Science

How long will it really be before we see special operators in Iron Man suits?

Given the spectacular special effects on display in Marvel’s “Iron Man” movies and the Defense Department’s clever allusions to the popular hero throughout the development of programs like their TALOS armored exoskeleton, you could be forgiven for thinking mankind is on the cusp of fielding some real-life superheroes. Many media outlets have been happy to latch on to reports of progress made on the Pentagon’s exosuit efforts, running headlines suggesting special operators will soon be tooling around in super-strong, bulletproof power-armor suits that will completely change the way combat operations are conducted.

It’s an exciting prospect, but realistically speaking, these reports of special operators fielding Iron Man-style suits on near-future battlefields are almost as fictional as the comics in which Iron Man can be found.

“When we get the exoskeleton here in a few months, we will have the best exoskeleton in the Department of Defense,” explained SOCOM Acquisition Executive James Smith earlier this week. “It will not be something our operators will feel comfortable putting on in a close [combat] environment today. So, moving, shooting, communicating in the face of enemy fire—not quite there yet.”

For the sake of emphasis, let’s revisit that last sentence one more time: “So, moving, shooting, communicating in the face of enemy fire—not quite there yet.”

The TALOS suit may not be the only exosuit under development in the Pentagon’s varied tool box, but it is, by most accounts, the most advanced and combat-centric. Back in 2013, the Defense Department even released this hype video that—it’s fair to say—could compete with the Kremlin’s work in terms of propagandized claims of “near-future” capabilities.

Now, however—six years of development later—the TALOS suit still lacks the ability to move, shoot, or communicate. What gives?

The truth is, as simple as Tony Stark makes it look, developing a truly functional combat exosuit is an extraordinary undertaking. Not only does it require developing new and advanced technologies, but it also requires those technologies to mature to a sufficient extent as to make them extremely reliable. It isn’t enough to build a TALOS suit that can survive a single engagement. To make the concept truly feasible, the suit has to be resilient enough to survive the extreme operational tempo of today’s special operations community. The suit needs to fire up and function day in and day out for months on end, in the most extreme and dangerous circumstances imaginable.

The very concept of the suit invites some difficult questions. In the minds of most ballistics experts, bulletproof isn’t a real thing; only bullet resistant is achievable. That differentiation is important when building equipment for combat operations: Even the mighty M1 Abrams tank isn’t considered bulletproof. It would just take one hell of a projectile to puncture the 600mm of armor adorning the front of it. Truly bulletproof armor plating of the thickness employed by Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit simply doesn’t exist, so systems like TALOS need to rely on a trade off between ballistic protection and maneuverability. Put simply, if you cover the suit in enough armor to stand and eat rounds, it becomes extremely heavy and immobile. If you build it to be able to move quickly and with enough agility to do things like dive behind cover, it will require either less armor or more power.

Lockheed Martin’s ONYX exosuit skips the idea of armor altogether, focusing instead on increasing endurance. (Courtesy of Lockheed Martin)

That need for power is a serious issue for these endeavors. It takes a lot of energy to move a giant armored suit around at all, forcing the suit to rely on either a huge store of batteries (which increases load and adds to the power requirement) or a fuel-powered generator that would compromise any form of stealth the suit would offer. Just imagine preparing to breach during a nighttime raid when the gas generator on your exosuit kicks on. So much for the element of surprise.

So in order to make these suits feasible, the Pentagon needs a small but potent power source, or far better batteries than we may be capable of producing currently. The suit needs to offer more agility than existing technology allows, and it needs to do so while demonstrating better reliability than a Toyota Camry, despite being used in only the worst and most dangerous conditions on the planet.

So how long will it be before we start seeing the 160th’s Little Birds being retired in favor of JSOC teams running in while dressed like War Machine? Optimistically, you could say years. Realistically, we may really be looking at decades.

Feature image courtesy of Marvel/Disney

Learn How To Prepare For Cold Weather Prior to Selection

Because most of our military bases are in the southern United States, one area that can be neglected, especially when preparing for Special Operations training is cold weather training. It is surprising how many young people who enter the military don’t know or understand the basics of cold weather preparation.

First some of the basics; despite most of the selection courses being conducted in the southern United States, it can still get cold and wet down there and everyone should always be prepared for the odd snowstorm, even down south. We had one SFAS class out at Camp Mackall that began with a storm that dropped about 5 inches of snow out there. And it wasn’t much fun for the candidates or the cadre until it melted away.

And in today’s never-ending war in Afghanistan, you will have to deal with very cold weather and snow in the mountains, as well as numerous other areas of the world that you’ll be working in.

Your body’s tolerance to the cold is much more difficult compared to the hot weather. Body heat is lost much faster from heat transfer from the skin, your body, especially your head. The human body has more difficulty maintaining its internal temperature in these conditions.

Generally, the more fit a person is, the easier it is to maintain body heat production in colder weather than unfit couch potatoes. But even in fit troops once heat loss from your body exceeds heat production, your core body temperature will begin to decline.

Once someone’s internal body temperature drops below 95°F, hypothermia can develop, which can result in shivering, confusion, fatigue, and slurred speech. Reductions in internal body temperature can result in abnormal cardiac rhythms and eventually death.

Some of the more common winter or cold-weather injuries such as frostnip, frostbite, and immersion foot are an issue for troops. Frostnip and frostbite occur when skin temperatures fall below 32°F and are most common in exposed skin, but can also occur in clothed hands and feet. Immersion foot occurs when the feet are cold and wet and the troops can’t or haven’t changed into dry socks/boots.

So, what are some of the tricks of the trade for candidates to follow?

Rest and Eat Well Before Working Out:

One of the most basic of needs for the body is enough sleep. It is even more important when working in a cold weather environment because your body has to work extra hard just to maintain your core body temperature.

If you’re going to begin a long workout outside, eat a light meal with easily digestible protein and carbs before beginning. Also, keep some light snacks in your pockets to keep your energy and body’s fuel up during the day.

Dress in Layers:

Knowing how to dress for the cold and having the proper gear is of paramount importance. Next to your skin wear some tight-fitting compression material that will wick moisture away from your body. After that, your next layer of clothing should be looser fitting. Don’t forget your head and neck area where a lot of body heat is lost. One great piece of equipment is the neck gaiter that the military issues. Keep your head covered with a watch cap or similar type winter hat.

It is imperative that your socks, boots, and gloves always stay as dry as possible. Layer another set of clothing if the weather is severe and warranted. And wear a shell type windbreaker over your clothing to keep your body heat inside and dry.

Once you begin working out and body heats up, some of the layers can be removed to keep from over-heating which can lead to hypothermia if you get and stay wet. We always carried a parka on top of our rucksacks in case we stopped for an extended period of time. It can be put on and taken off quickly and really comes in handy.

Warm Up Well Before Starting:

One of the issues we all have to deal with in the cold is that your joints are cold and stiff. And a proper warm-up before beginning not only should involve getting all of your joints moving around but does what it is intended to do…warm up your body and getting your internal heat built up.

Getting the blood flowing to all your extremities is very important and static stretching in the cold isn’t recommended at all. Save that for after you get the blood flowing. Get all your muscle groups going with some full range of motion exercises.

Drink Plenty of Water:

This is one area that we harp on all the time in our daily PT Prep workouts and we’ll continue doing that here. Why? Because we’ve all been guilty of neglecting the one area that has to be maintained and that is proper hydration.

When working in the cold, you’ll notice that you won’t be as thirsty as in the hotter environments. But that’s just Mother Nature playing a trick on you. The need for water is just as great in the cold weather as it is in the heat.

Try to keep the water as lukewarm as possible during heavy work in the cold weather environments and continuously drink during the entire day.

And whenever working in the cold, or even in the hotter climates, don’t leave home without your Woobie, the venerable poncho-liner, arguably the greatest invention ever made for the U.S. military. That came in handy and has traveled with me, even today to over 40 countries around the world.

This is just a few basic tips and as you get more experience in the cold, you’ll learn more and more like anything else, it involves trial and error. You’ll learn what works and doesn’t for your own body.

Last week we posted about snowshoeing to keep up your workouts in the snow. Yesterday we had a huge melt as temps went to around 60 degrees. Tonight we’re expecting ice storms, so tomorrow’s workout will be fun…and interesting. So stay prepared for anything and nothing will stop you from attaining your goal.

Photo: DOD

Polar Fitness App Leaks Sensitive Information on US Military

The Finnish-based fitness tracking app Polar has disabled its global activity map feature after last week when it was learned that a simple click was all that was required to track down the real-world identities of military and intelligence personnel.

Polar Flow, one of Polar’s apps, was allowing anyone to access a feature called Explore, which is a basic activity map. The data that is readily available on this feature included a user’s past activity, such as running or biking routes, but also the user’s personal details such as heart rate, physical attributes, and more personal data.

While other fitness apps have released similar activities in the past, for example, showing popular running, hiking, or biking paths, the Polar app exposed the username and personal details of each user for each individual’s activity.

This is the second incident in a few months, in January experts discovered that military worldwide have publicly shared online their exercise routes recorded through the fitness tracker Strava revealing the fitness sessions conducted inside or near military bases.
During the weekend, Dutch security experts revealed they were able to find data on some 6,000 individuals including military personnel from dozens of countries and FBI and National Security Agency personnel.
According to an investigation by the news website Bellingcat and the Dutch news agency De Correspondent, the fitness devices were leaking data belonging to the military or intelligence officials who could be exploited by a threat actors to spy on them.
“With only a few clicks, a high-ranking officer of an airbase known to host nuclear weapons can be found jogging across the compound in the morning,” explained the security researcher Foeke Postma that investigated the case with the Dutch news outlet De Correspondent.
“We can find Western military personnel in Afghanistan through the Polar site. Cross-checking one name and profile picture with social media confirmed one soldier or officer’s identity.”

While only two percent of the Polar users chose to share their data, experts were quickly able to retrieve the names and addresses of military and intelligence personnel. Including the names and addresses of personnel at military bases including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Arbil, Iraq, Gao, Mali, and bases in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Chad, and South Korea,

To read the entire article from Security Affairs, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Vague Trump Directive Creates “Space Force” or Did It?

The President, love him or hate him certainly knows how to make a splash. And he definitely did just that on Monday afternoon when he signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to create a new ”Space Force,” which will certainly anger the Air Force.

The President’s purposely vague directive, if followed thru will radically change the way the military services operate by putting all of the functions in space that many of services operate on their own, under one headquarters.

“I am hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces,” Trump said while at a meeting of the National Space Council.

“That’s a big statement. We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force. Separate but equal. It is going to be something. So important,” Trump added, (Yes, he really did say separate but equal).

The President reportedly signed the order at 12:36 p.m. on June 18, 2018. So, does that mean we now have a Space Force? Not yet. The President can direct the Pentagon to go ahead with the planning for a new Space Force but only Congress can authorize a new branch of the military.

“Establishing a service branch requires congressional action.” House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio said.

While the President can authorize the Pentagon to conduct working or study groups to lay out the groundwork for a future military branch, only Congress has the power to establish a new branch of the military and to establish the positions of senior officials to lead a new branch.

Which was why Trump’s directive was so vague.

However, a statement from one DOD official read, “The Joint Staff will work closely with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, other DoD stakeholders, and the Congress to implement the President’s guidance.”

The Pentagon will work on the basics of the Space Force and would have to brief Congress and have plans as to if creating a Space Force is even feasible, what the Space Force would do, who is going to be in it, and most importantly, how much is this going to cost.

Support for another service in Congress is mixed but right now it is probably safe to say, there will not be enough support in Congress to carry the necessary votes.

Trump’s directive goes counter what Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has stated publicly. In a letter Mattis wrote last year to Congress “At a time when we are trying to integrate the Department’s joint warfighting functions, I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations vice an integrated one we’re constructing under our current approach.”

The existing service chiefs are likely to be all against this move, specifically the Air Force. The decision is political rather than pragmatic as the chiefs don’t want to compete with another service for personnel, and for budgets. It is all about protecting their empires within. Currently, the Air Force considers space part of its domain.

And they have approximately 36,000 troops assigned to 134 world-wide bases to their Space Command, headquartered at Peterson AFB in Colorado. Their budget for their unclassified projects is expected to top $44.3 billion dollars.

The Air Force has the most to lose by creating a new sixth military service and would be forced to compete for pieces of space domain that it already enjoys. What of the bases and personnel that the Air Force is already using under Space Command? Do these get turned over to the new service or will the Pentagon build new facilities and start from scratch?

Each of the branches has their own space-based initiatives, albeit to differing degrees and they’ll be reluctant to give them up. Among them are the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), Naval Network and Space Operations Command (NNSOC), Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), and U.S. Marine Corps Forces Strategic Command (MARFORSTRAT). The U.S. Missile Defense Agency would also likely be tied into a new service arrangement.

In a sign that the Air Force could have seen this scenario arising, the Air Force Space Command was stripped of its role overseeing the service’s computer warfare efforts. Those personnel were transferred from Colorado Springs to Virginia and was seen as a move to allow the Air Force to focus more on their space warfare roles.

So, while they lost 72 airmen and civilians, they are expected to get an additional 150 personnel to boost their ability to plan and conduct warfare in orbit.

This current program that is under consideration and one that the Chinese and Russians are supposedly heavily invested in is the militarization of space, specifically the weaponization of satellites. It is believed that the Russians and Chinese are developing lasers which can knock out satellites in space which can throw our entire economy into a sudden stop and destroy our ability to spy on our adversaries.

It wouldn’t necessarily be a very expensive move in creating a new service per se. Most of the programs that are already existing could be just transferred from the service where it now resides to the new Space Force. It would then have to be reorganized under a new Chain of Command. That’s where it will get expensive. A new command requires the level of bureaucracy to the nth degree. This would require a new service secretary and a new member of the Joint Chiefs. Included in that would be a new headquarters and all the bells and whistles where staff personnel shuffle paper and “coordinate” but offer little to the overall mission.

A new service academy will probably not be needed, the new service can draw from the existing service academies, which would be a cost-saving measure.

But Congress may come back to the President and simply say that they won’t fund it and want to keep the command under the Secretary of the Air Force under the auspices of the Department of the Air Force.

And what, pray tell will they be called. OSF? (Outer Space Forces), one thing they won’t be called, at least officially are “Space Cadets.”

So while the internet is awash with futuristic Star Wars, Star Trek et .al, type of uniforms that the new Space Force may be wearing, we’ll take a break on that and just wait and see if the new command actually comes to fruition.

However, if they do opt for a Star Trek inspired duty uniform, a word of warning. Don’t be that obscure guy from the engineering section (red uniform shirt), who beams down to Rigel 7 for a scouting party….

Photo: Star Trek

Fifty Years Later, Who Really Killed Robert Kennedy?

Most of us who are old enough to remember, recall the events of June 5, 1968, when Robert Kennedy had just won the Democratic primary in California and was assassinated as he made his way from the podium and into the kitchen of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel.

Our country was in a bad way. The public turned against the Vietnam War after the Tet offensive and protests against it were on-going across the country. Martin Luther King had been murdered by an assassin’s bullet just two months before. People were questioning everything, riots were happening in most of the bigger cities in America. Kennedy, it was hoped, would be the great uniter and bring the country back together. His murder would change all of that.

Just after 12:15 a.m. Kennedy after making a quick statement to a wildly cheering crowd about moving on to Chicago and the primary there. As he made his way into the kitchen, thirteen shots would ring out in the Ambassador. Kennedy was shot in the head and crumpled to the floor.

Next to him was his wife Ethel, pregnant with their 11th child. Another man there Paul Schrade was also shot in the head but would survive. Kennedy was initially conscious and witnesses said he spoke at first and asked, “Is everybody okay? Is Paul all right?” Kennedy was shot once in the back of the head, twice in the back while a fourth round passed thru his jacket but missed him.

Besides Schrade, William Weisel, an ABC TV unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter with the Continental News Service; Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger, one of Kennedy’s campaign aides; and Irwin Stroll, a teenage Kennedy volunteer were all shot. All, however, would survive.

Two athletes, former NFL star Rosey Grier and USA track star Rafer Johnson saw a man with a gun in front of Kennedy and they quickly wrestled him to the ground and took his gun away from him. The man was a slight Palestinian man named Sirhan Sirhan.

Sirhan was born in Jerusalem of Christian parents. When he was 12, his family emigrated from Israel to New York and later California. He tried to change his plea from not guilty to guilty and to fire his counsel. The judge denied both requests. The prosecutor of the case was “Buck” Compton, the Lieutenant made famous in the “Band of Brothers” miniseries set during World War II.

Sirhan never denied shooting Kennedy but said he had no recollection of the event. He said one minute he was drinking coffee backstage with a woman, the next, he was being choked on the floor by Grier and others.

Sirhan had a .22-caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver in his hand. Karl Uecker, an Ambassador Hotel maitre d’ who was escorting the Kennedy party through the kitchen later testified that he grabbed Sirhan’s wrist and pinned it down after two shots and that Sirhan continued to fire wildly while being held down, never getting close to Kennedy. Uecker was aided by another waiter and an aide to Robert Kennedy. Both also testified that they helped tackle Sirhan after just two or three shots.

Sirhan’s lawyer, Grant Cooper never made the motion that Sirhan didn’t fire the fatal shots at Kennedy, instead, tried to argue that his client suffered from limited mental capacity. That was a huge mistake. Not only did Sirhan not fire the fatal shots at Kennedy, he couldn’t have even fired all of the shots that awful night.

Sirhan’s revolver held eight shots, there were 13 shots fired in the kitchen of the Ambassador. When Grier and Johnson among others wrestled Sirhan to the ground, he was a few feet in front of Kennedy. The fatal shot hit Kennedy in the back of the head, so close in fact that there were powder burns on the back of his jacket and in his hair.

These were facts that noted LA coroner Thomas Noguchi made clear in his testimony. Why didn’t anyone question how the fatal shots came from Kennedy’s rear and Sirhan was in front of him? The case got even cloudier when lead forensics investigator DeWayne Wolfer testified at Sirhan’s trial that a bullet taken from Kennedy’s body and bullets from two of the wounded victims all matched Sirhan’s gun.

Yet it was clear to other experts who examined the three bullets that they had markings from not only different guns but different bullet manufacturers. An internal police document had damning evidence of a second gunman which concluded that “Kennedy and Weisel bullets not fired from the same gun. Kennedy bullet not fired from Sirhan’s revolver.”

No mention was ever made at the trial of the thirteen rounds fired and how Sirhan would have somehow been able to not only shoot Kennedy from behind three times but to reload and somehow end up in front of him.

Other witnesses testified that there were bullet holes found in the door frames of the Ambassador’s kitchen, and photos showed investigators examining the holes immediately after the shooting. Taking into account the three bullets that hit Kennedy and the bullets that hit the five wounded victims, investigators had accounted for all eight of Sirhan’s shots. However, any subsequent rounds found in the doors would indicate a second gun. Wolfer later said the holes and the metal inside were not bullets, and the door frames were destroyed after the trial.

Police inspect bullet holes in the door frames. Later they claimed that they were not bullet holes and the door frames were destroyed. (AP photo)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently met with Sirhan in the prison in California and came away from that meeting convinced that Sirhan did not fire the shots that killed his father. He said that his father would be against any man being in prison for a crime that he didn’t commit.

Schrade was a UAW official who was there because he helped organize a United Auto Workers movement to support Kennedy in the upcoming election. He’s convinced that Sirhan didn’t fire the shots that killed Kennedy and actually spoke on his behalf at his last parole hearing.

Now 93, Schrade gave an interview with the Washington Post on the assassination and was adamant that Sirhan wasn’t the assassin.

“Yes, he did shoot me. Yes, he shot four other people and aimed at Kennedy,” Schrade said in the interview with the Post. “The important thing is he did not shoot Robert Kennedy. Why didn’t they go after the second gunman? They knew about him right away. They didn’t want to know who it was. They wanted a quickie.”

One bizarre theory had Sirhan being put under some kind of weird hypnosis prior to the shooting, almost as if a “Manchurian Candidate” which is pretty far fetched. From the Wikipedia page on the assassination, it describes this possible scenario in detail.

He next claimed to have drunk coffee in a backstage area near the hotel pantry with a woman to whom he was attracted, and who may have been involved with the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Dr. Brown has stated that the unknown woman then took Sirhan into the pantry, which Sirhan described in his prison memory sessions as a dark room at the hotel, and that while in the pantry the woman gave Sirhan a post-hypnotic cue to fire a gun in Kennedy’s direction minutes later. Sirhan was immediately subdued by several men in the pantry as Kennedy fell to the floor fatally wounded. Sirhan has claimed that after having coffee with the woman, the next thing he can remember is being choked and unable to breathe moments after the Kennedy shooting, stating: “It’s all vague now. I’m sure you all have it in your records. I can’t deny it or confirm it. I just wish this whole thing had never taken place.”

At Sirhan’s parole hearing, Schrade tried to shake his hand but was adamant about his feelings on the case. “We want a new investigation,” he said. “Not a reinvestigation — they’ve been done before, and always closed the door on the facts. They know what I do: Sirhan did not kill Bobby Kennedy, a second gunman did. And they haven’t admitted that for 50 years.”

Photos: AP

More Google Employees Quit Over Military AI Flap

Google employees are quitting the internet giant over the company’s work with “Project Maven”, a drone program that is using artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help analyze huge amounts of captured surveillance footage.

Billed as a way of maintaining “advantages over increasingly capable adversaries,” the project is formally known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team. Its objective is “to turn the enormous volume of data available to DoD into actionable intelligence and insights at speed” for human analysts.
More than 3,000 Google staffers signed a petition in April in protest at the company’s focus on warfare. “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” it read. “Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
An open letter calling for change was published Monday by the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), a non-governmental organization (NGO) made up of experts in artificial intelligence (AI), humanitarian law and human rights campaigning. It came as Gizmodo reported that around a dozen Google employees had recently resigned over the firm’s ties to Maven.
Billed as a way of maintaining “advantages over increasingly capable adversaries,” the project is formally known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team. Its objective is “to turn the enormous volume of data available to DoD into actionable intelligence and insights at speed” for human analysts.
More than 3,000 Google staffers signed a petition in April in protest at the company’s focus on warfare. “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” it read. “Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”

The military claims that it is not going to use the project for offensive purposes but they do admit that the program allows them to “enhance their military decision-making”.

To read the entire article from Newsweek, click here:

File photo of a drone from Wikipedia

European Spy Chiefs Warn of Russian Hybrid Threats

The Russian meddling in the United States, as well as other elections, is now going to be the norm, in addition to cyber warfare, disinformation campaigns and more traditional espionage the European heads of intelligence warned on Monday.

The Sergei Skripal assassination attempt in the UK is a prime example. After the attack, it was quickly followed by Russian denials and then nearly 30 alternate theories being spread by Russian propaganda using social media among other means.

“Our respect for Russia’s people … cannot and must not stop us from calling out and pushing back on the Kremlin’s flagrant breaches of international rules,” the head of Britain’s MI5 spy agency, Andrew Parker, told an intelligence gathering in Berlin.
“Whatever nonsense they conjure up, the case is clear,” said Parker.
He later told reporters that since allied governments were first briefed on Russia’s involvement in the attack by the British government, “the case, if anything, has got stronger since then.”
Germany’s domestic intelligence chief, Hans-Georg Maassen, said his agency, known as BfV, blames Russian authorities for orchestrating a persistent cyberattack aimed at stealing sensitive data so it can be used in future intelligence campaigns, such as what happened with the Democratic National Committee emails leaked during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign.
Sir Julian King, the EU’s security commissioner, warned that social media had “turbocharged” state actors’ ability to spread disinformation, citing the recent revelations about Cambridge Analytica’s gathering of personal data from Facebook users to help manipulate elections.
King warned of future threats posed by sophisticated fake videos that are undiscernible from real footage, calling it an example of a “deadly weapon of mass disinformation” that societies need to find ways of becoming resilient to.
He also said the European Commission is working with social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to better inform users about why they are seeing certain posts and who is paying for them, to help protect against disinformation campaigns by groups or governments outside the country.

The European spy agencies have vowed to work together and cooperate against this new and insidious form of warfare. One worrisome subject for all the agencies is the possible funding of extremist groups aiming to divide European societies, and they are preaching for greater awareness of hybrid attacks to counter any threats.

To read the entire article from Associated Press, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Israeli Intelligence Pulls Off a Coup and Reveals Iranian Nuke Program

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on Israeli television on Monday night and revealed to the country that the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad pulled off an incredible intelligence coup.

Netanyahu called it the greatest intelligence achievement in history. While that may be stretching it a bit, it is an extraordinary piece of intelligence gathering. What the Israelis did is amazing in the scope of the amount of actual weight and volume. Their agents somehow lifted from right under the Iranian’s noses, the entire archive of the Iranian nuclear program.

“Iran’s leaders repeatedly deny ever pursuing nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said Monday evening at Israel’s Defence Ministry. The Prime Minister was standing in front of blackout curtains which he’d soon pull back.

“Tonight I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied.”

“Iran lied about never having a nuclear weapons program,” he said. “One hundred thousand secret files prove it did. Second, even after the deal, Iran continued to preserve and expand its nuclear weapons knowledge for future use.”

After signing the nuclear deal with the Obama administration, the Iranians moved their entire archive to a non-descript looking warehouse in the Shorabad district of Tehran. But inside the facility which Netanyahu showed the television audience, were a series of massively reinforced safes which the Prime Minister claimed contained over half a ton of binders, written material, presentations and compact discs. Netanyahu claims that the binders contained 55,000 pages of material and the discs another 55,000 more.

Netanyahu then saved the bombshell, “a few weeks ago, Israel obtained half a ton of the material, inside this vault.”

Moving to the right side of the stage, Netanyahu dramatically revealed two black curtains, which he pulled back to reveal two bookcases containing 55,000 pages inside different binders and an additional 55,000 pages stored on 183 Compact Discs.

Netanyahu was speaking in English. His message wasn’t just to his countrymen, although he began and ended his presentation in Hebrew. This was a message to the people of Europe and especially to President Trump. He’s reiterating what has long been known thru intelligence circles but never admitted in the prior administration. If Iran is released from the accord in seven years, in 2025, as the agreement requires, then expect a nuclear Tehran shortly thereafter if not before.

From a breaking SOFREP article by “Eli” on Monday,

One of the documents appears a statement that the original program (Omad) was to be divided into two programs in which one will be conducted openly and transparently while the other under total concealment. In another document the Iranian project director is quoted that, “from now on the program will work under the cover of scientific research for medical reasons.” According to the Israeli Prime Minister, this project is still taking place at the Iranian SPND agency under the direct supervision of the Iranian defense ministry. This organization, previously exposed by the NCRI in 2011 consists of seven different subdivisions or sections, each responsible for specific parts and of Iran’s nuclear weapons research.
Additional information which was highlighted during the press release:

The original objective of Project Omad, which came to a halt in 2003 was to create 5 nuclear warheads
Among the sensitive information was simulations of nuclear weapon explosions.
Maps and additional information regarding possible test sites for nuclear experiments.
The famous Fordow facility already appears in the initial plans of Project Omad.
The manager of Project Omad, which was stopped in 2003 is today the director of the Iranian nuclear program.

With Secretary of State Rex Tillerson removed, the last remnant of opposition to tearing up the Iran deal is gone. President Trump now has National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who were both critical of the Iran deal.

Asked on Monday what his reaction was of the Netanyahu presser, Trump spared few words. “I think if anything what’s happening today and what’s happened over the last little while … has really shown that I’m 100% right” about the deal, Trump said.

The critics of Israel and Netanyahu have already decried this revelation as “no smoking gun” without having seen all of the evidence, which the Prime Minister says was already corroborated by American intelligence agents.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister criticized Netanyahu for his tweet on Monday, saying “BREAKING: The boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again. Undeterred by cartoon fiasco at UNGA.”

Zarif tweeted “You can only fool some of the people so many times.”

Mr. Netanyahu concluded his speech with what amounted to a direct address to Washington.

“In a few days President Trump will make a decision on the Iran nuclear deal,” he said. “I am sure he will do the right thing for the United States, the right thing for Israel and the right thing for the world.”

Photos: Wikipedia, AP

Russians Jamming US GPS Signals for Drones in Syria

U.S. military surveillance drones operating in Syria are having their signals jammed by the Russian military, seriously affecting U.S. military operations, according to American officials.

The Russians began jamming some smaller U.S. drones several weeks ago, the officials said, after a series of suspected chemical weapons attacks on civilians in rebel-held eastern Ghouta. The Russian military was concerned the U.S. military would retaliate for the attacks and began jamming the GPS systems of drones operating in the area, the officials explained.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., reacted to the news of Russian scrambling Tuesday by saying “Russia wants to undermine our interests at every turn.”
“It is insane to think that Russia is anything but an adversary,” said Sasse.
Jamming, which means blocking or scrambling a drone’s reception of a signal from a GPS satellite, can be uncomplicated, according to Dr. Todd Humphreys, the director of the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.
“GPS receivers in most drones can be fairly easily jammed,” he said.
Humphreys, an expert on the spoofing and jamming of GPS, warns this could have a significant impact on U.S. drones, causing them to malfunction or even crash. “At the very least it could cause some serious confusion” for the drone operator on the ground if the drone reports an incorrect position or is lost, he said.
U.S. analysts first caught the Russian military jamming drones in eastern Ukraine four years ago, after the invasion of Crimea, according to Humphreys. He said the jammers were initially detected as faint signals from space, bouncing off the earth’s surface. The jammers “had a pretty significant impact” on the United Nations surveillance drones that were attempting to monitor the area, grounding the fleet for days and halting intelligence gathering from the air.

The U.S. won’t comment as to if the jamming has caused any drones to crash. However, the jamming appears to affect only the smaller reconnaissance drones and not the larger, armed MQ-1B Predator or Reaper drones.

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Nerve Agent Poisoning Puts Secret Russian Military Labs in the Spotlight

The recent events that unfolded in the UK with the nerve agent poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on a bench in Salisbury is putting the secret labs of the Russians that research and manufacture these weapons in the spotlight.

During his last run for the presidency, in 2012, Russian leader Vladimir Putin startled U.S. military experts with a mysterious pledge to develop novel kinds of weapons to counter the West’s technological edge. Armies of the future, he said, would need weapons “based on new physical principles” including “genetic” and “psychophysical” science.
“Such high-tech weapons systems will be comparable in effect to nuclear weapons,” Putin said in an essay published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the Russian government’s newspaper of record, “but will be more ‘acceptable’ in terms of political and military ideology.”
Since the start of Putin’s second term, a construction boom has been underway at more than two dozen institutes that were once part of the Soviet Union’s biological and chemical weapons establishment, according to Russian documents and photos compiled by independent researchers. That expansion, which includes multiple new or refurbished testing facilities, is particularly apparent at secret Defense Ministry laboratories that have long drawn the suspicions of U.S. officials over possible arms-treaty violations.
“The big question is, why are they doing this?” said Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological weapons expert with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. In a newly released book, “Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia,” Zilinskas and co-author Philippe Mauger analyze hundreds of contract documents and other records that show a surge in Russian research interest in subjects ranging from genetically modified pathogens to nonlethal chemical weapons used for crowd control.
During the Cold War, Soviet leaders spent vast sums to create weaponized versions of 11 different pathogens — including the microbes that cause anthrax, smallpox and the plague — while also experimenting with genetically altered strains. They created new classes of chemical toxins, such as Novichok, reportedly used in the attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England.
A fourth-generation nerve agent more deadly than VX, Novichok is the stuff of legend. Russia denies that it ever researched or manufactured such nerve agents, but it arrested a former Soviet weapons scientist on charges of divulging state secrets after he published details about Soviet Novichok production in newspaper articles and a memoir.

Even after the fall of the former Soviet Union, the Russians didn’t allow inspectors inside their former chemical warfare research labs. Some thought the shape of the labs was part of the reason but many in the intelligence field believed that they were hiding something.

To read the entire article from Washington Post, click here:

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