Defense Articles

Some corn varieties that arose on the Caribbean island of Antigua defend themselves with chemical attacks that leave insect gut linings in tatters.

When armyworm caterpillars make the mistake of chewing on some of this corn, they don’t grow well, reaching only half the weight of counterparts that consume less gut-wrenching corn, says Dawn S. Luthe of Mississippi State University. Now, she and her colleagues propose at least one reason why.

Corn plants under attack quickly accumulate a cysteine protease–a protein-slicing enzyme–surrounding the location where the caterpillars are chewing. In an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report microscope observations of the sorry state of the innards of insects that had digested enzyme-laced corn tissue.

“That’s pretty novel,” comments Clarence Ryan of Washington State University in Pullman, another specialist in built-in plant weaponry. Although chemical defenses are common in the plant world, Ryan says he hadn’t heard of an enzyme of this particular class being deployed that way.

Luthe explains that the toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), now widely engineered into commercial crops, also attack insect guts. But Bt toxins do their damage differently. She says that the new enzyme doesn’t knock out insects fast enough to substitute for Bt toxins. However, she speculates that combining the protease with other defenses could make a pesticide to which it would be hard for insects to develop resistance.

Corn breeders have long known about the caterpillar-stunting power of the Antigua lineages. These plants don’t express the enzyme in their kernels. A coauthor of the new paper, W. Paul Williams of a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory at Mississippi State, has used the corn in traditional, nontransgenic corn-breeding projects.

To see what causes the stunting, Luthe, Williams, and their colleagues studied the chemicals released by the Antigua corn varieties when caterpillars start chewing on them. Other corn-defense chemicals typically show up in 8 hours, but the cysteine protease surges in about an hour and remains at high concentrations for at least a week.

They identified the gene that encodes this enzyme and inserted it into another corn variety. They grew masses of the transgenic corn tissue, called callus, which they then fed to armyworm caterpillars. Under a scanning electron microscope, the guts of caterpillars that ate enzyme-enhanced callus had many little rips. Innards of caterpillars that ate nontransgenic callus looked smooth.

Another scientist who studies plants defenses, Gary Felton of Pennsylvania State University in State College, calls the work “an elegant demonstration of this new mechanism.”

Men who get circumcised reduce their risk of acquiring HIV, the AIDS virus, by more than half, a clinical trial in South Africa shows.

Many previous studies have suggested such a benefit from male circumcision (SN: 4/3/04, p. 212). But this trial and two ongoing trials in Uganda and Kenya are the first ones to investigate the procedure’s effect on HIV risk to men. It did so by randomly assigning some men and not others to be circumcised, says physician Bertran Auvert of INSERM, the French national research agency, in Saint-Maurice.

Auvert and an international team of researchers recruited 3,274 uncircumcised heterosexual men, ages 18 to 24, from an area near Johannesburg.

All wanted to be circumcised and agreed to get the operation either at the start or at the end of the planned 21-month study. After the volunteers were randomly divided, physicians circumcised half the men and instructed them to abstain from sex for 6 weeks to allow full healing. Men in both groups were counseled on safe sex practices and checked for HIV infection three times during the study.

After 18 months, an oversight panel of scientists halted the project because the data were clear–49 of the uncircumcised men but only 20 of those who were circumcised had acquired HIV. The researchers report the findings in the November PLoS Medicine.

“There can no longer be a shadow of doubt that male circumcision gives a man major protection against HIV infection,” says physiologist Roger V. Short of the University of Melbourne in Carlton, Australia, who wasn’t involved in the South African study.

Auvert says that although circumcision reduced HIV risk by 60 percent, some men might mistakenly interpret this benefit as full protection. The circumcised men in the trial reported having sex 18 percent more often than the uncircumcised men did. The reason for the difference is unclear, he says.

Shortly after circumcision, men are at high risk of contracting the disease from sex partners because of the surgical wounds. But Auvert notes there was no jump in HIV infections among recently circumcised men in this study.

Uncircumcised men have soft foreskin around the head of the penis containing many cells that are easily infected by HIV, according to epidemiologist Robert C. Bailey of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These cells, called Langerhans’ cells, “tend to be close to the surface,” he says. Once infected, he adds, “they carry the virus deeper,” to the immune system T cells that HIV most commonly infects.

Circumcision removes the foreskin. During healing after the procedure, the protein keratin toughens the skin of the penis, which reduces HIV penetration there, Bailey says.

If circumcision offers protection for young-adult men, then it would be at least as valuable–or even more so–if done earlier in life, says Bailey, who is leading the study in Kenya.

The new data support a policy of early circumcision, Short concurs. “The later in life a man is circumcised, the more likely he is to be already infected with HIV.”

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

3010 DEFENSE PENTAGON

WASHINGTON, DC 20301-3010

JAN 13 2005

MEMORANDUM FOR CHAIRMAN, DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD

SUBJECT: Terms of Reference–Defense Science Board 2005 Summer Study on Transformation: A Progress Assessment

Since the end of the Cold War, the Department of Defense has engaged in a wide range of military and humanitarian operations. As President G.W. Bush stated in the 2002 National Security Strategy, “The major institutions of American national security were designed in a different era to meet different requirements. All of them must be transformed.” In response to this call to arms, the Department of Defense initiated wide-ranging plans, policies, and programs to transform itself. As described in the Secretary of Defense’s 2003 Transformation Planning Guidance (TPG), the scope of the Department’s transformation efforts encompassed how we fight, how we do business, and how we work with others. While the TPG states, “There will be no moment at which the Department is transformed,” the Department must evaluate both the effectiveness and the direction of its transformation efforts.

You are requested to form a Defense Science Board Summer Study to provide an assessment of the Department’s continuing transformation process. The assessment should describe the current status of the Department’s transformation efforts, identify the appropriate transformation objectives, and recommend ways and means to meet the emerging and persistent challenges as identified in the 2004 National Defense Strategy.
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The TPG outlined the Department’s three-part strategy for transformation: Transformed culture, Transformed processes, and Transformed capabilities. Within the Department’s transformation scope and strategy, the Study should consider all the following:

1) Concepts and Experimentation. Post-Cold War operational concepts are continuously evolving. In response to the Secretary’s request for joint concepts of operations, the concept community developed a family of joint concepts organized in a hierarchy including the overarching Joint Operations Concepts (JOpsC), subordinate Joint Operating Concepts (JOC), supporting Joint Functional Concepts (JFC), and detailed Joint Integrating Concepts (JIC). In addition, the Services developed supporting service concepts. The Air Force is developing the Air Force Concepts of Operations (CONOPS); the Navy and Marine Corps are developing the Naval Operating Concept for Joint Operations (NOC); and the Army is pursuing the Future Force concept. These concepts address the development of future joint forces’ transformational capabilities and characteristics, but an assessment is needed of the state of the joint concept development and experimentation process that integrates Service-provided capabilities into effective joint operational capabilities. Further, the assessment should examine how well the Department integrates the rest of the U.S. Government (USG) capabilities to provide the capabilities to deal with 21st Century adversaries. The Study should address alternative operational constructs and concept development processes, which would enable the Department of Defense to better meet the challenges of the 21st century by applying the entire array of power available to the USG. The Study must focus on important functional concepts and capabilities, such as logistics and battlespace awareness, which provide essential elements to implementing joint concepts. Finally, experimentation provides an important feedback mechanism into the iterative development of joint concepts. Consequently, the study must assess the state of experimentation, the interrelationships between a series of experiments within an experimental campaign, and, especially, the relationship and involvement of Service and Combatant Command experimentation efforts.

2) International competitors seek to develop and possess breakthrough technical capabilities intended to supplant U.S. advantages in particular operational domains. Because of this aspect of the security environment, the study should address disruptive challenges from a variety of sources such as technology, demographics, and legal. In addition, the Study should define the scope of the problem and capabilities DoD requires to address these challenges.

3) As an element of net-centric operations, the Department is developing a broad range of networked systems to generate new capabilities and multiply existing force structure effectiveness. The Study should assess the adequacy and effectiveness of the approaches to realize the potential advantages of net-centric operations.

4) The Department’s force structure still is burdened with Cold War legacy components. A significant transformation effort seeks to transform the joint force into smaller, rapid, more agile forces with greater deployability and lethality than much of the current force. However, strategic guidance and operational experience confirm that some joint force operations will continue to require sustained presence and an ability to confront heavy, concentrated firepower to achieve desired effects and mission accomplishment. Since the Department’s transformation efforts must reconcile expeditionary agility and responsiveness with persistence and durability, the study should focus on the Department’s need for evolving joint forces to cover the spectrum of military engagement and accomplish the full range of missions assigned to DoD.

Some corn varieties that arose on the Caribbean island of Antigua defend themselves with chemical attacks that leave insect gut linings in tatters.

When armyworm caterpillars make the mistake of chewing on some of this corn, they don’t grow well, reaching only half the weight of counterparts that consume less gut-wrenching corn, says Dawn S. Luthe of Mississippi State University. Now, she and her colleagues propose at least one reason why.

Corn plants under attack quickly accumulate a cysteine protease–a protein-slicing enzyme–surrounding the location where the caterpillars are chewing. In an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report microscope observations of the sorry state of the innards of insects that had digested enzyme-laced corn tissue.

“That’s pretty novel,” comments Clarence Ryan of Washington State University in Pullman, another specialist in built-in plant weaponry. Although chemical defenses are common in the plant world, Ryan says he hadn’t heard of an enzyme of this particular class being deployed that way.
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Luthe explains that the toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), now widely engineered into commercial crops, also attack insect guts. But Bt toxins do their damage differently. She says that the new enzyme doesn’t knock out insects fast enough to substitute for Bt toxins. However, she speculates that combining the protease with other defenses could make a pesticide to which it would be hard for insects to develop resistance.

Corn breeders have long known about the caterpillar-stunting power of the Antigua lineages. These plants don’t express the enzyme in their kernels. A coauthor of the new paper, W. Paul Williams of a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory at Mississippi State, has used the corn in traditional, nontransgenic corn-breeding projects.

To see what causes the stunting, Luthe, Williams, and their colleagues studied the chemicals released by the Antigua corn varieties when caterpillars start chewing on them. Other corn-defense chemicals typically show up in 8 hours, but the cysteine protease surges in about an hour and remains at high concentrations for at least a week.

They identified the gene that encodes this enzyme and inserted it into another corn variety. They grew masses of the transgenic corn tissue, called callus, which they then fed to armyworm caterpillars. Under a scanning electron microscope, the guts of caterpillars that ate enzyme-enhanced callus had many little rips. Innards of caterpillars that ate nontransgenic callus looked smooth.

Another scientist who studies plants defenses, Gary Felton of Pennsylvania State University in State College, calls the work “an elegant demonstration of this new mechanism.”

Men who get circumcised reduce their risk of acquiring HIV, the AIDS virus, by more than half, a clinical trial in South Africa shows.

Many previous studies have suggested such a benefit from male circumcision (SN: 4/3/04, p. 212). But this trial and two ongoing trials in Uganda and Kenya are the first ones to investigate the procedure’s effect on HIV risk to men. It did so by randomly assigning some men and not others to be circumcised, says physician Bertran Auvert of INSERM, the French national research agency, in Saint-Maurice.

Auvert and an international team of researchers recruited 3,274 uncircumcised heterosexual men, ages 18 to 24, from an area near Johannesburg.

All wanted to be circumcised and agreed to get the operation either at the start or at the end of the planned 21-month study. After the volunteers were randomly divided, physicians circumcised half the men and instructed them to abstain from sex for 6 weeks to allow full healing. Men in both groups were counseled on safe sex practices and checked for HIV infection three times during the study.

After 18 months, an oversight panel of scientists halted the project because the data were clear–49 of the uncircumcised men but only 20 of those who were circumcised had acquired HIV. The researchers report the findings in the November PLoS Medicine.
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“There can no longer be a shadow of doubt that male circumcision gives a man major protection against HIV infection,” says physiologist Roger V. Short of the University of Melbourne in Carlton, Australia, who wasn’t involved in the South African study.

Auvert says that although circumcision reduced HIV risk by 60 percent, some men might mistakenly interpret this benefit as full protection. The circumcised men in the trial reported having sex 18 percent more often than the uncircumcised men did. The reason for the difference is unclear, he says.

Shortly after circumcision, men are at high risk of contracting the disease from sex partners because of the surgical wounds. But Auvert notes there was no jump in HIV infections among recently circumcised men in this study.

Uncircumcised men have soft foreskin around the head of the penis containing many cells that are easily infected by HIV, according to epidemiologist Robert C. Bailey of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These cells, called Langerhans’ cells, “tend to be close to the surface,” he says. Once infected, he adds, “they carry the virus deeper,” to the immune system T cells that HIV most commonly infects.

Circumcision removes the foreskin. During healing after the procedure, the protein keratin toughens the skin of the penis, which reduces HIV penetration there, Bailey says.

If circumcision offers protection for young-adult men, then it would be at least as valuable–or even more so–if done earlier in life, says Bailey, who is leading the study in Kenya.

The new data support a policy of early circumcision, Short concurs. “The later in life a man is circumcised, the more likely he is to be already infected with HIV.”

Critics say assistant D.A. reluctant to take rape and child molestation cases to trial.

— File photo/The Capital-Journal

- CJOnline.com

For story archives and audio interviews, visit CJOnline.com.

- D.A.’s speeding ticket pleaded down.

Page 8-A

By JIM McLEAN

The Capital-Journal

Brenda Taylor-Mader, an assistant district attorney for Shawnee County, is no stranger to controversy.

She made headlines in Miami 12 years ago because her boss considered her style of dress provocative and because she had a New York dinner date with a stockbroker who she had unsuccessfully prosecuted for drunken driving.

More headlines followed when she publicly flirted with the idea of posing for Playboy magazine after being fired from her assistant state attorney’s job in Broward County, not for her flashy attire, but for her handling of DUI cases, failing to show up in court and her failure to do paperwork.

Here in Shawnee County, the issue isn’t so much Taylor-Mader’s short skirts and revealing animal-print blouses as it is her apparent reluctance to take rape and child molestation cases to trial.
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Records show, and Taylor-Mader confirmed during an interview on Saturday, that she hasn’t taken a single case involving allegations of sexual misconduct to trial since spring 1998.

Her failure in the eyes of some to vigorously prosecute sex cases has become a key issue in the increasingly bitter campaign between District Attorney Joan Hamilton and challenger Robert Hecht.

Hamilton, a Democrat seeking a third term, and Hecht, a 66-year- old Republican lawer who left the prosecutor’s office in 1969, have strong philosophical differences about the role victims should play in deciding whether cases go to trial or are settled in plea bargain agreements.

Hamilton insists it should largely be up to victims. Hecht says that while victims’ wishes are important, the safety of the entire community should come first.

With that debate serving as a backdrop, an anonymous letter written by someone with detailed knowledge of plea agreements negotiated by Taylor-Mader was recently sent to Topeka-area media outlets. The letter charged that Taylor-Mader and Hamilton were jeopardizing public safety by not putting chronic sex offenders in jail.

“The problem is more horrifying when the sexual abuse victims are children,” the letter states. “It is critical that each one of us as parents, educators, caretakers and members of the community demand that criminals who hurt our children are held accountable.”

The letter details the criminal history of Fitzgerald Blackwell, a court-designated “sex offender” who since 1990 has pleaded guilty three times to molesting teen-age boys. Though he has served time in prison, he has spent most of the past 10 years on probation.

He is in the Shawnee County Jail awaiting trial on charges of criminal sodomy and indecent solicitation of a child between the ages of 14 and 16.

But as before, there are indications he won’t go to trial. On Friday, Blackwell’s defense attorney, Kip Elliot, received a continuance to Nov. 30 to give him more time to work out a plea bargain with Taylor-Mader.

In 1998, Blackwell was charged with three counts of criminal sodomy and one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. But under a plea agreement negotiated by Taylor-Mader in March 1999, three of the four felony charges were dismissed, and the fourth was reduced to a misdemeanor.

Blackwell again received probation and was ordered to attend counseling sessions, to take medicine to render him impotent and to stay away from children.

The most recent charges against Blackwell were filed on May 16. Taylor-Mader said it was likely that the charges would be reduced in exchange for Blackwell’s testimony against another suspected child molester.

“A plea doesn’t mean non-incarceration,” Taylor-Mader said, insisting that Blackwell, whom she described as “childlike” and the “product of a disturbing background,” would receive jail time.

Critics of Taylor-Mader also point to the case of a former Topeka man who was charged in 1997 with raping his 8-year-old daughter.

Before the case went to trial, Taylor-Mader agreed to dismiss the rape charge in exchange for a guilty plea to a simple count of battery, a misdemeanor.

As Judge Nancy E. Parrish was preparing to accept the plea, the victim’s mother objected.

“Your honor, I don’t think it’s fair that he gets just a slap on the wrist for what he’s done to my daughter and to the rest of my three kids,” the mother said, charging that her ex-husband had molested all of her children and threatened them to keep them quiet.

“They are scared at nighttime when I have to go to work,” the mother said.

After the mother’s testimony, Taylor-Mader told Parrish that the district attorney’s office had agreed to the plea bargain because the victim’s “changing story” would make it difficult to prove the rape charge in front of a jury.

“I didn’t feel we had a strong case,” Taylor-Mader said Saturday, adding that if she had it to do over again she wouldn’t file the charges in the first place.

Part one of this article focused on cognitive biases and how they can contribute to criminal investigative failures. Part two presents probability errors and organizational traps that can lead investigations astray. It also offers recommendations and additional strategies that investigators may find helpful.

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PROBABILITY ERRORS

Probability and Psychology

Anyone who has spent a few hours watching people gamble will realize that probability is a difficult concept for the human mind. Individuals often use heuristics–and suffer from biases–when dealing with probability. Police officers find it particularly hard to think probabilistically. Because of their street experiences, they prefer black and white, rather than shades of gray. Probability errors in criminal justice most often occur in the forensic sciences but also can happen in criminal profiling.

Coincidences and the Law of Small Numbers
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A common problem with probability results from looking for patterns in, or drawing inferences from, a small number of incidents. For example, an analyst examines the dates for a series of 15 street robberies and observes that none of the crimes occurred on a Thursday. Is this pattern meaningful? Probably not. With only 15 crimes, chances are at least one day of the week will be free of robberies.

Skeptics often say they do not believe in coincidences. However, when looking for patterns within large numbers of items (i.e., events, suspects), coincidences are inevitable. The comparison of Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln provides a well-known example. The list of remarkable similarities is strictly the product of chance (with 43 U.S. presidents, 903 possible comparisons are possible) and cherry picking (noting similarities, while ignoring differences).

What role does coincidence play in major crime investigations? If enough suspects are looked at, by sheer chance, some will circumstantially appear guilty. A few people will just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Efforts to solve a crime by “working backwards” (i.e., from the suspect to the crime, rather than from the crime to the suspect) are susceptible to errors of coincidence. If you look hard enough, you can usually find some sort of connection. These types of errors often are seen in the proffered “solutions” to such famous cases as Jack the Ripper.

Coincidences can be a trap when offender modus operandi and similar fact evidence are used for crime linkage purposes. Trawl search problems occur when only similarities, and not differences, are examined. (1) Comparisons of common similarities (e.g., vaginal intercourse in rape crimes) lack utility, while misspecifications of similarities can be misleading. Consider two juvenile murder strangulations involving body transportation and concealment.

While the similar crime characteristics suggest a link, more detailed examination reveals important inconsistencies. One victim was a 3-year-old male, manually strangled, his body found in a dumpster 100 yards from his house. The other victim was a 14-year-old female, strangled with a rope, her body found dumped in a river 20 miles from her home.

Double Counting

Extracting two elements of a crime from a common source and then erroneously treating them as separate aspects can mislead a criminal investigation. A rumor heard from more than one person does not necessarily verify the information as both individuals may have received it from the same source. Consider a behavioral profile of a child murderer. Amongst other details, the profile estimates the offender’s age and his vehicle type, derived from automobile insurance data. Using the profile, investigators evaluate two suspects–one matches both the age and vehicle criteria, and the other only the age. Who is the better suspect vis-a-vis the profile? Actually, they are equal. Derived from the age estimate, the vehicle type is not an independent profile element drawn from the crime scene (as opposed to a vehicle sighting by a witness). Treating age and vehicle type as two separate match points constitutes double counting.

Conjunction Fallacy

The conjunction fallacy occurs when investigators assign a higher probability to the overlap of two events than to either event separately. Probabilities are combined by multiplying them together, resulting in a product smaller than either initial probability (given noncertainty). (2) Conjunction fallacies have occurred in DNA matching, offense-linkage analysis, and crime forecasting. (3) Imagine that a witness reports seeing a vehicle flee a nighttime gas station robbery in which the clerk was shot dead. He states that he had only a quick glimpse but is reasonably sure the vehicle was a gray domestic minivan. How much weight should be placed on this description?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This question has two parts. First, what is the probability the witness actually saw the offender’s vehicle? In major crime cases, especially those involving significant publicity, the public’s desire to help or become involved is high, but their information often proves unreliable. A generous assumption gives the witness a 75 percent chance of actually having seen the robber’s vehicle. Second, how accurate is his vehicle description? The witness provides three descriptive elements. Assigning witness accuracy probabilities of 70 percent to the make, 90 percent to the type, and 60 percent to the color (under some streetlights, blue looks gray) puts the likelihood that the witness saw a gray American-made minivan at only 38 percent. The probability that the offender was driving such a vehicle is only 28 percent (the probability the witness actually saw the vehicle times the probability of witness accuracy). This does not mean his information is not valuable. Obviously, suspect vehicles that are gray domestic vans should be prioritized and investigated. The problem only occurs when other suspect vehicles (e.g., blue imported SUVs) are ignored.

The FBI reported murders of officers in 2005 continued at high levels, although the 55 felonious deaths were well below the 21st Century peak of 70 in 2001.

Officers were wearing body armor in 30 of the 50 deaths due to firearms. Most wounds occurred in parts of the body other than the torso. Of nine deaths from torso wounds, only one occurred because of equipment failure. The assault weapon was a shotgun.

For officers dying from torso wounds, bullets entered through armholes, side panels and immediately above or below the area covered by a vest.

Deadly assaults on officers in the current year are continuing at the pace of a year ago.

Most officers fall victim to firearms, the FBI said, noting five deaths from vehicles and 50 from guns. But two-thirds of the murders occurred during vehicle patrol.

In analyzing the relationship of body armor in the fatalities, the FBI found only one death due to vest failure in 2005 compared to four in 2004.
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Law enforcement agencies have been upgrading body armor since the widespread publicity about vest failure in the death of a Forest Hills, Pa., police officer in 2003.

The National Institute of Justice adopted new minimum standards for bullet-resistant vests last year.

Most of the assailants had records of criminal violence and several were gang members. Gang assaults on police in California have become an increasing problem.

Apparently due to their criminal histories and knowledge of police procedures, these assailants fired below, above or to the side of the vests.

Of the identified assailants, 41 were under the age of 35 and 23 were youths between the ages of 17 and 25. Several had prior criminal records for assaulting officers and most had convictions for violent drug crimes.

IN FUTURE CONFLICTS, military space forces will likely face challenges ranging from defending against opposing systems to dealing with rapidly changing technology and support needs. The Air Force describes its vision for responding to these challenges as operationally responsive space (ORS). Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom clearly demonstrated the force-multiplication effect of space systems on US military capabilities. Precision-guided munitions; global, high-speed communications; and enhanced situational awareness all contributed to the rapid destruction of the Iraqi military (fig. 1). (1) Unfortunately, future opponents observed the United States’ dependence on space systems. To win the next war, this nation must prepare to respond to opposing space and counterspace systems. Gen Lance Lord, USAF, retired, former commander of Air Force Space Command, points to ORS as one way of shaping this response. (2) According to a draft study of ORS, it “will provide an affordable capability to promptly, accurately, and decisively position and operate national and military assets in and through space and near space. ORS will be fully integrated and interoperable with current and future architectures and provide space services and effects to war fighters and other users. ORS is a vision for transforming future space and near space operations, integration, and acquisition, all at a lower cost.” (3)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
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During Iraqi Freedom, described as the first counterspace war, both sides executed counterspace missions. Iraq, for example, attempted to jam GPS signals using Russian-made equipment, and US forces destroyed an enemy ground-transmitting facility, disabling Iraq’s ability to communicate with its forces and the outside world by using commercial satellite television. (4) A more capable future opponent will find additional techniques for using space to counter the space capability of the United States.

We can anticipate some responses to our space systems. Specifically, Russia, North Korea, Iran, India, and China may be capable of building a nuclear-armed antisatellite weapon system. (5) Furthermore, “many countries are developing advanced satellites for remote sensing, communications, navigation, imagery, and missile warning,” and Russia, China, and the European Union have developed or are developing satellite-navigation systems. (6) Improved antijam features can counter jamming defenses. However, the most effective countermeasures to our space capability will likely take the form of unanticipated actions by our adversaries. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might call such actions the “unknown unknowns” or, in the worst case, a “space Pearl Harbor.” (7) Fortunately, we have military techniques for responding to the unknown. Speed, maneuverability, and agility have allowed military forces throughout history to deal with unanticipated events. The ability to act and respond faster than the enemy is a well-known tenet of military operations.

Space systems do not adapt well to change. When it became obvious in September 1990, during the planning for Desert Storm, that existing satellite-communications capacity would not support the war effort, we made an urgent attempt to launch an additional Defense Satellite Communications System III spacecraft. That mission finally launched on 11 February 1992, missing the war by over a year. Luckily for the nation, we not only had access to a retired spacecraft but also were able to hire commercial communications capacity. (8) The ability of the United States to support Iraqi Freedom with additional space capability has not significantly improved since Desert Storm.

President Bush has noted the need for responsive space capability. US Space Transportation Policy Directive 40, issued 6 January 2005, directs our government to “demonstrate an initial capability for operationally responsive access to and use of space–providing capacity to respond to unexpected loss or degradation of selected capabilities, and/or to provide timely availability of tailored or new capabilities–to support national security requirements.” The same document describes the purpose behind this direction: “Access to space through U.S. space transportation capabilities is essential to: (1) place critical United States Government assets and capabilities into space; (2) augment space-based capabilities in a timely manner in the event of increased operational needs or minimize disruptions due to on-orbit satellite failures, launch failures, or deliberate actions against U.S. space assets.” (9) The challenge for the Air Force lies in responding to this direction within the constraints of austere budgets.

Responsiveness in space systems has proven difficult to attain. Characteristics of existing systems include development times exceeding a decade, high cost, and an emphasis on reliability and long mission life. These traits are driven, in part, by the considerable expense of getting to space. Nevertheless, we can achieve the space capability we desire through multiple approaches. The United States maintains a highly responsive fleet of launch vehicles in the ICBM force and has previously maintained communication spacecraft and counterspace systems on alert–an effective approach but costly and encumbered by nuclear politics. (10) Consequently, ORS is examining avenues other than brute force to secure responsiveness. To do so, we must change many aspects of the entire space architecture. The ground system, space vehicle, launch vehicle, and launch infrastructure all affect the responsiveness of space capabilities (fig. 2). Improving a launch vehicle’s reaction time has little effect if we have not similarly improved the infrastructure and spacecraft.

“Knowledge is power when shared.”

In preparation of tank gunnery, crews train on multiple tasks to ensure they are proficient in their job skills, which should guarantee a qualified rating on Tank Table VIII. Throughout the gunnery training phase all tasks are important–individual task training is the key to successful collective tasks.

Collectively, a tank crew wants to acquire, engage, and destroy all targets presented for each engagement. The score for each engagement depends on the time, in seconds, of the last target destruction. To assist in taste, engagement times, experienced tank crewmen emphasize the training of loading the 120mm main gun. During the training phase, the loader will be required to load the main gun until he meets crew standards. In most cases, the loader is allowed to stow the HEAT and sabot rounds in the ready rack where he is comfortable. Since the training sabot weighs 37.8 pounds and the training HEAT weighs 51.4 pounds, the majority of loaders prefer to place HEAT rounds in the upper tubes of the compartment–when the locking mechanism is unlatched for the HEAT round, the weight of the round will assist in the removal and loading process. This is where the armor community falls short in safety issues for crews and equipment.

All M1-series tanks have a ready and semi-ready ammunition compartment in the turret rear and a hull ammunition compartment. The main armament ammunition is stowed in the racks behind sliding armor doors. Each compartment, including the hull, has blow-off panels, a reinforced structure, and ballistic doors to protect the crew in case of projectile penetration in the ammunition storage area. The design specification of the 16-, 17-, and 18-round ammunition racks is the deciding factor in storing HEAT ammunition.
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The initial M1A1 tank from 1985 was assembled with 17-round racks in the turret ammunition compartment and full anti-fratricide protection for all tube locations on both the ready and semi-ready sides. Also, the hull ammunition compartment has full anti-fratricide protection. Because of their design, HEAT rounds are more vulnerable when compared to kinetic energy or canister rounds. Thus, to lower overall system vulnerability, only kinetic energy and canister rounds are to be stowed in the top two rows of the turret ammunition compartments. The lower two rows can hold either kinetic energy, canister, or HEAT rounds. The anti-fratricide protection is provided by wrapping materials around the outside of each tube where the warhead is located. If the jet steam of a HEAT round was to penetrate the amino storage area and detonate a HEAT warhead, the anti-fratricide bars are made to stop the fragmentation and explosive effects from detonating a neighboring round.

The design of the M1 tank evolved into the M1A1 to combat the increased capability of threat forces. The M1A1 tank incorporated modifications that increase the weight of the vehicle. During this period of production, our battle secnario was the tank-to-tank battle as were the tears of the Cold War. This type of battle scenario drove the requirement for more kinetic energy rounds rather than chemical energy rounds. To mitigate the increase in vehicle weight, there were several vehicle weight-reduction initiatives, which included reducing anti-fratricide protected locations within the new 16/18-round ammunition racks. Since the Cold War load plan required a majority of kinetic energy rounds, the reduction in anti-fratricide bars was not considered a reduction in capability.

The 16- and 18-round ammunition racks have been used in the Abrams tank since 1990. Whether you have a 16- or 18-round rack will determine where HEAT rounds will be stowed within the turret ammunition compartment. A 16- and 18-round rack has anti-fratricide bars mounted around the rearward portion of the tubes. Refer to Technical Manual (TM) 9-2350-264-10-1, Operator Controls, PMCS, and Operation Under Usual Conditions, page 2-485, for the exact placement of rounds. Generally speaking, to maximize tank crew survivability, stowage of HEAT rounds are to be placed in the two bottom rows and in the inner tube locations of the tun-et ammunition racks. Kinetic energy and canister rounds can be stowed in all rack locations of the turret ammunition compartment. The hull ammunition compartment will accommodate free stowage of kinetic energy, canister, or chemical energy rounds. However, HEAT rounds are considered safer if they are stowed in the inner column of the hull ammunition compartment. If more HEAT rounds are to be uploaded, the TM depicts the tubes that can be used to accommodate your unit’s SOP, but these rounds need to be fired first. The new U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 3-20.12, Tank Gunnery (Abrams), will address the 120mm ammunition stowage.

Other safety considerations when handling and storing 120mm ammunition include: thoroughly inspecting all rounds prior to uploading according to TM 9-2350-264-10-2, Operations Manual Operation Under Unusual Conditions, Emergency Procedures, Troubleshooting, and Maintenance, page 5-11, Table 5-2; training rounds will not be stored in the hull ammunition compartment due to the vulnerability of the training round propellant; load only enough training ammunition in the bustle compartments to achieve immediate training objectives; do not have, operate, or carry any unauthorized wireless/electronic devices when within three meters of tank ammunition; never operate any tactical or commercial radio on the 200-280 MHz frequency when within three meters of tank ammunition; frequency blocks shall be incorporated in all radios near the tank ammunition; and wear gloves when handling ammunition–the human body could act as an antenna amplifying any signals in area if the center primer electrode is touched.