A disabled American spy satellite is rapidly descending and is likely to plunge to Earth by late February or early March, posing a potential danger from its debris, officials said Saturday.

Officials said that they had no control over the nonfunctioning satellite and that it was unknown where the debris might land.

Stubborn, Unyielding Earth Threatens to Destroy Ailing Neighbor With "Atmospheric" Force Field.

US Spy Satellite, Power Gone, May Hit Earth

A letter and a reply about Dyson's most recent review.

When I wrote my review, I knew that my concluding judgment would arouse strong opposition. My purpose in writing was to give readers something to disagree with.

Recall:

According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"

And:

I was describing this to a friend over lunch in Palo Alto. As I was describing this the waiter came up behind me to take our order. I was in the middle of saying "it's very hard to enter the rectum, but once you do things move much faster", only to hear the waiter gasp. ... Some people are just not interested in natural history, I guess.

Von Braun's Bargain

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley has released the Air Force's weapon system "roadmap," a long-term plan for providing Air Force capabilities the nation needs in the 21st century to meet threats to the nation's security.

...

Airmen provide the nation with Global Vigilance, a system of "eyes and ears" to see and sense anything on the face of the Earth from the vantage of air, space and cyberspace. Airmen watch and listen across the electromagnetic spectrum, and put that information into context, providing decision-quality intelligence to political leaders, joint and combined commanders and combatants the world over.

Airmen provide the nation unrivalled Global Reach throughout the world.
They deliver the goods, the gas and their fellow warfighters beyond oceans, in hostile territory and across the last tactical mile, relying on the range, payload and speed of mobility aircraft. The Air Force's Global Reach allows joint military forces to hold targets or activities at risk and to communicate, command, supply, rescue, support or destroy them; and to reach into the far regions of space and cyberspace with a variety of payloads.

This really seems to be more about deciding which bases (not) to close under BRAC. Good luck finding anything "cyber" here.

Air Force weapon system roadmap released

At your request, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has analyzed whether a difference exists between the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) funding for science and technology (S&T) activities supporting unclassified space programs and its funding for S&T activities supporting other (nonspace) programs. The enclosed report indicates that funding for S&T activities supporting unclassified space programs has been less than S&T funding for other defense programs and that DoD’s plans for the future maintain that difference in funding. (Because of a lack of information, CBO’s analysis does not address the extent to which classified research might be supporting unclassified space programs.)

Comparison of science and technology funding for DOD’s space and non-space programs

The whole Armor of God Pajama set will help your children to depend on God to protect them from their fears, doubts, and uncertainties at night so their sleep can be restful and peaceful.

Armor of God PJ's

The U.S. military conducted more than five times as many airstrikes in Iraq last year as it did in 2006, targeting al-Qaeda safe houses, insurgent bombmaking facilities and weapons stockpiles in an aggressive strategy aimed at supporting the U.S. troop increase by overwhelming enemies with air power.

Top commanders said that better intelligence-gathering allows them to identify and hit extremist strongholds with bombs and missiles, and they predicted that extensive airstrikes will continue this year as the United States seeks to flush insurgents out of havens in and around Baghdad and to the north in Diyala province.

US Boosts Its Use of Airstrikes In Iraq

The author is a Hacker.

The growth of American engineering and science has affected military technology, organization, and practice from the colonial era to the present day -- even as military concerns have influenced, and often funded, domestic engineering programs and scientific development. American Military Technology traces the interplay of technology and science with the armed forces of the United States in terms of what the authors view as epochs:

1840--1865, the introduction of modern small arms, steam power, and technology, science, and medicine;

1900--1914, the naval arms race, torpedoes and submarines, and the signal corps and the airplane; and

1965--1971, McNamara's Pentagon, technology in Vietnam, guided missiles, and smart bombs.

The book is an excellent springboard for understanding the complex relationship of science, technology, and war in American history.

American Military Technology: The Life Story of a Technology

Did you read the original Unrestricted Warfare meme? (No one re-recommended it.) How about the one that Acidus recently posted? Or Rattle's notes from September?

Having long relied upon military prowess and diplomatic skills to project and protect its interests on the seas, on land and in aerospace, the United States now is in conflict with stateless entities seeking hearts and minds, not land or treasure. It is a global contest of words and images, waged on a battlefield called cyberspace where rules of engagement that govern traditional conflict don’t apply and plans for a multiagency effort to protect the information infrastructure have not yet been adopted.

Should we call this struggle a war? If so, what laws and rules govern conduct? How serious is the threat of malicious intrusions into—and manipulation of—information systems, and can the vulnerabilities, particularly in the Internet, be sufficiently reduced? Should we respond to these intrusions in kind, and if so, by which agencies and by what means? And what is the role of U.S. armed forces in a battle of words? Recent events have converged to bring the subject of network vulnerability, threats, risks and responses to the fore.

Cyberwar, Anyone?

Did you read the original Unrestricted Warfare meme? (No one re-recommended it.) How about the one that Acidus recently posted? Or Rattle's notes from September?

Cyberspace is the latest realm that the U.S. Defense Department is seeking to dominate in its efforts to protect national security and to project force. But this goal has not gone unchallenged as hackers from a variety of nations and criminal and terrorist organizations have tried to penetrate government networks to steal information or cause damage.

The Defense Department has become adept at protecting its network perimeters with firewalls and intrusion detection systems. However, in recent years, hackers have found ways to access government networks through weaknesses in existing applications such as logistics or command and control systems. To counter these threats, the U.S. Air Force recently launched the Application Software Assurance Center of Excellence (ASACE) to assess and strengthen its defenses against internal attack.

See also, Service Improves Defense Against Application-Level Attacks:

The U.S. Air Force is building an Application Software Assurance Center of Excellence to detect threats to its applications and prevent scans from becoming full-blown attacks. The move is due in part to the increase in the number of scans the Global Information Grid receives each day, now up to more than 3 million. The center will be located at the Air Force’s 754th Electronic Systems Group, Maxwell Air Force Base. Among the security measures that will be used are source code analysis, penetration testing, application shielding and database monitoring. Telos Corporation is providing the software and services for the project.

This transition is raising concern in military circles that there will be break-in attempts, such as using SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting or other assault methods to try to throw Web-based logistics systems into disarray.

Fortify Software won the biggest piece of the initiative and will provide the Air Force with more than $7 million in software. The Air Force will buy and use three Fortify software packages, each designed to look for a specific class of security vulnerabilities during the software development process when flaws are most likely to occur and are the easiest to fix.

As the prime contractor, Telos assembled a team including application security industry leaders that specialize in source code analysis, Web application penetration and security testing, application shielding, database monitoring, training, and implementation services. The team includes Cigital Inc., Fortify Software Inc., IBM/Watchfire Corporation, and Application Security Inc.

No sign of HP/SPI?

Air Force Refocuses Network Defense

This report describes the emerging areas of information operations, electronic warfare, and cyberwar in the context of U.S. national security. It also suggests related policy issues of potential interest to Congress.

For military planners, the control of information is critical to military success, and communications networks and computers are of vital operational importance. The use of technology to both control and disrupt the flow of information has been generally referred to by several names: information warfare, electronic warfare, cyberwar, netwar, and Information Operations (IO). Currently, IO activities are grouped by the Department of Defense (DOD) into five core capabilities: (1) Psychological Operations, (2) Military Deception, (3) Operational Security, (4) Computer Network Operations, and (5) Electronic Warfare.

Current U.S. military doctrine for IO now places increased emphasis on Psychological Operations, Computer Network Operations, and Electronic Warfare, which includes use of non-kinetic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, and nonlethal weapons for crowd control. However, as high technology is increasingly incorporated into military functions, the boundaries between all five IO core capabilities are becoming blurred.

DOD has noted that military functions involving the electromagnetic spectrum take place in what is now called the cyber domain, similar to air, land, and sea. This cyber domain is the responsibility of the new Air Force Cyber Command and includes cyberwarfare, electronic warfare, and protection of U.S. critical infrastructure networks that support telecommunications systems, utilities, and transportation.

Information Operations, Electronic Warfare, and Cyberwar