29 Dead in 8 Days as U.S. Puts Yemen Drone War in Overdrive

29 dead in a little over a week. Nearly 200 gone this year. The White House is stepping up its campaign of drone attacks in Yemen, with four strikes in eight days. And not even the slaying of 10 civilians over the weekend seems to have slowed the pace in the United States' secretive, undeclared war.

At this week's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, you'll hear lots of talk about the Obama administration's pursuit of al-Qaida and its allies ' including, of course, the raid that ultimately took out Osama bin Laden. But the hottest battlefield in this worldwide conflict isn't likely to receive much attention. It's a shame, because the fight in Yemen is one that demands discussion. Not only does the White House consider al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to be the extremist group most likely to strike in the United States. But the American response to that threat was been widely questioned by regional experts, who wonder whether U.S. drones and commandos aren't being duped into fighting on one side of a civil war.

The latest attack came in Hadramout province, where a barrage of eight missiles slammed into a suspected militant safe house on Wednesday, killing six people. 'The exact target of today's strike has not been disclosed; no senior AQAP leaders have been reported killed in the attack,' the Long War Journal notes. Most of those killed were fresh recruits; only one could be considered an extremist veteran, a security official tells CNN. Several others were able to escape the hideout alive.

On Sunday, at least 10 civilians were not so fortunate. They were killed in a strike gone awry near the town of Rada'a in al-Baitha province. An aircraft ' believed to be an American drone ' fired a pair of missiles at a vehicle supposedly carrying a local AQAP leader. One of the missiles instead hit a nearby minibus.  A 10-year-old girl and her mother were among the dead. 'Families attempted to carry the victims' corpses to the capital, Sana'a, to lay them in front of the residence of newly elected President Abdurabu Hadi, but were sent back by local security forces,' according to CNN.

'You want us to stay quiet while our wives and brothers are being killed for no reason. This attack is the real terrorism,' one Rada'a resident tells the network. Members of parliament and Yemeni human rights groups were quick to condemn the killings, as well.

The U.S. has two separate drone campaigns underway in Yemen ' one run by the CIA, the other by the military's Joint Special Operations Command. Together, they've conducted 43 strikes since the start of 2011, according to a Long War Journal tally, killing 274 people in the process. Exactly how many of the 274 were militants is tough to tell; the U.S. 'counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants,' the New York Times recently reported. As long as someone acts like a terrorists ' whatever that means ' he could be taken out in a so-called 'signature' strike.

Either way, the drones are only one facet of a much American broader war effort in Yemen. U.S. commandos stationed inside Yemen are helping government forces target their militant adversaries. American warplanes, based in neighboring Djibouti, are also flying missions over the country. The U.S. has acknowledged it will spend $112 million on military assistance to the Yemeni military for gear like night vision goggles and commando raiding boats. More than twice that amount will help fund nation-building there, to include 'food vouchers, safe drinking water and basic health services,' according to top White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

The rationale for this rather sizable campaign is simple, Brennan says: AQAP is al-Qaida's 'most active operational franchise.' Its members have tried to launch attacks on the U.S., including the infamous 'underwear bomber' of 2009, and inspire American-based extremists to do the same. Its allies even managed to take over Yemen's Abyan province for a time. In a single attack this March, insurgents surprised Yemen's 25th Mechanized Brigade, kidnapped 73 soldiers, and killed as many as 200 more in their sleep.

But the results of U.S. intervention are harder to gauge. Brennan and his colleagues say they're making progress in Yemen as a new government there gets trained up to take on the counterterror fight. Yet AQAP's ranks appear to be swelling. University of Virginia researcher Christopher Swift found on a recent trip to Yemen that economic arguments were AQAP's biggest allies. 'But the recent shift to 'signature' strikes in Yemen and the growing risk of civilian casualties is swiftly undermining our credibility with many ordinary Yemenis,' he writes. That matches what one member of Yemen's coalition government disagrees told the Washington Post in May: 'There is a psychological acceptance of al-Qaida because of the U.S. strikes,'

Nor is it always clear who is fighting whom. Yes, the government is battling AQAP. But it's also trying to put down a rebellion ' and the rebels are often hard to separate from the terrorists. Meanwhile, forces supporting the former president have battled with troops loyal to the new administration, and tribal militias have struck both Islamists and soldiers. So this is a conflict with as many as five sides, which would present a strategic challenge even if American policy makers were intimately familiar with Yemen. They are not.

'This is not going to end well,' Princeton University's Gregory Johnsen, an expert on the region, recently wrote. 'In an effort to destroy the threat coming out of Yemen, the U.S. is getting sucked further into the quicksand of a conflict it doesn't understand and one in which its very presence tilts the tables against the U.S.' Meanwhile, the strikes keep coming.

Pentagon's Robot Cheetah Outruns Usain Bolt

Updated 9/6/12 8:41 am

Robots are already stronger than humans, able to lift thousands of pounds at a time. In many ways, they're smarter than people, too; machines can perform millions of calculations per second, and even beat us at chess. But we could at least take solace in the fact that we could still outrun our brawny, genius robot overlords if we needed to.

Until now, that is. A four-legged robot, funded by the Pentagon, has just run 28.3 miles per hour. That's faster than the fastest man's fastest time ever. Oh well, ruling the planet was fun while it lasted.

The world record for the 100 meter dash was set in 2009 by sprinter Usain Bolt, who averaged 23.35 mph during his run for a time of 9.58 seconds. Over one 20-meter stretch, he managed to get up to 27.78 mph. It was a pretty impressive feat.

The Cheetah ' a quadrupedal machine built by master roboteers Boston Dynamics and backed by Darpa, the Defense Department's far-out research division ' not only topped Bolt's record-setting time. It also beat its previous top speed of 18 mph, set just a half-year ago.

'To be fair, keep in mind that the Cheetah robot runs on a treadmill without wind drag and has an off-board power supply that it does not carry,' a Boston Dynamics press release reminds us. 'So Bolt is still the superior athlete.'

But the company is looking to change all that, and soon.

In recent months, the Cheetah team 'increased the amount of power available to the robot. More power means faster motion and more margin in the actuators for better control,' Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert tells Danger Room in an email. The robot-makers have also been 'working on the control system, refining how the coordination of legs and back works and developing a better understanding of the dynamics.

He adds, 'You can see that there is still room for improvement at the end of the video we just posted, where the robot starts to go faster, but loses control and trips.'

But those control systems are improving. The next major step is to build an untethered version ' one with an onboard engine and operator controls that work in 3D.

'Our real goal is to create a robot that moves freely outdoors while it runs fast. We are building an outdoor version that we call WildCat, that should be ready for testing early next year,' Dr. Alfred Rizzi, the technical lead for the Cheetah effort, says in a statement.

It may sound a little outlandish. But keep in mind: Boston Dynamics has done this before. Its alarmingly like-like BigDog quadruped is able to tramp across ice, snow, and hills ' all without the off-board hydraulic pump and boom-like device now used to keep the Cheetah on track. An improved version of the BigDog can haul 400 pounds for up to 20 miles. (See what we mean about robot brawn?) The company also has a biped 'bot, Petman, that looks like a mechanical human ' minus the head.

The idea behind these biologically-inspired robots is that legs can carry machines across terrain that would leave wheels or tracks stuck. To be a true partner to a human soldier, a robot has to walk like one, too. Darpa says Cheetah and company will 'contribute to emergency response, humanitarian assistance and other defense missions.' But when the robot was first introduced, Boston Dynamics noted that its flexible spine would help it 'zigzag to chase and evade.'

As if being brilliant and super-strong wasn't unnerving enough.

Moscow Eyes Major Missile Upgrade

Robot subs, sea-based missile interceptors and new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Kremlin is promising a major upgrade to its arsenal. And if even some of those promises are met, it could cause a serious shift in the global balance of power.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been one of the strongest boosters of an upgraded military, but it's not going to be easy to keep up with the U.S., and now China. Beijing announced last month it's building a string of drone bases along its coastline, and is starting to show off the prelude to a proper navy. There are also lingering questions whether Beijing has tested a powerful new ICBM.

'We should make a breakthrough in the modernization of our defense industry, as it was done in the 1930s,' Putin said last week. The president ' who is attempted to lead a flock of endangered Siberian cranes to safety this week by hang-glider ' regularly makes statements along these lines. But the boosterism also guarantees if the U.S. has a certain kind of weapon or machine, or wants it, then Moscow assures the world that it's working on it too.

Case in point is Russia's new drone submarine. On Friday, we learned Russia is developing an unmanned underwater drone built along the lines of a 1980s-era mini-submarine called the Project 865 Piranha. Only two Piranhas were ever built, but Russia hopes to apply the lessons to a drone sub. 'The U.S. Navy is moving along similar lines,' said Anatoly Shlemov, defense contracts chief at the Kremlin-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation. That would be an ostensible reference to the Pentagon's Actuv unmanned sub hunter, which Darpa hopes will give the Navy the means to quietly follow and track diesel subs for months at a time, and do so relatively cheaply.

More pronounced is Russia's missile program. This week, Strategic Missile Forces commander Col. Gen. Sergei Karakayev told RIA Novosti a new liquid-fueled ballistic missile will be ready by 2018, replacing Russia's old solid-fueled R-36M2 Voyevoda missile (or SS-18 Satan, as known by NATO), which dates back to the Cold War. In recent years, Russia has also developed a solid-fueled ICBM called the Topol-M. But a new liquid-fueled missile has one big advantage over both, namely that it may give Moscow ' in six years ' the means to defeat a NATO missile shield in Europe.

One reason: Liquid-fueled rockets are really heavy, and have the weight and power to lift multiple warheads at once. And when there's multiple warheads screaming at your defenses ' and all it takes is one to slip through for you to lose a city ' that's enough to question the feasibility of an expensive shield in the first place. (Speaking of missile shields, Russia is also looking at building new missile interceptors similar to the U.S.'s ship-based Aegis system.)

Now the likelihood of catching up to par with the U.S. anytime soon is going to be nearly impossible. When Putin talks about modernizing the defense industry, he's responding to a growing crisis that Russia hasn't yet been able to manage.

According to an analysis by RusBusinessNews, in five years Russia's defense industry may risk 'shutting down manufacturing of missiles and tanks because of the increasing shortage of human resources.' There's a severe shortage of engineers, for one, compounded by a shrinking population, and young people choosing to leave industrial work for law careers and service-sector jobs. Industrial wages are low and equipment is growing obsolete, and companies are slow to develop a 'corporate culture' with services like daycare and clubs to attract fresh workers.

But if Moscow is desperately trying to stop a downward spiral, Beijing is managing a steady rise, and has the time and resources to experiment with the Chinese army of tomorrow. The navy is a good place to see it. 'So long as China's strategic surroundings remained hospitable and the United States was content guaranteeing safe passage through international waters and skies, the [People's Liberation Army Navy] could pursue leisurely 'fleet experimentation,' wrote Naval War College professors Toshi Yoshihara and Jim Holmes on Tuesday.

That means starting out by building lots of different types of ships, but not producing any particular class en masse. Then, after studying what works best, the next step is to incorporate those designs into modern warships. The professors point in particular to the Type 052D destroyer, which China looks to now be setting down at the rate of two per year. That also means augmenting those ships with drones, and expanding the presence of Chinese robots to protect the Pacific coast. Late last month, China's military announced that it is planning to build 11 new drone bases along the coast for snooping over the ocean. China is also planning to launch eight ocean-monitoring satellites into orbit by 2020. Two of those are radar satellites, while two others watch ocean currents and four are 'for observing sea color,' according to the Xinhua News Agency.

What's scarier are China's missiles. They'd be the main weapon in the event of a war the U.S. Navy. But China's missile programs ' and especially nuclear programs ' are super-secretive. In August, China reportedly tested a new submarine-launched ballistic missile. And late last month, China was reported to have tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in July called the Dongfeng-41, which has a purported capability to deliver multiple nuclear warheads. But there are lingering questions and conflicting reporting over what China tested, exactly.

Gregory Kulacki, a China analyst at the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, doubted the reports that China tested an ICBM. 'China's nuclear posture is shrouded in secrecy and is difficult to discern, even by Chinese academic and military experts,' he wrote. If China really did test an ICBM, it could be a sign Beijing may be looking at building better ways to deliver its nukes. If not, then it's a sign China may be comfortable with sticking to upgrading its conventional forces, for now.

The reports of an ICBM test, which first appeared in the U.S. press, were later repeated by Chinese state television, but that doesn't necessarily imply government approval, either. China's defense ministry did confirm that the military conducted recent missile tests, but did not elaborate on their nature.

Which goes to demonstrate the difference in how Russia and China sees themselves on the international stage. Had Russia tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile, Moscow-based news agencies would be the first ones to tell the world. In China, it's a lot more secretive. But Russia also has a lot more to prove.

Perfume of War: Iran Makes Musk to Conceal Troops

Call it the Dior of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. In one of the more bizarre military inventions from Iran, the U.S. arch-enemy has reportedly developed a perfume machine to hide troops during combat.

Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency reported that an Iranian inventor created a 'fragrance making and spraying device to deceive enemies on the battlefield.' The invention, called 'Deceit Perfume' and jointly built as a 'strategic project of the armed forces,' is intended to camouflage the smell of gunpowder by spreading odors over 'vast areas.' Tehran's troops will also have a choice of four agreeable aromas: fresh air, rainy weather, seaside weather (for the navy) and tea, according to the news agency.

There's no telling how the device will deliver the perfume or how large it is ' perhaps it's in the shape of a gun ' but the machine is said to be a 'highly effective and strategic weapon for civil defense, and for pushing back enemy threats, surprise attacks and offenses,' inventor Mohammad Sadeh Pir-Tavana told Fars. Perhaps it could be used by Iran's 3,500-strong ninja army.

The device is mainly to be used during an unconventional war against a much larger foe, where the smell of cordite from a recent firefight could give away the location of Iranian insurgents. Instead of being alerted to the Iranians' presence by the smell, America's troops may be deceived into letting their guard down by the refreshing scent of an incoming rainstorm. On the other hand, if U.S. troops were actually chasing insurgents around in the middle of a hypothetical war with Iran, suddenly encountering the smell of tea ' or the scent of rainy weather when it's not cloudy or raining ' could be a dead giveaway that the insurgents are close after all. But never mind.

It wouldn't be the first time America's foes have attempted to militarize musk. In 2010, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was reported to have attempted to kill Saudi Arabian officials and clerics with poisoned perfume. The plot, though, apparently never made it past the planning stages, and which was to include robbing banks to pay for the plot. Iran's military fragrances are more defensive in nature.

The perfume machine is also just the latest ' and weirdest ' in a series of boasts and military projects announced by Tehran in recent days. The more conventional announcements include Iran building a new drone called the Shaparak, or Butterfly, which the Revolutionary Guards wants to equip with missiles. Minister of Defense Ahmad Vahidi reiterated on Monday that developing smart bombs constitutes 'one of the main and important strategies of the defense ministry.' Iran also announced on Monday that its drones are now operating with air defense units, and the the Islamic Republic is looking to boost its air defense grid with new missiles and an indigenous version of Russia's S-300 surface-to-air missile launcher.

The IAEA, meanwhile, believes Iran has doubled its number of nuclear centrifuges, but Iran is reportedly having trouble updating equipment needed to speed up uranium enrichment, which could be used to build a bomb.

Now for another far-out announcement, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said Tuesday that Iran plans to send warships near U.S. coasts within 'the next few years,' according to the Associated Press. But, erm, Tehran regularly makes announcements like that. And actually sending a warship ' while possible if Iran managed to get the money together and secured a resupply base in a country like Venezuela ' would be so pitiful a threat to the homeland that the U.S. military would instead 'probably be grateful for the opportunity to study an Iranian ship close up,' wrote National Post's Matt Gurney.

Suffice to say, if Iran ever does send a warship, somehow using a perfume machine to spray the scent of seaside weather doesn't sound like it will be very effective. Of course, the U.S. might not have reckoned with the ninja army. And we all know that ninjas will use every trick at hand ' including scent ' in order to sneak up and get you.

Nowhere to Hide: Secret Spy Sat Agency Plans Unblinking Array

The U.S. has a vast constellation of spy satellites in orbit. But these surveillance spacecraft have traditionally only been able to gaze down on a few small areas of the planet at a time, like flashlights probing the dark. And this, only with careful advance planning by human operators on the ground. America's satellites helped monitor and map bin Laden's Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound, but had to be told where to look by intel agents who gleaned key information from detained terror suspects and al-Qaida couriers they were tracking.

The National Reconnaissance Office, America's secretive spy satellite agency, wants to expand the current flashlight-like satellite deployment to a horizon-spanning, overhead spotlight that can illuminate vast swaths of the planet all at once. The agency also wants new spacecraft that can crunch the resulting data using sophisticated computer algorithms, freeing the satellites somewhat from their current reliance on human analysts.

If it works as planned, missions like the years-long hunt for bin Laden could become a lot easier for the U.S. But that's assuming the technology can be developed on time and on cost.

A National Reconnaissance Office budget document for this fiscal year, obtained by Secrecy News' Steven Aftergood through a Freedom of Information Act request, includes references to the technologies the secretive spy agency is acquiring today, and hopes to develop in coming years. Most of the details are blacked out in the heavily redacted, 450-page document. But 'it is still possible to glean at least fragmentary insight into the current state of the NRO,' Aftergood wrote. That includes the technological aspirations of the agency, which employs around 3,000 engineers, analysts and technicians around the globe.

Since 1961 the NRO, headquartered in northern Virginia, has maintained round-the-clock orbital surveillance with a classified arsenal of satellites, reportedly including Keyhole camera-sats, downward-scanning Lacrosse space radars and signals intelligence spacecraft with giant arrays for sucking up communications from Earth.

The NRO is looking for ways to expand that array in a hurry. The agency would like to rapidly launch and reposition orbital sensors to keep pace with fast-moving events on the ground. In pursuit of this 'temporal responsiveness,' the NRO said it would in 2012 'analyze other innovative space lift concepts and new entrants for potential launch of NRO payloads, including reusable launch vehicles.'

The only reusable launch vehicle in U.S. service today is the Air Force's secretive X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. The robotic, billion-dollar X-37B, built by Boeing, launches atop an Atlas rocket, can stay in orbit 15 months at a time while frequently changing orbits using its on-board maneuvering rockets, and lands like an airplane for refit and repair. The X-37B's pickup-bed-size payload bay is just big enough for a camera or other sensor.

According to the redacted budget plan, another NRO tech goal for 2012 is the deployment of a system able to 'provide intelligence data to warfighters in the field using mobile devices.' The Army, Marines and Air Force already use handheld Rover terminals ' devices like big, rugged smartphones ' for downloading video from aerial drones. It's not hard to imagine the NRO tweaking similar hardware for receiving satellite imagery relayed in near-real time from one of the NRO's far-flung ground stations.

This year the satellite agency is also aiming to 'enhance the detection and tracking of maritime vessels.' It's a task for which today's sensors are probably adequate, but for which computer processing could need to be upgraded. Quickly sifting through massive troves of overhead imagery to separate the telltale signatures of ships from potentially millions of square miles of uniform ocean likely requires more computing horsepower than the NRO had available before now.

The NRO's longer-term technological ambitions are more grand. The agency wants to be able to 'use multiple and different sensor types against the same target,' a goal that could require numerous satellites able to coordinate their orbits, each simultaneously pointing a different camera, radar or electronic eavesdropper at the same spot on Earth. That kind of 'fusing' can 'exponentially increase the value of the intelligence,' Scott Large, then-director of the NRO, said in his 2008 Congressional testimony.

But that's no simple task, according to researchers Thomas Schetter, Mark Campbell and Derek Surka, writing in the journal Artificial Intelligence in 2003. (That might seem like a long time ago, but new satellites take years to build and launch; as a result, today's constellation is built on yesterday's tech.) 'The key technology that will enable multiple, distributed satellites to achieve their potential ' is coordinated intelligent autonomy,' the researchers wrote. In other words, the machines need to be able to communicate fluently with each other as well as with their human operators on the ground. And they need to be able to make some decisions on their own regarding where to go and when.

That kind of coordinated autonomy does exist ' in the atmosphere. Last year the Naval Research Laboratory tested computer algorithms that allowed two aerial drones carrying different sensors to simultaneously scan the same target. The NRO could be eying a similar system for its next-gen satellites. Along those same lines, the NRO also wants future sats to 'take advantage of massive data sets, multiple data sources and high-speed machine processing to identify patterns without a prior knowledge or pattern definition.' In other words, to do a form of thinking for themselves.

Computer memory and electrical power are both critical to making all this proposed on-board computer automation possible. For that reason, the NRO also wants 'carbon nano-tube memory,' 'third-generation, long-duration' lithium ion batteries and 'next-generation, high-efficiency solar cells.'

But the agency's tech appetite might exceed its means. The government has a poor track record of designing, budgeting for and managing its spacecraft. 'Most of the Department of Defense's large space acquisition programs have collectively experienced billions of dollars in cost increases, stretched schedules and increased technical risks,' the Government Accountability Office reported last year. And many of the military space systems that made it into orbit ultimately suffered mechanical problems. We know less about the NRO's success rate because its systems are classified, but it's reasonable to assume the satellite agency has fared no better.

If the stars align and the NRO does get the new gear it wants, then America's future spy satellites could be more numerous, autonomous, maneuverable and cooperative, smarter and much, much more effective ' together forming a sort of high-tech, unblinking eye in space capable of finding and tracking terrorists, insurgents, enemy ships and, well, pretty much anything else on the Earth below.

But that's a big if.

What Obama Won't Say in Charlotte: War on Terror is Done

You're about to hear a lot from the Democratic National Convention about the Master of the World the rest of us call President Barack Obama. Since the Charlotte convention will place national security at the fore of Obama's reelection hopes, Democrats will show voters Obama The World Leader, Obama The War-Ender, and above all, Obama The Osama Killer. And all of this will risk Obama missing the greatest opportunity of all: declaring an end to the United States' 11 years of fear and bloody, expensive global counterterrorist war. 

Democrats, for the first time in decades, have an advantage with voters on national security. A June Fox News poll found Obama had a 13-point advantage on counterterrorism; and an August Reuters poll gave him a nine-point advantage on national security and foreign policy in general. And media reports about their imminent Charlotte confab indicate they'll seek to maximize that newfound advantage. Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe reported Monday that the convention will emphasize how Obama (mostly) ended the Iraq war and is drawing down in Afghanistan; how he's working with other countries on issues like preventing a nuclear Iran rather than in spite of them; and, especially, how he ordered the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden. More subtly ' but unmistakably ' they'll likely say that GOP nominee Mitt Romney is a geopolitical lightweight and a reckless warmonger.

But like the dog who finally catches the car, it's unclear if Democrats actually know what to do with their new national security bona fides. Because the portrait likely to be displayed in Charlotte leaves out most of what Obama's foreign policy really is, at least on counterterrorism: a continuation of the policies of George W. Bush's second term, when Bush sanded down his harder edges. (More about that in a second.) And, unless Obama really plans something dramatic and unexpected for his Thursday renomination speech, he'll miss a huge opportunity to say that the U.S.' painful and single-minded focus on counterterrorism can finally come to a safe, responsible end.

That opportunity comes as an inadvertent gift from Obama's political opposition. There was something missing from last week's Republican convention in Tampa: the paranoid, wasteful, divisive and effective politics of the 9/11 Era. You didn't hear a repeat of Sarah Palin's accusation that Obama is 'worried that someone won't read [al-Qaida] their rights,' as she did four years ago. Nor did you get a remix of  Zell Miller's (in)famous 2004 assertion that 'today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.' Since Romney thinks he can defeat Obama on a message of economic recovery, his convention relegated national security to the margins. Romney's own nomination speech tucked a short segment on global affairs toward the end. He did not discuss 9/11, nor the Afghanistan war ' as the Obama campaign didn't hesitate to remind reporters in blast-email after blast-email.

It was a striking break from the previous two GOP conventions and presidential elections. George W. Bush accepted renomination in 2004 by arguing that his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, was too weak and indecisive to defend the U.S. from another 9/11. McCain ran four years later by similarly arguing Obama was too weak and naive to protect America. It was a remarkably effective political message, marginalizing antiwar voices in the Democratic Party or convincing Dems to sound like Republicans. Yet Romney's 2012 version veered so sharply from that template that he earned a rebuke from the incredulous Republican pundit Bill Kristol.

A couple hundred drone strikes and a raid on a certain Pakistani compound probably make that message a nonstarter. But it remains to be seen how Obama capitalize on Romney's elision of national security. One option, the one that looks like it'll be on display in Charlotte, is to show that Obama can successfully handle the challenges of a dangerous world; and to argue that Romney can't.

A bolder option is to portray the newfound GOP silence on war as a sign of political consensus for the country to move beyond the 9/11 Era of indefinite war. It's the difference between mastering the game and changing the game. And it would give substance  to Obama's stump-speech line that the 'tide of war is receding.'

Obama isn't Bush. His approach to counterterrorism is more like a stiletto than Bush's sledgehammer. That contrast comes through when examining Obama's first term and Bush's first term. But when you look at Obama's first term and Bush's second term, the distinctions become blurrier. Obama tripled troop levels in Afghanistan, expanding Bush's build-up there. Obama waged an aggressive drone war in Pakistan ' one that began to take shape in Bush's final year in office ' and then expanded the shadow wars to Yemen, Somalia and East Africa. And of course, Obama kept Bush's Defense Secretary and his top general.

The day after Romney's speech, Obama told soldiers at Ft. Bliss that his administration has 'taken out more top al-Qaida terrorists than at any time since 9/11.' He has stopped fighting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility after bipartisan congressional opposition doomed one of his 2008 campaign pledges, and even found novel places to hold terrorism detainees. As the GOP convention ended, the Justice Department quietly announced it would not indict anyone for torturing detainees in CIA custody. Perhaps some of the Republicans' silence on national security is an implicit recognition that Obama has carried out their foreign policy better than they did.

But Obama has been less successful in articulating an end to the 9/11 Era Bush began, and it's a major disconnect at the heart of his national security record. On the one hand, the Obama team contends, credibly, that al-Qaida is practically a spent force as the result of drone attacks and commando raids stretching from the Horn of Africa to the Pakistani tribal areas. But on the other, it argues that those attacks have to continue indefinitely. Senior Obama counterterrorism professionals concede they actually haven't figured out how they'd even know if the terrorist movement is actually beaten. Obama can truthfully tell voters that he got U.S. troops out of Iraq ' although maybe he should credit Bush with acquiescing to the Iraqis' demand for that in 2008 ' and will end direct U.S. combat in Afghanistan by 2014. But he can't truthfully tell Americans that their unhappy experiment as a global counterterrorist force is finished as long as Predators loiter over Mirin Shah.

Similarly, Obama has said absolutely nothing for four years about rolling back expansive surveillance programs ' whether by the National Security Agency or the FBI ' that arose after 9/11. While that surveillance state was supposed to be a temporary response to an emergency, dismantling it remains a marginal political position, since politicians don't want to be smeared as terrorist fellow-travelers. It's gotten to the point where maintaining the wartime government apparatus ' sometimes  by design, sometimes by inertia ' isn't even a partisan issue. GOP Senator Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, has become one of the Senate's leading voices for civil liberties, and for it has been demagogued by the Democratic Senate leader. A majority of Americans want to end the Afghanistan war, yet relatively few Washington politicians heed them. (No wonder Obama will emphasize the end of his surge in Charlotte, rather than the surge itself.) If Obama wanted to change the politics of national security, the GOP convention has provided only his latest opportunity to do so.

Instead, there's a tempting alternative: calling Romney weak on national security. In the spring, Obama cut an advertisement highlighting a 2007 interview in which Romney said it wasn't worth 'moving heaven and earth' to find bin Laden ' omitting Romney's subsequent clarification that 'of course' the U.S. ought to kill al-Qaida's leader. The Democrats may not get that explicit in Charlotte. But key surrogates like  Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick argued on the convention's eve that 'bringing Osama bin Laden to justice' was among the major contrasts Obama ought to draw between himself and Romney. Kerry, the 2004 nominee who was attacked as weak on security, plans to give a major speech arguing, 'You can't be strong at home if you are not strong in the world.' Message: Romney is a pussy.

In fairness, any president who avenged 9/11 would be guilty of political malpractice if he didn't remind voters he had Osama bin Laden killed. But it's a question of what Obama says about the significance of that death. It could be the way to credibly say that al-Qaida's days are numbered, and that the U.S. is only a few drone strikes away from its long-awaited victory in the war on terrorism. But if all Obama does is to include the bin Laden raid in a laundry list of national-security achievements, the best he can do is argue that he can be trusted to keep waging a global war that no one actually talks about successfully ending.

To do so requires taking a risky political choice. As Rand Paul learned when he argued that it's time to let the Patriot Act expire, politicians who argue that the terrorist emergency is a waning threat are constantly at risk of being slimed. Yet unless political leaders finally make that choice, they'll find their broader geopolitical ambitions constrained. Obama talks a lot about 'pivoting' to a focus on core U.S. commercial interests in Asia, yet his real foreign policy is found in the climbing tally of drone strikes worldwide. If Obama wants to change that ' and the GOP gave him the chance to ' the place to start is Charlotte.

China Now Using a Cruise Ship to Haul Troops and Tanks

The media freaked out about China's crappy aircraft carrier and hyperventilated over the J-20 stealth fighter. But China's newest addition to its military is more subtle, and stylish. It's a 36,000-ton pleasure boat capable of disgorging thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles held inside its belly.

That would be the Bahai Sea Green Pearl, a 36,000-ton ferry and cruise ship commissioned in August at Yantai Port in China's northeastern Shandong Province. At heart a vessel for pleasure and civilian transport, the ship is intended to normally ferry cars and passengers across the Yellow Sea. But when needed by the People's Liberation Army, the Green Pearl can double as a troop carrier. During its launching ceremony and demonstration on Aug. 8, PLA troops could be seen loading dozens of tanks, artillery pieces and armored vehicles on board.

Photos from Chinese state television posted to the China Defense Blog show some of the action, including what looks like fully loaded soldiers running through a corridor. Tanks and artillery pieces are also seen inside one of the ship's three vehicle compartments. How they got there: via the ship's roll-on/roll-off (or ro-ro) ramp on its stern.

China also has three more of the vessels under construction, which Zhang Wei, chief of the PLA's Military Transportation Department under the PLA General Logistics Department, said is a 'new leap in our military use of civilian vessels to improve the strategic projection.' The Green Pearl reportedly has room for more than 2,000 people and 300 cars. It's even got a helicopter pad.

It's also got luxury. When the ship isn't ferrying civilians, China's troops could take in the pleasure of tall windows for observing 'the beautiful scenery of the sea,' reported the Yantai Daily Media Group. Not only that, but rooms ' which range from first to third class ' are equipped with televisions, cellphone signal amplifiers and wireless internet access. And if the troops get bored in their rooms, there's always mingling in one of two staterooms and a cafe. There are even rooms set aside for reading and chess. And no cruise ship would be complete without some collective entertainment at a multi-purpose auditorium. If troops are feeling cooped up, they can always go above deck for excursions in the sun.

However, the Green Pearl is by no means a true amphibious assault ship. There's no indication of any landing craft, or any ability to launch them. The ship needs a proper dock to gets its heavier equipment onto land. That mostly rules out launching an invasion of troops while sitting (relatively) safely off-shore. Instead, the ship is more accurately called something like an 'amphibious augmentation' platform. It can base a helicopter, and it can follow up an amphibious assault with more troops ' after a landing site is secure.

It's also not a new concept. Using civilian ships for double duty is 'entirely in keeping with Chinese practices reaching back for centuries,' Jim Holmes, an associate professor of strategy at the Navy War College, tells Danger Room. For Western navies, that practice dated up until the 18th century. And today, the U.S. uses mixed military and commercial ships to refuel at sea, Holmes says.

China has also been building up its fleet of amphibious assault ships, which could be at the front line of an invasion of Taiwan, say. That is, if China could conceivably launch one. But probably not. Since 2008, China has launched four Yuzhao-class, or Type 081 amphibious assault ships. The lead ship was deployed to fight pirates near Somalia. China is also reportedly working on a newer, bigger amphibious ship called the Type 081 (.pdf).

What's more likely is using the Green Pearl for 'soft power' operations distant from China's shores. 'Beijing seems rather comfortable with the situation in the Taiwan Strait and is clearly looking beyond Taiwan, as it has been for some time now,' Holmes says. 'Such a vessel could be a workhorse for any mission involving amphibious operations, meaning humanitarian relief.'

That could mean delivering aid, transporting doctors and engineers to a country beset by an emergency. And there's always port calls. That is, making stops in countries friendly to China while carrying a contingent of visiting officers and diplomats on board.

And not that China's new cruise ships of war have any chance of matching the United States' own massive fleet of commercial transport ships available for military duties. The U.S. has 60 privately owned commercial ships available to be called upon by the Navy under the Department of Transportation's Maritime Security Program. Most of those are heavy-duty container vessels, but 17 of them are ro-ro ships.

According to the DoT's Maritime Administration (.pdf), the Navy has relied on them to lift troops during the Persian Gulf War, and into Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo, and has had to rely on those commercial ships even more in recent years to fight the war in Iraq. The United Kingdom famously hauled troops during the Falklands War with the Queen Elizabeth 2.

In the meantime, let the PLA take in the scenic views and relax to the soothing hum of the Green Pearl's engines. Unlike the U.S. and British cruise and ro-ro ships of war, there's not a huge chance of China's new pleasureboat invading anyone any time soon.