Chinese military strategist proposes forces be projected into space

PLA should play role in space: Strategist

6.16.09 / China Daily

A military strategist has proposed the Chinese army to set up its own space forces in the future to protect China’s growing extraterrestrial assets.

Space forces, often portrayed in the realms of science fiction as having fleets of spaceships equipped with lasers, are being developed by countries including the US and Russia to protect their off-world interests.

Wang Fa’an, a senior researcher on the construction of armed forces with the Academy of Military Sciences, said his call for China to develop its own space forces is not necessary for the time being, but may become pressing after the country carries out more space missions.

“Hi-tech military corps, including space forces, need to be considered in the future development plan of the Chinese Army,” the expert told China Daily.

Wang said the People’s Liberation Army will not pursue a strong fleet in space, saying the world does not need another arms race.

Russian armed forces established their space contingent in August 1992, while the US air force planned to include lasers, missiles and space-based energy weapons in its Transformation Flight Plan released in 2004.

Other military powers including India are also contemplating developing space forces, say analysts.

Among the more than 900 satellites orbiting the Earth, nearly half belong to the US, while Russia and China have 91 and 54 respectively, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Massachusetts-based research body.

On Feb 10, a privately-owned US communications spacecraft collided with a defunct Russian military satellite about 800 km above northern Siberia causing wide debate about security in space.

Military contractors vying for cyberhacking contracts

Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S.

5.30.09 / Christopher Drew & John Markoff / New York Times

MELBOURNE, Fla. — The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts.

The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.

The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for “cyberninjas” at a time when other industries are shedding workers.

The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.

At a Raytheon facility here south of the Kennedy Space Center, a hub of innovation in an earlier era, rock music blares and empty cans of Mountain Dew pile up as engineers create tools to protect the Pentagon’s computers and crack into the networks of countries that could become adversaries. Prizes like cappuccino machines and stacks of cash spur them on, and a gong heralds each major breakthrough.

The young engineers represent the new face of a war that President Obama described Friday as “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.” The president said he would appoint a senior White House official to oversee the nation’s cybersecurity strategies.

Computer experts say the government is behind the curve in sealing off its networks from threats that are growing more persistent and sophisticated, with thousands of intrusions each day from organized criminals and legions of hackers for nations including Russia and China.

“Everybody’s attacking everybody,” said Scott Chase, a 30-year-old computer engineer who helps run the Raytheon unit here.

Mr. Chase, who wears his hair in a ponytail, and Terry Gillette, a 53-year-old former rocket engineer, ran SI Government Solutions before selling the company to Raytheon last year as the boom in the military’s cyberoperations accelerated.

The operation — tucked into several unmarked buildings behind an insurance office and a dentist’s office — is doing some of the most cutting-edge work, both in identifying weaknesses in Pentagon networks and in creating weapons for potential attacks.

Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals $10 billion each year, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government’s spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect it to rise rapidly.

The military contractors are now in the enviable position of turning what they learned out of necessity — protecting the sensitive Pentagon data that sits on their own computers — into a lucrative business that could replace some of the revenue lost from cancellations of conventional weapons systems.

Executives at Lockheed Martin, which has long been the government’s largest information-technology contractor, also see the demand for greater computer security spreading to energy and health care agencies and the rest of the nation’s critical infrastructure. But for now, most companies remain focused on the national-security arena, where the hottest efforts involve anticipating how an enemy might attack and developing the resources to strike back.

Though even the existence of research on cyberweapons was once highly classified, the Air Force plans this year to award the first publicly announced contract for developing tools to break into enemy computers. The companies are also teaming up to build a National Cyber Range, a model of the Internet for testing advanced techniques.

Military experts said Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, which have long been major players in the Pentagon’s security efforts, are leading the push into offensive cyberwarfare, along with the Raytheon unit. This involves finding vulnerabilities in other countries’ computer systems and developing software tools to exploit them, either to steal sensitive information or disable the networks.

Mr. Chase and Mr. Gillette said the Raytheon unit, which has about 100 employees, grew out of a company they started with friends at Florida Institute of Technology that concentrated on helping software makers find flaws in their own products. Over the last several years, their focus shifted to the military and intelligence agencies, which wanted to use their analytic tools to detect vulnerabilities and intrusions previously unnoticed.

Like other contractors, the Raytheon teams set up “honey pots,” the equivalent of sting operations, to lure hackers into digital cul-de-sacs that mimic Pentagon Web sites. They then capture the attackers’ codes and create defenses for them.

And since most of the world’s computers run on the Windows or the Linux systems, their work has also provided a growing window into how to attack foreign networks in any cyberwar.

“It takes a nonconformist to excel at what we do,” said Mr. Gillette, a tanned surfing aficionado who looks like a 1950s hipster in his T-shirts with rolled-up sleeves.

The company, which would allow interviews with other employees only on the condition that their last names not be used because of security concerns, hired one of its top young workers, Dustin, after he won two major hacking contests and dropped out of college. “I always approach it like a game, and it’s been fun,” said Dustin, now 22.

Another engineer, known as Jolly, joined Raytheon in April after earning a master’s degree in computer security at DePaul University in Chicago. “You think defense contractors, and you think bureaucracy, and not necessarily a lot of interesting and challenging projects,” he said.

The Pentagon’s interest in cyberwarfare has reached “religious intensity,” said Daniel T. Kuehl, a military historian at the National Defense University. And the changes carry through to soldiers being trained to defend and attack computer and wireless networks out on the battlefield.

That shift can be seen in the remaking of organizations like the Association of Old Crows, a professional group that includes contractors and military personnel.

The Old Crows have deep roots in what has long been known as electronic warfare — the use of radar and radio technologies for jamming and deception.

But the financing for electronic warfare had slowed recently, prompting the Old Crows to set up a broader information-operations branch last year and establish a new trade journal to focus on cyberwarfare.

The career of Joel Harding, the director of the group’s Information Operations Institute, exemplifies the increasing role that computing and the Internet are playing in the military.

A 20-year veteran of military intelligence, Mr. Harding shifted in 1996 into one of the earliest commands that studied government-sponsored computer hacker programs. After leaving the military, he took a job as an analyst at SAIC, a large contractor developing computer applications for military and intelligence agencies.

Mr. Harding estimates that there are now 3,000 to 5,000 information operations specialists in the military and 50,000 to 70,000 soldiers involved in general computer operations. Adding specialists in electronic warfare, deception and other areas could bring the total number of information operations personnel to as many as 88,700, he said.

Afghan human rights groups concerned over likely US usage of white phosphorus

Afghan rights groups eye allegations of phosphorus use

5.10.09 / AP

KABUL (AP) — Doctors voiced concern over “unusual” burns on Afghan villagers wounded in an already controversial U.S.-Taliban battle, and the country’s top human rights groups said it is investigating the possibility white phosphorus was used.

The American military on Sunday denied using the incendiary in the battle in Farah province— which PresidentHamid Karzai has said killed 125 to 130 civilians — but left open the possibility that Taliban militants did. The U.S. says Taliban fighters have used white phosphorus, a spontaneously flammable material that leaves severe chemical burns on flesh, at least four times the last two years.

Using white phosphorus to illuminate a target or create smoke is considered legitimate under international law, but rights groups say its use over populated areas can indiscriminately burn civilians and constitutes a war crime.

Afghan doctors told The Associated Press they have treated at least 14 patients with severe burns the doctors have never seen before. The villagers were wounded during last Monday’s battle in Farah province.

Allegations that white phosphorus or another chemical may have been used threatens to deepen the controversy over what Afghan officials say could be the worst case of civilian deaths since the 2001 U.S. invasion that ousted the Taliban regime.

In Kabul on Sunday, hundreds of people marched near Kabul University to protest the U.S. military’s role in the deaths.

The incident in Farah drew the condemnation of Karzai, who called for an end to airstrikes. The U.S. has said militants kept villagers captive in hopes they would die in the fighting, creating a civilian casualties controversy.

However, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser said Sunday the United States would not end airstrikes. Retired Gen. James Jones refused to rule out any action because “we can’t fight with one hand tied behind our back.”

Along with Afghan and U.S. investigations into the battle, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has been looking into concerns that white phosphorus may have been used after strange burns were reported. Nader Nadery, a commissioner in the leading rights organization, said more investigation was needed.

“Our teams have met with patients,” Nadery told AP. “They are investigating the cause of the injuries and the use of white phosphorus.”

White phosphorus is a spontaneously flammable material that can cause painful chemical burns. It is used to mark targets, create smoke screens or as a weapon, and can be delivered by shells, flares or hand grenades, according to GlobalSecurity.org.

Human rights groups denounce its use for the severe burns it causes, though it is not banned by any treaty to which the United States is a signatory.

The U.S. military used white phosphorus in the battle of Fallujah in Iraq in November 2004. Israel’s military used it in January against Hamas targets in Gaza.

Col. Greg Julian, the top U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said the U.S. did not use white phosphorus as a weapon in last week’s battle. The U.S. does use white phosphorous to illuminate the night sky, he said.

Julian noted that military officials believe that Taliban militants have used white phosphorus at least four times in Afghanistan in the past two years. “I don’t know if they (militants) had it out there or not, but it’s not out of the question,” he said.

A spokesman for the Taliban could not be reached for comment Sunday.

The U.S. military on Saturday said that Afghan doctors in Farah told American officials the injuries seen in wounded Afghans from two villages in the province’s Bala Baluk district could have resulted from hand grenades or exploding propane tanks.

Dr. Mohammad Aref Jalali, the head of the burn unit at the Herat Regional Hospital in western Afghanistan who has treated five patients wounded in the battle, described the burns as “unusual.”

“I think it’s the result of a chemical used in a bomb, but I’m not sure what kind of chemical. But if it was a result of a burning house — from petrol or gas cylinders — that kind of burn would look different,” he said.

Gul Ahmad Ayubi, the deputy head of Farah’s health department, said the province’s main hospital had received 14 patients after the battle, all with burn wounds. Five patients were sent to Herat.

“There has been other airstrikes in Farah in the past. We had injuries from those battles, but this is the first time we have seen such burns on the bodies. I’m not sure what kind of bomb it was,” he said.

U.N. human rights investigators have also seen “extensive” burn wounds on victims and have raised questions about how the injuries were caused, said a U.N. official who asked not to be identified talking about internal deliberations. The U.N. has reached no conclusions about whether any chemical weapons may have been used, the official said.

Afghan officials say up to 147 people may have died in the battle in Farah, though the U.S. says that number is exaggerated.

Taliban militants have increased their attacks the last three years as the country’s insurgency has turned increasingly bloody. President Obama is sending 21,000 additional U.S. troops to the country to bolster the record 38,000 American forces already in the country.

Maine police department adds military armored personnel carrier to arsenal

Portland police boost arsenal with ‘tank’

The department receives two armored personnel carriers for free from the Department of Defense; one is for parts.

4.9.09 / David Hench / Portland Press Herald

Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

Lt. Gary Rogers sits behind the wheel of the Portland Police Department’s refurbished vehicle.

U.S. Army photo

Portland’s M113 armored personnel carrier will be painted a neutral black and will require some work before it’s ready to hit the streets.

The Portland Police Department is packing some heavy armor these days – 10 tons, give or take.

The department is in the process of configuring an M113 armored personnel carrier – affectionately referred to as a “tank” – for civilian law enforcement.

The track-driven military vehicles were offered for free as surplus property by the Department of Defense last fall, and Portland police got two of them. One will be used for parts, since maintaining the old vehicles is difficult.

“A lot of people look at it and say it’s too much,” said Capt. Ted Ross, head of operations for the department. “The benefit is to reduce the danger and exposure to danger for our officers that could be approaching a hostile or armed confrontation.”

There is no longer a turret-mounted machine gun, but Portland does plan on equipping the vehicle with a retractable battering ram – just in case officers need to force their way into a barricaded building.

“Anything we can do to make the officers and the general public safer, we’re willing to do,” Ross said. “We hope we never have to use it.”

Besides, they were free.

There are examples of when a department might need a heavily armored vehicle.

In Pittsburgh on Saturday, three officers were shot by a man with a high-powered assault rifle while they were responding to a domestic confrontation. When nearby officers sought to rescue two officers injured in the shooting, the only vehicle they had nearby was a standard panel van. They draped body armor over the windshield for protection.

The gunman did not fire on the van, but one of the retrieved officers died anyway.

Portland decided to apply for the armored personnel carrier last year because its 1980s vintage special reaction team vehicle was on its last legs.

“It wasn’t all that reliable,” said Lt. Gary Rogers, head of the special reaction team. “There were times when we would go to use it and it wouldn’t start and we’d leave it in the garage.”

A new armored police personnel vehicle costs between $185,000 and $200,000, money the department did not have, so the city pursued the M113.

“It was obtained with the intent of having something that would stop bullets,” Rogers said. “Although it may not be ideal for us in an urban environment, it will stop bullets.”

The department has since been able to obtain a homeland security grant to refurbish its old vehicle. In addition to a mechanical overhaul, the vehicle cab was affixed to a new, extended dual-wheel chassis, allowing it to be enlarged to carry more people.

The refurbished special reaction team vehicle, dubbed “Peacekeeper,” fits 10 people in a steel-encased cargo compartment in addition to a driver and a passenger in the front. It has a shielded turret on top and handrails and running boards on each side, which allows officers to use the vehicle’s steel-plate sides as protection from gunfire.

The back is large enough to load an injured person inside for medical treatment.

The vehicle was pressed into service its first day back from the shop in February, when the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency executed a “high-risk” search warrant on Portland Street, at a reputed drug house where guns were present. No shots were fired.

The “Peacekeeper” is more suited to an urban environment than the armored personnel carrier because it runs on tires and is therefore more maneuverable.

But the M113 is no slouch. The vehicle can do 40 mph and its linked tracks have rubber pads so they won’t damage the road. It gets 2.3 miles per gallon.

The vehicle is still sporting its Army camouflage paint job, which will be painted over with a more neutral black, and it will require some work before it is ready to hit the streets.

Once it is, members of the special reaction team can start training with it and devising scenarios for when it would be useful, said Rogers.

The Tucson Police Department has had an armored personnel carrier since 1994 and uses it 12 to 15 times a year for mobile cover, rescue and evacuation.

Air Force spy blimp designed to fly for 10 years nonstop

ISR blimp would fly for 10 years uninterrupted

3.28.09 / Michael Hoffman / Air Force Times

A blimp that hovers at 65,000 feet and stays aloft for a decade is what the Air Force hopes within five years will revolutionize its intelligence gathering.

Early estimates put the price at $400 million, according to the service’s chief scientist, Werner J.A. Dahm, who is overseeing the project.

The 450-foot-long airship would be a “potentially game-changing” addition to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities because of its 10-year flight time and a radar unit so massive it wouldn’t fit into any aircraft now in the service’s fleet, Dahm said.

“It would allow us to observe remarkably fine details over very long periods,” he said. “That lets us better understand how an adversary operates, how to anticipate their actions, how to interpret their intent, and many other things that we need today, tomorrow and beyond.”

The radar would track coalition and enemy movements on land, sea and air, advancing the capabilities provided by satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the Predator and the Reaper.

UAVs maintain a presence over the battlefield by cycling in and out of orbits; the blimp, too, would have that “unblinking eye” but without the support of launching and landing aircraft that the unending orbits demand, Dahm said.

The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, the military’s research arm, has been developing the aircraft since 2004. Work will start this year on the Integrated Sensor Is the Structure, or ISIS, a scaled-down version designed to fly a year without landing.

To keep the blimp in the air 10 years, scientists and engineers have had to design a hull that can withstand the elements at 65,000 feet, including a temperature of 130 degrees below zero, and produce a power source that can regenerate energy.

“We think we have the solutions to meet those technical challenges, and ISIS will let us try to put them all together into a complete functioning system,” Dahm said.

The hull material now can withstand a low of 150 degrees below zero and retain 85 percent of its fiber strength for 22 years, according to a DARPA presentation. Fuel cells recharged by the sun, instead of batteries, will power the blimp.

Lift will come from helium; the craft would have a sustained airspeed of 60 knots and a sprint speed of 100 knots, DARPA said.

Still, Dahm cautions, more work needs to be done. For example, the researchers still need to ensure the blimp can defend itself. Flying at 65,000 feet, the aircraft won’t be vulnerable to many enemy anti-aircraft systems but will be susceptible to “missiles and other threats,” Dahm said. “We need to assess if the technologies needed to make such systems possible are ready, and we need to learn how to effectively integrate those technologies into practical systems,” he said.

Right now, blimps with cameras are tethered above bases in Iraq and Afghanistan to provide security. The blimp in development, though, won’t be like any the military has ever used, Dahm said.

“We’ve never put a radar this large into a blimp before, and we’ve never tried to keep a blimp aloft continuously for years at these altitudes,” he said. “So, while it is a blimp, what we are doing in this joint DARPA/Air Force effort really is something absolutely revolutionary.”

Public military academies: Prep school or sneaky recruitment tool?

Public Military Academies: Prep Schools? Or Blatant Recruitment Pools?

9.19.08 / Allen McDuffee / In These Times

Public school systems are increasingly opening their doors to military academies — primarily in poor urban areas.

Matthew Hartman had every intention of enlisting in the Army directly after his graduation in two years. But it was Col. Sterling Stokes and his military staff who convinced Hartman that college, not the battlefield, was a better option. At least for now.

“They persuaded me that there is always time to serve my country and that maybe I would be able to serve even better if I went to college first,” Hartman, 16, says.

The Richmond, Va., native is a junior at the Franklin Military Academy in Richmond, where Stokes is principal. He earned the highest score on the 2008 National Chemistry Olympiad in his school, and is the type of student college admissions counselors would like to see among their applicants.

But for Cadet Hartman, the military seemed like a natural progression.

Academies like Franklin Military are part of the country’s rapidly expanding Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) program. The academies are exclusively JROTC and the Department of Defense helps fund them — part of a growing trend to introduce military schools into the public school system in primarily poor urban areas where many school systems are struggling, if not failing.

These academies aren’t boot camps for delinquents. There is no compulsory military service upon graduation. And they’re not the realization of the Bush administration’s machinations. In fact, administrators insist the academies are college prep schools.

But for many, the evidence isn’t so clear. Critics like Darlene Graminga, of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker pacifist organization, suggest that cases like Hartman’s are few and far between, and that the military academies are a veiled attempt to recruit American youth.

Graminga, program director of the group’s Truth in Recruiting Program, says, “I hardly doubt that it’s a coincidence that these schools are prospering at a time of war.”

Despite such concerns, public military academies are wildly popular among many parents and students.

Chicago — with more academies than any other city — can’t build them fast enough. Chicago’s sixth academy will open this fall. In all, the city has one-third of the country’s academies.

Each year, the Chicago Public Schools accepts only about 10 percent of academy applicants. For the 2007-2008 school year, approximately 7,500 students applied for 700 openings in the freshman class.

Extending JROTC

Military academies are part of the JROTC program that began in 1916. Former Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell is credited with advancing JROTC in its current form, in part by influencing then-President George H.W. Bush in 1992 to more than double the size of the program, from 1,500 JROTC programs to 3,500.

In his book, My American Journey, Powell wrote: “Inner-city kids, many from broken homes, found stability and role models in Junior ROTC. They got a taste of discipline, the work ethic, and they experienced pride of membership in something healthier than a gang. … Junior ROTC is a social bargain.”

In Virginia, the Richmond School Board and its Superintendent Richard Hunter conceptualized Franklin Military Academy — the country’s first secondary military academy — on the heels of the Vietnam War in the late ’70s. It opened its doors to 130 freshmen in the fall of 1980.

The following year, academies opened in St. Louis and Sandy Hook, N.J. After a 16-year gap, the Kenosha Military Academy in Wisconsin was built in 1998. Since then, the academies have grown at a rate of one to two a year.

“Students have to make the choice on their own to be here,” says Stokes, Franklin’s principal.

Once a student makes that first step, the application process is rigorous, including an interview and a written commitment from the parents, as well as the student.

Motivated

“We’re aiming at kids who aren’t in trouble but who aren’t fully realizing their potential, either,” says Ozzie Wright, principal of the Philadelphia Military Academy. “We often see kids who have all the makings of being good students, but have very unstable home lives because of economics and family structures. We can make a difference in these students’ lives.”

Elaine Macon-Johnson, who is in her fourth year at Franklin, teaches technology and business. She had arrived at the academy unwillingly, as part of a job reassignment, doubting whether public military academies should even exist. After a few years at Franklin, she says she became a convert.

“All I have to do is teach now,” Macon-Johnson says. “Before, I would have to spend so much time as disciplinarian.” These days, she says, “I don’t have behavior problems. And on the rare occasion that something does happen, it’s somebody else’s job to take care of, not mine.”

Many academy teachers, most of whom don’t have military backgrounds, say they feel the same way. Walking down the hallway in between classes, military instructor Sgt. Gary McCray says, “Look at this. When you were in school, did you ever see it so calm?” referring to the students quietly moving from one class to another, conversing. “Everybody is so relaxed,” McCray says.

Roberto Rodriguez, a first-year Marine Military Academy cadet, says, “I like that we could become leaders and we know every student. No bullies, none of that, so it’s real cool.”

Students attending the military academies are required to take one four-year military-related course. The JROTC curriculum includes military history, military protocol, civics and physical fitness. Students often participate in drill team, color guard and extracurricular activities, such as rock climbing and traveling. Some schools arrange an international trip each year for a limited number of students, and nearly all the academies send a large number of students to the Army-Navy football game each year. For the many students who have never been out of state — even out of their city — this is an appealing perk.

Recruitment factories?

As part of the 1916 National Defense Act, JROTC was created to prepare American youth to fight in World War I, if needed. And JROTC falls under the recruitment section of the Pentagon’s budget.

Principals are quick to say that they are not asked to boost the numbers of graduating students who enlist. Stokes says, “It’s not like we have been given [an enlistment] quota here.”

But in February 2000, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen told the House Armed Services Committee that JROTC is “one of the best recruiting devices we could have.” And Powell wrote in My American Journey, “Liberal school administrators and teachers claimed that we were trying to ‘militarize’ education. Yes, I’ll admit, the armed forces might get a youngster more inclined to enlist as a result of Junior ROTC. But society got a far greater payoff.”

In a difficult period for military recruiters, the Pentagon is expected to spend $20.5 billion in 2009 on recruiting, some of which will be distributed to JROTC. Pauline Lipman, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told PBS in December 2007, “It would be really naive to think that the military would, in fact, be expanding these schools and these programs and pouring millions of dollars into the schools at a time when they actually are having a recruitment crisis, if the schools were not about recruiting students.”

The Army has tried to accommodate its recruitment woes by reducing its annual recruitment goal, raising the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42, lowering mental aptitude standards, and welcoming in the overweight, the physically injured and formerly convicted.

Military statistics over the last two decades indicate that 30 percent to 55 percent of JROTC students eventually enlist. The military academies, however, maintain that their enlistment rates after graduation ranges between 4 percent and 10 percent.

“If the Defense Department is looking to us for recruitment, then they are making a bad investment,” says Wright, the principal at Philadelphia Military Academy.

But the numbers are inconclusive, if not misleading. The academies collect their data through exit interviews with graduating students. If a student goes directly into the military upon graduation — and the student has made that decision at the time of filling out the questionnaire — he or she would be part of that 4 percent-to-10 percent pool. However, if he or she doesn’t directly enlist and instead, for example, goes to college on a ROTC scholarship, then the academies, like other public high schools, don’t have the mechanisms in place to track the student after graduation.

Ambiguities

Hugh Price, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, once advocated using the military’s discipline to help at-risk youth. As vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1988 until 1994, he helped conceive and launch the quasi-military program for school dropouts that came to be known as the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program.

Price says he now thinks that schools have better options than a military presence. He wants to demilitarize public education and wonders whether the government can “find a way to make the attributes of the military model generic? Can it be done without the military? We need to find a way to help the struggling youth of America without funding from the military.”

Under the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, any school that receives federal funding must allow access to military recruiters. One of the military instructors at Franklin boasts that the school had a good relationship with the area recruiters. “Oh yeah,” he says, “We see them all the time.”

The academies often bill themselves as college prep schools. And looking at the schools and the learning environments, it appears they are making a difference in the students’ lives. Arne Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools system, boasts that the city’s military academies have a 94 percent graduation rate versus the district average of 84 percent.

But Oskar Castro, national coordinator of the AFSC’s Youth & Militarism program, isn’t convinced.

“Where is the evidence?” he asks. “So many of these schools are so new, and they claim that it’s too early to tell [whether a school is successful], so why are we still building them if we don’t know?”

And the AFSC’s Graminga argues that the academies don’t produce better results than other schools that are part of the small charter school programs, currently en vogue among public school leaders in large, urban environments.

“We have seen small schools projects be successful and the successes that are related to the military academies are in line with that,” she says. “But there doesn’t seem to be anything inherent to the military academies that leads us to say, ‘Now, they’ve got the answer!’ “

If Graminga is right, that might explain the success at Franklin Military, which has less than 500 students and an exceptionally low 15 to 1, student-teacher ratio.

Opportunity knocks

Powell and others argue that the military has historically given opportunities to those who have limited options. But making that argument also acknowledges that the military uses the academies as a recruiting tool. And given the academies’ demographics and the destruction of the GI Bill, which once provided funding for a college education, one can reasonably ask whether the Department of Defense is truly concerned with sending poor black and Latino kids to college.

In Richmond, Franklin Military consistently accommodates a 95 percent African-American student body in a city that, according to the 2006 census, has a population of which 20 percent exist below the poverty line and 54 percent are African-American.

Academy administrators maintain that these are the realities of urban America. Philadelphia Military’s Wright says, “The wealthier families in cities have the advantage of sending their children to private schools and a certain portion will go to the better public schools. But in cities, we know we are facing a particular demographic.”

The military, he adds, has a “history of providing opportunities” to underprivileged sectors of society.

If interest by school districts in military-sponsored education is any indication, we can expect to see a tremendous growth in the number of academies. What is less clear is whether the military academies would be considered successful if the public school systems in these urban areas were doing an adequate job.

“If the military branches are formally involved as sponsors, operators and funders,” says Price, “it is naive to expect them to resist the temptation to [use] these programs as a recruitment pipeline. If anything, given global conditions, the pressure on them to do so probably will intensify instead of subside.”

Israeli military college admits Gaza war crimes

Israel troops admit Gaza abuses

3.19.09 / BBC

Israel frequently claims to possess the most moral army in the world

An Israeli military college has printed damning soldiers’ accounts of the killing of civilians and vandalism during recent operations in Gaza.

One account tells of a sniper killing a mother and children at close range whom troops had told to leave their home.

Another speaker at the seminar described what he saw as the “cold blooded murder” of a Palestinian woman.

The army has defended its conduct during the Gaza offensive but said it would investigate the testimonies.

The Israeli army has said it will investigate the soldiers’ accounts.

The testimonies were published by the military academy at Oranim College. Graduates of the academy, who had served in Gaza, were speaking to new recruits at a seminar.

“[The testimonies] conveyed an atmosphere in which one feels entitled to use unrestricted force against Palestinians,” academy director Dany Zamir told public radio.

Heavy civilian casualties during the three-week operation which ended in the blockaded coastal strip on 18 January provoked an international outcry.

Correspondents say the testimonies undermine Israel’s claims that troops took care to protect non-combatants and accusations that Hamas militants were responsible for putting civilians into harm’s way.

‘Less important’

The Palestinian woman and two of her children were allegedly shot after they misunderstood instructions about which way to walk having been ordered out of their home by troops.

“The climate in general… I don’t know how to describe it…. the lives of Palestinians, let’s say, are much, much less important than the lives of our soldiers,” an infantry squad leader is quoted saying.

In another cited case, a commander ordered troops to kill an elderly woman walking on a road, even though she was easily identifiable and clearly not a threat.

Testimonies, which were given by combat pilots and infantry soldiers, also included allegations of unnecessary destruction of Palestinian property.

“We would throw everything out of the windows to make room and order. Everything… Refrigerators, plates, furniture. The order was to throw all of the house’s contents outside,” a soldier said.

One non-commissioned officer related at the seminar that an old woman crossing a main road was shot by soldiers.

“I don’t know whether she was suspicious, not suspicious, I don’t know her story… I do know that my officer sent people to the roof in order to take her out… It was cold-blooded murder,” he said.

The transcript of the session for the college’s Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course, which was held last month, appeared in a newsletter published by the academy.

Israeli human rights groups have criticised the military for failing to properly investigate violations of the laws of war in Gaza despite plenty of evidence of possible war crimes.

‘Moral army’

The soldiers’ testimonies also reportedly told of an unusually high intervention by military and non-military rabbis, who circulated pamphlets describing the war in religious terminology.

Palestinian civilians paid a heavy price during the three-week Israeli operation

“All the articles had one clear message,” one soldier said. “We are the people of Israel, we arrived in the country almost by miracle, now we need to fight to uproot the gentiles who interfere with re-conquering the Holy Land.”

“Many soldiers’ feelings were that this was a war of religion,” he added.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio that the findings would be examined seriously.

“I still say we have the most moral army in the world. Of course there may be exceptions but I have absolutely no doubt this will be inspected on a case-by-case basis,” he said.

Medical authorities say more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s 22-day operation, including some 440 children, 110 women, and dozens of elderly people.

The stated aim was to curb rocket and mortar fire by militants from Gaza. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians were killed.

Apparent mystery of who ordered troops to Alabama town in wake of shootings, event under Army inquiry

Army reviews troop use after fatal Ala. shootings

3.18.09 / Jay Reeves / AP

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Army said Wednesday it opened an inquiry into whether federal laws were broken when nearly two dozen soldiers were sent to a south Alabama town after 11 people died in a shooting spree last week.

State officials said the deployment of 22 military police officers and the provost marshal from Fort Rucker was requested neither by Republican Gov. Bob Riley nor the White House, which typically is required by law for soldiers to operate on U.S. soil.

Col. Michael J. Negard of the Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va., said officials are trying to determine who ordered the soldiers to Samson, who requested them, why they were sent and what they did there.

“In addition to determining the facts, this inquiry will also consider whether law, regulation and policy were followed,” he said. He declined further comment.

Former Samson resident Michael McLendon, 28, fatally shot nine victims in the town and killed a 10th in a neighboring county. The March 10 spree ended when McLendon killed himself, and the soldiers arrived in the hours after.

Investigators said McLendon was despondent over his inability to hold a job and his failure to become a Marine or a police officer.

Riley isn’t concerned whether the military overstepped its bounds, said Press Secretary Jeff Emerson.

“From what I understand it was a few folks who came to direct traffic or help where they could,” Emerson said. “If it had been more than what it was there might be a reason for concern, but these folks just came to see if they could help and left.”

The White House press office did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Reporters and curious citizens poured in after the slayings, overwhelming the town of 2,000 near the Florida state line. Samson is about 35 miles from Fort Rucker, the Army’s main helicopter training base.

Samson’s tiny police force and county officers were stretched to the limit after the shootings, which left investigators with at least seven different crime scenes to check for evidence.

Samson Mayor Clay King said he did not know why the soldiers showed up in town, but he was glad they did.

“The only function they did was directing traffic. They took drinks and snacks to other people working crime scenes,” King said. “I’m proud they were here.”

Residents said soldiers from Fort Rucker, a major employer in southeastern Alabama, have a reputation for helping nearby communities in emergencies.

According to a summary by the Congressional Research Service, federal law generally prohibits the armed forces from being used as domestic police. Exceptions include emergencies, when troops can help civilians but don’t directly act as police.

The chairman of the Libertarian Party of Alabama, Stephen Gordon, said while many are worried about the use of Army troops in civilian police roles, he doubts there was anything nefarious about the soldiers in Samson.

“There is no apparent harm here, but the principle still needs to be upheld,” Gordon said. “The barrier has been lowered for the next time, and we really need to take a look at what happened.”

America’s medicated army

6.5.08 / Mark Thompson / TIME

Seven months after Sergeant Christopher LeJeune started scouting Baghdad’s dangerous roads — acting as bait to lure insurgents into the open so his Army unit could kill them — he found himself growing increasingly despondent. “We’d been doing some heavy missions, and things were starting to bother me,” LeJeune says. His unit had been protecting Iraqi police stations targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, hunting down mortars hidden in dark Baghdad basements and cleaning up its own messes. He recalls the order his unit got after a nighttime firefight to roll back out and collect the enemy dead. When LeJeune and his buddies arrived, they discovered that some of the bodies were still alive. “You don’t always know who the bad guys are,” he says. “When you search someone’s house, you have it built up in your mind that these guys are terrorists, but when you go in, there’s little bitty tiny shoes and toys on the floor — things like that started affecting me a lot more than I thought they would.”

So LeJeune visited a military doctor in Iraq, who, after a quick session, diagnosed depression. The doctor sent him back to war armed with the antidepressant Zoloft and the antianxiety drug clonazepam. “It’s not easy for soldiers to admit the problems that they’re having over there for a variety of reasons,” LeJeune says. “If they do admit it, then the only solution given is pills.”

While the headline-grabbing weapons in this war have been high-tech wonders, like unmanned drones that drop Hellfire missiles on the enemy below, troops like LeJeune are going into battle with a different kind of weapon, one so stealthy that few Americans even know of its deployment. For the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medicines are intended not only to help troops keep their cool but also to enable the already strapped Army to preserve its most precious resource: soldiers on the front lines. Data contained in the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials say.

At a Pentagon that keeps statistics on just about everything, there is no central clearinghouse for this kind of data, and the Army hasn’t consistently asked about prescription-drug use, which makes it difficult to track. Given the traditional stigma associated with soldiers seeking mental help, the survey, released in March, probably underestimates antidepressant use. But if the Army numbers reflect those of other services — the Army has by far the most troops deployed to the war zones — about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were on such medications last fall. The Army estimates that authorized drug use splits roughly fifty-fifty between troops taking antidepressants — largely the class of drugs that includes Prozac and Zoloft — and those taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien.

In some ways, the prescriptions may seem unremarkable. Generals, history shows, have plied their troops with medicinal palliatives at least since George Washington ordered rum rations at Valley Forge. During World War II, the Nazis fueled their blitzkrieg into France and Poland with the help of an amphetamine known as Pervitin. The U.S. Army also used amphetamines during the Vietnam War.

The military’s rising use of antidepressants also reflects their prevalence in the civilian population. In 2004, the last year for which complete data for the U.S. are available, doctors wrote 147 million prescriptions for antidepressants, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical-market-research firm. This number reflects in part the common practice of cycling through different medications to find the most effective drug. A 2006 federally funded study found that 70% of those taking antidepressants along with therapy experience some improvement in mood.

When it comes to fighting wars, though, troops have historically been barred from using such drugs in combat. And soldiers — who are younger and healthier on average than the general population — have been prescreened for mental illnesses before enlisting.

The increase in the use of medication among U.S. troops suggests the heavy mental and psychological price being paid by soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon surveys show that while all soldiers deployed to a war zone will feel stressed, 70% will manage to bounce back to normalcy. But about 20% will suffer from what the military calls “temporary stress injuries,” and 10% will be afflicted with “stress illnesses.” Such ailments, according to briefings commanders get before deploying, begin with mild anxiety and irritability, difficulty sleeping, and growing feelings of apathy and pessimism. As the condition worsens, the feelings last longer and can come to include panic, rage, uncontrolled shaking and temporary paralysis. The symptoms often continue back home, playing a key role in broken marriages, suicides and psychiatric breakdowns. The mental trauma has become so common that the Pentagon may expand the list of “qualifying wounds” for a Purple Heart — historically limited to those physically injured on the battlefield — to include posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on May 2 that it’s “clearly something” that needs to be considered, and the Pentagon is weighing the change.

Using drugs to cope with battlefield traumas is not discussed much outside the Army, but inside the service it has been the subject of debate for years. “No magic pill can erase the image of a best friend’s shattered body or assuage the guilt from having traded duty with him that day,” says Combat Stress Injury, a 2006 medical book edited by Charles Figley and William Nash that details how troops can be helped by such drugs. “Medication can, however, alleviate some debilitating and nearly intolerable symptoms of combat and operational stress injuries” and “help restore personnel to full functioning capacity.”

Which means that any drug that keeps a soldier deployed and fighting also saves money on training and deploying replacements. But there is a downside: the number of soldiers requiring long-term mental-health services soars with repeated deployments and lengthy combat tours. If troops do not get sufficient time away from combat — both while in theater and during the “dwell time” at home before they go back to war — it’s possible that antidepressants and sleeping aids will be used to stretch an already taut force even tighter. “This is what happens when you try to fight a long war with an army that wasn’t designed for a long war,” says Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan Administration.

Military families wonder about the change, according to Joyce Raezer of the private National Military Family Association. “Boy, it’s really nice to have these drugs,” she recalls a military doctor saying, “so we can keep people deployed.” And professionals have their doubts. “Are we trying to bandage up what is essentially an insufficient fighting force?” asks Dr. Frank Ochberg, a veteran psychiatrist and founding board member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Such questions have assumed greater urgency as more is revealed about the side effects of some mental-health medications. Last year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urged the makers of antidepressants to expand a 2004 “black box” warning that the drugs may increase the risk of suicide in children and adolescents. The agency asked for — and got — an expanded warning that included young adults ages 18 to 24, the age group at the heart of the Army. The question now is whether there is a link between the increased use of the drugs in the Iraqi and Afghan theaters and the rising suicide rate in those places. There have been 164 Army suicides in Afghanistan and Iraq from the wars’ start through 2007, and the annual rate there is now double the service’s 2001 rate.

At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, including 36 in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army said on May 29. That’s the highest toll since it started keeping such records in 1980. Nearly 40% of Army suicide victims in 2006 and 2007 took psychotropic drugs — overwhelmingly, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft. While the Army cites failed relationships as the primary cause, some outside experts sense a link between suicides and prescription-drug use — though there is also no way of knowing how many suicide attempts the antidepressants may have prevented by improving a soldier’s spirits. “The high percentage of U.S. soldiers attempting suicide after taking SSRIs should raise serious concerns,” says Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, who teaches psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “And there’s no question they’re using them to prop people up in difficult circumstances.”

The Trauma of War
Before the advent of SSRIs — Lilly’s Prozac was the first to be approved by the FDA, in 1987, followed by Zoloft from Pfizer, Paxil from GlaxoSmithKline, Celexa from Forest Pharmaceuticals and others — existing antidepressants had many disabling side effects. Impaired memory and judgment, dizziness, drowsiness and other complications made them ill suited for troops in combat. The newer drugs have fewer side effects and, unlike earlier drugs, are generally not addictive or toxic, even when taken in large quantities. They work by keeping neural connections bathed in a brain chemical known as serotonin. That amplifies serotonin’s mood-brightening effect, at least for some people.

In 1994 then Major E. Cameron Ritchie, an Army psychiatrist, was among the first to suggest that SSRIs should deploy with Army combat units. In a paper written and published after she returned from a combat deployment to Somalia, Ritchie noted that the sick-call chests used by military doctors “contain either outdated or no psychiatric medications.” She concluded, “If depressive symptoms are moderate and manageable, medication may be preferable to medical evacuation.”

By 1999, military docs were debating the matter among themselves. Nash, a Navy psychiatrist, wrote that Navy doctors — who also provide Marines with medical care — had “sharp differences of opinion” over letting troops in war zones use SSRIs. Skeptics argued that their “real safety” in combat had not been proved. Supporters countered that their use could “avoid depleting manpower resources and damaging individual careers through unnecessary removals from operational duty.” Nash reviewed the medical literature and reported that SSRIs “can be safely administered to deploying and deployed personnel.”

The trickle of new drugs became a flood after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Details of America’s medicated wars come from the mental-health surveys the Army has conducted each year since the war began. If the surveys are right, many U.S. soldiers experience a common but haunting mismatch in combat life: while nearly two-thirds of the soldiers surveyed in Iraq in 2006 knew someone who had been killed or wounded, fewer than 15% knew for certain that they had actually killed a member of the enemy in return. That imbalance between seeing the price of war up close and yet not feeling able to do much about it, the survey suggests, contributes to feelings of “intense fear, helplessness or horror” that plant the seeds of mental distress. “A friend was liquefied in the driver’s position on a tank, and I saw everything,” was a typical comment. Another: “A huge f______ bomb blew my friend’s head off like 50 meters from me.” Such indelible scenes — and wondering when and where the next one will happen — are driving thousands of soldiers to take antidepressants, military psychiatrists say. It’s not hard to imagine why.

Repeated deployments to the war zones also contribute to the onset of mental-health problems. Nearly 30% of troops on their third deployment suffer from serious mental-health problems, a top Army psychiatrist told Congress in March. The doctor, Colonel Charles Hoge, added that recent research has shown the current 12 months between combat tours “is insufficient time” for soldiers “to reset” and recover from the stress of a combat tour before heading back to war.

Colonel Joseph Horam says antidepressants have made “a striking difference” in the way troops are treated in war. A doctor in the Wyoming Army National Guard, Horam served in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War and has been deployed to Iraq twice during this war. “In the Persian Gulf War, we didn’t have these medications, so our basic philosophy was ‘three hots and a cot’” — giving stressed troops a little rest and relaxation to see if they improved. “If they didn’t get better right away, they’d need to head to the rear and probably out of theater.” But in his most recent stint in Baghdad in 2006, he treated a soldier who guarded Iraqi detainees. “He was distraught while he was having high-level interactions with detainees, having emotional confrontations with them — and carrying weapons,” Horam says. “But he was part of a highly trained team, and we didn’t want to lose him. So we put him on an SSRI, and within a week, he was a new person, and we got him back to full duty.”

It wasn’t until November 2006 that the Pentagon set a uniform policy for all the services. But the curious thing about it was that it didn’t mention the new antidepressants. Instead, it simply barred troops from taking older drugs, including “lithium, anticonvulsants and antipsychotics.” The goal, a participant in crafting the policy said, was to give SSRIs a “green light” without saying so. Last July, a paper published by three military psychiatrists in Military Medicine, the independent journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, urged military doctors headed for Afghanistan and Iraq to “request a considerable quantity of the SSRI they are most comfortable prescribing” for the “treatment of new-onset depressive disorders” once in the war zones. The medications, the doctors concluded, help “to ‘conserve the fighting strength,’” the motto of the Army Medical Corps.

These days Ritchie — now a colonel and a psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general — thinks the military’s use of SSRIs has helped destigmatize mental problems. “What we’re trying to do is make treating depression and PTSD — especially PTSD, which is quite common for soldiers now — fairly routine,” she says. “We don’t want to make it harder for folks to do their job and their mission by saying they can’t use these medications.” Ritchie, who communicates “six times a day” with her colleagues in the war zones, says she is unaware of “any bad outcomes” resulting from soldiers taking SSRIs.

William Winkenwerder Jr., who issued the 2006 policy as the Pentagon’s top doctor before stepping down last year, says the new medicines are working well. “Combat presents some unique and important caveats — obviously, those who are being treated have access to firearms, and they may be under significant stress, so they need to be very carefully evaluated, and good clinical decisions need to be made,” Winkenwerder tells TIME. “It’s my belief that is happening.”

“In a Total Daze”
And yet the battlefield seems an imperfect environment for widespread prescription of these medicines. LeJeune, who spent 15 months in Iraq before returning home in May 2004, says many more troops need help — pharmaceutical or otherwise — but don’t get it because of fears that it will hurt their chance for promotion. “They don’t want to destroy their career or make everybody go in a convoy to pick up your prescription,” says LeJeune, now 34 and living in Utah. “In the civilian world, when you have a problem, you go to the doctor, and you have therapy followed up by some medication. In Iraq, you see the doctor only once or twice, but you continue to get drugs constantly.” LeJeune says the medications — combined with the war’s other stressors — created unfit soldiers. “There were more than a few convoys going out in a total daze.”

About a third of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq say they can’t see a mental-health professional when they need to. When the number of troops in Iraq surged by 30,000 last year, the number of Army mental-health workers remained the same — about 200 — making counseling and care even tougher to get.

“Burnout and compassion fatigue” are rising among such personnel, and there have been “recent psychiatric evacuations” of Army mental-health workers from Iraq, the 2007 survey says. Soldiers are often stationed at outposts so isolated that follow-up visits with counselors are difficult. “In a perfect world,” admits Nash, who has just retired from the Navy, “you would not want to rely on medications as your first-line treatment, but in deployed settings, that is often all you have.”

And just as more troops are taking these drugs, there are new doubts about the drugs’ effectiveness. A pair of recent reports from Rand and the federal Institute of Medicine (iom) raise doubts about just how much the new medicines can do to alleviate PTSD. The Rand study, released in April, says the “overall effects for SSRIs, even in the largest clinical trials, are modest.” Last October the iom concluded, “The evidence is inadequate to determine the efficacy of SSRIs in the treatment of PTSD.”

Chris LeJeune could have told them that. When he returned home in May 2004, he remained on clonazepam and other drugs. He became one of 300,000 Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffer from PTSD or depression. “But PTSD isn’t fixed by taking pills — it’s just numbed,” he claims now. “And I felt like I was drugged all the time.” So a year ago, he simply stopped taking them. “I just started trying to fight my demons myself,” he says, with help from VA counseling. He laughs when asked how he’s doing. “I’d like to think,” he says, “that I’m really damn close back to normal.”

Couple of Reuters photos of US Army soldiers patrolling Alabama town where shooting spree took place

The typo (Ruker/Rucker) is Reuters’. These come from their screenshot gallery on the aftermath of the shootings.