DEFENSE TECH ON THE MOVE
Just in time for the fall of Baghdad, Defense Tech is moving. Click here for the new site -- and switch those bookmarks now!

BIG GUNS, NOT HIGH TECH, BEHIND BAGHDAD COLLAPSE
The technologies behind U.S. troops' victories in the open expanses of the Mesopotamian deserts aren't what's triggering the fall of Saddam's rule in the alleys and shadows of Baghdad.

GPS-guided bombs, advanced radios and spy drones all become less reliable as sand gives way to concrete and steel. Instead, the American military has leaned on the cunning of its junior officers and the overwhelming firepower of its heavy armor in its battle for the Iraqi capital.

This is proving to be a powerful combination for U.S. forces, as recent events have shown. But it's most definitely a shift from the war's first phase.

Jim Lewis, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "Urban combat means training becomes important, and technology becomes secondary."

My Wired News story has more.

SADDAM'S HOLD ON BAGHDAD OVER, U.S. SAYS
"Saddam Hussein's rule over (Baghdad) has ended, U.S. commanders declared Wednesday, and jubilant crowds swarmed into the streets here, dancing, looting, cheering U.S. convoys and defacing images of the Iraqi leader," the Associated Press reports.

"The capital city is now one of those areas that has been added to the list of where the regime does not have control," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks at U.S. Central Command in Qatar.

Large pockets of the city still remain in control of Saddam loyalists, BBC TV cautions.

But the locus of battle immediately shifted to Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, where coalition aircraft have been bombing Republican Guard divisions in advance of a ground assault.

CHEMICAL "SMOKING GUNS" FLAME OUT -- WHY?
It's a scene being replayed all over Iraq. American soldiers stumble upon a mysterious liquid or powder. The material is tested - and it's shown to be a nerve agent, or mustard gas. Embedded reporters and military flacks rush to tell the world that, at last, they've found the "smoking gun" that proves Saddam had banned weapons all along.

And then, a few hours later, further analysis shows that the whole thing was just a false alarm. The sample has to be sent to a lab, where a third and final determination can be made about whether or not the material is toxic.

What's going on here? Why do these "false positives" - as they're called in weapons inspectorese - keep popping up? Why are these tests so consistently inconsistent?

Check out my Tech Central Station story for answers.

COP TROLLS L.A.P.D. COMPUTERS FOR CELEB INFO
"A Los Angeles police officer used department computers to access confidential law enforcement records of celebrities and sold the information to tabloids," the Associated Press reports. "Between 1994 and 2000 (Officer Kelly) Chrisman accessed computer files on such celebrities as Sharon Stone, Sean Penn, Meg Ryan, Kobe Bryant, O.J. Simpson, Larry King, Drew Barrymore, Cindy Crawford, and Halle Berry, according to internal Police Department documents."

Chrisman's lawyer, former Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden, said that the 13-year veteran never sold the information to anyone.

(via Politech)

ARMY FOXES HUNT FOR CHEMICALS
When U.S. soldiers found drums of suspected chemical weapons yesterday at a warehouse in Albu Muhawish, Iraq, two Army Fox mobile laboratories were quickly brought in.

The Philly Inquirer takes a look at the three-man, 20-ton vehicles, each equppied with more than a million dollars worth of chemical testing gear inside.

My question is: with all that equipment, why are the Foxes coming up with so many "false positives" -- reports that banned weapons are present, only to be later disproved?

According to the Telegraph, U.S. Central Command is receiving an average of three reports a day of suspected weapons of mass destruction. None has so far proved correct.

NEW PAY PLAN FOR DEFENSE LABS
Defense Department labs have had a tough time holding on to scientists and engineers. And a big reason why is the stilted civil service hiring and promotion system, which turns recruiting new employees, and paying top performers, into near-Herculean feats.

All of this may change soon, Government Executive reports. The Defense Department has proposed eliminating the leaden "General Schedule" personnel plan, and replacing it with something a bit more sensible; merit pay, for example, instead of compensation based on rigid seniority levels.

Not surprisingly, public employee union officials are already voicing their displeasure. Jacqueline Simon, with the American Federation of Government Employees, says she's "wary about pay-for-performance."

DRONES OVER BAGHDAD: GOOD OMEN?
Slate sees drones over Baghdad, and thinks they're a good omen for the American operation there.

It provides a clue, among many other clues these past few days, that Saddam Hussein's regime exists no longer. The key clue here is the very fact that a drone can fly over Baghdad at all. The drones we're using fly very low and very slowly; they are easy to shoot down. Yet no Iraqi soldier even tried to shoot this one down. We know that Iraqi soldiers have anti-aircraft artillery; they have turned some of them horizontally and used them as ground artillery against U.S. tanks. A fair inference is that no one shot down this drone because no one gave orders to shoot it down—which likely means no command structure existed to give such orders. Organized resistance seems to have crumbled, and, if that's the case, so has the regime, in any meaningful sense of that word.

All true. But the drones' vision is obscured by Baghdad's buildings and alleyways. So they're probably not as effective as they were in the Mesopotamian desert or in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. The importance of the unmanned planes may be more symbolic than tactical. More tomorrow on this in Wired News.

TOXIC ROCKETS DISCOVERED NEAR BAGHDAD
National Public Radio is reporting that Marines near Baghdad have discovered rockets equipped with sarin and mustard gas. They found significant quantities of the toxins -- "not just trace elements" -- in the cache of 20-foot long BM-21 projectiles.

U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar had no immediate comment on the report. But if the story is accurate, this would be the first time major quantities of banned weapons have been found in the current conflict with Iraq.

This is one of several potential chemical discoveries in Iraq.

"U.S. soldiers evacuated an Iraqi military compound on Sunday after tests by a mobile laboratory confirmed evidence of sarin nerve gas," according to the Knight-Ridder News Service. "The evacuation... followed a day of tests for the nerve agent that came back positive, then negative. Additional tests Sunday night by an Army Fox mobile nuclear, biological and chemical detection laboratory confirmed the existence of sarin."

Col. Tim Madere, the top chemical officer in 101st Airborne V Corps, told the New York Times he'd withhold final judgement on whether or not the substance is sarin until the 51st Chemical Company can perform a more thorough analysis. Those tests are supposed to be completed by Wednesday.

On Friday, MSNBC.com reported finding traces of the ricin and botulinum toxins at a militant camp near the Iranian border.

THERE'S MORE: The chemical fog of war is rolling in thick. AFP now says that the "sarin" supposedly found by the 101st is actually a pesticide.

THE POETRY OF AL JAZEERA
A DARPA-backed project is now giving real-time translations of Al Jazeera and other Arabic-language TV channels.

But like just about every voice-recognition program, this one is buggy.

"In a demonstration the company recently conducted over the Web, the system produced somewhat cryptic English sentences that gave the viewer an extremely rough idea of what the Al Jazeera newscasters were describing," reports the New York Times' John Markoff.

"It's more like poetry than prose," said Bradley Horowitz, founder of Virage, the translation firm. "It evokes the right things, but it's hardly accurate."

"CHEMICAL ALI" DEAD; SADDAM PALACE TAKEN
"American forces took control of a major presidential palace on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad early this morning in the biggest thrust into the city so far," according to the New York Times. "As many as 70 tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles rolled down the wide streets as A-10 Warthog planes and pilotless drones flew in the skies unchallenged."

In the southern city of Basra, "Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed 'Chemical Ali' by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a 1988 poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead," the Associated Press reports.

MARINES SICK OF CHEMBIO SUITS
Marines fighting around Baghdad are "starting to doubt the seriousness of the chem-bio (weapon) threat," and are sick of wearing the suits designed to protect them against such dangers, according to Army Times.

It's been widely reported that the MOPP ("Mission-Oriented, Protective-Posture") gear makes the desert heat even worse. What's less known is how the clumsy, charcoal-lined suits are turning relatively routine acts into major productions.

"The Marines’ trousers don’t even have a zipper, turning a simple bathroom break into a nightmare of untucking and unbuckling," the paper says.

During an artillery mission (outside Baghdad on) April 4, while grabbing for a 100-pound shell from the dirty bed of his ammo truck, the corporal’s slick (MOPP) rubber boots lost traction. In the middle of a combat operation, the Marine fell four feet to the ground, breaking his right leg in two places and prompting an immediate ground medevac.

“It sucks to lose a corporal, period,” said 1st Lt. Ty Yount, 26, executive officer for Battery M, 3rd Battalion, 11th Marines, whose Marine fell from the truck. “But to lose one like that, out here, that just makes it worse.”

The grunts have been wearing the MOPP gear pretty much non-stop since the invasion of Iraq began, nearly three weeks ago.

NEXT UPDATE: APRIL 7
Defense Tech will return on Monday.

R.A.F. TO RAIN CONCRETE ON BAGHDAD
As if bunker busters, cluster bombs, and an array of precision-guided munitions weren't enough. Coalition forces are preparing to drop half-ton concrete blocks on Baghdad.

These blue, bomb-shaped chunks would be used against Iraqi armor. The weapons don't explode, of course. But they are equipped with a laser-guidance system, so they're reasonably accurate. The hope is that the blocks can flatten tanks, without hurting civilians nearby.

The American military has been using the weapons in Iraq for several years, as part of Operation Northern Watch -- the enforcement of the "no-fly zones." Royal Air Force Tornados may start plopping them on Saddam's tanks soon.

LEAFY, GREEN BIOSENSORS
First they brought in the chickens. Then came the pigeons. Now, Army-backed researchers are trying to turn plants into biological and chemical toxin sensors, Wired News reports.

Scientists at Penn State are working on a three-year, $3.5 million program to turn the mouse-ear cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), a small flowering plant in the mustard family, into a green sentinel. The idea is to futz with the plant's proteins so that it makes a visual response when poisons are nearby.

But these researchers are hoping the cress will do more. Maybe the plant can be genetically engineered to react to explosive elements -- making the cress into a living mine-detector, as well.

Don't hold your breath for this one.

MILITANT CAMPS IN IRAQ YIELD TOXIN TRACES
MSNBC.com says it has found traces of the ricin and botulinum toxins at Sargat, an alleged Ansar al-Islam terrorist training camp a mile from the Iraq-Iran border.

The samples were taken from a boot and a shoe recovered from the camp. They were tested with the BioWarfare Agent Detection Devices supposedly used by U.N. weapons inspectors. The tests are designed to give an immediate answer for whether or not there's a particular toxin present. They are pretty reliable; but with these quick exams, false positives aren't out of the question, either. And so additional assessments will be needed before we can say for sure that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

MILITARY SATELLITE LAUNCHES HEAT UP
From targeting data to maintenance orders, Predator drone pictures to e-mail to the kids, the military sends almost every scrap of information it has through wireless networks. And that means the armed forces have a Homer Simpson-esque appetite for bandwidth.

So it's no surprise that the U.S. Air Force is set to launch its second communications satellite in a month. On March 10, a Delta 4 rocket took up a DSCS3-A3 satellite, a space-borne relay communicating about as fast as the modem in your Apple II did back in the 80's. On Sunday, a Titan IVB will launch from Cape Canaveral, with a Milstar II satellite on board. It talks a bit faster, at 1.5 megabits per second.

Michael Kucharek, with Air Force Space Command, insists that the flurry of take-offs -- which includes launches of GPS satellites in late January and late March -- is "not a surge because of what's going on in the Persian Gulf."

The launches have been planned for two years, he asserts. But the Columbia Shuttle disaster screwed up the schedule temporarily.

Once the satellites are in space, it can take anywhere from "a few weeks to a few months" to get them operational; testing needs to be done first to make sure the satellites can talk ground stations, and each other.

WAR IS NOT A GAME
The world of video games and the world of war are drifting closer. That's not necessarily such a good thing, notes Got Game?, a new blog devoted to "the future of play."

CHEMICAL DEFENSES COULD AWAIT U.S. TROOPS
Saddam may try to use his unconventional weapons in uncoventional ways. Armies have traditionally unleashed chemical attacks on an enemy, firing toxic bombs or artillery shells at opposing troops. But Saddam may these poisons as defenses, turning Baghdad neighborhoods so toxic that "few would want to venture, even in protective suits," reports the New York Times.

Mustard gas and the nerve agent VX "might linger on the battlefield like pools of motor oil on the ground," the paper speculates. The chemicals would maintain their potency for weeks.

"Iraq used a variation of that tactic in its final offensives in its war with Iran in 1988," the Times notes. "The Iraqis laid down mustard gas behind the Iranian forces, then bombarded the front lines with the short-lived but highly toxic sarin. The goal was to drive the retreating sarin-exposed troops into the mustard trap."

THERE'S MORE: "U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad," according to the Associated Press. "But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives."

TROOPS TAKE OVER BAGHDAD AIRPORT
"U.S. ground forces have swept into Baghdad's international airport under cover of darkness, securing it with tanks and other armored units. They encountered almost no opposition from Iraqi forces," ABC News reports.

HOCKEY PUCKS OF DEATH
A new kind of bomb made its combat debut in Wednesday's attack on Republican Guard forces, according to the Air Force.

A B-52 Stratofortress dropped six sensor-fused CBU-105 cluster bombs on a column of Iraqi tanks headed south out of Baghdad, destroying the armor. The Air Force calls the bombs "smart-guided" cluster munitions. Defense Tech first discussed them six weeks ago.

A CBU-105 disperses ten smaller, hockey-puck shaped bomblets that sense the engine heat from armored vehicles, and then fire downward to destroy them. As they descend, the bomblets open up minature parachutes to compensate for wind, launch conditions, and bad weather.

Then, "as they approach the ground, those units split as well, each one ejecting four armor-piercing explosives," ABC News reports. "The result, say sources: one bomb drop causes 40 explosions, spread out over 15 acres or more."

THERE'S MORE: The cluster bomblets are wrapped in the same yellow packaging as the humanitarian rations that coalition forces are handing out to civilians in Iraq, UNICEF warns. "These are the same rations," the agency notes, "that were air dropped in Afghanistan, where the military eventually changed the wrapping to blue."

FAULTY TECH NOT TO BLAME FOR "FRIENDLY FIRE"?
Misfiring technology has been blamed for many of the "friendly fire" deaths in Gulf War II. But New Scientist says that the armed services' lack of coordination is the real culprit in these accidents.

FED AGENCIES DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DEFEND
This is how ill-prepared the federal government is to protect itself against terrorist attacks: Many of its agencies don't even know which buildings and computer networks to defend.

In 1998, the Clinton administration ordered the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, to each come up with a list of crucial equipment, buildings and information technology that must be protected under any circumstance.

But nearly five years later -- and more than 18 months after Sept. 11 -- none of these agencies has completed its list, according to a report released Wednesday by the Government Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm. And none of the agencies has comprehensive plans for keeping these assets safe.

My Wired News story has more.