The incredible U.S. military spy drone that’s so powerful it can see what type of phone you’re carrying from 17,500ft

 Articles of Interest, Crimes & Criminal Activity (Organized Crime, Narcotics, Predators, Cyber Crime, Cyber Stalking, UnSolved), Investigative, Law Enforcement, National security, Terrorism, Cyber Terrorism & Related Crimes, Science & Related Space Technology, Technology & Digital Security, U.S. MARINES & Military  Comments Off
May 162013
 

The incredible U.S. military spy drone that’s so powerful it can see what type of phone you’re carrying from 17,500ft

Daily Mail / UK
by Damian Gayle
January 28, 2013

  • The ARGUS-IS can view an area of 15 sq/miles in a single image
  • Its zoom capability can detect an object as small as 6in on the ground
  • Developed by BAE as part of a $18million DARPA project
  • System works by stringing together 368 digital camera chips

A sinister airborne surveillance camera gives the U.S. military the ability to track movements in an entire city like a real-time Google Street View. The ARGUS-IS array can be mounted on unmanned drones to capture an area of 15 sq/miles in an incredible 1,800MP – that’s 225 times more sensitive than an iPhone camera. From 17,500ft the remarkable surveillance system can capture objects as small as 6in on the ground and allows commanders to track movements across an entire battlefield in real time.

 

Beat that, Google: An image taken from 17,500ft by the U.S. military's ARGUS-IS array, which can capture 1,800MP zoomable video feeds of an entire medium-sized city in real time

Beat that, Google: An image taken from 17,500ft by the U.S. military’s ARGUS-IS array, which can capture 1,800MP zoomable video feeds of an entire medium-sized city in real time

 

‘It is important for the public to know that some of these capabilities exist,’ said Yiannis Antoniades, the BAE engineer who designed the system, in a recent PBS broadcast. The aerospace and weapons company developed the ARGUS-IS array as part of a $18.5million project funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

In Greek mythology, Argus Panoptes, guardian of the heifer-nymph Io and son of Arestor, was a primordial giant whose epithet, ‘Panoptes’, ‘all-seeing’, led to his being described with multiple, often one hundred, eyes. Like the Titan of myth, the Pentagon’s ARGUS-IS (a backronym standing for Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System) works by stringing together an array of 368 digital camera imaging chips. An airborne processor combines the video from these chips to create a single ultra-high definition mosaic video image which updates at up to 15 frames a second.

 

All-seeing: This graphic illustrates how the U.S. military's ARGUS-IS array links together images streamed from hundreds of digital camera sensors to watch over a huge expanse of terrain in real time

All-seeing: This graphic illustrates how the U.S. military’s ARGUS-IS array links together images streamed from hundreds of digital camera sensors to watch over a huge expanse of terrain in real time

 

What it looks like: The ARGUS-IS (a backronym standing for Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System) strings together an array of 368 digital camera imaging chips into a single unit

What it looks like: The ARGUS-IS (a backronym standing for Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System) strings together an array of 368 digital camera imaging chips into a single unit

 

That tremendous level of detail makes it sensitive enough to not only track people moving around on the ground thousands of feet below, but even to see what they are doing or carrying. The ARGUS array sends its live feed to the ground where it connects to a touch-screen command room interface. Using this, operators can zoom in to any area within the camera’s field of view, with up to 65 zoom windows open at once. Each video window is electronically steerable independent of the others, and can either provide continuous imagery of a fixed area on the ground or be designated to automatically keep a specified target in the window.

 

Sinister: The system tracks all moving objects in its field of view, highlighting them with coloured boxes, allowing operators to track movements across an area as and when they happen

Sinister: The system tracks all moving objects in its field of view, highlighting them with coloured boxes, allowing operators to track movements across an area as and when they happen

 

The system automatically tracks any moving object it can see, including both vehicles and individuals on foot, highlighting them with coloured boxes so they can be easily identified. It also records everything, storing an approximate million terabytes of data a day – the equivalent of 5,000 hours of high-definition video footage. ‘So you can go back and say I’d like to see what happened at this particular location three days, two hours [and] four minutes ago, and it will actually show you what happened as if you were watching it live,’ said Mr Antoniades.

 

iPad next? The feed from the ARGUS is transmitted to a touch-screen command and control interface

iPad next? The feed from the ARGUS is transmitted to a touch-screen command and control interface

 

Windows: Operators can open a window to zoom in to any area within the camera's field of view, with up to 65 open and running at once

Windows: Operators can open a window to zoom in to any area within the camera’s field of view, with up to 65 open and running at once

 

Total surveillance: The view of Quantico, Virginia, highlighted in the PBS film

Total surveillance: The view of Quantico, Virginia, highlighted in the PBS film

 

For the PBS programme reporting the technology, Mr Antoniades showed reporters a feed over the city of Quantico, Virginia, that was recorded in 2009. The technology has been in development since 2007 but authorities are staying tight lipped about whether it has yet been deployed on the battlefield. Dr Steven Wein, director of optical sensor systems at BAE Systems, said: ‘The ARGUS-IS system overcomes the fundamental limitations of current airborne surveillance systems. ‘Very high-resolution imaging systems required for vehicle and dismount tracking typically have a “soda-straw” view that is too small for persistent coverage. ‘Existing wide-area systems have either inadequate resolution or require multiple passes or revisits to get updates.’ BAE are now said to be working on an infra-red version of ARGUS that would allow commanders total surveillance of an area even at night.

 

Direct Link:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2269563/The-U-S-militarys-real-time-Google-Street-View-Airborne-spy-camera-track-entire-city-1-800MP.html

US Navy Successfully Launches UAV From Aircraft Carrier!

 Articles of Interest, National security, Terrorism, Cyber Terrorism & Related Crimes, Science & Related Space Technology, U.S. MARINES & Military  Comments Off
May 162013
 

US Navy Successfully Launches UAV From Aircraft Carrier

Defense News
by AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
May 14, 2013

Northrop Grumman personnel conduct pre-operational tests May 13 on an X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush. On May 14, the ship became the first aircraft carrier to catapult launch an unmanned aircraft from its flight deck. / (MC3 Kevin J. Steinberg / US Navy via AFP)

Northrop Grumman personnel conduct pre-operational tests May 13 on an X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush. On May 14, the ship became the first aircraft carrier to catapult launch an unmanned aircraft from its flight deck. / (MC3 Kevin J. Steinberg / US Navy via AFP)

 

WASHINGTON —

The US Navy successfully launched an unmanned plane off the deck of an aircraft carrier for the first time Tuesday in what officials called a breakthrough for robotic aviation.

The bat-winged X-47B drone took to the air after being launched by a catapult aboard the George H.W.Bush aircraft carrier off the coast of Virginia, a Navy spokeswoman said.

“I can confirm it was successfully launched at 11:18 a.m. (1518 GMT),” Navy Lt. Katie Cerezo told AFP.

The aircraft carried out several low approaches to the carrier before landing in Maryland at the US naval air station at Patuxent River after a 65-minute flight, the Navy said.

The test flight marked the first catapult launch of a robotic, unmanned plane from a carrier at sea, and Navy officers called it a “milestone.”

“This historic event challenges the paradigm of manned carrier landings that were first conducted more than 90 years ago,” Rear Adm. Mat Winter, who oversees unmanned aviation for the Navy, wrote on the service’s website.


The experimental aircraft, which looks like a smaller version of the B-2 stealth bomber, is supposed to clear the way for a new line of drones that would carry out bombing raids from a carrier.

The Air Force and Army already have a large fleet of robotic aircraft, but the Navy hopes to catch up with the X-47B, the unmanned Fire Scout helicopter and other drones that can stay in the air for hours to spy or attack an adversary.

The X-47B can reach an altitude of 40,000 feet with a range of about six hours or 2,100 nautical miles (3,900 kilometers), and has two weapons bays that can carry a payload of up to 4,500 pounds (2,040 kilograms).

With a much longer range than manned fighter jets, the robotic bomber could transform naval warfare in the same way drones have reshaped the battlefield on land.

Controlled by mouse click from a “mission operator” on the carrier, the aircraft has more autonomy than current robotic aircraft, according to Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the drone.

The plane flies a preprogrammed mission and the operator “does not actively ‘fly’ it via remote control as is the case for other unmanned systems currently in operation, “ according to a fact sheet from Northrop.

Rights groups have voiced concern over the advent of more autonomous combat aircraft that could allow robots to wage war semi-independently. Human Rights Watch has cited the X-47B in particular as a potentially alarming advance.

The group has called for a “pre-emptive prohibition” on fully autonomous robotic weapons, which it says would endanger civilians and violate the principles of international humanitarian law.

Direct Link:  http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130514/DEFREG02/305140016/US-Navy-Successfully-Launches-UAV-From-Aircraft-Carrier

 

UNACCEPTABLE CONDUCT: 26,000 Sexual Assaults in Military Raise Alarm ( NO… Means STOP! )

 Articles of Interest, Crimes & Criminal Activity (Organized Crime, Narcotics, Predators, Cyber Crime, Cyber Stalking, UnSolved), FALLEN & INJURED HEROES, Firearms, Weapons & Personal Safety, Social Media, U.S. MARINES & Military  Comments Off
May 142013
 

Sexual Assaults in Military Raise Alarm in Washington


The New York Times
by Jennifer Steinhauer
May 7, 2013

Survivors Share Experiences of Sexual Assault in the Military

Survivors Share Experiences of Sexual Assault in the Military

WASHINGTON —

The problem of sexual assault in the military leapt to the forefront in Washington on Tuesday as the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted last year, up from 19,000 in 2010, and an angry President Obama and Congress demanded action.

 

The study, based on a confidential survey sent to 108,000 active-duty service members, was released two days after the officer in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the Air Force was arrested and charged with sexual battery for grabbing a woman’s breasts and buttocks in an Arlington, Va., parking lot.

At a White House news conference, Mr. Obama expressed exasperation with the Pentagon’s attempts to bring sexual assault under control.

“The bottom line is, I have no tolerance for this,” Mr. Obama said in answer to a question about the survey. “If we find out somebody’s engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable, prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.”

The president said he had ordered Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel “to step up our game exponentially” to prevent sex crimes and said he wanted military victims of sexual assault to know that “I’ve got their backs.”

In a separate report made public on Tuesday, the military recorded 3,374 sexual assault reports last year, up from 3,192 in 2011, suggesting that many victims continue not to report the crimes for fear of retribution or a lack of justice under the department’s system for prosecution.

The numbers come as the Pentagon prepares to integrate women formally into what had been all-male domains of combat, making the effective monitoring, policing and prosecuting of sexual misconduct all the more pressing.

Pentagon officials said nearly 26,000 active-duty men and women had responded to the sexual assault survey. Of those, 6.1 percent of women and 1.2 percent of men said they had experienced sexual assault in the past year, which the survey defined as everything from rape to “unwanted sexual touching” of genitalia, breasts, buttocks or inner thighs.

From those percentages, the Pentagon extrapolated that 12,100 of the 203,000 women on active duty and 13,900 of the 1.2 million men on active duty had experienced some form of sexual assault. In 2010, a similar Pentagon survey found that 4.4 percent of active-duty women and fewer than 0.9 percent of active-duty men had experienced sexual assault.

Pentagon officials could not explain the jump in assaults of women, although they believed that more victims, both men and women, were making the choice to come forward. In the general population, about 0.2 percent of American women over age 12 were victims of sexual assault in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

**********

Honor Betrayed

A two-part series that examined women in the military who were sexually assaulted.

Part I: Attacked at 19 by an Air Force Trainer, and Speaking Out

Part II: Trauma Sets Female Veterans Adrift Back Home

*********

In response to the report, Mr. Hagel said at a news conference on Tuesday that the Pentagon was instituting a new plan that orders the service chiefs to incorporate sexual assault programs into their commands.

“What’s going on is just not acceptable,” Mr. Hagel said. “We will get control of this.”

The report quickly caught fire on Capitol Hill, where women on the Senate Armed Services Committee expressed outrage at two Air Force officers who suggested that they were making progress in ending the problem in their branch.

“If the man in charge for the Air Force in preventing sexual assaults is being alleged to have committed a sexual assault this weekend,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, “obviously there’s a failing in training and understanding of what sexual assault is, and how corrosive and damaging it is to good order and discipline.”

Ms. Gillibrand, who nearly shouted as she addressed Michael B. Donley, the secretary of the Air Force, said that the continued pattern of sexual assault was “undermining the credibility of the greatest military force in the world.”

She and some other members of the committee are seeking to have all sex offenders in the military discharged from service, and she would like to replace the current system of adjudicating sexual assault by taking it outside the chain of command. She is particularly focused on decisions, including one made recently by an Air Force senior officer, to reverse guilty verdicts in sexual assault cases with little explanation.

Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who is also on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is holding up the nomination of that Air Force officer, Lt. Gen. Susan J. Helms, to be vice commander of the Air Force’s Space Command. Ms. McCaskill said she wanted additional information about General Helms’s decision to overturn a jury conviction in a sexual assault case last year.

Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the Air Force chief of staff, told the committee at the same hearing on Tuesday that he was “appalled” by the conduct and the arrest of Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, the Air Force officer accused of sexual battery on Sunday. The police say that Colonel Krusinski was drunk when he approached the woman in the parking lot and that the victim was ultimately able to fend him off and call 911.

Mr. Hagel called Mr. Donley on Monday evening to express his “outrage and disgust” over the matter, a Pentagon statement said.

Ms. McCaskill was particularly critical of Colonel Krusinski as well as the Air Force for placing him in charge of sexual assault prevention. “It is hard for me to believe that somebody could be accused of that behavior with a complete stranger and not have anything in his file,” she said.

While Mr. Hagel and others in the military seem open to changes to the system that allows cases to be overturned, they remained chilly to the idea of taking military justice out of the chain of command.

“It is my strong belief that the ultimate authority has to remain within the command structure,” Mr. Hagel said, which is almost certain to meet with objections as the issue continues to come under the scrutiny of the Armed Services Committee.

Under Mr. Hagel’s plan, the military would seek to quickly study and come up with ways to hold commanders more accountable for sexual assault. The chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the commandant of the Marines have until Nov. 1 to report their findings. Mr. Hagel also directed the services to visually inspect department workplaces, including the service academies, for potentially offensive or degrading materials, by July 1.

 

Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.

 

 

The NSA Is Training 13 Teams of Covert Hackers to Attack Other Countries

 Articles of Interest, Crimes & Criminal Activity (Organized Crime, Narcotics, Predators, Cyber Crime, Cyber Stalking, UnSolved), Law Enforcement, National security, Terrorism, Cyber Terrorism & Related Crimes, Science & Related Space Technology, Social Media, Technology & Digital Security, U.S. MARINES & Military  Comments Off
Mar 142013
 

The NSA Is Training 13 Teams of Covert Hackers to Attack Other Countries


Gizmodo
by Kyle Wagner
March 13, 2013

NSA ( Image credit: Getty Images)

NSA ( Image credit: Getty Images)

For the first time, the United States has officially disclosed plans to develop counterattack measures against foreign nations’ cyberattacks.

U.S. CYBER COMMAND

U.S. CYBER COMMAND

 

General Keith Alexander, chief of the military’s Cyber Command and the NSA, told Congress yesterday the military is training 13 teams of programmers and computer experts to carry out offensive attacks.
As disclosures to Congress go, this is about as ass-kicking as you can get:

“I would like to be clear that this team, this defend-the-nation team, is not a defensive team,” Gen. Keith Alexander, who runs both the National Security Agency and the new Cyber Command, told the House Armed Services Committee. “This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. Thirteen of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission alone.”

There will be an additional 27 teams that will be focused on surveillance and training. These defensive teams will “monitor incoming traffic to the United States through private ‘Internet service providers’”. That sounds ominous, and there will obviously be a lot of back and forth about what can be done legally, and what is actually being done. But cyberattacks like Stuxnet and Shady Rat are evidence enough that the government needs to take very seriously.

So a bunch of dweebs/hackers/assassins in Fort Meade, Maryland, are going to be our defense against digital destruction. Though, it’s fun to imagine them as captured hackers deployed Weapon X Style. Sabu dressed like this, for example. [NY Times via Ars Technica]

 

Direct Link:  http://gizmodo.com/hacking/

The 1993 World Trade Center bombers: Where are they now?

 Articles of Interest, Crimes & Criminal Activity (Organized Crime, Narcotics, Predators, Cyber Crime, Cyber Stalking, UnSolved), FALLEN & INJURED HEROES, Law Enforcement, National security, Terrorism, Cyber Terrorism & Related Crimes, Technology & Digital Security, U.S. MARINES & Military, WANTED CRIMINALS & POI  Comments Off
Feb 262013
 

The 1993 World Trade Center bombers: Where are they now?

CBS News
by Joshua Norman
February 26, 2013

 

A police photographer adjusts a light at the edge of the crater in an underground parking garage at the World Trade Center February 28, 1993.

A police photographer adjusts a light at the edge of the crater in an underground parking garage at the World Trade Center February 28, 1993. 
/ Getty Images

 

On Feb. 26, 1993, an ugly new phase of terrorism was ushered in when Jordanian Eyad Ismoil drove Kuwaiti Ramzi Yousef and a 1,300-pound nitrate-hydrogen gas enhanced bomb also stuffed with cyanide into the parking garage below the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

Yousef lit a 20-foot fuse, and the two fled quickly enough to evade immediate capture by authorities. The bomb killed six people and injured more than 1,000 that day.

When the bomb went off, their goal of bringing down the Twin Towers failed, but the event was the first in a continuing string of indiscriminate attacks on civilians by terrorists designed solely to kill as many as possible.

1993 World Trade Center, bombers, ramzi yousef
The seven men convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City

/ FBI.gov

By 1997, seven men had been convicted for the attack: Yousef, Ismoil, Egyptian Mahmud Abouhalima, Palestinian Mohammad Salameh, Kuwaiti Nidal A. Ayyad, Iraqi Abdul Rahman Yasin and Palestinian Ahmad Ajaj. Only six of them, however, had been caught.

The one thing that bound them all was a radical Egyptian cleric, Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind sheik who had once set up shop in Jersey City, New Jersey. Rahman was ultimately convicted of masterminding several attacks — some carried out, some not — on American interests.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed holds up a piece of paper during a court recess at a military tribunal pretrial hearing at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Oct. 15, 2012, in this picture of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed holds up a piece of paper during a court recess at a military tribunal pretrial hearing at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Oct. 15, 2012, in this picture of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
/ AP Photo/Janet Hamlin

Rounding out the circle of plotters is the infamous Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is not only Yousef’s uncle, but also later claimed to be the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks which ultimately brought the Twin Towers down. Mohammed gave Yousef advice, tips, and cash in the run up to the 1993 bombing.

Five of the seven main bombers are serving life sentences in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.

Yousef is currently suing for more human contact after 15 years in prison. According to the Los Angeles Times, he wrote to the warden: “I request an immediate end to my solitary confinement and ask to be in a unit in an open prison environment where inmates are allowed outside their cells for no less than 14 hours a day.”

Nidal Ayyad, an alleged Rutgers University graduate, is apparently serving his life sentence in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana

Abdul Yasin was tracked down by “60 Minutes” in May of 2002 in an Iraqi facility outside of Baghdad. He had successfully fled the U.S. after the 1993 bombing and remained high on the most-wanted list the entire time.

Yasin, 40 at the time, expressed regret to Leslie Stahl about the bombing and claimed he was talked into it by his fellow bombers, whom he met for the first time while living in Jersey City.

“[Yousef and Salameh] used to tell me how Arabs suffered a great deal and that we have to send a message that this is not right … to revenge for my Palestinian brothers and my brothers in Saudi Arabia,” Yasin told Stahl. He added that they also prodded him about being an Iraqi who should avenge the defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War.

The “60 Minutes” interview is likely the last time any Westerner officially spoke to Yasin, who by all accounts remains on the lam to this day.

Khaled Sheikh Mohammed is currently on trial in Guantanamo Bay for his role in the 9/11 attacks. Mohammed is kept under such heavy security that his lawyers can’t even reveal routine conversations with their client. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman sits and prays inside an iron cage at the opening of court session in Cairo Aug. 6, 1989.
Blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman sits and prays inside an iron cage at the opening of court session in Cairo Aug. 6, 1989.
/ AFP/Getty Images

The true “celebrity” of the attacks, for lack of a better term, is the so-called “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman. His name and his teachings are repeatedly invoked by jihadists and conservative Muslims the world over as inspiration.

In September 2003, he was transferred from the federal Supermax prison in Colorado to a medical prison in Springfield, Mo., after officials said Rahman might lose his limbs to diabetes.

Militants who attacked the Ain Amenas gas field in the Sahara in January of this year had offered to release two of the three Americans eventually killed in the attack in exchange for the freedom of Rahman and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The Obama administration rejected the offer outright.

Al Qaeda’s current leader, Ayman Al-Zawahri, has repeatedly invoked Rahman as a reason for kidnapping and killing Westerners. In an undated two-hour videotape posted last October on militant forums, he said that abducting nationals of “countries waging wars on Muslims” is the only way to free “our captives, and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.”

Even more moderate Muslims appear to revere the Blind Sheik. In his first public speech last June addressing tens of thousands of mostly Islamist supporters, Egypt’s then-president-elect Mohammed Morsi vowed to free Rahman.

The U.S. has not budged in its refusal to consider freeing Rahman in any negotiations so far, so it is highly unlikely Morsi will succeed.

 

Related Links:

Direct Link:  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57571334/the-1993-world-trade-center-bombers-where-are-they-now/

 Older Entries