Whereas the disruption of an enemy's communications systems and other technology is not a novel concept, the Defense Department is searching for new ways to do this. "If I'm flying against an air defense system trying to track me, if I can suppress or block that signal and send back a false one, that's an example of electronic warfare," Maybury says. "This is particularly important as we get into the advanced information age; more and more aircraft are being run by software."
Boeing's $67 million EA-18G Growler is an example of an electronic warfare weapon. It has been used by the U.S. Navy as a communications jammer aircraft since 2009. The Growler is now or will likely soon be able to transmit malicious software code via its array of sensors, Bronk says.
Cyberwarfare
"The whole field of cyber has exploded since 9/11," Maybury says. "In the last year alone, we have created two brand-new career fields in the Air Force—one for remotely piloted aircraft operators and one for cyber operators."
Applying traditional military strategy to the cyber world, "you want to outmaneuver your attacker or change the battlefield dynamically," Maybury says. One idea the Air Force has been pursuing is dynamically changing the signature of its information technology (IT) systems to prevent hackers from targeting Defense Department computers. This could mean moving information around on virtual servers within a physical server or, potentially, switching a server's operating system without disrupting operations. "We're talking about saving the state of your data and then quickly converting to a different OS or application using the same data," he adds.
Cyberconflict is already a reality, although it is debatable whether it has ever escalated to the level of a "cyberwar," where one nation uses IT systems to attack the computers and networks of another nation. "For me, the biggest IT weapon innovation is Stuxnet, a piece of malware that reputedly knocked perhaps as many as one-third of Iran's centrifuges at Natanz offline—that's a major piece of engineering," Bronk says. "Regardless of who made it we must see this as an enormous change in how covert-action, low-intensity battle is waged," he adds. "This will likely not be an isolated case."
Missile guidance systems
Combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq often exist right in the middle of civilian areas, placing even greater demands on precision use of explosive weaponry. Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) have been in development for much longer than a decade, but they have matured since 9/11 to the point where the U.S. and its allies can "destroy a particular corner or room of a house with a rocket fired from 70 kilometers away, something that is both ludicrous and outstanding," Gustafson says.
Guided missile systems have become accurate to within a square meter, according to Gustafson. "In fact, we are now so accurate that we are downgrading the warheads," he says. "Why do we need to cause all the extra destruction when all we want to do is kill the baddies in [a particular] room?"
Smart grenade launcher
The shoulder-fired XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System, about the size of a regular rifle, has been in the hands of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan since late 2010. The CDTE uses thermal sensors and a laser range finder to spot its target, after which microchipped, radio-controlled 25-millimeter ammunition can destroy that target, even when hidden behind a wall or other cover. Called "the Punisher," the CDTE weighs about 6 kilograms and is 75 centimeters in length.
Satellite-guided parachutes
Joint Precision Airdrop Systems (JPADS) use global positioning systems, maneuverable parachutes and an onboard computer to increase airdrop precision when delivering pallets of supplies to precise targets, something that is a particular challenge in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. The Air Force first tested JPADS in Afghanistan in August 2006, dropping containers with food, water, ammunition and other supplies, weighing 230 to 1,000 kilograms, to troops on the ground. The U.S. Marine Corps have been using similar technology in Iraq since 2004 to drop 900-kilogram loads within 70 meters of their designated target points.
The Air Force has increased its precision airdrops significantly, says Maybury, adding that "this is particularly a challenge in places like Afghanistan, where there are lots of hills and you want to make sure that you drop things in particular locations so they don't fall into enemy hands."
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20 Comments
Add CommentAssymetrical warfare funded by paranoid attitudes and beliefs sounds like a collosal waste of time and money to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would have thought a better response would have been to tell the Pakistani leadership to deliver Omar and Osama within 48 hours or there would be consequences(Pakistani intelligence were, after all, the intermediaries between Washington and their former proxies). It would have saved quite a bit of blood and treasure, made the current global financial mess more tractable, and won America admiration for restraint and adherance to law; instead of contempt for hypocrisy and over-reaction. The money spent on the wars since would have funded a lot of peaceful and productive science to refocus the US economy for a better US 21st century. The current spiral is not prognostically inspiring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGoes back even further ,Hel. Back to the voice calling for an eye for an eye and the deification of vengeance(we seem to be anagramising Geneva to avenge)rather than impartial and objective justice. As someone remarked, its a recipe for all-round blindness, reductio ad absurdum, on the grounds you might just get to be the one-eyed king. Mohamed based his creed on the same biblical pre-scientific folk-tales. Religion played its ethical part in our human infancy, its time for evolutionary weaning. Religious antagonism is no solution, it just recreates the ignorance of centuries of sectarian and racist conflict. Given twentieth century hardware, not advisable. Still MAD.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParanoid?? Have you been missing in action for the last 20-30 years?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy apologies scientific earthling, this comment was meant for dubina.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParanoid?? Have you been missing in action for the last 20-30 years?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, paranoia is too simplistic a term.More a sort of insatiable acquisitive obsessive-compulsive collective disorder. Spliced to an immature glorifying of war as some sort of machismo virtue. Our still evolving animal nature, and its territorial possessiveness, needs leashing. Otherwise we finish as mere hominids, rather than our potential human totality. Those trying to control the planet should perhaps begin by controlling their simian selves. A fear of death manifesting as over-aggressive behaviour, but still related to paranoia. Knotty little complex.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@opus diablos; I like your pseudo Latin! However, your incoherent english leaves me wondering; What planet are you from?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you have Totality Humanity there?
Oh, never mind. You don't have to answer.
After 9/11 attack America developed more and more destructive weapons, some very powerful x rays equipments.There is no effect on Afghan and Iraqi people, war is still going on and U.S is ready to withdraw defeated way from both counties. About your powerful lesser X rays machine you are insulting more and more people particularly foreign dignitaries. I think America did learn a lesson from both war as she did not learned any lesson from Vietnam and Korea war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot sure any lessons were learned. The Brits and Sarko just ran a Suez sequel, but whereas Eisenhower(a seasoned soldier)put the block on the original, Obama green-lighted Libya, and seems determined to follow on to Syria and Iran. That same military/industrial complex Ike warned about is wagging the dogs of war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTotality Humanity, Quinn? Who's losing coherence, here?I'm from the same dying planet as you. But the Martians(Mars is the god of both war and the eponymous market)seem to be anxious to ensure they reduce the Earth until they feel at home.If America invested half what it puts into weapons into a resumption of JFK's war on poverty half the muslims would be happy to bow towards Washington. If they were an honest broker to sort the Palestinian situation out the other half would comply, and we could all take a break from the idiotic 'war on terror'. America's problem is follows London's pattern, and has forgotten/erased its revolutionary democratic origins.
About 2,400 years ago, a clever Chinese fellow said that to force an enemy to fight (even though he might prefer not to), attack what he must defend (Manhattan?). He also said no country ever benefited from a protracted war. Even worse, he said that to win a war, a country must be morally superior to and cleverer than an enemy, so as to be able to win without fighting. To be forced to engage in combat, rather than to achieve one's aims by cleverness, is a sign of an inferior leader. I'm thinking he might have been right! Maybe what we need isn't superior weapons (although they would useful as a last resort), but superior leadership skills in someone who is clever enough to win without fighting, and who also, in spite of that, wants to run for public office.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(1)My heart goes out to all 9/11 victims & their families. I too have lost someone, a dear friend of 11 years on that terrible day. The only thing more severe than what transpired is the fact that our own government deliberately covered up, or worse, was directly involved in the event itself. This is a belief that is shared by at least 1/3 of the public, (and around half of all New Yorkers) but is vehemently denied by the mainstream media as well as many uninformed citizens. I refuse to believe that primitive cave-dwellers halfway around the world were able to knock down two skyscrapers and penetrate the most heavily defended building in the world in one fell swoop. Don't get me wrong, our leaders can be incompetent but if they were THAT incapable of keeping us safe, then I am truly appalled and far from "proud to be an American".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's been 10 years later and we are NOT safer. Just think of what has taken place since 9/11: prolonged and costly wars on multiple fronts-all part of a fictional "War on Terror" that is said to continue for the next 100 years, the PATRIOT ACT which has created a domestic security police-state that spies on its own citizens, the end of Habeus Corpus & Posse Comitatus, and the overall downgrade of the USA's reputation in the eyes of the global community, just to name a few. Something isn't right, anyone who accepts the "official” story of 9/11 at face value, without doing their own research, needs to have their head examined. You owe it to yourself and your family to learn the facts.
Here are just a few reasons why we need a new, independent investigation of 9/11, one that is NOT conducted by there very same people who seem to be covering it up:
(2)-THREE buildings fell in NY on 9/11, the Twin Towers & WTC Building 7, which was NOT hit by a plane and received minable damage that any similar structure could sustain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-Before 9/11, no large steel-framed building had collapsed from a fire, ever. On 9/11, three of them did. The 32 story Windsor Tower in Spain burned for 24 hours in 2005, yet its steel frame didn't collapse.
-Many 1st responders, media, WTC employees, and other eyewitnesses reported bombs going off throughout the buildings before they fell. Some explosions were heard before the planes even hit. Scientists have pointed out that the government has no explanation for the molten steel that was present for 3 weeks after 9/11 and Niels Harrit, a professor of nano-chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, reported finding high-grade nano-thermite in the dust from the buildings.
-The 9/11 Commission doesn't even mention WTC 7. Phillip Zelikow wrote the "official" 9/11 Commission's outline before the Commission was even formed. President Bush refused to release "classified" info to aid the investigation and even refused to speak under oath while meeting with the Commission. The head of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean, even stated that the Commission was set up to fail. Its membership consisted of former politicians. No knowledgeable experts were appointed.
-NORAD, the agency that's supposed to protect our skies, was ordered to stand down by Vice President Dick Cheney. Norman Mineta, former Congressman and Secretary of Transportation, was down in a bunker with Cheney on 9/11. He testified to this but it was not included in the Commission Report either. NORAD also "just happened" to be conducting military drills on 9/11, something that reportedly interfered with intercepting the hijacked planes. The commission's Senior counsel, John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the government made “a decision not to tell the truth about what happened,” and that the NORAD “tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public.”
-Over 1,500 professional architects and engineers demand a new 9/11 investigation. They all unanimously agree that the "official story" doesn't hold weight scientifically and their numbers are growing. Similar groups who demand a real investigation are popping up all over. These include: Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Veterans for 9/11 Truth & various groups of 9/11 families. Around 70% of the victim's families questions have not been answered.
(3)To top it off, the 1ST RESPONDERS-those who gave their all to help the victims of 9/11, many of whom are still sick and injured from it today and aren't receiving the benefits they deserve-are not being included in the 10 year 9/11 ceremony. Many of these firemen, medics, police, and servicemen share the same belief: that we’re NOT being told the truth about 9/11. Real Americans keep their government in check and not the other way around. Real Americans aren't afraid to question their government, the same government that has failed them again and again and continues to do so. The truth is, I really don't know what happened on 9/11.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just know that it isn't what they told us it was.
They kill, disable and maim THE INNOCENT along with their targets INDISCRIMINATELY. This means, they are war criminals and must be brought to a global court for trial, prosecution and Justice. The fact this periodical highlights these insidious ruinous weapons says VOLUMES about the nature of this magazine. Complicit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Post-9/11 Technology Brings Exoskeletons, Laser Cannons to 21st-Century U.S. Military."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWould that be the same US Military whose drone warfare against the "enemy" in Pakistan constitutes a war crime, as defined by international treaties to which the US is a signatory nation?
I am a SciAm subscriber and I value the magazine. But please stop celebrating weapons systems that bring terror, misery, and death to civilian populations whose only crime is to live in a region where some of the locals may disagree with the US about how to run their country.
Let's cheer those technological innovations that help people rather than those that maim and kill innocents in the name of "national security."
Screw the military and those that aid and abet it. $$$ down a rat hole and you Sci Am ought to be ashamed for giving the military publicity in the name of so-called science. You rate a big fat UGH for doing so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill scare and hatred stop by competing against your enemies for advanced technology? It may help reduce our scare if we read the Arts of Wars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is lunacy! "truthers" have no idea the pain that they cause.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe technology is fascinating but how is this realistically affordable for the military ? , Research and development is fine and should be encouraged but procurement the money just isn't there .
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