The Metrics of War

A couple days ago a bunch of new "snowflakes" were released on the Rumsfeld Library. I almost want to put that library bit in quotes, but really it's somewhat commendable such a controversial public figure would be willing to release so much of his own documentation and leave it open to public debate. I'll let the former SecDef (DefSec?) tell you what a snowflake is:

The term “snowflake” covers a range of communications, from notes to myself on topics I found interesting, to extended instructions to my associates, to simple requests for a haircut. There was no set template; some are several pages and some just a few words. They were all conceived individually and I had never considered them as a set until I started work on the memoir. I then found that when reviewed together, they give a remarkable sense of the variety of topics that are confronted by a secretary of defense.

Paul McCleary over at the Ares blog at Aviation Week already did a very interesting post on these. How Rumsfeld was known as somewhat of a detail oriented micro manager. Yet these new memos show him as being out of touch, slow to respond, and forgetful in following up on issues.

Among some of the older, previously released memos I found this gem from Ryan Henry, the Principal Deputy for Policy under the Secretary of Defense (how do fit all that on a business card?) back in July 2004. He seems to be responding to Rumsfeld asking about certain metrics that a senator had asked be included in the Iraq Weekly Report. Henry states they were already using all of the metrics besides two: number of prisons and number of tv stations broadcasting.

He comes off fairly professional but you can almost hear his incredulous tone as he later explains that they could report number of prisons or number of prisoners but feel that reporting the number of prisons up to international standards would be a more valuable metric. I've certainly got a few politely worded emails under my belt that similarly dance around the "really? you want me to start doing what now?" issue.

If you were wondering what they did track here's some of it:

• MW of electricity produced, percentage of Iraqis with power
• Numbers of schools open, percentage of boys and girls attending
• Number of hospitals open, percentage of Iraqis receiving care
• Timetable to democracy (hahaha)
• Crude oil production
• Number of militia and police, and number in training
• Gallons of water available, number of Iraqis with fresh water access
• Number of troops from other countries (you'd hope someone's keeping track of this)
• Number of US troops (again...)
• Food available, number malnourished
• Unemployment rate

My favorite part happens in the header of the next page:

I'm curious if 7 years later if we have finally "built justice".

DARPA Thursdays: 3D Holographic Battle Planning

One of the challenges facing the military is how to effectively communicate a battle plan. If you're going to a physical place it's helpful to have as many visual aids as possible. One of the things DARPA has tried to develop along these lines is a 3D holographic display. And they've succeeded.

Not that 3D holographic display, this 3D holographic display.

It's called UPSD Urban Photonic Sandtable Display. It allows a 3D display that does not require any special glasses and allows up to 20 participants to stand around, look at it, and interact. Or interact so much as freezing, rotating, zooming, etc. Freeze and enhance! (I know mixing my Star Wars metaphors with my Star Trek quotes is just asking for it).

It can be any where from six inches to six feet and is meant to process data (possibly population or medical data) and interpret in like a 3D graph. They're working on incorporating that with previous 3D technology they've developed for mapping that is supposedly being used by troops in Afghanistan.

So what does this mean? Doesn't look too impressive admittedly at the moment but clearly the capabilities and options are there. And while now it's being developed by the military for urban missions I could see it being used by city planners and developers or by aid groups who are going into devastated areas. I can think of a wide range of applications from medical professionals looking at treatment and spread of disease or just basic medical care in a geographical area to a Dilbert-esque style marketing corporate tool who wants to see how well they can sell widgets in a city and monitor real time influence or purchase of their product to find better ways to appeal to the consumer.

The technology and the implications so jaw dropping even Nien Nunb can't keep his mouth closed.

Jet Engine Eats Tax Dollars

Here we again. More infighting and lying and bragging on the "alternate engine" for the F-35. You see, Pratt & Whitney won the initial engine competition for the F-35. The main competitor, a team of GE and Roll's Royce (not the same as the car manufacturer) lost the competition. You would think that would be the end to it. But no. Congress has been diverting program money towards the alternate engine. I talked about this before.

 

On Monday, just in time for a romantic Valentine's Day, the Department of Defense budget will be released. The budget will likely not include funding for the alternate engine. And the two engine manufacturers are trying to get ahead of the story with their own competing press lines.

 

So far Pratt & Whitney is running at 16% under cost per engine. But the new budget is going to include more funding for them, along the lines of a billion dollars more. GE and Roll's Royce are trying to draw plenty of attention to this extra funding as while some of it is for extra delivery of engines and related services, some is also pegged towards improvement. GE and Rolls are trying to demonstrate their engine is more innovative than the P&W engine and both are arguing about how worthy metrics like fuel burn are.

 

I suspect this will be contentious and I frankly don't care which engine is actually better. But we should be angry when competition doesn't fuel (see what I did there?) a better product but instead a hissy fit that serves no one, and congress while cutting budgets everywhere else continues to fund a defense item that is completely redundant and as far as typical defense programs completely unnecessary.

DARPA Thursdays: Underwater Sensors

A lot of DARPA's interesting marine projects relate to anti-submarine warfare, like this pilotless ship I talked about last year. Now they're looking for an underwater sensor array. I've done some quick CAD of what this might look like, as seen in the photo above. Underwater arrays are nothing new. They can look like buoys, capsules floating underneath the surface, they can even be disguised in something that looks and floats like kelp.

Here DARPA has in mind something that would be in deep ocean, at or near the bottom. This brings to mind my rough idea for a series of pressure resisting domes you could drop to the ocean floor. Sensor arrays are kind of a neat thing to begin with, a bunch of nodes communicating with each other and sharing information. So its a two fold problem of designing something that's mechanically hardy in not only high pressure environments but also cold, corrosion and have to be long lasting or incorporate some clever mechanism to surface itself and be easy to replace.

Working in the ocean is not unlike working in space; you can send your hardware into it but if something fails it's best to have as many possible methods of fixing it from a distance as possible. Meaning communication between nodes and to your surface point would not be trivial. And by the way the FBO is written you can tell DARPA's not looking for amazing innovation, they're just looking for something that works. Seems like a good opportunity for a small interdisciplinary unit to make something effective.

DARPA Thursdays: The Ultracap

The military is always looking for new and better ways to power the equipment a soldier has to lug around. I mentioned last year the DARPA initiative to power electronics directly from human body heat and now we're talking storage and how fast you can charge. DARPA awarded industry leader Maxwell Technologies, along with the University of Massachusetts, a contract to develop ultracap energy storage.

 

Maxwell already makes ultracapacitors; they are like a conventional capacitor but extremely more dense. Per wikipedia instead of having the traditional two plates and a dielectric the two "plates" are separated by a substance rather than empty space. There's still a voltage difference between the two sides, but less physical space is actually needed and therefore more can be crammed into less space. Meaning these end up with a power density of 10 to 100 times your typical battery.

 

According to Maxwell, soldiers now lug around approximately 60 lbs in batteries or backup batteries. This would enable more power storage than what the soldier is carrying around now, though I wonder that as technology improves and we make better and newer and fancier little devices that this won't just mean the soldier continues to carry around the same weight only now it can power new tools.

Bite the Hand that Feeds

Congress just passed a stopgap bill to keep federal funding at current levels through March. Republicans tried to squash any attempts at funding healthcare or financial reform agencies as being too costly, but one measure that managed to stay in was funding for the F-35 alternate engine.

 

By the skin of its teeth, the GE/Rolls Royce partnership building the alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter maintained its funding from last year, $430 million. Congress has been funding this effort for the last fourteen years and even with a "new" no-earmark "fiscally responsible" party about to take over, it's not about to hit the chopping block yet. Secretary Gates considers the program wasteful and unnecessary and Obama had said he would veto any bill that included new funding for it, though I suspect he won't veto this bill.

 

When's an alternate engine a good thing? When you have doubts about the contractor making the primary engine. When there's a remarkable improvement with the alternate engine. When the company making the primary engine may not be able to deliver. But most importantly, only when you are looking to phase in the alternate at some point in your production. Engine development is expensive. First there's obtaining the base hardware than making all the improvements you plan to as a gradual process. There's a lot of R&D that goes into most defense engines, they do not come standard one size fits all and there's a lot of time on both the engine side and the aircraft side in making a good fit, doing the appropriate amount of testing, and getting the needed certifications and oversight from the federal government. Oversight from federal employees who are looking at a two year pay freeze while GE and its Ohio management employees will get to suck up millions more in federal funding for an engine that after 14 years is apparently still not ready for final phase and does not look to be a necessary alternative to the current engine.

 

In a move that will make you blink, the conservative Brookings Institue actually recommends cutting or cancelling entirely the whole of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter budget. Their report is like a report written in complete denial. They admit current defense budgets, not including the war(s) effort, is 5% of GDP compared to 8 or 9% in the 1960s, 5% in Reagen's time, and 3 and 4% up until 2007. Thus it considers this level "moderate". It applauds Secretary Gates' efforts at reducing overspending programs and then offers this assessment:

In 2010, he proposed closing Joint Forces Command, reducing the number of flag officers in the military, and curbing contractor workforces by 10 percent a year for three years running. This last recommendation is dubious. Calls for reduction of some arbitrary percentage in a workforce over some period of time are appealing but usually unsuccessful, if the past is a guide. For example, similar goals were established in the 1990s for privatizing defense support functions, with an eerily similar goal of finding 30 percent savings in total support spending. But this effort was largely unsuccessful—privatization did occur in many areas, but 30 percent savings did not, and in fact overall trend lines in operating accounts did not curve downward at all.

A conservative think tank admitting that privatizing everything doesn't actually save money? But let's continue to not give our federal employees raises while we let this engine project drag on and on. I don't know what definition of earmarks the new congress will be using when the new majority is pledging to forgo them, but I hope someone stands up against this ridiculous kind of pet project. Four hundred million might not seem like a lot. This estimate stated extending a public healthcare option to tens of millions of uninsured Americans would cost less than $1 trillion over 10 years. Or, you guessed it, less than we spend on this engine. It's reasonable to fund successful defense programs that are important to our national security and protect soldiers on the ground. It's unreasonable to keep funding these wasteful, local pet projects.

DARPA Thursdays: Phantom ship chases subs

There seems to be a trend in autonomous, constantly patrolling vehicles lately what with Solar Impulse's 24 hour flight and Boeing's plan for a five year flight. So it should come as no surprise the DARPA is trying to develop a pilotless robot ship that could automatically chase enemy subs around without needing control or direction. It would need to be light and carry a lot of fuel for this kind of stamina which it does and will be made from aluminum. But at 62 ft long with a high point of 45 ft it doesn't sound like it will be too sneaky. It'll use an obstacle avoidance system which is pretty common for autonomous vehicles in other mediums. I suspect in a few years we'll see requests for proposal of versions of this craft that are mostly imperceptible to sonar or otherwise difficult to track by the subs they are chasing. The general idea is shooting it down will only create a red flag for someone to chase down thereby giving away the location of the escaping sub. But from what I know of the military they don't like their expensive unmanned crafts to suffer enemy fire if they can help it.

I have seen the future, and it is unmanned

There seems to be a fair amount of buzz on unmanned military drones. Many soldiers love them and swear by them. Many US citizens couple them with their dislike of the war and cite the many civilian casualties associated with them. Whatever your opinion, they are mean fighting machines. Capable of long stakeouts, detailed video, and precise strikes. Perhaps that's why the civilian casualties are so alarming. We expect perfection from our robots even as the people giving the order to fire are only human.

 

Unmanned helicopters have been an interesting technology to watch. Some manufacturers have taken existing helicopters and retrofitted them to be remotely pilotable. Others have done the development from the ground up. Now NAVAIR has issued a request for proposals for cargo carrying unmanned helicopters and the Marines have done the same.

 

If anyone wondered what was going to happen to all these drones when the Afghanistan war eventually slows down I think we have our answer. We can expect to see them carrying things and doing reconaissance missions. Drones have been able to survey the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, sweep over the fire-prone areas out west looking for new outbreaks, and even fly over the gulf mapping the spread of the oil spill. Now those same drones might be able to drop much needed supplies to people in remote areas of disaster zones where weather or prep time for mobilization might have prevented a human pilot from flying. It is a hopeful thing I think.

Fun and snow in the summertime

I've talked about our icebreakers before and the need to have a presence in the arctic, both scientific and military. I know there are plenty of hippies out there that would like to send a bunch of scientific vessels to these places, give some polar bears hugs, and set up some scientific bases. But frankly that kind of money and research investment doesn't just happen spontaneously. And in the arctic it's worse than in many other places on earth, minus deep ocean exploration. So often the government has to get involved. And no matter your opinion of the military and its place it tends to be a good funding source of scientific exploration.

Now it looks like thanks to budget cuts and economic problems, funding for arctic military programs is on the chopping block. Per Ares, at Aviation Week, we're behind in charts, ships, and don't have a solid plan to get up to speed.

"Decent charts really don't exist," he[Stephen Carmel, senior vice president for maritime services of shipping giant Maersk Line] said, "aids for navigation don't exist, emergency response capability does not exist, so there's things that need to be done before you can really support shipping up there." In general, "there are a lot of things overall that are still far from certain in terms of the practicalities of working" in the Arctic, he concluded.

Now, our old enemies are moving in:

The Russians, meanwhile, with their already large icebreaker fleet have announced plans for more nuclear-powered icebreakers, more ice-capable submarines, and as of 2008, had resumed surface naval patrols in Arctic waters. Moscow has also announced plans to land paratroopers on the North Pole some time this year.

We have two, broken down icebreakers. We are sadly in need of two new ones and nobody wants to fund it. Maybe a new "cold war" fever (literally) will finally inspire us to take the efforts we need to be there. It's not just about shipping and protecting shipping lanes, it's about capable emergency response, security, and scientific endeavors and opportunities that would otherwise be left behind. Knowledge is power. We need charts, plans and the ships and forces necessary to explore and get us there. And we need that to support scientific teams that used to go along on our now, harbor-tethered icebreakers. 

Catastrophic Events

Oh you thought I meant the oil spill. Turns out the cap actually worked so for a few hours now oil hasn't been leaking into the gulf. Woot. You can go here to watch some undersea machines doing something that's not entirely clear. Presumably attaching the cap but what that is in the video I have no idea. All this hullaballoo over a few drops of oil in the ocean (yeah yeah yeah) and we've forgotten about a recent life-changing earth-shaking event: the earthquake in Haiti.

Turns out, we're still there. And much like worries in the Gulf, hurricane season is fast approaching. US soldiers and engineers are building four schools and ten medical sites, including bathrooms on site for the school children. There's still a lot wanting in Haiti right now. Looks like something like a million people are still without even a temporary place to call home. It's a disappointment we don't seem to be building homes or clearing areas in some of the hardest hit parts of Haiti. But it seems like the efforts of the US military are at least partially directed by what the Haitian government is asking for. And they're asking for schools and medical facilities, not homes or clearing. And they're on a time deadline needing to make these buildings strong enough to withstand hurricanes. Sounds like less than a thousand total military left in Haiti, and probably closer to 500. Unknown to me whether they will continue to build infrastructure and improvements come the fall when they plan to have completed these projects or whether that is the end of the line for US military support to Haiti. Part of me wishes they could have stayed and done more to really improve the country. But then part of me thinks how we're so lacking here in so many places of communications (fiber optic cable laid, or cell towers) and roads and failing bridges and I wonder why we don't have 500 US military travelling around the US and improving our space. I guess that's the selfish part.

For more you can go here and here.