Air Force’s Secret Space Plane Prepped for New Launch

The second X-37B sits inside its encapsulation shell at a Florida facility before an April 2010 launch. Photo: Air Force

The Air Force’s mysterious X-37B space plane is now readying for its third space mission, slated to begin in October. And perhaps not surprising for the hush-hush orbital drone, the third time into space remains as secretive as the first two.

Next month, the X-37B will blast off again aboard an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The exact timing of the October launch is unknown and subject to change due to weather conditions, and there’s no telling how long the drone will stay in orbit. ”Preparations for launch at Cape Canaveral have begun,” Major Tracy Bunko, an Air Force spokesperson, told Space.com.

While it’ll be the third flight for the robotic space plane program as a whole, it’s only the second for this particular craft. Four months ago, X-37B’s second of two planes returned from its first flight and a record-breaking 469 days in orbit – more than double the first mission’s total.

Will the OTV-3 try to break that record? The military, naturally, hasn’t said; calls to the Air Force were not immediately returned. Nor does the public know what exactly it’ll be doing once it’s up there. Its mysterious mission has fueled speculation it could be a spy. China fears it could be an experimental weapons platform or a means to disable satellites.

What we do know about the X-37B is that it’s a smaller, unmanned version of the now-retired space shuttle and is ostensibly used for Air Force research missions of an indeterminate nature. The manned space shuttle, we know, was retired last summer and just completed a three-day ferry flight across the United States. The X-37B is like a lighter robotic version, and can stay up for more than a year at a time — far longer than the manned shuttles ever could. The drone measures 29 feet long and 15 feet wide, weighs 11,000 pounds and is about a fourth the weight of the space shuttle, and launches into orbit on a conventional rocket but glides back down to Earth like a plane. Inside the plane is a payload bay roughly the size of a pickup truck bed. It costs around an estimated billion dollars.

Continue Reading “Air Force’s Secret Space Plane Prepped for New Launch” »

Tags: , , , ,
Back to top

Obama Defends Free Speech After Asking YouTube to ‘Review’ Anti-Islam Movie

Staff and security personnel wait backstage as President Barack Obama addresses the United Nations, September, 2011. Photo: Flickr/White House

As riots across the Mideast targeted U.S. embassies and consulates, the White House quietly asked YouTube to “review” whether an anti-Islam film allegedly fueling the chaos violated any terms of use. Now, in front of the United Nations, President Obama insisted that the only answer to offensive speech is “more speech.”

It’s not that Obama thinks that the Prophet Mohammed ought to be maligned by a filmmaker who uses tons of aliases and was once busted for PCP. There’s a principle at stake, he told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning: “Our Founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views, and practice their own faith, may be threatened.” The calls for censoring the video emanating through the Muslim world are ultimately futile, as well: “When anyone with a cellphone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete.”

True enough. But his administration’s response to the video and the anti-American protests continues to whipsaw. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo tweeted condemnations of the film on September 11 and stuck by them as mobs outside stormed the embassy gates. Obama basically deleted those tweets in his speech. He challenged offended Muslims to “also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied.” And Obama dismissed the idea that the anti-Islam film was the true cause of this month’s assaults on U.S. embassies, locating it in “intolerance” instead. Even Obama critics like Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol conceded that the president’s speech was “conventionally unobjectionable.”

Continue Reading “Obama Defends Free Speech After Asking YouTube to ‘Review’ Anti-Islam Movie” »

Tags: , , , , ,
Back to top

Syrian Tanks Pummel Rebel City as Satellites Watch

Successive images of Aleppo show increasing war damage. Photo: AAAS

Successive images of Aleppo show increasing war damage. Photo: AAAS

Three successive overhead snapshots by orbiting civilian satellites provide the best, unclassified, big-picture view to date of the more than two-month-old battle for one of Syria’s key cities. Since late July troops loyal to embattled Syrian president Bashar Al Assad have waged a relentless air and ground campaign against rebels in Aleppo, a city of two million near the border with Turkey.

In the satellite photos, a tank appears then disappears, leaving a ruined building in its wake. Scorch marks, craters and debris chart the progression of brutal urban fighting. Makeshift defensive positions proliferate as the assault escalates.

These details and more are visible in commercial satellite images dated Aug. 9 and 23. Researchers  at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, based in Washington, D.C., compared the August snapshots to each other and to an October 2011 Google Earth image in order to understand the scale and evolution of the fighting.

The images “largely corroborate on-the-ground reports of heavy artillery assaults by the Syrian army moving through neighborhoods,” Susan Wolfinbarger, an AAAS senior program associate, said in a statement.

AAAS’ satellite-based assessment of nearly 200 square kilometers of dense urban terrain belies the growing power of independent observers to monitor civil fighting — and the paucity of on-the-ground reporting in embattled Aleppo, 18 months into Syria’s bloody civil war, which has killed 17,000 people including nearly 12,000 non-combatants.

Continue Reading “Syrian Tanks Pummel Rebel City as Satellites Watch” »

Tags: , , , ,
Back to top

$2 Billion Later, Bloated Spy Blimp Finally Kills a Cruise Missile

JLENS. Photo: Raytheon

For the first time, one of the Pentagon’s spy blimps successfully detected and tracked an anti-ship cruise missile, which the Navy then proceeded to blast out of the sky. But it’s only a marginal success for the once-hyped blimp program. Once sweeping in scale and designed to use radars to help shoot down enemy missiles — a threat we could potentially face during a war with Iran — the blimps have seen drastic cuts after nearly $2 billion in development costs and years of delays.

The Raytheon-designed spy blimps, called the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor or JLENS, used its radars to home in on a test cruise missile during a demonstration Friday at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. After the blimps detected the test missile, the Navy fired a Standard Missile-6 interceptor and shot the incoming missile down. ”It was a very successful intercept, and I’m pleased to say lots of pieces of the target scattered over the desert,” Mark Rose, Raytheon’s program director, told reporters during a teleconference Monday.

And on paper, the blimps sound better than in practice. Seventy-five meters long and almost as wide as a football field, a JLENS is actually not one — but two — blimps touted as a missile-defense radar in the sky. The Pentagon has hoped for years to field the blimps — designed to float at 10,000 feet for up to a month at a time — as a tool for tracking missiles, planes and boats.

In the event of a war with Iran, the blimps are designed to float calmly above the Persian Gulf, while defending against incoming missiles that could sink ships. The blimps’ sensor range — about 342 miles — reaches farther than the Air Force’s E-3 Sentry early-warning plane, while staying on guard for longer and using less fuel and manpower. The sensor range also reaches far enough that it could cover a sizable chunk of the Gulf including the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway.

But the JLENS also has an inglorious history. First proposed in 1998, the Pentagon had by 2007 planned to build 28 blimps — divided into 14 pairs of two when deployed — at a total cost of $1.4 billion. By 2012, the military had already spent $1.9 billion, more than the original cost, and didn’t have a single blimp ready to go. The program also needed another sum of $6 billion to field all the blimps by the year 2014.

Continue Reading “$2 Billion Later, Bloated Spy Blimp Finally Kills a Cruise Missile” »

Tags: , , , ,
Back to top

Libya Could Be An Opportunity For CIA, If Spies Stick Around

Libyans celebrate the end of the Gadhafi regime in Benghazi, October 2011. After the attack on the U.S. consulate, these same Libyans could be key for the CIA’s counterterrorism efforts. Photo: Flickr/Magherebia

President Obama told the truth when he said there would be no U.S. ground troops in Libya after last year’s war to oust dictator Moammar Gadhafi. He just left out a lot of context — like how eastern Libya, the site of the deadly September 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, would become a major staging ground for American contractors and intelligence operatives as they try to take the measure of the local Islamist militants.

The future of that effort is now in question after an attack that killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador and two former Navy SEALs. The assault has led Americans to vacate Benghazi for their safety, even though various militant groups continue their operations. It’s a disaster for U.S. intelligence efforts in the region, especially since the attack has made brutally clear how real the jihadi threat in eastern Libya remains.

But there may be the smallest of silver linings to this black cloud, if American operatives are able to capitalize on it. The aftermath of the attack shows widespread displeasure with Benghazi’s jihadist groups, with thousands marching in protest. That’s an opportunity the CIA could use to rebuild its intelligence gathering.

The New York Times reports that one of the compounds in the lightly-secured Benghazi consulate was a CIA safe house. From there, intelligence personnel and contractors — like the ex-Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, who died in the attack — attempted to locate and destroy the thousands of rockets and missiles that went missing during the war. They also attempted to gather information on the constellation of extremist militias that have emerged after the downfall of Gadhafi.

Now they may not. While U.S. surveillance drones dot the skies over Libya, what remains of the intelligence operation below may have already departed Benghazi, understandably fearing for its safety. An anonymous U.S. official described it to the Times as a “catastrophic intelligence loss” that leaves the U.S. with “our eyes poked out.” While other officials dispute that characterization, the first account administration officials provided of the incident mentioned that remaining U.S. personnel in eastern Libya had been extracted.

Continue Reading “Libya Could Be An Opportunity For CIA, If Spies Stick Around” »

Tags: , , , , ,
Back to top
« OLDER POSTS