wretchard the cat (wretchard)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

Member since Sep 08, 2006, follows 2 people, 4 public groups, 931 public bookmarks (1598 total).

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Pakistan's New Generation of Terrorists - Council on Foreign Relations on 2009-12-18
Military ‘Swimming In Sensors and Drowning in Data’ on 2009-12-16
- Synthesizing all these collection disciplines and disseminating them quickly is the challenge facing the military. If intelligence is the “coin of the realm,” as Clapper and other senior leaders said at the GEO-Int conference here, then the military may soon have more cash than it can spend.
  
  “We’re going to find ourselves in the not too distant future swimming in sensors and drowning in data,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
- Military ‘Swimming In Sensors and Drowning in Data’
- 5 more annotations...
- - Maj. Gen. Bradley A. Heithold, commander of the Air Force ISR agency, said the tracking and killing of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 provides an example of how the paradigm changed. During the first Gulf War, it was relatively easy for the Air Force to find large Iraqi troop formations, Scud missiles and tanks. Targeting and delivering munitions took far more time.
    
    By the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the sought-after targets were hiding among the civilian population. Predator unmanned aerial vehicles flew 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a total of 600 hours to pinpoint Zarqawi’s location. Once that was done, it took only six minutes for two nearby F-16s to deliver the bombs that killed him.
    
    “It’s a huge effort to find where they are, and takes very little effort in the end to either kill or capture,” Heithold said.
  - Maj. Gen. Bradley A. Heithold, commander of the Air Force ISR agency, said the tracking and killing of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 provides an example of how the paradigm changed. During the first Gulf War, it was relatively easy for the Air Force to find large Iraqi troop formations, Scud missiles and tanks. Targeting and delivering munitions took far more time.
    
    By the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the sought-after targets were hiding among the civilian population. Predator unmanned aerial vehicles flew 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a total of 600 hours to pinpoint Zarqawi’s location. Once that was done, it took only six minutes for two nearby F-16s to deliver the bombs that killed him.
    
    “It’s a huge effort to find where they are, and takes very little effort in the end to either kill or capture,” Heithold said.
  - “People are going to have to start thinking about what we are going to do with all this high-def, and how we’re going to process it,” he said. High-def is a “bandwidth hog,” he added, so there may be issues with the communications architecture as well, he noted.
    
    Industry has done an excellent job of providing cutting edge sensors, said Heithold.
    
    “Okay, I have got 27 targets to look at now. Does that mean I have to put 27 guys … on the shift that day?”
    
    Industry now has to come up with the smart technology, machine-to-machine interfaces, that can help sort through all the data. There are 332,000 airmen in the Air Force, Heithold said. And they’re “really busy.”
    
    The military is increasing what it’s putting on the platforms, from full-motion-video to some “pretty significant capabilities,” which he would not specify.
  - Whatever the solution is to sorting through all this data, it will not be more analysts.
    
    “The answer isn’t throwing more manpower at it because in DoD, we don’t have it … It’s easier for me to get money than it is to get manpower,” he said. “We’re going to have to use technology, smart systems that cipher through the intelligence,” he added.
  - Another long-standing issue is how to share intelligence with those who need it. Numerous rules and regulations determine who can see what. That goes for members of the U.S. government as well as allies.
    
    “No matter what anybody says, it’s pathetic,” Maj. Gen. John M. Custer, commanding general of Fort Huachuca, Ariz., and the Army intelligence center, said of the information sharing environment.
    
    “There’s no reason for an Italian, Dutch, United Arab Emirates or any other soldier to die because they don’t have the appropriate kinds of intelligence,” he said. “I really don’t have a clue as to why we don’t allow everyone on [SPRNET] in Afghanistan. If you are fighting a war with this nation, you should have access to it.”
US mulls Predator strikes in Pakistani cities: report on 2009-12-15
Kirishima_Damage_Analysis.pdf (application/pdf Object) on 2009-12-13
Hamburger.pdf (application/pdf Object) on 2009-12-13
MySQL :: output to SQLite 3 to csv on 2009-12-03
Jackson Diehl - Jackson Diehl on Arab disappointment with Obama - washingtonpost.com on 2009-11-30
- It's been nearly six months since Barack Obama stirred hearts and raised hopes across much of the Arab world with his much-promoted Cairo address. Many came away from it expecting a new and more vigorous U.S. attempt to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Others hoped for more American sympathy and support for liberal reform in countries where free expression, women's rights and democratic elections are blocked by entrenched autocracies.
Blacks hit hard by economy's punch on 2009-11-24
- These days, 24-year-old Delonta Spriggs spends much of his time cooped up in his mother's one-bedroom apartment in Southwest Washington, the TV blaring soap operas hour after hour, trying to stay out of the streets and out of trouble, held captive by the economy. As a young black man, Spriggs belongs to a group that has been hit much harder than any other by unemployment.
  
  Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland.
A Third Lebanon War Could Be Much Worse than the Second on 2009-11-23
- Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah recently announced that he could hit any and every place in Israel with long-range missiles. That would mean that, unlike in 2006, Hezbollah could strike not only the northern cities of Kiryat Shmona and Haifa but also Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion International Airport, and the Dimona nuclear-power plant.
  
  I dismissed his claim as a wild boast last week, but Israeli army commander Major General Gabi Ashkenazi confirmed it this week. So while we've all been worried about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been quietly arming his chief terrorist proxy with more advanced conventional weapons.
- It's possible that a "balance of terror" on each side of the border will prevent anyone from doing anything stupid, but I wouldn't count on it. Hezbollah's rhetoric is more belligerent this year than ever. Not only does Nasrallah threaten to avenge the assassination of his military commander Imad Mugniyeh, he and the rest of the leadership fantasize in public about nuclear war.
Anthony Faiola -- In Germany, going green gets expensive - washingtonpost.com on 2009-11-23

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