USA > History > 2010 > War > Pentagon (I)

Steve Benson

political cartoon

Arizona Republic

Cagle

23 September 20010

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/politics/19cong.html
the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy

Uncle Sam

The Big (Military) Taboo

December 25, 2010
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

We face wrenching budget cutting in the years ahead, but there’s one huge area of government spending that Democrats and Republicans alike have so far treated as sacrosanct.

It’s the military/security world, and it’s time to bust that taboo. A few facts:

• The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It says that we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.

• The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. Do we fear that if we pull our bases from Germany, Russia might invade?

• The intelligence community is so vast that more people have “top secret” clearance than live in Washington, D.C.

• The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.

This is the one area where elections scarcely matter. President Obama, a Democrat who symbolized new directions, requested about 6 percent more for the military this year than at the peak of the Bush administration.

“Republicans think banging the war drums wins them votes, and Democrats think if they don’t chime in, they’ll lose votes,” said Andrew Bacevich, an ex-military officer who now is a historian at Boston University. He is author of a thoughtful recent book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.”

The costs of excessive reliance on military force are not just financial, of course, as Professor Bacevich knows well. His son, Andrew Jr., an Army first lieutenant, was killed in Iraq in 2007.

Let me be clear: I’m a believer in a robust military, which is essential for backing up diplomacy. But the implication is that we need a balanced tool chest of diplomatic and military tools alike. Instead, we have a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service — and that’s preposterous.

What’s more, if you’re carrying an armload of hammers, every problem looks like a nail. The truth is that military power often isn’t very effective at solving modern problems, like a nuclear North Korea or an Iran that is on the nuclear path. Indeed, in an age of nationalism, our military force is often counterproductive.

After the first gulf war, the United States retained bases in Saudi Arabia on the assumption that they would enhance American security. Instead, they appear to have provoked fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden into attacking the U.S. In other words, hugely expensive bases undermined American security (and we later closed them anyway). Wouldn’t our money have been better spent helping American kids get a college education?

Paradoxically, it’s often people with experience in the military who lead the way in warning against overinvestment in arms. It was President Dwight Eisenhower who gave the strongest warning: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” And in the Obama administration, it is Defense Secretary Robert Gates who has argued that military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny; it is Secretary Gates who has argued most eloquently for more investment in diplomacy and development aid.

American troops in Afghanistan are among the strongest advocates of investing more in schools there because they see firsthand that education fights extremism far more effectively than bombs. And here’s the trade-off: For the cost of one American soldier in Afghanistan for one year, you could build about 20 schools.

There are a few signs of hope in the air. The Simpson-Bowles deficit commission proposes cutting money for armaments, along with other spending. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a signature project, the quadrennial diplomacy and development review, which calls for more emphasis on aid and diplomacy in foreign policy.

“Leading through civilian power saves lives and money,” Mrs. Clinton noted, and she’s exactly right. The review is a great document, but we’ll see if it can be implemented — especially because House Republicans are proposing cuts in the State Department budget.

They should remind themselves that in the 21st century, our government can protect its citizens in many ways: financing research against disease, providing early childhood programs that reduce crime later, boosting support for community colleges, investing in diplomacy that prevents costly wars.

As we cut budgets, let’s remember that these steps would, on balance, do far more for the security of Americans than a military base in Germany.

    The Big (Military) Taboo, 25.12.2010,http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26kristof.html

Backing ‘Don’t Ask’ Repeal,

With Reservations

December 19, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — Pfc. Daniel Carias, a Bronx native who is just weeks from graduating from Marine Corps infantry training at Camp Geiger near here, says he has known plenty of gay men since high school and feels completely comfortable around them.

He thinks Congress did the right thing in repealing the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, a policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But Private Carias, 18, has one major concern: gay men, he says, should not be allowed to serve in front-line combat units.

“They won’t hold up well in combat,” he said.

That view, or variations on it, was expressed repeatedly in interviews with Marines around this town, home to Camp Lejeune, and outside Camp Pendleton in Southern California on Sunday.

Most of the approximately two dozen Marines interviewed said they personally did not object to gay men or lesbians serving openly in the military. But many said that introducing the possibility of sexual tension into combat forces would be disruptive, an argument made by the commandant of the Marine Corps a week before the historic repeal was passed by the Senate on Saturday and sent to President Obama for his signature.

Many concerns — and possible solutions — are outlined in a Defense Department plan for carrying out the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Officials said they did not yet have a timetable for adopting the change. Under the terms of the legislation, the Defense Department will not carry out the repeal until Mr. Obama, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, certify that the military is ready to make the change .

In the interviews, the Marines also argued that front-line units living in cramped outposts were encouraged to be extremely tight knit to better protect one another. An openly gay man — only men can serve in combat units — might feel out of place and as a result disrupt that cohesion, they argued.

“Coming from a combat unit, I know that in Afghanistan we’re packed in a sardine can,” said Cpl. Trevor Colbath, 22, a Pendleton-based Marine who returned from Afghanistan in August. “There’s no doubt in my mind that openly gay Marines can serve, it’s just different in a combat unit. Maybe they should just take the same route they take with females and stick them to noncombat units.”

Advocates for gay service members said questions about the ability of gay troops to serve in combat units were based on unfair and inaccurate stereotypes. Gay men already serve honorably and well in war-fighting units, they said, just not openly. Those same gay troops typically blend in to their units without tensions, they said, and anyone, straight or gay, can crumble emotionally during fighting.

“The thought they would freak out, be unprepared or panic is completely belied by the facts that have come out during this debate,” said Alexander Nicholson, a former soldier who is executive director of Servicemembers United, an organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans.

Anthony Wilfert, 25, for instance, served a yearlong tour with an Army combat unit in Baghdad from 2005 to 2006. He was in firefights and knew colleagues who were wounded or killed. Several colleagues, including superiors, knew he was gay, he asserts. But no one had trouble with his sexuality in Iraq, he says, and he was promoted to sergeant. “No one feared that I would not be able to handle myself or be able to help other men and women on the battlefront,” said Mr. Wilfert, who lives in Nashville. Eventually, though, he was discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He said he was considering re-enlisting.

The concerns raised by Marines about gay men in combat units echoed the results of a survey of 115,000 troops released by the Pentagon in November. The survey found that across the entire military, just 30 percent of service members said that ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” would undermine their unit’s ability to “work together to get the job done.”

But among infantry troops, the percentage was significantly higher: 48 percent within Army combat units and 58 percent among Marine combat units said that having openly gay troops would hurt unit cohesiveness.

Concerns about the ability of combat units to integrate openly gay troops has also been raised repeatedly by the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James Amos, who told reporters recently that having gay Marines in combat units would be a “distraction.”

“Mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines’ lives,” General Amos said. However, the general, whose comments came several days before Congress voted to repeal the policy, said in a statement on Sunday that the Marine Corps would “step out smartly to faithfully implement this new policy.”

Not all the Marines interviewed expressed concerns about having openly gay troops fighting alongside them.

Pfc. Alex Tuck, a 19-year-old from Birmingham, Ala., who is at Camp Geiger, said he had no doubt that gay Marines would not only perform well in combat but would also be accepted by a vast majority of Marines.

“Showers will be awkward,” Private Tuck said outside a shopping mall here, expressing a worry mentioned by just about every Marine interviewed. “But as long as a guy can hold his own and protect my back, it won’t matter if he is gay.”

But a friend of Private Tuck’s injected a note of skepticism. “It won’t be totally accepted,” said Pvt. Justin Rea, 18, from Warren, Mich. “Being gay means you are kind of girly. The Marines are, you know, macho.”

Several combat commanders, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to speak publicly on the issue, expressed concerns. An Army platoon sergeant who recently led front-line soldiers in Afghanistan, and who supported the ban’s repeal, said he envisioned a difficult transition period during which harassment of openly gay troops would be common.

“They were kicking people out for being homosexual, and now they will be kicking people out for picking on homosexuals,” the sergeant said.

An Army officer who is now leading troops in Afghanistan said he expected that swift and stern disciplinary measures would stamp out harassment. But he said he still anticipated that many openly gay soldiers would feel alienated at first from their straight colleagues.

“They will not be going to all of the events, strip clubs and bars that the other soldiers attend, and soldiers will almost certainly not be going out of their way to sample the gay culture,” the officer said in an e-mail. “The first gay men (as the infantry is all male) are going to need very thick skins.”

A third officer just back from Afghanistan said he would not be surprised if some combat soldiers in small outposts wanted to sleep separately from openly gay troops. But this officer emphasized that what would truly earn acceptance for gay troops would be fighting well.

“Honestly, what I care about is how good a gunner they are,” he said. “If an individual is performing well on the battlefield, people won’t care.”

Reporting was contributed by Catherine Einhorn and Karen Zraick in New York, Ian Lovett in Southern California, and Ashley Parker and Eric Schmitt in Washington.

    Backing ‘Don’t Ask’ Repeal, With Reservations, NYT, 19.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/us/politics/20gays.html

At Long Last, Military Honor

December 19, 2010
The New York Times


More than 14,000 soldiers lost their jobs and their dignity over the last 17 years because they were gay, but there will be no more victims of this injustice. The nation’s military is about to send a message of tolerance and shared purpose to the world — now that political leaders, who voted for legalized bigotry in the armed forces in 1993 and kept it alive since then, have found the strength to stand up and end it.

The Senate vote on Saturday afternoon to allow open service by gay and lesbian soldiers was one of the most important civil rights votes of our time. The ringing message of the decision to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law will carry far beyond its immediate practical implications. Saturday may be remembered as the day when sexual tolerance finally become bipartisan.

Sadly, the vast majority of Republicans remained on the benighted side of the party line. Senator John McCain disgraced his distinguished military career by flailing against the vote, claiming it would be celebrated only in liberal bastions like Georgetown salons. But to the surprise even of supporters of repeal, eight Republican senators broke with party orthodoxy and voted with virtually every Democrat to end the policy. Fifteen House Republicans did the same on Wednesday. By focusing on history and decency, they took a stand of which their states can be proud. Perhaps a new moral momentum may even help them erase the remaining traces of prejudice in public life, including Washington’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriage.

They listened to senators like Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, who helped round up the votes. They studied the Pentagon’s examination of the implications of repeal, prepared by the Defense Department’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, which said it posed little risk to the military. They heard the voices of leaders like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said repeal would enhance security by retaining soldiers who would otherwise be discharged or never enlist.

And those 23 Republicans split from those in their party who believe their principal purpose is to humble President Obama. The president, who will soon sign the bill into law, made repeal a signature promise, joined by Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. If he can muster support for the New Start nuclear treaty in the next few days, he will end the year, and the first half of his term, with more solid accomplishments than seemed likely after the midterm elections.

There is still much work to be done. The vote in Congress does not end the policy outright. That will come only after the administration certifies that it has prepared the armed services for the change, and after an additional 60 days. It should take only a few months to properly educate officers and enlisted forces and put the new policy into effect. During those weeks, as a matter of obvious fairness, the military should pledge not to discharge any more soldiers who acknowledge being gay.

After the transformative vote, Mr. Obama said thousands of men and women would no longer have to live a lie in order to serve their country. As they begin this new chapter in their service, their country too will find itself transformed for the better.

    At Long Last, Military Honor, NYT, 19.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/opinion/20mon1.html

Senate Repeals ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

December 18, 2010
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Saturday voted to strike down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.

By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay, lesbian and bisexual troops as second-class citizens.

Mr. Obama hailed the action, which fulfills his pledge to reverse the ban, and said it was “time to close this chapter in our history.”

“As commander in chief, I am also absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best-led and best-trained fighting force the world has ever known,” he said in a statement after the Senate, on a preliminary 63-to-33 vote, beat back Republican efforts to block final action on the repeal bill.

The vote marked a historic moment that some equated with the end of racial segregation in the military.

It followed an exhaustive Pentagon review that determined the policy could be changed with only isolated disruptions to unit cohesion and retention, though members of combat units and the Marine Corps expressed greater reservations about the shift. Congressional action was backed by Pentagon officials as a better alternative to a court-ordered end.

Supporters of the repeal said it was long past time to abolish what they saw as an ill-advised practice that cost valuable personnel and forced troops to lie to serve their country.

“We righted a wrong,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut and a leader of the effort to end the ban. “Today we’ve done justice.”

Before voting on the repeal, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants who came to the United States at a young age, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements including passing a criminal background check.

The 55-to-41 vote in favor of the citizenship bill was five votes short of the number needed to clear the way for final passage of what is known as the Dream Act.

The outcome effectively kills it for this year, and its fate beyond that is uncertain since Republicans who will assume control of the House in January oppose the measure and are unlikely to bring it to a vote.

The Senate then moved on to the military legislation, engaging in an emotional back and forth over the merits of the measure as advocates for repeal watched from galleries crowded with people interested in the fate of both the military and immigration measures.

“I don’t care who you love,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said as the debate opened. “If you love this country enough to risk your life for it, you shouldn’t have to hide who you are.”

Mr. Wyden showed up for the Senate vote despite saying earlier that he would be unable to do so because he would be undergoing final tests before his scheduled surgery for prostate cancer on Monday.

The vote came in the final days of the 111th Congress as Democrats sought to force through a final few priorities before they turn over control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in January and see their clout in the Senate diminished.

It represented a significant victory for the White House, Congressional advocates of lifting the ban and activists who have pushed for years to end the Pentagon policy created in 1993 under the Clinton administration as a compromise effort to end the practice of barring gay men and lesbians entirely from military service.

Saying it represented an emotional moment for members of the gay community nationwide, advocates who supported repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” exchanged hugs outside the Senate chamber after the vote.

“Today’s vote means gay and lesbian service members posted all around the world can stand taller knowing that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ will soon be coming to an end,” said Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and executive director for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and his party’s presidential candidate in 2008, led the opposition to the repeal and said the vote was a sad day in history.

“I hope that when we pass this legislation that we will understand that we are doing great damage,” Mr. McCain said. “And we could possibly and probably, as the commandant of the Marine Corps said, and as I have been told by literally thousands of members of the military, harm the battle effectiveness vital to the survival of our young men and women in the military.”

He and others opposed to lifting the ban said the change could harm the unit cohesion that is essential to effective military operations, particularly in combat, and deter some Americans from enlisting or pursuing a career in the military. They noted that despite support for repealing the ban from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other military commanders have warned that changing the practice would prove disruptive.

“This isn’t broke,” Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said about the policy. “It is working very well.”

Other Republicans said that while the policy might need to be changed at some point, Congress should not do so when American troops are fighting overseas.

Only a week ago, the effort to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy seemed to be dead and in danger of fading for at least two years with Republicans about to take control of the House. The provision eliminating the ban was initially included in a broader Pentagon policy bill, and Republican backers of repeal had refused to join in cutting off a filibuster against the underlying bill because of objections over limits on debate of the measure.

In a last-ditch effort, Mr. Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a key Republican opponent of the ban, encouraged Democratic Congressional leaders to instead pursue a vote on simply repealing it. The House passed the measure earlier in the week.

The repeal will not take effect for at least 60 days, and probably longer, while some other procedural steps are taken. In addition, the bill requires the defense secretary to determine that policies are in place to carry out the repeal “consistent with military standards for readiness, effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention.”

“It is going to take some time,” Ms. Collins said. “It is not going to happen overnight.”

In a statement, Mr. Gates said that once the measure was signed into law, he would “immediately proceed with the planning necessary to carry out this change carefully and methodically, but purposefully.” In the meantime, he said, “the current law and policy will remain in effect.”

Because of the delay in formally overturning the policy, Mr. Sarvis appealed to Mr. Gates to suspend any investigations into military personnel or discharge proceedings now under way. Legal challenges to the existing ban are also expected to continue until the repeal is fully carried out.

In addition to Ms. Collins, Republicans backing the repeal were Senators Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, John Ensign of Nevada, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and George V. Voinovich of Ohio.

“It was a difficult vote for many of them,” Ms. Collins said, “but in the end they concluded, as I have concluded, that we should welcome the service of any qualified individual who is willing to put on the uniform of this country.”

Mr. Lieberman said the ban undermined the integrity of the military by forcing troops to lie. He said 14,000 people had been forced to leave the armed forces under the policy.

“What a waste,” he said.

The fight erupted in the early days of President Bill Clinton’s administration and has been a roiling political issue ever since. Mr. Obama endorsed repeal in his presidential campaign and advocates saw the current Congress as their best opportunity for ending the ban. Dozens of advocates of ending the ban — including one severely wounded in combat before being forced from the military — watched from the Senate gallery as the debate took place.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, dismissed Republican complaints that Democrats were trying to race through the repeal to satisfy their political supporters.

“I’m not here for partisan reasons,” Mr. Levin said. “I’m here because men and women wearing the uniform of the United States who are gay and lesbian have died for this country, because gay and lesbian men and women wearing the uniform of this country have their lives on the line right now.”

    Senate Repeals ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, NYT, 18.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/politics/19cong.html

War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat

November 27, 2010
The New York Times
By JOHN MARKOFF

FORT BENNING, Ga. — War would be a lot safer, the Army says, if only more of it were fought by robots.

And while smart machines are already very much a part of modern warfare, the Army and its contractors are eager to add more. New robots — none of them particularly human-looking — are being designed to handle a broader range of tasks, from picking off snipers to serving as indefatigable night sentries.

In a mock city here used by Army Rangers for urban combat training, a 15-inch robot with a video camera scuttles around a bomb factory on a spying mission. Overhead an almost silent drone aircraft with a four-foot wingspan transmits images of the buildings below. Onto the scene rolls a sinister-looking vehicle on tank treads, about the size of a riding lawn mower, equipped with a machine gun and a grenade launcher.

Three backpack-clad technicians, standing out of the line of fire, operate the three robots with wireless video-game-style controllers. One swivels the video camera on the armed robot until it spots a sniper on a rooftop. The machine gun pirouettes, points and fires in two rapid bursts. Had the bullets been real, the target would have been destroyed.

The machines, viewed at a “Robotics Rodeo” last month at the Army’s training school here, not only protect soldiers, but also are never distracted, using an unblinking digital eye, or “persistent stare,” that automatically detects even the smallest motion. Nor do they ever panic under fire.

“One of the great arguments for armed robots is they can fire second,” said Joseph W. Dyer, a former vice admiral and the chief operating officer of iRobot, which makes robots that clear explosives as well as the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. When a robot looks around a battlefield, he said, the remote technician who is seeing through its eyes can take time to assess a scene without firing in haste at an innocent person.

Yet the idea that robots on wheels or legs, with sensors and guns, might someday replace or supplement human soldiers is still a source of extreme controversy. Because robots can stage attacks with little immediate risk to the people who operate them, opponents say that robot warriors lower the barriers to warfare, potentially making nations more trigger-happy and leading to a new technological arms race.

“Wars will be started very easily and with minimal costs” as automation increases, predicted Wendell Wallach, a scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and chairman of its technology and ethics study group.

Civilians will be at greater risk, people in Mr. Wallach’s camp argue, because of the challenges in distinguishing between fighters and innocent bystanders. That job is maddeningly difficult for human beings on the ground. It only becomes more difficult when a device is remotely operated.

This problem has already arisen with Predator aircraft, which find their targets with the aid of soldiers on the ground but are operated from the United States. Because civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have died as a result of collateral damage or mistaken identities, Predators have generated international opposition and prompted accusations of war crimes.

But robot combatants are supported by a range of military strategists, officers and weapons designers — and even some human rights advocates.

“A lot of people fear artificial intelligence,” said John Arquilla, executive director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School. “I will stand my artificial intelligence against your human any day of the week and tell you that my A.I. will pay more attention to the rules of engagement and create fewer ethical lapses than a human force.”

Dr. Arquilla argues that weapons systems controlled by software will not act out of anger and malice and, in certain cases, can already make better decisions on the battlefield than humans.

His faith in machines is already being tested.

“Some of us think that the right organizational structure for the future is one that skillfully blends humans and intelligent machines,” Dr. Arquilla said. “We think that that’s the key to the mastery of 21st-century military affairs.”

Automation has proved vital in the wars America is fighting. In the air in Iraq and Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft with names like Predator, Reaper, Raven and Global Hawk have kept countless soldiers from flying sorties. Moreover, the military now routinely uses more than 6,000 tele-operated robots to search vehicles at checkpoints as well as to disarm one of the enemies’ most effective weapons: the I.E.D., or improvised explosive device.

Yet the shift to automated warfare may offer only a fleeting strategic advantage to the United States. Fifty-six nations are now developing robotic weapons, said Ron Arkin, a Georgia Institute of Technology roboticist and a government-financed researcher who has argued that it is possible to design “ethical” robots that conform to the laws of war and the military rules of escalation.

But the ethical issues are far from simple. Last month in Germany, an international group including artificial intelligence researchers, arms control specialists, human rights advocates and government officials called for agreements to limit the development and use of tele-operated and autonomous weapons.

The group, known as the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, said warfare was accelerated by automated systems, undermining the capacity of human beings to make responsible decisions. For example, a gun that was designed to function without humans could shoot an attacker more quickly and without a soldier’s consideration of subtle factors on the battlefield.

“The short-term benefits being derived from roboticizing aspects of warfare are likely to be far outweighed by the long-term consequences,” said Mr. Wallach, the Yale scholar, suggesting that wars would occur more readily and that a technological arms race would develop.

As the debate continues, so do the Army’s automation efforts. In 2001 Congress gave the Pentagon the goal of making one-third of the ground combat vehicles remotely operated by 2015. That seems unlikely, but there have been significant steps in that direction.

For example, a wagonlike Lockheed Martin device that can carry more than 1,000 pounds of gear and automatically follow a platoon at up to 17 miles per hour is scheduled to be tested in Afghanistan early next year.

For rougher terrain away from roads, engineers at Boston Dynamics are designing a walking robot to carry gear. Scheduled to be completed in 2012, it will carry 400 pounds as far as 20 miles, automatically following a soldier.

The four-legged modules have an extraordinary sense of balance, can climb steep grades and even move on icy surfaces. The robot’s “head” has an array of sensors that give it the odd appearance of a cross between a bug and a dog. Indeed, an earlier experimental version of the robot was known as Big Dog.

This month the Army and the Australian military held a contest for teams designing mobile micro-robots — some no larger than model cars — that, operating in swarms, can map a potentially hostile area, accurately detecting a variety of threats.

Separately, a computer scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School has proposed that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency finance a robotic submarine system that would intelligently control teams of dolphins to detect underwater mines and protect ships in harbors.

“If we run into a conflict with Iran, the likelihood of them trying to do something in the Strait of Hormuz is quite high,” said Raymond Buettner, deputy director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School. “One land mine blowing up one ship and choking the world’s oil supply pays for the entire Navy marine mammal program and its robotics program for a long time.”

Such programs represent a resurgence in the development of autonomous systems in the wake of costly failures and the cancellation of the Army’s most ambitious such program in 2009. That program was once estimated to cost more than $300 billion and expected to provide the Army with an array of manned and unmanned vehicles linked by a futuristic information network.

Now, the shift toward developing smaller, lighter and less expensive systems is unmistakable. Supporters say it is a consequence of the effort to cause fewer civilian casualties. The Predator aircraft, for example, is being equipped with smaller, lighter weapons than the traditional 100-pound Hellfire missile, with a smaller killing radius.

At the same time, military technologists assert that tele-operated, semi-autonomous and autonomous robots are the best way to protect the lives of American troops.

Army Special Forces units have bought six lawn-mower-size robots — the type showcased in the Robotics Rodeo — for classified missions, and the National Guard has asked for dozens more to serve as sentries on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. These units are known as the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System, or Maars, and they are made by a company called QinetiQ North America.

The Maars robots first attracted the military’s interest as a defensive system during an Army Ranger exercise here in 2008. Used as a nighttime sentry against infiltrators equipped with thermal imaging vision systems, the battery-powered Maars unit remained invisible — it did not have the heat signature of a human being — and could “shoot” intruders with a laser tag gun without being detected itself, said Bob Quinn, a vice president at QinetiQ.

Maars is the descendant of an earlier experimental system built by QinetiQ. Three armed prototypes were sent to Iraq and created a brief controversy after they pointed a weapon inappropriately because of a software bug.

However, QinetiQ executives said the real shortcoming of the system was that it was rejected by Army legal officers because it did not follow military rules of engagement — for example, using voice warnings and then tear gas before firing guns. As a consequence, Maars has been equipped with a loudspeaker as well as a launcher so it can issue warnings and fire tear gas grenades before firing its machine gun.

Remotely controlled systems like the Predator aircraft and Maars move a step closer to concerns about the automation of warfare. What happens, ask skeptics, when humans are taken out of decision making on firing weapons? Despite the insistence of military officers that a human’s finger will always remain on the trigger, the speed of combat is quickly becoming too fast for human decision makers.

“If the decisions are being made by a human being who has eyes on the target, whether he is sitting in a tank or miles away, the main safeguard is still there,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, which tracks war crimes. “What happens when you automate the decision? Proponents are saying that their systems are win-win, but that doesn’t reassure me.”

    War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat, NYT, 27.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/science/28robot.html

Judge Orders U.S. Military to Stop ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

October 12, 2010
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the United States military to stop enforcing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that prohibits openly gay men and women from serving.

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court for the Central District of California issued an injunction banning enforcement of the law and ordered the military to immediately “suspend and discontinue” any investigations or proceedings to dismiss service members.

In language much like that in her Sept. 9 ruling declaring the law unconstitutional, Judge Phillips wrote that the 17-year-old policy “infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members” and violates their rights of due process and freedom of speech.

While the decision is likely to be appealed by the government, the new ruling represents a significant milestone for gay rights in the United States.

Two other recent decisions have overturned restrictions on gay rights at the state and federal levels. Tuesday’s ruling, in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America, could have a potentially sweeping impact, as it would apply to all United States service members anywhere in the world.

Christian Berle, the acting executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay organization, applauded the judge’s action, saying it would make the armed forces stronger.

“Lifting the ban on open service will allow our armed forces to recruit the best and brightest,” Mr. Berle said, “and not have their hands tied because of an individual’s sexual orientation.”

Alexander Nicholson, the named plaintiff in the lawsuit, said “we sort of won the lottery,” considering the breadth of the decision. Mr. Nicholson is executive director of Servicemembers United, an organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans.

The government has 60 days to file an appeal. “We’re reviewing it,” said Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, adding that there would be no other immediate comment. The government is expected, however, to appeal the injunction to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to try to keep it from taking effect pending an appeal of the overall case.

Such a move would carry risks, said Richard Socarides, who was an adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay rights issues. “There will be an increasingly high price to pay politically for enforcing a law which 70 percent of the American people oppose and a core Democratic constituency abhors,” he said.

Critics of the ruling include Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and a proponent of the don’t ask, don’t tell law, who accused Judge Phillips of “playing politics with our national defense.”

In a statement, Mr. Perkins, a former Marine, said that “once again, an activist federal judge is using the military to advance a liberal social agenda,” and noted that there was still “strong opposition” to changing the law from military leaders.

Mr. Perkins predicted that the decision would have wide-ranging effects in the coming elections. “This move will only further the desire of voters to change Congress,” he said. “Americans are upset and want to change Congress and the face of government because of activist judges and arrogant politicians who will not listen to the convictions of most Americans and, as importantly, the Constitution’s limits on what the courts and Congress can and cannot do.”

The don’t ask, don’t tell law was originally proposed as a compromise measure to loosen military policies regarding homosexuality. Departing from a decades-old policy of banning service by gay, lesbian and bisexual recruits, the new law allowed service and prohibited superiors from asking about sexual orientation. But the law also held that service members could be dismissed from the military if they revealed their sexual orientation or engaged in homosexual acts.

Since 1993, some 14,000 gay men and lesbians have been discharged from the service when their sexual orientation became known, according to Mr. Nicholson’s group.

The law has long been a point of contention, and President Obama has asked Congress to repeal it.

At an afternoon briefing on Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the injunction was under review, but that “the president will continue to work as hard as he can to change the law that he believes is fundamentally unfair.”

The Department of Justice, however, is required to defend laws passed by Congress under most circumstances.

In February, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked Congress to repeal the law.

The House voted to do so in May, but last month the Senate voted not to take up the bill allowing repeal. Advocates for repeal have pushed for that vote to be reconsidered after the midterm elections.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said, “Senator Reid is encouraged by the decision, and still hopes to be able to take the bill to the floor after the elections in November.”

Mr. Gates was on an official visit to Vietnam when Judge Phillips’s action was announced on Tuesday. “We have just learned of the ruling and are now studying it,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. “We will be in consultation with the Department of Justice about how best to proceed.”

After her initial ruling in September, Judge Phillips, who was appointed by Mr. Clinton, sought recommendations from the parties as to what kind of legal relief should follow.

The Log Cabin Republicans recommended a nationwide injunction. The Department of Justice sought narrower action.

Arguing that “the United States is not a typical defendant, and a court must exercise caution before entering an order that would limit the ability of the government to enforce a law duly enacted by Congress,” the Justice Department noted that the law had been found constitutional in other courts.

It asked that the judge’s injunction apply only to members of Log Cabin Republicans and not to the military over all.

In the other recent cases in which federal judges have pushed back against laws that restrict gay rights, a judge in California struck down that state’s ban on same-sex marriages in August. And in July, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that a law prohibiting the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, the Defense of Marriage Act, was unconstitutional, opening the way for federal benefits in such unions.

While Mr. Obama has been critical of the Defense of Marriage Act, the Justice Department has defended it in the federal court challenge. On Tuesday, the department filed an appeal in the case and issued a statement that might well be echoed in coming weeks in the military case.

“As a policy matter, the president has made clear that he believes DOMA is discriminatory and should be repealed,” said Ms. Schmaler, the department spokeswoman. “The Justice Department is defending the statute, as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged.”

Advocates for gay rights said they were cheered by the direction of the three recent rulings.

Chad Griffin, the board president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which sponsored the litigation against California’s same-sex marriage ban, said that “with the momentum of these three court decisions, I think it really is the beginning of the end of state-sanctioned discrimination in this country.”

    Judge Orders U.S. Military to Stop ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, NYT, 12.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/us/13military.html

Ex-Lobbyist Pleads Guilty to Illegal Campaign Donations

September 24, 2010
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A former lobbyist who helped clients secure more than $100 million in military contracts pleaded guilty Friday to illegally funneling more than $380,000 in campaign contributions to House members controlling the Pentagon’s budget.

The ex-lobbyist, Paul J. Magliocchetti, 64, of Amelia Island, Fla., faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced in December, though prosecutors agreed as part of a plea bargain to seek a term no longer than six and a half years.

Mr. Magliocchetti founded and owned the now-defunct PMA lobbying group, which was a major player on Capitol Hill for decades.

In 2007 and 2008 alone, three top Democrats on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee — John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, James P. Moran of Virginia and Peter J. Visclosky of Indiana — directed $137 million in contracts to Mr. Magliocchetti’s clients, typically through the special budget appropriations known as earmarks. Before becoming a lobbyist, Mr. Magliocchetti once served as a subcommittee staff member and an aide to Mr. Murtha, who died this year.

Mr. Magliocchetti’s plea bargain may actually be good news for those House members who had a close relationship with him. The text of the plea agreement omits the standard language requiring a defendant to cooperate with a continuing investigation and testify against others.

Also, the statement of facts does not mention any specific congressman, and it says the campaign committees that received illegal contributions from Mr. Magliocchetti had no idea that he was using illegal conduits to skirt campaign finance laws.

In a news release, the Justice Department stated explicitly that the “campaigns that received these funds were unaware of Magliocchetti’s scheme.”

Specifically, Mr. Magliocchetti admitted as part of the plea bargain that from 2005 through 2008, he used family members, friends and lobbyists to route $386,250 in illegal campaign contributions. Mr. Magliocchetti said he used his own money — and later money from his company — to reimburse the people who made contributions on his behalf.

The government said the amount of illegal campaign contributions likely far exceeds $386,000, something Mr. Magliocchetti disputes. While he admits he knowingly used family and friends as conduits, he said that PMA lobbyists were highly paid and often made contributions that were outside his knowledge or influence.

“I didn’t know what they did with the money,” Mr. Magliocchetti told Judge T. S. Ellis III of Federal District Court.

In all, Mr. Magliocchetti pleaded guilty to two counts of making illegal campaign contributions and a third count of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission. Prosecutors agreed to drop eight other counts as part of the plea bargain.

His son, Mark Magliocchetti, had already entered a guilty plea on related charges.

    Ex-Lobbyist Pleads Guilty to Illegal Campaign Donations, NYT, 24.10.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/us/politics/25lobby.html

U.S. Sees Delay In Marines' Move to Guam From Japan

September 23, 2010
Filed at 2:51 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

GUAM (Reuters) - The relocation of around 8,600 U.S. Marines and 9,000 dependents to Guam from Japan will take until 2016, two years longer than expected due to a lack of facilities on the island, the U.S. Defense Department said.

The move is part of a broader 2006 accord to reorganize U.S. troops in Japan, including relocation of the Marines' Futenma airbase on Okinawa to a quieter part of that Japanese island.

That base has long been a source of tension for residents and led to the resignation of former Prime Minister Yukio Hatayama earlier this year.

"Force flow will be managed to ensure that military populations will not be relocated to Guam until the requisite facilities are constructed," the department said, putting the expected completion date for construction at 2016.

"Any current delays to funding or construction pacing could further push out the relocation of military and dependents."

The department said it had also decided for now not to go ahead with a planned Air and Missile Defense Task Force on the Pacific Ocean island, which would have involved moving a further 600 military personnel and 900 dependants.

David Bice, executive director of the Joint Guam Program Office, told Reuters on Thursday, the target date for the relocation of the Marines "remains 2014" and that "the actual completion will be determined by adaptive program management."

In its Record of Decision on the shift, the U.S. Defense Department deferred some decisions including the site of a wharf for aircraft carriers and the site for a live-fire training range, which had raised environmental and heritage concerns .

There had been concerns that Guam lacked the ports, roads and facilities to support the move by the target of the end of 2014. The delay could affect the timing of the shift of the U.S. base on Okinawa.

The Record of Decision followed the earlier release of a final environment impact study of the move.

Okinawans associate Futenma with noise, pollution and crime and Hatoyama, raised then dashed their hopes the base would be moved entirely off the island. He quit after being seen to have mishandled the issue.

Lying 2,400 km (1,500 miles) south of Japan, Guam is made up of the peaks of two ancient volcanoes, including Mount Lamlam, described by local officials as the highest mountain in the world if measured from its base at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Held by the Japanese for three years during World War Two, Guam boasts large reefs, some of which would be destroyed by construction at any of the proposed sites for the carrier wharf. There were also local concerns that the proposed site of the firing range would limit access to a historic site at Pagat in the northeast.

For the full decision, click on http://r.reuters.com/cyq94p

(Writing by John Mair; Editing by Jonathon Burch)

    U.S. Sees Delay In Marines' Move to Guam From Japan, NYT, 23.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/23/news/news-us-guam-marines.html

Military Equality Goes Astray

September 21, 2010
The New York Times

The best chance this year to repeal the irrational ban on openly gay members of the military slipped away Tuesday, thanks to the buildup of acrimony and mistrust in the United States Senate.

Republicans, with the aid of two Arkansas Democrats, unanimously voted to filibuster the Pentagon’s financing authorization bill, largely because Democrats had included in it a provision to end the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Another vote to end the policy could come again in the lame-duck session in December, but now there is also a chance it will be put off until next year, when the political landscape on Capitol Hill could be even more hostile to gay and lesbian soldiers.

The decision also means an end, for now, to another worthy proposal that was attached to the Pentagon bill: the Dream Act, which permits military service and higher education — as well as a chance for citizenship — for young people whose parents brought them to this country as children without proper documentation.

Republicans said the inclusion of both items in the defense bill was a blatant political attempt by Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, to bolster his chances for re-election by invigorating the party’s base. This is, in fact, an election year, but the debate over the military’s discrimination policy has gone on for years, and the looming balloting does not absolve Congress of the duty to address this denial of a fundamental American right.

No evidence has been found that open service by gay and lesbian soldiers would harm the military; in fact, a federal judge recently found the opposite. The policy has led to critical troop shortages by forcing out more than 13,000 qualified service members over the last 16 years, according to the judge, Virginia Phillips.

A Pentagon study now under way may help guide the implementation of a nondiscrimination policy, but it is unlikely to change the basic facts of the question.

President Obama, the House and a majority of senators clearly support an end to “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but that, of course, is insufficient in the upside-down world of today’s Senate, where 40 members can block anything.

The two parties clashed on the number of amendments that Republicans could offer. Republicans wanted to add dozens of amendments, an obvious delaying tactic, while Democrats tried to block all but their own amendments. In an earlier time, the two sides might have reached an agreement on a limited number of amendments, but not in this Senate, and certainly not right before this election, when everyone’s blood is up even more than usual.

If the military’s unjust policy is not repealed in the lame-duck session, there is another way out. The Obama administration can choose not to appeal Judge Phillips’s ruling that the policy is unconstitutional, and simply stop ejecting soldiers.

But that would simply enable lawmakers who want to shirk their responsibility. History will hold to account every member of Congress who refused to end this blatant injustice.

    Military Equality Goes Astray, NYT, 21.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/opinion/22wed1.html

Pentagon Changes Rules to Cut Cost of Weapons

September 14, 2010
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW

The secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, announced more than 20 changes in purchasing procedures on Tuesday intended to rein in the ballooning cost of weapons systems and make military ships and planes more affordable.

Mr. Gates said the moves would cut waste, set goals for what weapons should cost and give military contractors greater financial incentives to complete projects on budget.

In addition, the military will give preferential treatment to suppliers with good cost-control records and will require more competitive bidding for service contracts, an area that has been rife with abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates’s goal is to save $100 billion over the next several years and use that money to continue the Pentagon’s modernization programs, including the design of a new nuclear missile submarine and long-range aerial strike systems. He said the Pentagon had already started adjusting speed and size requirements to save billions on the projected cost of the submarine.

The initiative is the Pentagon’s latest effort to deal with a long-running problem: how to keep the cost of new weapons from climbing so much that the size of its forces keeps shrinking. To reverse that trend, Mr. Gates said, “designing to affordability, and not just to desire or appetite, is critical.”

He added that while consumers were accustomed to paying less for more advanced computers and mobile phones each year, taxpayers “had to spend significantly more in order to get more” in military programs.

The changes come as the growth in military spending, which has soared since the terrorist attacks nine years ago, begins to slow. The Pentagon spends about $400 billion of its $700 billion annual budget on equipment and services, and military officials hope to avoid budget cuts by showing Congress and the White House that they can use the money more effectively.

While contractors support a number of the changes, they say the pressure to cut costs is already prompting layoffs and buyouts at military companies, even as the Obama administration is battling to save jobs in other areas of the economy.

Industry executives also doubt that the Pentagon will be able to fend off budget cuts once the Afghanistan war winds down, and they fear that could lead to even larger reductions in jobs and contracts, especially if Mr. Gates retires next year, as he has hinted.

An industry consultant, James McAleese, said the recent announcements of buyouts and layoffs at companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing showed how seriously the contractors were taking Mr. Gates’s push for efficiency.

“It’s almost as if Secretary Gates, despite all the political turbulence, is winning the war without firing a shot,” Mr. McAleese said.

Many previous efforts to improve Pentagon contracting have foundered, and Mr. Gates had to cancel or trim nearly three dozen programs last year. But he and Ashton B. Carter, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, worked with the industry on the latest changes and incorporated some of its suggestions for streamlining Pentagon oversight and trying to maintain stable production rates.

“Over all, I think it’s positive,” Richard K. Sylvester, the vice president of acquisition policy at the Aerospace Industries Association, said of the new guidelines. “We’ve got a number of good things in there.”

As part of the cost-saving plan, Mr. Gates has also proposed closing a major military command and reducing the number of generals and admirals.

Mr. Carter said at a briefing Tuesday that a “substantial fraction” of the $100 billion in savings could come from the contracting changes.

Mr. Gates said the department planned to increasingly turn to fixed-price contracts, with incentive bonuses for good performance, instead of cost-plus contracts, in which the government covered all the expenses and guaranteed contractors a profit.

Under that type of fixed-price contract, the government and the contractor would share equally in cost overruns. The Pentagon is finishing talks with Lockheed Martin to shift to such a contract earlier than expected in the Joint Strike Fighter program.

Mr. Gates said that the new ballistic missile submarine, the long-range aerial strike systems, an advanced combat vehicle for the Army and a presidential helicopter could cost more than $200 billion over the next decades, and the new approaches will be incorporated “right at the beginning as a firm requirement for each new program.”

He said early estimates had placed the cost of each submarine at $7 billion, but the department now projected it could build one for $5 billion.

Mr. Gates said he would also expand to the rest of the military a preferred-supplier program started by the Navy to funnel more work to its best contractors.

But Mr. Gates and Mr. Carter sounded more hard-nosed in describing their efforts to crack down on the service contractors, which supply things like gas and food to intelligence analysts at a cost that has soared to $200 billion a year.

Mr. Carter said the Pentagon’s own track record was “even worse” in managing those contracts than the ones for weapons.

    Pentagon Changes Rules to Cut Cost of Weapons, NYT, 14.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/business/15pentagon.html

Judge Rules That Military Policy Violates Rights of Gays

September 9, 2010
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gay members of the military is unconstitutional, a federal judge in California ruled Thursday.

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court struck down the rule in an opinion issued late in the day. The policy was signed into law in 1993 as a compromise that would allow gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in the military.

The rule limits the military’s ability to ask about the sexual orientation of service members, and allows homosexuals to serve, as long as they do not disclose their orientation and do not engage in homosexual acts.

The plaintiffs challenged the law under the Fifth and First Amendments to the Constitution, and Judge Phillips agreed.

“The don’t ask, don’t tell act infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members in many ways,” she wrote. “In order to justify the encroachment on these rights, defendants faced the burden at trial of showing the don’t ask, don’t tell act was necessary to significantly further the government’s important interests in military readiness and unit cohesion. Defendants failed to meet that burden.”

The rule, she wrote in an 86-page opinion, has a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services.

The plaintiffs argued that the act violated the rights of service members in two ways.

First, they said, it violates their guarantee of substantive due process under the Fifth Amendment. The second restriction, the plaintiffs said, involves the free-speech rights guaranteed under the First Amendment. Although those rights are diminished in the military, the judge wrote, the restrictions in the act still fail the constitutional test of being “reasonably necessary” to protect “a substantial government interest.”

The “sweeping reach” of the speech restrictions under the act, she said, “is far broader than is reasonably necessary to protect the substantial government interest at stake here.”

The decision is among a number of recent rulings that suggest a growing judicial skepticism about measures that discriminate against homosexuals, including rulings against California’s ban on same-sex marriage and a Massachusetts decision striking down a federal law forbidding the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage.

It will not change the policy right away; the judge called for the plaintiffs to submit a proposed injunction limiting the law by Sept. 16th. The defendants will submit their objections to the plan a week after that. Any decision would probably be stayed pending appeals.

The suit was brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay organization. The group’s executive director, R. Clarke Cooper, pronounced himself “delighted” with the ruling, which he called “not just a win for Log Cabin Republican service members but all American service members.”

Those who would have preserved the rule were critical of the decision.

“It is hard to believe that a District Court-level judge in California knows more about what impacts military readiness than the service chiefs who are all on record saying the law on homosexuality in the military should not be changed,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative group. He called Judge Phillips a “judicial activist.”

As a candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama vowed to end “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Once elected, he remained critical of the policy but said it was the role of Congress to change the law; the Justice Department has continued to defend the law in court.

In February, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked Congress to allow gays to serve openly by repealing the law. The House has voted for repeal, but the Senate has not yet acted.

Richard Socarides, a lawyer who served as an adviser to the Clinton administration on gay issues when the policy was passed into law, said the legal action was long overdue. “The president has said he opposes the policy, yet he has defended it in court. Now that he’s lost, and resoundingly so, he must stop enforcing it.”

The case, which was heard in July, involved testimony from six military officers who had been discharged because of the policy. One, Michael Almy, was an Air Force major who was serving his third tour of duty in Iraq when someone using his computer found at least one message to a man discussing homosexual conduct.

Another plaintiff, John Nicholson, was going through training for intelligence work in the Army and tried to conceal his sexual orientation by writing to a friend in Portuguese. A fellow service member who was also fluent in that language, however, read the letter on his desk and rumors spread throughout his unit.

When Mr. Nicholson asked a platoon sergeant to help quash the rumors, the sergeant instead informed his superiors, who initiated discharge proceedings.

    Judge Rules That Military Policy Violates Rights of Gays, NYT, 9.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10gays.html

2008 Attack on Military Computers Is Confirmed

August 25, 2010
The New York Times
By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — A top Pentagon official has confirmed a previously classified incident that he describes as “the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever,” a 2008 episode in which a foreign intelligence agent used a flash drive to infect computers, including those used by the Central Command in overseeing combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Plugging the cigarette-lighter-sized flash drive into an American military laptop at a base in the Middle East amounted to “a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control,” according to William J. Lynn 3d, deputy secretary of defense, writing in the latest issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.

“It was a network administrator’s worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary,” Mr. Lynn wrote.

The incident was first reported in November 2008 by The Los Angeles Times, which said that the matter was sufficiently grave that President George W. Bush was briefed on it. The newspaper cited suspicions of Russian involvement.

But Mr. Lynn’s article was the first official confirmation. He also put a name — Operation Buckshot Yankee — to the Pentagon operation to counter the attack, and said that the episode “marked a turning point in U.S. cyber-defense strategy.” In an early step, the Defense Department banned the use of portable flash drives with its computers, though it later modified the ban.

Mr. Lynn described the extraordinary difficulty of protecting military digital communications over a web of 15,000 networks and 7 million computing devices in dozens of countries against farflung adversaries who, with modest means and a reasonable degree of ingenuity, can inflict outsized damage. Traditional notions of deterrence do not apply.

“A dozen determined computer programmers can, if they find a vulnerability to exploit, threaten the United States’s global logistics network, steal its operational plans, blind its intelligence capabilities or hinder its ability to deliver weapons on target,” he wrote.

Security officials also face the problem of counterfeit hardware that may have remotely operated “kill switches” or “back doors” built in to allow manipulation from afar, as well as the problem of software with rogue code meant to cause sudden malfunctions.

Against the array of threats, Mr. Lynn said, the National Security Agency had pioneered systems — “part sensor, part sentry, part sharpshooter” — that are meant to automatically counter intrusions in real time.

His article appeared intended partly to raise awareness of the threat to United States cybersecurity — “the frequency and sophistication of intrusions into U.S. military networks have increased exponentially,” he wrote — and partly to make the case for a larger Pentagon role in cyberdefense.

Various efforts at cyberdefense by the military have been drawn under a single organization, the U.S. Cyber Command, which began operations in late May at Fort Meade, Maryland, under a four-star general, Keith B. Alexander.

But under proposed legislation, the Department of Homeland Security would take the leading role in the defense of civilian systems.

Though the Cyber Command has greater capabilities, the military operates within the United States only if ordered to do so by the president.

Another concern is whether the Pentagon, or government in general, has the nimbleness for such work. Mr. Lynn acknowledged that “it takes the Pentagon 81 months to make a new computer system operational after it is first funded.” By contrast, he noted, “the iPhone was developed in 24 months.”

    2008 Attack on Military Computers Is Confirmed, NYT, 25.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/technology/26cyber.html

Gates Tightens Rules for Military and the Media

July 2, 2010
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Nine days after a four-star general was relieved of command for comments made to Rolling Stone magazine, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued orders on Friday tightening the reins on officials dealing with the news media.

The memorandum requires top-level Pentagon and military leaders to notify the office of the Defense Department’s assistant secretary for public affairs “prior to interviews or any other means of media and public engagement with possible national or international implications.”

Just as the removal of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal from command in Afghanistan was viewed as President Obama’s reassertion of civilian control of the military, so Mr. Gates’s memo on “Interaction With the Media” was viewed as a reassertion by civilian public affairs specialists of control over the military’s contacts with the news media.

Senior officials involved in preparing the three-page memo said work on it had begun well before the uproar that followed Rolling Stone’s profile of General McChrystal. But they acknowledged that the controversy, and the firing of one of the military’s most influential commanders, served to emphasize Mr. Gates’s determination to add more discipline to the Defense Department’s interactions with the media.

“I have said many times that we must strive to be as open, accessible and transparent as possible,” Mr. Gates wrote in the memo, which was sent to senior Pentagon civilian officials, the nation’s top military officer, each of the armed-services secretaries and the commanders of the regional war-fighting headquarters. “At the same time, I am concerned that the department has grown lax in how we engage with the media, often in contravention of established rules and procedures.”

The memo by Mr. Gates, a former C.I.A. director, also demanded greater adherence to secrecy standards, issuing a stern warning against the release of classified information: “Leaking of classified information is against the law, cannot be tolerated and will, when proven, lead to the prosecution of those found to be engaged in such activity.”

A copy of the unclassified memo by Mr. Gates was provided to The New York Times by an official who was not authorized to release it. Douglas B. Wilson, the new assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, and Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, verified its content.

Mr. Gates’s memo “is based primarily on his view that we owe the media and we owe ourselves engagement by those who have full knowledge of the situations at hand,” Mr. Wilson said.

Mr. Gates was particularly concerned that civilian and military officials speaking to reporters sometimes had only a parochial view of a national security issue under discussion. The new orders, Mr. Wilson said, were devised to “make sure that anybody and everybody who does engage has as full a picture as possible and the most complete information possible.”

The repercussions of the Rolling Stone profile have included heightened concerns that military officers will become warier of the press — and it is expected that many officers will read the new memo as an official warning to restrict access to reporters.

Mr. Wilson and Mr. Morrell rejected those assumptions, saying Mr. Gates would remain committed to having the Pentagon work closely with reporters.

“From the moment he came into the building, this secretary has said that to treat the press as an enemy is self-defeating,” Mr. Morrell said. “That attitude has been reflected in his tenure: he has been incredibly accommodating, incredibly forthright and incredibly cooperative with the news media. That said, he thinks we as a giant institution have become too undisciplined in how we approach our communications with the press corps.”

But correspondents who cover national security issues, a realm that routinely requires delving into the classified world, have come to rely on unofficial access to senior leaders for guidance and context — and for information when policies or missions may be going awry.

Officials involved in drafting Mr. Gates’s memo cited several recent developments as central to his thinking. They included disclosure of the internal debate during the administration’s effort to develop a new policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, similar public exposure of internal deliberations over the Pentagon budget and weapons procurement, and, among others, an article in The Times describing a memorandum on Iran policy written by Mr. Gates and sent to a small circle of national security aides.

On behalf of the military, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was consulted during the drafting of the memo on media relations and “fully supports the secretary’s intent,” said Capt. John Kirby, the chairman’s spokesman.

He cited Admiral Mullen’s visit to Kabul, Afghanistan, last weekend, in which the admiral told American military officers and embassy personnel that “we must continue to tell our story — we just need to do it smartly, and in a coordinated fashion.”

Mr. Gates’s memo also orders senior civilian and military leaders to coordinate their release of official Defense Department information that may have national or international implications, and to ensure that their staff members have the experience and perspective “to responsibly fulfill the obligations of coordinating media engagements.”

The memo is expected to reanimate the professional public-affairs cadre among the Pentagon’s civilian and military staffs, who have made no secret that they have felt challenged by the growing numbers of contractors hired for “strategic communications” issues. It was one such contractor who brokered Rolling Stone’s profile of General McChrystal.

    Gates Tightens Rules for Military and the Media, NYT, 2.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/world/03pentagon.html

An Arsenal We Can All Live With

May 21, 2010
The New York Times
By GARY SCHAUB Jr. and JAMES FORSYTH Jr.

Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

THE Pentagon has now told the public, for the first time, precisely how many nuclear weapons the United States has in its arsenal: 5,113. That is exactly 4,802 more than we need.

Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the Senate to advocate approval of the so-called New Start treaty, signed by President Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia last month. The treaty’s ceiling of 1,550 warheads deployed on 700 missiles and bombers will leave us with fewer warheads than at any time since John F. Kennedy was president. Yet the United States could further reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons without sacrificing security. Indeed, we have calculated that the country could address its conceivable national defense and military concerns with only 311 strategic nuclear weapons. (While we are civilian Air Force employees, we speak only for ourselves and not the Pentagon.)

This may seem a trifling number compared with the arsenals built up in the cold war, but 311 warheads would provide the equivalent of 1,900 megatons of explosive power, or nine-and-a-half times the amount that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara argued in 1965 could incapacitate the Soviet Union by destroying “one-quarter to one-third of its population and about two-thirds of its industrial capacity.”

Considering that we face no threat today similar to that of the Soviet Union 45 years ago, this should be more than adequate firepower for any defensive measure or, if need be, an offensive strike. And this would be true even if, against all expectations, our capacity was halved by an enemy’s surprise first strike. In addition, should we want to hit an enemy without destroying its society, the 311 weapons would be adequate for taking out a wide range of “hardened targets” like missile silos or command-and-control bunkers.

The key to shrinking our nuclear arsenal so radically would be dispersing the 311 weapons on land, at sea and on airplanes to get the maximum flexibility and survivability.

Ideally, 100 would be placed on single-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles, like the Minuteman III systems now in service. These missiles, which have pinpoint accuracy, are scattered around the country in such a way that only one potential enemy, Russia, would have any chance of rendering the arsenal impotent with a surprise strike. (And it is likely that our unilateral cuts would entice Moscow, which has been retiring its systems at a fast clip in recent years, to follow suit.) Equally important, these missile sites are easily detected and monitored, which would reassure our friends and provide a credible threat to our enemies.

The sea leg of the plan would involve placing 24 Trident D-5 missiles, each with a single nuclear warhead, on each of our Ohio-class submarines. Today’s fleet of 14 can be cut to 12, with eight on patrol at a given time, together carrying 192 missiles ready to launch. The Tridents are extremely effective, as they can be moved around the globe on the submarines, cannot be easily detected, and present a risk to even hardened targets. And should any of our allies feel that our cuts in seaborne missiles are worrisome, we can remind them that the British and French will keep their complementary nuclear capabilities in the Atlantic.

Finally, for maximum flexibility in our nuclear arsenal, each of our B-2 stealth bombers could carry one air-launched nuclear cruise missile. While we have 20 such bombers, we assume that one would be undergoing repairs at any given time, giving us the final 19 warheads in our 311-missile plan. Our B-2 fleet is more than adequate for nuclear escalation control and political signaling, and giving it an exclusive role in our nuclear strategy would allow us to convert all our B-52H bombers to a conventional role, which is far more likely to be of use in our post-cold-war world.

While 311 is a radical cut from current levels, it is not the same as zero, nor is it a steppingstone to abandoning our nuclear deterrent. The idea of a nuclear-weapon-free world is not an option for the foreseeable future. Nuclear weapons make leaders vigilant and risk-averse. That their use is to be avoided does not render them useless. Quite the opposite: nuclear weapons might be the most politically useful weapons a state can possess. They deter adversaries from threatening with weapons of mass destruction the American homeland, United States forces abroad and our allies and friends. They also remove the incentive for our allies to acquire nuclear weapons for their own protection.

We need a nuclear arsenal. But we certainly don’t need one that is as big, expensive and unnecessarily threatening to much of the world as the one we have now.


Gary Schaub Jr. is an assistant professor of strategy at the Air War College and James Forsyth Jr. is a professor of strategy at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.

    An Arsenal We Can All Live With, NYT, 21.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/opinion/24schaub.html

Deal Reached for Ending Law on Gays in Military

May 24, 2010
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — President Obama, the Pentagon and leading lawmakers reached agreement Monday on legislative language and a time frame for repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, clearing the way for Congress to take up the measure as soon as this week.

It was not clear whether the deal had secured the votes necessary to pass the House and Senate, but the agreement removed the Pentagon’s objections to having Congress vote quickly on repealing the contentious 17-year-old policy, which bars gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the armed services.

House Democratic leaders were meeting Monday night and considering taking up the measure as soon as Thursday. But even if the measure passes, the policy cannot not change until after Dec. 1, when the Pentagon completes a review of its readiness to deal with the changes. Mr. Obama, his defense secretary and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff would also be required to certify that repeal would not harm readiness.

The measure could enable gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military for the first time, ending a policy that Mr. Obama, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, all say they oppose.

Representative Patrick J. Murphy, Democrat of Pennsylvania and a leading advocate in the House for repeal, is hoping to attach the proposal to a defense authorization bill that will come up for a vote on Thursday.

In the Senate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, intends to introduce the language on Thursday in the Armed Services Committee. In a letter to Mr. Obama on Monday, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Lieberman and Senator Carl M. Levin, the Armed Services Committee chairman, announced support for the proposal and asked the White House for its “official views.”

But Capitol Hill aides said the letter was pro forma; Mr. Obama’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, quickly replied with the White House’s assent.

The compromise emerged Monday after a flurry of closed-door meetings at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

White House and Pentagon officials, who met with aides to proponents of repeal in Congress, declined early in the day to talk about the negotiations.

“Given that Congress insists on addressing the issue this week,” said Geoff Morrell, a spokesman for Mr. Gates, “we are trying to gain a better understanding of the legislative proposals they will be considering.”

Some gay rights advocates complained that too many conditions were attached to the repeal. But the president of the Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solmonese, said the deal “puts us one step closer to removing this stain from the laws of our nation.”

Mr. Obama has been under intense pressure from gay rights groups to live up to his campaign promise to work with Congress to repeal the law.

Already this year, the administration has taken significant steps toward doing undoing the policy; last month, the Secretary of the Army, John M. McHugh, said he was effectively ignoring “don’t ask, don’t tell” and had no intention of pursuing discharges of active duty service members who have told him they are gay.

But full-fledged repeal, which requires an act of Congress, has been moving slowly. Gay rights advocates want a vote before the November midterm elections, when Democrats are expected to lose seats. The language that is now circulating allows lawmakers to do that, while allowing Mr. Gates to keep the timetable for his review intact.

    Deal Reached for Ending Law on Gays in Military, NYT, 24.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/us/politics/25tell.html

U.S. Is Said to Expand Secret Military Acts in Mideast Region

May 24, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents.

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to make such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said. Its goals are to build networks that could “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” Al Qaeda and other militant groups, as well as to “prepare the environment” for future attacks by American or local military forces, the document said. The order, however, does not appear to authorize offensive strikes in any specific countries.

In broadening its secret activities, the United States military has also sought in recent years to break its dependence on the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy agencies for information in countries without a significant American troop presence.

General Petraeus’s order is meant for small teams of American troops to fill intelligence gaps about terror organizations and other threats in the Middle East and beyond, especially emerging groups plotting attacks against the United States.

But some Pentagon officials worry that the expanded role carries risks. The authorized activities could strain relationships with friendly governments like Saudi Arabia or Yemen — which might allow the operations but be loath to acknowledge their cooperation — or incite the anger of hostile nations like Iran and Syria. Many in the military are also concerned that as American troops assume roles far from traditional combat, they would be at risk of being treated as spies if captured and denied the Geneva Convention protections afforded military detainees.

The precise operations that the directive authorizes are unclear, and what the military has done to follow through on the order is uncertain. The document, a copy of which was viewed by The New York Times, provides few details about continuing missions or intelligence-gathering operations.

Several government officials who described the impetus for the order would speak only on condition of anonymity because the document is classified. Spokesmen for the White House and the Pentagon declined to comment for this article. The Times, responding to concerns about troop safety raised by an official at United States Central Command, the military headquarters run by General Petraeus, withheld some details about how troops could be deployed in certain countries.

The seven-page directive appears to authorize specific operations in Iran, most likely to gather intelligence about the country’s nuclear program or identify dissident groups that might be useful for a future military offensive. The Obama administration insists that for the moment, it is committed to penalizing Iran for its nuclear activities only with diplomatic and economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has to draw up detailed war plans to be prepared in advance, in the event that President Obama ever authorizes a strike.

“The Defense Department can’t be caught flat-footed,” said one Pentagon official with knowledge of General Petraeus’s order.

The directive, the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order, signed Sept. 30, may also have helped lay a foundation for the surge of American military activity in Yemen that began three months later.

Special Operations troops began working with Yemen’s military to try to dismantle Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an affiliate of Osama bin Laden’s terror network based in Yemen. The Pentagon has also carried out missile strikes from Navy ships into suspected militant hideouts and plans to spend more than $155 million equipping Yemeni troops with armored vehicles, helicopters and small arms.

Officials said that many top commanders, General Petraeus among them, have advocated an expansive interpretation of the military’s role around the world, arguing that troops need to operate beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to better fight militant groups.

The order, which an official said was drafted in close coordination with Adm. Eric T. Olson, the officer in charge of the United States Special Operations Command, calls for clandestine activities that “cannot or will not be accomplished” by conventional military operations or “interagency activities,” a reference to American spy agencies.

While the C.I.A. and the Pentagon have often been at odds over expansion of clandestine military activity, most recently over intelligence gathering by Pentagon contractors in Pakistan and Afghanistan, there does not appear to have been a significant dispute over the September order.

A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to confirm the existence of General Petraeus’s order, but said that the spy agency and the Pentagon had a “close relationship” and generally coordinate operations in the field.

“There’s more than enough work to go around,” said the spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. “The real key is coordination. That typically works well, and if problems arise, they get settled.”

During the Bush administration, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld endorsed clandestine military operations, arguing that Special Operations troops could be as effective as traditional spies, if not more so.

Unlike covert actions undertaken by the C.I.A., such clandestine activity does not require the president’s approval or regular reports to Congress, although Pentagon officials have said that any significant ventures are cleared through the National Security Council. Special Operations troops have already been sent into a number of countries to carry out reconnaissance missions, including operations to gather intelligence about airstrips and bridges.

Some of Mr. Rumsfeld’s initiatives were controversial, and met with resistance by some at the State Department and C.I.A. who saw the troops as a backdoor attempt by the Pentagon to assert influence outside of war zones. In 2004, one of the first groups sent overseas was pulled out of Paraguay after killing a pistol-waving robber who had attacked them as they stepped out of a taxi.

A Pentagon order that year gave the military authority for offensive strikes in more than a dozen countries, and Special Operations troops carried them out in Syria, Pakistan and Somalia.

In contrast, General Petraeus’s September order is focused on intelligence gathering — by American troops, foreign businesspeople, academics or others — to identify militants and provide “persistent situational awareness,” while forging ties to local indigenous groups.


Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

    U.S. Is Said to Expand Secret Military Acts in Mideast Region, NYT, 24.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/world/25military.html

Mr. Gates and the Pentagon Budget

May 16, 2010
The New York Times

There has been a feeding frenzy at the Pentagon budget trough since the 9/11 attacks. Pretty much anything the military chiefs and industry lobbyists pitched, Congress approved — no matter the cost and no matter if the weapons or programs were over budget, underperforming or no longer needed in a post-cold-war world.

Annual defense spending has nearly doubled in the last decade to $549 billion. That does not include the cost of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, which this year will add $159 billion.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has now vowed to do things differently. In two recent speeches, he declared that the nation cannot keep spending at this rate and that the defense budget “gusher” has been “turned off and will stay off for a good period of time.” He vowed that going forward all current programs and future spending requests will receive “unsparing” scrutiny.

Mr. Gates isn’t proposing cutting his budget. He’s talking about 2 percent to 3 percent real growth after inflation, compared with 4 percent a year in 2000 to 2009. Given the nation’s dire financial state, it’s still a lot.

The Obama administration has already chopped some big-ticket, anachronistic weapons. (It stood up to the lobbyists and Congressional boosters to kill the F-22 fighter jet.) There has been more investment in needed new weapons, most notably unmanned drones. The Quadrennial Defense Review talked sternly about the need for “future trade-offs,” although it failed to start making the hard choices.

Mr. Gates said he wants to trim the bloated civilian and military bureaucracy (including excess admirals and generals) for a modest savings of $10 billion to $15 billion annually. He wants more cuts in weapons spending, and he deserves credit for naming specific systems.

Why should the Navy have 11 aircraft carriers (at $11 billion a copy) for the next 30 years when no other country has more than one, he asked at the Navy League exposition in Maryland. He questioned the need for the Marines’ beach-storming Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (vulnerable to advances in anti-ship systems) and $7 billion ballistic missile submarines for the Navy.

We’re sure the irate calls from Capitol Hill and K Street haven’t stopped since. It must be noted that Mr. Gates didn’t say for sure whether he would slash any of these systems — or how deeply.

Perhaps the most politically volatile issue is military health care costs, which rose from $19 billion to $50 billion in a decade. Active-duty military and their families rightly do not pay for health care. But what retirees pay — $460 annually per family — has not risen in 15 years.

Mr. Gates said that many retirees earn full-time salaries on top of their military retirement pay and could get coverage through their employer. We owe our fighting forces excellent care, but this is a time when everyone must share the burden.

Even if Mr. Gates begins to get a real handle on other costs, budget experts warn that exploding personnel costs — wages, health care, housing, pensions — will increasingly crowd out financing for new weapons. Once the United States commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, Washington will have to consider trimming troop strength, beginning with the Navy and Air Force.

Mr. Gates is an old Washington hand and we’re sure he is going into this fight with his eyes wide open. Still, if there was any doubt about what he’s up against, a House Armed Services subcommittee gave him a reminder last week. It added nearly $400 million to the Pentagon’s $9.9 billion 2011 request for missile defenses. That included $50 million for an airborne laser that experts agree doesn’t work and Mr. Gates largely canceled last year.

    Mr. Gates and the Pentagon Budget, NYT, 16.5.2010? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/opinion/17mon1.html

Op-Ed Contributor

The Last Days of the Dragon Lady

May 7, 2010
The New York Times
By CHOLENE ESPINOZA

FIFTY years ago today, the Soviet Union announced that it had shot down an American U-2 spy plane and that its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was alive.

It seems like a long-ago event from the cold war. That may be why, in this era of satellites and drones, most people are surprised to learn that the U-2 is not only still in use, but that it is as much a part of our national security structure as it was a half-century ago.

Every decade or so there is chatter about replacing the U-2. And yet, thanks to its remarkable technological and operational capacity and flexibility, the U-2 has in recent years been used to find homemade bombs in Afghanistan, drug lords in Colombia, mass graves in the former Yugoslavia and budding nuclear weapons programs in the Middle East. It has also been critical in non-military missions like measuring ozone levels and mapping disaster zones.

This time, though, it looks pretty certain that the Air Force will follow through on its plans to retire the U-2 as soon as it can field a Global Hawk drone retrofitted with electronic eavesdropping devices.

I flew the U-2 during the 1990s, and I received this news as if I had learned that an old friend was dying. It may seem odd to grieve for a machine. But the U-2 is no ordinary vehicle. Some in my world call flying the plane a religion, others a calling. For me it was a gift.

The U-2 is nicknamed the Dragon Lady for good reason. You never knew what to expect when you took it into the air, no matter how seasoned a pilot you were. This was an unfortunate consequence of its design. The trade-off of a plane built light enough to fly above 70,000 feet is that it is almost impossible to control. And 13 miles above the ground, the atmosphere is so thin that the “envelope” between stalling and “overspeed” — going so fast you lose control of the plane, resulting in an unrecoverable nose dive — is razor-thin, making minor disruptions, even turbulence, as deadly as a missile. The challenge is even greater near the ground, since to save weight, the plane doesn’t have normal landing gear.

As I was told before one of my tryout flights, “Landing the U-2 is a lot like playing pool. It’s not so much how you shoot as how you set up your shot.” Or, as my former wing commander said, “We’ve all had moments when we could just as easily have made one tiny move the other way and ended up dead.”

Getting the plane up and down was not the only challenge. Staying airborne — and alert — for countless hours, looking at nothing but sky, was another. I learned the hard way, for example, that you can get diaper rash from Gatorade.

Other risks were less benign, as I found when I was the ground officer for a pilot who radioed, “My skin feels like it’s crawling.” He had the bends so badly from changes in pressure that when he landed his body was covered with huge welts. Had the weather not cleared in time for him to land, these bubbles of nitrogen might have lodged in his brain or optical nerve — as they had in other U-2 pilots.

Were the risks worth it? Absolutely. The advantage of having a human being in the pilot’s seat of a reconnaissance plane is overwhelming. A person can troubleshoot problems in mid-flight, with creativity that a computer lacks and a proximity to the problem that a remote-control pilot can never achieve. A pilot also has unique situational awareness: I’ve been on more than one mission in which I was able to distinguish promising details that a drone would have missed.

It was worth it personally, too. I’ll never forget the adrenaline surge of landing what was basically a multimillion-dollar jet-powered glider on its 12-inch tail wheel from a full stall while wearing a space suit. And I’ll always remember the peace of sitting alone on the quiet edge of space, out of radio contact for hours.

The new generation of drones have their merits. But flying robots, no matter how advanced, can’t measure up to the courage and commitment of a pilot who is risking her life for the sake of the mission.

Reconnaissance will outlive the U-2, but there will always be a divot in the hearts of those who have seen the curvature of the earth, the stars seemingly close enough to touch, and known the satisfaction of having completed a mission with the Dragon Lady.

Cholene Espinoza is a former U-2 pilot.

    The Last Days of the Dragon Lady, NYT, 7.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/opinion/07Espinoza.html

Editorial

And the Magic Number Is ...

May 5, 2010
The New York Times

Finally, the truth can be told. The United States has officially announced that it has 5,113 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, plus “several thousand” more waiting to be dismantled. The totals are so close to the unofficial estimates that have been publicly circulating for years, you might wonder what all the excitement is about.

American intelligence officials long argued that disclosing the numbers would help terrorists calculate the minimum fuel needed for a weapon. If that was ever true, it is certainly out of date. Reputable Web sites already reveal that American weapons designers need around 4 kilograms of plutonium, or about 8.8 pounds.

The fact that these nonsecrets were jealously guarded for so long shows the stubborn cold war mind-set of the nuclear, defense and intelligence bureaucracies. President Obama should be commended for breaking with this anachronism. It will help bolster American credibility as he presses to curb the further spread of nuclear weapons.

The numbers show how far the United States has come in shrinking a nuclear arsenal that reached a peak of 31,255 weapons in 1967. The 5,113 means a reduction of 84 percent, but still far more than is needed to deter any threat. The United States and Russia (which is estimated to have thousands more weapons in reserve than the United States) need to make even deeper cuts. But after years of inaction under President George W. Bush, who disdained arms treaties, the trend is better.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was still at his blustering best this week. Despite the fact that his country hid its nuclear efforts for years and was recently caught hiding another banned enrichment plant, he told an audience at the United Nations that Washington is the “main suspect” fostering a nuclear arms race. Mr. Obama’s decision to disclose, and the numbers, took some of the wind out of that.

    And the Magic Number Is ..., NYT, 5.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/opinion/05wed4.html

U.S. Faces Choice on New Weapons for Fast Strikes

April 22, 2010
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — In coming years, President Obama will decide whether to deploy a new class of weapons capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour and with such accuracy and force that they would greatly diminish America’s reliance on its nuclear arsenal.

Yet even now, concerns about the technology are so strong that the Obama administration has acceded to a demand by Russia that the United States decommission one nuclear missile for every one of these conventional weapons fielded by the Pentagon. That provision, the White House said, is buried deep inside the New Start treaty that Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed in Prague two weeks ago.

Called Prompt Global Strike, the new weapon is designed to carry out tasks like picking off Osama bin Laden in a cave, if the right one could be found; taking out a North Korean missile while it is being rolled to the launch pad; or destroying an Iranian nuclear site — all without crossing the nuclear threshold. In theory, the weapon will hurl a conventional warhead of enormous weight at high speed and with pinpoint accuracy, generating the localized destructive power of a nuclear warhead.

The idea is not new: President George W. Bush and his staff promoted the technology, imagining that this new generation of conventional weapons would replace nuclear warheads on submarines.

In face-to-face meetings with President Bush, Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones. Mr. Bush and his aides concluded that the Russians were right.

Partly as a result, the idea “really hadn’t gone anywhere in the Bush administration,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has served both presidents, said recently on ABC’s “This Week.” But he added that it was “embraced by the new administration.”

Mr. Obama himself alluded to the concept in a recent interview with The New York Times, saying it was part of an effort “to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons” while insuring “that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.”

The Obama national security team scrapped the idea of putting the new conventional weapon on submarines. Instead, the White House has asked Congress for about $250 million next year to explore a new alternative, one that uses some of the most advanced technology in the military today as well as some not yet even invented.

The final price of the system remains unknown. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing on Thursday that Prompt Global Strike would be “essential and critical, but also costly.”

It would be based, at least initially, on the West Coast, probably at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Under the Obama plan, the Prompt Global Strike warhead would be mounted on a long-range missile to start its journey toward a target. It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it would have to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting. (In that regard, it is akin to the problem that confronted designers of the space shuttle decades ago.)

But since the vehicle would remain within the atmosphere rather than going into space, it would be far more maneuverable than a ballistic missile, capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory. Its designers note that it could fly straight up the middle of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp turn toward a target.

The Pentagon hopes to deploy an early version of the system by 2014 or 2015. But even under optimistic timetables, a complete array of missiles, warheads, sensors and control systems is not expected to enter the arsenal until 2017 to 2020, long after Mr. Obama will have left office, even if he is elected to a second term.

The planning for Prompt Global Strike is being headed by Gen. Kevin P. Chilton of the Air Force, the top officer of the military’s Strategic Command and the man in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal. In the Obama era — where every administration discussion of nuclear weapons takes note of Mr. Obama’s commitment to moving toward “Global Zero,” the elimination of the nuclear arsenal — the new part of General Chilton’s job is to talk about conventional alternatives.

In an interview at his headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, General Chilton described how the conventional capability offered by the proposed system would give the president more choices.

“Today, we can present some conventional options to the president to strike a target anywhere on the globe that range from 96 hours, to several hours maybe, 4, 5, 6 hours,” General Chilton said.

That would simply not be fast enough, he noted, if intelligence arrived about a movement by Al Qaeda terrorists or the imminent launching of a missile. “If the president wants to act on a particular target faster than that, the only thing we have that goes faster is a nuclear response,” he said.

But the key to filling that gap is to make sure that Russia and China, among other nuclear powers, understand that the missile launching they see on their radar screens does not signal the start of a nuclear attack, officials said.

Under the administration’s new concept, Russia or other nations would regularly inspect the Prompt Global Strike silos to assure themselves that the weapons were nonnuclear. And they would be placed in locations far from the strategic nuclear force.

“Who knows if we would ever deploy it?” Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top adviser on unconventional weapons, said at a conference in Washington on Wednesday. But he noted that Russia was already so focused on the possibility that it insisted that any conventional weapon mounted on a missile that could reach it counted against the new limit on the American arsenal in the treaty.

In a follow-on treaty, he said, the Russians would certainly want to negotiate on Prompt Global Strike and ballistic missile defenses.

If Mr. Obama does decide to deploy the system, Mr. Samore said, the number of weapons would be small enough that Russia and China would not fear that they could take out their nuclear arsenals.

    U.S. Faces Choice on New Weapons for Fast Strikes, NYT, 22.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/world/europe/23strike.html

Editorial

The Defense Budget

February 4, 2010
The New York Times

The cold war has been nearly banished from the Pentagon’s latest review of military challenges. The Quadrennial Defense Review, released this week, finally catches up with the current world, one where the United States confronts a host of different adversaries on a variety of different battlefields.

It acknowledges that while the United States remains the world’s leading military power, it is much more dependent on allies to help maintain international stability. It places long overdue emphasis on preserving and rebuilding the overstretched, all-volunteer force. It recognizes the need to rebalance American forces to perform multiple new tasks and to finally jettison cold war weapons that are too expensive, over budget, underperforming or ill suited to today’s missions.

The review and the accompanying 2011 defense budget request still fall short, particularly in their failure to address the security-related consequences of a world of deficits as far as the eye can see. The review talks about the need for future “trade-offs” but suggests that that is only a possibility when it must be a given.

President Obama is asking Congress for $708.3 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2011. That includes a base budget of $549 billion (the growth rate, adjusted for inflation, is 2.3 percent over 2010, compared with 4 percent per year from 2000 to 2009) and $159 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The White House is separately seeking another $33 billion for the 30,000 more troops being sent to Afghanistan.

At a time when the country is fighting two wars, major savings are not likely to be possible. This Pentagon budget, like President Obama’s last one, makes some tough choices — but not enough.

On the positive side, the budget reflects the defense review’s priorities by adding billions in new financing for helicopters, unmanned drones and special operations forces that are all crucial to the fight against extremists.

It also calls for canceling some anachronistic or unnecessary programs. Defense Secretary Robert Gates boldly took on the lobbyists and their many allies in Congress last year and canceled the F-22 fighter jet, a cold war relic. We applaud his efforts to try — once again — to end production of the C-17 transport plane, which military planners say they have enough of, and an alternate engine for the F-35, which the planners say is redundant.

He could cut more. An estimated $26 billion can be saved by halting production of the troubled V-22 Osprey vertical lift aircraft and the hugely costly Virginia class submarine, slimming the still unproven missile defense program and refitting existing warships (not buying new ones) for Mr. Obama’s new missile defense plan in Europe.

The budget rightly calls for improved medical care and support programs for soldiers and their families; all are under incredible strain after eight years of war. Over the long term, defense planners are worried about this country’s ability to pay for the all-volunteer military, in part because the annual cost of health care (for retirees as well as active-duty personnel) has skyrocketed from $19 billion in 2001 to more than $50 billion in 2011.

Mr. Gates was right this week to raise the issue of unrealistically low annual health insurance premiums for military retirees (active-duty military do not pay for health care), saying they have not been increased (from $460 per family, $230 per individual) in 15 years.

Congress now gets to poke, prod and, we hope, seriously debate the budget and the defense review. It must start with another post-cold-war notion: The country cannot afford to write the Pentagon a blank check. And that means that Congress will have to spend less time listening to defense lobbyists and more time thinking about the country’s real strategic needs.

    The Defense Budget, NYT, 4.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04thur1.html

Editorial

Equality in the Military

February 3, 2010
The New York Times
 

History was made on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. More than 16 years after their predecessors helped impose the odious “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the nation’s two top defense officials called on Congress to repeal the law that bans gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The principled courage of the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a major step forward for civil rights.

Their action leaves no further excuse for Republican lawmakers to go on supporting this discrimination. President Obama must not let the opponents of repeal, who are already mobilizing, keep this terribly unjust law on the books.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” was passed by Congress in 1993, with the support of Les Aspin, who then was the secretary of defense, and Gen. Colin Powell, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It compelled gay men and lesbians to hide who they are and to live in fear of being reported. Many thousands of men and women have been drummed out of the armed forces under this law.

Critics argue that the presence of gay service members makes the military less unified and effective. There is strong evidence that this is not so, including the experiences of nations, such as Canada and Britain, where gays serve openly. A policy of driving out good and talented people — including ones with much-needed skills in Arabic, Farsi, and other languages — makes the military less effective.

At Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a clear commitment to end “don’t ask, don’t tell” — following up on the promise President Obama made in his State of the Union address. The question, Mr. Gates said, “is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it.” He said, however, that more time will be needed to work out how to change the policy.

While the policy is being reviewed by the Pentagon’s top lawyer and the commander of the United States Army in Europe, Mr. Gates said the existing law will be carried out in a “more humane and fair manner.” One welcome change would be a decision by the military to no longer aggressively pursue discharge cases against people whose sexuality is revealed by third parties, including jilted romantic partners.

Since “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a federal law, the Obama administration will have to work to get Congress to repeal it. There will be considerable opposition. Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, declared his opposition on Tuesday. Representative John Boehner, the leader of the House Republicans, indicated earlier that with two wars under way it was not the right time to change the policy.

In fact, it is an ideal time. The armed forces need every qualified person who wants to serve. Polls show that Americans broadly support repealing the law. President Obama has spoken out forcefully for jettisoning the policy, and his party controls both houses of Congress. The armed forces have evolved. Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently called for a repeal, declaring that “as a nation built on the principle of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger, more cohesive military.”

The United States has traveled far since 1993 on gay rights. It is ready for a military built on a commitment to equal rights for all.

    Equality in the Military, NYT, 3.2.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/opinion/03wed1.html