Aptima, MITRE, Lockheed To Extend Human Intelligence To UAVS for genocide

[Eckhart Tolle]

Aptima Teams Up To Extend Human Intelligence To UAVS
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http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Aptima_Teams_Up_To_Extend_Human_Intelligence_To_UAVS_999.html

by Staff Writers
Woburn MA (SPX) Aug 06, 2010

In less than a decade, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have evolved from a curiosity on the battlefield to a core 'eyes in the sky' resource for the US military. Yet, as more UAVs enter the battlespace for new and novel uses, these unmanned systems will need to operate more intelligently and autonomously, evading enemy hazards and adapting to the changing mission conditions with reduced human intervention. To meet the challenge of how human knowledge can be transferred to machine systems, Aptima and the Cognitive Engineering Research Institute are developing MIMIC, the "Mixed Initiative Machine for Instructed Computing," a capability for capturing and conveying to UAVs the flight control and decision-making expertise lodged in the heads of humans. MIMIC is being developed through a contract with the Office of Naval Research (ONR), to help ONR to create a next generation of intelligent UAVs that can operate more autonomously, allowing the UAV for example, to infer mission threats and more quickly avoid adversary actions, to self-launch or land, and to make necessary flight control decisions when communications are disrupted, or the human operator's attention is divided amongst several UAVs.

MIMIC in Action
MIMIC is a hybrid model that integrates psychological learning theory and rapid machine learning algorithms to enable the human operator to teach the UAV new tactical and flight control behaviors. The research and experimentation that underlies MIMIC is being conducted using Aptima's DDD (r) simulation environment. As a multi-UAV simulator, DDD employs a unique user interface that logs and tracks every interaction of the human UAV operator as they're engaged in a mission involving, multiple UAVs, numerous target objectives and a myriad of constraints such as weather, hazards, fuel, speed, and other aircraft. Using software-based agents, MIMIC will build a mental model of the human operator as they perform mission tasks, observing and learning the flight control behaviors and tactical decision-making. "The goal of automation is for the system to become aware of the user's intentions and objectives, such that it has learned the 'play,' knows how to execute it, and can facilitate or assist what needs to happen next," said Nathan Schurr, MIMIC Program Manager at Aptima.

Rather than the tedious step-by-step process of a human attempting to train a UAV system, MIMIC's agent-based technology learns from a user's actual behaviors, from which it can then anticipate and predict when to automate a sequence of actions or processes. "Considering that it currently takes a team of people to control a single UAV, the development of intelligent interfaces will flip that model, elevating the human to a level where an individual can operate and manage multiple unmanned vehicles," Dr. Schurr added.

Aptima, which applies expertise in how humans think, learn, and behave to solving complex military problems was awarded MIMIC through the Department of Defense Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR), which provides early-stage R and D funding directly to small companies working cooperatively with researchers at universities and other research institutions.

[Dig]

er....


RED FING ALERT!

[firefly]

Sounds like the beginning of Skynet  Once they hook it up to Big Dog too, they'll have it covered 

[Dig]

Aptima wins multiple unmanned vehicle contracts with U.S. Army, Navy
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/index/display/article-display/312880/articles/military-aerospace-electronics/online-news/aptima-wins-multiple-unmanned-vehicle-contracts-with-us-army-navy.html

WOBURN, Mass., 25 Nov. 2007. Aptima Inc., a leader in human-centered engineering, announced the award of three contracts for developing technologies to improve the control and functions of unmanned air, land, and sea vehicles (UxVs) and their integration into military operations. The Army and Navy contracts address a continuum, scaling from how individual unmanned vehicles, such as drones, can be operated with fewer personnel, to the coordination of teams of UxVs used in joint military operations.

Having evolved from a battlefield curiosity to today's use in urban warfare -- for surveillance, to detect and disarm IEDs, and as weapons systems -- UxVs are a key part of the U.S. military's transformation. The pursuit of a "mixed initiative" force of the future that combines humans and robotics requires that unmanned vehicles systems possess 1) greater intelligence by learning from humans, and 2) that human operators wield greater control over the types and number of unmanned air, land, and sea vehicles that can be coordinated simultaneously across missions.

Aptima will address UxVs at the individual, networked, and team of teams levels -- illustrated by three of the contracts below:

C2RAD (Command and Control of Small Robotics Assets Display)
To support the human operator in the field using a robotic vehicle as a forward observer, C2RAD will provide an integrated display that both maps and shows locations of red, green, and blue entities, such as snipers, obstacles, and friendly forces, and shares that data with other troops and command.

Aptima and Lockheed Martin will develop C2RAD to overcome the challenges that lie at the interfaces between human and machine, and between human operators and commanders. Applying new scientific principles concerning human-to-robot and human-to-human collaboration, C2RAD is envisioned as the interface on a handheld device that plans the route of the robotic asset and links its intelligence to others, such as members of a platoon that may be operating in harm's way. This will dramatically improve the real-time situational awareness of field troops and the larger mission concerns by command and control.

MIMIC (Mixed Initiative Machine Instructed Computing)
While unmanned aerial vehicles have advanced, particularly in imagery interpretation, for UAVs to reach full potential as autonomous systems, they will need to "learn" tactical behaviors for operating in unexpected situations and in uncertain environments. The development of MIMIC will help these unmanned systems perform more independently, capturing the knowledge of human operators, and embedding in the control devices the decision-making skills of UAV commanders as to how they generate, select, and execute maneuvers in evading and deceiving the enemy.

COSMIC (Collaborative Optimization System for Mixed-Initiative Control)
For large-scale military operations, such as fleets conducting searches and monitoring large bodies of water for mines and safe ingress and egress, COSMIC will provide a collaborative environment allowing human operators onboard naval combat systems, carriers, or aircraft, to coordinate multiple unmanned vehicles. Building on Aptima's MiDAS project (Mission Displays for Autonomous Systems), COSMIC will help ensure optimal performance of UAV controllers functioning as a team in order to accomplish multiple missions occurring simultaneously.

COSMIC's tools will facilitate the processes that include global resource planning, mission monitoring, and re-planning. Integrated with Lockheed Martin's ICARUS (Intelligent Control and Autonomous Replanning of Unmanned Systems), COSMIC will reduce the human operator workload while improving the shared situation awareness across the entire mission team.

[Dig]

Aptima Lands Unmanned Vehicle Contracts with U.S. Army, Navy
http://aero-defense.ihs.com/news/aptima-umv-contracts.htm
November 19, 200

Aptima Inc. was awarded three contracts for developing technologies to improve the control and functions of unmanned air, land and sea vehicles (UxVs) and their integration into military operations. The Army and Navy contracts address a continuum, scaling from how individual unmanned vehicles, such as drones, can be operated with fewer personnel, to the coordination of teams of UxVs used in joint military operations. According to Aptima, UxVs, which are used for surveillance, to detect and disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and as weapons systems, have become a key part of the U.S. military's transformation.

The company said pursuit of a mixed initiative force of the future that combines humans and robotics requires that unmanned vehicles systems possess greater intelligence by learning from humans and that human operators wield greater control over the types and number of unmanned air, land and sea vehicles that can be coordinated simultaneously across missions.

Aptima will address UxVs at the individual, networked and team-of-teams levels, illustrated by the following three contracts:

Command and control of small robotics assets display (C2RAD).

To support the human operator in the field using a robotic vehicle as a forward observer, C2RAD will provide an integrated display that both maps and shows locations of red, green and blue entities, such as snipers, obstacles and friendly forces, and shares that data with other troops and command.


C2RAD is envisioned as the interface on a handheld device that plans the route of the robotic asset and links its intelligence to others, such as members of a platoon that may be operating in harm's way. Aptima said this will improve the real-time situational awareness of field troops and the larger mission concerns by command and control.

Mixed initiative machine instructed computing (MIMIC).

While unmanned aerial vehicles have advanced, particularly in imagery interpretation, for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to reach full potential as autonomous systems, they need to learn tactical behaviors for operating in unexpected situations and in uncertain environments, according to Aptima.

The development of MIMIC is aimed at helping these unmanned systems perform more independently, capturing the knowledge of human operators and embedding in the control devices the decision-making skills of UAV commanders as to how they generate, select and execute maneuvers in evading and deceiving the enemy.

Collaborative optimization system for mixed-initiative control (COSMIC).

For large-scale military operations, such as fleets conducting searches and monitoring large bodies of water for mines and safe ingress and egress, COSMIC will provide a collaborative environment allowing human operators onboard naval combat systems, carriers or aircraft to coordinate multiple unmanned vehicles. COSMIC's tools will facilitate the processes that include global resource planning, mission monitoring and replanning.

[Dig]

Mapping the Terrain of War Corporatism:
The Human Terrain System within the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
http://zeroanthropology.net/all-posts/mapping-the-terrain-of-war-corporatism-the-human-terrain-system-within-the-military-industrial-academic-complex/
UPDATED: 03 March 2010; 17 March 2010; 19 March 2010; 22 March 2010; 26 April 2010; 03 June 2010; 05 June 2010

By Maximilian C. Forte

At least 33  corporations have vested interests, through contracts gained, in supporting the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS) in particular, and in the development of “human terrain” capabilities across various branches of the Army apart from HTS (see for example: “The Pentagon’s “Other” Human Terrain System?“). Most of the newspaper coverage of HTS has focused almost exclusively on the role of BAE Systems, and the claimed “nationalization” of HTS1 (turning HTS employees into government workers, specifically labeled “intelligence analysts”) has not meant either the decline or disappearance of private contracting. Recruitment, training, and the design and equipping of technology used by HTS, and other human terrain branches in the Army, are all in the hands of private contractors. Several HTS employees have been, or continue to be, also employees of these corporations. There is considerable overlap and movement of senior personnel between several of these corporations and HTS in particular. Some of these individuals know each other from past work conducted for some of these private contractors.

Any suggestion that HTS is not about supporting war, and separate from the military-industrial complex and corporate war-profiteering, is at the very least naïve or disingenuous. As soon as corporations become such a significant part of the picture, arguments about “saving lives,” “peace keeping,” and “cultural sensitivity” become, at the very best, secondary concerns. The main concern for any corporation is the accumulation of capital. The main concern for any war corporatist is the accumulation of capital derived from engagement in warfare – the main drive is to maintain the war that produces the contracts that generate revenue and growth. HTS is thus very much part of the neoliberal economy of warfare, and academics are recruited – regardless of whatever they believe were the reasons for their recruitment – in order to support imperial warfare and thus to expand the profits of empire. Indeed, it would seem that several of the more outspoken HTS recruits from academia have been extremely naïve in their representations of the nature and purpose of their work – either naïve, or consciously duplicitous and cynical.

It should also be noted that several of these corporations (Lincoln) have been found to have roles in planting propaganda in foreign newspapers, which later fed back into U.S. domestic media coverage of foreign wars, and have performed roles in domestic spying (BAE Systems, Science Applications International Corporation [SAIC], MZM Inc.) and building domestic “counterterrorism” and “homeland security” capabilities (ManTech, and others). What is thus also being constructed, with the aid of HTS as pretext and justification, is the further development of repressive technologies aimed at the U.S. public. This is part of the blowback of empire against democracy at home.

HTS spokespersons have stressed that HTS does not do “intelligence” work, and nor do they support better targeted killing. With respect to the intelligence issue, usually we are faced with conflicting definitions of “intelligence” and some human terrain proponents do in fact speak of “ethnographic intelligence” and “cultural intelligence.”2 The point is that some of these companies are in fact primarily interested in intelligence work, according to their own terms. Booz Allen Hamilton explicitly seeks people who have extensive experience in the U.S. “intelligence community,” to train HTS recruits. The Walsingham Group is simultaneously engaged in “Human Factors & Human Social Cultural Behavioral Programs” and “Intelligence, CI/HUMINT, SOF & Irregular Warfare Support”, mixing interests with a Special Ops background, and support for Homeland Security. HTS contractors certainly have a “dark side” that the promotional propaganda for the human terrain doctrine obscures. Some are explicit that their technology, such as Ascend’s Tactical Ground Reporting device, is intended to “increase combat effectiveness.” One of the contractors, CACI, was at the heart of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. In Iraq, the Wexford Group, now owned by CACI, was directly involved in supporting the targeted killing of people suspected of laying IEDs, supporting what were called “small kill teams” (note also HTS’ origins in the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defense Organization, JIEDDO). SCIA has also developed maps explicitly for the purpose of pinpointing the presence of “insurgents” or “bad guys” based on recorded behavior patterns.

Some of the companies also seem perfectly innocuous, lacking a profile or mission that is primarily military or intelligence-oriented. Some also lack more than very superficial websites that do little beyond providing a generic commercial image, a name, and maybe contact information – with nothing indicated about clients or contracts, or even who are the main officers of the company. Not all of the companies are American – at least one, MTC Technologies, is a Canadian company. Another of the companies is owned by American Indians.

Especially interesting are the several cases of clear overlaps between the companies’ personnel and consultants. For example, one will find overlaps between Georgia Tech, Aptima, and Mitre, in the figure of Eduardo Salas. Kari Kelton of Aptima also served HTS.3 HTS’ Steve Rotkoff is also tied to McNeil Technologies. Strong links tie Glevum Associates, the Lincoln Group, and HTS, to the extent that their senior personnel seem to be triplicated across all three: HTS’ Milan Sturgis, at the heart of a sexual harassment scandal,4 works as a consultant for Glevum; Alicia Boyd and Laurie Adler, both formerly with Lincoln, moved into HTS, and now Adler has moved into Glevum (for more on Adler see here and here). Daniel Wolfe, IT Director for HTS is closely tied to both Glevum and USI. Charlie King worked for both HTS and Wexford – CACI.5 We also learn that STI, a contractor for HTS, was owned by Blackwater, the mercenary corporation now called Xe. In addition, HTS’ Audrey Roberts, who we know from her glowing sales articles about HTS in the Journal of International Peace Operations (see here and here), has also served as a Research Associate for the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) and Assistant Editor of its journal (JIPO) — the point being that IPOA is an association of private military corporations, including the likes of Blackwater.

1 DeYoung, Karen. (2009). U.S. moves to replace contractors in Iraq: Blackwater losing security role; other jobs being converted to public sector. The Washington Post, March 17, A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/16/AR2009031602720_pf.html

2 Renzi, Fred, Lieutenant Colonel. (2006). Networds: Terra Incognita and the Case for Ethnographic Intelligence. Military Review, Sept-Oct. http://www.diigo.com/cached? url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.army.mil%2Fprofessional writing%2Fvolumes%2 Fvolume4%2Fdecember_ 2006%2F12_06_1.; Delp, Benjamin T. (2008). Ethnographic Intelligence (ETHINT) and Cultural Intelligence (CULINT): Employing under-utilized strategic intelligence gathering disciplines for more effective diplomatic and military planning. IIIA Technical Paper 08-02. Institute for Infrastructure and Information Assurance, James Madison University, April. http://www.box.net/shared/ha5x74mccc; Flynn, Michael T., Major General; Captain Matt Pottinger; and, Paul D. Batchelor. (2010). Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan. Center for a New American Security, January.http://www.box.net/shared/9yudnxm9xg; Naquin, Doug. (2007). Remarks by Doug Naquin, Director, Open Source Center. CIRA Newsletter, 32 (4) Winter.http://www.box.net/shared/xy7tlnmb5e; see also a growing list of papers and reports that tie HTS to intelligence work, understood on the many different levels of “intelligence”: http://www.diigo.com/user/openanthropology/HTS%20intelligence

3 http://www.diigo.com/cached?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.
com%2Fpub%2Fkari-kelton%2F15%2F530%2F876

4 http://zeroanthropology.net/2009/02/26/some-breaking-news-on-the-human-terrain-system-death-threats/

5 http://www.diigo.com/cached?url=http://www.linkedin.com/pub/king-charlie-col-r/a/175/916

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Research for this report was done in part with the aid of references from the writings of John Stanton and Roberto J. González, as well as additional independent research. Further updates were produced with the assistance of Benjamin Hirschfield and Roberto J. González.

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First, this is the complete list of companies compiled to date:

(1) Alpha Ten Technologies, Inc.
(2) Aptima, Inc.
(3) Archimedes
(4) Ascend Intelligence (General Dynamics C4 Systems)
(5) BAE Systems
(6) Booz Allen Hamilton
(7) Careerstone Group
(8 ) Connecting Cultures
(9) Echota Technologies Corporation
(10) Georgia Tech Applied Research Corporation
(11) Glevum Associates
(12) K3 Enterprises
(13) Lincoln Group
(14) MASY Group
(15) McNeil Technologies
(16) MITRE
(17) Monitor 360
(18 ) MTC Technologies
(19) MZM, Inc.
(20) NEK Advanced Securities Group, Inc.
(21) Northrop Grumman Corporation
(22) Overwatch Systems
(23) RAND Corporation
(24) RTI International
(25) SAIC
(26) SCIA Solutions LLC
(27) Sensor Technologies (ManTech International Corporation)
(28 ) USI Inc.
(29) Wexford Group – CACI
(30) CLI Solutions
(31) Walsingham Group
(32) Integrated Training Solutions
(33) i2 and ESRI

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
A Breakdown of Private Corporations’ Human Terrain Activities

What follows below are notes and extracts from published reports on the corporations listed, particularly in connection with their human terrain work, and links to sources and the companies’ webpages.
(1) Alpha Ten Technologies, Inc.

http://www.alphaten.com

From Roberto González: “After Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, there was a boom in funding for projects focused on human terrain research and “culture-centric” warfare, and this attracted dozens of companies from the military-industrial complex-BAE Systems, Aptima Corporation, MITRE, the RAND Corporation, Wexford Group, MTC Technologies, NEK Advanced Securities Group, and Alpha Ten to name a few.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/price02032009.html

(2) Aptima, Inc.: Human-Centered Engineering

http://www.aptima.com

“Effectively countering this new enemy requires a shift in strategy and tactics to focus on the ‘human terrain’ – the territory that Aptima knows best. Our unique and innovative approach couples social science principles with rigorous quantitative, computational methods to provide our customers with enhanced capabilities to optimize the Blue layer, defeat the Red layer, and influence the Green layer” (http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:XSCn4bmG1hIJ:www.aptima.com/domains.php%3Fdomain_id%3D1+%22aptima%22+human+terrain).

Kari Kelton on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kari-kelton/15/530/876) who served as Technical Director / Assistant Director of Assessment at Human Terrain System, US Army TRADOC, also served as Director of National Security Solutions at Aptima, Inc.

Aptima, together with MITRE, won a $4.5 million contract for “Mapping the Human Terrain” (MAP-HT):

“The Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) validated the capability need of MAP-HT JCTD as an FY-07 new start. The outcome of MAP-HT is to develop an integrated, open source, spatially/relationally/temporally referenced human terrain data collection and visualization toolkit to support BCT/RCTs in understanding human terrain. The objective is to deploy MAP-HT toolkit to Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIMM) elements (e.g. USAID, DEA, Coalition Partners). MAP-HT will provide a joint common relevant picture of the human terrain for use by tactical elements, operational commanders, theater planners, interagency organizations, and coalition partners. The fundamental problem addressed by the MAP-HT JCTD is to provide an integrated capability (organization, methods, tools) to the Joint, Service, or Inter-agencies that will effectively collect/consolidate, visualize, and understand open source socio-cultural (“green data”) information that will assist Commanders in understanding the ‘human terrain’ in which they operate. This basic understanding will help to reduced IED incidents via improved situational awareness of the human terrain by using ‘green layer data/unclassified’ information to understand key population points to win the ‘will and legitimacy’ fights and surface the insurgent IED networks. This will also increase the socio-cultural knowledge base for operational units and will increase the dissemination of current information to trainers and the intelligence community. The overall project context for MAP-HT is development and deployment ‘by, through, and with’ deployed units in contact. MAP-HT will directly support joint and combined operations. In addition to Army support, the US Marine Corps sees substantial merit in an institutionalized human terrain capability. The key to success in this endeavor is to stop the loss of human terrain data during unit rotations. To do so, a capability (people, process, and tools) must be further developed to provide a means for commanders and their supporting operations sections to collect data on human terrain, create, store, and disseminate information from this data, and use the resulting understanding as an element of combat power. While information and SME support are the primary MAP-HT thrusts, development and integration work will also be performed to allow commanders to visualize cultural information in geospatial and social network contexts. Compliant with the Joint Force Generation cycle, MAP-HT will also support training commands that prepare warfighters for deployment. USEUCOM has included this in their Roadmap, and is also included in the DOD Irregular Warfare Roadmap.
• Lead Service: US Army• User Sponsor and OM: USCENTCOM
• USSOCOM, USEUCOM, USJFCOM
• Technical Manager: US Army ERDC-TEC
• Technical Agents: US Army TRADOC-DCSINT, USMC TECOM, USSOCOM
• Transition Mgr: DCGS-A; DCGS-MC; DCGS-SOF;SOCOM SOAL PEO IIS
• Industry: MITRE, Aptima
• FY 2007 Planned Output: Spiral .5 and Spiral 1 – Develop baseline for MAP-HT Toolkit, Develop ID and MP. Focus on continued evolution of the prototype MAP-HT Tool, enhancement of relevant data collection and analysis/visualization tools, and development of doctrine and TTPs.
• FY08 Planned Output: Spiral 2 will refine the doctrinal implications of Spiral 1, advance the core knowledge management tools, add capabilities in knowledge discovery and advanced”
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:HskHsbJwf6YJ:www.dtic.mil/descriptivesum/Y2008/OSD/0603648D8Z.pdf+%22aptima%22+%22human+terrain%22&cd=30&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

See also Aptima’s published work: Cultural Agent Model to Predict inHabitant Opinion Reactions (CAMPHOR): Building and Applying a Dynamic Human Terrain Map: http://www.dodccrp.org/events/13th_iccrts_2008/CD/html/papers/156.pdf — Authors: Yuri Levchuk, Aptima Inc., 1726 M Street, N.W., Suite 900, Washington, DC 20036,Phone: (202) 842-1548×323; Alexander Lubyansky, Aptima Inc., 1726 M Street, N.W., Suite 900, Washington, DC 20036; Phone: (202) 842-1548x 338

And see Aptima’s “The Human Element in Intelligence Analysis”:
http://www.aptima.com/case_studies.php?case_study_id=3

On 02 July, 2009, William Salter of Aptima, Inc. (12 Gill Street Suite 1400, Woburn, MA 01801, Phone: (781) 496-2428) was awarded a Defense contract for Topic# OSD 08-CR7: “Cultural Awareness for Military Operations (CAMO)”:

“Abstract: Aptima is proposing an innovative approach to developing relevant, effective military cultural training. The Cultural Awareness for Military Operations (CAMO) proof-of-concept prototype will be based on theoretically grounded and empirically validated pedagogy. It will result in a serious game built on the Delta3D game engine. Delta3D is a key development component of the Deployable Virtual Training Environment (DVTE), a laptop based training platform already adopted by the Marine Corps. CAMO will thus be on a smooth technical transition path. It will adapt to learner knowledge, background, and progress, incorporating proven training measurement technology, already effectively applied in the DVTE environment, that greatly facilitates the design, construction, and collection of valid measures. CAMO will contain accurate and relevant cultural content, with Phase I development focusing on general cultural awareness and skills. This will lay the groundwork for further elaboration in Phase II and for developing culture-specific training as well. It will be grounded in both academic research (ensured by our collaborator, Professor Lynn Smith-Lovin of Duke University) and detailed familiarity with military training requirements, ensured by interactions with military subject matter experts. It will therefore address vital military requirements and should be on track for rapid transition to operational use.”
http://www.dodsbir.net/selections/abs083/osdabs083.htm (see also video game development projects for learning the “human terrain” on that same page)

Eduardo Salas also served as a consultant to Aptima as a Principal Investigator for: “Human Terrain System (HTS) & Multicultural team training project,” Georgia Tech Research Institute (12/08 – 9/09; $522,091) – from: http://www.psych.ucf.edu/CV/Salas%20CV%20AUG%2023,%202009.pdf

From Roberto González: “After Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, there was a boom in funding for projects focused on human terrain research and “culture-centric” warfare, and this attracted dozens of companies from the military-industrial complex-BAE Systems, Aptima Corporation, MITRE, the RAND Corporation, Wexford Group, MTC Technologies, NEK Advanced Securities Group, and Alpha Ten to name a few.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/price02032009.html

[Dig]

‘Under modern conditions any effective invitation to Hell will certainly appear in the guise of scientific planning – as Hitler's régime in fact did.’
CS Lewis, ‘A Reply to Professor Haldane’ (c. 1946)

As I’ve said in the Afterword to Peculiar Lives, it’s my sincere hope that readers will be able to experience my novella in isolation from its literary influences. The book is designed to stand alone, and if it doesn’t then I’ve failed to achieve something which I set out to do1.

However. The novella wears its debt to the novelist Olaf Stapledon on its sleeve, to say the least, and it’s deliberately immersed, both stylistically and in terms of theme and content, in the British tradition of the ‘scientific romance’ – the intellectual science fiction of the pre- and inter-War years.

I’m more familiar with this milieu than most, having written in detail about the fiction of (among others) HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, CS Lewis, Aldous Huxley and, of course, Stapledon himself, as part of my doctoral thesis. I don’t expect my readers to be similarly conversant. So here – purely, it must be said, for the entertainment of those who wish to delve a little deeper into the book’s themes – are some notes relating the novella to this cultural background.

As the Afterword suggests, ideas of long-term social planning and the biological perfectibility of ‘mankind’ had become an intellectual commonplace after the First World War. Perhaps, as my character Gideon Beech suggests, it was the War itself – an evident and horrific failure of humanity on the part of much of Europe’s population – which made such ideas so appealing. However, they had already been apparent in embryo in late Victorian imperialistic attitudes, and in the early models of evolution which saw humanity’s development as an ‘ascent’ from the status of the animals.

Certainly these and similar notions were highly popular among the intellectuals of the day. In Gaudy Night (1935), the detective novelist Dorothy L Sayers has a minor character who campaigns for ‘the sterilisation of the unfit, and the encouragement of matrimony amongst the intelligentsia.’ Sayers herself was a Christian humanist, both liberal and humane in her outlook, and Miss Schuster-Slatt’s views are most certainly not hers nor those of her protagonists. Even so, the character is treated as a harmless crank, as comic relief in fact, and not – as a modern novel would surely depict her – as a dangerous madwoman or fanatic.

Similar views were held by many among the literati of Europe and America, as well as scientists such as the Marxist biologist JBS Haldane. Prof John Carey’s book The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992) charts their evolution in the literature of the time, particularly in the works of Wells, Shaw, DH Lawrence, Graham Greene and various writers of the Bloomsbury set2. What Carey does not mention is that this complex of ideas was particularly prevalent in the science fiction of the era, which as a future-oriented genre paid particularly close attention to the question of humanity’s fulfilment, or otherwise, of its social and biological potential.

One manifestation of these ideas in SF was the prevalence of the ‘superman’ story, wherein a ‘highly evolved’ and superior human being is born, usually by a genetic accident, and demonstrates his superiority to contemporary humanity before (usually) they kill him. The implication is that contemporary humanity is not yet ready to face its responsibilities, but that the superman’s day will come. The classic of this sub-genre is JD Beresford’s The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911), after which the ‘Hampdenshire Programme’ in Peculiar Lives is named3.

There were other manifestations, however. Much futuristic fiction of the time portrays (usually approvingly) extensively thought-out programmes for the sociological and scientific ‘improvement’ of humanity. The aim of these is usually to improve people morally, as well as physically and intellectually: to create, as Beech suggests, a world in which the horrors of the Great War could never recur. This is, of course, a long-term end, and so far as it goes an admirable one. It is the means which the authors usually suggest for attaining it which tend to horrify the modern reader.

The usual proposal – seen to its fullest extent in works like Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come (1933) – was for the establishment of a global scientific elite who would take over the responsibility for ‘directing’ the masses. Their enlightened will would be enforced, both politically in the short term with education and indoctrination, and biologically in the long term with eugenics and (what we would now refer to as) genetic engineering.

The parallels with the principles and methods which informed Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich are obvious (a point which Carey’s book makes rather heavy-handedly, by analysing Mein Kampf (1926) alongside the work of the British intellectuals). The Nazis’ brainwashing of the younger generation of Germans, their attempts to remove from the gene-pool all those whom they considered unfit, their Nietszchean cult of the superman and even their rhetoric of a society which would last for a thousand years, are all profoundly reminiscent of the programmes which Wells and others had been formulating in their fiction.

This is not to say that Wells and co were Nazis themselves, nor even necessarily right-wing in their outlook4. Most certainly the racial premises on which Hitler based his Final Solution would not have presented themselves to these writers in the same terms. While the idea that the different ‘races’ of humanity had different intrinsic characteristics was a commonplace of the time, the proposition that certain races were essentially inferior (or even evil), to the extent that they must be wiped out, was one that most contemporary intellectuals would certainly have blanched at.

Nor is it the case that such assumptions were universally accepted, or that such programmes of futurological planning had no critics. Huxley’s dystopia Brave New World (1932) famously presents a future based on precisely these lines as being a living hell, while Lewis was vocal on the faults of what he called the ‘metabiological heresy’.

Nevertheless, in working to generate a cultural climate in which such ideas were admired, in proselytising so enthusiastically for a eugenic solution to the problem of building a utopia for humanity, Wells and his disciples must bear some portion of the responsibility for making the Holocaust possible. Ironically, their crime was one of lack of imagination. The real-world implications of the philosophies which they had expressed in fiction – and in particular the extensive and horrific human suffering which these implications entailed – seem to have been beyond their ability to predict.

* * *

In Peculiar Lives, the general rule is that writers who were dead by 1950, when the narrative is supposedly written, are referred to by their real names and identities. HG Wells (1866-1946), in particular, is mentioned repeatedly – it would have been impossible to discuss the history of British science fiction without mentioning him by name – and indeed The Time Machine (1896) is quoted directly on p72, as an example of Victorian thinking in SF (This was a somewhat quixotic decision on my part, as – in contrast with the Stapledon quotes, which Olaf Stapledon's son John Stapledon kindly allowed me to use for free, the 44-word Wells quote cost me £65 in copyright permisssions.) Authors who were still alive in 1950 appear in the novella under fictional identities: George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) appears as Gideon Beech, CS Lewis (1898-1963) as John Cleavis5, and, of course, Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950) becomes (with certain caveats laid out in the Afterword) my narrator, Erik Clevedon.

Stapledon was a literary disciple of Wells, and his fiction was firmly of the eugenicist-utopian school of thought. Last and First Men (1930) describes, as part of the vast sweep of future human history with which it deals, numerous occasions when ‘Man’ betters himself through programmes of selective breeding, genetic engineering, educational indoctrination and, on occasion, wholesale genocide. While the negative aspects of these are acknowledged (the ethnic cleansing of the natives of Venus, for instance, is a decision which agonises the high-minded Fifth Men and which blights the lives of their immediate successors) they are seen ultimately as mere episodes in humanity’s noble struggle to achieve its evolutionary destiny, the utopian society of the Last Men on Neptune, billions of years in the future. Star Maker (1937) reveals that many other species in Stapledon’s fictional universe have gone through similar processes, giving rise to harmonious and godlike group-minds which come to dominate whole galaxies.

One chapter of Last Men in London (1932) tells the brief story of an oppressed and embittered ‘superman’ whose values his early-twentieth-century contemporaries can never accept, and the theme of a potential successor to Homo sapiens being born before his time is treated at much greater length in Stapledon’s Odd John (1935). Odd John could well be called my primary source for Peculiar Lives, and it is supposed to correspond closely with the account of Percival’s early life, The Peculiar, to which Clevedon’s narrative is supposedly the sequel6.

While certain elements of his history (the farm upbringing, for instance) are more familiar from Stapledon’s Sirius (1944), the story of an augmented dog with human intelligence, my character of Percival the Peculiar is closely based on that of Odd John7. Similarly, the far future which Percival and Lechasseur tour in Chapter IV is based – in broad outline if not in detail – on that of Stapledon’s Last Men, whom Sanfeil’s species resemble.

Needless to say, Peculiar Lives takes liberties with Stapledon’s philosophy, primarily in showing how both Clevedon and Percival come to think better of their eugenicist principles. From the moment when he experiences his moral revelation in Chapter V.4, Clevedon becomes my mouthpiece rather than Stapledon’s. The original Odd John dies rather than give up his superhumanist ideals, and – as seen in the second quotation printed as an epigraph to the novella – Stapledon himself continued to espouse eugenics as late as 1948, well after the full extent of the Nazi atrocities had become apparent. The line from Odd John with which I have accompanied this quotation in the book becomes an ironic counterpoint to this.

George Bernard Shaw – in whose voice I had enormous fun writing Chapter III.4 – was another proponent of eugenics. His plays Man and Superman (1903) and Back to Methuselah (1921) are his equivalents of Odd John and Last and First Men: the first portrays a contemporary ‘superman’ from whom future generations may be bred, and the latter a sequence of progressively distant futures which result from such breeding.

Both men were of a mystical bent, but there were marked differences in the speculative theologies of Stapledon and Shaw, which I have Clevedon sum up, as accurately as I was able to make him, on pp64-65. Where Beech talks about ‘the Will of Life’, Shaw wrote of ‘the Life Force’, but otherwise the opinions of Gideon Beech correspond with the ‘genuinely scientific religion’ espoused by Shaw in his lengthy Preface to Back to Methuselah. A few aspects of the future portrayed in the final act of Shaw’s play, ‘As Far As Thought Can Reach’, also find their way into Sanfeil’s world as seen in Chapter IV.

Finally, Lewis – one of the sternest contemporary critics of this strain of scientistic thinking – did indeed see Shaw and Stapledon as subscribing to a joint dogma, one which in his view ran the risk of remaking humanity’s descendants as a species without human values, their good or evil acts lacking any kind of moral dimension because their decisions had been predetermined by their eugenicist ancestors. His own science fiction trilogy – Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945) – savagely satirises the proponents of such ideas.

There are many points on which Lewis and I part company; but ultimately his opinions of the world which Wells, Shaw and Stapledon hoped to usher in are not so very distant from my own. Of these men’s creative imagination, on the other hand, he was a great admirer, as am I.

In the Preface to That Hideous Strength, which draws on many Stapledonian ideas for its inspiration, Lewis wrote that ‘Mr Stapledon is so rich in invention that he can well afford to lend, and I admire his invention (though not his philosophy) so much that I should feel no shame to borrow’. This, as much as the dual quotes from Stapledon himself, could stand as the epigraph to Peculiar Lives.

NOTES

1. This even goes for the other books in Telos’s Time Hunter range. See here for more.

2. Carey’s book is polemical in tone, and should be read as such – I’m certainly not recommending it as a dispassionate account. I feel it’s particularly unfair to Virginia Woolf, whose diaries it cites from a period during which she was seriously mentally disturbed and suffering some extreme emotional reactions.

3. The references to the ‘Hampdenshire Programme’ leave deliberately ambiguous the question of whether the project was named after Beresford’s novel itself or after the birthplace of its protagonist, and therefore of whether The Hampdenshire Wonder is fact or fiction in the Time Hunter universe.

4. Shaw and Stapledon were, in fact, socialists and sympathised with communist Russia, although Stapledon had reservations about the Soviets’ practice of their supposed principles. Shaw was an outspoken supporter of Stalin.

5. Cleavis, who receives only a brief mention on p64 of Peculiar Lives, is a character from Paul Magrs’s novels, and was used by kind permission of Paul himself. See here for more.

6. For those keeping track, the Erik Clevedon books mentioned in Peculiar Lives, along with their Stapledonian counterparts, are as follows. The Peculiar is based on Odd John; The Coming Times and Men of the Times are meant to be Last and First Men and Last Men in London; The Star Beasts (mentioned only in Clevedon’s Foreword, p12) is intended to recall Star Maker, although the title comes from a phrase in Arthur C Clarke’s somewhat Stapledonian novel Imperial Earth (1975). Peculiar Lives itself has no direct equivalent in Stapledon’s work, but it occupies the same position in his canon as Stapledon’s final, autobiographical novel, A Man Divided (1950).

7. I was even able to give the cover artist Matthew Laznicka, a visual reference for Odd John, to use as the basis for his Percival. It’s just a shame that the space for artwork on the Peculiar Lives cover wasn’t large enough to allow for any naked ladies.

http://www.infinitarian.com/plcontext1.html

[Cryptvill]

Wow, interesting development. We saw it coming, it is here now? Eh... :S

[trailhound]

Armed machines that learn...DUH! WTF how stupid are we as a species?

[Dig]

Armed machines that learn...DUH! WTF how stupid are we as a species?

Part of the Terminator cover story. Of course the fricking elite have control of these things. They need the cover story that they are "self aware" and destroyed humanity because of some "glitch" rather than as planned by the Bilderberg Psychopathic Genocidal Maniacs. And the MIC cannot even see it, or they are just too attached to the trinkets of gold given to them.

[Satyagraha]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/256/story/64779.html
WASHINGTON —

"The unmanned bombers that
frequently cause unintended civilian casualties in Pakistan
are a step toward an even more lethal generation of robotic hunters-killers
that operate with limited, if any, human control.""

Now you see why I am so hellbent about my research, once this is in place, it is over.

"The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons."

Yup, all governed by Defense Embedded Systems, MIAA/DoDAF 3.0+/LynuxWorks, developed by advances in the Ptech Framework.

"The trend is clear: Warfare will continue and autonomous robots will ultimately be deployed in its conduct," Ronald Arkin, a robotics expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, wrote in a study commissioned by the Army."

Genocide will continue worldwide, and begin in the former U.S. The elite needs this to avoid humans from retaking their governments back.  This is where most of your bailout money went folks.

"The pressure of an increasing battlefield tempo is forcing autonomy further and further toward the point of robots making that final, lethal decision," he predicted. "The time available to make the decision to shoot or not to shoot is becoming too short for remote humans to make intelligent informed decisions."

Gotta hurry up and make sure your systems are in place to kill the American People before they start bringing the bankers to justice.

"Autonomous armed robotic systems probably will be operating by 2020, according to John Pike, an expert on defense and intelligence matters and the director of the security Web site GlobalSecurity.org in Washington."

I'd expect to see them far sooner than that.

"This prospect alarms experts, who fear that machines will be unable to distinguish between legitimate targets and civilians in a war zone."

The civilians will be "legitimate targets" in the elites view, and they will be tracked with Red Force tracking, while Blue Force tracking keeps the paramilitary NWO troops from being killed (for now).

"We are sleepwalking into a brave new world where robots decide who, where and when to kill," said Noel Sharkey, an expert on robotics and artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield, England.

Human operators thousands of miles away in Nevada, using satellite communications, control the current generation of missile-firing robotic aircraft, known as Predators and Reapers. Armed ground robots, such as the Army's Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System, also require a human decision-maker before they shoot.

As of now, about 5,000 lethal and nonlethal robots are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Besides targeting Taliban and al Qaida leaders, they perform surveillance, disarm roadside bombs, ferry supplies and carry out other military tasks. So far, none of these machines is autonomous; all are under human control.

The Pentagon's plans for its Future Combat System envision increasing levels of independence for its robots.

"Fully autonomous engagement without human intervention should also be considered, under user-defined conditions," said a 2007 Army request for proposals to design future robots."

Yeah, under the user defined conditions of the global elite.

For example, the Pentagon says that air-to-air combat may happen too fast to allow a remote controller to fire an unmanned aircraft's weapons.

"There is really no way that a system that is remotely controlled can effectively operate in an offensive or defensive air-combat environment," Dyke Weatherington, the deputy director of the Pentagon's unmanned aerial systems task force, told a news conference on Dec. 18, 2007. "The requirement for that is a fully autonomous system," he said. "That will take many years to get to."

It will take a lot less now with the trillions you stole from the real economy.

"Many Navy warships carry the autonomous, rapid-fire Phalanx system, which is designed to shoot down enemy missiles or aircraft that have penetrated outer defenses without waiting for a human decision-maker.

At Georgia Tech, Arkin is finishing a three-year Army contract to find ways to ensure that robots are used in appropriate ways. His idea is an "ethical governor" computer system that would require robots to obey the internationally recognized laws of war and the U.S. military's rules of engagement."

Right, you mean Northcom's rules of engagement.  Even if they were lawful, they run on Ptech built architectures, which can be commandeered by the real admins, to completely reprogram them as they wish, on the fly.

"Robots must be constrained to adhere to the same laws as humans or they should not be permitted on the battlefield," Arkin wrote."

Give me a break.  What laws were the humans in CACI, Kroll, JSOC, EODT, Blackwater adhering to?

For example, a robot's computer "brain" would block it from aiming a missile at a hospital, church, cemetery or cultural landmark, even if enemy forces were clustered nearby. The presence of women or children also would spark a robotic no-no.

HAHAHAHAHA, you mean exactly the opposite.

Arkin contends that a properly designed robot could behave with greater restraint than human soldiers in the heat of battle and cause fewer casualties.

"Robots can be built that do not exhibit fear, anger, frustration or revenge, and that ultimately behave in a more humane manner than even human beings in these harsh circumstances," he wrote.

Sharkey, the British critic of autonomous armed robots, said that Arkin's ethical governor was "a good idea in principle. Unfortunately, it's doomed to failure at present because no robots or AI (artificial intelligence) systems could discriminate between a combatant and an innocent. That sensing ability just does not exist."

Semi-correct.  Because there is no such thing as innocents.  However you are wrong.  Those NWO soldiers will have ID's that will inform the GIG (which the robots are tied into) that they are allies (Blue Force Tracking) --until the NWO no longer has a need for even their own soldiers in the final equation.

"Selmer Bringsjord, an artificial intelligence expert at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., is worried, too."

"I'm concerned. The stakes are very high," Bringsjord said. "If we give robots the power to do nasty things, we have to use logic to teach them not to do unethical things. If we can't figure this out, we shouldn't build any of these robots."

But you have no say in that.  9/11 wasn't carried out for them to not go for the prize, which is effectively the terminator, but far more than just that.

[Anti_Illuminati]

LET'S PLAY A GAME OF: "THANK YOU FOR PLAYING":

Official Raytheon document

http://www.raytheon.com/technology_today/archive/2004_Issue2.pdf

Raytheon has also used the Ptech Enterprise tool to develop Zachman and DoDAF views. Ptech’s concordant knowledge base was used to create the AV-2 and the OV-3 for a portion of the Military Information Architecture Accelerator (MIAA). Raytheon used the Ptech software to publish a CD, allowing the customer to examine the architecture through a web browser and also exported the OV-5 activity model as code for a Colored Petri Net simulation.


S p e c i a l t y   E n g i n e e r i n g

Raytheon Specialty Engineering is evolving to support Mission Systems Integration. Our customers are mandating order- of-magnitude system reliability improvements to meet extremely aggressive SoS cost and availability goals. Methods and tools have undergone a transformation from a point estimation focus to a model-driven simulation approach that comprehends probabilistic distributional variability. SoS mission success and performance objectives are being improved through simulation-based Specialty Engineering Measures of Effectiveness and trades analysis.

[INSERT:  The above was one of the motives to carry out the 9/11 black op, to help them fast-track the above performance objectives, they needed massive funding for this--9/11 secured that for them.]

_______________________________________________________________________________
http://www.aeanet.org/prnw/200905070900NE12345
Raytheon Wins NextGen Contract to Study National Airspace System Needs

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2009 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) has been awarded a seven-month, firm-fixed-price contract to study the NextGen Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance architecture and determine the National Airspace System's needs for 2018 to 2025.

"The next generation of airspace management must support a broad array of capabilities - from classic aircraft with minimal automation to highly integrated, multi-sensor aircraft, including unmanned aerial systems," said Andy Zogg, Raytheon vice president for Command and Control Systems. "Our study will identify the alternative CNS architecture needed to meet growing capacity while providing the efficiencies necessary to ensure safe operations."

The study analyzes ICNS interfaces to operator flight planning systems, aircraft capabilities, avionics functions and Federal Aviation Administration automation systems.

The $2.3 million contract was awarded by the NextGen Institute, a venture between the National Center for Advanced Technologies and the FAA. The Joint Planning and Development Office will access the Institute to gain private sector expertise, tools and facilities for NextGen activities.

The Raytheon-led team includes Rockwell Collins, ARINC, Aviation Management Associates and Thales.

Raytheon Company, with 2008 sales of $23.2 billion, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, homeland security and other government markets throughout the world. With a history of innovation spanning 87 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as a broad range of mission support services. With headquarters in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon employs 73,000 people worldwide.

Note to Editors:

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) plan to modernize the National Airspace System (NAS) through 2025. Through NextGen, the FAA is addressing the impact of air traffic growth by increasing NAS capacity and efficiency while simultaneously improving safety, reducing environmental impacts, and increasing user access to the NAS. To achieve its NextGen goals, the FAA is implementing new Performance-Based Navigation routes and procedures that leverage emerging technologies and aircraft navigation capabilities.

SOURCE Raytheon Company

[Anti_Illuminati]

The underpinnings of the global elites terrorist military power structure

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/Articles/01winter/adams.htm

Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decisionmaking
THOMAS K. ADAMS
© 2001 Thomas K. Adams

From Parameters, Winter 2001-02, pp. 57-71.

To date, most warfare has taken place within what Robert J. Bunker terms "human space," meaning the traditional four-dimensional battlespace that is discernible to the human senses.[1] In essence, war has always consisted of human beings running, dodging, and hurling things at each other, lately with the help of machinery. Even such revolutionary developments as gunpowder only enhanced our ability to throw things at enemies we could see and hear.

The first crude examples of autonomous weapons were probably the early experiments by the US Navy and Sperry Gyroscope Company on unpiloted aircraft during the last years of the First World War. Then came the advent of electronics, especially radar, and warfare began to leave the realm of human senses. Ships and planes could fire on enemies that were no more than ghostly green images on a cathode ray tube. Later came military robots such as cruise missiles that were able to autonomously execute missions formerly requiring manned systems. Advanced radar engagement systems enabled pilots to locate, identify, and destroy enemy aircraft without ever seeing them. Some robotic systems became even more independent, such as the Navy's Phalanx close-in air defense weapon, which is "capable of autonomously performing its own search, detect, evaluation, track, engage, and kill assessment functions."[2] Thanks to advanced sensors and information processing, target recognition and identification methods are being developed to permit truly autonomous guided munitions. This includes munitions capable of autonomously engaging fixed and mobile ground targets, as well as targets in air and space.[3] Warfare has begun to leave "human space."

A long step in this direction was taken in mid-2000 when the US Senate Armed Services Committee added $246.3 million to its version of the 2001 defense authorization bill to speed development of unmanned combat systems. The committee set two ambitious goals--within ten years, one third of all deep-strike aircraft would be unmanned; and within 15 years, one third of ground combat vehicles would operate without human beings on board.[4] At about the same time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Army selected initial contractors for the Army's planned Objective Force. The concept calls for "a network-centric, distributed force that will include a manned command and control element/personnel carrier, a robotic direct-fire system, a robotic non-line of sight system, an all-weather robotic sensor system, coupled with other layered sensors."[5] According to Lieutenant Colonel John Blitch, program manager for DARPA's Tactical Mobile Robotics Program, "We have spent a lot of time and energy analyzing employment concepts for portable robotic platforms over the last few years and are convinced of their revolutionary impact on dismounted warfare."[6] These initiatives and others are rapidly taking us to a place where we may not want to go, but probably are unable to avoid.

Once this progression of ever more capable machines began, the US armed forces, and those of other advanced countries, started down a road that will probably remove warfare almost entirely from human hands. Several trends are contributing to this unsettling development, but the most important one is the rise of computer-driven information systems coupled with the proliferation of mobile autonomous and semi-autonomous systems (i.e. "robots"). The devices created by this coupling greatly increase the speed at which things happen, especially weapon effects and information processing. A much less noticed trend, the development of very cheap and very small military systems, will also help to move warfare even further out of "human space." In combination, these advances have a synergistic effect. More and more aspects of warfighting are not only leaving the realm of human senses, but also crossing outside the limits of human reaction times. The effect of these trends is already being enhanced by the emergence of directed energy weapons (DEWs) with their capacity for engagement at the speed of light.

In short, the military systems (including weapons) now on the horizon will be too fast, too small, too numerous, and will create an environment too complex for humans to direct.

Furthermore, the proliferation of information-based systems will produce a data overload that will make it difficult or impossible for humans to directly intervene in decisionmaking. This is not a consideration for the remote science-fiction future. Weapons and other military systems already under development will function at increasingly higher levels of complexity and responsibility--and increasingly without meaningful human intervention.

According to the US Army Infantry School, "We intend to transform the Army, all components, into a standard design with internetted C4ISR."[7] And, it is well known that various "digital army" initiatives such as the Land Warrior system and the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below are under way.[8] Likewise, a number of unmanned and semi-autonomous systems are already in wide use, and autonomous systems are in prototype or development.[9] The first operational light-speed weapon, the US Air Force's Yal-1a Attack Laser (also known as ABL or Airborne Laser), is slated for operational readiness by 2003. Others, such as high-power microwave and particle-beam devices, are under development.[10] At Sandia National Laboratories, tiny MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) already exist in prototype form.[11]

None of this is accidental. For one thing, it is national policy, articulated by former President Bill Clinton as a critical part of the national security strategy.[12] Second, it has been pursued tenaciously by the military despite expense, setbacks, and criticism. Knowledge is seen as the key to "battlefield dominance," and speed is seen as the key to exploiting that knowledge. We have made these two qualities--knowledge (information) and speed--the keystones of planning for the future Army and the other services as well. Army After Next (AAN) forces are expected to need both "linear speed" (speed across the ground) and "angular speed" (the ability to out-think and anticipate) in order to survive and win on future battlefields.[13] Like the chiefs of the other services, General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, has clearly stated that he endorses this concept.[14] It is believed that these qualities--information dominance, combined with speed and agility--will lead to military dominance at all levels of warfare: strategic, operational, and tactical.[15]

Military discussions of advanced warfighting (as opposed to scientific or technical ones) occasionally include the reassurance that there will always be an immediate, direct, and intimate connection between human beings and warfighting. According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "The purpose of technology is to equip the man. We must not fall prey to the mistaken notion technology can reduce warfare to simply manning the equipment."[16] As a white paper from the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) put it, "Autonomous unmanned systems will be fully adaptive to unforeseen changes while remaining completely predictable in mission performance."[17]

We are faced with the prospect of equipment that not only does not require soldiers to operate it, but may be defeated if humans do attempt to exert control in any direct way. It is easy to see a steadily decreasing role for humans in direct combat as the 21st century progresses.

Information Systems

The fundamental development underlying the loss of human control is that of automated information systems. Furthermore, the impressive current capabilities of such systems may only hint at their future capacity. Quoting again from the TRADOC white paper:

    Advances in computer architecture and machine intelligence will have reached the point where intelligent agents can analyze the environment and current battle situation, search likely target areas, detect and analyze targets, assist in attack decisions, select and dispense munitions, and report results. These unmanned systems will augment manned platforms in every facet of operations on the ground, sea, air, and space, including information dominance and manipulation.[18]

The difference between a machine that can do all these things and "assist in attack decisions" and one that makes its own "attack decisions" is a matter of programming.

This is a description of machines that can function autonomously to conduct warfare at the tactical level. If anything, this description is probably a gross understatement.

Current computers have not even begun to approach their theoretical limits, and those limits continue to recede. In 1998, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico announced that they had been able to consistently manipulate subatomic particles, thus opening to the way for computation and communication systems orders of magnitude smaller and faster than the ones now in existence.[19] In 1999 researchers at UCLA and Hewlett-Packard succeeded in constructing microscopic integrated circuits using single molecules as building blocks. James Heath, the UCLA professor leading the project, suggested that a molecular computer with the processing power of 100 conventional personal computers would be about the size of a grain of salt. The implications are almost unimaginable--cheap, ubiquitous supercomputing, and unlimited memory capacity in devices so small that they are on the scale of insects.[20]

This is not to suggest that there will ever be an overriding decision to exclude humans from decisionmaking. Instead, we will continue to pretend to be in complete control while leading ourselves gradually and incrementally toward systems whose logic demands that human control become more abstract with less and less direct participation.

Mastering the OODA Loop

The entry point for automated systems to join the military decisionmaking process is described in abstract form by the so-called "OODA" Loop: observe, orient, decide, and act.[21] For purposes of this discussion, the loop can be seen as beginning with "observation," and indeed there will be a great deal of observation connected with future military organizations.

An enormous amount of attention (and money) has been invested in observation in the form of new surveillance and reconnaissance technology. Development of these capabilities has become increasingly vital with the Army Chief of Staff's 1999 announcement that he plans to field units whose very survival is largely dependent on information collection and advanced information systems.[22] This meshes nicely with the TRADOC view of the future: "The use of multiple, inexpensive unmanned platforms with modular sensor and information-gathering devices provide for an almost unlimited ability to analyze the battlespace. These sensor platforms will be land-based (both mobile and stationary), airborne, and space-based."[23] As explained by Major General John Thomas, commander of the US Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, this kind of information saturation is essential. The Army's new lightly armored "medium brigades" will have intelligence and sensor assets equivalent to those of a full division. These new brigades are expected to survive by using these assets to avoid the enemy, using superior knowledge, terrain, and agility to remain out of enemy fields of fire. According to General Thomas, "Probably the largest and most exciting area is in robotics so that many of these sensors can be automatically emplaced and maybe even autonomously emplaced."[24]

But victory does not always go the commander with the best observation. It goes to the one that can best process observation into data, data into information, information into orders, and then orders into action. The process is continuous--the results of action are observed, starting the process all over again. The individual functions involved have been enshrined in military jargon as the OODA Loop mentioned above.[25]

The notion of mastering this process, "getting inside the enemy's decision loop" (i.e. execute the OODA process more quickly than the enemy) is at the heart of the digital Army and the information warfare concept.

By 2025, speed-of-light engagement will be a common feature of military conflict. Future architectures envision a new array of ground- and space-based sensors, uninhabited combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), and missile defense technologies that will take advantage of directed energy weapons. Air, sea, land, and space forces will be both faster and more agile. Adversaries will take advantage of these characteristics to operate faster than a defender can observe the activity, orient himself, decide how to respond, and act on that decision. The attacker thus places himself "inside" the defender's OODA Loop, destroying an adversary's ability to conduct an active defense.[26]

To master the OODA Loop in this demanding environment, military leaders are pushing hard for the technology to obtain and process more information more rapidly. This push attempts to achieve the core capability of information dominance, "the ability to collect, control, exploit, and defend information while denying an adversary the ability to do the same."[27] From the perspective of an Army organized around automated information systems, the struggle to get inside the enemy decision loop is one of processing power, the ability to move through the loop ever more rapidly.

When improved sensors are coupled with extensive communications links and advanced data-processing, the result is an ever-increasing flow of detailed information. Unfortunately, the explosion of available information inevitably results in information overload and flawed decisionmaking. Human beings commonly deal with this by ignoring much of the inflow, thus negating the purpose of the information systems in the first place. Recent exercises reveal an alarming number of unread messages because of information overload. As the quantity of data rises, the difficulty of preparing and interpreting it for decisionmaking grows. Furthermore, more information, flowing more efficiently, can easily give the commander conflicting perspectives of the battlespace. Soon it becomes obvious that the slowest element in the process is the human decisionmaker. By reducing the human role, the entire system is enhanced.

Automated systems, using some form of artificial intelligence, may be the solution to this difficulty. As an Air Force document asserts: "Unmanned systems will capitalize on artificial intelligence technology gains to be able to assess operational and tactical situations and determine an appropriate course of action. The key to the success of command and control is information. Some of these systems will not only collect data but also have the ability to analyze data and provide recommendations to the commander."[28] Operationally, the difference between "providing" a recommendation and "acting" on a recommendation is merely a software tweak.

Automated systems can certainly reduce the pressure of information saturation and eliminate conflicts, but at a price. Essentially, they do so by creating a series of information "filters" that establish priorities and eliminate marginal data, reconcile the remaining information conflicts, and present a consensus picture of the situation. All of this is invisible to the ultimate consumer, out of his or her control and very likely not well understood. This means that the commander is receiving a picture of the battlefield that is designed to emphasize certain things while de-emphasizing others. Still other factors are omitted entirely.

Autonomy

STAR 21, an Army study of 21st-century needs, concluded that unmanned systems will become prevalent on the land battlefield.[29] The rise of unmanned ground systems is the most important step toward autonomous systems for land warfare, a rise that is already in full progress. As envisioned by the Army Training and Doctrine Command:

    Unmanned systems will operate throughout the depth, width, and breadth of the battlespace, providing both the real-time intelligence necessary for the commander to locate and identify key targets, as well as the means to destroy them. . . . [A]utonomous convoys loaded with the necessary supplies to replenish expenditures can be dispatched from ports or airheads to central logistics bases. From there, the unmanned systems can transport the supplies further forward. . . .

    Future battles will have unmanned systems as forward sensor/observers detecting and identifying high-value targets and calling for fires.[30]

Unmanned systems have been around for a long time in the form of multimillion-dollar cruise missiles and the like. After all, the long-range cruise missile is nothing more than an unmanned bomber, an autonomous aerial vehicle or, simply put, a robot.[31] But now such systems are cheaper, smaller, and more capable than seemed possible even a few years ago. In 1998, for example, an autonomous aircraft no bigger than a large model airplane and weighing just 29 pounds flew across the Atlantic Ocean, successfully arriving at a predetermined destination.[32] The US Department of Defense has an extensive military robotics program, and by 2005 DOD is expected to spend $72 million on unmanned ground vehicles alone.[33] Unmanned systems have supported the Bosnia mission in the areas of reconnaissance (with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and mine-clearing using Standardized Robotic System kits on manned platforms.[34] The DARPA Unmanned Ground Vehicle Demo 11 program has fielded four HMMWVs reconfigured as unmanned scout vehicles.[35]

The difference between a truly autonomous system and one that is merely unmanned is another question of processing power. As mentioned earlier, the coming micro-miniaturization of computer systems will eventually make it possible to pack computing power greater than a year 2001 mainframe system into a device that is barely visible.[36] The immediate prospect is for cheap computers small enough to be used in almost any device, followed at some point in the more distant future by ubiquitous supercomputing and unlimited memory capacity in devices that are literally microscopic. These developments are important for their own sake, but also in the present context because they set the stage for autonomy.

As the TRADOC white paper put it, "Unmanned systems may have the ability to learn. The concept of collective leadership and subordination will then permit systems working under human supervision to assist the warfighter in the accomplishment of his mission."[37] As this quote suggests, TRADOC publications in particular are careful to specify that human decisionmaking will be involved at some level in the operation of these systems. However, there is no a priori reason why this should be so. Inevitably, some adversary will decide that eliminating humans from the military decision cycle at the tactical level will confer a significant advantage, forcing others to follow suit.

The logic leading to fully autonomous systems seems inescapable. Clearly, the armed forces will want a "person in the loop" no matter how capable the automated system may become. However, if this person has a meaningful role in the operation of the system (for example, a tank, fighting ship, or warplane), then he or she will obviously be the most critical (and probably the most vulnerable) component of the system as well as the most difficult to replace. The obvious course for an adversary attacking the tank, ship, or plane is to concentrate on attacking the human component. This probability creates serious design restraints and restrictions in performance since protecting the human becomes critically important and imposes a burden in armor, life support, sustainable g-forces, and so forth. This provides a strong incentive not to include humans in the systems at all.

The obvious response to this threat is that favored by the Air Force for some applications, "fly-by-wire." This means simply that a human located safely away from the battle scene remotely pilots the aircraft by radio control. In principle, there is no reason this solution could not be applied to ground vehicles and ships, or at least to surface vessels (submarines present a different problem). Unfortunately this solution has its own vulnerabilities--the enemy's priority then becomes to attack the remote control links electromagnetically by jamming or physically by attacking the transmitter.[38] This becomes all the more troublesome when cross-continental control is required. Having extended links gives the enemy a logical place to attack that is hard to defend. Systems will need at least some measure of local autonomy in order to survive. Fully autonomous systems avoid all these difficulties while allowing a less vulnerable, higher performance system.

But even if full autonomy is rejected, the presence of humans making critical decisions still does not avoid the issue. Given that such persons have a real, rather than merely symbolic, role in the command and control of the fighting system, consideration must be given to the possibility that they will be injured or killed and cannot carry out their duties. It seems unreasonable that the highly trained crew and their multimillion-dollar ship or aircraft would simply be written off as a casualty. It is far more sensible to design the system so as to continue to operate the plane or vessel and, if necessary, continue the fight. This is nothing more than autonomy arrived at by a slightly different route.

The trend toward reliance on automation and artificial intelligence can be seen in the Navy's Smart Ship Program, which is spending millions of dollars to replace personnel with technology. By 2005, this program is expected to reduce the number of sailors on the Navy's 27 CG 47 Ticonderoga-class cruisers by replacing them with new control, automation, damage control, and information technologies. Shortly afterward, 57 of the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers will be likewise refitted. According to Navy plans, the crew of the new DD-21 "land attack" destroyers could number as few as 95. Current destroyers and cruisers carry more than 300 sailors on board.[39] These improvements aren't cheap. Refitting the 27 Ticonderoga-class cruisers alone will cost $124 million. But according to a Navy assessment, lower manpower costs, less maintenance, and fewer support costs will save nearly $3 million a year per ship.[40] Another example is the "arsenal ship" proposal in which a stealthy, unmanned vessel would loiter off an enemy shore and fire guns or missiles at the command of air or ground forces located elsewhere.[41]

In sum, this approach results in the development of systems that take the operator "out of the loop," shifting the role of the human operator from that of an active controller to that of a supervisor who serves in a fail-safe capacity in the event of system malfunction. Unfortunately, the role of passive monitor seems to be a task for which humans are poorly suited.[42]

Speed

Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), including laser, microwave, and charged particle or neutral particle beam devices, are a major emerging military technology that enormously increases the speed with which weapon effects occur. All are based on the emission of electromagnetic energy at different frequencies, usually in focused beams. They can be vastly more accurate than conventional weapons because they follow line-of-sight rather than ballistic trajectories, thus eliminating all the problems of ballistics.[43] Researchers and engineers are now developing a wide range of these devices.[44] The first operational laser weapon, the US Air Force's Yal-1a Attack Laser, will be followed by Army and Navy systems. One of these, the Army's Tactical High Energy Laser Demonstrator, scored a first on 28 August 2000 by using a deployable laser system to successfully track and destroy a salvo of two Katyusha artillery rockets in flight. Other applications are being examined through the Army's "virtual test bed" for vehicle-mounted directed energy weapons.[45]

One advantage of such weapons is that missing the target is less important, since the system will be able to cycle quickly and fire off another speed-of-light burst, this time having corrected its aim. With DEWs, active countermeasures (dodging, throwing chaff, deploying decoys, returning fire) become enormously more difficult and in many cases impossible. It is hard to see many roles for humans in this kind of lightning duel. Human perceptions and motor coordination skills are simply not capable of intervening usefully. Defense then relies on instantaneous, automated responses and passive measures, of which the best are probably speed and size. Small, agile, very fast-moving targets, other things being equal, are harder to detect and much harder to hit.[46] This will place a premium on micro-systems, to be discussed later. The same qualities that make such systems harder to target and strike also make them much more difficult to control in anything approaching human "real-time."[47]

As indicated by the Army's tactical laser systems, DEWs are not limited to strategic weapon systems.[48] A variety of threats--short-range rockets and artillery, UAVs, cruise missiles, pop-up helicopters--can appear quickly and without warning. When a threat is not detected until late or its unmasked time is short, there is no second chance. Countering these threats requires a weapon that is fast, accurate, and close-in. On 22 April 1999, Boeing completed proof-of-concept testing of a new tactical high-energy chemical laser. As described by Boeing, this technology "permits . . . highly mobile, self-contained laser weapons with significant lethality at engagement ranges up to 10 km for ground-to-air defensive systems, and over 20 km for air-to-ground or air-to-air systems." The company's plans include "complete weapon systems in roll-on, roll-off installations for rotorcraft (V-22, CH-47), aircraft (AC-130), and ground vehicles." Boeing says that such a system could be ready in about two years.[49] With different sensors and fire control it also offers a unique ultra-precise strike capability for operations other than war, where pinpoint accuracy, tactical stand-off, and no collateral damage are dominant considerations.[50]

Perhaps the extreme example of warfare outside "human space" is that of "netwar"--electronic conflict within and among computer systems attacking the full spectrum of opposing military and civilian information systems (including computer-controlled networks such as communications, logistics, and transportation). By its nature, the speed of such conflict is limited only by the speed of the electronic circuits in which it occurs. This is another example of conflict that will quickly escalate out of human control due to its complexity and rapidity. Netwar attacks may be too pervasive and rapid for human intervention, adapting instantly to responses. Both attack and defense will be completely automated, because humans are far too slow to participate.[51]

Smaller and Smaller

Small systems are highly desirable for military purposes, especially in a force-projection Army. Smaller systems require less space, thus fewer airframes to transport, and they use less fuel in operation. They are more difficult for the enemy to detect and, once detected, harder to hit. The viability of such "small, smart, systems" was demonstrated on 11 January 1999, when Lockheed Martin began DOD-sponsored flight tests on an aircraft with a wingspan of six inches--about the size of an outstretched hand. The aircraft, which weighs only three ounces, is one of the smallest man-made flying objects.[52]

It is (once again) the presence of micro-electronics that makes the difference between the Lockheed Martin device and an ordinary model airplane. Miniaturized electronic circuits have revolutionized military electronics. Similarly, the miniaturization of mechanical systems is expected to launch another revolution. Military commanders will have very small, very smart machines to more effectively collect target and damage assessment information with reduced risk to personnel and decreased probability of discovery. Swarms (hundreds or thousands) of miniature autonomous vehicles will be capable of performing tasks that are difficult or impossible today, such as locating and disabling land mines, detecting chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, and verifying treaties.

During the 1990s, Sandia National Laboratories produced an early example of a microsystem, the Miniature Autonomous Robotic Vehicle (MARV). MARV is one cubic inch in size and is made primarily from commercial parts using ordinary machining techniques. Despite its small size, it contains all its needed power, sensors, computers, and controls. MARV is severely limited in its operation, but it is leading to even smaller autonomous vehicles with greatly enhanced mobility, more intelligence, on-board navigation and communication, as well as the ability to act cooperatively with other robots.[53] Sandia is also developing technologies to rapidly machine, fixture, and assemble Small Smart Machine devices, including automated assembly of parts down to 100 microns in size.[54]

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers have devised much tinier robots, similar to ants, which exhibit certain limited aspects of intelligence and differentiated specialization, such as avoiding shadows and staying away from each other. They are cheap and easy to reprogram. According to researchers, "Thirty-five years from now, analogous small, lethal, sensing, emitting, flying, crawling, exploding, and thinking objects may make the battlefield highly lethal."[55]

Very small systems have several advantages. As noted earlier, it is easier to quickly transport huge numbers of them, both sensors and fighting systems. They also can be moved at speeds, accelerations, decelerations, and in intricate maneuvers that human beings could never withstand. It is conceivable to move enormous numbers of these devices at ballistic missile speeds, having them in action half a world away in minutes. In such circumstances, operating according to preset instructions may not provide the necessary flexibility in operation, and remote control is probably impractical. Once again, this leads us back to autonomy.

The nature of small systems is such that they are more difficult to hit with conventional projectile weapons due to their small size and large numbers. This applies even to some DEWs, such as lasers. The logical countermeasure for very small, smart systems deployed in large numbers is probably an energy weapon with an area effect such as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device. Once again this is likely to lead to the play and counterplay of extremely rapid autonomous systems functioning far too quickly for human intervention.

Solutions

If the problem is how to maintain meaningful human control of autonomous warfighting systems, no good solution presents itself. One answer, of course, is to simply accept a slower information-processing rate as the price of keeping humans in the military decision business. The problem is that some adversary will inevitably decide that the way to defeat the human-centric systems is to attack it with systems that are not so limited.

A longer-range solution is to integrate humans and machines in a far more intimate fashion. Once form of this concept is that of the Air Force's Information Integration Center (IIC). In this scheme, all-source information collectors would transmit raw data to an IIC. Archival databases linked to the center would be used for historical analyses to fill information gaps. The IIC, housed in an integrated and interconnected constellation of "smart" satellites, will analyze, correlate, fuse, and "deconflict" all relayed data. The refined data would be relayed to human users through implanted microscopic chips, providing users with computer-generated mental visualizations. This would allow the user to place himself or herself into the selected battlespace.[56] It would avoid the need for clumsy interfaces by making humans a part of the information system in a way very similar to that in which the computers are connected. But, like "fly-by-wire" systems, it does depend on broadcast information at radio frequencies, raising the serious possibility of jamming or other forms of interference.

In the further future, the arrival of very advanced, microscopic information systems may allow extremely sophisticated data processing capacities to be made an integral part of the human brain. However, assuming this proves to be possible, such a step may raise objections from those who object on moral and ethical grounds to blurring the distinction between humans and machines. It also does not address the relative fragility of human beings in combat situations.

Conclusions

The evolution and adaptation of the systems and processes described here are not as simple nor as straightforward as it might seem. The effective use of such technologies will require rapid, effective, and close interaction between many different systems. It will involve sophisticated command and control links as well as a variety of technical means, including reconnaissance sensors, communication links, computers, display systems, and weapon platforms. This kind of new and subtle interaction will require radical changes in the architecture and integration of these interconnected and widespread intelligence absorbing, processing, and application systems. Right now, the architectures for this kind of "system of systems" are barely in the developmental stages. The actual achievement of solutions for the integration of such large, complex systems will be a long process involving extensive experimentation. At least another decade, probably two, will be required.

This leaves us in something like the position of monarchies witnessing the democratic revolution at the beginning of the 19th century. Something profound and far-reaching is going on all around us, even within our own societies. But the advisers, courtiers, and generals that surround the throne are at a loss to determine what it means, much less what to do about it.

Humans may retain symbolic authority, but automated systems move too fast and the factors involved are too complex for real human comprehension. When computers are designed and programmed by other computers, the situation will be even further from anything humans can reasonably expect to understand, much less intervene in successfully. At the same time, loud denials can be expected from some quarters, angrily claiming that humans are as much, if not more, in charge than ever. In a sense this will be true--the new systems will enable people to accomplish far more in war and peace than was even conceivable before their development, or, rather, is even conceivable now. But the simple fact remains, the farther we extend our reach outside "human space," the more we require the assistance of machines.

Future generations may come to regard tactical warfare as properly the business of machines and not appropriate for people at all. Humans may retain control at the highest levels, making strategic decisions about where and when to strike and, most important, the overall objectives of a conflict. But even these will increasingly be informed by automated information systems. Direct human participation in warfare is likely to be rare. Instead, the human role will take other forms--strategic direction perhaps, or at the very extreme, perhaps no more than the policy decision whether to enter hostilities or not. Nevertheless, wars are a human phenomenon, arising from human needs for human purposes. This makes intimate human participation at some level critical, or the entire exercise becomes pointless.

NOTES

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Lieutenant Colonel John Blitch, program manager for DARPA's Tactical Mobile Robotics Program, for agreeing to review this material. However, his review does not imply endorsement. The observations and opinions expressed, as well as any errors or omissions, remain the sole responsibility of the author.

1. Robert J. Bunker, Five-Dimensional (Cyber) Warfighting (Carlisle, Pa.: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 10 March 1998), pp. 7-8.

2. US Navy, Phalanx CIWS (Close-In Weapon System) information sheet, internet, http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/weapons/wep-phal.html, accessed 11 December 2000.

3. "Our Mission," Public Affairs Office, Advanced Guidance Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio, March 2000.

4. "Gearing Up for Robot Wars," Army Times, 29 May 2000, p. 6.

5. US Department of Defense, "DARPA and Army Select Contractors for Future Combat Systems Programs," News Release No. 236-00, OASD (Public Affairs), Washington, D.C., 9 May 2000.

6. Conversation with the author, 21 December 2000. Lieutenant Colonel Blitch is also the former chief of unmanned systems at the US Special Operations Command.

7. US Army Infantry School, "Brigade Combat Team Briefing," Ft. Benning, Ga., undated, received 13 March 2000. "C4ISR" stands for "command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance."

8. Brian Palmer, "The Army and Partner Raytheon Reinvent the Foot Soldier," Fortune, 21 December 1998.

9. DARPA Tech99 Tactical Mobile Robots Presentation, slides 8, 9, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Washington, D.C., 1999.

10. Boeing Defense Group of Seattle, Wash., is building the prototype. "USAF Yal-1a Attack Laser Fact Sheet," US Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Public Affairs, Kirtland AFB, N.M., January 1998.

11. William Trimmer, "Grand in Purpose, Insignificant in Size," Tenth Annual International Workshop on "Micro Electro Mechanical Systems," Nagoya, Japan, 1997, Proceedings, IEEE Catalog Number 97CH36021, pp. 9-13.

12. William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington: The White House, February 1996), p. 1.

13. Robert H. Scales, Jr., "America's Army: Preparing for Tomorrow's Security Challenges," Army Issue Paper No. 2 (Carlisle, Pa.: US Army War College, November 1998), p. 8.

14. For example, "Statement of the Chief of Staff before the Airland Subcommittee," Committee on Armed Services, US Senate, 106th Cong., 8 March 2000, internet, http://www.army.mil/armyvision/docs/000308es.pdf, accessed 12 December 2000.

15. Discussed in US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Knowledge and Speed--Battle Forces and the US Army of 2025," Deputy Chief of Staff for Doctrine, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1998.

16. Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Concept for Joint Operations" (Washington: DOD, May 1997), p. 24.

17. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Concept of Employment for Unmanned Systems (Draft)," 24 August 1999, p. 4. See also US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Unmanned System Future Capability (Working Draft)," 19 August 1999.

18. Ibid.

19. "Breakthrough Made in Subatomic Manipulation," Scripps-Howard newspapers, 8 November 1998, internet, http://www.nandotimes.com, accessed 8 November 1998.

20. "Just Right for Mini-Me: the Mini-Micro-PC," Time Digital, 18 July 1999.

21. See, for example, David S. Fadok, et al., "Air Power's Quest for Strategic Paralysis," (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1995), p. 16.

22. Eric K. Shinseki, The Army Vision (Washington: Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Staff, January 2000).

23. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Concept of Employment for Unmanned Systems (Draft)," p. 12.

24. Quoted in Jane's Defense Weekly, 21 June 2000, internet, http://www.janes.com/defence/interviews/dw000621_i.shtml, accessed 18 June 2001.

25. See, for example, Fadok, et al., p. 16.

26. William B. Osborne, "Information Operations: A New War-Fighting Capability," Air Force 2025 Research Paper (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: August 1996).

27. Sheila E. Widnall, and Ronald R. Fogelman, "Air Force Executive Guidance" (Washington: US Air Force, December 1995), pp. 2, 17.

28. Ibid.

29. US Department of the Army, STAR 21: Strategic Technologies for the Army of the 21st Century (Washington: National Academy Press, 1996), Introduction.

30. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Concept of Employment for Unmanned Systems (Draft)," pp. 4, 11. See also, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Unmanned System Future Capability (Working Draft)."

31. At one point, devices similar to the cruise missile were referred to as "robot bombers" rather than the now fashionable term Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV).

32. The flight was sponsored, in part, by the Department of the Navy. Tad McGeer and Juris Vagners, "An Unmanned Aircraft's Atlantic Flight," GPS World Magazine, June 1999, internet, http://www.gpsworld.com/0699/0699feat.html, accessed 2 March 2000. In 1995 students from the University of Texas at Arlington demonstrated an AAV that was able to autonomously takeoff from a designated area, locate and identify radioactive and biohazardous material represented by labeled barrels, map the location of each barrel, and return to its start point.

33. Michael Toscano, "Joint Robotics Program," slide presentation, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition & Technology), Strategic & Tactical Systems, Land Warfare, 24 August 1999, slide 13.

34. Ibid., p. 7.

35. Ronald C. Arkin and Tucker Balch, "Cooperative Multiagent Robotic Systems," Office of Mobile Robot Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga., undated, received March 2000.

36. "Just Right for Mini-Me: the Mini-Micro-PC," TIME Digital.

37. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Concept of Employment for Unmanned Systems," p. 12.

38. This problem is mentioned, almost in passing, on the web page for the Advanced Guidance Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, http://www.mn.afrl.af.mil/public/advguid.html, accessed 1 January 2001.

39. Susan I. Erwin, "Running Ships with Fewer Sailors," National Defense, March 2000, p. 16.

40. US Navy, "Smart Ship Project Assessment Report, " Commander, Naval Surface Force, US Atlantic Fleet, Norfolk, Va., 9 September 1997. See also, "`Smart Ship' Program Advances," MarineTalk website, 20 December 1999, internet, http://www.marinetalk.com/article/xxx00012222TU/, accessed 6 March 2001.

41. Charles Aldinger, "Remote-Control Warship Planned," Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 July 1996, p. 5.

42. See, for example, Raja Parasuraman, "Human-Computer Monitoring," Human Factors, 29 (1987), 695-706, and earlier (1981) work by C. D. Wickens and C. Kessel, "Failure Detection in Dynamic Systems," in Human Detection and Diagnosis of System Failures, ed. J. Rasmussen and W. B. Rouse (New York: Plenum, 1983).

43. Bill Hillaby, "Directed Energy Weapons Development and Potential," National Network News, 4 (July, 1997), 1, published by The Defense Associations National Network, Ottawa, Canada, internet, http://www.sfu.ca/~dann/nn4-3_12.htm, accessed 2 March 2001.

44. Jeffrey E. Thieret, et al., "Strategic Attack Systems Description," in Strategic Attack in 2025, Air Force 2025 Project (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University, 1996) ch. 3, internet, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/volume3/chap06/v3c6-3.htm#Target Engagement System, accessed 9 March 2001.

45. "Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL)," news release BW0064, TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., 9 November 2000, internet, http://www.trw.com/thel/, accessed 12 December 2000. The US Army is also considering a Directed Energy Warfare Vehicle (DEW-V) concept. The DEW-V is a "virtual test bed" to determine the operational effectiveness of vehicle-mounted directed energy weapons for battle scenarios in 2015 and beyond. See Hillaby.

46. John T. Tatum, "A New Threat to Aircraft Survivability: Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapons," Aircraft Survivability, Fall 1995, p. 11.

47. Although no one expects these devices to completely replace conventional weapons, they have at least three advantages over conventional systems in addition to those already cited. First, some DEWs, especially the radio frequency type, have a higher probability of hit than projectiles. The spreading beam can irradiate the entire target, making accurate pointing and tracking much simpler. Second, the "ammunition" supply for these weapons is large compared to a typical store of conventional projectiles and missiles. This is especially true of aircraft, where weight is a critical consideration. Finally, DEWs are potentially much cheaper to support than conventional explosives. The traditional ammunition loading, fusing, and storage facility could be replaced by the "fuel" required to source the DEW. Additionally, some forms of DEWs, such as lasers and radio frequency weapons, can be used to produce nonlethal effects. See Tatum, p. 11.

48. The US Army and TRW Corporation have been using the High Energy Laser System Test Facility (HELSTF) for a joint tactical program with Israel called "Nautilus." The joint effort is evaluating lasers for use against short-range rockets, including the kind used with great effect against Israeli troops in South Lebanon and Russian forces in Chechnya. On 9 February 1996, lasers at HELSTF shot down their first armed and operational short-range rocket at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. In 1997, HELSTF conducted a successful live-fire test including the detection, tracking, and destruction of a short-range missile. The demonstration paved the way for further development in the form of the planned Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL) system, a mobile ground-based air defense system for the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command. "Nautilus Fact Sheet," US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Huntsville, Ala., 1996. "Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL)" information sheet, TRW Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio. The same material may be found on the internet at http://www.trw.co.il/seg/sats/THEL.html, accessed 29 June 2000.

49. "Boeing Completes Testing of Tactical High Energy Laser," Defense Systems Daily, internet, http://defence-data.com/archive/page4222.htm, accessed 26 June 2000.

50. Ibid.

51. For a full discussion of netwar, see Stefan Eisen, Jr., "Netwar, It's Not Just for Hackers Anymore," document number ADA297897, Defense Technical Information Center, Ft. Belvoir, Va., 22 June 1995.

52. "Micro Air Vehicles," UK Defence Forum, March 1999, internet, http://www.ukdf.org.uk/ts6.html, accessed 13 March 2000.

53. Sandia National Laboratories, Intelligent Systems and Robotics Center, Miniature Autonomous Robotic Vehicle (MARV) webpage, http://www.sandia.gov/isrc/Capabilities/Prototyping/Small_Smart_Machines/MARV/marv.html, accessed 2 March 2000.

54. Ibid.

55. Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), Project 2025 (Norfolk, Va.: National Defense University, 6 May 1992), p. 36.

56. 2025 Concept, No. 900702, "Implanted Tactical Information Display," 2025 Concepts Database (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air War College, 1996).

Dr. Thomas K. Adams is a political-military strategist with more than 30 years of experience in all forms of military operations other than war, including counterguerrilla operations in Vietnam, humanitarian assistance in Haiti, counterdrug missions in South America, and peace operations in Bosnia. His recent publications include Special Operations and the Challenge of Unconventional Warfare (Cass, 1998) and "The Real Military Revolution," Parameters (Autumn 2000). His last operational military assignment was with the NATO stability force in Bosnia. A retired US Army lieutenant colonel, Adams holds a Ph.D. in political science from Syracuse University, an M.A. in international relations, an M.S.Sc. in social psychology, and a B.A. in liberal arts.

[trailhound]

 http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/jan_brewer_says_send_in_the_drones_to_hunt_immigrants


Jan Brewer Says Send in the Drones to Hunt Immigrants
by Michael A. Jones May 27, 2010 10:50 AM (PT) Topics: US & Human Rights
 

DronesForget "Send in the Clowns." There's a new show tune playing through the halls of the Arizona governor's office, and it's called, "Send in the Drones."

That's because Gov. Jan Brewer, who recently signed into law one of the harshest anti-immigrant pieces of legislation in U.S. history, has fired off a letter to President Barack Obama, urging him to send dozens of drones down to the U.S./Mexico border, to target people who might consider crossing.

Drones are the same weapons that the Obama administration has used in record amounts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the tune of numerous civilian casualties and untold amounts of anger from not only terrorist networks like al Qaeda, but also regular people on the ground who don't like watching their houses destroyed and their loved ones blown up.

Perhaps Gov. Brewer isn't aware of the fact that drones, otherwise known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have a dubious reputation for killing innocent people.

"I would also ask you, as overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan permit, to consider wider deployment of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] along our nation's southern border," Gov. Brewer wrote. "I am aware of how effective these assets have become in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, and it seems UAVs operations would be ideal for border security and counter-drug missions."

What a strange definition of "effective" Gov. Brewer has, and rather amazing that she'd openly advocate for turning the U.S./Mexico border into a spin-off of the Afghan/Pakistan border.

Of course, what's also somewhat bizarre about Gov. Brewer's request for drones to patrol the border is the fact that ... drones already patrol the border. That's a fact not lost on Mother Jones, who notes that at least five drones already roam along the border, and have been since the mid-2000s, well before the Obama administration took office.

"If you want to get on the government's case for not flying Predators in domestic airspace or for considering the idea in the first place, too late — that drone has flown," writes Dave Gilson at Mother Jones.

So it looks like Gov. Brewer's vision for Arizona is a desert land filled with rogue law enforcement officers, National Guard helicopters, drones, and military weapons. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this a state in the U.S., or the scenery being mapped out for the next version of Grand Theft Auto?

[trailhound]

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/brazil-under-fire-for-spending-350-million-on-israeli-drones-1.265590

Brazil under fire for spending $350 million on Israeli drones
Brazil ruling party politician, social activists vow to fight 'importation of Israeli oppression'.
By Cnaan Liphshiz

The anticipated use of Israeli-made drones by Brazilian police Tuesday drew criticism from a prominent ruling party politician. It also prompted social activists to seek greater cooperation with Palestinian movements to protest the "importation of Israeli oppression."

The sale of Israeli drones to Brazil "confirms that Israel draws indirect benefits from the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories," Valter Pomar, secretary of international relations for the leftist Workers Party (PT), told Haaretz.

Pomar said he disagreed with the "democratically-reached" decision to equip Brazilian police with drones used as part of what he termed "Israel's illegal and illegitimate actions."

"It is symptomatic that Brazil imports tactics and equipment from Israel, an ultra-militarized country which keeps an entire population under military occupation," said Mauricio Campos, a spokesman for the Network of Communities and Movements against Violence.

He added that the network - a prominent grassroots organization which sprang up six years ago in Rio's poor favelas, or shantytowns - will discuss the pending sale on Thursday, during a general meeting. "Without doubt, we will make our voices heard over this," Campos told Haaretz.

His group has organized various events to protest Israel's policies and what the network called "genocidal attacks" on Palestinians.

The discussion on Thursday of the drone sale was scheduled after Brazilian media reported last week that Rio's state police force is considering buying six Israeli Skylark I unmanned aerial vehicles to combat rampant crime.

In November, during President Shimon Peres' state visit to Brazil, Israel and Brazil sealed a $350 million deal for the supply of 14 Israeli Heron UAVs to several Brazilian law enforcement agencies.

That deal was completed weeks after a drug gang from a Rio favela shot down a police helicopter with a short range rocket.

[trailhound]

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/high-tech-death-from-above-u-s-drone-wars-fuel-war-crimes/

High-Tech Death from Above: U.S. Drone Wars Fuel War Crimes

by Tom Burghardt / May 3rd, 2010

As America continues its uncontrolled flight towards disaster, Israeli-style “targeted killings” (assassinations) of alleged militants and unarmed civilians in the “Afpak theatre” are on the rise.

With indiscriminate attacks by armed drones soaring since President Obama was sworn into office, the Pentagon’s mad dash to achieve what it describes as “full-spectrum dominance” in this regional “battlespace,” has sought to leverage its dominant position as the world leader in robotized forms of state killing and obtain a decisive technological edge over their adversaries.

Judging by proverbial “facts on the ground,” they’ll need it. The World Socialist Web Site disclosed May 1, that a “semi-annual report released by the Pentagon on the Afghanistan war recorded a sharp increase in attacks on occupation troops and scarce support for the corrupt US-backed puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai.”

Despite Obama’s dispatch of 35,000 troops since his inauguration as imperial Consul, socialist critic Bill Van Auken writes that the congressionally-mandated progress report “presented a grim picture of the state of the nearly nine-year-old, US-led war,” and that “the country’s so-called insurgents considered 2009 their ‘most successful year’.”

That the drone wars will escalate is underscored by a piece in Air Force Times. Writing May 1, an anonymous correspondent reports that Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Glenn Walters, the deputy director for resources and acquisition for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, said “the U.S. military has sent so many of its 6,500 UAVs to the Middle East that other operating theaters are going without.”

Speaking April 28 at an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA) conference in northern Virginia, Walters said that Obama’s Afghanistan “surge” has stripped other Pentagon commands of drones and that it “will likely be a year before U.S. planners have a better handle on how many UAVs will be needed there and how many can be spared for use outside of the Middle East.”

“By 2012,” Walters told the killer robot conclave, “we’ll have 8,000 UAVs that will have to fit into” the Defense Department’s global maintenance and basing structure.

All the more reason then, in keeping with the Pentagon’s twisted logic, to escalate attacks on Pakistan, raining high-tech death from above!

Remote-Controlled War Crimes

Since its inception under the criminal Bush regime, the administration’s robot assassination policy has been called into question by legal scholars and civil liberties’ advocates who charge that CIA, but also military pilots, waging America’s undeclared drone war on Pakistan may be liable for war crimes.

During hearings last week before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s National Security and Foreign Affairs panel, Mary Ellen O’Connell, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, told the committee that “Combat drones are battlefield weapons. They fire missiles or drop bombs capable of inflicting very serious damage. Drones are not lawful for use outside combat zones. Outside such zones, police are the proper law enforcement agents, and police are generally required to warn before using lethal force.”

The one caveat I would add to the professor’s statement are that “police” would be “proper law enforcement agents” outside combat zones were America a “normal” country that abides by the rule of law, including laws governing armed conflict. Clearly, a nation that squanders nearly $800B of it’s treasure in a single year on death and destruction is anything but normal.

O’Connell went on to say that “restricting drones to the battlefield is the most important single rule governing their use. Yet, the United States is failing to follow it more often than not.” The Notre Dame law prof continued: “At the very time we are trying to win hearts and minds to respect the rule of law, we are ourselves failing to respect a very basic rule: remote weapons systems belong on the battlefield.”

In a sharply worded letter to President Obama, submitted as a statement for the record to the House panel, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero wrote, “I am writing to express our profound concern about recent reports indicating that you have authorized a program that contemplates the killing of suspected terrorists–including U.S. citizens–located far away from zones of actual armed conflict. If accurately described, this program violates international law and, at least insofar as it affects U.S. citizens, it is also unconstitutional.”

Romero stated that the “U.S. is engaged in non-international armed conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq and the lawfulness of its actions must be judged in that context. … The entire world is not a war zone, and wartime tactics that may be permitted on the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be deployed anywhere in the world where a terrorism suspect happens to be located.”

But as the imperial project goes to ground, we can expect that the administration’s policy of targeting its enemies for liquidation on the streets of Sana’a, Mogadishu or perhaps, even New York or Washington, will continue along on its merry way.

Last October, investigative journalist Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker that the Air Force UAV fleet “has grown from some fifty drones in 2001 to nearly two hundred; the C.I.A. will not divulge how many drones it operates. The government plans to commission hundreds more, including new generations of tiny ‘nano’ drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.”

And given the classified rules governing the CIA’s “geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force,” the highly-compartmented program affords the President another plausibly deniable weapon in the Executive Branch arsenal. Because of this, Mayer writes, “there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”

“Should something go wrong in the C.I.A.’s program,” Mayer reports, “it’s unclear what the consequences would be.”

Judging however, by the response of our “forward looking” President and his “liberal” acolytes in Congress, academia and the media to widespread constitutional abuses (warrantless wiretapping), the waging of preemptive, aggressive wars (Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan), and illegal detention and torture by the previous, and current, U.S. regimes, it’s pretty obvious what those “consequences” will be.

“The Predators in the C.I.A. program,” Mayer observes, “are ‘flown’ by civilians, both intelligence officers and private contractors.” Described as “seasoned professionals” by Mayer’s counterterrorism source, the CIA has outsourced “a significant portion of its work.” And “from their suburban redoubt,” we’re informed, “they can turn the plane, zoom in on the landscape below, and decide whether to lock onto a target.”

But therein lies the rub for the CIA.

During last week’s congressional hearings, Loyola Law School professor David Glazier, told the House panel that the CIA’s crew of killer drone pilots could, in theory at least, be prosecuted because they aren’t combatants in a legal sense.

“It is my opinion, as well as that of most other law-of-war scholars I know, that those who participate in hostilities without the combatant’s privilege do not violate the law of war by doing so, they simply gain no immunity from domestic laws,” Glazier said.

“Under this view” Glazier continued, “CIA drone pilots are liable to prosecution under the law of any jurisdiction where attacks occur for any injuries, deaths or property damage they cause.” Here’s where things get interesting. “But under the legal theories adopted by our government in prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, these CIA officers as well as any higher-level government officials who have authorized or directed their attacks are committing war crimes.” (emphasis added)

There it is, plug-and-play state killing; but fear not.

As a top Bush administration aide told investigative journalist Ron Suskind in 2004: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality–judiciously, as you will–we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

While the swagger and imperial hubris of the Bush regime may have been swapped for the vastly superior Obama (PR) product, the results are inevitably the same: death and destruction on a planetary scale and to hell with the law and human rights.

Drone Wars Escalate

As The Long War Journal noted in January, the American drone campaign “in Pakistan’s tribal areas remains the cornerstone of the effort to root out and decapitate the senior leadership of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other allied terror groups, and to disrupt both al Qaeda’s global and local operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

CNN reported that CIA Director, Leon Panetta, told the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles last May that the American drone war is “the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt” the leadership of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets known as al-Qaeda.

But with civilian deaths spiking, the robot reign of terror has sparked widespread opposition across all political sectors in Pakistan, from far-right Islamist factions to the socialist left. While Pentagon and CIA officials claim that civilian deaths are “regrettable,” an unintended consequence of America’s global imperial project, facts on the ground tell a different tale.

Last year, investigative journalist Amir Mir reported in Lahore’s English-language newspaper, The News, that of 60 “cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent.”

According to Mir, the “drone attacks went wrong due to faulty intelligence information, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children.” The Pentagon and CIA dispute these figures.

In February however, Mir disclosed that Afghanistan-based Predator drones “carried out a record number of 12 deadly missile strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan in January 2010, of which 10 went wrong and failed to hit their targets, killing 123 innocent Pakistanis. The remaining two successful drone strikes killed three al-Qaeda leaders, wanted by the Americans.”

According to the journalist, the spike in drone assaults indicated that “revenge is the major motive for these attacks,” and can be “attributed to December 30, 2009 suicide bombing in the Khost area of Afghanistan bordering North Waziristan, which killed seven CIA agents. US officials later identified the bomber as Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian national linked to both al-Qaeda and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).”

In other words, the slaughter of 123 civilians was viewed by the CIA and Pentagon as a splendid means “to avenge the loss of the seven CIA agents and to raise morale of its forces in Afghanistan.”

Sensitive as always to the suffering of others, The Washington Post reported April 26, that “CIA is using new, smaller missiles and advanced surveillance techniques to minimize civilian casualties in its targeted killings of suspected insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to current and former officials in the United States and Pakistan.”

According to the Post, “technological improvements” in recent months “have resulted in more accurate operations that have provoked relatively little public outrage,” the unnamed officials said.

Stung by the growing furor over civilian deaths, the Agency defensively claims their assassination program delivers “precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare.”

Chief among the “improvements” cited by the Post, CIA Predators are now fielding a Lockheed Martin-designed “Small Smart Weapon” called the Scorpion. Clocking-in at 21 inches, weighing 35 pounds and having the diameter of a “small coffee cup,” the Post reports that it causes far less damage than a Hellfire “and it can be fitted with four different guidance systems that allow it to home in on targets as small as a single person, in complete darkness.”

According to Lockheed Martin, the Scorpion “provides the warfighter with low cost lethality against a broad target set” and “ensures accuracy to less than one meter and dramatically reduces the possibility of collateral damage.”

I’m sure this comes as a comforting reassurance of America’s pure intentions, especially for “Afpak” women and children who’ve been turned into smoldering body parts scattered across the landscape of our latest “good war.”

An Evolving Marketplace…for High-Tech Death

As the United States continues its drive to dominate resource-rich, but politically unstable regions of the world, the Pentagon, in a throw-back to the “Camelot” era of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ have embraced the counterinsurgency doctrine of fighting multiple “brushfire” wars in inhospitable global hot-spots.

Increasingly, as the “battlespace” morphs from fighting in jungles, deserts or that former Cold War set-piece, the European plain, directly into large urban areas, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) takes center stage. While “situational awareness” of the hot zone has always been a preoccupation of Pentagon planners, the nature of urban combat places a premium on complex technological systems that gather intelligence–from low earth orbit to right outside your door.

Such preoccupations have been a boon for America’s defense and security grifters.

During 2010’s first quarter, Washington Technology reported, that “contracts announced during January, February and March had values that ranged from $266 million to $2.8 billion.”

According to reporter Nick Wakeman, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., “secured” a $266 million contract from the Air Force for “program and technical support for the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial systems.”

Work will include “program and configuration management, logistics, technical services, flight and operations, software maintenance and data collection.”

As investigative journalist Nick Turse reported for TomDispatch in January, the Pentagon “cut two sizeable checks to ensure that unmanned operations involving the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper will continue full-speed ahead in 2010.” In addition to the General Atomics deal, Turse reported that the Air Force inked a “$38 million contract with defense giant Raytheon for logistics support for the targeting systems of both drones.”

As combat operations across the “Afpak theatre” escalate, the use of drones by both the CIA and Air Force have sharply increased; indeed, the Pentagon is on a veritable shopping spree.

This is borne-out by the flight hours logged by unmanned systems. “In 2004″ Turse writes, “Reapers, just beginning to soar, flew 71 hours in total, according to Air Force documents; in 2006, that number had risen to 3,123 hours; and last year, 25,391 hours.”

According to Air Force estimates Turse avers, “the combined flight hours of all its drones–Predators, Reapers, and unarmed RQ-4 Global Hawks–will exceed 250,000 hours, about the total number of hours flown by all Air Force drones from 1995-2007. In 2011, the 300,000 hour-a-year barrier is expected to be crossed for the first time, and after that the sky’s the limit.”

Such estimates can only be music to the ears of General Atomics’ shareholders.

While these systems are powerful reminders that being an Empire means never having to say you’re sorry to the victims, it seems they’re not quite good enough.

Air Force Times reported last May that the Air Force “is already looking at a third generation of armed remote-control planes even as it continues to build up its fleet of MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers.”

Although General Atomics has the lock on providing the CIA and Pentagon with MQ-1 and MQ-9s, the “service has started an analysis” for a next gen killer drone, the MQ-X, “with the goal of choosing a plane in 2012, Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford told reporters.”

According to Air Force Times, “General Atomics has already unveiled a jet-powered UAV called the Avenger, able to fly at 460 mph–about twice as fast as the Reaper–and carry 3,000 pounds of weapons and sensors.”

Last week, Defense Systems reported that the Defense Department “is reassessing its view of unmanned aerial vehicles–a key component of modern combat operations–and deciding what the military needs from UAVs beyond their traditional use as a platform to gather intelligence and fire weapons.”

Defense Systems’ reporter Amber Corrin wrote that “next-generation UAVs will need to take on additional duties including cargo transport, refueling and possible medical applications, and they will need to be interoperable with different platforms, users and military services.”

One wag, Col. Dale Fridley, the Director of the Air Force Unmanned Aerial Systems Task Force, said that the Air Force is looking for a “plug-and-play” approach and that “interoperable command and control, multi-access controls and enhanced human-system interfaces are among the most important short-term enablers in developing next-generation UAVs.”

Fridley described the proposed MQ-X as the “embodiment of the flight plan.”

According to General Atomics, the firm’s next-gen, jet-powered Predator C drone, the Avenger, can attain air speeds far greater than the lumbering systems currently operating. With a 41-foot long fuselage and 66-foot wingspan, the system can “can carry the same mix of weapons as Predator B,” the MQ-9 Reaper. The company envisages the manufacture of both armed and unarmed reconnaissance models for the Defense Department and other willing customers.

And with Predators clocking more than 30,000 hours of flight time per month, and with more than 40 UAVs aloft “every second of every day,” as GA boosters put it, and with the Air Force and the CIA seeking the capability to fly anywhere from 50-75 daily “missions” above Afghanistan, Pakistan and who knows where else, the always-open wallet’s of the American people will continue feeding, and accelerating, the imperialist “kill chain.”

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily and Pacific Free Press. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press. Read other articles by Tom, or visit Tom's website.