Earlier this month, two Chinese satellites met up in orbit. Depending on who you believe, it’s either a sign of China’s increasingly-sophisticated space program — or a sign of its increasingly-sophisticated space warfare program.
A well-regarded Russian space watcher was the first to note that the two satellites, newly-launched SJ-12 and two-year-old SJ-06F, had performed maneuvers indicating a cutting edge procedure called non-cooperative robotic rendezvous. A loose network of amateur space spectators and astronomers soon congregated online, and confirmed that the sats had, indeed, converged.
This kind of rendezvous can have extremely useful, and benign, applications: removing space debris, refueling satellites or repairing craft in orbit. But the military apps are massive, and include up-close inspection of foreign satellites, espionage — and the infliction of some serious damage to adversarial space infrastructure. In other words, orbital warfare that, given just how reliant we are on satellite technology, would have widespread consequences on the ground.
“These kinds of rendezvous have been done plenty of times with ground control, but robotically controlled satellites, rendezvousing at higher altitudes, is really quite new,” says Brian Weeden, who offers an in-depth rundown of the incident at The Space Review. “The perception of how this technology is being developed, and what it is being used for, is extremely important.”
The United States is the only other country known to have performed a similar feat. In 2005, NASA researchers launched DART (Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) in an effort to rendezvous with a Navy satellite. Navigational errors led to the two satellites bumping, but the initiative did offer proof-of-concept that American scientists were making major headway towards satellites that can autonomously meet up in space. Since then, the Darpa-funded Orbital Express program has demonstrated the capacity for satellites to rendezvous for refueling and module swapping.
So, in a sense, it was really only a matter of time before China followed suit. In recent years, they’ve fast-tracked a handful of space exploration and development projects, culminating in a satellite-killing weapons program and 90-pound mini-sat that some speculated was designed with nefarious intent.
“The Chinese would be absolutely incompetent to not be trying to reduce U.S advantage in space,” James Oberg, a former NASA space engineer specializing in orbital rendezvous, tells Danger Room. “No potential adversary in their right mind would give us permanent advantage in space operations.”
Weeden notes that neither the United States or Chinese governments have been especially forthcoming about their progress on satellite rendezvous capacities, not to mention respective satellite arsenals and specific locations. The dilemma is even more salient because, as this incident illustrates, knowledgeable amateurs with the right equipment can do their own detective work — and then meet online to share the results.
“There’s a continued assumption among governments that if they don’t publish satellite details and locations, nobody is going to figure it out,” Weeden says. “That’s wrong.”
In this instance, China’s government has yet to acknowledge the incident, and their apparent choice of location for the actual rendezvous adds to the troubling puzzle. According to Oberg, the satellite meet-up occurred in an orbit almost exclusively devoted to earth observation — spy and weather satellites, for example — where “a potential adversary would be most interested in rendezvousing.”
“On the other hand, it’s also where a satellite might need refueling,” he adds. “It’s like you could be changing a screwdriver for a hammer, or you could be turning a peaceful ‘bot into a killer one.”
But China’s been eager to boast about their prior space exploration projects, and have already publicized plans for a major satellite rendezvous trial next year, so silence in this instance seems telling.
“There’s still a vague possibility that this was a matter of computational bias and coincidence,” Oberg says. “But the silence here is suggestive of a military program.”
For now, web-based space watchers will keep working. They’re hoping to figure out whether or not the Chinese satellites touched, which would indicate either an error like that of the DART attempt or some kind of military trial run. Regardless, the rendezvous is a stark reminder that the safety of American deep-space systems is by no means guaranteed.
“For all we know, these could just be mind games. They don’t have to attack U.S space capacities — they just have to make us think they could,” Oberg says. “We’re not playing chess in space, we’re playing Go. This makes chess look like a kindergartner’s pastime.”
13:27 31/08/2010 MOSCOW, August 31 (RIA Novosti) – Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said the country’s military-industrial complex must be modernized to retain its competitive status on the market.
“To retain our competitive position on the weaponry and special equipment market, we must actively modernize our military-industrial complex, introduce innovative technologies and new management methods, and attract young, talented professionals,” the president said.
In April experts said that Russian weapons were falling behind rival products.
Russian Academy of Science members Vladimir Fortov and Igor Kalyaev said that a reduction in research funds was making it hard for Russian weapons to stay competitive and for the defense industry to make breakthroughs in the market.
In March Russian President Dmitry Medvedev approved a long-term policy for the development of the national defense industry. He stressed that development and production of modern electronic systems would be a priority for the industry in the next three to four years.
However, Fortov and Kalyaev said the military prefers short-term projects, with concrete developments based on well-known principles. This approach makes Russian military equipment lag behind its rivals even at the planning stage.
(Reuters) – The U.S. government will have unmanned surveillance aircraft monitoring the whole southwest border with Mexico from September 1, as it ramps up border security in this election year, a top official said on Monday.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said U.S. Customs and Border Protection would begin flying a Predator B drone out of Corpus Christi, Texas, on Wednesday, extending the reach of the agency’s unmanned surveillance aircraft across the length of the nearly 2,000 mile border with Mexico.
“With the deployment of the Predator in Texas, we will now be able to cover the southwest border from the El Centro sector in California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, providing critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground,” Napolitano said during a conference call.
“This is yet another critical step we have taken in ensuring the safety of the border and is an important tool in our security toolbox,” she added.
Illegal immigration and security along the porous border with Mexico has become a hot topic this year, when the ruling Democrats’ control of Congress is on the line in November 2 elections.
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama signed a $600 million bill that would fund some 1,500 new Border Patrol agents, customs inspectors and other law enforcement officials along the border, as well as paying for two more unmanned drones.
Napolitano said the additional aircraft pledged under the bill, together with the new aircraft soon to begin operations in Texas, would increase the Customs and Border Protection drone fleet to six by the start of next year.
The Predator B drones are made by defense contractor General Atomics. They carry equipment including sophisticated day and night vision cameras that operators use to detect drug and human smugglers, and can stay aloft for up to 30 hours at a time.
Srinagar, India, Aug 30, IRNA — The Government has now decided to equip its police and paramilitary forces with slew of Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) also called laser dazzlers to tackle Kashmiri protesters.
Latest reports said 64 people have been killed and thousands injured in less than three months, mostly in direct firing by paramilitary CRPF and police forces on the stone throwing protesters.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is understood to have given the go-ahead for the selective use of the gun, which is non-lethal and aimed at disorienting a crowd or even militants in action, news reports said.
The laser dazzler would flash a laser beam causing the protesters to go virtually blind for nearly a minute, good enough time for the troops to nab them, reports added saying that the laser beam is two to three metres wide.
The weapon was produced two years ago by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
Times Of India recently quoted a top official saying that the DRDO has been trying to develop its own set of Star Wars-like weapons including the DEWs like Laser dazzlers.
The weapon has already been successfully tested by the army in “real combat” situations in Kashmir, reports added.
Prime Minister Singh gave a hint about the weapon when he said last week, “We need to revisit standard operating procedures and crowd control measures to deal with public agitations with non-lethal, yet effective and focused measures.”
United Nations conventions however prohibit the use of laser guns that cause permanent blindness.
The gun originally developed by the US in the early 1990s was initially referred as far more terrifying military weapon.
Its development was arrested mostly due to international outcry that use of military dazzlers would be extremely cruel and inhumane, and the weapons were condemned both by the International Red Cross and the United Nations.
Experts said that a major problem that made laser dazzlers a political plutonium before they were ever even been deployed was that the difference in the amount of energy needed to temporarily blind and permanently blind a target was a very thin and not easily defined line.
For a long time, any laser that was capable of temporarily blinding a target in one instance could very easily permanently blind one in another, depending on many variables such as atmospheric conditions, range, orientation of the target, length of exposure, frequency, beam intensity, and more.
These problems could not be easily solved, and laser blinders fell out of favor as a form of personnel neutralization and began to be looked upon more for weapon sensor neutralization.
News reports in India however said that the guns developed by DRDO were fully compliant with the UN conventions.
(Reuters) – An aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the center of a corruption probe is on the CIA payroll, The New York Times reported, citing Afghan and U.S. officials.
Mohammed Zia Salehi, an Afghan National Security Council official, appears to have been paid by the U.S. spy agency for many years, officials in Kabul and Washington told the Times.
The Times said it was unclear whether Salehi was being paid for information, or to advance U.S. views inside the Karzai administration, or both.
Salehi was arrested by Afghan police in July but released after Karzai intervened.
Salehi’s relationship with the CIA underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, the newspaper said.
Karzai is under pressure from the Obama administration to do more to root out corruption in his government to shore up the legitimacy of his government.
Washington believes a successful counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan hinges on winning Afghan public support for the government in Kabul and sidelining the Taliban.
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre – and scary – rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants – with no need for a search warrant. (Read about one man’s efforts to escape the surveillance state.)
It is a dangerous decision – one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno’s privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the “curtilage,” a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government’s intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno’s driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. “There’s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there’s one kind of diversity that doesn’t exist,” he wrote. “No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter.” The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of “cultural elitism.”
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state – with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit’s – including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s pro-privacy ruling was unanimous – decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last,” he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: “Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.”
SOUTH Korea has detected a “massive” deployment of North Korean troops and arms near the capital Pyongyang, Seoul’s defence ministry said today.
The large number of soldiers, armoured vehicles and artillery have been stationed near the communist state’s capital since July 12, the ministry said in a report to Parliament.
The deployment appears to be related to political events such as a meeting of key communist party delegates next month and the party’s 65th anniversary on October 10, a ministry spokesman said.
“The massive deployment of troops could be designed to show their military power at home and abroad, or for security,” he said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has not publicly appointed an eventual successor, but his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, is widely believed to be being groomed to take over from his ailing 68-year-old father.
Some analysts say Kim Jong-Il will probably designate the son as his political heir at the September meeting, the third such gathering since the communist state was founded in 1948.
It is seen as the most important party event since 1980, when a convention of all-party members made public Kim Jong-Il’s status as the eventual successor to his father, and founding president, Kim Il-Sung.
Kim Jong-Il took over from his father in 1994 in the communist world’s only dynastic succession.
South Korea’s spy chief said in June that the leader’s poor health was driving him to speed up preparations for a handover and that Jong-Un was taking a greater role in policymaking and often accompanied his father on inspection tours.
Vibrant Response 2010 is a U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) directed, U.S. Army North (ARNORTH) executed culminating training event (CTE) for Chemical, Biological, Nuclear, and high-yield Explosive (CBRNE) consequence management response force (CCMRF) 11.1 focusing on Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) missions in a Consequence Management (CM) role.
This command post exercise (CPX) was conducted at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from Aug. 11 through Aug. 19, 2010. This CPX which involved 400 to 500 people challenged the command and control aspects of a joint task force headquarters required to respond quickly to a domestic disaster.
What has the Army done?
The Army has stood up two CCMRFs to respond to large-scale, domestic disasters. The CCMRF is a Title 10 force comprised of both active component (AC) and reserve component (RC) forces. Each CCMRF is commanded by a major general and consists of three brigade-size task forces – medical, operations, and aviation – in addition to smaller, more specialized elements.
This exercise included Soldiers from the 3/30 MEB from Illinois, and 63rd Theater Aviation Brigade (TAB) from Kentucky (TF AVN C2 HQs) with down trace units from Maryland, New York, and North Carolina. The CCMRF falls under U.S. Army North, which is the Joint Forces Land Component Command (JFLCC), the Army Service Component Command (ASCC), to U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), and the lead agency for Vibrant Response. As such, ARNORTH coordinates the federal military support for domestic operations on land. The CCMRF is designed to reinforce state/local responders when they request federal assistance.
Why is this important to the Army?
Potential CBRNE incidents are a serious threat to the security of our nation. Such an attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could produce catastrophic results overwhelming civil authorities and first responders. The CCMRF provides an answer to this challenge.
What continued efforts does the Army have planned for the future?
CCMRF – One (AC) unit will be assigned to USNORTHCOM on Oct. 1, 2010. CCMRF – Two (RC) will be on prepare-to-deploy orders (PTDO) status while assigned to USNORTHCOM through Sept. 30, 2011. The Department of Defense is working with the National Guard Bureau to field an additional, complementary, all-hazards capability through the designated Homeland Response Forces (HRFs). Ohio (FEMA Region 5) and Washington (FEMA region 10) will be the first two HRF states to stand-up by October 2011.
BOSTON (AP) — Scientists are releasing gases and fluorescent particles into Boston’s subway tunnels on Friday to study how toxic chemicals and lethal biological agents could spread through the nation’s oldest subway system in a terrorist attack.
It’s part of a weeklong study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to figure out ways to quickly minimize the impact of an airborne assault on the nation’s 15 subway systems and protect the nation’s infrastructure. U.S. subway systems include 810 miles of track in tunnels and accounted for about 3.45 billion trips taken last year, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
The scientists are monitoring concentration of the gases – which are invisible to the naked eye and nontoxic – and particles as they move throughout the system and then up into the streets above, pushed by turbulence created by trains thundering through the tunnels. Researchers use electronic devices to take air samples at more than 20 Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority stations and in subway cars.
Test results will be used to craft ways to quickly detect an attack so authorities can shut down subways to limit the spread of contaminants.
Federal officials say similar tests were conducted in 2008 in the Washington, D.C., area, serving as an excellent contrast to the Boston study. The Massachusetts subway system, which opened its first tunnels in 1897, is poorly ventilated, while Washington’s is relatively modern and well-ventilated, DHS officials said.
Abel Girmai, an aspiring actor from Cambridge who rode Boston’s Red Line on Friday, said he thinks about the possibility of an attack “all the time” and supports studying how a biological attack would play out in the subway system.
“Anything that has to do with security, I’m with it,” Girmai said.
“I think at certain times, we do get in a comfort zone. Americans are like that. We don’t think something like that will happen, but we have to get out of that mode.”
Donna Derochers, a legal secretary from Halifax, said she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of the study.
“It’s scary because you are going to find out what could actually happen. You might not want to know,” she said. “You may not want to ride the ‘T’ ever again.”
Though the study focuses on the deliberate release of chemical or biological agents, it also will help researchers understand airflow characteristics for smoke or unintentional spills of chemicals or fuels, DHS said in a statement.
The potency of a chemical or biological attack on underground tunnels was demonstrated in 1995, when a Japanese cult used the deadly sarin nerve gas to attack the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 people and injuring hundreds of others.
In the U.S., authorities thwarted an al-Qaida-sponsored plot to carry out three coordinated suicide bombing attacks on New York City subways last September.
“The MBTA is working closely with our federal partners in order to make the transit system as safe as possible,” MBTA Transit Police Chief Paul MacMillan said.
Physicists and engineers specializing in aerosol physics conducted similar tests in Boston about eight months ago. The tests are being done in both winter and summer months because temperatures and humidity can affect the movement of airborne contaminants, said Teresa Lustig, program manager at the DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate.
This time, officials are also testing the effectiveness of some of the proposed strategies crafted after scientists analyzed the initial tests, Lustig said.
In both studies, researchers released plumes of sulfur hexafluoride, a common tracer gas used for indoor and outdoor air testing, and perfluorocarbon gas, which is used in eye surgery and other medical applications.
The study involves 30 researchers from: Argonne, Ill.-based National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.-based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Arlington, Va.-based ICx Technologies, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory of the United Kingdom and Chemistry Centre of Perth, western Australia.
The day before the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration agreed on a plan to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by force if it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a report by a bipartisan commission of inquiry.
The report pointed out that agreement on the plan, which involved a steady escalation of pressure over three years, had been repeatedly put off by the Clinton and Bush administrations, despite the repeated failure of attempts to use diplomatic and economic pressure.
The revelation emerged at the beginning of the commission’s hearings this week on the country’s failure to prevent the attacks, in which the top officials from both administrations came under scrutiny.
The hearings followed two days of uproar in Washington over allegations from a former White House counter-terrorism tsar, Richard Clarke, that the Bush administration’s ideological obsession with Iraq had hindered the momentum of the struggle with al-Qaida in the months before the attack. Mr Clarke claimed that the plan to increase the pressure on the Taliban was inherited from the Clinton administration.
However, in testimony to the commission, the secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the September 10 meeting of top White House officials, to agree the strategy towards the Taliban, demonstrated a new determination to deal with al-Qaida.
The report drawn up by the commission’s staff said: “From the spring of 1997 to September 2001, the US government tried to persuade the Taliban to expel Bin Laden to a country where he could face justice. The efforts employed inducements, warnings and sanctions. All these efforts failed.”
At a meeting of the Bush administration’s top national security officials on September 10, a three-phase strategy was agreed.
The Taliban would be presented with a final ultimatum to hand over Bin Laden. Failing that, covert military aid would be channelled to anti-Taliban groups. If both those options failed, “the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action.”
However, the three-step process would have taken up to three years, and did not represent an immediate attack plan.
The next day, hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Centre and hit the Pentagon, triggering the launch of an anti-Taliban offensive in October and the Taliban’s fall a month later.
Yesterday, it was the turn of Clinton administration veterans to face questioning on why they had failed to take more aggressive action against al-Qaida in the wake of the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa and the 2000 attack on the American destroyer USS Cole.
The former officials defended their record but also revealed splits in the Clinton administration on how to respond to the attacks. Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, directed blame at the Clinton-era defence department under William Cohen for not agreeing to use special forces to hunt down al-Qaida in the Afghan mountains.
“I’m personally not satisfied we were able to get the right answers out of the Pentagon,” she said. Mrs Albright said she had repeatedly pressed for alternative military measures other than the cruise missile strikes on suspected al-Qaida bases that were tried after the embassy bombings. She said the Pentagon told her that special forces units would either be too small to protect themselves or too large to be covert.
Testifying later, Mr Cohen said that more than 13,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan had failed to find Bin Laden, so questioned what success a small special forces unit might have had.
The commission heard that after the African embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the Clinton administration presented an ultimatum to the Taliban warning it would bear the consequences if there were another al-Qaida attack.
The commission members, drawn from the ranks of retired officials and politicians from both parties, repeatedly asked why that threat was not delivered after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
Mrs Albright said that by the time the Clinton administration left office in January 2001 there was still no “definitive proof” of al-Qaida involvement in the suicide attack off the Yemeni coast. John Lehman, a navy secretary in the Reagan administration and one of the commissioners, alleged that the CIA was already convinced of al-Qaida’s responsibility by December, but Mrs Albright said that finding was not passed on to the political leadership.
Asked the same question, Mr Powell said that before the September 11 attacks, there was no consensus in the Bush administration on how far to go against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
“We did not take into account during that period the kind of actions we were prepared to follow after 9/11,” he told the inquiry. “It was not clear how to get at al-Qaida in a way to destroy al-Qaida, and we were not prepared, before 9/11, to take down the Taliban.”
Mr Powell vigorously rejected the claim, made by Mr Clarke in a White House memoir published on Monday, that the Bush administration had failed to take the terrorist threat seriously,
“President Bush and his entire national security team understood that terrorism had to be among our highest priorities, and it was,” he said. Mr Powell said holding more meetings on the issue would not have accelerated efforts to arm a US hi-tech surveillance drone, the Predator, with missiles so that it could track and, if necessary, attack Bin Laden in Afghanistan – one of the measures urged by Mr Clarke.
The armed Predator was only ready by autumn 2001.
Mr Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, also objected to suggestions that the US should have acted earlier to arm the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. They said the Northern Alliance was in no position to pose a serious military threat to Kabul, and was implicated in drug dealing and human rights abuses. Only after September 11 2001, they argued, when US special forces soldiers were sent to collaborate with the Northern Alliance, was it feasible to increase direct military aid.
The main players, past and present
Madeleine Albright, secretary of state 1997-2001 Under pressure yesterday for having been too soft on the Saudis and the Taliban. She blamed William Cohen and the Pentagon for failing to send special forces after al-Qaida.
Colin Powell, secretary of state since 2001 On the defensive over the Bush administration’s failure to act faster against al-Qaida. He denied that having more meetings on the subject would have been more effective. The Bush White House and the Pentagon are likely to face intense criticism
William Cohen, defence secretary 1997-2001 Dropped in hot water by caution on the use of ground troops. He personified the conservatism of the American defence establishment before September 11
Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary since 2001 Was more concerned with reorganising armed services and with Star Wars anti-ballistic missile programme than terrorism before September 11. He is alleged to have favoured bombing Iraq in the immediate aftermath because it had more promising targets than Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA is opening a counterproliferation center to combat the spread of dangerous weapons and technology, a move that comes as Iran is on the verge of fueling up a new nuclear power plant.
CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday that the new unit would place CIA operators side by side with the agency’s analysts to brainstorm plans to “confront the threat of weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, chemical and biological.”
The center would formalize the collaboration between the agency’s analysts and operators, a close working relationship that CIA spokesman George Little said already has yielded intelligence successes.
Little cited their work in last year’s revelation of the “discovery of the Syrian covert nuclear reactor and Iran’s undeclared uranium enrichment facility near Qom.” That Iranian city is the ideological center of Iran’s Shiite rulers.
Paul Brannan, a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security, said another CIA success was the slowing down of Iran’s nuclear centrifuge operations at Natanz. The agency, he said, sneaked “faulty parts into Iran’s nuclear supply chain.”
That operation, Brannan said, “is an example of where you’d need both analysts to tell you what type of parts would Iran need that you could inject, and the operations side to work with trading companies to try to get the parts in there.”
The CIA’s new center goes into effect just as Iran’s Bushehr power plant gets stocked with fuel rods provided by Russia. Uranium fuel will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor on Saturday, beginning a process that will last about a month and end with the reactor sending electricity to Iranian cities, Russian and Iranian officials said.
Brannan said the Bushehr site is not a proliferation threat since Iran does not have the ability to reprocess the spent fuel into nuclear weapons-grade material.
But that site will be watched closely not only by the CIA but by other elements of the intelligence community. The overall effort is led by the National Counterproliferation Center, which is under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
One senior intelligence official said that when the Bushehr plant goes operational, analysts at all the agencies will examine data such as radar and satellite images of the site separately, and then may share their observations over secure top-secret systems. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue of overlapping intelligence responsibilities.
They’ll be watching for things like a heat signature on radar images, Brannan said. They will also be tracking, as much as they can from imagery, vapor leaving the cooling towers, which would indicate Bushehr is “hot,” the intelligence official said, or whether the Iranians “are trying to siphon anything off” the reactor to any of their other facilities.
The Iranians have been known to go to elaborate lengths to obscure their actions from view. The commercial satellite company GeoEye tracked Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility over several years, which showed how the Iranians first built two large 550-by-550-foot chambers at ground level, and then buried the vast site.
A second set of buildings, complete with landscaping, was then constructed nearby, apparently to look like the real facility, while the original construction is now underground and completely invisible from the sky.
(This version corrects to Office of the National Director of Intelligence instead of Office of the Intelligence Director in 9th paragraph and corrects attribution in 11th paragraph. )
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2010 – More than 2,000 participants from 18 countries are taking part in Panamax 2010, one of the world’s largest multinational maritime training exercises, aimed at defense of the Panama Canal.
Cosponsored by U.S. Southern Command and the Panamanian government, the 12-day exercise that kicked off Aug. 16 brings together sea, air and land forces in a joint, combined operation focused on defending one of the world’s most strategic and economically crucial waterways, Southcom officials said.
Participants will test their ground, naval, air and special operators’ ability to respond to threats to the Panama Canal during the exercise taking place in the waters off Panama and Colombia, and also in Miami and Mayport, Fla., and Norfolk, Va.
In addition, Panamax 2010 participants will exercise their ability to plan for a major humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission in the region, officials said.
Major players in the exercise –- part live play and part virtual –- include U.S. 4th Fleet, which will exercise command and control from its maritime operations center in Mayport, Fla.; and U.S. 2nd Fleet, which will serve as a joint task force leading a multinational force operating under a United Nations resolution.
USNS Grasp and U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Forward are among 24 vessels taking part in the exercise, as well as units from 12th Air Force in Tucson, Ariz., and U.S. Army South from Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Servicemembers participating in Panamax bring a broad range of capabilities, explained Jose Ruiz, a Southcom spokesman. They represent medical, diving and salvage units, explosive ordnance disposal and riverine units, all with roles to play in the evolving exercise scenario.
Speaking during Aug. 16 opening ceremonies in Mayport, Navy Rear Adm. Vic Guillory, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command and U.S. 4th Fleet, emphasized the importance of partnerships and the role of global maritime forces in protecting the Panama Canal Zone.
Panamax offers “a tremendous opportunity to share and exchange information and learn from one another in a coalition and joint environment,” he said.
Speaking in Norfolk, Navy Vice Adm. Daniel P. Holloway, commander of U.S. 2nd Fleet and director of the Combined Joint Operations from the Sea Centre of Excellence, said Panamax will promote interoperability that’s critical in that joint coalition environment.
“We want to do these exercises now, at a time of peace, so that if the crisis occurs, we have already established the protocols in our relationships,” he said.
In addition to the United States and Panama, participants in Panamax 2010 include Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
Panamax has grown dramatically since 2003, when Panama, Chile and the United States conducted the first exercise in the series. Last year, participation peaked with 20 nations taking part in Panamax 2009. Collectively, they contributed about 7,000 troops, more than 30 ships and a dozen aircraft to the exercise.
A strange double earthquake was responsible for the tsunami that devastated parts of the South Pacific in 2009, scientists claim.
In a rare set of events, an initial 8.1 magnitude earthquake was immediately followed by a second 8.0 shock.
The resulting tsunami devastated the South Pacific islands of Tonga and Samoa.
An estimated 192 people died as four waves each more than five metres high surged inland.
And international team led by Professor Thorne Lay of the University of California, US, studied the causes of the tsunami. The results are published in the journal Nature.
Record shock
The earthquake was unusual, not only because of the double shock, but also because of the location of the first event.
Almost all great earthquakes – shocks of magnitude 8.0 or bigger – occur at locations where fragments of the Earth’s rigid crust, known as tectonic plates, grind against one another.
However, the initial Tonga earthquake occurred up to 100 km (62 miles) from the closest tectonic plate boundary. As such it is the largest ever earthquake of this type reported in more than 100 years of monitoring.
Professor Lay commented that the Tonga earthquake was “unlike anything seismologists have seen before”.
This “out of place” earthquake was triggered as part of the Earth’s crust was dragged under another piece of crust. As it bent, it snapped near its middle sending out shockwaves.
Earthquakes and tsunamis are a common feature of the Pacific. The region – known as the Ring of Fire because of its many volcanoes – is one of the most geologically active parts in the world
In 2004, a massive 9.1 magnitude earthquake triggered the infamous Boxing Day Tsunami. This catastrophic event killed nearly a quarter of million in 14 countries throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans.
A group of scientists says as much as 79 percent of BP Plc’s leaked oil remains in the Gulf of Mexico, challenging an Obama administration assessment that the crude is largely gone or rapidly disappearing.
Most of the oil that leaked from BP’s Macondo well from April 20 to July 15 is still beneath the water’s surface, five scientists including Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia in Athens, concluded in a memo made public yesterday. The researchers say they drew upon the U.S. government’s study while reaching different conclusions.
The Obama administration’s Aug. 4 report indicated that almost three-fourths of the crude that leaked has disappeared or soon will be eaten by bacteria. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has said at least half of the oil released is now “completely gone.”
Chemist Dana Wetzel said the administration’s conclusion felt like the “closing credits of a movie.”
“It’s like they were saying ‘the end,’” Wetzel, program manager at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, said in an interview last week. “I’d say we have just gotten through setting up the plot.”
Spokesmen at the White House, NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard didn’t respond to requests for comment on the new report.
Oil Still There
Charles Hopkinson, a University of Georgia marine scientist and one of the five researchers, said plumes of oil dispersed underwater remain a threat.
“One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless,” he said in a statement released yesterday. “The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade. We are still far from a complete understanding of what its impacts are.”
Other scientists agree with the government that the oil has largely dissipated.
“I don’t think it’s still lurking out there,” Edward Overton, an environmental chemist and professor emeritus at Louisiana State University, said in an interview last week.
‘Incredible’ Resiliency
“The Gulf is incredible in its resiliency and ability to clean itself up,” said Overton, who served as a technical reviewer for the administration’s report. “I think we are going to be flabbergasted by the little amount of damage that has been caused by this spill.”
The leak began after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by London-based BP exploded off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers and oiling as much as 650 miles of coastline.
The scientists who said that as much as 79 percent of the oil is still in the Gulf of Mexico said their estimates don’t include oil known to have washed into coastal wetlands because such crude is too difficult to measure, according to the memo, dated Aug. 11 and written by Hopkinson.
President Barack Obama and administration officials have emphasized positive news about the Gulf region since the flow of oil from the biggest U.S. spill was halted.
Obama and his family traveled to Florida’s Gulf coast on Aug. 14 in a bid to provide the region with an economic boost. The president, who took a swim with daughter Sasha, said beaches along the coast are clean and open for business and the seafood is safe. Obama also said he won’t be “satisfied” until the environment along the Gulf has been restored.
Mother Nature’s Work
“Mother Nature did some nice work for us in terms of evaporation and dissolution of the oil in the water,” Carol Browner, Obama’s top environmental adviser, said earlier this month.
Scientists from the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg said in a separate study that they have seen evidence oil observed underwater has become poisonous to marine life.
The oil was found in the “critical” DeSoto Canyon that supports spawning grounds for commercially important fish species on the West Florida Shelf, according to an e-mailed statement from the school today.
Robert Weisberg, a scientist at the university, said today that it’s not yet known how the oil remaining in the Gulf of Mexico may affect the ecosystem.
“There is subsurface oil,” he said in an interview. “I don’t care what anyone says. But the truth is we really don’t know yet about the concentration levels.”
St. Petersburg, Florida (CNN) — Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill may have settled to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico further east than previously suspected and at levels toxic to marine life, researchers reported Monday.
Initial findings from a new survey of the Gulf conclude that dispersants may have sent the oil to the ocean floor, where it has turned up at the bottom of an undersea canyon within 40 miles of the Florida Panhandle. Plankton and other organisms showed a “strong toxic response” to the crude, according to researchers from the University of South Florida.
“The dispersant is moving the oil down out of the surface and into the deeper waters, where it can affect phytoplankton and other marine life,” said John Paul, a marine microbiologist at USF.
Results of the latest survey are scheduled to be released Tuesday, but CNN obtained a summary of the initial conclusions Monday night. Tests conducted offshore indicate the oil matches the 205-million-gallon Deepwater Horizon spill, which has been temporarily capped for a month, the summary states.
Some of it has spread into the DeSoto Canyon, a channel on the ocean floor east of the ruptured well. That canyon comprises part of the spawning grounds for much of the Gulf’s commercial fish. “To date, this is the easternmost location for the occurrence of subsurface oils,” the report states.
The oil is not “draping” across the bottom, but is spread out in “small, unevenly distributed droplets,” the report states. USF chemical oceanographer David Hollander said that when an ultraviolet light used to detect oil was turned onto the sea floor, “All of a sudden, it turns out to be a constellation of little dots.”
And the oil could well up onto the continental shelf and resurface later, Paul said. Or it could be eaten by fish and other animals and accumulate in the food chain, Hollander said.
“It’s in such small droplets that you can see it — you can filter it and see it,” he said. “But if you look at it, it’s transparent, and small larval fish see these droplets as food so they’re ingesting pure oil.”
The Environmental Protection Agency has previously reported some oil turning up in the sediment at the bottom of the Gulf, but has not determined whether it came from the Deepwater Horizon spill that erupted in April or whether it was already present. And on August 4, the head of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration warned that oil could persist in the water even though the well has been temporarily capped.
The oil company BP used more than 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants on the Deepwater Horizon spill between its eruption in late April and the time the well was capped in mid-July. BP says the chemicals allowed the oil to be broken up into droplets small enough that microbes can digest it, and the Environmental Protection Agency has said the dispersants were no more toxic than the oil itself.
Critics warned the full effect of the dispersants on the food chain was not known and that their use in deep water effectively concealed the full extent of the spill.
NOAA spokeswoman Mary Jane Schramm said on Monday that she had not seen the latest study and couldn’t comment on it. BP spokesman John Curry, meanwhile, said the company wants “to know everything everyone wants to know.”
The company is responsible for capping, cleaning up and compensating victims of the oil spill, and it has committed to spending $500 million to research the spill’s impact over the next 10 years. The latest study will “add another piece to the puzzle,” Curry said.
“There will be others that’ll want to look at this study and want to look at doing some additional research,” he said. “There’s been extensive testing up to this point, and I’m sure there will be much more going forward.”
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it’s Haiti’s disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is … destroying and taking over Iran.
In his address, Mr Gilani said 20 million were now homeless, although it was unclear how many of those people were briefly forced to leave their homes and how many had lost their houses altogether.
“Unfortunately, the recent unprecedented torrential rains and devastating floods have made more than 20m people homeless, destroyed standing crops and food… worth billions of dollars, washed away bridges, roads, communication and energy networks,” he said.
There were still flood victims to be reached, but the government was leaving no stone unturned, he said.
The UN had previously said the region’s worst flooding in 80 years had affected 14 million out of Pakistan’s 180 million population and killed 1,600 people.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit the country during the weekend.
‘Slow’ international response
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s UN envoy has voiced renewed criticism of the international response to the disaster.
Zamir Akram told the BBC that the immensity of the devastation was only now being recognised, and that so far there had not been enough help.
However, he said he was hopeful that the relief effort was improving.
“I don’t think that Pakistan has been abandoned. As the gravity of the situation and the extent of the damage that has been caused by these unprecedented floods spreads around the world, the response is growing,” he said.
And flood levels are expected to surge even higher along parts of the already dangerously swollen Indus river, with disaster officials saying “major peaks” were expected next week in Punjab and Sindh provinces.
Aid agencies have been warning of the dangers of an outbreak of cholera since the onset of the floods.
The UN said it would start widespread treatment of the deadly disease.
Maurizio Giuliano, of the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP news agency that one case of cholera had now been confirmed in the town of Mingora, in the Swat valley
He said there were 36,000 more cases of people suffering from watery diarrhoea – one of the symptoms of cholera.
“Given that there are concerns about cholera, which is a very deadly disease, what we’ve started to do instead of testing them for cholera is to treat everyone for cholera,” he said.
“We’re not suggesting that everyone who has acute watery diarrhoea has cholera, but cholera is certainly a concern and that’s why we’re stepping up our efforts to treat cholera.”
Parades cancelled
Pakistan has cancelled official celebrations of its Independence Day on Saturday, as officials try to co-ordinate relief efforts.
Earlier, President Asif Ali Zardari directed that there should be no official celebrations.
In his Independence Day message, he said: “The enthusiasm of Independence Day this year… has been dampened because of the unprecedented floods that have devastated the lives of thousands of people and left scars on the lives of several hundred thousands more in all parts of the country.
“I salute the courage and heroism of flood victims and assure them that the government will do everything possible to alleviate their sufferings.”
Major cultural and music shows will be cancelled along with the usual military parades and official gatherings.
Mr Zardari will instead spend the day touring affected regions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces.
His critics at home and abroad have rounded on him for not taking a more direct role, and choosing to visit Europe just as the disaster was unfolding.
The UN on Wednesday launched a $459m (£294m) appeal for emergency aid, but says billions will be needed in the long term.
Analysts say the cost of agricultural losses is still hard to quantify.
The Crops Protection Association put the loss of the cotton crop alone at $1.8bn, while agriculture officials said 17 million acres of farmland was under water.
BBC World Service’s Newshour will broadcast a one-hour programme on the Pakistan floods, hosted by Lyse Doucet from Karachi, at 1200 GMT on Saturday 14 August.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 11, 2010 – The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan now has almost 120,000 troops from 47 different countries assigned to it, NATO officials said yesterday.
The United States provides 78,430 of that total, part of the roughly 100,000 American troops now based in the country. The top leadership is all American, with Army Gen. David H. Petraeus commanding ISAF and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. Army Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez commands the ISAF Joint Command, and Army Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell commands NATO Training Mission Afghanistan.
The largest regional command in Afghanistan is in the south, with 35,000 troops. The command is focused on Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city and the spiritual home of the Taliban. Regional Command South is under the command of British army Maj. Gen. Nick Carter.
Kandahar is the focus of counterinsurgency efforts now. The American presence in the region is significant, with U.S. troops around the city, in the Arghandab River valley and guarding the road network linking the city with the rest of the country. Canadians run the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, Australians operate the team in Tarin Kowt, and the team in Qalat is American-run.
The next-largest regional command is in the east, with 32,000 personnel. Regional Command East is built around the 101st Airborne Division headquarters, with Army Maj. Gen. John Campbell commanding. In addition to the U.S. troops, a brigade of French troops and a Polish brigade also serve in the command. Ten of the 14 provincial reconstruction teams in the area are staffed by Americans. The Czech Republic mans the team in Logar, New Zealand operates the team in Bamyan, Turkey handles Wardak, and South Korea has troops at the team in Parwan.
Regional Command South West is the next-largest command, with 27,000 troops. The command covers Helmand and Nimroz provinces, with most of the troops in Helmand. Marines provide most of the American manpower in the region, and they work closely with British forces there. Denmark and Georgia also have forces in the area. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Mills commands from his headquarters in Lashkar Gah.
With 11,000 troops, Regional Command North is keeping watch on an area that is experiencing a growth in Taliban activity. Commanded by German army Maj. Gen. Hans-Werner Fritz in Mazar-e Sharif, the command has a smorgasbord of nationalities. The Germans work seamlessly with Norwegians, Swedes, Hungarians and Turks. U.S. forces are based in the area as part of the Afghan army and police training effort.
The Italians command Regional Command West, based in Herat. The 9,000 coalition troops cover an area stretching from the middle of the country to the border with Iran. Spanish, Lithuanian and American troops are the mainstays under the command of Italian Brig. Gen. Claudio Berto.
Finally, Regional Command Capital encompasses the area in and around the Afghan capital of Kabul. Turkish Brig. Gen. Levent Colak commands the 5,000-member command, which is basically Turkish and Spanish. The command has been turning over security responsibility to Afghan forces over the past couple of months, but the Afghans still work under the guidance and mentorship of the command.
After the United States, the country with the largest number of troops with ISAF is the United Kingdom with 9,500, followed by Germany with 4,590. France is next with 3,750, followed by Italy with 3,400, Canada with 2,830, Poland with 2,630, Romania with 1,760, Turkey with 1,740, Spain with 1,555, and Australia with 1,455.
OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN (AP) — In a historic first for Cold War adversaries, U.S., Canadian and Russian military officers directed fighter jets and ground controllers to test how well they could track an international terrorist hijacking over the Pacific Ocean.
A chartered American jet code-named Fencing 1220 sent a mock distress signal shortly after taking off from Anchorage, Alaska, on Sunday, triggering a pursuit by at least seven fighters and a flurry of radio and telephone calls between military and civilian officials on both sides of the Pacific.
The Associated Press had exclusive access to Fencing 1220, a plush executive-style Gulfstream whose passengers included a Russian Air Force colonel and a senior commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the joint U.S.-Canadian command that patrols the skies over North America.
Their goal: To ensure that two militaries still distrustful of each other can work effectively tackling a terror threat that worries both nations.
One question that arose Sunday was just how much information they need – from the ground, from the fighters, from the hijacked pilots and from the terrorists – and whether fewer, simpler messages might be better than the flood of communication the exercise generated.
Canadian Forces Col. Todd Balfe, the deputy commander of NORAD’s Alaska region, acknowledged it may seem “incongruous” that the exercise was taking place amid tension between his country and Russia over recent Russian bomber flights probing the northern boundaries of Canadian airspace. But with al-Qaida at the front of North American minds and Russia dealing with threats from Chechen rebels, terrorism transcends national boundaries, and exercises like this could lay the foundation for cooperating on other issues as well, Balfe said.
“So we’ll start out with this mission, and if that leads into other missions, for example, probing of air spaces, well, that would be a great thing as well,” he said.
Even veteran officers aboard the Gulfstream were struck by the unprecedented cooperation the exercise required and the breathtaking sight of fighter jets so near that the pilots’ helmets were clearly silhouetted against the bright blue sky.
“I’m kind of in awe,” said U.S. Army Maj. Michael Humphreys, the senior American officer on Fencing 1220 and a spokesman for NORAD. “It was a remarkably well-planned and well-executed exercise.”
It is only half over. The plane will fly back to Alaska later this week, again pursued by fighter jets and tracked by controllers on the ground and in the air.
Russian Air Force Col. Alexander Vasiliev said he knew the day would come when the former Cold War enemies would work in concert, but “he never thought it would be him sitting on the aircraft,” his translator said. Vasiliev declined to be quoted directly, saying he would leave that to a Russian spokesman at a news conference planned later in the week.
The intricate exercise began about 10 minutes after the Gulfstream took off from Alaska. Its civilian pilots sent an agreed-upon digital distress code, 5475, to civilian air traffic controllers in the U.S. to signal that the plane had been “hijacked.”
Ben Rhodes, one of the pilots, followed up with a voice radio call: “Fencing 1220 squawking 5475 for the exercise.”
NORAD then dispatched two F-22s and an E-3 Sentry – an airborne surveillance and command post – to shadow the plane.
The Gulfstream was still over Alaska at about 38,000 feet (11,500 meters) when the angular, silver F-22s drew alongside, about 10 minutes after the hijack signal. They edged to within 500 feet (150 meters) and after about 30 minutes, they turned back to refuel and didn’t return.
On the ground and in the air, commanders at NORAD headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., and civilian aviation officials in Alaska were communicating with their Russian counterparts. About two hours after the F-22s fell back, while the Gulfstream was over the Pacific, NORAD officers aboard the E-3 Sentry radioed their counterparts on a Russian surveillance and command post plane that Fencing 1220 was theirs to follow.
Two Russian Su-27 fighters painted pale blue and white soon pulled up from behind the Gulfstream and hovered off its right side, red stars clearly visible on their wings and twin tails. They shadowed the Gulfstream for about 90 minutes before banking sharply to the left and peeling away.
Three other Russian fighters, a MiG-31 and two Su-27s, later shadowed the Gulfstream during the 7 1/2-hour flight. All the fighters were unarmed, a condition of the exercise.
The scene aboard Fencing 1220 was a dramatic contrast to the ominous threats and bluster that marked U.S.-Soviet relations for most of the last half of the 20th century. One of the lowest points came in 1983, when the Soviet air force shot down a Korean Air Lines jumbo jet, killing 269 people. The jet had strayed far off course near the USSR’s Pacific coast and was brought down near Sakhalin Island, well south of the route Fencing 1220 took.
Aboard the Gulfstream, Balfe and Vasiliev chatted amiably about the planes they flew and their families. The radio sometimes carried the voices of Russian officers speaking heavily accented English, asking questions or delivering route instructions.
“To see those Russian fighters pull up right on time, to hear the Russians (talking on the radio), it’s just incredible,” the U.S. Army’s Humphreys said.
