TPile

Possibly because of excitement over the Russia-Georgia conflict last month, little attention was given to a new development in chemical warfare – the first use by the Israeli police of a new, smelly weapon to disperse demonstrators:

Israeli police say the new crowd-control method, which they call a "skunk bomb," was used for the first time Friday in the village of Naalin. Palestinians have been holding almost daily protests against a security barrier that Israel is building in the area.

Israeli police say a water-spraying device showered the liquid on the demonstrators, forcing most to rush off to change their clothes.

The weapons are described as an improvement over the rubber bullets and tear gas used previously, and "medical and legal authorities approved the use of the foul-smelling liquid."

According to the Jerusalem Post, "some demonstrators described the smell as similar to that of sewage, adding that it was hard to get rid of, even after a shower."

We’ve been waiting for this – Noah noted when the Skunk was developed in 2004. According to a report in the UK’s Independent newspaper, the chemical involved is an artificial version of skunk liquid:

The foul-smelling liquid squirted by angry or frightened skunks at their victims was analyzed by Israeli defence scientists and a synthetic version created for use in a weapon they call the "skunk bomb". Fired with great care, and from a respectable range, it is designed to force civilian protesters to disperse. Security forces would not be keen to arrest the victims, and they would be equally unwelcome at home.

This may signal a shift towards classifying so-called malodorants as "riot control agents." There is a whole legal dance around the use of non-lethal chemicals, and the US Army has shown a strong interest in deploying them. The new 155mm XM1063 non-lethal artillery round is filled with an unknown chemical agent, and many suspect that this is a malodorant. It is set to go into production – if it is approved – in the next year.

Jason Sigger took exception to my suggestion that the XM1063 might count as a chemical weapon and so technically be banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. However, the CWC defines a toxic chemical as "Any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals." So I strongly suspect it would fall under this heading. But America specifically regards Riot Control Agents as being exempt from the CWC. Watch out for revelations about what the XM1063 actually contains, and expect to see lawyers making some money on this one.

Ironic Footnote: Oddly enough, malodorants were used earlier this year by eco-warriors of the Sea Shepherd group, as reported in The Australian:

Captain of the Steve Irwin Paul Watson denied any attack on the Yushin Maru No. 3, saying he had not even seen such a boat.

But he confirmed the group launched a “retaliatory strike” of butyric acid “stink bombs” at the Yushin Maru No. 2, about one hour after activists Benjamin Potts and Giles Lane were transferred to the Australian customs boat, the Oceanic Viking.

Greens using chemical weapons?? You couldn’t make it up…

ALSO:

• Chemical Weapon… Or Plant Extract?
• Contagious Fear: Mass Sociogenic Smell Weapon
• Rancid Stink, Big Flash, Painful Squeal: Grenade Assaults Every Sense
• Pentagon Explores ‘Human Fear’ Chemicals; Scare-Sensors …

I will refrain from making any "hot car!" jokes…

The decline of the U.S. military’s acquisitions workforce, and the resulting reliance on private contractors to perform oversight on weapons program, is "going to be sooner or latter one of the biggest stories of the military complex in this half of the century," according to one longtime defense industry professional.

Our source, who asked to kept anonymous since he is still employed by a major defense firm, said the rise of the "Lead Systems Integrator" — whereby industry manages weapons buys on the government’s behalf — is "dumb as bag of $600-hammers."

He’s referring, of course, to the notorious "$600 hammer" story from the 1980s. Reportedly, the Pentagon was spending hundreds of dollars for simple, inexpensive items.

"I
have been involved in a whole range of levels in the development,
execution, verification and fielding some of the most complex systems," over 30 years, our man tells us.

[I] have seen what was honestly a modestly efficient
process turn upside down to the point where the simplest of functions
and performance cost thousands of times what they should … It’s deeply ironic that all the acquisition
reform of the late ’90s has had the almost complete opposite effect. …

We
would grant the shakers and movers on this that there is a large
shortage of qualified technical people staffing the project offices.
Clearly retaining qualified technical people is a priority. But, there
is much more to it than that. The key missing element is accountability
and the ability to … take risk at the same time.

So where did these foundation elements go and why? … A cultural
revolution swept through the system-development ranks because of the
combination of three things:

1) The culture surrounding the development of nuclear systems
went away. The development of those systems had a large collateral
effect on many other systems being developed at the same time. That
culture looked for problems with little or no bias and once found,
fixed them no matter what. Ironically this drove [engineers] to find [problems] as early
as possible in the development cycle thus keeping cost to a minimum.
This
drive for unbiased thoroughness has largely gone away and thus "hope"
replaced responsibility and bow-waving problems down stream becomes the
norm …

2) After the Cold War, procurement houses in the Pentagon went
through huge draw-downs in personnel. As
the commander of Hanscom AFB told me at the time, its way easier to
decrease the number of uniform personnel than the civilians on the
programs thus the ratio change dramatically to the civilian side. No
longer would the acute accountability the officer ranks brought to a
project dominate. It was largely replaced with one where you can move
up to a GS-15 by simply having a heartbeat. …

3) The contractors, while slow to figure this out, discovered they could milk the lack of competent oversight to the max. At
first they were on board with taking larger role in development of
these systems but as time went by they started to figure out the lame,
poorly written contracts and requirements … allowed them to
exploit more holes than one could take advantage of in a lifetime. 

"The solution to this mess isn’t hard," our insider concludes.

Common
sense,
accountability, the return to a culture that recognizes that
complex systems are wrought with problems to solve, and one that
celebrates finding and solving them (and you better do it as early as
possible) is the real core task. I know this sounds moronic, but the
basic principles have been lost and this is where things need to start.

(Photo: me)

ALSO:

• Fixing Pentagon Weapons-Buying Mess Ain’t Easy
• ‘Systems Integrator’ Deals Screwing Up Weapons Buys

In the early days of August, a suspected drug-running boat zoomed through the Straits of Florida, trying to outrun her American pursuers. The drug boat zigged and zagged near reefs and sandbars at 42 knots, and skimmed over water as little as five feet deep. Ordinarily, that would have been enough shake off any Coast Guard cutter or Navy frigate chasing her — those vessels can’t be in such shallow water. But this pursuer kept coming, and coming. Finally, after two hours, the drug boat ran out of gas. During their interrogations, the drug-running suspects said it was like being chased by a UFO.

The ship wasn’t alien, however. It was an 80-foot, 60-ton, $6 million experimental vessel, built for the Defense Department, called the Stiletto. A Batman-esque, double-M-shaped hull allows Stiletto to operate in extremely shallow waters. A carbon fiber body let’s the thing cruise at up to 60 knots. And a series of gigbit ethernet connections allows radars to drone-controllers to infrared sensors to be positioned anywhere throughout the ship.

Originally developed by the Pentagon’s now-defunct Office of Force Transformation as a kind of floating lab, the Stiletto’s eye-popping design has won praise from all corners of the Defense Department. But since its sponsoring office went dark, the Stiletto has been a bit of an orphan in the Pentagon’s bureaucracy. Finally, it was sent to the coasts of Colombia for drug-interdiction duty.

U.S. Southern Command announced the Stiletto’s presence to the local press, saying it would patrol the reefs and sandbars that ordinary served as drug-running sanctuaries. The cocaine ships stop going there. "In football terms, it was like having a shut-down corner. People don’t throw to that side of the field," Captain James Hruska, the Defense Department’s Stiletto program manager, tells DANGER ROOM.

But on the way home from Colombia, Stiletto saw action in the Straits of Florida. And got confused for a UFO.

[Pics: DoD]

Michael Tanji spent nearly 20 years in the U.S. intelligence community, working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office, among others.

Despite being re-assured again and again that the nation’s intelligence community has largely fixed its information sharing problems, some people who are in a position to know beg to differ:

U.S. intelligence agencies are unable to share information about foreign cyber attacks against companies for fear of jeopardizing intelligence-gathering sources and methods, cyber security expert [and former NSC official] Paul B. Kurtz told lawmakers yesterday. . . .There is no coordinated strategy or mechanism for sharing intelligence about intrusions with companies, nor is there a systematic way for companies to share information with the government…

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who has worked related issues in the government or private sector. I’ve been a Fed and done nothing but ask and gave little to nothing in return; I’ve worked for the private sector and balked at reporting because of the legal issues as well as dealing with the extra burden of reporting. It’s not that people don’t want to work together, but when the process is onerous and roadblocks high, well, no one wants to voluntarily play Sisyphus.

The fact remains though that both government and commercial systems are being run over by serious attackers. Just the negative fiscal impact alone is significant. "Industry’s annual loss of intellectual property has been estimated at more than $200 billion a year." according to the Washington Post. But you can always find a way to make more money. Once you lose a strategic advantage – through the loss of intellectual property or sensitive government information – the cascading effects don’t just put you behind the eight ball, they wipe you clean off the table.

There are some things that would facilitate sharing:

1. Make it Easy. When the only way to report data to Uncle Sam is
   through yet another closed system with more security credentials and
   more overhead, people won’t bother. Or they’ll report trivial items that
   don’t take a lot of time. A PGP-wrapped attachment in email is secure
   enough. (If your network is pwned what difference does it make? If it
   isn’t, what good is the data X years from now once the crypto is
   cracked?)
2. Make it Fair. Feds take but never give, so eventually industry
   stops giving: a familiar refrain. So implement an anonymization system
   that allows meaning and insight to be communicated back and forth
   without revealing sensitive data. Adapting the "arbitrary unit
   designator" concept from intelligence analysis (e.g. If an IP address
   is too sensitive to share, give it a random but fixed alpha-numeric ID
   for the purposes of sharing) is a start.
3. Make it Legal. Industry-government sharing initiatives tend to fail
   because industry has these people called "shareholders" and "auditors"
   that get riled up if a company says it’s been breached. Legal top cover
   for corporations would go a long way towards improving cooperation.
   It’s not about hiding misconduct or culpability but avoiding the fickle
   inclinations of the market.
4. Pay for It. DHS has asked for private sector expertise, but only at
   the expense of industry. Corporations want to help, but when they pay
   someone a salary they like that person to show up to work. Industry
   experts will participate in secondments if the government stops trying
   to do everything on the cheap and just expands the IPA program to cover the people they want.

The fixes themselves are easy enough to implement; actually getting
to the point where they can be implemented is hard and costs money.
Again, if we’re serious about cyber security then we should be willing
to deal with the expense and level of effort. You’ll know we’re not
serious if more or less this same discussion is repeated in a year or
two.

– Michael Tanji, cross-post to Haft of the Spear

[Photo: AWD]

The U.S. State Department is using a wide range of tactics to win over the populations of hostile countries such as Iran, according to James K. Glassman, Under Secretary For Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. "We want to bring people together," Glassman said during a teleconference on Wednesday. He listed programs ranging from pro-democracy videos to inviting the Iranian national basketball team to play in Salt Lake City.

But one initiative he cited really stood out. State employs eight professional Internet "trolls" whose job it is to log onto blogs in unfriendly countries and "push back" against what Glassman says is misinformation about the U.S.

[T]hey enter into digital
conversations online either on other people’s blogs or other
websites. And they identify themselves as working for the United States
Government … [A]t times they will … say, you know, that’s not
accurate, here’s the truth about U.S. policy and here’s a link, you can
go to America.gov, you can go somewhere else. They do this in Arabic,
Farsi, Urdu, and by the way, we hope soon, in Russian.

One target of Glassman’s trolls is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s personal blog. "We … think that our guy made some very telling points," Glassman said.

UPDATE: Noah here. Matt Armstrong, who’s emerged as a go-to analyst on these issues of public diplomacy, has a bunch of posts related to the Glassman call.

(Art: via Shallmakenolaw.com)

* Yemeni terrorists gave plenty of warning

* Hezbollah to the rescue?

* New LCS delivered

* Scrapping a stealth jet

* How the U.S. spy sat crew stepped out of the black

(High five: EM)

Super-strength cyborg penguins may not be here, yet. But the Navy isn’t taking any chances. The service has taken out a contract on swimmers — whether they’ve got undersea exo-skeleton enhancements, or not. Specifically, the Navy just signed a deal to develop a "Non-lethal Swimmer Deterrent":

Some examples of NLSD systems or devices are laser light
dazzlers, entanglement barriers, flash bang rounds, advanced
incapacitating agents, electrical shock devices, laser, acoustic and
high power microwave directed energy devices. The methods or technology
used by the system or device should not be a lethal threat to the
swimmer (although the Navy is interested in a scalable capability for
future consideration) and only have the ability to stun or temporarily
disable the swimmer and stop further incursion.

The threat of underwater terrorism to ships, pipelines and port
facilities has been a concern for the last few years and we’ve seen several effrots to develop underwater defenses.

In which case we can expect pitched battles between the Navy’s
flash-bangs, lasers and "entanglement barriers" [i.e. nets] and the
oncoming hordes? I seriously doubt it, but maybe Hollywood will pick up
on the idea. Much more likely is the prospect that, in a few years, low-tech versions of these exoskeletons may become commercially available. And unless the Navy
has the means to detect and deter them, two stealthy swimmers with one
explosive charge could do a huge amount of damage.