Photo: Army

On March 3, 2008, a Taliban suicide bomber driving a green truck packed with explosives barreled through the front gate of a small U.S. outpost in Sabari district, Afghanistan, and blew himself up next to the dining facility where American soldiers were just sitting down to dinner.

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Elliott and the modified pod. Photo: Air Force

Sitting in the cockpit of her A-10 Warthog somewhere over Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base on Jan. 10, Maj. Olivia Elliott flipped a switch. In an instant her blunt, twin-engine warplane with the 30-millimeter cannon in the nose was transformed. No longer just the Air Force’s most heavily-armed attack jet, now the A-10 was also a flying wireless router, providing Internet connectivity to anyone in range — and with the right password.

The final test of the Network-Tactical, or Net-T, upgrade to the Northrop Grumman LITENING and Lockheed Martin Sniper targeting pods, carried by A-10s and other warplanes, is the latest in a long chain of communications breakthroughs by the U.S. military and the defense industry.

From handheld devices capable of streaming video from overhead drones to encrypted data-links allowing warships to share radar data and cue targets for each other’s missiles the Pentagon has debuted a dizzying array of new systems meant to build the information connections in a network over the last 10 years.

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As part of its ongoing strategic “pivot” towards the Pacific, early this year the Defense Department announced it would design a new missile able to quickly cross long distances and penetrate sophisticated air defenses, of the kind rapidly proliferating across Asia. The so-called “conventional prompt strike option” would be submarine-launched, the Pentagon said in its January Defense Budget Priorities and Choices release.

The department placed great emphasis on the new weapon, declaring that “we had to invest in capabilities required to maintain our military’s continued freedom of action.”

But 11 months later, the Pentagon has yet to take meaningful, practical steps towards developing the prompt strike option, casting into doubt the department’s ability to solve the kind of anti-access, area-denial problem posed by, for example, China’s fast-modernizing navy and air force.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

The targets were buildings packed with humming computers. A missile streaked overhead and, at preset coordinates, it fired concentrated beams of energy. Computers short-circuited, the lights flickered out and even cameras monitoring the rooms shut off. The missile had turned off all the power in the targeted buildings.

This first successful test of the three-year, $40-million Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) at a Utah test range on Oct. 16 marked a big step forward for technology that has been in development for more than four decades.

The potential of CHAMP and other so-called Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons is enormous, in theory. They could allow an army to bloodlessly disable select portions of an enemy’s military capabilities, potentially winning a fight without a lethal shot being fired.

But CHAMP itself, a collaboration between the Air Force Research Laboratory, defense giants Boeing and Raytheon plus Ktech, a small company Raytheon acquired last year, does not necessarily herald “a new era in modern-day warfare,” as Keith Coleman, the CHAMP program manager at Boeing Phantom Works, claimed in a press release. Boeing declined to comment for this story.

Experts disagree on the Boeing-Raytheon technology’s capabilities and readiness, and the vulnerability of military targets to its effects. “It’s an interesting program,” Norman Friedman, a respected military author and analyst, tells AOL Defense. But CHAMP “could be PR over reality,” he adds. A truly revolutionary EMP weapon might require more work.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

Boeing art.

The missile launched from the wing pylon of a B-52 heavy bomber and streaked over the desert of western Utah. At pre-set coordinates, a microwave emitter installed in the winged, jet-propelled cruise missile blasted a target building. But there was no big bang, no billowing clouds of dust and debris. Instead, the building was struck with disruptive, high-frequency microwaves.

The goal of the test on the morning of Oct. 16 was “to render … electronic and data systems useless,” according to Boeing, the lead contractor for the three-year, $40-million Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project, or CHAMP, initiated in 2009.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

The bomb exploded like a dusty thunderclap directly underneath the front left tire of the U.S. Army MaxxPro truck, sending the tall, roughly 20-ton vehicle lurching at least 10 feet forward and scattering chunks of the outer hull like amputated body parts.

It was March 19, 2011, in the Pakhab-e-Shana in eastern Afghanistan’s breadbasket Logar Province. The bomb, later estimated at 250 pounds, had targeted a convoy belonging to the Army’s 10th Mountain Division carrying humanitarian aid to the impoverished village.

What happened next was either the direct consequence of the MaxxPro’s special design, or the expected result of a bomb striking any U.S. military armored vehicle. That distinction lies at the heart of a months-long debate that could shape the direction of American vehicle development.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

East Asia. AOL Defense art.

America counts heavily on a cordon of allies stretching from Japan to the north down to Thailand, and across to India, in the highly unlikely event of war with China. But these same allies could draw the U.S. into strictly local disputes in which America does not always have a clear security interest and which could destabilize the region.

Asian powers including India and Japan possess large, sophisticated navies and air arms which, combined with U.S. Pacific forces, could outgun the rapidly-modernizing People’s Liberation Army in wartime. And in peacetime, these same regional powers can help as counters to Beijing’s growing influence.

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The past decade has seen an unlikely revival of a long-grounded technology. Military airships, last operational with the U.S. Navy in the 1960s, took back to the skies, propelled by soaring demand for long-endurance, low-cost aerial surveillance in Iraq and Afghanistan. Per flight hour, an airship costs a fraction of what a helicopter or a fixed-wing plane costs.

But three of the most prominent new-breed airship programs came crashing back to earth in early 2012. A massive, in-development Air Force spy blimp, a Navy test blimp and an Army tethered airship that’s part of an evolving missile-defense network — all were canceled or curtailed. It might have seemed that the promise of a new generation of military blimps was, well, so much hot air.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

Navy photo.

The Navy’s proposal to delay construction of new ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) meant to succeed the current Ohio class is both good and bad news for America’s shipbuilders, according to the program manager for the new “boomer” sub. But key members of Congress -– already at odds with the Administration over delays to the Virginia-class submarine — remain skeptical.

Pushing construction start on the 12 so-called “Ohio Replacement” subs to 2021 from 2019 could raise costs, though by how much is not clear, Brian Wilson from General Dynamics’ Electric Boat told AOL Defense. On the other hand, the delay could give designers more time to refine the new subs’ blueprints, potentially avoiding costly complications in construction, Wilson said. “It is two more years of design effort, so there is the possibility of ensuring we have the most mature design in place.”

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Northrop Grumman photo.

The cost of building Virginia-class attack submarines could grow by up to $600 million if Congress signs off on the Navy’s proposal to slip a Virginia from 2014 to 2018. Under heavy pressure to cut budgets, the Navy wants to reduce sub-building expenses in the short term, even at the price of increasing the program’s overall cost. But two powerful legislators, longtime sub-booster Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (formerly a Democrat but now an independent) and House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R.-Calif.), are rallying opposition to the delay.

The U.S. Navy, submarine builders, and their allies on Capitol Hill spent years trying to drive down the cost of the world-beating Virginias. The effort included design changes, industrial initiatives, and focused politicking. The goal: to ensure the Navy could afford to buy two Virginias a year for a bit over $4 billion (in 2005 dollars), starting in Fiscal Year 2012.

The “2 for 4 in ’12″ effort succeeded. Last year the Navy requested, and Congress approved, the acquisition of two submarines in 2012 for a combined cost of $4.7 billion. Navy plans at the time anticipated building two attack boats a year through 2022, with the exception of 2018, the only year in which just one Virginia would be purchased. The plan sustained a 48-strong attack submarine force over the long term, according to Navy projections.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

Army photo.

The commandos came under the cover of darkness. It was mid-February in Laghman province, just east of Kabul in mountainous eastern Afghanistan. A team of U.S. Army Special Forces swept in together with an elite unit of the Afghan police, known as the Provincial Response Company. But this time the target was not a Taliban. This time the Green Berets were helping the Afghans take down one of their own, a government official named Nangyalai.

The former sub-governor of Laghman’s Alingar district, Nangyalai had been tried, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in absentia by an Afghan court for stealing everything from government-issue weapons to 150 bags of wheat. Just getting a conviction is a minor triumph amidst Afghanistan’s chronic corruption. Getting an arrest is extraordinary. But nabbing Nangyalai (who, like many Afghans, goes by only one name) is just one small victory in long and largely unsuccessful struggle to build an Afghan ally the Americans can trust to take over when they’re gone.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

AFGHANISTAN: International Special Operations forces play an important but largely unheralded role in Afghanistan. American Army Rangers, Green Berets and Delta Force, along with Navy SEALs and Air Force specialists work with the best from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and a host of other allied nations to kill and capture insurgents and terrorists. They also train Afghan militia, police and soldiers.

Combined Special Operations Task Force 10, part of ISAF Special Operations Forces (one of several Special Forces commands in Afghanistan) includes troops from Romania, Hungary and Slovakia — among others — and trains Provincial Response Companies, little-known, high-end police units belonging to the Afghan Ministry of Interior.

The company-size PRCs, each trained by a 12-man Special Forces team, specialize in delivering warrants developed by Afghan authorities to support prosecutions and expand the rule of law in the provinces.

Lt. Col. Isaac Peltier commands Task Force 10 from an ISAF facility near Kabul. In a rare exception to Special Forces’ tradition of secrecy, Peltier sat down with AOL Defense to talk about the PRCs and the challenges his troops face, including Afghan corruption, Taliban attacks and allowing trainees to fail in the interest of instructing them.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.