Building anything with armor (rock) attributes violates the tenets of RMA that if you can be seen you can be direct hit by high explosives, so since we're lazy and greedy we will just run around naked and let ALL high explosive near misses kill us (air bursting AAA, SAMs) and of course any small-arms fire kinetic energy bullet hits too. Don't fly under 10, 000 feet....we'll send UAVs in low even though their soda straw view is nothing like a human's eyes and can't sport enemies hiding by C3D2 and the UAV's 50% crash rate against the earth will only be made worse when the enemy shoots them down. DoD's lop-sided misunderstanding of war can be tied directly to their misunderstanding of explosives (this web page):

www.geocities.com/transformationunderfire/highexplosives.htm

The Army's FCS medium tank while thankfully on tracks and not wheels after the RMA hubrists had to accept physical reality that wheeled vehicles cannot go cross-country with any armor weight, only has armoring to withstand easy threats; bullets, small cannon shells and ATGMs/RPGs that are man-carried or on light vehicles. This would be ok if FCS were to primarily operate in closed terrain, but its a MEDIUM track that's too heavy to operate in closed terrain without getting constantly stuck. The FCS cannot take a main gun 90-140mm hit from a medium-heavy tank in open terrain because its TOO LIGHT. Physical armor on the FCS is not a driving force in the RMA madness its based on, "Networking" is. While not a "Jap Zero", the FCS is like a P-39 Aircobra, its got a little bit of armoring and a little bit of mobility and a little bit of firepower while showboating new but dubious technology like its car-doors and mid-mounted engine.

Back to the issue of Maneuver Air Support...the missing ingredient is our lack of MANNED observation/attack aircraft to find the enemy and immediately attack him in both nation-state war as swarms of "killer bees" and during sub-national conflicts with dogged investigative 24/7/365 air surveillance. We all know MANPADS and SAMS under 10K can be countered so an armored, low-altitude, high agility O/A aircraft can provide MAS. This runs counter to the lies of RMA that machines can and should replace men in war. When we have a half-baked reform like Goldwater-Nichols its naive to think men in uniform are going to buck the RMA party line and write a requirements document that will hurt his promotions and post-retirement job opportunities with the defense firms building RMA mentalistic junk. For there to be progress we need Winston Churchills and Barnes Wallises, civilians with a gift for sound (employs rock, paper and scissors aspects) military creativity (GIDO) to overcome the narrow-mindedness of on-duty military men (FIDO) if we are to overcome our more-open minded foes.

What about at Sea?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rskOGARqjqc

The Navies of the world were the first to create armored warfighting platforms to withstand HE attacks. This continued until WW2 when a mythology of futility was created in response to the airplane delivered-HE attack. After Pearl Harbor not a single heavily armored battleship was sunk if it was moving and had aircraft cover to repel air attacks. Hundreds of lesser (under 10, 000 tons) and non-armored ships were hit and sunk even if there was effective air cover because there will always be some "leakers" that get through; be they aircraft, submarines, sea mines, patrol boats or daring surface ship destroyers. This mythology of futility in the face of HE attacks which are now guided has created an entire fleet of under 10, 000 ton U.S. Navy ships at risk of a sea battle disaster of epic proportions:

Falklands Lessons Not Learned

A "balanced" design was a ship that could withstand hits from the same sized armament it carried.

BALANCE

We understood this before WW2, got stymied by the Washington Peace Treaty Ship Weight Limits, and took all of WW2 to get it right.

Then WW2 ended.

What the hell happened?

As time went on, the guided missile offering a DIRECT HIT (DH) of high explosives should have demanded BETTER SHIP ARMORING and even having ships submerge to avoid the hit in the first place. Instead, we were lazy and fatalistic our designs became fatally IMBALANCED. Today, NONE of our destroyers, cruisers or aircraft carriers can survive a direct hit from their own type armaments....the same mistake of the battlecruiser...remember the HMS Hood?

IMBALANCE

The whole house of cards is set to collapse the minute the protection rug is pulled out from us! We have replaced a sound pyramid with a spinning "top".

Consider the plight of the USS Samuel B. Roberts during the 1988 Iran-Iraq Guard-the-Oil-Tankers War, from former marine Frank Hoffman's October 2006 Armed Forces Journal book review of "No Higher Honor" a patriotically correct book by Bradley Peniston:

"...the Roberts found itself in the middle of an Iranian minefield and it backed over an ancient but potent instrument of naval warfare, an M-08/39 naval mine packed with more than 250 pounds of explosives. Just before 5 p.m. on April 14, 1988, the Roberts hull bumped into a 3-foot black metal sphere. "A lead foil horn crumpled against a half-inch hull plate. Chemicals mixed, generating an electrical charge," Peniston writes. "An eighth of a ton of TNT violently transformed into heat and vapor and soot. The shockwave hit the ship at frame 276--two-thirds of the way down the 445-foot hull, and just four feet to port of centerline. The blast lifted the entire ship at the point of impact, and the stern rose a few feet more than the bow. The stress was more than the keel could endure." A fireball burst up from the damaged engine room as scalding gases melted its equipment and vented up through the ship's exhaust stack. Its back broken and its crew stunned, the Roberts was dead in the water. Water was flooding into the ship's engine compartments, and a raging fire was consuming the stricken vessel's fuel tanks. As Peniston captures it; "In a heartbeat, a single low-tech weapon had roughly halved the structural strength of a U.S. Navy warship".

Notice the distortion to make the blast look bigger and make excuses for our weak, thin-skinned Navy---Peniston ridiculously calls the 250 pounds of HE "an eighth of a ton"...boy that's like saying 1 ounce is really "32, 000th of a ton". He's trying to get the word "ton" in there to make it look like the Roberts was hit by a lot of explosives to excuse away its disablement when really its the WEAKNESS of U.S. Navy ships that resulted in its loss. The Navy brass expensively repaired the Roberts quickly to save face. They'll tell you they have a new class of "High Tech" flimsy destroyers that has replaced many of the Oliver Hazard Perry class and non-solved the vulnerability-to-HE attack problem. We have the USS Cole debacle hit again by HE this time while she sat unguarded at port a rubber boat waltzed up to her side and exploded (SDP).

Despite the Germans sinking Allied ships beginning in 1943 with guided bombs and missiles, the U.S. Navy has refused to over the years ARMOR their ships and have actually adopted the "Jap Zero" RMA mentality in their flimsy surface ships.

The heavily armored Iowa class battleship CAN survive enemy HE DH attacks; its a key weapon we need to smash into a spoil and enemy invasion fleet even if its guarded by a shield of missiles, aircraft and submarines. Without heavily armored battleships capable of withstanding guided HE attacks, the navy whose floating SSC is the weakest will be forced to flee the battle Jutland style or be sunk. The Navies of the world were the first to armor themselves and the first to unarmor themselves in preparation to die and be defeated at sea.

Legendary DoD Air Chief Chuck Myers writes:

"If you think four BB's are expensive, how about a fleet of multi-billion dollar ships which can not defend against 'sea skimmers' and cannot survive a good strafing much less a guided missile.

Keep in mind, I was a part of the Navy group that had to perform the 'vulnerability analysis' to CM and other ordnance when we had to answer the Congess in 1979 re: proposed reactivation. The only ordnance which might really damage an Iowa is a 16" armor piercing round which we own, exclusively. Here is a fact: no U.S. battleship at sea, engaging in combat operations has ever been sunk; even when the USS North Carolina took a couple of massive Jap torpedos, which created a hole 40' x 18' in the forward/starboard hull, increased speed and continued to fight; later retired to a Pacific island base and accepted a weld job, returning to combat ops within six weeks. That's a WARship."

What about precision-guided SDH strikes against fixed targets?

Many RMA pundits and even maneuverists will wrongly concede that most PGM SDH strikes against fixed targets that cannot move (ships at anchor etc.) are effective. Aircraft above ground concrete shelters are notoriously visible on a static air base and while they can protect against a DH, Iraqi aircraft shelters were easily busted by SDH strikes into their roof centers. This is why as we said earlier, aircraft need to be UNDERGROUND using connected shipping containers so they can be camouflaged and not provide a targetting aim point.

However, if the thing being struck is adequately burrowed and hardened it can survive even a SDH. First, if the target is under ground, camouflaged and not detected there will be no coordinates to target to get a DH much less a SDH. Bombers may think they are hitting targets and they might be sacrificial decoys to deceive them. The German U-Boat pens in France during WW2 that were NEVER destroyed warn us urgently to not depend on HE air strikes.

After years of relentless bombings, how could the bunker bases survive - and even be strengthened - without significant damage?

One man had an answer that was echoed by many. First Lieutenant (later Captain) Edward J. Hennessy, stationed at Thurleigh in East Anglia, flew 25 missions as the command pilot of the B-17F, "Little Audrey." A Chicagoan and 1940 Notre Dame graduate, and only 23, Hennessy was on his third mission over St. Nazaire when flak took out an engine. "We had damage from FW's and ME's every mission. Our fighters didn't have the range, so in those early days we always flew without fighter escort," he said. "Everything was tried against the sub pens without results. One time we loaded 2,000 pound Navy 16-inch battleship shells fitted with tail fins, hoping to hit the 'garage doors.' They bounced off just like the others. It convinced us that nothing was going to take out the pens, and we were right - nothing did."

With the most complete roof system of the five bases, the St. Nazaire pens received the least damage. If they saw anything at all from 25,000 feet, Allied flight crews discerned only a roof superstructure, the topmost of seven roof levels above the pens.

To detonate bombs and direct the blast to an open six-and-a-half foot-high explosion chamber below, German engineers designed the fangrost or "bomb trap" superstructure - inverted, concrete, U-shaped beams set on parallel slabs. An enclosed concrete layer under the explosion chamber (the third section) continued down to another solid section, then to a triangular interior void formed by tilting concrete U-beams against each other. Serving as a second bomb trap, the void also redistributed enormous weight loads to exterior walls. The combination of fangrosten, an explosion chamber, and the void, redirected bomb impacts and contained penetrating explosions. Below the triangle-shaped void, additional concrete reinforcement encased a steel-trussed framework spanning each pen's eight-foot- thick dividing walls. A final corrugated steel layer - the only section viewed from the pens - served as the covering above the U-boats. In all, seven anomalous dense overlays up to 25-feet thick protected the U-boats.

After hundreds of raids only dimpled the pens, a new Allied weapon - the "Tallboy" entered the scene. Sporting offset fins for bullet-like twisting, the 12,000-pound ballistic bomb was so heavy it could be dropped only from relatively low levels, thus negating much of its penetrating ability. In bases with incomplete fangrost defenses, some hits actually penetrated to the pen berths. But after hundreds of attempts, not one Tallboy pierced roofs with the complete seven-layer fangrost system. At war's end the five bases remained fully functional, but the five once-peaceful seaports and their surroundings were destroyed completely.

Grand Slam

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Mm-zFW_nA

After the German surrender, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey counted 3,000 artillery pieces along the entire Atlantic Wall. Sited on land, flak ships and flak towers, 300 heavy-caliber guns defended Lorient. Numerous Luftwaffe bases and 40,000 Wehrmacht troops encircled the bunkers. Surrounding the pens, bristling from firing ports, casemates, flak-towers and armored turrets, scores of 20mm, 75mm, 88mm, 105mm, and 128mm guns awaited the Allied enemy. No combat zone was protected more fiercely. But Festung Lorient withered on the vine, as the U.S. 66th Infantry, and 4th Armored Divisions wisely skirted Lorient on the march to Germany.

John Godwin's web site details how British "Dam Busters" genius Barnes Wallis was alert and developed bunker-busting bombs in WW2 but these were not enough to defeat the German sub pens:

http://members.aol.com/nukeinfo2/

Note that the way the "rock" of the U-Boat pens was defeated was not by "scissors" of HE bombs but by "paper" of maneuver that flanked and cut-off them from supplies and men to stay operational. Again, when air strikes fail, the answer is ground MANEUVER.

New Chinese Communist Satellite-Guided Aircraft Bomb

LAND

We MUST get our troops out of tents and trucks forever and into hardened BATTLEBOXes with German sub-pen style pre-det roofs, the enemy's guided HE threat is GROWING and we are making excuses to live in a WW2 re-enactment la-la land. We need to be like the Chinese in the Korean War (be as camouflaged and crafty with combined arms war means like tracked AFVs) but without BECOMING THEM (John Poole's handicapped foot slogging narcissist mentality).

AIR

Our aircraft MUST DISPERSE and BURROW underground, too. Henderson field on Guadalcanal should have taught us to be able to burrow even expeditionary airfields.

Smart American Combat Engineers get it: during WW2 they respected high explosive attack enough to properly camouflage...

During World War II the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.

However, today's lazy American light infantry narcissists don't get it and Combat Engineers are not listened to and we get clusterfucks like Bagram AFB in Afghanistan clear as day as a target even on Google maps satellite as General Gavin warned us years ago in 1958!

The irony is that the very things Bagram AFB personnel need to burrow underground are stacked in a corner being ignored! Thousands of ISO shipping containers that can be made into camouflaged and fortified "BATTLEBOXes".

While the lazy narcissist troops suffer in pathetic tents that cannot camouflage or protect them!

What else can we do? If we don't blow-the-whistle here on incompetent military practices? The narcissist U.S. military doesn't act on anyone's internal constructive criticism to fix problems quietly, they just lie and declare THERE IS NO PROBLEM! SHOOT THE HONEST, LOYAL, MESSENGER REPORTING THE PROBLEM!

Precision Bombing of Nothing: an American Tradition

www.geocities.com/operationalliedforces/airinterdictionfails.htm
www.history.navy.mil/library/online/bombing_tool.htm

Americans want to replay WW2 on the cheap and do the firepower part from sexy aircraft and not do the necessary ground maneuver to take a Berlin or a Tokyo. Since nuclear SHEs are off the table to break the will of a nation-state foe, small amounts of HEs from small fighter-bombers from extremely costly, vulnerable aircraft supercarriers or piss-off-the-locals land bases going too fast to see what they are hitting means they can only hit what is obvious. Smart foes will not offer obvious targets seen from the air. Foes that are not nation-states with American-style industries will not HAVE ANY OBVIOUS air targets. Only if many heavy bombers are used to mass HE effects can nation-states be forced to bend their wills but only if we are willing to carpet-bomb and kill many civilians in the process and be just as evil as the government leaders we are opposing if those citizens are victims and not guilty accomplices of placing the governmental leaders in power.

The power of planet earth to absorb our inefficient fighter-bomber airstrikes is greater than our ability to throw money down the drain or create narcissistic egomaniacs to fly such pricey aircraft. America will continue to be defeated by foes refusing to play our partial WW2 re-enactment game with small amounts of HE until we finally realize that firepower cannot win wars short of SHE annihilation of all the people we THINK are against us, and to develop a MANEUVER based warfighting force structure that can DIFFERENTIATE between good guy and bad guy from the ground without getting itself hurt by it being in armored tracked combat vehicles with EFFICIENT firepower proving leverage to HELP. This would mean projecting massive amounts of precision HE BALLISTICALLY via guns from ships and artillery pieces whenever possible so as to prevent a human pilot from having to fly over or near a target to try to hit it. We must preserve THE WILL OF OUR OWN PEOPLE and not fritter it away delivering HE against mud huts. Men in aircraft flying low and slow must help ground forces find the enemy to not only hit him with HE/KE attacks but to control the ground itself so he cannot use it to wage war. Robbing the enemy of the ability to wage war by not allowing him the ground needed can force him to conclude that he should stop trying. When an enemy can no longer fight you, he is defeated. When an enemy has been made to changed in his mind to stop trying to fight you, you have hope that he can someday be your friend.

SEA

At sea, as if the CHICOMs didn't have enough HE ASMs, mines, torpedoes already you now can add HE guided glide bombs. The USN needs to wake up from its large aircraft carrier poison Kool-Aid, disperse and grain more aircraft to spoil HE attacks, harden its ships with heavy armoring and go under the sea for protection.

ALL U.S. military forces need to start using C3D2 and stop whining about just the enemy using it to foil easy video game-like victories for us.

Clearly, the U.S. military has yet to fully exploit the 20th century armored battleship, submarine, airplane, tank, and shipping container as described above to exploit the protective potentials and self-sufficiency possibilities of hardened steel and/or the sea and earth to defeat HE dominated 21st century warfare. At sea, our Navy floats in flimsy horizontal buildings easily exploded by SDH HE strikes full of petty bureaucrats playing sea-based garrison games when they should be either on heavily armored surface ships or beneath the water in submarines. On land, the Air Force is comfortable on fixed air bases in flimsy shacks with air conditioning while their fuel-laden planes are parked in rows Hickam Field Pearl Harbor-style ready to explode from the first hot shrapnel near miss, U.S. Army and marines are still walking around on foot, riding in wheeled trucks and living in tents. A light unit has no tracked tanks, walks or rides in vulnerable wheeled trucks. It cannot go cross-country except slowly on foot and cannot swim across lakes and rivers. It's a WW1 style clusterfuck asking to be toasted by EVERY type of weapon known to man. Once a man is wounded, 2 men are taken out tending to him and the unit is pinned down and at risk of being wiped out Rangers at Cisterna, 1943 style. Heavy units have a support underclass of Jessica Lynches who after their fuel, ammo and food gets toasted in vulnerable wheeled trucks will themselves grind to a halt and beg rescue from the air, which may not come if enemy air defenses are effective if inside a SSC trap. The light narcissists in cohoots with the RMA disciples will reply that since a SDH is "doomsday" and cannot be survived (their own prejudice-serving, lack of imagination) that there is no point in being armored or vehicle mobile AT ALL; by being "light" they can avoid the SDH entirely because they are just walking humans not worth the cost of a $1 million munition. What these fools do not understand is that avoiding the SDH is NOT the only thing they have to worry about, THEY SWIM IN A SEA OF BULLET AND HIGH EXPLOSIVE WEAPONS EFFECTS and any of these striking them (DH) or even just landing nearby (NM) will KILL AND WOUND THEM. The enemy doesn't need to be able to specifically point target the man on foot or in a wheeled truck---all he has to do is know the general area where the "lightitis" fools are and can unload a bunch of HE effects in that area to kill/wound/destroy them because:

THE SIDE THAT IS UP AND MOVING IS AT A DISADVANTAGE TO THE SIDE THAT IS DOWN AND FIRING

How Do We Make Explosives Work For Us instead of Against Us? Fighting the Gunslinger Culture

The U.S. Army and marines are run by infantry officers who shoot KE bullets and DO NOT USE HE.

We'll say it again.

The U.S. Army and marines are run by infantry officers who shoot KE bullets and DO NOT USE HE.

Before you even try to suggest they do use HE, think again.

The disposible rocket shooting HE is a fantasy; its a round of ammunition so there's no placeholder in small unit tactics for Soldiers to train on it. That's why massed enemy RPG launchers have been kicking our asses all these years. M203 40mm grenade launchers have no training round, so they are ignored as an extra 3 pounds of weight under fireteam leader and grenadier M16/M4 rifle/carbines. Hand grenades could be trained on without exploding, but the M67 practice grenade is a 1 pound steel ball that would hurt Soldiers if it hits them--why this can't be covered in foam rubber in a high visibility orange color to aid in retrieval is yet another common sense thing not being down because INFANTRY ARE GUNSLINGERS NOT INTERESTED IN HE TAKING AWAY THEIR EGO GRATIFICATION BY KILLING THE ENEMY FOR THEM. The bottom line is:

HIGH EXPLOSIVES ARE DANGEROUS AND NOT SEXY.

Unlike a rifle or machine gun which unloaded is not dangerous but makes an excellent phallic symbol to be seen with, HE is a white slab of play-dough that sits in your rucksack and doesn't do a damn thing to get you into bed with chicks. You can throw it into a fire to cook your rations as Vietnam vets did but you better not add pressure to this heat by stomping on it or else you'll become a red blood mist. Handling the raw C4 with youre fingers is poisonous to add insult to injury, remember to wash your hands afterwards with soap and water. It doesn't do a damn thing to your ego until you blow it up and no chicks are going to be around to see you do it, anyway. C4 is FUCKING DANGEROUS. Its serious stuff, all GO and no "show".

A mere ounce of C4 in the right place can bring down an airliner. Its so dangerous it SHOULD NOT EVEN BE STORED INSIDE THE GROUND VEHICLE WITH YOU, as the IDF found out a few years ago since this is just setting you up for a fatal SDH if its sympathetically detonated during an enemy attack. All it needs is heat and shock to detonate. C4 should be stored in a TRAILER covered in kevlar towed by you in your armored track and taken out as needed. For busting tunnels and caves we should use a trailer of LOW explosives (ammonium nitrate + diesel fuel) and pump it in by hoses, and send a UGV in to emplace a small C4 HE charge to set it all off. If LE/HE are detonated in the trailer they would explode AWAY from you in your armored track like a near miss. You can't play with LE/HE; the infantry doesn't handle it on a daily basis. Its not fun. Guns are fun. The result is HE ignorance reigns (or should we say "reins in"?) in our tactics.

So, HE is ignored by the light infantry narcissist with a gun in his hands. When he does use HE he can go overboard and kill innocent civilians as this IDF video shows. The IDF Soldiers here know the need to be in armored vehicles like the M113 "Zelda" shown in the video to protect THEM from KE and HE attacks as they scoot around the non-linear battlefield but were weak in their understanding of HE against civilian doors and a needless tragedy resulted.

1.The question here is was explosive door entry required? Did they try knocking on door for permissive entry? Mechanical breach by a tracked armored vehicle at least would not have killed the mom.

2. Where were the sniffer dogs? Why ransack a house blindly when a detector dog could go straight to the items if present?

3. Tragedies like this only make more rebels and is yet more proof that we need a dedicated Non-Linear Battlefield Stability Corps (NLB-SC) who are older, more mature adults who have a grasp of what HE can do and not do. Its also further proof that EVERYONE in the Army needs hands-on training on what HE can and cannot do, as well as every other aspect of modern warfare.

The battlefield is dominated by WHAT WORKS BEST not what LOOKS best and HE like tracked tanks are in the minority when it comes to tools when looks-obsessed Army/marines "gunslingers" are in charge. When HE reality smacks them in the face as it is in constant HE ambushes of men in flimsy wheeled trucks on man-made strips of open terrain in Iraq/Afghanistan, they reply with another vanity; "what heroes they are to die for their country" etc. etc. dolce decorum est. This non-sense should stop and the American Army needs to face the fact that HE and tracked tanks dominate ground warfare and get on with teaching ALL their Soldiers about them and how to use them in combined-arms maneuver warfare.

First, we need to get the practitioners of High Explosives--COMBAT ENGINEERS--into the top leadership of the Army/marines and the maneuver elements down to the COMPANY level. To get the latter done, we need to standardize all light infantry MTOEs into the Airborne MTOE so the 10th Mountain and 25th "Tropic Lightnings" light infantry have Delta Weapons companies that have M113 Gavin light armored fighting vehicles to give them closed terrain, air/amphibious mobility in the face of enemy HE effects as well as bullets. Details:

www.combatreform.com/itmaneuversabattalion.htm

An Engineer Platoon or at least a Sapper Squad should be permanently assigned to the Delta Weapons Companies so they have an appreciation of HE effects and can do mobility/counter-mobility tasks to support the maneuver of the "Engineer Cavalry" unit they actually are which could have HHC, A, B and C companies mounted inside M113 Gavins and Mini-Gavins (fits inside CH-47s heavy lift helicopters). We should rename the Engineers attached to the Delta Weapons companies an "Engineer Cavalry" or ECAV platoon or squad which would fit in nicely with the letter "E".

To get Combat Engineer officers into command slots when the Army/marines are run by gunslinger narcissists shooting KE bullets will be next to impossible with the modularity brigades repeating the mistake of the Pentomic structure from the 1960s. What we propose instead is that at battalion level a "S-3E" slot be created; a permanent combat engineering officer and NCO who will insure HE effects be factored into battalion mission planning. The Sava River debacle where Soldiers were encamped on the flood plane in tents would be avoided by having smart combat engineers to what-if the physical soundness of our battle positions in the defense.

In the offense, to bust enemy SSCs, we need stronger maneuver that goes in 3 dimensions (parachute airdrop and airland) by light forces in high-technology M113 Gavin light tracks from aircraft and improved heavy forces (M1 Abrams, M2 Bradleys with earth-shields over their turret/hull junction point) in 2 dimensions overland supported by a fighting resupply column itself in M113 Gavin derived pallet lifting armored tracks.

What Guderian called for in 1944, we must do. The ENTIRE U.S. Army must be mobile in armored tracks to prevail on HE dominated battlefields. America has the industrial capacity to do this; the Germans didn't or the would have. Major General F.W. von Mellenthin writes in agreement with B.H. Liddell-Hart:

"The Germans lost the chance of victory because they had based their mobility on wheels instead of tracks. On these mud-roads the wheeled transport was bogged when the tracks could move . Panzer forces with tracked transport might have overrun Russia's vital centers long before the autumn, despite the bad roads"

Panzer Battles, Page 187

A force that come come as enveloping maneuver "paper" in all directions by air, by sea, across country to trump the "rock" and "scissors" of enemy SSCs. The key is to fully and skillfully mechanize with EVERYONE in simple, affordable but as capable-as-possible M113 Gavin tracks with earth-filled SOA blast walls attached on the outside after aircraft insertion. All forces are stealthy with infared camouflage and have dozer blades to entrench themselves instantly to evade DHs and certainly SDHs. Smokescreens are valued and practiced. When on-the-move, we are like Genghis Khan/Sherman---we are not dependant upon our fighting resupply columns; we can capture enemy weapons and ammo and use them against them with "Vulture" weapons squads and vehicle brackets. We can siphon fuel from any source and keep our tracks moving, the M1/M2 has their fuel tanks REMOVED FROM INSIDE THEIR HULLS so this accelerant no longer compromises their armor protection for our troops. We have ability to gobble up airdropped pallets of supplies, too without breakbulk. A retired USAF officer writes:

"Your scheme to eliminate logistics concerns by returning to foraging and scavenging only works if your forces use the same fuels, ammos, and equipment as the enemy, or especially designed to be one-way compatible (like some Soviet weapons were), so you can scavenge their stuff and they can't scavenge yours. Otherwise, if you are advancing, great, but if THEY are advancing they (theoretically) SCAVENGE YOURS!"

We should have a "M16A5" assault rifle with inter-changeable magazine wells, bolts and barrels that can shoot enemy ammo and preserve use of our superior reflex and night firing optics. Our model needs to be the Roman Army who carried everything they needed to survive indefinitely on expeditionary campaigns; a scissors/rock/paper combined-arms force all-in-one. Our Forward Operating Bases are composed of ISO shipping container BATTLEBOXes that are hardened instantly when made into a circle by connecting earth-filled SOA blast walls. Their roofs should have "Mini-Fangrost" HE pre-detonation layering on top. They can be further hardened to near invincibility by being dug under the ground. Our FOBs themselves carry many months of vital ammunition and food supplies and derive power from the sun and wind to cool themselves, power sensors and communications but can distil drinking water from the air itself. Today, we can build a mobile fortress capability that only needs ammo, food and fuel, if not moving not much of the latter especially if fuel economy is increased by 2x via Hybrid Electric Drive.

Everything goes by BATTLEBOX to include folding wing observation/attack "grasshoppers" to conserve fuel until we really need them in the air or when the weather doesn't allow them to be in the air etc. to insure there is an airborne 3 dimensional force co-located and working with ground maneuver forces at all times.

What Right Looks Like: the U.S. Army of the future Hardened against SHE/KE/HE Effects

Even after a nuclear blast, troops can if they take cover continue to fight; this test from 1952 shows foot infantry following a M24 Chaffee light tank; this realization led to fully-enclosed armored personnel carriers like the M113 Gavin that could shield from fall-out radiation to maneuver through nuclear devastated areas lacking roads/trails...devastation now possible with guided munitions on a smaller scale--so why wouldn't we need infantry in tracks? The lust for air-filled rubber tired trucks is a fatal emasculation we must avoid.

2D/3D forces can move themselves by their tracks from Allied Nation Operating Bases (ANOBs) into battle and live in FOBs exactly as they would back home at Homeland Operating Bases (HOBs). There would no longer be a "garrison" of static buildings and lawns to care for and do 19th century parades and ceremonies, we are EXACTLY what we need to be in war, 24/7/365. Every recruit an officer cadet learns the BATTLEBOX-GAVIN as part of what "right looks like" from Day 1 of their MANEUVER COMBATANT training where the history of warfare as described in this paper is explained to them, not just rifle-in-hand gunslinging. Weapons handling is continuous from Day 1, and recruits/officer cadets must use IMT every time they go to and from chow while OPFOR with videocameras and SIMUNITION shoots at them so their fire & movement skills are developed to a HIGH LEVEL via force-on-force feedback like a high school football team does (shame on us that we are not already doing this) so EVERYONE IN THE ARMY CAN FIGHT, not just plop on their belly, return fire and whine for rescue.

Aircraft not directly helping maneuver units need to be massed to carpet bomb with unguided HE munitions and use FAEs to penetrate likely enemy tunnels and bunkers after surrounded by maneuver paper. This means B-52s and B-1s that can strike from high altitude not giving the enemy warning as a diving attack from fighter-bombers do. Like Barnes Wallis, we need to develop the largest HE bombs possible that can fit into B-52s/B-1s that can penetrate deep enough to explode Iranian, North Korean and others trying to evade destruction by deep burrowing. We must realize that these massive strikes will not necessarily rid the enemy and have trailers with tanks of LE ammonium nitrate/diesel fuel to pump in underground to detonate and collapse burrowed foes. Flame throwers with fuel in a trailer tower by the tank would be safe enough to assist. Its WW2 in the Pacific or WW1 Stormtroops all over again, but war is cyclical and the constants do remain the same.

So what consequence does HE have other than for military effectiveness, if any?

The sad news is that there has been a political use of fire and LE/HE to change the minds of ignorant people, which may indeed be the Ultimate High Explosive (UHE). As said earlier, some of you may not want to admit it, but Nero set Rome on fire to get key land he wanted to build his palace on. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament with LE explosives gunpower. Hitler set the Reichstag fire to make Communists, Jews into the convenient societal scapegoats as he took dictatorial powers. FDR allowed the Japanese to strike our sitting fleet at Pearl Harbor with HE. LBJ entertained the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to get the U.S. to actively fight the Vietnam war. The sad fact is that government insiders instigate events to drag people to war selling them on an UHE lie.

Let's consider HE use in civilian society to collapse buildings in a controlled manner as seen on the Discovery Channel. As said before, when military HE weapons are used on buildings, the results are disappointing. Against steel bridges, military HE bombs disappoint too; the Remagen bridge in 1945 was hit repeatedly yet stood as the American Army raced across the rhine river into Germany to stop the war by maneuver. The Paul Doumer bridge in North Vietnam didn't go down as dozens of USAF and Navy jet fighter-bomber pilots lost their lives dropping unguided bombs. Only when laser guided bombs hit specific points on the bridge did it finally go down. Fire doesn't do much either to steel and concrete buildings and bridges. However, a SDP (not kinetic) of HE by commandos or saboteurs can cut steel beams and fracture concrete and this is the preferred way to take down large buildings and bridges. A pyrotechnic cutter charge like Thermite used in the military can burn right through steel and if skillfully set off collapse a large skyscraper. Thermite doesn't stop burning so its not used legally in building demolitions when controlled HE charges going off at set times and places can implode buildings. Yet the general public's ignorance that thermite has no legal civil use should have alerted them that its presence in World Trade Center steel beams still burning during scrap recovery means THESE BUILDINGS WERE NOT TAKEN DOWN BY AIRCRAFT FUEL FIRES BUT DELIBERATE HE AND THERMITE DEMOLITION BY SABOTEURS/TERRORISTS. When coupled with the undisputed facts that white anglo-saxon non-Islamics before the 9/11 attacks placed put options on stocks to make millions of dollars off this human tragedy proves they had foreknowledge and were CONSPIRATORS IN THE EVENT. Aww, the dreaded "C" word that threatens the "R" word-RESPONSIBILITY TO GET OFF YOUR ASS AND FIGHT ENEMIES INTERNAL TO THE USA.

Facing the FACTS that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job (ie why were parts from a surplus A-3D SkyWarrior that looks like a mini-767 to the uninformed with podded engines hanging under its wings strewn at the Pentagon on 9/11?) would mean YOU would have to get off your asses and FIGHT REAL EVIL, and criminals like Bush/Cheney have no hesitation to go assassinate folks like Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife. It takes real moral and physical courage to fight real evil, the physical courage to kill lest you be killed in war is not so remarkable when so may alleged "courageous" veterans fail to stand up to war mongers here at home.

Hermann Goering, Hitler's deputy and Luftwaffe Chief said:

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

What if the real bad guys are burrowed and hardened so HE air strikes, even "precision" ones cannot get them?

The failure to destroy German U-Boat bases by HE air strikes in WW2 provide a somber warning and a reminder that GROUND MANEUVER is they key when the enemy erects a rock to hard for us to crack. The shameful fact that the U.S. Air Force gave up on HE deep penetrating bomb research & development in the easy excuse that we would use "nuclear earth penetrating bombs" has set us up for failure today when we need to get deep targets like nuclear facilities without going nuclear ourselves and being hypocrites.

Wiping out the Red Chinese Air Force on the Ground Not Likely: PLA-AF and PLA-N Air Base Infrastructure

This pair of twin-engined J-8Is most likely belong to the 16th Air Regiment, 6th Fighter Division, based at Yinchuan in the Lanzhou MR. Yinchuan is one of several "superhardened" PLA-AF bases (PLA).

The PLA-AF fighter base at Feidong in the Nanjing MR is a good example of the design of a 'superhardened' fighter base. The primary runway, available for take-offs and landings, has a wide full-length parallel taxiway to enable recoveries in the event of damage. An auxiliary take-off only alert runway is directly connected to the underground hangar entrance, allowing the fighter to roll out of the tunnel, line up, open the throttles and take off quickly. The PLA invested considerable thought into planning its network of "superhardened" fighter bases, usually placing the runways behind a hill or mountain, relative to the threat axis. Another good example of such a base is at Yinchuan...in the Beijing MR. While modern smart weapons have somewhat diminished the effectiveness of such base designs, they still present genuine challenges in targeting and achieving robust weapons effects (U.S. DoD).

The web page below details the superhardened CHICOM bases now in use that make it highly unlikely the USAF or Navy or marine egomaniacs in fighter jets are going to be able to air strike them, 6-Day War-style on the ground and have an easy time defending a Taiwan from their airborne-amphibious maneuver invasion. But of course, the U.S. Air Force, Navy, marines will strike alllll of these air bases and wipe-out their many planes on the ground, risking nuclear war to protect the handful of supercarriers we have sailed to defend Taiwan in a crisis. (Yeah, right).

Read up on the PLA Air Order of Battle:

http://scramble.nl/cn.htm

We love all the J-10 EurofighterTyphoon-a-sans that "don't exist" that have been fielded that can turn circles around our handfulls of bloated F-18 StuporHornets from our handfulls of stuporcarriers....

We see a lot of aircraft shooting a hell of a lot of ASMs at our vulnerables surface ships = lots of leakers = lots of hits = lots of dead and dying Americans in the water = naval fuking disaster 101 = Bye, Bye Taiwan! = Bye! Bye! U.S. "Super Power" Status.

Shutting Down WMD Factories Not So Easy

The enemies of today are smarter than the Iraqis were in having their nuclear facilities located in just one obvious target location as the daring Israeli Air Force raid on Osirak in 1982 proved.

Known Iranian Air Bases are depicted above

Germany was beat by GROUND MANEUVER that papered over their U-Boat pen rocks. Scissors can only do so much and we better be ready to get the job done with paper maneuver. Sadly, with RMA pundits and USAF strategic bombing disciples running DoD, we are NOT READY to air deploy and 3D maneuver against the new U-Boat pens of our day--Iran's buried and hardened nuclear facilities. Aviation Week reports:

The "MOAB" earth-penetrating bomb doesn't go far enough, Bush War-Mongers want to use Tactical Nukes

The fact that many of the Iranian targets are underground presents another problem. Analysts at the U.S. CIA have noted since shortly after the 1991 Iraq war, that the sale of earth-boring equipment skyrocketed in the Middle East as countries started putting key facilities underground to protect against U.S. air strikes. U.S. weapons like the GBU-28 can penetrate perhaps 30 ft. of hardened materials or 100 ft. of earth. But Iranian facilities are reportedly buried 100-200 ft. below the surface with alternating layers of earth and cement to absorb the impact of penetrating bombs. There are satellite pictures of the Natanz nuclear facility in north central Iran that show two large centrifuge buildings being buried under several yards of reinforced concrete and at least 75 ft. of earth.

The Israeli missile specialist agrees that "dozens of meters" of alternating layers of sand and cement create a sandwich that is impossible for conventional weapons to penetrate.

"You have to go after the entrances and develop new penetrators," a retired Israeli air force (IAF) general says. "But even then, conventional weapons can't penetrate to 200 ft., and the U.S. won't use nuclear weapons."

Even without uncertainties about the targets, a former Israeli diplomat who was involved in planning the 1981 raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor warned that officials should never promise unrealistic results from a military action. "You can only postpone Iran's nuclear development," he says. "The goal [must be] to slow it down with no expectation of eliminating it completely."

Israeli officials say there is no resemblance to what they or the U.S. might face in trying to decelerate Iran's current nuclear program compared to 25 years ago.

But there is danger in waiting too long, says the retired general. "Now there is only research and development [in Iran] and no operational capability," he says. "R&D can be delayed. Once they do have a [weapon], you no longer have the delay option. What can be done now, can't be done a few years from now. [The bomb] is still coming. One day, the Iranians will have their first nuclear experiment."

The general, a veteran IAF pilot, worries that the U.S. may not be up to delaying the program, despite its several years of continuous combat operations. "I'm not sure if the U.S. is in the position politically to [attack Iran] after three years in Iraq."

The situation against North Korea is even worse....the same earth that can smother a SHE nuclear blast can also PREVENT a nuclear blast from destroying things deep inside...they may not even be reachable with ANY firepower "scissors" attacks. See this DID article re: the RNEP (which Congress blocked following Democrat Party opposition, after concluding that even this may not solve the core problem).

www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/10/congress-cancels-rd-for-nuclear-earthpenetrator-bombs/index.php

See also this Winds of Change.NET article on the subject of NK, policy, and the critical lever:

www.windsofchange.net/archives/009113.php

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/04/irans_superconc.html

Iran's Invulnerable Bunkers?

A few weeks back, the Air Force detonated out its most powerful bunker-buster yet. But a new Iranian super-strong concrete might make it almost useless before it reaches service.

I owe this story to DANGER ROOM reader Jay Sappington, a civil engineer in Fort Worth. He graduated with his masters from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), where he had participated in a student competition organized by the American Concrete Institute. The challenge was to make a 2"x2" concrete cube with the highest possible compressive strength. Among the competitors at this internationally diverse school was a team from the University of Tehran. Jay takes up the story.

"I designed a 2"x2" concrete cube with a compressive strength of 16,000 psi [pounds per square inch] at 28-days, a relatively high strength as standard concrete is on the order of 3,000 psi, typically. Now, The University of Tehran made several cubes between 50,000 to 60,000 psi, and possible stronger! I thought the aggregate to be made from quartz, and I also remember some steel fibers in the mix. These cubes exploded at failure, finally damaging the compression machine on the third or fourth cube (that machine was substantial, made for much larger samples). So, keep in mind this is unreinforced concrete (save the steel fibers) at an early age. Concrete becomes stronger, sometimes by orders of magnitude, over time."

Jay Googled the sponsoring professor of the Iranian students, and found that he has an extensive resume in the fields of ultra high strength concrete and nuclear reactors. So it's far from impossible that the Iranian nuclear industry has access to some pretty advanced technology in this area - and given the repeated threats to bomb nuclear installations, we can expect them to be well protected.

To give you some idea of just how tough we are talking, rock of over 10,000 psi is considered hard. The strongest granite is about 30,000 psi. How well would the MOP deal with ultra-tough concrete?

According to Globalsecurity.org, the Air Force's new, 30,000-pound, bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrator "is expected to penetrate as much as 60 meters [200 feet] through 5,000 psi reinforced concrete. It will burrow 8 meters into the ground through 10,000 psi reinforced concrete."

That's quite a reduction between 5,000 and 10,000 psi. Something several times stronger could degrade performance a lot more. I asked Rex Swenson, Public Affairs Liaison of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Munition Directorate, about this. He answered:

Unfortunately, we can not discuss the actual capabilities of the MOP due to security concerns. Suffice to say that the numbers on the Global Security website were not provided by DTRA [Defense Threat Reduction Agency] or the AFRL/MN.

The bottom line is that any highly reinforced target might withstand one strike from a MOP, but even a bunker roof made of 60,000 psi concrete can be chipped away at until it finally fails to protect what's underneath.

Personally, I'd guess that advanced concrete could severely limit the effectiveness of the blunt instrument/brute force approach embodied by MOP. You really don't want to be dropping bombs at intervals against the same spot, especially when an aircraft can only carry one.

The answer has to lie in smarter weapons with more advanced payloads. The Air Force is looking at more sophisticated ways to defeat a bunker complex - earthquake bombs and robot cockroaches being among the more extreme. Beating your head against an ultra-hard concrete wall may not be the answer.

Posted by David Hambling 11:25:00 AM in Ammo and Munitions, Mullah Menace, Nukes Reddit It | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20CH20060103&articleId=1714

Nuclear War against Iran
by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 3, 2006

The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran is now in the final planning stages.

Coalition partners, which include the U.S., Israel and Turkey are in "an advanced stage of readiness".

Various military exercises have been conducted, starting in early 2005. In turn, the Iranian Armed Forces have also conducted large scale military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf in December in anticipation of a U.S.-sponsored attack.

Since early 2005, there has been intense shuttle diplomacy between Washington, Tel Aviv, Ankara and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In recent developments, CIA Director Porter Goss on a mission to Ankara, requested Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets." Goss reportedly asked " for special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation." (DDP, 30 December 2005).

In turn, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given the green light to the Israeli Armed Forces to launch the attacks by the end of March:

All top Israeli officials have pronounced the end of March, 2006, as the deadline for launching a military assault on Iran.... The end of March date also coincides with the IAEA report to the UN on Iran's nuclear energy program. Israeli policymakers believe that their threats may influence the report, or at least force the kind of ambiguities, which can be exploited by its overseas supporters to promote Security Council sanctions or justify Israeli military action. (James Petras, Israel's War Deadline: Iran in the Crosshairs, Global Research, December 2005)

The U.S.-sponsored military plan has been endorsed by NATO, although it is unclear, at this stage, as to the nature of NATO's involvement in the planned aerial attacks.

"Shock and Awe"

The various components of the military operation are firmly under U.S. Command, coordinated by the Pentagon and U.S. Strategic Command Headquarters (USSTRATCOM) at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska.

The actions announced by Israel would be carried out in close coordination with the Pentagon. The command structure of the operation is centralized and ultimately Washington will decide when to launch the military operation. U.S. military sources have confirmed that an aerial attack on Iran would involve a large scale deployment comparable to the U.S. "shock and awe" bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003:

American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq. Using the full force of operational B-2 stealth bombers, staging from Diego Garcia or flying direct from the United States, possibly supplemented by F-117 stealth fighters staging from al Udeid in Qatar or some other location in theater, the two-dozen suspect nuclear sites would be targeted.

Military planners could tailor their target list to reflect the preferences of the Administration by having limited air strikes that would target only the most crucial facilities ... or the United States could opt for a far more comprehensive set of strikes against a comprehensive range of WMD related targets, as well as conventional and unconventional forces that might be used to counterattack against U.S. forces in Iraq

(See Globalsecurity.org at www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran-strikes.htm)

In November, U.S. Strategic Command conducted a major exercise of a "global strike plan" entitled "Global Lightening". The latter involved a simulated attack using both conventional and nuclear weapons against a "fictitious enemy". Following the "Global Lightening" exercise, U.S. Strategic Command declared an advanced state of readiness (See our analysis below)

While Asian press reports stated that the "fictitious enemy" in the Global Lightening exercise was North Korea, the timing of the exercises, suggests that they were conducted in anticipation of a planned attack on Iran.

Consensus for Nuclear War

No dissenting political voices have emerged from within the European Union. There are ongoing consultations between Washington, Paris and Berlin. Contrary to the invasion of Iraq, which was opposed at the diplomatic level by France and Germany, Washington has been building "a consensus" both within the Atlantic Alliance and the UN Security Council. This consensus pertains to the conduct of a nuclear war, which could potentially affect a large part of the Middle East Central Asian region.

Moreover, a number of frontline Arab states are now tacit partners in the U.S./ Israeli military project. A year ago in November 2004, Israel's top military brass met at NATO headquarters in Brussels with their counterparts from six members of the Mediterranean basin nations, including Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. A NATO-Israel protocol was signed. Following these meetings, joint military exercises were held off the coast of Syria involving the U.S., Israel and Turkey. and in February 2005, Israel participated in military exercises and "anti-terror maneuvers" together with several Arab countries.

The media in chorus has unequivocally pointed to Iran as a "threat to World Peace".

The anti-war movement has swallowed the media lies. The fact that the U.S. and Israel are planning a Middle East nuclear holocaust is not part of the anti-war/ anti-globalization agenda.

The "surgical strikes" are presented to world public opinion as a means to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

We are told that this is not a war but a military peace-keeping operation, in the form of aerial attacks directed against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Mini-nukes: "Safe for Civilians"

The press reports, while revealing certain features of the military agenda, largely serve to distort the broader nature of the military operation, which contemplates the preemptive use of tactical nuclear weapons.

The war agenda is based on the Bush administration's doctrine of "preemptive" nuclear war under the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.

Media disinformation has been used extensively to conceal the devastating consequences of military action involving nuclear warheads against Iran. The fact that these surgical strikes would be carried out using both conventional and nuclear weapons is not an object of debate.

According to a 2003 Senate decision, the new generation of tactical nuclear weapons or "low yield" "mini-nukes", with an explosive capacity of up to 6 times a Hiroshima bomb, are now considered "safe for civilians" because the explosion is underground.

Through a propaganda campaign which has enlisted the support of "authoritative" nuclear scientists, the mini-nukes are being presented as an instrument of peace rather than war. The low-yield nukes have now been cleared for "battlefield use", they are slated to be used in the next stage of America's "war on Terrorism" alongside conventional weapons:

Administration officials argue that low-yield nuclear weapons are needed as a credible deterrent against rogue states.[Iran, North Korea] Their logic is that existing nuclear weapons are too destructive to be used except in a full-scale nuclear war. Potential enemies realize this, thus they do not consider the threat of nuclear retaliation to be credible. However, low-yield nuclear weapons are less destructive, thus might conceivably be used. That would make them more effective as a deterrent. (Opponents Surprised By Elimination of Nuke Research Funds Defense News November 29, 2004)

In an utterly twisted logic, nuclear weapons are presented as a means to building peace and preventing "collateral damage". The Pentagon has intimated, in this regard, that the ‘mini-nukes’ (with a yield of less than 5000 tons) are harmless to civilians because the explosions ‘take place under ground’. Each of these ‘mini-nukes’, nonetheless, constitutes – in terms of explosion and potential radioactive fallout – a significant fraction of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Estimates of yield for Nagasaki and Hiroshima indicate that they were respectively of 21000 and 15000 tons (www.warbirdforum.com/hiroshim.htm)

In other words, the low-yielding mini-nukes have an explosive capacity of one third of a Hiroshima bomb.

---

Mini-Nukes

The earth-penetrating capability of the [nuclear] B61-11 is fairly limited, however. Tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Even so, by burying itself into the ground before detonation, a much higher proportion of the explosion energy is transferred to ground shock compared to a surface bursts. Any attempt to use it in an urban environment, however, would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.

www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm
www.globalresearch.ca/images/gbu28.jpg

Gbu 28 Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28)

The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons:

'It's a package (of nuclear and conventional weapons). The implication of this obviously is that nuclear weapons are being brought down from a special category of being a last resort, or sort of the ultimate weapon, to being just another tool in the toolbox," said Kristensen. (Japan Economic News Wire, op cit)

We are a dangerous crossroads: military planners believe their own propaganda. The military manuals state that this new generation of nuclear weapons are "safe" for use in the battlefield. They are no longer a weapon of last resort. There are no impediments or political obstacles to their use. In this context, Senator Edward Kennedy has accused the Bush Administration for having developed "a generation of more useable nuclear weapons."

The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace. "Making the World safer" is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust. But nuclear holocausts are not front page news! In the words of Mordechai Vanunu, The Israeli government is preparing to use nuclear weapons in its next war with the Islamic world. Here where I live, people often talk of the Holocaust. But each and every nuclear bomb is a Holocaust in itself. It can kill, devastate cities, destroy entire peoples. (See interview with Mordechai Vanunu, December 2005).

Space and Earth Attack Command Unit

A preemptive nuclear attack using tactical nuclear weapons would be coordinated out of U.S. Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, in liaison with U.S. and coalition command units in the Persian Gulf, the Diego Garcia military base, Israel and Turkey.

Under its new mandate, USSTRATCOM has a responsibility for "overseeing a global strike plan" consisting of both conventional and nuclear weapons. In military jargon, it is slated to play the role of "a global integrator charged with the missions of Space Operations; Information Operations; Integrated Missile Defense; Global Command & Control; Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Global Strike; and Strategic Deterrence.... "

In January 2005, at the outset of the military build-up directed against Iran, USSTRATCOM was identified as "the lead Combatant Command for integration and synchronization of DoD-wide efforts in combating weapons of mass destruction."

To implement this mandate, a brand new command unit entitled Joint Functional Component Command Space and Global Strike, or JFCCSGS was created. JFCCSGS has the mandate to oversee the launching of a nuclear attack in accordance with the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, approved by the US Congress in 2002. The NPR underscores the pre-emptive use of nuclear warheads not only against "rogue states" but also against China and Russia.

Since November, JFCCSGS is said to be in "an advance state of readiness" following the conduct of relevant military exercises. The announcement was made in early December by U.S. Strategic Command to the effect that the command unit had achieved "an operational capability for rapidly striking targets around the globe using nuclear or conventional weapons." The exercises conducted in November used "a fictional country believed to represent North Korea" (see David Ruppe, 2 December 2005):

"The new unit [JFCCSGS] has 'met requirements necessary to declare an initial operational capability' as of Nov. 18. A week before this announcement, the unit finished a command-post exercise, dubbed Global Lightening, which was linked with another exercise, called Vigilant Shield, conducted by the North American Aerospace Defend Command, or NORAD, in charge of missile defense for North America.

"After assuming several new missions in 2002, U.S. Strategic Command was reorganized to create better cooperation and cross-functional awareness," said Navy Capt. James Graybeal, a chief spokesperson for STRATCOM. 'By May of this year, the JFCCSGS has published a concept of operations and began to develop its day-to-day operational requirements and integrated planning process.' 'The command's performance during Global Lightning demonstrated its preparedness to execute its mission of proving integrated space and global strike capabilities to deter and dissuade aggressors and when directed, defeat adversaries through decisive joint global effects in support of STRATCOM,' he added without elaborating about "new missions" of the new command unit that has around 250 personnel.

Nuclear specialists and governmental sources pointed out that one of its main missions would be to implement the 2001 nuclear strategy that includes an option of preemptive nuclear attacks on 'rogue states' with WMDs. (Japanese Economic Newswire, 30 December 2005)

CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022

JFCCSGS is in an advanced state of readiness to trigger nuclear attacks directed against Iran or North Korea.

The operational implementation of the Global Strike is called CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022. The latter is described as "an actual plan that the Navy and the Air Force translate into strike package for their submarines and bombers,' (Ibid).

CONPLAN 8022 is "the overall umbrella plan for sort of the pre-planned strategic scenarios involving nuclear weapons."

"It's specifically focused on these new types of threats -- Iran, North Korea -- proliferators and potentially terrorists too,' he said. 'There's nothing that says that they can't use CONPLAN 8022 in limited scenarios against Russian and Chinese targets.'(According to Hans Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, quoted in Japanese economic News Wire, op cit)

The mission of JFCCSGS is to implement CONPLAN 8022, in other words to trigger a nuclear war with Iran. The Commander in Chief, namely George W. Bush would instruct the Secretary of Defense, who would then instruct the Joint Chiefs of staff to activate CONPLAN 8022.

CONPLAN is distinct from other military operations. it does not contemplate the deployment of ground troops.

CONPLAN 8022 is different from other war plans in that it posits a small-scale operation and no "boots on the ground." The typical war plan encompasses an amalgam of forces -- air, ground, sea -- and takes into account the logistics and political dimensions needed to sustain those forces in protracted operations.... The global strike plan is offensive, triggered by the perception of an imminent threat and carried out by presidential order.) (William Arkin, Washington Post, May 2005)

The Role of Israel

Since late 2004, Israel has been stockpiling U.S. made conventional and nuclear weapons systems in anticipation of an attack on Iran. This stockpiling which is financed by U.S. military aid was largely completed in June 2005. Israel has taken delivery from the U.S. of several thousand "smart air launched weapons" including some 500 'bunker-buster bombs, which can also be used to deliver tactical nuclear bombs.

The B61-11 is the "nuclear version" of the "conventional" BLU-113, can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb. (See Michel Chossudovsky, www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO112C.html , see also www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf03norris ) .

Moreover, reported in late 2003, Israeli Dolphin-class submarines equipped with U.S. Harpoon missiles armed with nuclear warheads are now aimed at Iran. (See Gordon Thomas, www.globalresearch.ca/articles/THO311A.html

Late April 2005. Sale of deadly military hardware to Israel. GBU-28 Buster Bunker Bombs:

Coinciding with Putin's visit to Israel, the U.S. Defence Security Cooperation Agency (Department of Defense) announced the sale of an additional 100 bunker-buster bombs produced by Lockheed Martin to Israel. This decision was viewed by the U.S. media as "a warning to Iran about its nuclear ambitions." The sale pertains to the larger and more sophisticated "Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28) BLU-113 Penetrator" (including the WGU-36A/B guidance control unit and support equipment). The GBU-28 is described as "a special weapon for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground. The fact of the matter is that the GBU-28 is among the World's most deadly "conventional" weapons used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, capable of causing thousands of civilian deaths through massive explosions.

The Israeli Air Force are slated to use the GBU-28s on their F-15 aircraft.

(See text of DSCA news release at www.dsca.osd.mil/PressReleases/36-b/2005/Israel_05-10_corrected.pdf

Extension of the War

Tehran has confirmed that it will retaliate if attacked, in the form of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel (CNN, 8 Feb 2005). These attacks, could also target U.S. military facilities in Iraq and Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a scenario of military escalation and all out war.

At present there are three distinct war theaters: Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. The air strikes against Iran could contribute to unleashing a war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region.

Moreover, the planned attack on Iran should also be understood in relation to the timely withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which has opened up a new space, for the deployment of Israeli forces. The participation of Turkey in the U.S.-Israeli military operation is also a factor, following last year's agreement reached between Ankara and Tel Aviv.

More recently, Tehran has beefed up its air defenses through the acquisition of Russian 29 Tor M-1 anti-missile systems. In October, with Moscow`s collaboration, "a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit." (see Chris Floyd)

The Sinah-1 is just the first of several Iranian satellites set for Russian launches in the coming months.

Thus the Iranians will soon have a satellite network in place to give them early warning of an Israeli attack, although it will still be a pale echo of the far more powerful Israeli and American space spies that can track the slightest movement of a Tehran mullah’s beard. What’s more, late last month Russia signed a $1 billion contract to sell Iran an advanced defense system that can destroy guided missiles and laser-guided bombs, the Sunday Times reports. This too will be ready in the next few months. (op.cit.)

Ground War

While a ground war is not envisaged under CONPLAN, the aerial bombings could lead through the process of escalation into a ground war.

Iranian troops could cross the Iran-Iraq border and confront coalition forces inside Iraq. Israeli troops and/or Special Forces could enter into Lebanon and Syria.

In recent developments, Israel plans to conduct military exercises as well as deploy Special Forces in the mountainous areas of Turkey bordering Iran and Syria with the collaboration of the Ankara government:

Ankara and Tel Aviv have come to an agreement on allowing the Israeli army to carry out military exercises in the mountainous areas [in Turkey] that border Iran.

[According to] ... a UAE newspaper ..., according to the agreement reached by the Joint Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Dan Halutz, and Turkish officials, Israel is to carry out various military manoeuvres in the areas that border Iran and Syria. [Punctuation as published here and throughout.] [Dan Halutz] had gone to Turkey a few days earlier.

Citing certain sources without naming them, the UAE daily goes on to stress: The Israeli side made the request to carry out the manoeuvres because of the difficulty of passage in the mountain terrains close to Iran's borders in winter.

The two Hakari [phonetic; not traced] and Bulo [phonetic; not traced] units are to take part in the manoeuvres that have not been scheduled yet. The units are the most important of Israel's special military units and are charged with fighting terrorism and carrying out guerrilla warfare.

Earlier Turkey had agreed to Israeli pilots being trained in the area bordering Iran. The news [of the agreement] is released at a time when Turkish officials are trying to evade the accusation of cooperating with America in espionage operations against its neighbouring countries Syria and Iran. Since last week the Arab press has been publishing various reports about Ankara's readiness or, at least, agreement in principle to carry out negotiations about its soil and air space being used for action against Iran.

(E'temad website, Tehran, in Persian 28 Dec 05, BBC Monitoring Services Translation)

Concluding remarks

The implications are overwhelming.

The so-called international community has accepted the eventuality of a nuclear holocaust.

Those who decide have swallowed their own war propaganda.

A political consensus has developed in Western Europe and North America regarding the aerial attacks using tactical nuclear weapons, without considering their devastating implications.

This profit-driven military adventure ultimately threatens the future of humanity.

What is needed in the months ahead is a major thrust, nationally and internationally which breaks the conspiracy of silence, which acknowledges the dangers, which brings this war project to the forefront of political debate and media attentiion, at all levels, which confronts and requires political and military leaders to take a firm stance against the U.S. sponsored nuclear war. Ultimately what is required are extensive international sanctions directed against the United States of America and Israel.

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best seller The Globalization of Poverty published in eleven languages. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization, at www.globalresearch.ca . He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His most recent book is entitled: America’s "War on Terrorism", Global Research, 2005.

We should get Congressional support for a sound plan to get rid of Iranian/North Korean nukes not BS RMA airstrikes-alone mentalities. Maneuver into North Korea would require a large invasion, a small operation on the ground might work in Iran. We should parachute drop an Air-Mech-Strike Force in M113 Gavins with liquid explosives that can be applied to effect a specific direct placement of LE that would insure Iranian nuke facilities deep underground are destroyed after the first attempt at air strike destruction. The AMS Force could also rescue any USAF pilots shot down during Phase I. Phase III could be directed air strikes controlled by the AMS forces to finish off or hit what was missed. Phase IV would be extraction of the AMS Force by STOL airlanding C-130s or overland travel to a friendly country.

The problem is American SOF are insufferable egomaniacs who refuse to use tracked armor so they can be in enemy territory and FIGHT; they want to be in sexy wheeled dune buggies so they don't look like the "mech pussies" in tracks in the heavy units of the Army. So because of their narcissism and fashion statements, they can't fight on the ground in the face of Iranian security forces but must run and ask for air strikes to rescue them ie: they can't be expected to finish destroying the nuclear facilities if the Iranians are defending them with their "mech pussies" in tanks and IFVs/APCs. The most SOF in dune buggies can do is shine laser beams on targets for range, GPS coordinates and terminal guidance. Its the lazy American RMA way all the way.

Who has Nukes?

RED = has them for sure
PINK = probably has them
YELLOW = working on getting them

Who in the U.S. is disloyal enough or external enemies to have nukes?

What could happen if we do not get rid of these illegals and nukes?

VIDEO: a small nuclear device in an artillery shell lands nearby; a sub-national terrorist group or nation-state military attack might look just like this in SHE effects, are we ready with our lazy aircraft and troops-in-open, living-in-tents, driving around in trucks mentalities? Do our cities have underground civil defense shelters ready for a "backpack" nuke going off planted by saboteurs through our porous borders Bush refuses to fully close with tangible fencing and adequate troops? This isn't the George Clooney/Nicole Kidman, The Peacemaker movie where we have highly competent and moral people fighting for us, its REALITY, and that reality is we have immoral and incompetents at the helm full of their own CYA BS to try to excuse away their failures.

www.combatreform.com/nuclearcannon.mpg

Foreign Policy Research Institute
Over 50 Years of Ideas in Service to Our Nation
www.fpri.org

Footnotes
The Newsletter of FPRI's
Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education

WAR AND TECHNOLOGY

by Martin van Creveld

Vol. 12, No. 25
November 2007

Martin van Creveld is Professor, Institute of Arts and Letters, Hebrew University and author of Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge, 2004). This essay is based on his address at FPRI's History Institute for Teachers, "Teaching Military History: Why and How," held at the First Division Museum in Wheaton, IL and co-sponsored by the Cantigny First Division Foundation. Core support for the History Institute is provided by The Annenberg Foundation; support for this weekend conference was provided by W. W. Keen Butcher, Robert L. Freedman, Bruce H. Hooper, and John M. Templeton, Jr. For the conference report, videotapes, and other papers, see: www.fpri.org/education/teachingmilitaryhistory/.

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War and technology have always been linked very closely. Indeed, without technology, there would probably have been no war. After all, without technology, if only in the form of sticks and stones, man's ability to kill his own kind is extremely limited. He can hit--a purpose for which his arms are much better suited than those of any other animal--and bite, but he can hardly kill; he can choke, but doing so takes time, and few people are so strong that they could not be overpowered by a few others. Under such circumstances early human warfare might perhaps have resembled the kind of strife we witness among chimpanzees. There would no doubt have been fights over living space, access to resources such as food water, females, and precedence. Some fights might even have been motivated by the sheer fun of taking on an enemy and overcoming him. However, almost certainly there would have been no real war.

From the first day that technology was introduced to war, it has helped shape the latter. Flint-made daggers and spears, and leather or wickerwork shields, did quite as much to shape the tactics adopted by ancient societies as horses did during the middle ages and as tanks, aircraft, and various combat ships do today. They determined, for example, whether formations would be close or open, deep or shallow, rigid or lose. Other technologies determined how far different units comprising a single force could get away from each other without losing touch; thus playing a critical role in strategy. Technology also helped determine which kind of formations were most suitable for fighting which enemies in what kind of terrain, under what kind of circumstances, and so on.

The same is true of horses, chariots, mechanical artillery, and gunpowder. Of course we have far more, and better, technology than our ancestors did. But technology is becoming more expensive all the time, both absolutely and in comparison with manpower; this, indeed, is one reason why the number of the most powerful weapon systems in particular has been going down from 1945 on. However, technology is not playing any greater role in shaping war than it has done at any time in the past. To say so is a form of hubris that is not without importance to the American way of making war in particular.

Whereas weapons have always helped determine tactics, tactics in turn helped determine organization, operations, strategy, logistics, and command and control systems. All these were driven by the technology in use and, in turn, drove it along. Thus the relationship between the two--war and technology, doctrine and the hardware required for putting it into effect--is two-sided. For example, did the development of mechanical transport before 1914 permit the huge artillery pieces of World War I, or did the need to break through fortifications lead to the development of those pieces as well as the mechanical transport without which they would have been useless?

And yet the quest for technological superiority is eternal. From the first moment that Homo sapiens went to war, attempts were made to obtain victory by designing weapons that would be better than those of the enemy. Flint blades were replaced by copper ones. They in turn were replaced by bronze ones, which were replaced by iron ones, which were replaced by ones that were made of steel. Simple bows were replaced by long and composite ones, until finally firearms took over and did away with the bow altogether. Firearms in turn underwent a long, and near continuous, process of development that took them from the primitive devices of 1400 all the way to today's assault rifles, machine guns, and artillery. Armor, fortifications, and means of transportation all underwent similar development. Although here and there the collapse of a society led to a return to a simpler technology, the retreat was always temporary.

Finally, while the goal was always to win victory by means of technological superiority, some new and irresistible device, that goal was rarely attained. First, war is an imitative activity par excellence. To win, it is necessary to understand the enemy; to understand the enemy means learning from him and, to some extent, becoming like him. If only because any weapon used in war will inevitably fall into the hands of the enemy and be copied, technological superiority, even if achieved, rarely lasted for very long.

Second, war, conducted as it is against an enemy who is as intelligent, as resourceful, and as free to bring his will and resources to bear as oneself, is among, if not the, most complex of all human activities. The number of factors that help determine the outcome is huge. In particular it is necessary to mention morale, cohesion, and sheer fighting power; all three of which, being intangible, are very difficult to evaluate. Since technology is but one of the factors that shape war, technological superiority alone has seldom led to a decision. And the longer the war, the more true this is.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THEIR IMPACT ON WAR

From the earliest times to 1945, technology drove war without changing its essence. Since the objective was always to achieve victory by smashing the enemy, it is scant wonder that war always tended to become more powerful. In terms of size, technology was one of the factors that permitted armed forces to grow from a few dozens tribal warriors into millions of modern soldiers. The distances over which operations could be conducted and the speed with which individuals, units, and machines moved about (which, however, is not the same as the speed with which offensives advanced) both increased dramatically. Starting with clubs and culminating in Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, so did the range at which power was brought to bear against the enemy.

A very important effect of developing technology was to enable war to spread into environments that used to be inaccessible to it. From the land to rivers, lakes and coastal waters; from coastal waters into the sea; from the surface of the sea into the latter's depths; as well as into the air and, most recently, into outer space. Generally speaking, no sooner does technology open any environment to human activity than that environment becomes the theater of warlike operations, either actual or planned. At times, so rapid was the increase that five years made all the difference. For example, the armies of 1918 would have sliced through those of 1914 like a knife through butter. The armies of 1945 would have done the same to those of 1939, and those of 1950 to those of 1945.

For all that, technology did not change the nature of war. War remained what it had been since the time when the first band of cavemen, carrying sticks and stones, went out to attack its neighbor. Namely, a violent, two-sided activity governed by action and reaction, challenge and response; in the sense that it was used to advance or defend the interests of the group or organization that waged it, it also remained an instrument of politics. All this was as true in 2000 BCE, and presumably 50,000 BCE, as it was in 1945.

Next, a vast revolution took place, causing not only the methods by which war is waged but its very essence to change. Unlike most revolutions, this one can be dated not only to the day, but also to the hour. Over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 was a beautiful summer day. At 9:15 am, out of a clear blue sky, there appeared a single bomber, the largest that had been built up to that time. The bomb doors opened, and a single bulky device dropped out. As the aircraft banked steeply away, the device fell, gathering speed. A few minutes later it exploded. A thousand suns shone, an estimated 75,000 people lay dead, and the nature of war had changed, presumably forever.

Until then, every new weapon that appeared on the scene had been met by a technological or tactical development that, to a large extent, neutralized it--or why else did technological progress continue? Now, for the first time, a weapon had been built against which there was no effective defense. As more and more nuclear weapons were built, and as more countries acquired them, the outcome, to speak with the greatest of all nuclear strategists, Thomas Schelling, was that the link between victory and survival was cut.

A few people, notably Bernard Brodie, then a young teacher at Columbia University, understood the nature of the change almost at once. Previously, though a victor might suffer losses as grievous as those suffered by King Pyrrhus in his proverbial triumph over the Romans in 279 BCE, he was at any rate assured that his forces and his country would survive. In a world where both sides had nuclear weapons, this no longer applied. Thus the very nature of war as an instrument in the hands of politics was put into question. Its nature as a two-sided activity consisting of action, counteraction, and counter-counteraction also underwent a decisive change. A nuclear war would surely see a first strike and possibly a second strike as well. However, given the magnitude of the destruction that would be inflicted, very few analysts ever tried to look into the possibility of a third strike. To the extent that they did so, they characterized it as "broken back warfare," a term that speaks for itself.

Over six decades have passed since Hiroshima. During those decades, in every single region where nuclear weapons were introduced, large-scale war between the countries that possessed them has disappeared. Countless doctrines were written, and weapons and delivery vehicles deployed, to fight a nuclear war if it came; in the end, however, the balance of terror always prevailed. To the extent that war still took place, it only did so between, or against, third- and fourth-rate powers that did not have nuclear weapons. Probably for the first time in history, developing technology had caused not just the way war was waged and fought but its nature, as well as its usefulness as an instrument of policy, to change. Nothing that came before, not even the horse or the wheel or gunpowder, and nothing that came after, not even missiles and satellites and computers, has had anything like a similar impact; compared with nuclear weapons, too, all other so-called weapons of mass destruction are as pigmies to giants. Nor, sixty-two years later, and in spite of the development of various of anti-ballistic missile defenses by various countries around the world, does it appear likely that the impact in question will be undone in the foreseeable future.

THE AMERICAN APPROACH TO MILITARY TECHNOLOGY

Two developments probably explain the American love story with technology, and military technology in particular.

First there was the shortage of labor, especially skilled labor, in a vast, almost empty, continent. One solution, adopted mainly in the southern part of the country, was to import slaves; the other, increasingly adopted in its northern part from the last decades of the eighteenth century on, was technology. By the middle of the nineteenth century, American technology, including also the use of standardized production and interchangeable parts, begun to flood the world and "Yankee ingenuity" was becoming proverbial.

Certainly until 1939 or even 1945, American technology, including military technology, tended to be as good as that of others but no better. The weapons it produced, such as combat aircraft and tanks and artillery and ships and submarines, were characterized not so much by top of the line performance as by the methods by which they were produced, the scale on which they were produced, and the price at which they were produced. As General Dwight D. Eisenhower put it, it was "Detroit" that won World War II for America; as one German officer allegedly put it, in an encounter between an American and German units, the Germans ran out of shells before the Americans ran out of tanks. One outcome was that, at the end of that war, theaters of war the world over were littered with surplus American equipment. Rather than transport it all home, which would have been exceedingly expensive, the Americans either sold it to their allies on the cheap or else simply left it to rust.

By that time, the U.S. had convinced itself that, in any future war, it would fight outnumbered. The idea was confirmed during the early years of the Cold War and in Korea, when Chinese "human wave" attacks could only be stopped by superior U.S. firepower; however, as NATO got organized it lost much of its force even in Europe. As to war in other parts of the world, the opposite was the case. Counting its allies, in Vietnam, in Gulf War I, in Serbia, and in Gulf War II, the U.S. actually enjoyed numerical superiority. Still, the notion that the U.S. was inferior in manpower-or, if it was not inferior in manpower, could not afford as many casualties as its opponents-persisted; to compensate, the U.S. would rely on the superior technology at its disposal. The idea was voiced by several secretaries of defense, including Robert McNamara, James Schlesinger, and Harold Brown. Its strongest advocate was probably Donald Rumsfeld during the heady days of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs. He even set up an Office of Transformation to look after it; though just what it did was never quite clear.

Relying on superior technology, however, had its disadvantages. The more advanced the technology, the more complex it was and the greater the difficulties involved in its development. These difficulties, in turn, translated themselves into time and money. In theory, costs could be kept down by spreading development costs over large number of weapons and weapon systems. In practice, very often such was the cost of development that Congress, horrified, cut down the number of weapons in order to avoid even larger budget shortfalls than those that actually occurred. As a result, the order of battle tended to shrink and shrink. Most problematic of all, when it came to fighting (as opposed to deterring) nuclear-armed opponents, such as the Soviet Union and China, the new weapons were essentially useless.

As to non-nuclear countries, in theory, the highly sophisticated weapons now being produced and deployed gave the U.S. an overwhelming advantage over them. In practice, the populations of quite a number of such countries were still able to challenge the U.S. They did so by engaging in what has been variously called guerrilla, or Low Intensity Conflict, or non-trinitarian warfare, or terrorism, or asymmetric warfare, or insurgency, or whatever. All these forms of conflict have in common that they rely on stealth and unfold in immensely complex environments. Either natural ones, made up of mountains, jungles, or swamps; or artificial ones, made up of human beings, their dwellings, their means of production, their transport arteries, and their communications. Already World War II, in the form of the German counter-partisan operations in Yugoslavia and elsewhere, had shown that, in such complex environments, the most modern, most sophisticated technology does not work nearly as well as in simpler ones. It was a lesson that the U.S., to its very great cost, has simply refused to learn.

Looking back, the outcome of the approach that put technology at the heart of military affairs and exaggerated what it could do is only too clear. Since 1945, the U.S. has engaged in four major wars. Out of these, one, Korea, ended in a draw. One, the First Gulf War, ended in victory. One, Vietnam, ended in defeat; the fourth, the Second Gulf War, is very likely to end in the same way. Clearly technology has not provided a formula for victory in war against nuclear states, either. To the contrary, all it has done is to render such wars unthinkable. It has also failed to provide such a formula in war against terrorists, guerrillas, or whatever they are called. At best it has enabled the U.S. to vanquish one or two opponents, such as Serbia, which were so small, weak, and remote as to raise the question why they had to be fought at all. That is not a very good outcome for something on which oceans of money have been spent.

CONCLUSION

To sum up, technology has always driven war, and been driven by it; however, contrary to the common wisdom, there is no sign that its role in shaping war has either increased or diminished. While the quest for technological superiority, the silver bullet as it is sometimes known, is as old as war itself, technology is but one of the factors that shape war and determines its outcome. As a result, victories due solely to technological superiority have been rare; and such superiority, even if it was achieved, usually did not last for very long. On the whole, the effect of technology has tended to increase, or help increase, the size of war, the power and speed with which it is waged, and the range at which it is waged. It has also expanded the environments in which it was waged. For millennia, however, it was incapable of changing either the nature of war or the purpose that it served.

With the advent of nuclear technology, things changed. Provided enough bombs are available, war in its old sense, consisting of action, counteraction, an counter- counteraction, has probably become impossible; if not for all time to come, at any rate as far into the future as we can look at present. Provided both belligerents are nuclear armed, the purpose it serves has also become extremely problematic. The second of these factors explains why, since 1945, wars waged between powerful countries have become exceedingly rare. Technological superiority could only be used, if it could be used at all, against non-nuclear, weak opponents.

The U.S., however, has consistently refused to learn this lesson. Whereas initially the American love affair with technology led to large numbers of fairly good weapons, after 1945 things changed. Holding on to the idea that it would fight outnumbered long after that idea ceased to be true, the U.S. has persisted in sinking fortunes into new weapons and weapons systems. The results, as the list of victories and defeats shows, have been mixed at best.

Guess who gave Pakistan Nukes for Surface-to-Surface Missiles & Aircraft Bombs?

www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0%2C%2C2188777%2C00.html#article_co

The man who knew too much

Pakistani Shaheen I and II SSMs; note the transporter erector launcher (TEL) making it very difficult to locate and target these ballistic missiles

He was the CIA's expert on Pakistan's nuclear secrets, but Rich Barlow was thrown out and disgraced when he blew the whistle on a U.S. cover-up. Now he's to have his day in court. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report

Saturday October 13, 2007
The Guardian

Rich Barlow idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campsite in Montana - itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

He prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at the Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal - a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb - he found himself a marked man.

In the late '80s, in the course of tracking down smugglers of WMD components, Barlow uncovered reams of material that related to Pakistan. It was known the Islamic Republic had been covertly striving to acquire nuclear weapons since India's explosion of a device in 1974 and the prospect terrified the west - especially given the instability of a nation that had had three military coups in less than 30 years. Straddling deep ethnic, religious and political fault-lines, it was also a country regularly rocked by inter-communal violence. "Pakistan was the kind of place where technology could slip out of control," Barlow says.

He soon discovered, however, that senior officials in government were taking quite the opposite view: they were breaking U.S. and international non-proliferation protocols to shelter Pakistan's ambitions and even sell it banned WMD technology. In the closing years of the cold war, Pakistan was considered to have great strategic importance. It provided Washington with a springboard into neighbouring Afghanistan - a route for passing U.S. weapons and cash to the mujahideen, who were battling to oust the Soviet army that had invaded in 1979. Barlow says, "We had to buddy-up to regimes we didn't see eye-to-eye with, but I could not believe we would actually give Pakistan the bomb.

How could any U.S. administration set such short-term gains against the long-term safety of the world?" Next he discovered that the Pentagon was preparing to sell Pakistan jet fighters that could be used to drop a nuclear bomb.

Barlow was relentless in exposing what he saw as U.S. complicity, and in the end he was sacked and smeared as disloyal, mad, a drunk and a philanderer. If he had been listened to, many believe Pakistan might never have got its nuclear bomb; south Asia might not have been pitched into three near-nuclear conflagrations; and the nuclear weapons programmes of Iran, Libya and North Korea - which British and American intelligence now acknowledge were all secretly enabled by Pakistan - would never have got off the ground. "None of this need have happened," Robert Gallucci, special adviser on WMD to both Clinton and George W. Bush, told us. "The vanquishing of Barlow and the erasing of his case kicked off a chain of events that led to all the nuclear-tinged stand-offs we face today. Pakistan is the number one threat to the world, and if it all goes off - a nuclear bomb in a U.S. or European city- I'm sure we will find ourselves looking in Pakistan's direction."

U.S. aid to Pakistan tapered off when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. Dejected and impoverished, in 1987 Pakistan's ruling military responded by selling its nuclear hardware and know-how for cash, something that would have been obvious to all if the intelligence had been properly analysed. "But the George HW Bush administration was not looking at Pakistan," Barlow says. "It had new crises to deal with in the Persian Gulf where Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait."

As the first Gulf war came to an end with no regime change in Iraq, a group of neoconservatives led by Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Donald Rumsfeld were already lobbying to finish what that campaign had started and dislodge Saddam. Even as the CIA amassed evidence showing that Pakistan, a state that sponsored Islamist terrorism and made its money by selling proscribed WMD technology, was the number one threat, they earmarked Iraq as the chief target.

When these neocons came to power in 2001, under President George W Bush, Pakistan was indemnified again, this time in return for signing up to the "war on terror". Condoleezza Rice backed the line, as did Rumsfeld, too. Pakistan, although suspected by all of them to be at the epicentre of global instability, was hailed as a friend. All energies were devoted to building up the case against Iraq.

It is only now, amid the recriminations about the war in Iraq and reassessments of where the real danger lies, that Barlow - the despised bringer of bad news about Pakistan - is finally to get a hearing. More than 20 years after this saga began, his case, filed on Capitol Hill, is coming to court later this month. His lawyers are seeking millions of dollars in compensation for Barlow as well as the reinstatement of his $80,000 a year government pension. Evidence will highlight what happened when ideologues took control of intelligence in three separate US administrations - those of Reagan, and of the two Bushes - and how a CIA analyst who would not give up his pursuit for the truth became a fall guy.

Born in Upper Manhattan, New York, the son of an army surgeon, Barlow went to an Ivy League feeder school before attending Western Washington University on America's northwest tip. Even then he was an idealist and an internationalist, obsessively following world events. He majored in political science, and his thesis was on counter-proliferation intelligence; he was concerned that the burgeoning black markets in nuclear weapons technology threatened peace in the west. "I got my material from newspapers and books," he recalls. "I went to congressional hearings in Washington and discovered that there was tonnes of intelligence about countries procuring nuclear materials." After graduation in 1981, shortly after Reagan became president - avowedly committed to the non proliferation of nuclear weapons - Barlow won an internship at the State Department's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), which had been established by John F Kennedy in the '60s.

At first Barlow thought he was helping safeguard the world. "I just loved it," he says. His focus from the start was Pakistan, at the time suspected of clandestinely seeking nuclear weapons in a programme initiated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the father of Benazir. "Everywhere I looked I kept coming up against intelligence about Pakistan's WMD programme," Barlow says. "I thought I was telling them what they needed to hear, but the White House seemed oblivious." Immersed in the minutiae of his investigations, he didn't appreciate the bigger picture: that Pakistan had, within days of Reagan's inauguration in 1981, gone from being an outcast nation that had outraged the west by hanging Bhutto to a major U.S. ally in the proxy war in Afghanistan.

Within months Barlow was out of a job. A small band of Republican hawks, including Paul Wolfowitz, had convinced the president that America needed a new strategy against potential nuclear threats, [EDITOR:Like what? GIVING NUKES TO ISLAMICS? WTFO?] since long-term policies such as détente and containment were not working. Reagan was urged to remilitarise, launch his Star Wars programme and neutralise ACDA. When the agency's staff was cut by one third, Barlow found himself out of Washington and stacking shelves in a food store in Connecticut, where he married his girlfriend, Cindy. He was not on hand in 1984 when intelligence reached the ACDA and the CIA that Pakistan had joined the nuclear club (the declared nuclear powers were Britain, France, the US, China and Russia) after China detonated a device on Pakistan's behalf.

Soon after, Barlow was re-employed to work as an analyst, specialising in Pakistan, at the Office of Scientific and Weapons Research (OSWR). The CIA was pursuing the Pakistan programme vigorously even though Reagan was turning a blind eye - indeed, Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, claimed in 1985: "We have full faith in [Pakistan's] assurance that they will not make the bomb."

Back on a government salary, Barlow, aged 31, moved to Virginia with his wife Cindy, also a CIA agent. From day one, he was given access to the most highly classified material. He learned about the workings of the vast grey global market in dual-use components - the tools and equipment that could be put to use in a nuclear weapons programme but that could also be ascribed to other domestic purposes, making the trade in them hard to spot or regulate. "There was tonnes of it and most of it was ending up in Islamabad," he says. "Pakistan had a vast network of procurers, operating all over the world." A secret nuclear facility near Islamabad, known as the Khan Research Laboratories, was being fitted out with components imported from Europe and America "under the wire". But the CIA obtained photographs. Floor plans. Bomb designs. Sensors picked up evidence of high levels of enriched uranium in the air and in the dust clinging to the lorries plying the road to the laboratories. Barlow was in his element.

However, burrowing through cables and files, he began to realise that the State Department had intelligence it was not sharing - in particular the identities of key Pakistani procurement agents, who were active in the U.S. Without this information, the U.S. Commerce Department (which approved export licences) and U.S. Customs (which enforced them) were hamstrung.

Barlow came to the conclusion that a small group of senior officials was physically aiding the Pakistan programme. "They were issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that was critical for their nuclear bomb programme and that the U.S. Commerce Department had refused to license," he says. Dismayed, he approached his boss at the CIA, Richard Kerr, the deputy director for intelligence, who summoned senior State Department officials to a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley. Barlow recalls: "Kerr tried to do it as nicely as he could. He said he understood the State Department had to keep Pakistan on side - the State Department guaranteed it would stop working against us."

Then a Pakistani nuclear smuggler walked into a trap sprung by the CIA - and the Reagan administration's commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons was put to the test.

U.S. foreign aid legislation stipulated that if Pakistan was shown to be procuring weapons of mass destruction or was in possession of a nuclear bomb, all assistance would be halted. This, in turn, would have threatened the U.S.-funded war in Afghanistan. So there were conflicting interests at work when Barlow got a call from the Department of Energy. "I was told that a Pakistani businessman had contacted Carpenter Steel, a company in Pennsylvania, asking to buy a specific type of metal normally used only in constructing centrifuges to enrich uranium. His name was Arshad Pervez and his handler, Inam ul-Haq, a retired brigadier from the Pakistan army, had been known to us for many years as a key Pakistan government operative." Barlow and U.S. customs set up a sting. "Pervez arrived to a do a deal at a hotel we had rigged out and was arrested," Barlow says. "But ul-Haq, our main target, never showed."

Trawling through piles of cables, he found evidence that two high-ranking U.S. officials extremely close to the White House had tipped off Islamabad about the CIA operation. Furious, Barlow called his superiors. "The CIA went mad. These were criminal offences," Barlow says. The State Department's lawyers considered their position. They argued that an inquiry would necessitate the spilling of state secrets. The investigation was abandoned just as Reagan made his annual statement to Congress, testifying that "Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device."

But the Pervez case would not go away. Congressman Stephen Solarz, a Democrat from New Jersey, demanded a closed congressional hearing to vet the intelligence concerning Pakistan's bomb programme. Barlow was detailed to "backbench" at the meeting, if necessary offering advice to the White House representative, General David Einsel (who had been chosen by Reagan to head his Star Wars programme). An armed guard stood outside the room where the hearing was held.

Barlow recalls that Solarz got straight to the point: "Were Pervez and ul-Haq agents of the Pakistan government?" Without flinching, Einsel barked back: "It is not cut and dried." It was a criminal offence to lie to Congress, as other hearings happening on the same day down the corridor were spelling out to Colonel Oliver North, the alleged mastermind behind Iran-Contra. Barlow froze. "These congressmen had no idea what was really going on in Pakistan and what had been coming across my desk about its WMD programme," he says. "They did not know that Pakistan already had a bomb and was shopping for more with U.S. help. All of it had been hushed up."

Then Solarz called on Barlow to speak. "I told the truth. I said it was clear Pervez was an agent for Pakistan's nuclear programme. Everyone started shouting. General Einsel screamed, 'Barlow doesn't know what he's talking about.' Solarz asked if there had been any other cases involving the Pakistan government and Einsel said, 'No'." Barlow recalls thinking, "'Oh no, here we go again.' They asked me and I said, 'Yes, there have been scores of other cases.'"

The meeting broke up. Barlow was bundled into a CIA car that sped for Langley. It was a bad time to be the U.S.'s foremost expert on Pakistan's nuclear programme when the administration was desperate to prove it didn't exist. Shortly after, Barlow left the CIA, claiming that Einsel had made his job impossible.

Later that year, Reagan would tell the U.S. Congress: "There is no diminution in the president's commitment to restraining the spread of nuclear weapons in the Indian subcontinent or elsewhere."

Once again, Barlow was able to bounce back. In January 1989, he was recruited by the Office of the Secretary of Defence (OSD) at the Pentagon to become its first intelligence analyst in WMD. For a man uncomfortable with political pragmatism, it was a strange move: he was now in a department that was steeped in realpolitik, balancing the commercial needs of the U.S. military industry against America's international obligations. Within weeks, he had again built a stack of evidence about Pakistan's WMD programme, including intelligence that the Pakistan army was experimenting with a delivery system for its nuclear bomb, using U.S.-provided technology. "Our side was at it again," Barlow says.

PAF F-16s

Still optimistic, still perhaps naive and still committed to the ideal of thwarting the Pakistan programme, Barlow convinced himself that his experience in the CIA was untypical, the work of a handful of political figures who would now not be able to reach him. When he was commissioned to write an intelligence assessment for Dick Cheney, defence secretary, giving a snapshot of the Pakistan WMD programme, he thought he was making headway. Barlow's report was stark. He concluded that the U.S. had sold 40 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan in the mid-80s - it had been a precondition of the sale that none of the jets could be adapted to drop a nuclear bomb. He was convinced that all of them had been configured to do just that. He concluded that Pakistan was still shopping for its WMD programme and the chances were extremely high that it would also begin selling this technology to other nations. Unbeknown to Barlow, the Pentagon had just approved the sale of another 60 F-16s to Pakistan in a deal worth $1.4bn, supposedly with the same provison as before.

"Officials at the OSD kept pressurising me to change my conclusions," Barlow says. He refused and soon after noticed files going missing. A secretary tipped him off that a senior official had been intercepting his papers. In July 1989, Barlow was hauled before one of the Pentagon's top military salesmen, who accused him of sabotaging the new F-16 deal. Eight days later, when Congress asked if the jet could be adapted by Pakistan to drop a nuclear bomb, the Defence Department said, "None of the F-16s Pakistan already owns or is about to purchase is configured for nuclear delivery." Barlow was horrified.

On August 4 1989, he was fired. "They told me they had received credible information that I was a security risk." Barlow demanded to know how and why. "They said they could not tell me as the information was classified." All they would say was that "senior Defence Department officials", whose identities were also classified, had supplied "plenty of evidence". The rumour going around the office was that Barlow was a Soviet spy. Barlow went home to Cindy. "We were in marriage counselling following my fall-out at the CIA. We were getting our relationship back on track. And now I had to explain that I was being fired from the Pentagon."

Barlow still would not give up. His almost pathological tenacity was one of the characteristics that made him a great analyst. With no salary and few savings, he found a lawyer who agreed to represent him pro-bono. At this point, more documents surfaced linking several familiar names to Barlow's sacking and its aftermath; these included Cheney's chief of staff, Libby, and two officials working for Wolfowitz. Through his lawyer, Barlow discovered that he was being described as a tax evader, an alcoholic and an adulterer, who had been fired from all previous government jobs. It was alleged that his marriage counselling was a cover for a course of psychiatric care, and he was put under pressure to permit investigators to interview his marriage guidance adviser. "I had to explain to Cindy that her private fears were to be trawled by the OSD. She moved out. My life, professionally and personally, was destroyed. Cindy filed for divorce."

Barlow's lawyers stuck by him, winning a combined inquiry by the three inspector generals acting for the Defence Department, the CIA and the State Department (inspector generals are the equivalent of ombudsmen in Britain). By September 1993, the lead inspector, Sherman Funk, concluded that the accusation of treachery was "an error not supported by a scintilla of evidence. The truth about Barlow's termination is, simply put, that it was unfair and unwarranted." The whole affair, Funk said, was "Kafka-like" - Barlow was sacrificed for "refusing to accede to policies which he knew to be wrong".

It seemed Barlow had been vindicated. However, when the report was published it had been completely rewritten by someone at the Pentagon. Funk was appalled. When Barlow's lawyers called the Pentagon, they were told it was the department that had been exonerated. Now it was official: Pakistan was nuclear-free, and did not have the capability of dropping a bomb from an American-supplied F-16 jet and the reputation of the only man who claimed otherwise was destroyed. Later, Barlow's lawyers would find his brief to Cheney had been rewritten, too, clearing Pakistan and concluding that continued U.S. aid would insure that the country would desist from its WMD programme.

The Pentagon officials who were responsible for Barlow's downfall would all be out of government by 1993, when Bill Clinton came into the White House. In opposition they began pursuing an aggressive political agenda, canvassing for war in Iraq rather than restraining nuclear-armed Pakistan. Their number now included Congressman Donald Rumsfeld, a former Republican defence secretary, and several others who would go on to take key positions under George Bush, including Richard Armitage, Richard Perle and John Bolton.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz headed the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which concluded in July 1998 that the chief threat - far greater than the CIA and other intelligence agencies had so far reported - was posed by Iran, Iraq and North Korea: the future Axis of Evil powers. Pakistan was not on the list, even though just two months earlier it had put an end to the dissembling by detonating five nuclear blasts in the deserts of Balochistan.

It was also difficult not to conclude that Islamist terrorism was escalating and that its epicentre was Pakistan. The camps that had once been used to train the U.S.-backed mujahideen had, since the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, morphed into training facilities for fighters pitted against the west. Many were filled by jihadis and were funded with cash from the Pakistan military.

It was made clear to the new president, Bill Clinton, that U.S. policy on Pakistan had failed. The U.S. had provided Islamabad with a nuclear bomb and had no leverage to stop the country's leaders from using it. When he was contacted by lawyers for Barlow, Clinton was shocked both by the treatment Barlow had received, and the implications for U.S. policy on Pakistan. He signed off $1m in compensation. But Barlow never received it as the deal had to be ratified by Congress and, falling foul of procedural hurdles, it was kicked into the Court of Federal Claims to be reviewed as Clinton left office.

When the George Bush came to power, his administration quashed the case. CIA director George Tenet and Michael Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, asserted "state secrets privilege" over Barlow's entire legal claim. With no evidence to offer, the claim collapsed. Destroyed and penniless, the former CIA golden boy spent his last savings on a second-hand silver Avion trailer, packed up his life and drove off to Bear Canyon campground in Bozeman, Montana, where he still lives today.

Even with Barlow out of the picture, there were still analysts in Washington - and in the Bush administration - who were wary of Pakistan. They warned that al-Qaida had a natural affinity with Pakistan, geographically and religiously, and that its affiliates were seeking nuclear weapons. Some elements of the Pakistan military were sympathetic and in place to help. But those arguing that Pakistan posed the highest risk were isolated. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were in the ascendant, and they returned to the old agenda, lobbying for a war in Iraq and, in a repeat of 1981 and the Reagan years, signed up Pakistan as the key ally in the war against terror.

Contrary advice was not welcome. And Bush's team set about dismantling the government agency that was giving the most trouble - the State Department's Nonproliferation Bureau. Norm Wulf, who recently retired as deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, told us: "They met in secret, deciding who to employ, displacing career civil servants with more than 30 years on the job in favour of young, like-thinking people, rightwingers who would toe the administration line." And the administration line was to do away with any evidence that pointed to Pakistan as a threat to global stability, refocusing all attention on Iraq.

The same tactics used to disgrace Barlow and discredit his evidence were used again in 2003, this time against Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador whom the Bush administration had sent to Africa with a mission to substantiate the story that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material to manufacture WMD. When Wilson refused to comply, he found himself the subject of a smear campaign, while his wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA agent. Libby would subsequently be jailed for leaking Plame's identity (although released on a presidential pardon). Plame and Wilson's careers and marriage would survive. Barlow and his wife, Cindy's, would not - and no one would be held to account.

Until now.

When the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress in 2006, Barlow's indefatigable lawyers sensed an opportunity, lodging a compensation claim on Capitol Hill that is to be heard later this month. This time, with supporters of the Iraq war in retreat and with Pakistan, too, having lost many friends in Washington, Barlow hopes he will receive what he is due. "But this final hearing cannot indict any of those who hounded me, or misshaped the intelligence product," he says. "And it is too late to contain the flow of doomsday technology that Pakistan unleashed on the world."

· Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are the authors of Deception: Pakistan, The United States And Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy, published later this month by Atlantic Books, £25.

· The following clarification was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday October 19 2007. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was not jailed for leaking the identity of a CIA agent, as we said in this article. He was convicted of perjury and obstructing an investigation into the leak. President Bush did not pardon him, but commuted the sentence to a fine and probation.

New Life for Merkava Line? Tough Tanks Have Israel Rethinking Plans to End Production

By BARBARA OPALL-ROME, TEL AVIV

From: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2057227&C=thisweek

Just weeks before Israel launched its war against Lebanon-based Hizbollah, Israel's Land Forces commander warned that it was time to prepare for a new kind of warfare that relied less on heavy armor and more on smaller, highly specialized infantry supported by massive airpower and standoff attacks.

Today, he's likely singing a different tune, observers say.

According to participants in prewar meetings of the Israel Manufacturers' Association and the Armored Corps Foundation, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Gantz, chief of the Land Forces, said Israel's top brass believed future wars would require fewer main battle tanks. Participants said they were told to prepare for an eventual phase-out of the Merkava tank production line. "We're in the cross hairs, and this time it's very serious," Brig. Gen. Nir Amir, manager of Israel's Tank Program Office, said July 13.

But that was just one day after a Hizbollah crossborder raid touched off the Lebanon War II, as it is called here. After 33 days of combat in which Hizbollah used Iranian, Russian, Syrian and U.S. anti-tank missiles and armor-piercing projectiles against Israeli forces, Gantz and others in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are reassessing the tank's role.

Most believe the Merkava acquitted itself admirably in the recent fighting, not only in its primary ground combat role, but in support missions such as escorting infantry, delivering supplies and even extracting battlefield casualties.

"Before the war, they spoke about a new concept in the IDF where there would be no more large wars, whatever that means, and that the Air Force would deal with the bulk of future threats," said Haim Erez, a retired IDF major general who serves as chairman of Israel's Armored Corps Foundation.

"But I expect now, if they analyze this war correctly, they'll understand clearly why things happened the way they did. ... And one of the lessons is that the tank and heavy armor will remain the central element of the ground force structure, with a continued role of primary importance in the future battlefield," said Erez, a brigade commander in the 1973 Yom Kippur war whose troops were the first to cross the Suez Canal in pursuit of the Egyptian Army.

As for the Merkava, "before the war, we all understood it was not a question of if, but when the IDF would order a halt to new production. We were told they were still crunching the numbers, and that the issue was whether to produce another 200 or 300 tanks before closing out the line," said one industry executive who attended the Gantz meeting with Israeli manufacturers.

"Each war proves anew to those who may have had their doubts the primacy of the main battle tank," said Yehuda Admon, a retired IDF brigadier general and former manager of the Merkava tank program. "Between wars, the tank is always a target for cuts. But in wartime, everyone remembers why we need it, in its most advanced, upgraded versions and in militarily significant numbers."

Reassessing Priorities

Gantz denied he had denigrated the tank or the need for near-term production.

"We never spoke of a sudden halt to production, but of the desired balance for our future force," he said in an Aug. 22 interview.

"But yes," he conceded, "it is now clear from the lessons of this war that many cards in the deck will have to be reshuffled. The proportions and the mathematical equations we were using prior to the war will be revised, as will the prewar priority we attached to heavy armor."

Gantz said the war in Lebanon highlighted the need for heavily defended troop transports and fighting vehicles, such as the Namer, or Tiger, concept. Developed by Israel's Tank Program Office nearly 10 years ago yet never funded for production, the Namer would use the Merkava chassis to carry 11 soldiers behind thick armor. Defense sources estimate the Namer would cost about $2 million apiece for a notional production run of 200, pricey for an infantry carrier.

"And I expect the lessons from the war will make it easier to convince others of this need," he said.

Of the nearly 400 IDF tanks deployed during the conflict, fewer than five were destroyed by underbelly charges, while dozens were damaged by anti-tank munitions, officials said. But only 22 tanks were actually penetrated by Kornet-E and Methis-M and other missiles, and in half of those instances, no IDF troops were killed. In the other half, fatalities were minimized by armor and other means of survivability designed specifically for the Merkava tank.

Erez blamed many of the hits on lack of training and poor tactics.

"The way this war was executed did a disservice to the tanks; they weren't employed correctly," he said. "When you send in a small force of tanks into a village where there's no front and no rear - and where terrorist cells are still operating - you're going to take hits. Tanks need to be incorporated as part of a full combined arms force package."

Erez noted that in the Yom Kippur war, a single division sustained the same number of penetrations on a single day.

"Back then, our Pattons suffered enormous enemy penetrations. So in this war, we need to keep things in proportion, and recognize the inherent survivability and the full complement of weaponry that makes the Merkava by far the world's most effective, most defended tank."

David Engel, a retired IDF brigadier general and a former director of the Merkava program, agreed. "People focus on the number of hits and the number of casualties. But the professionals, at least, should be focused on all the lives that have been saved due to the Merkava's designed-in survivability, despite the faulty employment concept."

Shlomo Passy, chairman of the Heavy Armor Forum of the Israel Manufacturers' Association, said in many cases during the war, the Merkava proved the only platform capable of entering high-threat areas and extracting the wounded. "We understand many people owe their lives to the tanks that were sent in under a wall of fire to rescue the injured," said Passy, a brigadier general in the IDF Ordnance Corps reserves.

"I believe many of the younger officers who were indoctrinated in the new concept of standoff warfare suddenly discovered the importance of the tanks from this war. ... The tank and heavy mechanized vehicles must remain the central element of the ground battle, and what must be shouted from the rooftops is the need to invest in upgrades and continue production of new platforms that preserve our strategic advantage and our industrial base," Passy said.

New Lease on Life?

According to defense sources here, the IDF General Staff, prior to the war, had hoped to save more than $200 million per year, beginning in 2011, by halting Merkava production after all outstanding contractual obligations were fulfilled. By that time, the IDF would have acquired at least another two brigades - some 220 tanks - of the latest Mk4s while upgrading older models with many of the advanced systems being integrated in the newer models.

But because it takes about 30 months for a Merkava to roll off the line, defense and industry sources say a 2011 production cutoff would mean that new contracts for long-lead items would grind to a halt as early as next year. Since the war, it is possible - even likely - that the Merkava line will be extended, Nir said in an Aug. 22 follow-up interview. "There has been no official decision yet, but I expect that before the end of the year, we'll have a clearer picture regarding the program's future. And I expect that future will be a lot brighter than it seemed to be just a month before the war," he said.

Nir said the Merkava program office was not surprised by results from the field, including the instances where Hizbollah anti-tank weapons managed to penetrate the platform. "Like all tanks, the Hizbollah knew that attacking the sides and the back would maximize their capabilities. But clearly, despite our sorrow at the loss of each and every life, we believe the Merkava demonstrated its ability to save lives."

Defense officials said a budgetary reprieve by the IDF General Staff would allow the Tank Program Office to accelerate additional upgrades aimed at enhancing the combat effectiveness and survivability of the Merkava. "We always knew that the anti-tank threat would not stand still, and that over the years, we'd have to go to the next level of protection," one defense official said in reference to a family of active armor protection systems that has been developed by Israel's Ministry of Defense. "In all fairness, the Merkava didn't demonstrate even half of its capabilities in this war." Aside from its war-fighting contributions, the Merkava is credited by the Manufacturers' Association here with attracting some $200 million to $250 million in annual exports. More than 200 firms and factories employing some 10,000 workers participate in Merkava production, rendering the program "not only a clear strategic asset, but the industrial backbone driving a critical sector of Israel's defense industrial base," Passy said. *

E-mail: bopallrome@defensenews.com.

www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17314&ch=biztech

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

The Missiles of August
The Lebanon War and the democratization of missile technology

By Mark Williams

The events of September 2001 disproved the assumption that only a state could make war on another state. Now Hezbollah's confrontation with Israel has provided further education about how the world is changing. Hezbollah's campaign is a clear sign of how the democratization of missile technology -- cruise missile technology, in particular -- is reshaping global realities.

Assumptions about the Israeli Defense Force's military superiority have enjoyed axiomatic status, especially among laypeople. In fact, the IDF were -- and perhaps still are -- a good Citizen-Soldier militia, with a small number of units of excellent professional Soldiers, and a highly capable general staff. According to a famous, and probably apocryphal story, when asked the secret of Israel's military successes, an Israeli commander succinctly summarized the IDF's method: "Always fight Arab armies."

However, as Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah, has explained: "We are not a regular army and we do not use the way of a regular army." Hezbollah has displayed a combination of a guerrilla force's decentralized flexibility and a national military's sophistication, fielding weapons like the C-802 Noor radar-guided anti-ship missile (an Iranian-made knockoff of the Chinese "Silkworm" C-802) that struck an Israeli warship on July 14. In sum, Hezbullah's arsenal includes the following missiles:

· 122mm Katyushas: range 13 miles, warhead 6 kg
· 122mm improved Katyushas: range 19 miles, warhead, 6 kg
· 220mm Syrian rockets: range 43 miles, warhead 40 kg
· 240mm rockets: range 6 miles, warhead 18kg
· 240mm Iranian Fajr 3: range 26 miles, warhead 50 kg
· 333mm Iranian Fajr 5: range 46 miles, warhead 90 kg
· 302mm Iranian Khaibar-1: range 100 miles, warhead 100 kg
· 610mm Iranian ZelZal-2: range 130 miles, warhead 400 kg

Significantly, according to claims by both Hezbollah and Israel, Hezbollah has held in reserve all of its 200-odd Zelzal-2 missiles, which have a range of up to 200 kilometers -- capable of reaching Tel Aviv. The Zelzal missiles are road-mobile, solid-propellant systems, about which little is known. They are most likely unguided or use a rudimentary inertial system; when properly launched, such rockets would be accurate to within several kilometers of their target, enough to hit a city like Tel Aviv.

Given all that, it's a reasonable supposition that Sheikh Nasrullah and Hezbollah were ordered by their Iranian backers to keep in reserve the Zelzals, as well as a significant number of the Iranian Fajr-5 missiles (of which the Khaibar-1 is believed by many analysts to be a modified variant).

Hezbollah's Katyushas are the furthest thing from the latest designs. Predating venerable weapon systems such as the AK-47 assault rifle and B-52 bomber, these generic short-range rockets were given their name by the Soviet troops who first fired them at German forces during World War II.

For all the Katyusha's vintage provenance, however, it has defeated futuristic attempts at missile defense like the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), a U.S.-Israeli attempt to create a high-energy chemical laser that could detonate the missiles in midflight. In fact, it's indicative of the difficulties of short-range missile defense that the THEL prototype was approximately the size of six city buses; according to Subrata Ghoshroy, a military analyst at MIT who studied the project in 1996, not only would the system have been "a sitting duck" on a battlefield, but also any fractures of its fuel tanks would have released potentially deadly gas over its crew and bystanders. Although in 2000 the THEL was able to shoot down two Katyushas simultaneously during tests when no cloud cover impeded it, Katyusha rockets were designed to be fired from truck-mounted launchers in barrages of up to 50. Given the THEL's general impracticality, the U.S. Army ceased funding it in late 2004.

What are the possibilities for missile defense against the longer-range, Iranian-built rockets, such as the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, with which Hezbollah hit Israel's third-largest city, Haifa, and as far south as Hadera in central Israel?

Since the 1950s, when Time magazine printed artists' depictions of the majestic umbrella-shaped shields that would be created by the Pentagon's anti-missile missiles as they intercepted Soviet ICBMs over American cities, the U.S. military has kept promising that whatever ABM (anti-ballistic missile) system was then under development, was just a step or two from being perfected. Simultaneously, it has allowed fudged tests in order to get favorable results, and ignored the fact that, even if the technology worked perfectly when deployed, such systems would be vulnerable to countermeasures that would be cheap and easy for attackers to employ.

In 2006, the best hope for tactical missile defense remains the latest iterations of the Patriot interceptor. First deployed in the first Gulf War, the U.S. military initially claimed that this surface-to-air missile had shot down more than 40 of Saddam Hussein's Scuds. In 1992, however, the Government Operations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives concluded (.pdf file) that the Army had no proof that any Patriot had shot down any Scuds. The latest Patriot versions seem to be more effective, with at least eight independently confirmed tactical missile hits in the 2003 Iraq War.

Israel, with the United States, has spent billions on a two-tier ABM system that combines Patriots with Arrow rockets, a homegrown Israeli system. Nevertheless, although Patriot batteries have been set up around Haifa, Israel launched none in the recent conflict with Hezbollah. That's because Patriots cost $1 to $3 million, the Arrow interceptors are similarly expensive, and the supply of both, whether or not they hit incoming Hezbollah rockets, would soon run out -- as with the THEL system, both economics and physics favor the attacker's rockets.

On the ground, Hezbollah has been able to move its rocket launchers rapidly. Indeed, Hezbollah's battlefield agility and flexibility is one of the most striking features of the recent conflict. Objections that Hezbollah has accomplished a "victory" only in that its obdurate resistance has vast propaganda value within the Arab world miss the point that a militia of some 3,000 fighters impeded the advance of what was supposedly one of the world's best armies beyond a few kilometers inside Lebanon. In the process, more than 20 Israeli Merkava tanks -- again, reputedly the world's best -- were damaged by anti-tank weapons, including the Russian-made RPG-29, which have a tandem warhead so that the first explosion blows away a tank's protective shield and the second penetrates it.

Overall, Hezbollah's decentralized, flexible network of small units exhibited the essential aspects of a warfighting style that some military thinkers have predicted would predominate in 21st-century warfare, and which has been described as netwar or fourth-generation warfare. It's a style of warfare that armies of nation-states, with their massive levels of force, are ill-equipped to fight.

One proponent of this school of thought, John Arquilla, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, has argued: "What happens if you take your large hammer to a ball of quicksilver? That's what these networks are." He continues: "We are trying to wage war as if it still mattered that our forces are comprised of 'the few and the large' -- a few large heavy divisions, a few large aircraft carrier battle groups -- when in fact war is migrating into the hands of the many and the small -- little distributed units. We live in an era when technology has expanded the destructive power of a small group and the individual beyond our imaginations."

These lessons of combat -- now exemplified by Hezbollah's resistance to the IDF -- are not being lost elsewhere in the Arab world. According to a UPI story, "Anti-tank Rockets Menace Israelis," appearing on August 14, the day of the cease-fire, a reporter from the Israeli paper Ha'aretz recently interviewed a member of Fatah's al-Aksa brigades in Bethlehem, who said: "The brothers...are no longer interested in games with Kalashnikov rifles; they want anti-tank rockets....When this technology arrives, how difficult would it be for one of the fighters to sit on the Palestinian side of the wall at Abu Dis and fire a rocket at the King David Hotel? With less effort than a suicide bombing or shooting one can fire a missile and get the same results."

But not only this level of missile technology is being democratized. As the instance of the Iranian-made, radar-guided, anti-ship missile that hit the Israeli corvette illustrates, more sophisticated missile technology is also spreading. Pakistan, China, North Korea, and Iran, among others, now possess cruise missiles. The United States and its allies are now urging a U.N. resolution that will call for international sanctions against Iran.

To enforce such sanctions would require control of Iran's offshore waters and particularly of the Straits of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil moves and where Iran can potentially destroy all shipping. It's not inconceivable to many analysts that Iran, with the missile technology it now possesses, could 'take down' that foremost example of U.S. military power, the aircraft carrier battle group. In a world of proliferating cruise-missile technology, one Pentagon consultant told me: "We have a navy full of ships that will burn to the waterline when hit."

(Next week, in the second part of this article, we will analyze the implications of this democratization of cruise-missile technology.)

www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17374&ch=biztech

The Missiles of August--Part II
The democratization of cruise missile technology.

By Mark Williams

This is the second part of a story that ran on August 16.

For many experts in weapons proliferation, cruise missiles are the most disturbing threat today.

Hezbollah's recent use of an Iranian variant of the Chinese "Silkworm" C-802 radar-guided anti-ship missile against an Israeli warship illustrates the larger trend. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, the first Gulf War demonstrated America's unparalleled global power, which flowed, in part, from possession of a new class of weapons with near-surgical accuracy at great distances. Fifteen years later, another shift in the balance of global military power is occurring as missile technology--particularly, the cruise missile technology that was a hallmark feature of U.S. military supremacy--is being democratized.

Cruise missiles can be as sophisticated as the American AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile and its W80 nuclear warhead--which can strike targets 3,000 kilometers away, using guidance systems that hug satellite-mapped terrain--or as simple as small, unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) built from commercially-available kits. The German World War II-era V-1 "buzz bomb" even meets the definition of a cruise missile: an unmanned self-propelled guided aircraft that uses aerodynamic lift to deliver a payload to a target. Still, as Owen Cote, associate director of MIT's Security Studies Program, explains: "Antiship cruise missiles only need a relatively simple inertial navigation system and a radar return from their target, which is within the area the missile is launched at." Consequently, antiship cruise missile systems, being simpler and often shorter range, are generally the first kind of cruise missile acquired by states or organizations, such as Hezbollah.

The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a voluntary nonproliferation agreement involving 34 countries and supposedly limiting export of unmanned systems that can deliver weapons of mass destruction, defines a antiship cruise missile as having a range of less than 300 kilometers. A cruise missile is a Category II item--meaning, essentially, that it may be exported by any company that manufactures it. (Category I severely limits exports of ballistic missile systems, space-launch vehicles, and land-attack cruise missile systems.) Given that antiship cruise missiles can be converted to land-attack systems, the MTCR is a particularly leaky sieve. But American actions have also inadvertently helped spread the technology. In 1998, when the Clinton administration launched 75 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Osama bin Laden's bases in response to al Qaeda's bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, six of the missiles misfired and landed across the border in Pakistan. It has long been suspected that these unexploded missiles were studied by Pakistani and Chinese scientists. Ted Postol, a professor of science, technology, and international security at MIT, confirms this: "A Pakistani colleague of mine told me that a significant number of those missiles that we launched at Afghanistan actually landed in Pakistan and those guys reverse-engineered them."

The propulsion system of the Babur missile that Pakistan tested in 2005 definitely resembles that of the BGM-109 Tomahawk. After an initial launch by a solid-fuel booster, a cruise turbo fan engine cuts in, giving the Babur a speed of 880 kilometers per hour and a range of 500 kilometers. That Chinese assistance was a factor in developing the Babur's GPS- and INS-based guidance system is supported by its resemblance to the Chinese YJ-62 antiship cruise missile and the family resemblance of both missiles to the Tomahawk.

The Babur was, in a sense, Pakistan's predictable response to the test-firing in 2001 of the PJ-10 BrahMos cruise missile by its subcontinental rival, India. Jointly developed by Russia's Mashinostreyenia and India's Brahmos Corporation, the BrahMos's ramjet cruise engine is based on the Russian supersonic antiship Yakhont missile and capable of speeds of 2.5 to 2.8 Mach (three times faster than the Tomahawk). India and Russia ensured that the BrahMos didn't violate the MTCR, however, by keeping its range within the 300-kilometer limit specified for antiship cruise missiles.

How many cruise missile types exist in the world today and how many countries have them? Given that reverse-engineering and modification have produced different variants of the major types, some accounts reckon that as many as 130 types exist, with 75 countries possessing them. Not only has the MTCR's permissive handling of antiship cruise missiles aided this proliferation, but some MTCR nations have turned a blind eye when their own companies have exported cruise missiles in defiance of its rules. For instance, Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov claims that Ukraine, a MTCR signatory, sold the nuclear-capable X-55 cruise missile to Iran and China in 2001 and 2002. John Pike, director of private military information group Global Security.org, charges that many European companies have regularly contravened the MTCR: "They're open for business and they want to make money." As for the most worrisome non-MTCR nations--Iran, North Korea and Pakistan--Pike maintains that their close collaboration on missile technology amounts to "one development program in three different places."

Cruise missile proliferation may soon become bigger news. Last week, Iran--Hezbollah's primary missile supplier--blocked U.N. inspectors from viewing the Natanz complex housing Iranian uranium-enrichment efforts and delivered its nonresponse to the incentives offered by the U.S. and Europe in return for Iran halting its nuclear program., Therefore, America and its U.N. Security Council allies threaten that they'll attempt to pass a U.N. resolution on August 31 that would impose economic sanctions on Iran.

That effort may be of little avail. Firstly, Russia and China, both veto-wielding Security Council members, vigorously oppose sanctions. Secondly, even if America and its European allies finesse Russian and Chinese opposition, it's not clear that the U.S. can sanction Iran more effectively than it has for the last quarter-century.

So while the Bush administration has proceeded with diplomacy, officials repeat that the military option "remains on the table" if that's what it takes to deny the Tehran regime the nuclear bomb. Indeed, many in Washington believe that U.S. Air Force is ready with advanced plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

John Pike maintains that not only is the administration preparing for a pre-emptive attack on Iran, but even without such a move the destabilizing forces already unloosed in the Middle East may escalate into a situation in which Iran will try to obstruct the passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz--where the Persian Gulf narrows to only 34 miles and through which 90 percent of Persian Gulf oil exports pass. If, according to Pike, Iraq breaks up into three partitioned regions--Kurdistan in the north, an oil-less "Sunnistan" in the middle, and a Shia-dominated region in the south--Saudi Arabia, already the Sunni insurgency's biggest supporter, will see its fellow Sunnis deprived of the oil wealth that has historically been theirs and will possibly increase its aid to the Sunni insurgency. Iran will respond with increased support for Iraqi Shias. Thence, the struggle could intensify into a conflict resembling the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq "Tanker War", when both countries attacked oil tankers and merchant ships--including those of neutral nations--to deprive their opponent of trade. As in the 1980s, U.S. naval forces would be drawn into such a conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

This time, though, the Iranians possess at least 300 Exocet antiship missile systems and an undisclosed number of Russian Moskit supersonic antiship systems--and possibly also the improved Moskit version, the Yakhont.

Recent naval history provides a foretaste of what the relatively primitive Exocet missiles could do. In the Falklands War in 1982 between the U.K. and Argentina, Argentinean jets armed with French-made Exocets hit the H.M.S. Sheffield, whose superstructure was constructed of lightweight aluminum. The aluminum melted and the frigate burned to the waterline and sank. Similarly, in 1987, during the Iran-Iraq War, an Iraqi jet launched two Exocet missiles into the U.S.S. Stark, another frigate, and its lightweight aluminum superstructure also caught fire.

It is Iran's Moskits, though, that are the real concern for American ships. These ramjet-equipped missiles, flying two and a half to three times the speed of sound and as low as five feet above the water, were specifically designed by the Russians to overcome the Aegis defense systems and SM-2 and SM-3 defense missiles protecting American aircraft-carrier groups. The maximum theoretical response time to a Moskit launch is 25 to 30 seconds, leaving little time for jamming and countermeasures--let alone bringing to bear missiles and quick-firing artillery. Unlike past decades, when U.S. warships were constructed with aluminum superstructures (which were 35 to 45 percent lighter than steel and assisted a vessel's speed and maneuverability), current American warships, like the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that are primary components in a U.S. carrier group, generally have steel superstructures. Nevertheless, al Qaeda's attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 provides some insight into what a Moskit can do. The Cole, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer with steel armor, was docked in Aden harbor when a small craft exploded against its port side, putting a 40-by-40-foot (12-by-12 meter) gash in the Cole's flank. That explosion was the result of as much as 600 pounds of explosive. The Cole's vulnerability suggests that any of Iran's Russian-made Moskit missiles, and their 750-pound warheads, are potential ship-killers.

The Falklands War has been much pondered by military analysts. John Arquilla, professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, says: "The Exocet missile definitely proved the vulnerability of the slow-moving big ship." The key to the U.K.'s Falklands victory, Arquilla continues, was that the British calculated how to put their two aircraft carriers beyond the range of Argentinean air attacks while still enabling British aircraft to hit Argentinean forces. That lesson has applications for the challenge that the U.S. Navy may soon face in the Persian Gulf. Yes, the Gulf's north shore belongs to Iran and is potentially a platform for their cruise missiles. True, any ship within the Gulf, including ships docked at the U.S. Fifth Fleet's base in Bahrain, could theoretically be targeted from across the Gulf or from speedboats and helicopters that the Iranians have purportedly adapted as mobile platforms for their missiles. In practice, however, America has and will maintain complete air dominance.

That means that if America stands off its naval assets over the horizon, the Iranians have three options: they can aim their missiles at targets in visible range, employ radar-guided missiles to acquire over-the-horizon targets, or else use sea-based platforms to launch missiles. In all those cases, they will immediately become vulnerable to U.S. retaliation from the air. The Iranians would likely only get one chance at launching their cruise missiles before their platforms were destroyed.

Yet what if the Iranians could launch swarms of hundreds of missiles simultaneously? All bets might be off. In such a scenario, the Iranians could conceivably devastate an American naval force. Do the Iranians possess enough missiles to do that? The truth is that we don't know, as the congressional report released on Thursday, August 24, concluded. In terms the threat level, independent analyst John Pike puts it this way: "Iran is a riddle wrapped in an enigma."

In the longer term, the trend seems clear. Iran developed its first indigenous 32-bit microprocessor last month. Like mounted cavalry faced by the machine gun in 1914 or the battleship confronted by aerial attack in 1941, the U.S. aircraft carrier battle group seems likely to become increasingly a giant, slow-moving target when an enemy can fire swarms of self-guiding cruise missiles from hundreds of miles away. "Sixty-odd years ago, the German admiral Durnitz had in his office a picture of the ocean with a few gulls and a sunlit sea," John Arquilla says. "Durnitz would point to this picture when his U-boat skippers visited him and say, 'That is the future of naval warfare--there will be no great vessels, only submarines and aircraft.' In 21st-century sea warfare, expect the rise of sea power without a navy."

Regarding the democratization of cruise missile technology generally, Arquilla continues: "When cruise missiles are as widespread as AK-47s, we will truly have the war of all against all." As for the strategic prospects in such an era, Arquilla says, "I always send people back to Jean Bloch's The Future of War (1898). Bloch was a banker and he looked at society, security, and strategy all together. Before World War I, he understood that technological advances were creating systems of enormous destructive capacity, but the societal systems that were emerging would be capable both of taking great damage and of continuing. Because everybody had these capabilities, you would end up with a long attritional war, which both sides would lose. I think we're in a similar situation to the one Bloch described, where the barriers to entry have dropped sufficiently so that, as long as anyone has the will to fight, they'll be able to continue fighting. I think that's the strategic picture that's most pertinent to our time."

http://aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/aw091106p1.xml

U.S., Israel Ponder How to Slow Iranian Nuclear Weapons Development

By David A. Fulghum and Douglas Barrie
09/10/2006 04:47:58 PM

BUSTING THE BOMB

The fighting in southern Lebanon revealed Iran's willingness to supply sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah, and one of its ships was intercepted trying to do just that for Hamas in the Palestinian territories. A continuing series of tests has demonstrated Iran's growing arsenal of ballistic, tactical and sea-based weapons, and Western intelligence officials anticipate its fielding of locally built versions of fighter-launched, long-range, air-to-surface missiles. But the real fear is Iran's development of nuclear weapons. Once built, they would be easy to hide and export. Analysts contend the centrifuges and heavy water production will be in operation soon to follow a dual-track development scheme. Those that feel most threatened--the U.S. and Israel--say they will have to move soon to put the brakes on fabrication and testing. They now think the date to act would be by the end of 2007. Tehran has spurned a call for full suspension of uranium enrichment, which could mean international economic sanctions following passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Those sanctions are likely to toughen if Iran continues to reject controls. Both the U.S. and Israel are planning other ways, after economic sanctions, to slow down Tehran's push for nuclear weapons.

"Once they have a weapon, it can be stored anywhere and it becomes impossible to find. That's why the program has to be delayed soon."

These comments by a senior U.S. Air Force official resonate in many Western capitals, as well as in Israel. The dissonance comes in trying to determine just how to "delay" Iran's nuclear weapons program. "All of us are [alarmed] about Iran and their desire to have a nuclear capability," says Sen. John Warner (R.-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Certainly, the Israelis should be front and center on that issue because they have concerns, too--deep concerns."

Israel, the state directly threatened by Iran's nuclear ambitions, faces stark choices of exercising military restraint and relying on Western diplomacy, gambling on U.S. military action, or of acting unilaterally, with all the inherent risk.

"Diplomacy is still the best option," says Dan Meridor, a Likud Party member of the Israeli parliament. Meridor has recently been closely involved in a classified review of Israel's strategic defense policy."Iran's development [of nuclear weapons] can be delayed for a considerable time, if the world is in unison. We now need a [U.N. Security Council] resolution and we need Russia not to use its veto. I believe we can reach an agreement where Russia goes along. Iran would hear a clear voice."

Should diplomatic efforts fail, Meridor says, "It will be another world with an arms race, because Iran's neighbors don't want to be dominated." The fighting in Lebanon, with its revelations of the extent of Iranian arms proliferation, has already altered the perceptions in the region. Israel has named its air force chief, Maj. Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, commander of its new Iran front and director of any war plans that might materialize.

Of course, the region already has a nuclear weapons state--though it remains undeclared. Israel covertly gained a nuclear capability in the mid-1960s, as a strategic deterrent.

Iran maintains its nuclear program is for civil purposes only--a claim met with considerable skepticism. "It appears weapons-oriented. Otherwise, why bury so much of it underground?" points out Lee Willett, head of the military capabilities program at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.

The U.N. also remains dubious about Iran's publicly stated objectives. The latest Security Council resolution--which Iran's government has publicly spurned--ordered Iran to halt uranium enrichment or face sanctions.

Assuming Iran's intent to make nuclear weapons, the fundamental question becomes exactly how close the country is to the manufacture of bomb-grade material, the ability to manufacture a nuclear device and turn it into a deliverable weapon. The answers will set the timeline for diplomatic and military options. Iran certainly has a number of ballistic--and potentially air-breathing--missile programs in development which represent credible delivery systems.

The U.S. now appears more cautious in estimating how soon Iran could be in a position to produce sufficient nuclear weapons-grade material. In the mid-1990s, it was suggested Tehran could be in that position in five years. The 2005 National Intelligence Assessment reportedly suggested Iran would achieve the capability by "early-to-mid-next decade."

If the U.S. and Israel become convinced that Tehran is determined to pursue a nuclear weapons program, then military action--at some point--at least to slow the program significantly becomes a possibility. Israel has successfully pursued this path before, with the 1981 air strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.

Late last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, responding to a question about military options for dealing with Iran, said that it would be unfortunate if other countries thought "that we're not capable of defending our country, of doing anything that we might need to do."

Israel's military has two primary concerns regarding Iranian nuclear capability: the threat posed to the civilian population by a nuclear attack and the risk of disabling effects of a high-altitude air-burst and the resulting electro-magnetic pulse (EMP). Tel Aviv and Washington also fear the regional impact of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Iran remains one of the few states in the region that does not recognize Israel's right to exist. In tandem with trying to reshape Israeli forces to deal with non-state actors, such as Hezbollah, defense planners are also rethinking the organization, makeup and strategic reach of the nation's military forces as a reaction to the perceived Iranian threat.

The insidious effects of nuclear detonations at a high altitude threaten Israel. The EMP can produce a huge spike of electricity, threatening to cripple network-dependent air defenses, intelligence-gathering capability and operational military forces.

The Iranians purposefully have not followed Iraq's 1981 model of concentrating their nuclear development in a single area. They have distributed their nuclear development over numerous sites, including Bushehr, where a nuclear power plant is being built. Natanz is the site of a pilot fuel enrichment plant, and where a full-scale facility is under construction. Arak is the site of a research reactor and a heavy water production plant inaugurated in August.

While the multiplicity of sites makes drawing up a comprehensive target list more challenging, U.S. and Israel officials also suggest there are positive aspects to this. Not every nuclear-related site need be struck to hobble any nascent nuclear weapons program. The goal would be to select a few choke points.

"There are lots of links in the chain you can attack," says a former senior Israeli diplomat. "So how you define the mission is important. There may be 40 facilities [the total may be considerably higher], but you select only four. You don't have to attack all of them. For example, some targets are vulnerable to movement, like centrifuges. They need stability, so if you create enough [vibration or Earth tremors], their alignment can be distorted."

As the system expands or changes over time, additional small-scale attacks could further delay the effort, whenever it approaches a critical stage of development. While Israeli officials do not believe an Iranian nuclear weapons program can be stopped, they are convinced it could be slowed by years with the idea that time, negotiations, sanctions and perhaps changes in government could alter the desire to arm.

"Iran is potentially a short-term problem, if you look at the demographic issues," Willett suggests. The country's young people may be less inclined to follow hard-line Islamist ideology and may be less hostile to the West in general, so simply delaying any nuclear weapons program could have the desired effect.

A senior U.S. Air Force officer describes the problem of finding those choke points as an involved process that includes distinguishing commercial nuclear facilities from those with military applications. "There are a lot of sites and you have to segregate them." Nonetheless, "it's not that difficult," he says.

The USAF official contends Israel could be forced to launch attacks by the end of 2007--"the sooner the better." With the aid of U.S. intelligence (and information garnered from Russian sources and Iran's neighbors), he contends that evidence of plutonium, centrifuge use, cooling and power generation/transmission will provide the proper targeting signatures for "a couple of handfuls of attacks--less than a dozen" to shut down Iranian nuclear progress for years. "Where does the electrical power go in and out, and how do those people communicate with the outside world?"

U.S. officials have estimated there are as many as 70 Iranian nuclear sites, of which a minimum of 15 would have to be attacked. Moreover, underground construction and camouflage efforts in Iran, done in conjunction with North Korea, were to have been completed this summer. U.S. analysts further estimated fewer than two dozen strike sorties could inflict significant damage on three major Iranian facilities, but there would be little impact on Iran's technology base or team of scientists.

The fact that many of the Iranian targets are underground presents another problem. Analysts at the U.S. CIA have noted since shortly after the 1991 Iraq war, that the sale of earth-boring equipment skyrocketed in the Middle East as countries started putting key facilities underground to protect against U.S. air strikes. U.S. weapons like the GBU-28 can penetrate perhaps 30 ft. of hardened materials or 100 ft. of earth. But Iranian facilities are reportedly buried 100-200 ft. below the surface with alternating layers of earth and cement to absorb the impact of penetrating bombs. There are satellite pictures of the Natanz nuclear facility in north central Iran that show two large centrifuge buildings being buried under several yards of reinforced concrete and at least 75 ft. of earth.

The Israeli missile specialist agrees that "dozens of meters" of alternating layers of sand and cement create a sandwich that is impossible for conventional weapons to penetrate.

"You have to go after the entrances and develop new penetrators," a retired Israeli air force (IAF) general says. "But even then, conventional weapons can't penetrate to 200 ft., and the U.S. won't use nuclear weapons."

Even without uncertainties about the targets, a former Israeli diplomat who was involved in planning the 1981 raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor warned that officials should never promise unrealistic results from a military action. "You can only postpone Iran's nuclear development," he says. "The goal [must be] to slow it down with no expectation of eliminating it completely."

Israeli officials say there is no resemblance to what they or the U.S. might face in trying to decelerate Iran's current nuclear program compared to 25 years ago.

But there is danger in waiting too long, says the retired general. "Now there is only research and development [in Iran] and no operational capability," he says. "R&D can be delayed. Once they do have a [weapon], you no longer have the delay option. What can be done now, can't be done a few years from now. [The bomb] is still coming. One day, the Iranians will have their first nuclear experiment."

The general, a veteran IAF pilot, worries that the U.S. may not be up to delaying the program, despite its several years of continuous combat operations. "I'm not sure if the U.S. is in the position politically to [attack Iran] after three years in Iraq."

"How do you win?" asks the retired general. "You can't, in the traditional sense. Winning now is to continue the fight against terrorism while maintaining a normal civilian life. Victory is pushing operational [nuclear weapons] capability off for another 3-4-5 years. There's no magic. The [short-term, delaying] solution is a day of intensive strikes." The red line for both Israel and the U.S. is Iran having a weapon that can be tested.

"No one will join an [allied] coalition if Iran has a nuclear weapon," the former Israeli diplomat says. "Most nations are hostage to terrorist attacks. With a bomb in hand, Iran can then support more challenging terrorist attacks by Hezbollah or Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Any response by the West will become more risky.

"We are approaching quite fast the point where we have to postpone [Iran's nuclear development]," he says. "So the U.S. has to have the backing of the majority of [the international community]. Completing those steps now is important. Even though Egypt and Saudi Arabia will publicly condemn any attack, they are praying that the U.S. will do it."

There are some basics derived from the attack on Iraq's nuclear facility in 1981 that appear to remain applicable, most of those interviewed agree. The attacker, be it the U.S. or Israel, can't afford to be condemned internationally for spreading contamination. They also must avoid collateral and environmental damage and loss of life. The attackers must be able to say they had tried all the political and diplomatic options.

http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/StudentWebPages/IPesic/ResearchPaper.htm

DEPLETED URANIUM

ETHICS OF THE SILVER BULLET

By: Iliya Pesic

Almost all M1A1 Abrams Tanks fire 120mm depleted uranium rounds. Image source: P1

Soldiers of the Future? Might be necessary if we The "Silver Bullet" (30 mm DU round) are to continue DU use. Image Source: P2 Image Source: P3

Class: ENGR 019 - Technological Ethics
Professor: Dr. Neil R. Quinn Jr.

Santa Clara University

PAPER OUTLINE:

I. INTRODUCTION/ABSTRACT

II. WHAT IS DEPLETED URANIUM (DU)?

III. MODERN APPLICATIONS OF DU

· Airplane Ballasts and Tank Armor

· What is DU Ammunition?

IV. RECENT EXAMPLES OF DU AMMO USAGE

· Case 1: Iraq (The Gulf War)

· Case 2: The Balkans (Bosnia and The Kosovo Conflict)

V. ETHICAL ANALYSIS*

· Pro's and Con's of DU ammunition

· Professional Issues

· Legal Issues

· Ethical Philosophical Issues/Perspectives

· Stakeholders

VI. POSSIBLE ACTIONS

· Possible Action #1: Permit the use of DU ammunition

· Possible Action #2: Ban the use of DU ammunition

· Possible Action #3: Limit the use of DU ammo or halt DU ammo usage pending further investigation/research.

VII. FINAL DECISION AND CONCLUSION

* Ethical analysis format taken from "Ethical Decision-making Workshop - Group Capture Sheet" by Dr. Neil Quinn.

I. INTRODUCTION/ABSTRACT:

"All the Soldiers there were wearing NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical warfare) protective clothing. We said: 'What's going on here?' And their answer was: 'Didn't you know? This ammunition is a bit dodgy.'"

- Tim Pubrick, Gulf War veteran, British Royal Army tank commander.6

Depleted uranium (DU) ammunition is a very recent advancement in military weapons use. Due to its effectiveness against piercing armor, DU ammunition has recently become a popular item among NATO armies and will most likely become a mainstream form of conventional ammunition among many other armies of the world. However, massive amounts of circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that the use of DU ammunition has known to cause dramatic side effects, such as health problems, stillborn babies, toxic and poisonous land, water supplies, and residential territories. Hence an important question arises, is it ethical to use DU ammunition on the battlefield?

II. WHAT IS DEPLETED URANIUM (DU)?

Before we can analyze the ethical use of DU ammunition, it is important to first establish the technology behind DU and DU weapons. Uranium is one of the heaviest elements found in nature and is emits alpha, beta, and gamma particles. It is 1.7 times denser than lead.12 The half-life of U238 (DU is 99% U238) is 4.5 billion years!13 Uranium byproducts(such as Thorium (Th232)) have even longer half-lives, making uranium an element that gets more radioactive during its own decay process.5 Natural uranium is 99.274% U238, 0.720% U235, and 0.0055% U234.14a Uranium is enriched when its contents of U235 reaches 3.2-3.6% (since U235 is fissible). Weapon-grade uranium is +90% U235.14a What is depleted uranium? We start out with natural uranium and extract enriched uranium for nuclear fuel and weaponry. The leftover from the extraction process is something very similar to natural uranium, known as "depleted uranium". The only difference is that DU has 0.202% of U235 and 0.0008% of U234.14a How much DU do we currently have? As of June 1998, we have around 57,800 huge steel cylinders of DU or 496,000 metric tons. 14b Storage of DU is very complicated and problematic since corrosion of DU storage cylinders often occurs over relatively short periods of time.15

Tells you all you need to know about uranium enrichment and processing. Notice DU is leftover from the enrichment process. Image source: P4

Depleted uranium is stored as Uranium Flouride (UF6) in giant cylinders. Located in Portsmouth. Image Source: P4

Another photo on the storage of depleted uranium. Storage of DU is often very difficult. Image Source: P4

Another photo on the storage of depleted uranium. Image Source: P4

III. MODERN APPLICATIONS OF DU:

The applications of DU are quite extensive. DU is very low cost and is readily available. DU can be used as a commercial aircraft counterweight. A Boeing 747 needs 1,500 kg of DU.12,14c Due to volume restrictions, DU is an ideal dense counterweight that takes up very little space. However, due to widespread fears of DU, Tungsten can also be used in a wide range of commercial aircraft counterweights.14c An interesting note: in past plane crashes (e.g. 1992 Israeli El Al cargo jet crash in Amsterdam), local authorities usually end up scraping around 40 cm of topsoil from the crash site and nearby soils, most likely to rid of toxins produced from DU.13,14f

As well, DU can be used in tank armor. Around 1500 tanks were loaded with DU armor in 1993 and 2000 more were ordered by the US military for the future.14c How do we implement DU armor on tanks? Most tanks contain two thick shields of conventional steel armor. There exists a moderately thick gap between the two shields. DU is inserted into the armor plates and the two shields are then welded together to make one tough three-layer armor plate.

Finally, DU is extensively used in military grade ammunition. Ammunition has always existed in various different forms. DU is simply a new type of ammunition. Regular low-caliber bullets are made of compacted hardened lead.3 Armor piercing rounds (usually of higher caliber) are made out of steel. Incendiary and high explosive rounds (for even higher caliber rounds) are made with chemical explosive compounds.3 DU is merely a recent but simple advancement made in high caliber ammunition. What is depleted uranium ammunition? Basically DU + conventional ammunition = DU ammunition. DU weapons can be installed in conventional ammunition in a variety of ways. However the common methods are the following: you can either coat the ammo in DU or you can make conventional ammo with a DU core. 9,10 DU and tungsten ammunition research was being conducted as early as the 1970s as a means of generating conventional effective armor piercing rounds. 14d Tungsten is generally very expensive, has a higher melting point, and doesn't cut armor as well as DU. Depleted uranium is cheap, abundant, and even provided free to arms manufacturers. DU rounds can be classified in many different types of ammunition. DU is employed in tank rounds (usually as a kinetic dart/projectile, high-explosive device, or smart bombs)1, heavy machine guns (as used by US Bradley Fighting Vehicles), gatling guns (as used by US Apache helicopters, A-10 Warthogs, Harrier jets, and other anti-personnel aircraft), artillery (e.g. Howitzers and mortar shells), and probably in ultra-high caliber sniper rifles. The most common DU round is a high kinetic energy projectile. The projectile can pierce all forms of heavy armor. Contact temperature between the projectile and the armor is 1132 degrees C.1 DU also easily burns, just like magnesium, upon penetration, adding to the effectiveness of the ammo as an armor piercing device.14c When the projectile cuts through the armor, the DU penetrator and parts of the tank get so hot that it literally vaporizes. Anywhere from 18-70% of the DU usually oxidizes (depending on type of impact).14c For example, direct impact yields 99% oxidization. A Uranium oxide (which consists of insoluble UO2 and soluble UO3) aerosol forms, where 50-96% of the particles are less than 10 microns and hence can be inhaled easily.2

Here is a quite extensive photograph showing a wide range of DU ammo, from 25 mm heavy machine gun rounds to 120 mm tank shells. Image Source: P5

This photograph most shows the different types of 120 mm DU tank shells. The two on the far left are high-explosive rounds. The pointed shells are kinetic energy projectile rounds. Image Source: P6

Another important characteristic of DU ammo is that it dramatically increases the lethal range of conventional weaponry. For lower caliber weapons (such as heavy machine guns fired from the BAV or aircraft), DU rounds can be lethal from up to 8km.10 On larger caliber heavy weapons (such as tanks), DU rounds can easily destroy an enemy tank from 3-5km.1 However, a cautious note, circumstantial evidence suggests that DU exhibits harmful radiological, chemical, and biological effects (which will be discussed later on in this paper). But for now, keep in mind that DU is extremely toxic and still contains much of the radiation that natural uranium has. For example, US Army field manuals indicate that those who handle DU contaminated vehicles or DU injured individuals must wear gas masks and protective radiological suits.14f There are at least 15-17 countries that currently possess DU ammunition (e.g. US, Britain, France, Israel, Egypt, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.)14c,13 Large military manufacturers, such as the US, China or Russia, could easily become a major DU ammunition distributors to other major militaries in the near future.

Classification of the two most common 120 mm DU tank rounds, a kinetic-energy projectile and a high-explosive projectile. Image Source: P6

IV. RECENT EXAMPLES OF DU AMMO USAGE:

In order to analyze the effects of DU ammunition, recent conflicts involving DU ammo need to be considered. The two most recent cases involve Iraq during the Gulf War in the early 1990s, and Kosovo/Bosnia during the Balkan conflicts of the mid and late 1990s. A harmful reaction by Allied veterans to chemical, biological, and radiological effects from the Gulf War culminated into what is known as Gulf War Syndrome (part of the cause is potentially due to DU weaponry). A very recent similar series of events occurred with post-DU use in the Balkans, which lead to "Balkan War Syndrome".

CASE 1: IRAQ (THE GULF WAR)

The Gulf War is an older case but was the first time that the U.S. military employed DU weaponry on a large military scale against an enemy. DU ammunition has been accredited during and after the Gulf War as one of the main reasons why the Allied military had such a swift victory over Iraqi military forces.1,9 DU allowed our tanks to penetrate enemy armor easily and at far greater distances. Allied tanks could directly engage enemy tanks while in the enemy's line-of-sight with little worry from retaliatory fire. This means that Allied tanks could hit their Iraqi tanks while Iraqi tanks couldn't hit Allied tanks. Also due to DU armor, not a single U.S. tank was penetrated from enemy fire. U.S. tanks took many close direct hits from Iraqi Soviet-made T-72 tanks (as close as 400m!), but enemy rounds were simply not able to penetrate the DU armor! 14f DU ammunition was such a successful and popular weapon that U.S. tank crews have dubbed DU ammo as the "Silver Bullet."[9] (Partially because DU rounds have a silver-like luster due to the aluminum coating.) An important thing to consider was how much DU was actually dumped onto Iraqi territory. Around 9,640 tanks shells and 850,000 aircraft 30mm rounds were used. This translates to nearly 650,000 pounds of actual DU deposited on Iraqi soil! That's a lot of nuclear waste!

M1A1 Abrams Tanks were armed with 120 mm DU tank shells. Image source: P1

Many M1A1 Abrams were also upgraded with strong DU armor plating. Image source: P1

Due to the extensive use of DU weaponry in the Gulf War, one has to consider the chemical, biological, environmental, and radiological effects that resulted. Analysis of DU can be achieved from investigating incidents of friendly fire. Over 200 vehicles that were hit by friendly fire were analyzed by the U.S. military. Over 29 vehicles were found with abnormally high radioactive levels. 12 vehicles (including 6 Bradleys) were buried in Saudi Arabia due to substantial radioactive levels. Numerous Soldiers were also rumored to have been affected by DU. British SAS and US Special Forces, cleanup crews, and a wide variety of other military personnel who were constantly in the presence of DU contaminated sites were analyzed and in many cases shown to have contained abnormally high levels of uranium and radiation poisoning. Many veterans (not just those suffering from friendly fire) continue to have persistent medical problems. During the Gulf War, over 85% of military Soldiers have wandered through at least some DU contaminated sites (e.g. destroyed Iraqi vehicles, bunkers, etc.) Veteran groups estimate that +400,000 Gulf personnel have inhaled some amount of DU dust. By 1996, As a result of NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare), nearly +187,000 veterans have sought serious medical help and 18,200 were hospitalized. However in 1993, the Department of Veterans Affairs has done medical testing on Soldiers who still have retained DU shrapnel within their bodies.16 Interestingly, their claims indicate no direct threat from DU.

M2 and M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles (BFVs) are armed with 25mm DU ammunition. Image source: P7

The 25 mm cannon shown here fires DU ammunition. Image Source: P7

There are also serious long-term effects of DU that still exist today in Iraq. In regions heavily hit by DU, studies have shown that numerous civilians have extensive problems with their immune systems, malignant cancers (such as ludicrously high leukemia rates), heart problems, and bizarre abnormal birth defects (such as children born without eyes, ears, tongue, etc.).2 In some regions, Leukemia has become one of the main forms of cancer-related death. There has been a 4x increase in cancer among children (+130,000 in 1997).14i Contaminated agriculture and water supplies help spread the DU dust which continues to hurt people in different regions where DU ammo was not used. However, one should note that even before the Gulf War, much of Iraqi soil was already highly contaminated from previous conflicts (e.g. chemical and biological warfare against Iran, Iraqi Kurds).

Just two of NUMEROUS cases of totally bizarre stillborn infants in Iraq due to DU contamination. Stillborn infants here are born with some of the most confusing abnormalities. The image on the left is of an infant born with one eye in center of the head. The image on the left is of an infant born normal but without any eyes at all. Image source: P8

"When we climbed into vehicles after they'd been hit, no matter what time or day or night it was, you couldn't see three feet in front of you. You breathed in that dust."

- Dr. Doug Rokke, Gulf War veteran, U.S. Army clean-up crew. [6]

CASE 2: THE BALKANS (BOSNIA AND THE KOSOVO CONFLICT)

A more recent case of DU ammunition use was during the conflicts in Kosovo and Bosnia. An interesting thing to note is that no major chemical or biological weaponry was used or numerous NBC sites bombed during both conflicts. Even though Yugoslavia has done extensive research into chemical weaponry, no significant amount was used in both conflicts. Hence, the only potentially hazardous device used was DU ammunition. At first, NATO claimed that DU ammunition was not being used at all. No mention was made until a small group of NATO Soldiers started dying from blood/renal/rectal related cancers in a very short period of time and the term "Balkan War Syndrome" came into full force. New Tomahawk cruise missiles armed with a 3kg DU warhead core were first used in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. Over 31,000 A-10 30mm rounds were fired and over 1,500 cruise missiles (armed with DU) were used. Some regions in Bosnia and especially Kosovo (a region that NATO HEAVILY bombed for 3 months) are so contaminated with DU that the soil there is permanently destroyed. NATO soldiers are constantly told not to eat local foods or drink from local water supplies (since ingestion of DU dust is very common by eating foods or drinking water contaminated with DU dust). [17] Soldiers were also told to stay away from military sites hit by DU and not to pick up any possible DU fragments. [17] This concludes the basic facts of DU ammunition and the specific conflicts in which DU ammo was used.

A-10 Thunderbolt II Aircraft is a tank-busting/anti-personnel attack jet fully loaded with numerous 30mm DU rounds. Image source: P9

Photo showing personnel loading the A-10 with numerous 30mm DU rounds. Image source: P10

Closeup of the Gatling gun that spews out armor-piercing 30mm DU rounds. Image source: P10

Cruise missile used in the Kosovo Conflict contained 3 kg of DU in their warhead. Image source: P11.

Around 1500 cruise missiles were used during the Kosovo Conflict. Image source: P11

V. ETHICAL ANALYSIS:

PRO'S AND CON'S OF DU AMMUNITION:

When first analyzing the ethical dilemmas of DU ammo, a statement of the most relevant facts, such as the pros and cons, are necessary. For example, there are crucial benefits of DU ammo. It is a highly effective armor-piercing device. The purpose of ammunition is to take out enemy targets efficiently by inflicting as much damage as you can to the enemy. DU is very effective and is a very lethal and efficient killing device. It doesn't just damage an enemy tank, it pulverizes it and easily annihilates the crew as well! There are alternative forms of advanced ammo but DU fares the best of them all! Alternative forms of ammunition are around 20% less effective than DU and generally more expensive (such as using Tungsten kinetic penetrators). 1,10 Alternative tank rounds do not always penetrate armor as effectively as DU. Most non-DU rounds tend to "mushroom" (which is how the round looks after contact with enemy armor) as they hit their targets. However, as DU contacts enemy armor, it get extremely hot and "self-sharpens" as it enters the armor, just like a hot knife through butter.10,11 The bottom line is that DU is simply too good for any military not to use in the battlefield! Another crucial benefit of DU is that it increases the effectiveness of military weapons at even greater distances, oftentimes putting your enemy at a huge disadvantage. Another benefit DU proved during the Gulf War was using DU as tank armor. 645 out of 2058 U.S. tanks used in the Gulf were fitted with DU armor. Iraqi tank rounds directly struck U.S. tanks but there was no puncture of the DU armor! Hence DU used as ammunition and armor are important ways of protecting our soldiers in combat. Unfortunately, another significant characteristic of DU was also discovered during the Gulf War, that DU ammo can easily puncture DU armor (as was found out by U.S. tanks hit by friendly fire)! A final benefit of DU ammunition is that by using DU rounds in huge military campaigns, one can get rid of tons of nuclear waste. A lot of waste dumped all over Kosovo and Iraq. This is basically dumping nuclear waste through the use of deadly weapons. [11]

DU kinetic energy penetrator up close. The narrow contact area allows for huge transfer of energy on a small surface. Image source: P6

What are the consequences of DU ammunition? Even though there are very few government reports that suggest that DU contains harmful side effects, there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that clearly points out that DU and DU ammo causes extensive radiological, environmental, chemical, and biological effects. DU ammo can easily be shown to cause severe environmental damage. For example, numerous anti-tank rounds were fired in Ethan Allen Firing Range (a U.S. based testing site for DU weapons). The soil surrounding the site was so contaminated wih radiation and toxin from DU that 4 inches of topsoil, over a few mile radius, was scooped up and later stored away as nuclear waste. 14e DU dust results from the use of DU ammo (which forms as it pierces the armor) and can easily spread far away from the target. There was one tested case in the Gulf War where DU dust spread up to 42 km from an enemy target site pulverized with DU rounds!14e Just recently, the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) stated that they still found traces of DU dust in the air two years after the end of the bombing of Kosovo.18 Remember that DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years. That means that local environments contaminated with poisonous DU dust will remain that way for a very long time and will continue to spread.

"There has been, and continues to be, a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. If no one makes the case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefields, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and be deleted from the arsenal."

- Colonel Ziehman of Los Alamos National Laboratory. 11

Soldiers of the future? If we continue to use DU ammo, may so (protection from DU dust). Image source: P12 and P2

DU ammo can also cause extreme biological effects to those exposed to it. DU dust commonly is inhaled and digested through simple inhalation of air and consumption of food. Insoluble and Soluble uranium oxide enters the body and eventually enters the bloodstream.2 Soluble uranium is expelled through urination, but insoluble uranium (around 50% of DU) stays in the body and travels from the bloodstream and settles in bone and organ tissue.2 Veterans and civilians exposed to DU have experienced extensive irreversible damage to kidney and partial kidney failure. Cancers related to one's blood, bone, and immune system become common.14h There are also various other biological effects claimed from DU, such as chronic fatigue, respiratory problems, heart problems, digestive organ damage (e.g. liver failure and severe rectal bleeding), etc.2

Finally DU ammo can be shown to have radiological effects. On the outside DU is quite harmless. It is a low-level alpha particle emitter. Fortunately, alpha particles can easily be stopped by a piece of paper! Hence, a soldier can be in contact with a DU-armored tank for years and not see any effects at all! However, DU dust that enters the body can be quite harmful, depending on the amount of exposure. When DU enters the body, alpha particles directly bombard one's cell tissue. On average 1 in 70,000 human cells that are bombarded from alpha particles emitted from DU turn into cancer cells.14h Hence depending on length of exposure and concentration any person exposed to large amounts of DU would most likely suffer long-term cancer-related effects. Also, remember that DU is very similar to natural uranium (around 99% similar), which is dug up as an ore using conventional mining techniques. It is well known that uranium miners suffer significantly higher levels of cancer related illnesses, respiratory, and digestives related problems from natural uranium dust and radiation.5 Hence it would make much sense that DU exhibit similar characteristics and side effects.

"If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences. The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological. Personnel inside or near vehicles struck by DU penetrators could receive significant internal exposures."

- Statement by US Army Environmental Policy Institute (statement made after Gulf but not before Kosovo). 11

"The ingestion of small amounts of radioactive dust ...will cause a building up of radioactive material in the body, which eventually may have serious consequences...Lung cancer, bone necrosis, and rapid anaemia are possible diseases due to the deposition of radioactive substances in the cell tissue or bone structure of the body..." - Warning by the Canadian Department of Mines on uranium ore. 5

PROFESSIONAL ISSUES:

Military technology has always brought up large professional issues. The research, military application, use, and capitalization on DU ammo and weaponry contain similar professional issues as the military use of smart bombs, cruise missiles, or any form of military technology. Military defense is a big industry throughout the world and DU is just a part of it. However, on a professional level, such military weapons can produce dramatic political and international ramifications, such as seen by expanding nuclear weapons. Another professional issue deals with the relationship between the military command and their Soldiers. Commanders are obligated to ensure the safety of their Soldiers under all conditions. But when your own Soldiers start to die off from their own ammunition, then serious questions are raised about the professionalism of one's army.

AH-64 Apache helicopters fire a huge load of DU from their 30 mm cannon. Image source: P13

Close up of the gatling gun on the AH-64 Apache helicopter. Fires 30 mm DU rounds. Image source: P13.

LEGAL ISSUES:

The legal and policy issues of DU can be analyzed with respect to other special weapons, such as those that pertain to land mines, cluster bombs, napalm, white phosphorous, agent orange, anthrax, etc. It is difficult to determine whether or not DU possesses any international legal infringement. However, if proper research were to dictate that DU was unsafe and causes numerous long-term side effects, then it would be quite simple to proclaim that DU is illegal in combat. The UN already considers DU to be illegal and many lawyers are currently pushing for international legislation banning all forms of DU weaponry. A UN resolution was written in 1996 stating that "all States to be guided in their national policies by the need to curb production and spread of weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminate effect, in particular nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, napalm, cluster bombs, biological weaponry, and weaponry containing depleted uranium." 14j In addition, the UNCHR (UN Commission on Human Rights) recently passed a resolution categorizing DU ammo alongside nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as "weapon of indiscriminate effect." 13. Hence it could be argued that if DU weapons are indiscriminate and cause unnecessary suffering, then that itself would be a violation of the US military field manual on The Law of Land Warfare: "It is especially forbidden to employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. (HR, art. 23, par. (e).) ...Usage has, however, established the illegality of the use of lances with barbed heads, irregular-shaped bullets, and projectiles filled with glass, the use of any substance on bullets that would tend unnecessarily to inflame a wound inflicted by them, and the scoring of the surface or the filing off of the ends of the hard cases of bullets." 4 It would seem that one could make a strong point against the illegality of DU ammunition!

Helicopter taken out by 120mm tank shell. Image source: P1

ETHICAL ISSUES:

Ethical issues arise primarily when comparing the harmful effects of DU versus their military combat benefits. There are many different perspectives that could be used to analyze this situation. From the Utilitarian perspective (the ethical action is the one that produces the greatest benefit overall to those directly affected), using DU is unethical for it presents too many horrible long-term side effects that would in turn cause excessive amounts of suffering to large groups of people (mostly innocent civilians). The environment is ruined for many future generations! Future generations will suffer for political actions they were not responsible for. Chemical, biological, and radiological effects will continue to plague many innocent people and many lives will be lost to poisonous DU contamination. The only elated victors here are the military commanders, politicians, and ammo manufacturers.

From the Kantian perspective (a philosophic perspective similar to the Golden Rule, "do unto others as they would do onto you"), the use of DU ammunition is somewhat difficult to analyze. The Kantian perspective is difficult to apply to military situations. From one perspective, you wouldn't want the enemy to use powerful DU-armed weapons against your army, but that is sort of awkward. On the battlefield, Soldiers most likely are aware that they will often be facing an enemy who is researching means of improving military weapons and vice versa. Hence there is some sort of indirect consideration and understanding that both sides are constantly enhancing their own weapons. Hence the use of DU is currently a military advancement that only a few countries have benefited from, but when you are on the battlefield in the near future, you still are aware that the enemy could also possess DU ammo and can use it against you. There is some sort of mutual acceptance on the rules of warfare in terms of technological advancement between both sides. Hence on a slight level and strictly concerning military combat, the Kantian perspective could somewhat promote the ethical use of DU weapons.

Concerning the Rights perspective (an action is ethical if it obeys fundamental rights that relate to human dignity and autonomy), the use of DU is unethical for it violates the personal rights of all civilians and Soldiers who are directly affected from DU (especially your own Soldiers). Nuclear, biological, and chemical effects violate and will continue to violate numerous civilians' rights to live a normal life. Future generations will continue to be punished for conflicts they had no part in. The personal rights of soldiers are also affected. As mentioned before, there is also violation of military-Soldier contract/obligation concerning the knowledge of DU contamination. In addition, if DU is harmful in combat, then there is an obligation to warn your own Soldiers of the negative side effects and hence make the necessary precautions to protect them.

The Fairness/Justice perspective (treating people differently based on crucial moral differences) would question whether or not DU ammunition is fair on the battlefield and whether or not it is fair to the innocent civilians who suffer the consequences of DU contamination? It is not fair towards the Soldiers when they get sick form their own bullets. It is not fair towards civilians and society as well. However it could be debated as being fair on the battlefield. War is tough and technology is a way of getting a slight upper hand during combat. This reaffirms the previous concept of the mutual rules of engagement on the battlefield versus military technological research and advancement.

From the Common Good perspective (an ethical action is one that promotes the most common good for the society overall), it is unethical to use DU. It is simply too destructive and poses too many side effects towards the community for many generations. DU will not only affect the community of our military opponents but might also eventually affect our communities as well. DU takes warfare to the extreme since armies who use it consider only the short-term tactical benefits with no regard for the aftermath.

From the Virtue perspective (an ethical action is one that promotes the most individual and social moral virtues), DU ammunition is unethical for we will demean ourselves as a civilized society. DU weaponry is clearly not necessary to conduct warfare on a sophisticated level. DU ammo is not a necessity. As mentioned, it is amazing how far our military will go to win the war despite horrific future side effects.

A final perspective is a perspective on warfare ethics. Is it right to use weapons that exercise "overkill" on the battlefield? As previously mentioned, a 120 mm DU projectile not only destroys a tank, it pulverizes it! When the DU anti-tank round punctures a tank, parts of the tank's armor and projectile get so hot that they both literally vaporize.1 The tank heats up to such a high temperature that it often times causes parts of the tank to melt and catch on fire. As the projectile enters the tank, it splinters into many pieces, often times bursting into flames. The tank ammo and fuel blow up( due to the ignition of fuel fumes) and the tank that's leftover is barely recognizable.1 There are numerous other weapons that are quite efficient at destroying a tank but doesn't require the use of DU ammo. Tactile weapons from conventional Apache hellfire missiles to 1970's short-range Soviet Sagger rockets can easily destroy any tank, especially at close range. A wide variety of weapons can pulverize even the most sophisticated tanks at ambush range19 (e.g. Palestinian homemade explosives have proven destructive against advanced Israeli Sabre and Merkava tanks). Hence, DU doesn't have to be a military necessity in terms of destroying armored vehicles.

This widespread Soviet-era RPG is more than adequate at taking out armored vehicles at ambush range. Image source: P15

Iraqi Soviet-made T-72 hit by 120 mm tank shell fired from M1 tank. Overkill? Image source: P14

A Yugoslav M-84 tank destroyed by DU fire from A-10 during the Kosovo conflict. Image source: P2

STAKEHOLDERS:

Who are the stakeholders in this situation? NATO/UN troops are at direct risk of DU. DU ammo is usually used in initial stages of war and conflict. Aircraft (such as A-10 anti-personnel aircraft), artillery, smart bombs, etc. are first used in initial bombardment of enemy targets. Crucial targets (e.g. radar, air defense, armored divisions, etc.) are taken out and your Soldiers eventual move in. By using DU, you are directly putting the lives of your troops in great danger! Is this justifiable? Is it necessary? Not only that, but should we send troops without telling them the full dangers of DU? If it is dangerous, shouldn't we better protect our Soldiers? Would a conflict we engage in then be politically correct? The DoD and MoD finally admit that DU ammo could have serious consequences.14i, 15 No wonder we kept DU use in Kosovo a secret for a while. In addition, enemy troops are direct stakeholders for they receive the full and direct threat of DU ammo.

Civilians and collateral damage is another issue that should be strongly considered. Civilians are the unfortunate stakeholders of DU ammo use. As previously mentioned DU decay is long and the lives of future civilians will be greatly affected. DU storage has known to cause contamination to sewers, soil, groundwater, and water supplies. Cleanup easily costs hundreds of million of dollars and is an extremely difficult process.14d Leaving behind DU ammo is just like leaving behind landmines. DU litters the land and has the potential to kill innocent people of future generations!

Every military in the world are also stakeholders of DU ammo use. Since DU ammo can be easily constructed, it will be very likely that in the future many countries will arm their current weapon systems with DU ammunition. As previously mentioned, a very important fact that one should consider is that since DU can easily be created from natural uranium ore, non-nuclear power countries can easily produce DU ammunition. The final stakeholders are companies that produce DU ammo (e.g. US ammo companies are given DU for free by the US government and given lucrative contracts to produce DU ammo to arm common military land, sea and air base weapon systems.)9,10

If the proliferation of DU ammo continues, chances are that even high caliber sniper rifles (e.g. Barrett M82A1 shown here) will be developed to fire conventional DU rounds (testing of DU sniper ammo was done during the Gulf). Image source: P16

VI. POSSIBLE ACTIONS:

There are a few possible actions that can be carried out to answer the ethical question concerning DU ammo usage. We can allow the widespread promotion of DU ammo or ban DU ammo completely and consider it illegal in combat. We can also permit limited use of DU ammo (e.g., halt DU use pending extensive research on DU side effects).

POSSIBLE ACTION #1: PERMIT THE FULL USE OF DU AMMUNITION:

If we allow the widespread promotion of DU ammo, then the consequences of that could be devastating. Eventually everyone might have it! Russia and China could become mass producers and distributors of DU weapons (even though Russia currently claims that their armed forces are not using DU ammo20, it is still a possibility). Terrorists will have it as well. By having a few countries use DU weapons now will only provoke an arms race that will emphasize that a modern military needs DU ammo for its weapons! Remember, DU ammo can penetrate DU armor! When every major country eventually equips their military with DU ammo, then the benefit of only you having DU on the battlefield is eliminated! You are hence fighting the same battle fought before, just at greater distances. You are back to the previous scenario. And let's not forget the contamination that will result from this. With this decision we will continue to violate the rights of our Soldiers, society, and future generations. DU will persist to inflict collateral damage on all societies throughout the world. Hence the common good out of this situation is absolutely nothing! Certain government armies will get more power for a brief moment, only until all modern armies are equipped with DU ammunition.

POSSIBLE ACTION #2: BAN THE USE OF DU AMMUNITION

The second alternative is to ban DU ammunition completely. Countries will be penalized for the use of DU ammo. This follows similarly to the rules of military engagement when using advanced weapons such as biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. There is enough mutual respect and consideration that such weapons are not to be used on the battlefield. The fear of mutual reciprocity is enough to indicate that such negative side effects are not desirable to both sides. However, there is no guarantee that such a rule would be enforced. For example, the US still continues to use horrific "overkill" weapons such as napalm, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, autonomous landmine systems, etc. These are weapons that are not necessary at getting the job done. However, if we do ban DU weapons we will stop the spread of DU contamination and hence stop the collateral damage that occurs due to the use of DU ammo. The common good here is probably the best one in that we begin to limit the negative effects of DU for our society and future generations.

POSSIBLE ACTION #3: LIMIT THE USE OF DU AMMO OR HALT DU AMMO USAGE PENDING FURTHER INVESTIGATION/RESEARCH.

The third alternative is to limit the use of DU ammo or to halt DU usage pending research on the full side effects of DU and DU weapons. There simply isn't enough research going on into this area of technology. More research has to be done to determine all the side effects in greater detail. If tests do show negative consequences of DU ammo use, then that information needs to be made public and DU proliferation should be stopped! However, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelmingly obvious that DU causes horrific side effects, however the notion for publication of such consequences needs to be made! Individual rights are somewhat respected in that by limiting DU we limit the collateral damage associated with DU usage. The common good is simply that we limit the effects of DU (pending on what research indicates).

VII. FINAL DECISION AND CONCLUSION:

"I don't think the government actually realizes how many lives they are ruining, and they need to ...they're just killing the veterans, and killing their families along with them, with all the worry - and it's not fair."

- Mandy Duncan, wife of Kenny Duncan, U.S. Army driver during the Gulf War.8

The final decision is to ban DU ammunition completely. DU ammunition is extremely unethical. To use such tactical weapons for a war without considering its horrible side effects or ramifications for future generations is unacceptable! DU ammo is not the ultimate alterative in the battlefield. It is an overkill technology and not necessary at all for victory in battle. DU ammo use would most likely produce an arms race that would require all modern militaries to arm themselves with DU ammunition. The only time an army has any tactical advantage with DU ammunition is if your enemy doesn't have it, but due to the ease of constructing DU ammo, it is obvious that it won't be long before every major military has armed themselves with DU ammunition. Hence, in the long run DU will become obsolete. It is better to put more research into defensive/offensive tactics rather than destructive weaponry.

120mm KE penetrator 30mm DU penetrator 120mm HE penetrator

Source: P6 Source: P17 Source: P6

In conclusion, war is a last alternative and its side effects should be limited as much as possible, especially for the innocent civilians. However, regardless of what the international community does to stop the use of DU ammo, the research into harmful military technologies will only continue to increase! There is simply too much money, power, and politics involved! It is up to the people to obligate themselves in becoming more aware of such actions by higher authorities. It is up to the people to exercise their democratic powers so as to keep their governments and their affiliated branches in check.

Bibliography:

1. "120mm Ammunition." FAS (Federation of American Scientists): Military Analysis Network. 3/8/2002.

www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/120.htm

2. Bertell, Rosalie. "Gulf War Veterans and Depleted Uranium." Hague Peace Conference. [May 1999]. 2/27/2002. http://ccnr.org/du_hague.html

3. "Bullets for Beginners." FAS (Federation of American Scientists): Military Analysis Network. 3/8/2002.

www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/bullets.htm>

4. Department of the [US] Army. "Chapter 2 - Hostilities." U.S. Army's Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare. [15 July, 1976]. 3/5/2002. http://nile.ed.umuc.edu/~nstanton/FM27-10.htm

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_362000/362543.stm

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_362000/362484.stm

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1122000/1122566.stm>

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http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m829a1.htm

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http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m919.htm

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http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/newsid_1100000/1100430.stm

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsod_1108000/1108058.stm

13. "What is Depleted Uranium?" 2/27/2002.

http://cadu.members.gn.apc.org/whatisdu.htm

14. Zajic, Vladimir S. "Review of Radioactivity, Military Use, and Health Effects of Depleted Uranium" [1 August, 1999]. 2/27/2002.

http://vzajic.tripod.com

14a) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 1 - Radioactivity." [1 August, 1999]. 2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/1stchapter.html#top

14b) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 2 - Origins" [1 August, 1999].

2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/2ndchapter.html#top

14c) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 3 - Applications" [1 August, 1999].

2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/3rdchapter.html#top

14d) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 4 - Manufacturers" [1 August, 1999].

2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/4thchapter.html#top

14e) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 5 - Ammunition Testing" [1 August, 1999]. 2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/5thchapter.html#top

14f) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 6 - Combat and Accidents" [1 August, 1999]. 2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/6thchapter.html#top

14g) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 7 - Radiological Effects" [1 August, 1999]. 2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/7thchapter.html#top

14h) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 8 - Chemical Toxicity" [1 August, 1999]. 2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/8thchapter.html#top

14i) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 9 - Gulf War Illness" [1 August, 1999].

2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/9thchapter.html#top

14j) Zajic, Vladimir S. "Chapter 10 - Conclusion" [1 August, 1999].

2/27/2002. http://vzajic.tripod.com/10thchapter.html#top

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19. Arkin, William M. "Still Glowing." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. V53 n5 (1997): 64.

20. "No ammunition with depleted uranium in Russia army - official." ITAR/TASS News Agency. January 11, 2001.

Image Bibliography:

P1) www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m1.htm

P2) www.usni.org/hrp/images/OP%20Desert%20Shield%20ChemWar%2090.JPG

P3) www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/232710

P4) http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/guide/

P5) http://vzajic.tripod.com/3rdchapter.html#top

P6) www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/120.htm

P7) www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m2.htm

P8) http://www.wakefieldcam.freeserve.co.uk/extremedeformities.htm

P9) www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/a-10.htm

P10) http://members.aol.com/Stravonski/private/gun.html

P11) www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/bgm-109.htm

P12) http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/360000/images/_362543_training150.jpg

P13) www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/ah-64.htm

P14) deploymentlink.osd.mil/current_issues/du_use.shtml

P15) www.globalscan.net/Image101.JPG

P16) www.barrettrifles.com/rifles_82A1.html

P17) www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/pgu-14.htm

JTCG/ME PROGRAM OFFICE Director USAMSAA ATTN: AMSRD-AMS-J 392 Hopkins Road APG, MD 21005-5071 Phone: DSN 298-6580 E-mail: jpias@amsaa.army.mil

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Sample JMEMs

FM 101-50-1 Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual/Air-to-Surface

FM 101-60-1 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual/Surface-to-Surface: Effectiveness Data for Mortar, 81mm: M29 (U)

FM 101-60-2 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual/Surface-to-Surface: Effectiveness Data for Howitzer, 105mm, M101A1 (U)

FM 101-60-3 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual/Surface-to-Surface: Effectiveness Data for Howitzer, 155mm, M109 (U)

FM 101-60-6 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual: Surface-to-Surface Effectiveness Data for 5-Inch/ 38-Inch Naval Twin-Gun Mount, MK-28, -32, and With Gun, Fire Control System MK-37 (U)

FM 101-60-7 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual: Effectiveness Data for Mortar: 4.2-Inch, M30 (U)

FM 101-60-9 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual: Surface-to-Surface Effectiveness Data for Naval Single-Gun Mount, MK42 w/Gun Fire Control System, MK68 (U)

FM 101-61-3 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual/Surface-to-Surface (JMEM/SS) - Weapon/Munitions Application: Ammunition

FM 101-62-1 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual Surface-to-Surface: Safe Distances for Fragmentary Munitions (U)

FM 101-62-3 (C) Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual/Surface-to-Surface: Manual of Fragmentation Data (U)

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WHAT ABOUT THE ENTRANCES TO THE U-BOAT PENS?

A retired USAF combat pilot writes:

"Good article but you missed a point on the sub pens. If the approaches to the pens had been guarded by a combination of underwater mines and UAVs it would have been possible to sink the subs as they approached or departed the pens (their most vulnerable time. Constant pressure on transit would have worked as it makes the defenses work all the harder to prevent attack. It isn't the current crop of UAVs that are needed. It is stuff we did for the AF back in the late '70s. Which I might add, were rejected in favor of manned aircraft even though using them in the initial phase of a Pact advance would have shut the war down in about 8 hours with almost no loss of NATo territory. I got fired for pushing the idea but that is what happens to Captains ahead of their time :~).

Loved it. - Write more good stuff like that."

xxxxx

Sir,

you are correct, we need to use the ending of the movie "Das Bot" where Allied swarms of fighter-bombers strafe the U-boat at its entrance before it got to the invincible pens as an example of what your "killer bee" UAVs could have accomplished even in the face of thick anti-aircraft fire. Coupled with sea mines, your approach is basically Air Maneuver---"paper" that covers over the "rock" of the sub pens by encirclement. The best use of UAVs is en masse in nation-state wars when you flush out or corner a foe who has to act, has to move and expose himself to get military effects. In essence, an UAV or "UCAV" is nothing more than field artillery that instead of falling down immediately has wings to fly and if it doesn't kamikaze crash into its target, drops HE munitions and comes back for re-use though UAVs have a notorious 50% crash rate. Since UCAVs are nothing more than artillery bombardment, why does the Air Force need to own/operate them when land bombardment is the Army's job? One could separate UCAVs into long-ranged (over 1, 000 miles) ones that can attack an enemy without our land army present (strategic) and those that can attack when our army is maneuvering (operational/tactical).