Jon
06-24-07, 01:01 PM
The tech fix
The military spent billions to hear a pin drop in Baghdad, but was it listening to soldiers’ needs?
http://www.metrospirit.com/Image/18.47/thumb_mb_224.jpg
An Army photo shows prophet in action, under ideal conditions.
AUGUSTA, GA. - Somewhere in Iraq, there’s a modified Humvee with a 23-foot collapsible antenna sticking off of the roof.
It is harvesting electromagnetic signals emitted by radios and telephones. The soldiers inside the rig can pick out a signal and jam it, or pinpoint its source, perhaps revealing an enemy’s location. Or they can simply listen to the voices floating through the air.
Information collected by the Humvee is relayed to a brigade operations center in the area. From there, data bounces to a military satellite, and back to the United States.
And so it is that an Arabic linguist here at Fort Gordon, an ocean away from combat, can eavesdrop on a conversation in Baghdad almost as it happens.
The communications gear on the Humvee is part of a system called Prophet. The military devised it the mid-1990s to replace older, “obsolete” equipment. Several years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, Prophet went to war. Army Cryptologic Operations and the National Security Agency have since enhanced it for use in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Army officials use buzzwords like revolutionary and transformational to describe its powers. But what can it do to stop an endless supply of homemade bombs hidden by the roadside?
Even though Prophet’s backers call it a success, the system — like other costly, state-of-the-art military programs — was designed with another war in mind.
As such, it is an example of what some call a systemic problem within the military: the compulsion to seek out technological cures for human ills.
Prophet may be impressive, but it’s not magic. It may help draw an “electronic map” of the battlefield, but it can’t single out an enemy from all the faces in a crowd. It can’t turn chaos into calm.
It can’t pick our wars. And if we pick the wrong one, it can’t make us win.
Not to mention: the Prophet-equipped Humvees that rolled into Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at an estimated cost of $300,000 per vehicle, were the same “thin-skinned” models that left soldiers so infamously vulnerable.
Fancy electronics, but no armor.
The Defense Department has asked Congress for more than half a trillion dollars in spending next year. The emphasis remains on high technology.
The Army wants to increase its spending on Prophet ground systems from $100.5 million this year to $119.5 million.
The Pentagon’s budget for the V-22 Osprey, an airplane that can take off like a helicopter, would increase by $500 million, to $2.6 billion — even though the Osprey has been plagued by design flaws, crashes and doubts about its practicality.
Meanwhile, the amount allocated to basic pay for enlisted personnel would actually decline from $31.7 billion to $30.3 billion.
“In Washington, there has never, never been a lobby for soldiers,” says Ralph Peters, a retired lieutenant colonel in Army intelligence turned novelist and commentator. However, the companies that produce weapons technology employ some of the capital’s top power brokers.
None other than former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now in prison for bribery and other crimes, was present for the Prophet’s roll-out ceremony in June 2002. The first contract for the system went to Titan Corp., one of Cunningham’s top donors.
“Even Satan can accidentally do good things,” notes Peters, who, being unfamiliar with Prophet, was unwilling to pass judgment on it. Any system that saves American lives, he says, is worth the cost.
“There are specific technologies that are very useful in Iraq,” he says. “Intercepting cell phone transmissions is a classic example.”
Prophet may well be helpful. Because parts of the system are secret, the people who use it day-to-day can’t really talk about it. Titan representatives declined to comment. Edward T. Bair, the Army program executive officer in charge of Prophet, did not respond to written questions submitted to his secretary.
In any case, the military wasn’t sure Prophet would work before it put the equipment in soldiers’ hands. A 2003 audit by the Defense Department’s inspector general found that Prophet “will be fielded without ensuring that the system meets operational needs.” In other words, they weren’t sure it would hold up in a fight.
Further, the audit said “Prophet will be fielded without knowing the extent to which the systems meet information assurance requirements.” That means engineers couldn’t verify that the communications were secure.
Kenneth H. Stavenjord, Director of the IG’s Technical Assessment Directorate, oversaw the 2003 audit. Asked if there had been any follow-up, he said, “I can’t talk to you.”
Despite auditors’ concerns, Prophet was put on the fast track for use in Afghanistan, then Iraq. How has it fared?
In recent years, Bair and other officers have cited Prophet as a “success story.” But a successful acquisitions program and a successful war are two different things.
In the January 2004 Military Intelligence Professionals Bulletin, Lt. Col. DJ Reyes wrote that the terrain in Iraq “restricted our ability to provide useful signals intelligence” and that the low-tech nature of the post-invasion conflict “mitigated (and, at times, negated) the effectiveness of our technical intelligence platforms.”
Earlier this year, Air Force Gen. Ronald E. Keys warned that there is so much electromagnetic pollution, from U.S. and insurgent forces around Baghdad, that the military’s sensitive surveillance systems may be overwhelmed.
“We’ve learned the limits of technology,” says Peters.
While high technology may be useful, he says, only the human mind can draw conclusions. Peters has long criticized the military’s overreliance on whiz-bang gear. More have come around to this way of thinking since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have suffered from a lack of “human intelligence” — flesh-and-blood spies.
“It’s something American, where the solution always seems to be technology,” says Nick Sarantakes, a Command and General Staff College instructor at Fort Gordon. “Science and engineering is nice, but you still need liberal arts.”
In the first Gulf War, says Peters, “We were able to collect a lot of raw data, but the problem was, nobody could figure out what it meant.”
Analysts in Iraq and at Fort Gordon struggle with the same problem today, in part because of bureaucratic decisions made decades ago.
Once Cold War Pentagon planners decided to focus on expensive technology, they inadvertently set a course that today’s soldiers must follow.
Peters recalls one case, from his years in Army intelligence, where top planners bought whatever the contractors were selling, against the advice of soldiers.
“There’s this dreadful system called the ‘All Source Analysis System: ASAS,’” Peters says. “Back in the ’80s, we said, ‘This is a bad move, it’s premature technology, and not what we need, in any case.’”
They got it anyway. “The technocrats were in charge. They were abetted by the defense contractors, who were utterly unscrupulous, and by members of Congress,” Peters says. “The system, even though it’s legal, is ethically corrupt.”
Today, Peters’ dreaded ASAS is in use at Fort Gordon and elsewhere. The information collected by Prophet feeds into ASAS computers. The two systems are “fully integrated,” according to Army documents.
Sounds great on paper. :D
The military spent billions to hear a pin drop in Baghdad, but was it listening to soldiers’ needs?
http://www.metrospirit.com/Image/18.47/thumb_mb_224.jpg
An Army photo shows prophet in action, under ideal conditions.
AUGUSTA, GA. - Somewhere in Iraq, there’s a modified Humvee with a 23-foot collapsible antenna sticking off of the roof.
It is harvesting electromagnetic signals emitted by radios and telephones. The soldiers inside the rig can pick out a signal and jam it, or pinpoint its source, perhaps revealing an enemy’s location. Or they can simply listen to the voices floating through the air.
Information collected by the Humvee is relayed to a brigade operations center in the area. From there, data bounces to a military satellite, and back to the United States.
And so it is that an Arabic linguist here at Fort Gordon, an ocean away from combat, can eavesdrop on a conversation in Baghdad almost as it happens.
The communications gear on the Humvee is part of a system called Prophet. The military devised it the mid-1990s to replace older, “obsolete” equipment. Several years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, Prophet went to war. Army Cryptologic Operations and the National Security Agency have since enhanced it for use in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Army officials use buzzwords like revolutionary and transformational to describe its powers. But what can it do to stop an endless supply of homemade bombs hidden by the roadside?
Even though Prophet’s backers call it a success, the system — like other costly, state-of-the-art military programs — was designed with another war in mind.
As such, it is an example of what some call a systemic problem within the military: the compulsion to seek out technological cures for human ills.
Prophet may be impressive, but it’s not magic. It may help draw an “electronic map” of the battlefield, but it can’t single out an enemy from all the faces in a crowd. It can’t turn chaos into calm.
It can’t pick our wars. And if we pick the wrong one, it can’t make us win.
Not to mention: the Prophet-equipped Humvees that rolled into Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at an estimated cost of $300,000 per vehicle, were the same “thin-skinned” models that left soldiers so infamously vulnerable.
Fancy electronics, but no armor.
The Defense Department has asked Congress for more than half a trillion dollars in spending next year. The emphasis remains on high technology.
The Army wants to increase its spending on Prophet ground systems from $100.5 million this year to $119.5 million.
The Pentagon’s budget for the V-22 Osprey, an airplane that can take off like a helicopter, would increase by $500 million, to $2.6 billion — even though the Osprey has been plagued by design flaws, crashes and doubts about its practicality.
Meanwhile, the amount allocated to basic pay for enlisted personnel would actually decline from $31.7 billion to $30.3 billion.
“In Washington, there has never, never been a lobby for soldiers,” says Ralph Peters, a retired lieutenant colonel in Army intelligence turned novelist and commentator. However, the companies that produce weapons technology employ some of the capital’s top power brokers.
None other than former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now in prison for bribery and other crimes, was present for the Prophet’s roll-out ceremony in June 2002. The first contract for the system went to Titan Corp., one of Cunningham’s top donors.
“Even Satan can accidentally do good things,” notes Peters, who, being unfamiliar with Prophet, was unwilling to pass judgment on it. Any system that saves American lives, he says, is worth the cost.
“There are specific technologies that are very useful in Iraq,” he says. “Intercepting cell phone transmissions is a classic example.”
Prophet may well be helpful. Because parts of the system are secret, the people who use it day-to-day can’t really talk about it. Titan representatives declined to comment. Edward T. Bair, the Army program executive officer in charge of Prophet, did not respond to written questions submitted to his secretary.
In any case, the military wasn’t sure Prophet would work before it put the equipment in soldiers’ hands. A 2003 audit by the Defense Department’s inspector general found that Prophet “will be fielded without ensuring that the system meets operational needs.” In other words, they weren’t sure it would hold up in a fight.
Further, the audit said “Prophet will be fielded without knowing the extent to which the systems meet information assurance requirements.” That means engineers couldn’t verify that the communications were secure.
Kenneth H. Stavenjord, Director of the IG’s Technical Assessment Directorate, oversaw the 2003 audit. Asked if there had been any follow-up, he said, “I can’t talk to you.”
Despite auditors’ concerns, Prophet was put on the fast track for use in Afghanistan, then Iraq. How has it fared?
In recent years, Bair and other officers have cited Prophet as a “success story.” But a successful acquisitions program and a successful war are two different things.
In the January 2004 Military Intelligence Professionals Bulletin, Lt. Col. DJ Reyes wrote that the terrain in Iraq “restricted our ability to provide useful signals intelligence” and that the low-tech nature of the post-invasion conflict “mitigated (and, at times, negated) the effectiveness of our technical intelligence platforms.”
Earlier this year, Air Force Gen. Ronald E. Keys warned that there is so much electromagnetic pollution, from U.S. and insurgent forces around Baghdad, that the military’s sensitive surveillance systems may be overwhelmed.
“We’ve learned the limits of technology,” says Peters.
While high technology may be useful, he says, only the human mind can draw conclusions. Peters has long criticized the military’s overreliance on whiz-bang gear. More have come around to this way of thinking since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have suffered from a lack of “human intelligence” — flesh-and-blood spies.
“It’s something American, where the solution always seems to be technology,” says Nick Sarantakes, a Command and General Staff College instructor at Fort Gordon. “Science and engineering is nice, but you still need liberal arts.”
In the first Gulf War, says Peters, “We were able to collect a lot of raw data, but the problem was, nobody could figure out what it meant.”
Analysts in Iraq and at Fort Gordon struggle with the same problem today, in part because of bureaucratic decisions made decades ago.
Once Cold War Pentagon planners decided to focus on expensive technology, they inadvertently set a course that today’s soldiers must follow.
Peters recalls one case, from his years in Army intelligence, where top planners bought whatever the contractors were selling, against the advice of soldiers.
“There’s this dreadful system called the ‘All Source Analysis System: ASAS,’” Peters says. “Back in the ’80s, we said, ‘This is a bad move, it’s premature technology, and not what we need, in any case.’”
They got it anyway. “The technocrats were in charge. They were abetted by the defense contractors, who were utterly unscrupulous, and by members of Congress,” Peters says. “The system, even though it’s legal, is ethically corrupt.”
Today, Peters’ dreaded ASAS is in use at Fort Gordon and elsewhere. The information collected by Prophet feeds into ASAS computers. The two systems are “fully integrated,” according to Army documents.
Sounds great on paper. :D