharia may be the hardest such case, since it attacked sovereign U.S. soil in eastern Libya. None of those organizations and individuals, however, are substantially tied to al-Qaida. Which raises the challenge of any new legal authority: defining an adversary in a rigorous way, such that it both encapsulates the scope of the actual threat posed to the U.S. by associates of associates of al-Qaida and sets up the U.S. to actually end that threat. The bureaucratic mechanisms of the war are already outpacing a new AUMF, as drone bases get established in places like Niger, far from any al-Qaida operations, and the Obama administration codifies its procedures for marking terrorist targets for death.

The current AUMF already authorizes broad war powers to the president. As Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) noted in his filibuster of impending CIA director John Brennan Wednesday, it establishes a 'war with no temporal limits' or geographic ones. In Pakistan, the U.S. doesn't just launch drone strikes and commando raids against core al-Qaida remnants, it also kills unknown individuals believed to fit a terrorist profile based on observed pattern-of-life behavior. The CIA and Joint Special Operations Command are also waging a campaign against al-Qaida's Yemen-based affiliate, an 'association' never mentioned in the AUMF, albeit against an organization that has unsuccessfully attempted to attack the U.S. at home. Even in Yemen, the U.S. also carries out so-called 'signature strikes' against anonymous targets. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently said that the drone strikes have killed 4,700 people, orders of magnitude more than were involved in the 9/11 conspiracy and core al-Qaida.

But if these campaigns have strained the authorities underscored by the AUMF, practically no one in Congress has objected, either on legal or strategy grounds. In fact, as Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) pointed out in 2010, more than half the legislators who voted for the AUMF in 2001 are no longer even in Congress, yet the wars persist while the adversary morphs. Changing that dynamic to constrain the war will be a major test of the durability and influence of the civil-liberties coalition that Paul's filibuster seemed to inspire.

Yet when McKeon suggested a new AUMF, both to take into account a changed al-Qaida and to allow Congress to bless or reject that war, the Obama administration balked. Jeh Johnson, then the Pentagon's top lawyer, called the existing AUMF 'sufficient to address the existing threats.' There was a complication: the administration was concerned that the GOP-led House would expand the war even further, while simultaneously requiring the administration to expand the detainee population at Guantanamo Bay, undercutting a major administration initiative. The new-AUMF effort ultimately went nowhere.

Now, even if the administration and Congress still disagree on Gitmo, it would appear that at least some in the administration have reached consensus with McKeon's point. That point, however, favors expanding and entrenching a war that the U.S. has shown no capacity to successfully end. Ironically, revisiting the AUMF arguably weakens the U.S. capacity to win the war, since it shows that when the U.S. reaches the end of its 'kill lists,' it just shifts the goal posts and targets new terrorist organizations.

All of which contradicts the claim in Obama's second inaugural address that 'enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war' ' which the Post reports makes Obama himself uncomfortable. It also undercuts the major points of a 13-hour filibuster that has Washington, and especially conservatives, enthusiastic. Political trends fade, but the war on terrorism manages to endure.

11 Years Later, Senate Wakes Up to War on Terror's 'Battlefield America'

Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster will inevitably fail at its immediate objective: derailing John Brennan's nomination to run the CIA. But as it stretches into its sixth hour, it's already accomplished something far more significant: raising political alarm over the extraordinary breadth of the legal claims that undergird the boundless, 11-plus-year 'war on terrorism.'

The Kentucky Republican's delaying tactic started over one rather narrow slice of that war: the Obama administration's equivocation on whether it believes it has the legal authority to order a drone strike on an American citizen, in the United States. Paul recognized outright that he would ultimately lose his fight to block Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief and architect of much of the administration's targeted-killing efforts.

But as his time on the Senate floor went on, Paul went much further. He called into question aspects of the war on terrorism that a typically bellicose Congress rarely questions, and most often defends, often demagogically so. More astonishingly, Paul's filibuster became such a spectacle that he got hawkish senators to join him.

'When people talk about a 'battlefield America',' Paul said, around hour four, Americans should 'realize they're telling you your Bill of Rights don't apply.' That is a consequence of the September 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force that did not bound a war against al-Qaida to specific areas of the planet. 'We can't have perpetual war. We can't have a war with no temporal limits,' Paul said.

This is actually something of a radical proposition. When House Republicans attempted to revisit the far-reaching authorization in 2011, chief Pentagon attorney Jeh Johnson conveyed the Obama administration's objections. Of course, many, many Republicans have been content with what the Bush administration used to call a 'Long War' with no foreseeable or obvious end. And shortly before leaving office in December, Johnson himself objected to a perpetual war, but did so gingerly, and only after arguing that the government had the power to hold detainees from that war even after that war someday ends.

Paul sometimes seemed to object to the specific platform of drones used against Americans more than it did the platform-independent subject of targeted killing. But Paul actually centered his long monologue on the expansive legal claims implied by targeting Americans for due-process-free execution: 'If you get on a kill list, it's kind of hard to complain'. If you're accused of a crime, I guess that's it'. I don't want a politician deciding my innocence or guilt.' Paul threw in criticisms of other aspects of the war on terrorism beyond targeted killing, from widespread surveillance of Americans to the abuses of state/Homeland Security intelligence 'fusion centers.'

Paul also name-checked several bloggers, reporters and think-tankers critical of targeted killing, like The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola, The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, and the Council on Foreign Relations' Micah Zenko. At one point, he read from one of my Danger Room articles, and another from Danger Room editor/founder Noah Shachtman. And Paul's filibuster reached unlikely advocates over Twitter, from X frontwoman Exene Cervenka to former baseball slugger Jose Canseco.

All this may be unsurprising coming from one of the Senate's premiere civil libertarians. But as the filibuster picked up more and more media attention ' and especially social-media attention ' hawkish senators began joining in. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) praised Paul's efforts at compelling transparency from the White House. What Paul is arguing is 'no less important than our Constitutional government itself,' said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), no dove.

It would be foolish to presume that Paul's moment in the spotlight heralds a new Senate willingness to roll back the expanses of the post-9/11 security apparatus. Rubio, for instance, stopped short of endorsing any of Paul's substantive criticisms of the war. But Paul did manage to shift what political scientists call the Overton Window ' the acceptable center of gravity of discussion. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan), the hawkish chairman of the House intelligence committee, put out a statement that started out subliminally criticizing Paul but ultimately backing him on the central point.

'It would be unconstitutional for the U.S. military or intelligence services to conduct lethal counterterrorism operations in the United States against U.S. citizens,' Rogers said. 'And as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I would never allow such operations to occur on my watch. I urge the Administration to clarify this point immediately so Congress can return to its pressing oversight responsibilities.'

Again, that's still a long way from substantively constraining an executive branch that's enjoyed both widespread latitude and congressional deference since 9/11. But Paul's filibuster posed a challenge to the Senate more than it does Brennan or President Obama. 'Is perpetual war OK with everybody?' he asked.

White House Trades Targeted-Killing Memos for a New CIA Director

Updated, 3:30 p.m.

John Brennan is now overwhelmingly likely to become the next CIA director. To speed his Senate confirmation, the White House agreed to let senators view its top-secret legal memoranda authorizing the targeted killing of U.S. citizens who've never been charged with a crime. You, however, still can't read them.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, announced on Tuesday that she'd struck an agreement with the White House to allow senators 'access to all' of the Justice Department memoranda about targeted killing of U.S. citizens. A summary of some of those opinions, leaked to NBC last month, showed an expansive definition of the concept of an 'imminent' threat posed by an American 'senior operational leader' of al-Qaida. Access to the memoranda ' it's not clear how many ' 'will pave the way for the confirmation of John Brennan to be CIA director,' Feinstein said in a press release.

'The executive branch's goal is to disclose as much information publicly as possible,' said Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, 'and this administration has taken an unprecedented series of steps to disclose, consistent with the requirements of national security, the details of our counterterrorism policies and the legal justifications for them.'

The deal set up Brennan's nomination sailing through the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday afternoon by a 12-3 vote. Brennan still faces varied opposition on the Senate floor: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has threatened to hold up the nomination until he clarifies whether the CIA has the power to authorize a drone strike on U.S. soil; others are using him as leverage to get more Benghazi information. But the White House deal on the memos won Brennan the support of the intelligence panel's civil libertarian wing.

'We are pleased that we now have the access that we have long sought and need to conduct the vigilant oversight with which the committee has been charged,' Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Mark Udall (D-Colorado) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced in a joint statement. 'We anticipate supporting the nomination of John Brennan to be Director of the CIA and we appreciate that the executive branch has provided us with the documents needed to consider this nomination.'

But you still can't read the Justice Department memoranda, which are still classified and which, according to the summary, unilaterally declare themselves exempt from any judge's review. Amnesty International's Zeke Johnson said the White House/Senate deal was 'far from sufficient to ease concerns about extrajudicial executions.' (Memos on the targeted killing of non-Americans aren't part of the deal, according to the Washington Post.) The three civil-libertarian senators said the 'next step' would be to 'bring the American people into this debate and for Congress to consider ways to ensure that the president's sweeping authorities are subject to appropriate limitations, oversight, and safeguards.'

It remains unclear whether the American people will get to read the memoranda that outline the Obama administration's asserted authorities to potentially kill them without trial. It also remains unclear whether any senator will push for the memos' declassification. Wyden, Udall and Collins declared themselves 'particularly pleased that the administration will provide public, unclassified answers to questions about whether these lethal authorities can be used within the United States.'

That may be enough to gain Brennan, the architect of the Obama administration's targeted killing efforts, the top job at the CIA. 'The confirmation process should be about the nominees and their ability to do the jobs they're nominated for,' Hayden said.