Armoredd.com

Oct 29, 9:03 PM EDT

By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer

Through CT Central

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth’s first nearly full look at Mercury reveals that the tiny lifeless planet took a far greater role in shaping itself than was thought, with volcanoes spewing “mysterious dark blue material.”

New images from NASA’s Messenger space probe should help settle a decades-old debate about what caused parts of Mercury to be somewhat smoother than it should be. NASA released photos Wednesday, from Messenger’s fly-by earlier this month, that gave the answer: Lots of volcanic activity, far more than signs from an earlier probe.

Astronomers used to dismiss Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, as mere “dead rock,” little more than a target for cosmic collisions that shaped it, said MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber.

“Now, it’s looking a lot more interesting,” said Zuber, who has experiments on the Messenger probe. “It’s an awful lot of volcanic material.”

New images of filled-in craters - one the size of the Baltimore-Washington area and filled in with more than a mile deep of cooled lava - show that 3.8 to 4 billion years ago, Mercury was more of a volcanic hotspot than the moon ever was, Zuber said.

But it isn’t just filled-in craters. Using special cameras, the probe showed what one scientist called “the mysterious dark blue material.” It was all over the planet. That led Arizona State University geologist Mark Robinson to speculate that the mineral is important but still unknown stuff ejected from Mercury’s large core in the volcanic eruptions.

That material was seen with NASA’s first partial view of Mercury by Mariner 10 in the 1970s. It was spotted again in Messenger’s first images of Mercury’s unseen side earlier this year. The latest Messenger images, added to earlier photos show about 95 percent of the planet, and the blue stuff was in many places, more than astronomers had anticipated.

Although Robinson described the material as “dark blue,” it only looks that way to special infrared cameras. In normal visible light, it would have “a soft blue tinge and it would be less red” than the rest of Mercury, he said.

It’s too early to tell what that material is, but it may have iron in it, Robinson said. That would be a surprise because Mariner 10 didn’t find much iron, he said.

—

On the Net:

NASA’s Mercury mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission-pages/messenger/main/index.html

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Oct 31, 6:41 PM EDT

By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer
Through St Petersburgh Times

BAGHDAD (AP) — U.S. deaths in Iraq fell in October to their lowest monthly level of the war, matching the record low of 13 fatalities suffered in July. Iraqi deaths fell to their lowest monthly levels of the year. Eight of the 13 Americans died in combat, most of them in northern Iraq where al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgent groups remain active. The U.S. military suffered 25 deaths in September and 23 in August.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, 15 U.S. military deaths were reported for October. The monthly toll in that combat theater had been in the 20s since June, when 28 Americans were killed - the worst one-month total since that war began in late 2001.

The sharp drop in American fatalities in Iraq reflects the overall security improvements across the country following the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and the rout suffered by Shiite extremists in fighting last spring in Basra and Baghdad.

But the decline also points to a shift in tactics by extremist groups, which U.S. commanders say are now focusing their attacks on Iraqi soldiers and police that are doing much of the fighting.

Iraqi government figures showed at least 364 Iraqis killed in October - including police, soldiers, civilians and militants.

Despite the sharp decline, the Iraqi death toll serves as a reminder that this remains a dangerous, unstable country despite the security gains, which U.S. military commanders repeatedly warn are fragile and reversible.

U.S. commanders are also worried that security could worsen if the Iraqi parliament refuses to approve a new security agreement by the end of December, when the U.N. Security Council mandate under which the coalition operates in Iraq expires.

Without a new agreement or a new U.N. mandate, U.S. military operations would have to stop. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government is pressing for changes in the draft agreement before submitting it to parliament.

Much of that concern focuses on Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a new operation Oct. 15 to clear al-Qaida and other insurgent groups from the city.

Violence occurs almost daily in Mosul, although the U.S. military says attacks there are down by almost half since May.

Attacks and threats against Christians in Mosul prompted about 13,000 of them to flee the city in early October.

On Friday, a local official, Jawdat Ismaeel, said Christians were trickling back after police and soldiers increased patrols and checkpoints in Christian neighborhoods. He said that 35 Christian families, about 210 people, returned in the past week and that the exodus from the city had largely stopped.

The Iraqi government has offered each Christian family that returns 1 million Iraqi dinars - about $865 - although officials say the response so far has been lukewarm.

Also Friday, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh announced that Iraq and Iran have agreed to exchange bodies of soldiers killed during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. He said the exchange - 200 Iraqi bodies for 41 Iranian - would take place Nov. 15 at a border post that he did not identify.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from both sides were killed or went missing during the war.

The International Committee of the Red Cross announced Oct. 16 that the two countries agreed on how to gather and share information about the missing and hand over any remains uncovered.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press

31/10/2008 19h17

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Suspected US missiles struck two deadly blows Friday killing 32 mainly Al-Qaeda operatives and injuring a key Taliban commander in a Pakistani tribal area near the Afghan border, officials said.

The two strikes within a few hours were the latest in series of attacks that have raised tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

In the first attack two missiles hit a pick-up truck and a house west of Mir Ali, a town in the troubled North Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan, killing 20 mainly Arab militants, officials said.

They told AFP the strike targeted an Al-Qaeda financial coordinator known as Abu Akasa Al-Iraqi and that there were unconfirmed local reports that he was among the dead.

Two further missiles fired by a suspected US drone at a militant hideout near Wana, the main town in neighbouring South Waziristan, killed 12 suspected rebels soon after, a senior security official said.

They included “foreigners”, the official said — using the term by which security services refer to Al-Qaeda operatives.

Officials said top Taliban commander Mullah Nazir was wounded in the strike.

“Nazir sustained injuries and was rushed to a hospital by Taliban. We are not sure about the seriousness of injuries to him” a top security official told AFP. “In the two strikes the majority of those killed were Al-Qaeda operatives and some Taliban local commanders.”

Local administration official Mowaz Khan also confirmed Nazir, who leads the Pakistani Taliban faction accused by the United States of sending fighters across the border, was wounded in the attack.

Officials said 30 militants, mostly Taliban fighters, were injured in the attack.

The attacks came just two days after Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led “war on terror”, summoned Washington’s ambassador to Islamabad to deliver a strong protest over a number of similar strikes.

“Some 20 militants were killed in the attack and most were Arabs. It was a successful strike,” another security official told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to the first attack.

Local residents said the strike hit the house of a Pakistani tribesman named Amanullah Dawar. It was not immediately clear whether the house or the vehicle, a pick-up truck, was blown up first, officials said.

Officials in North Waziristan said al-Iraqi was believed killed but added that they were still seeking confirmation.

He was known locally as Abdullah and officials said that while he was not part of the top Al-Qaeda hierarchy he played an important role as a financial “lynchpin”.

Friday’s attacks were the 17th and 18th such strikes in the past 10 weeks, according to an AFP tally. All have been blamed on US-led coalition forces or CIA drones based in neighbouring Afghanistan.

A strike on Sunday killed senior Taliban commander Haji Omar Khan, a lieutenant of veteran Afghan Taliban chieftain and former anti-Soviet fighter Jalaluddin Haqqani.

The attacks have sharply raised tensions between Washington and nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it called in US envoy Anne Patterson over the strikes.

“It was underscored to the ambassador that the government of Pakistan strongly condemns the missile attacks which resulted in the loss of precious lives and property,” the ministry said in a statement.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has promised zero tolerance against violations of his country’s sovereignty. The attacks have also become an election issue in the US presidential campaign.

A New York Times report last month said Pakistan’s national security adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani made an unannounced visit to top White House officials after a strike in early September to voice his anger in person.

The attack on September 3 led to civilian casualties.

by Ilya Kramnik
Moscow (UPI) Oct 30, 2008
Space War

There are many examples of failure to fulfill Russia’s annual state defense order: Delivery of Sukhoi Su-34 aircraft and Mil Mi-28N helicopters is well behind schedule, the missile-carrying submarine Yury Dolgoruky is certain not to be launched in 2008, and the second submarine in the series is unlikely to hit the water in 2009, as scheduled, either.

At the same time, there is some good news: The timeline for Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile deliveries to troops is being scrupulously followed, although it is not known whether it will be kept when another new missile — the RS-24 — starts to be mass-produced.

It is understandable that Russian Federation defense sector plants cannot solve their problems by themselves, as these have taken 20 years to pile up. A way out must be found in the near future, and must involve state support, not only in the form of financial injections and bylaws regulating profit rates.

It must above all be a state program for retooling defense plants, providing them with up-to-date equipment and staffing them with a highly trained workforce. And while the Russian government can respond to the first problem by ordering increased imports of high-tech equipment from abroad, the second one will take years and require an overhaul actually re-establishing a system of vocational training.

Aside from other factors, there is also the psychological one — the appeal of a worker’s job in the post-Soviet era has substantially diminished in Russia.

Defense order problems are not endemic to Russia alone. The number of programs to make purchases for the U.S. Armed Forces that failed or were terminated because of exorbitant prices defy listing.

Among the latest and largest, mention should be made of the winding up of a program to build LCS-class warships, a program to build Zumwalt-type destroyers, a program to build the Comanche reconnaissance helicopter and a program to build the ARH-70 reconnaissance helicopter.

The models that have made it to the production stage are also plagued by problems. The U.S. Navy, for example, is dissatisfied with the quality of San Antonio-class landing craft, whose tactical fitness is under threat because of a host of defects, while the U.S. Marine Corps has refused to adopt for service the newest EFV amphibious vehicles, which likewise have proved to be unreliable and costly.

The resumption of an arms race following a long pause is proving too heavy for both key participants, although neither Russia nor the United States is likely to “call off the competition.”

(Ilya Kramnik is a military commentator for the RIA Novosti news agency. This article is reprinted in part by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

(United Press International’s “Outside View” commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: October 31, 2008

New York Times

TOKYO — A high-ranking Japanese military official was dismissed Friday for writing an essay stating that the United States had ensnared Japan into World War II, denying that Japan had waged wars of aggression in Asia and justifying Japanese colonialism.

The Defense Ministry fired Gen. Toshio Tamogami, chief of staff of Japan’s air force, late on Friday night, only hours after his essay was posted on a private company’s Web site. The quick dismissal seemed intended to head off criticism from China, South Korea and other Asian nations that have reacted angrily to previous Japanese denials of its militarist past.

The Defense Minister, Yasukazu Hamada, said the essay included an “inappropriate” assessment of the war, adding, “It was improper for a person in his capacity as air force chief of staff to publicly state a view clearly different from the government’s.”

In the essay, General Tamogami, 60, elaborated a rightist view of Japan’s wartime history shared by many nationalist politicians. But it was a rare formulation from inside Japan’s military, which, as Japan has been shedding its postwar pacifism in recent years, has gained a more prominent role.

Japan’s military — whose operations are restricted by the nation’s war-renouncing Constitution — should be allowed to possess “offensive weaponry” and widen its defense activities with allies, the general also wrote.

The article was posted on the Web site of a real estate developer called Apa Group after taking the $30,000 first prize in an essay-writing contest sponsored by the company.

General Tamogami wrote that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 and thereby drew the United States into World War II after being caught in “a trap” set by President Roosevelt.

“Roosevelt had become president on his public pledge not to go to war, so in order to start a war between the United States and Japan, it had to appear that Japan took the first shot,” he wrote.

He denied that Japan had invaded China and the Korean Peninsula, arguing that Japanese forces became embroiled in domestic conflicts on the Asian continent.

“Even now, there are many people who think that our country’s aggression caused unbearable suffering to the countries of Asia during the Greater East Asia War,” he wrote, using the term favored by Japan’s right to refer to World War II. “But we need to realize that many Asian countries take a positive view of the Greater East Asia War. It is certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor nation.”

Since the mid-1990s, the Japanese government has officially apologized for its wartime past and acknowledged its aggression in Asia. But in recent years, nationalist politicians belonging to the right wing of the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party have waged a campaign to revise Japan’s wartime history.

Few politicians have spoken as comprehensively as General Tamogami did. Instead they have telegraphed their sympathies with the rightist view of history. The current prime minister, Taro Aso, in the past publicly praised Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula. Mr. Aso, whose family’s mining business used forced laborers during World War II, also said Koreans gladly adopted Japanese names.

Hours before the general’s dismissal, Mr. Aso said, “Even though he published it in a private capacity, given his position, it is not appropriate.”

Last year, Shinzo Abe, then the prime minister, drew anger in Asia and the United States by denying the Japanese military’s involvement in recruiting the wartime sex slaves known euphemistically as “comfort women.”

His comments led the United States House of Representatives to adopt a nonbinding resolution calling on Japan to acknowledge and apologize for its wartime sex slavery. Japan has yet to respond.

Agence France-Presse | Oct 29, 2008

Defence Talk

ANKARA: Turkish warplanes bombed Tuesday Kurdish rebel positions in neighbouring northern Iraq, the army said.

The jets, backed by artillery fire, pounded “effectively” Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) hideouts in the regions of Hakurk and Avashin-Basyan as well as Zap, a major rebel stronghold, the statement said.

“The targets were hit successfully,” it said, without mentioning any casualties among PKK ranks.

The army has stepped up operations against the PKK — both inside Turkey and in northern Iraq — since October 3 when militants crossing from camps across the frontier attacked a Turkish border outpost, killing 17 soldiers.

The previous cross-border air strike targeting PKK hideouts in the Qandil mountains was on October 17, in which at least 25 militants were killed, according to the army.

Earlier this month, Turkey’s parliament extended by one year the government’s mandate to order cross-border military action against the PKK in northern Iraq, which has been in effect since October 17, 2007.

The United States has helped its NATO ally by providing intelligence on PKK movements inside Iraq.

Turkish officials estimate about 2,000 PKK rebels are holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq, where they allegedly enjoy free movement and obtain weapons and explosives for attacks in Turkey.

Ankara has often accused the Iraqi Kurds, who run an autonomous administration in the region, of tolerating and even aiding the PKK, but has said it will still pursue dialogue with them to resolve the problem.

Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said last week that Ankara was considering a proposal by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani for three-way talks with Baghdad and Washington to outline fresh measures to purge the PKK bases in northern Iraq.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 44,000 lives.

10.30.08, 5:00 PM ET

United States - By Andrea Shalal-Esa
Forbes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chief Pentagon arms buyer John Young said he still had questions on Thursday about the U.S. Navy’s decision to halt the DDG-1000 destroyer program at three ships and build older model DDG-51 destroyers instead.

“There’s a substantial amount of additional analytical work to be done,” Young told reporters at his Pentagon office.

Any move by the Navy to build just a few more DDG-51 destroyers would be “very expensive,” he said.

The newer DDG-1000 hull offered some benefits, including a lower radar signature and quieter operation, over the older hull of the DDG-51s, he said.

Young, who oversaw the DDG-1000 program when he was the Navy’s acquisition chief, said he found the recent decision to back away from the new destroyer — which was to be the lead ship in a new class of destroyers — “a little unusual.”

The Navy in July said it would halt the DDG-1000 program after just two ships, instead of building seven as planned, but it later bowed to congressional pressure and said it would buy a third DDG-1000 ship.

Citing changed military requirements, the Navy said it would buy eight more DDG-51 ships and acknowledged restarting the line would incur additional costs.

General Dynamics Corp (nyse: GD - news - people ) and Northrop Grumman Corp (nyse: NOC - news - people ) are building the first two DDG-1000 destroyers, DDG-1000 and DDG-1001. Both also built the DDG-51 warship.

Young held up the DDG-1000 program as an example of a major weapons program that has largely met its cost and schedule targets. The two lead ships were under contract for about $2.5 billion each, with additional ships slated to cost about $2 billion each, he said.

When Navy officials explained their decision to Congress in July, they said each of the first two DDG-1000 ships would cost $3.2 billion, while it would cost about $2.2 billion to buy the first of the new batch of DDG-51 warships.

Young said the Navy had legitimate concerns about the cost of the DDG-1000 destroyers, but further analysis was needed, suggesting that additional efforts could be made to further lower the cost of the DDG-1000 destroyers.

If the current decision stood, Young said it was clear that splitting work on three DDG-1000 ships between two shipyards “could be punitively expensive to the taxpayer,” he said.

Raytheon Co (nyse: RTN - news - people ), which is working on the combat system for the destroyer, is fighting the Navy decision. Lockheed Martin Corp (nyse: LMT - news - people ) built the combat system for the older model DDG-51 destroyers. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa)

Copyright 2008 Reuters

Expands blue-water capabilities

By Aharon Etengoff @ Thursday, October 30, 2008 6:38 AM
ITExaminer

The Indian Navy has announced plans to acquire eight mine countermeasure vessels (MCMVs).

MCMVs typically detect mines with high-definition sonar and destroy them using remotely detonated explosives. The new ships will replace 12 Pondicherry-class ocean minesweepers purchased in the 1970s and 1980s.

New Delhi has asked a number of countries to submit bids, including DCN International, Fincanteri, Izhar, Kangnam and Northrop Grumman. At least six of the ships are slated to be built at India’s state-owned Goa Shipyard.

When completed, the MCMVs will be equipped with one 30mm anti-surface air gun, two 12.7mm heavy machine guns and a pair of Kavach chaff launchers manufactured by the Jabalpur Gun Carriage Factory.

The military is expected to deploy the ships for naval defence and search-and-rescue missions.

The Indian Navy has taken several significant steps to bolster its naval capabilities, including the acquistion of a Russian aicraft carrier and a 16,900-tonne Jalashwa transport ship. The 173-metre-long Landing Pontoon Dock (LPD), currrently the second largest Indian warship in service, is capable of transporting four landing craft, six helicopters and a battalion of 900 soldiers.

In addition, the Indian Navy recently deployed the Nagan, a low frequency towed array sonar system developed by the Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory, in conjunction with Bharat Electronics, Larsen and Toubro, Uniflex Cables and Keltron. According to NPOL Director S Ananthanarayanan, the long-range sonar was “more effective in detecting and classifying the vessels being tracked at variable depths, as noise due to turbulence of own-ship propulsion will not corrupt the signals received from the target.”

The MoD has also issued a tender for at least 16 advanced naval helicopters, and plans to form a fleet of advanced diesel submarines.

28 October 2008

Air Forces Technology

Malaysia has shelved a plan to buy 12 military helicopters from Eurocopter due to budget constraints following the global financial crisis, the prime minister said on Tuesday.

“At the moment, we have decided not to purchase the helicopters. We need to delay it because of the financial crisis,” Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told reporters.

Abdullah, who is also the defence minister, said the order for 12 EC 725 twin-engined, multi-mission helicopters was valued at 1.7bn ringgit ($474.8m) and not 2.3bn ringgit as reported by the domestic media.

The Eurocopter deal has been mired in controversy since it was announced last month with Malaysian opposition parties arguing that the price tag for the helicopters was more than double that paid by Brazil for the same order.

Abdullah denied claims of any irregularities but said a parliamentary panel would scrutinise the deal.

An official at the defence ministry said the government will not compensate Eurocopter, the helicopter subsidiary of EADS, because no deal had been signed.

By Loh Li Lian, Reuters.

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 30, 2008; 2:31 PM

A month after a key instrument failed on the Hubble Space Telescope — delaying a planned space shuttle mission to upgrade and repair the orbiting observatory — NASA engineers have succeeded in restoring the main camera to working order, officials said today.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which operates the Hubble for NASA, said the new images captured by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 were a “perfect 10,” equal in quality to what the telescope was delivering before one of its two science data formatting instruments failed.

After several weeks of intense efforts to switch operations over from the failed instrument to an18-year-old back-up that had never been used, the process was successfully completed this week. The first new images were taken on Oct. 27 and 28 and show a pair of galaxies about 400 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cetus. The astronomers said one galaxy appears to have passed through the other.

The Hubble, which is jointly operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, has revolutionized astronomy since it became fully operational in 1993. The planned repair mission, which NASA says will be the last to reach Hubble, is expected to make the observatory more powerful than ever and keep it running until 2013.

Almost every major component on the Hubble has a spare, and the second data collector is now doing all the essential work related to translating data collected by the telescope into a form that can be transmitted to Earth. A third data formatter is currently at the Goddard Space Flight Center being prepared for delivery to Hubble on the upcoming repair shuttle mission. Initially planned for early October, that flight now is expected to launch in February or May.

NASA has scheduled a teleconference to discuss the repair mission later this afternoon.

With the main computer and data formatter now functioning again, the Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys is working as well, although it is only able to pick up ultra-violet light, said Space Telescope Institute spokesman Ray Villard. The visible light capability went out a while ago and is scheduled to be fixed during the repair mission.

“We’re now back where we were before the formatting instrument failed,” Villard said.

By MARCIA DUNN Associated Press
Oct. 29, 2008, 3:28PM

Houston Chronicle

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA officials said today it might be possible to try out its new moon rocketship a year earlier than its current target date of 2015.

That would mean just a four-year gap between the last space shuttle flight and the next-generation spacecraft, instead of five years. Many in Congress, including the two presidential candidates, are troubled by the prospect of the United States having to rely on Russia for trips to the international space station during that time.

NASA is midway through a study looking at ways to move up its March 2015 test launch of the new Ares rocketship with a crew, in case the next president wants that. The new rocket would ultimately return the United States to the moon, but the initial flights would be to the space station.

It will be difficult to accelerate the mission by much more than a year, however, said Jeff Hanley, manager of NASA’s back-to-the-moon program, called Constellation.

“We’re shooting for a more aggressive date of September 2014,” and looking at even faster options, he said. “The real stretch is what can we do to accelerate as much as 18 months. That will be particularly hard.”

The two-month study, which includes outside experts, should be completed in early December.

NASA’s Ares rocket would have an Apollo-style capsule on top, called Orion, to carry astronauts. A moon flight is targeted for 2020.

The Ares concept has been controversial from the start; some engineers, in fact, have been working in their off-hours on alternative rocket designs.

If NASA were to drastically redesign the rocket at this point as some have suggested, it would push everything back three years, said Steve Cook, the Ares project manager at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

“Everybody’s entitled to an opinion,” Cook told reporters in a conference call. “But I think you’ve got to stick to the facts of engineering and project management, and the fact that we’re three years into this. You’d basically back yourself up three years and start over again, so just watch the gap grow.”

NASA has been struggling with ways to make the new rocket safer and has come up with possible solutions for controlling its vibrations to prevent injuring the crew, and preventing the rocket from drifting into the launch tower at liftoff. Cook said the latter problem is remote — a southerly wind would have to be blowing 39 mph or more — and could be controlled through the steering system or with tight wind constraints.

Space shuttle commander Brent Jett, director of flight crew operations, said he’s sought dissenting opinions from his fellow astronauts, but no one is willing to scrap the Ares rocket.

NASA hopes to perform a test flight of an unmanned Ares rocket next July. But that could be delayed by the space shuttle repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

By JOHN T. BENNETT
Published: 28 Oct 16:43 EDT (20:43 GMT)

Defense News

Potential threats make it necessary for the United States to maintain a nuclear arsenal for many years to come, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Oct. 28, and called for steps to ensure the nation has the ability to build such complex weapons.

Gates, in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, embraced former President Bill Clinton’s “lead and hedge” nuclear approach. Under this approach, Gates said, the United States should take the lead in seeking to eliminate such weapons while also hedging its bets by maintaining a deterrent nuclear arsenal.

He pointed to the nuclear programs and ambitions of nations like North Korea, Iran, Russia and China as reasons Washington must take steps to ensure the nation’s existing nuclear force is ready for launch, and also make sure industry and government have the technical expertise to build new versions.

Gates quickly added the Pentagon does not consider Russia or China to be U.S. foes. But, he said, “we cannot ignore these developments.”

He called the existence of nuclear weapons a “genie that cannot be put back into the bottle.”

As for America’s existing stockpile of nuclear munitions, he said those are “safe, secure and reliable.”

But, Gates said, “the problem is the long-term prognosis - which I would characterize as bleak.”

That’s because the nation’s existing set of nukes is decades old and costly to maintain, he said. Additionally, Gates noted, the United States has not designed such a weapon since the 1980s, built one since the 1990s, or tested one since 1992.

With many scientists that worked on that last generation of U.S. nuclear arms past, at or nearing retirement age, Gates said the nation is suffering from “a brain drain” in this realm. He raised doubts about whether the U.S. industrial base in coming years will even be able to take on the task of designing and building a new nuclear force.

He urged Congress to alter its recent practice of stripping money in annual Pentagon budget requests for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, which he said would “reinvigorate and rebuild our infrastructure and expertise.”

Under the RRW initiative, the military would attempt to build a warhead Pentagon and administration officials say would be more secure than the ones that make up Washington’s current force.

Lawmakers have raised serious concerns about the Bush administration’s RRW plans, leading them to withhold funds for the effort.

Many skeptics argue pursuing a new program would hurt Washington’s ability to keep other nations from getting “the bomb.” They say because of this, and because the nation’s existing arsenal can be maintained for 50 to 100 years, the RRW program should be delayed for some time. Still other critics simply oppose all nuclear weapons.

Gates said Pentagon and administration officials take more time to “sit down with individual members” of Congress and explain why the military considers the RRW effort a critical one.

Asked by an audience member if the Pentagon would build an RRW without new tests, Gates tersely replied, “Yes.”

Wed. October 29, 2008; Posted: 09:00 AM

Trading Markets

MARLBOROUGH, Mass., Oct. 29, 2008, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — The U.S. Navy has successfully conducted the first large-scale test of Raytheon Company’s (NYSE: RTN | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) Deep Siren tactical paging system.

Deep Siren enables operational commanders anywhere in the world to contact a submerged submarine, regardless of its speed or depth. This capability solves one of the most significant shortfalls in submarine communications.

Raytheon’s Deep Siren system employs acoustic, expendable buoys that, when contacted through the Global Information Grid, enable long-range communications.

“Deep Siren is a critical technology for the Navy’s first generation of undersea FORCEnet communications efforts,” said Jerry Powlen, vice president, Network Centric Systems’ Integrated Communications Systems. “Employing this technology enables the submarine fleet to be connected to the network while actively participating in military operations.”

In April 2008, the Navy began a comprehensive test of the Deep Siren tactical paging system for the Navy’s Communications at Speed and Depth program. Initial testing demonstrated successful results when the Deep Siren buoy was deployed over the side of a surface vessel.

In June, a Navy submarine deployed 12 Deep Siren communications gateway buoys at the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center deep water range in the Bahamas. The buoys successfully reached the surface establishing direct connectivity between the commander of the Submarine Force test team in Norfolk, Va., and the submarine.

In August, the Operational Test and Evaluation Force conducted the final test event, a military utility assessment, when a Navy submarine successfully deployed Deep Siren buoys. With successful test results, Raytheon is ready to move forward to production.

Raytheon is partnering with Ultra Electronics Maritime Systems and RRK Technologies Ltd. to deliver this initial capability. The Raytheon team expects this technology will easily transition and be deployed from ships and aircraft, in addition to submarines.

Raytheon Company, with 2007 sales of $21.3 billion, is a technology leader specializing in defense, homeland security and other government markets throughout the world. With a history of innovation spanning 86 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as a broad range of mission support services. With headquarters in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon employs 72,000 people worldwide.

Note to Editors:

Raytheon’s Deep Siren solution includes a satellite communications command station, an acoustic receiver decoding station on board a submarine, and a communications gateway buoy that floats on the ocean surface and converts received SATCOM messages to underwater acoustic transmissions.

For all test events, the SUBFOR test team, Norfolk, Va., established communications via the Deep Siren command station with the deployed buoys via the Iridium satellite network, delivering several hundred acoustic messages to the submarine with performance that exceeded requirements.

Submarines routinely initiate communications or adhere to previously established communication schedules to make contact with commanders. This process introduces operational time delays and severely limits a submarine’s ability to fully participate across the spectrum of naval missions.

Official tests results from the outcome of the August Military Utility Assessment are expected in December.

Contact: MB Hodgkiss 508.490.2607

SOURCE Raytheon Company

29 October 2008

Air Force Technology

The Pentagon is set to name three rival industry teams for the first stage of a potential $40bn competition to replace the workhorse Humvee vehicle used by US forces in Iraq and elsewhere.

The 27-month technology development contracts being awarded are to build and test the joint light tactical vehicle, or JLTV, a family of light armored combat and scout trucks.

Army officials said they expect the awards to be announced this week, possibly as soon as Wednesday. The Pentagon’s top six suppliers are among those bidding.

Competitors include Lockheed Martin teamed with BAE Systems; Northrop Grumman, paired with specialty truck maker Oshkosh; and General Dynamics with Humvee maker AM General.

Also included are a separate pairing of BAE and Navistar International; Force Protection and Finmeccanica unit DRS Technologies; Textron teamed with Boeing and SAIC; and Raytheon and Blackwater USA.

The military is seeking a vehicle that offers more maneuverability, reliability and roadside-bomb protection than the Humvee, which entered service in 1985 during the Cold War.

Initially, the Pentagon plans to buy 60,000 JLTVs for the army, marine corps and the US special operations command. They will start phasing out the current fleet of 160,000 Humvees – short for high-mobility, multi-wheeled vehicles.

The round one winners are to build four test configurations each during the first 15 months, followed by 12 months of testing, according to a Congressional Research Service report dated 28 August.

Preliminary, low-rate production deals could occur as early as 2011, in tandem with continued development of less-mature designs through 2013. Company officials have estimated production ultimately could be worth as much as $40bn over a decade or more.

“After the technical development phase the current intent is for another full and open competition for the system development and demonstration phase which will allow all interested parties to compete,” said Lt. Col. Martin Downie, an army spokesman.

James McAleese, a McLean, Virginia, lawyer specialising in aerospace and government contracting, predicted that eventual production contracts would go to no more than two of the teams about to be tapped to build prototypes.

Army leaders want to push at least one vehicle into limited production by 2011 as part of their broader modernisation plan, he said.

“This gives the three immediate winners a huge leg up in terms of both time and government funding,” McAleese said. Ultimately, the army and marine corps likely will be able to afford only one or two full-rate production contracts, he added.

Humvees are the vehicular backbone of US forces worldwide, with more than 10,000 used by coalition forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq to overthrow President Saddam Hussein.

The JLTVs are to include scalable armor protection, enhanced suspension and equipment to link into current and future tactical data networks. The programme is a joint army and marine corps effort, with the army designated as the lead service.

The army estimates that each JLTV will cost $418,000, almost 70% higher than the initial target of $250,000 a vehicle that would have let it replace all of its Humvees with JLTVs, according the Congressional Research Service report.

US defence officials have voiced interest in international involvement in JLTV development. Australia, Britain, Israel and Canada are among countries reported to be discussing possible co-development funding.

The choice of three teams is designed to check designs and cost estimates, evaluate manufacturing processes and refine programme requirements, Lt. Col. Wolfgang Petermann, the army’s JLTV product manager, has said.

The Humvee is the linear descendant of the Jeep, which became the main four-wheel-drive transport of the US Army and allies during World War II.

The Pentagon envisions Humvees remaining in service for many years to come; about 3,000 to 5,000 continue to be produced annually.

By Jim Wolf, Reuters.

27 October 2008
domain-b.com

The Indian Navy has issued RFIs (request for information) to a number of international shipbuilding and design yards/firms for the next generation of submarines to be constructed at its shipyards. When issued, the contract will be worth an estimated Rs30,000 crore and provide a second line of conventionally propelled submarines after the state-of-the-art French designed Scorpene hunter killer submarines currently under manufacture at French and Indian shipyards.

The Scorpene project is being executed at a cost of Rs18,798-crore.

According to naval sources, the RFIs (request for information) has been issued to Russian (Rosoboronexport), French (Armaris) and German (HDW) firms, amongst others, and that two rounds of discussions have already taken place. Sources said that another round of discussions were likely before the RFP (request for proposal), or a global tender, was issued in late-2008 or early-2009.

To be executed under Project -75A all the six vessels of this second line of diesel-electric submarines, will be equipped with air-independent propulsion (AIP) systems which will significantly boost their operational capabilities.

The AIP system enables conventional diesel-electric submarines to stay submerged longer than other conventional subs which have to surface or snorkel every few days to get oxygen to recharge their batteries.

These subs will posses a high degree of stealth, land-attack capability and the ability to incorporate futuristic technologies. Like the Scorpenes, they will also be built in an Indian shipyard with special emphasis on full transfer of technology, sources stated.

Pakistan commissioned its first Mesma AIP-equipped French Agosta-90B submarine last month, which is the third of the Agosta-class subs it has been constructing since 1999.

As billions are spent on the economy, Jim Wolf, Reuters, sees how much is left to keep major weapons programmes alive.

Date: 24 Oct 2008

Air Force Technology

The US armed services are manoeuvring to defend big-ticket weapon programmes as the nation’s economic woes mount and the government spends billions of dollars shoring up the financial system.

Experts say the services have a good chance of succeeding, to the benefit of contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon.

To the extent there is budget pressure on the biggest programmes, they are likely to be stretched out or scaled back slightly rather than scrapped, several experts say. “It’s very rare for programmes to be actually cancelled,” says Steven Kosiak, vice president for budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Even such controversial efforts as missile defence, which has been receiving about $10bn annually in recent years, was pruned by 3% this year by lawmakers – a measure of bipartisan support.

The air force is seeking the abrupt retirement of 314 F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft and nine A-10 close-air support planes to save $3.4bn in fiscal 2010, which begins 1 October 2009. Its goal is to use the money to keep Lockheed’s next-generation
F-35 joint strike fighter on track, modernise bombers and buy unmanned surveillance planes.

In addition, air force officials have made it clear that they hope to extend production of Lockheed’s radar-evading F-22 air superiority fighter – a decision for a new president who will take office in January after the 4 November election.

And less than 24 hours after cancelling a projected $6.2bn deal with Textron’s Bell helicopter unit due to cost overruns and delays, the army said it would stage a new competition as soon as possible. The army said a new fleet of 512 reconnaissance and attack helicopters remained a ‘critical requirement’.

Political support

“Big weapons programmes generate so many jobs that they spawn potent political constituencies,” says Loren Thompson, a defence industry consultant. “Weapons programmes will be fiercely defended.”

The army is also seeking to protect its $160bn future combat systems programme, the centerpiece of its modernisation efforts. The programme is co-managed by Boeing and SAIC.

“We’re 100% behind it, and we’ll make it a priority in all of our budgeting going forward,” Army Secretary Pete Geren told reporters earlier this month, days after a $700bn financial rescue package was signed into law.

Not all defence-industry watchers believe military spending can be largely immune to the sputtering economy. James McAleese, a McLean, Virginia, government contracts lawyer, cites the army helicopter cancellation as signalling the start of leaner times for the defence industry. “This vote of no-confidence is an obvious wake-up call for the rest of the defence community for at least the next four years,” he says.

Spending patterns

The Bush administration has projected that defence spending, adjusted for inflation, will flatten and gradually decline starting in 2010, after peaking in fiscal 2009 that began 1 October.

Defence spending has risen four or five percentage points above the inflation rate over the past eight years.

Congress authorised $612.5bn for national security in fiscal 2009, including $542.5bn for the basic defence budget and a $70bn allowance for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thompson says demand for fighter aircraft, ships, tanks and other multibillion-dollar weapons systems is driven mainly by overseas threats and domestic politics, not economic forces. Pentagon efforts to kill programmes have often been defeated by congress. Lawmakers kept alive a second engine for the F-35 fighter and the navy’s next-generation destroyer programme in 2008.

David Berteau, a defence industry analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Pentagon acquisition official, says the big programmes are based on ‘fundamentally sound requirements’. If they were not funded, the military would have to spend large sums to upgrade aging systems or abandon missions, “and we’re not going to do that,” he says.

Jacques Gansler, the chief weapons buyer from 1997 to 2001 who still advises the Pentagon on many issues, predicts the sums being spent on national security will not have a ‘precipitous decline’.

By MELISSA HAYES
Burlington County Times

Philly Burbs.com

WESTAMPTON — If a storm is approaching the county and the National Weather Service needs to notify all of the municipal emergency management coordinators, it can now do so with one phone call.

The county’s Office of Emergency Management is utilizing military technology, called the MARCOM System, to create seamless communications between various agencies.

“This technology allows those at primary positions in our Emergency Operations Center to talk to anyone in the field during an event, anyone from any agency and any number of radios at one time,” said Freeholder Jim Wujcik, liaison to the Office of Emergency Management.

Kevin Tuno, the county’s emergency management coordinator, said the system ties together telephones and radios. It also allows people who are at the scene of an incident to call into the system and be connected to a radio frequency to broadcast information.

The county has its own system to tie together police, fire and emergency medical services. This technology allows the county to communicate with entities outside its system, including the state police, utility companies and the military bases.

“We have always considered the safety of our residents and our first responders paramount, and this system removes any communications obstacle that could compromise that safety,” Wujcik said.

Camden-based Communications Systems-East, a division of L3 Communications, worked with the county in 2006 to pilot the system for civilian use. The technology recently was installed in the Emergency Operations Center off Woodlane Road.

The system installed in Burlington County was removed from the USS Greeneville, a nuclear submarine, which was dry docked in Connecticut for refurbishing this spring.

There are about a dozen land-based MARCOM systems installed at U.S. Coast Guard and Navy stations.

“We extend our appreciation to L3 for selecting Burlington County Office of Emergency Management as the site for its pilot,” Wujcik said.

Email: mhayes@phillyBurbs.com

October 26, 2008 7:26 AM

USA Today

October 27, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Insurgents shot down a U.S. helicopter after exchanging fire with its crew in central Afghanistan on Monday, while a suicide bomber in the north killed two American soldiers inside a police station, officials said.

The crew of the helicopter, forced down in a province neighboring Kabul, were rescued and troops were “in the process of recovering” the aircraft,” said Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews, a U.S. military spokesman.

“The helicopter crew exchanged fire with the enemy before the damage brought the helicopter down,” Matthews said.

At least four militants were killed in the exchange, said Fazel Karim Muslim, the chief of Sayed Abad district.

Wardak province has seen an increase in insurgent activity the last two years, and its main highway is now extremely risky to travel on, particularly at night. In mid-October, a U.S. Special Forces raid freed a kidnapped American working for the Army Corps of Engineers who had been held by his captors in Wardak for two months.

The U.S. and other foreign forces rely heavily on helicopters for transportation around Afghanistan, which is covered by rough mountains and long stretches of desert and has few decent roads. Insurgents rarely bring down military helicopters, though they have hit several in recent years.

Separately, a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up inside a police station in northern Afghanistan on Monday, killing two American soldiers and wounding five other people, officials said.

The bomber entered a police station in Pul-e-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province, while Afghan officials were meeting with U.S. troops advising a police training program, provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Rahman Sayed Kheil said.

The blast killed two American soldiers, a U.S. military spokesman said.

Four Afghan security officers were wounded, Kheil said.

It was not immediately clear if the bomber was a policeman or just wearing the police uniform.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the blast in a phone call to an Associated Press reporter. Mujahid said the bomber’s name was Abdul Had and that he was from Baghlan province.

Militants in Afghanistan have in the past disguised themselves in police or army uniforms when attacking Afghan and foreign troops. But actual policemen in the Afghan force were responsible for at least two recent attacks in eastern Afghanistan in which two U.S. soldiers died after police opened fire on them in two separate incidents.

More U.S. and NATO troops have died this year in Afghanistan than any other year since the 2001 U.S. invasion, in part because Taliban militants are launching increasingly complex and deadly attacks.

But NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, said he is tired of negative headlines and what he sees as a wave of unwarranted pessimism in news reports.

“Somebody likes to report an attack somewhere and that becomes the trend in Afghanistan, or they don’t report the positive events or the absolute brutality or the illegitimacy of the Taliban,” McKiernan told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday.

McKiernan highlighted an event last week witnessed by NATO troops in Farah province in which insurgents planting a roadside bomb grabbed two children and used them as human shields when they were attacked by NATO forces.

The four-star general also pointed to a protest last week by about 1,000 Afghans in Laghman province over the slaying of 26 local workers by Taliban militants who stopped a bus in Kandahar and killed many on board.

“That’s a rejection of the brutality of the Taliban by the people of Afghanistan, and that needs to be heard,” McKiernan said.

“What happens sometimes in reporting is that there’s this idea that the Taliban is at the gates of Kabul, or after Sarposa (a massive June prison break) they’re about ready to take control of Kandahar, or they’re resurgent in Uruzgan or Helmand, and it’s just not true,” he said.

McKiernan, who took command of the NATO mission in Afghanistan in June, has acknowledged that the country lacks security and governance in many regions but concluded in a recent news conference that “we are not losing Afghanistan.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Oct 26, 2:11 PM EDT

By MICHELLE FAUL
Associated Press Writer

KIBUMBA, Congo (AP) — Rebels seized an east Congo army base and the headquarters of a refuge for some of the world’s last mountain gorillas in heavy fighting Sunday that sent thousands of civilians fleeing, U.N. officials and rebels said.

An unknown number of soldiers, rebels and civilians were killed in the renewed fighting in North Kivu province, according to civilians who said the onslaught began around 2 a.m.

Government troops raced down the road north from the provincial capital of Goma to reinforce a counterattack Sunday morning. One tank careened into a group of fleeing civilians and killed three teenage boys, civilians said.

Associated Press reporters who watched the fathers burying their sons in a cabbage patch outside Kibumba could hear bombing from army tanks about 12 miles from Rumangabo army camp, seized in the attack.

Sunday’s attack marked the second time rebels have seized the base since Aug. 28, when rebel leader Gen. Laurent Nkunda went on the offensive after accusing government troops of violating a January cease-fire.

Some 15,000 civilians escaped Sunday, the United Nations said, among more than 200,000 people who have fled their homes in just two months and joining at least 1.2 million displaced in previous conflicts.

“There’s heavy fighting. A lot of people have been killed - rebels, soldiers, civilians. We’re lucky we got away,” said Jean-Baptiste Bushu Mbusho, a builder who works for the Italian aid agency AVSI.

U.N. peacekeepers from India who tried to investigate the accident involving the three boys were instead turned away by angry civilians hurling stones.

Such attacks have become common, with civilians accusing the U.N. peacekeeping mission - the biggest in the world with 17,000 troops - of failing to protect the population.

The U.N. force has failed to halt the fighting in the vast region of rural hills and forests, and both sides in the combat also accuse the United Nations of siding with the other.

On Wednesday near Kibumba, a hurled rock smashed the nose of a deputy commander in the Indian force. “He has had two major surgeries,” U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg said. “He will be disfigured for the rest of his life.”

The United Nations deployed a rapid reaction force on Sunday and appealed to both sides to cease fire - at least to allow civilians to escape.

“But nobody is listening to us and they keep fighting,” van den Wildenberg said.

Nkunda’s fighters, who claim to be protecting the region’s Tutsi minority, have occupied parts of Virunga National Park for nearly a year, but attacked the headquarters for the first time Sunday.

Park Director Emmanuel de Merode called the seizure of the headquarters “unprecedented, even in all the years of conflict in the region.”

More than 50 park rangers fled into the forest and were making their way on foot to Kibumba, he said in a statement.

“The conflict on the ground is chaotic and dangerous, and we cannot allow our rangers to become targets,” he said.

The park is home to 200 of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas, which are considered critically endangered. Ten mountain gorillas were killed last year, including two Silverbacks, causing an international outcry.

Meanwhile, many of the civilians who have been displaced are malnourished and some are dying of hunger, the U.N. World Food Program said Friday. The Geneva-based agency is seeking $46 million in donations for food aid needed to sustain refugees through March.

The fighting has also jeopardized aid deliveries, and the U.N. agency said some contractors were refusing to go to certain areas.

—

On the Web:

The U.N. mission in Congo: http://www.monuc.org/

Virunga National Park: http://gorilla.cd/

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

By MARTIN SIEFF
Published: Oct. 24, 2008 at 11:22 AM

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (UPI) — Happy United Nations Day! It was 63 years ago Friday that the U.N. Charter went into effect. To paraphrase noted bard Paul McCartney, “Will we still need it, will we still feed it, when it’s 64?”

The answer is “Yes.” The failures of the United Nations are many and awful, but it has had some overlooked and crucial successes as well.

The United Nations certainly has failed in its primary function — to stop and prevent war. But you would have to wait for the Messianic era proclaimed in many of the world’s great religions to achieve that.

At least 100 million people have been killed in conflicts since the United Nations was created. It has proved toothless and futile in preventing the genocide in Darfur or the violence in Congo that has cost 10 million lives over the past decade. It never raised a finger to rein in tyrants from Mao Zedong in China to Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

When the United Nations has been authorized to act, to try to prevent war or end mass slaughters, its own administrative incompetence has repeatedly signed the death warrants of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

In Bosnia, the United Nations failed utterly to prevent the massacre in Srebrenica. In Rwanda, the organization’s incompetence failed to deter a genocide that cost a million lives.

In both cases, some form of concerted humanitarian intervention by the great powers would have been far more effective and humane. Trusting in the United Nations, as U.S. President Bill Clinton did, proved a true warrant for genocide.

U.N. apologists usually argue that since the organization functions at the bidding of its member nations, it is their fault rather than the world body itself when it cannot perform international security functions.

But this argument does not hold water. Had the United Nations not existed, or been sidelined from the word “go,” the innocent victims of Srebrenica and Rwanda would have had a far better chance of being saved by concerted great power action. Trusting in the United Nations to protect them proved their doom. U.N. officials were culpable precisely because they craved the prestige of running security operations that they could not begin to deliver.

U.N. apologists also claim the world body does a great deal of good with its health, food and relief agencies. However, this argument too is spurious. The best of those bodies, such as the Geneva-based World Health Organization, would be maintained and funded even if the United Nations vanished. Many of them are far more adept in publicizing their efforts and fundraising among the rich and beautiful of the global elite than they are in actually helping people anyway.

In terms of promoting global development, critics from the right and the left have cogently argued for decades that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have done much more harm than good. In the current global financial meltdown, the United Nations has been an irrelevance.

However, in one crucial area it has performed brilliantly — though none of the credit goes to the Secretariat or any part of the organization’s huge bureaucracy.

For the veto system of the great powers exercised in the U.N. Security Council actually works. In the closing months of World War II, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed the idea and won the grudging agreement of Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for it.

Since then, the Security Council veto has played a major role in preventing any outbreak of global war between the world’s leading industrial powers for the past 63 years. This is a record already three times better than that of the moribund League of Nations, which lasted less than two decades before World War II broke out in 1939.

As long as the policymakers in Russia, the United States, China, Britain and France remain confident that they can block any international action or unilateral action by each other, or by other major powers, through the wielding of their vetoes as the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, outright conflict between them can be avoided.

However, starting with the U.S. and NATO bombing of Yugoslavia to end Serb violence against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999, a precedent was established whereby major powers, most of all and initially the United States, but now Russia too, have felt increasingly free to act unilaterally with their armed forces without the cover of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

In August the Russians took advantage of that precedent to invade the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the Caucasus and occupy one-third of it, despite Georgia’s close ties to the United States and its aspirations to becoming a NATO ally.

The United Nations certainly hasn’t prevented wars or mass killings around the world, and the wording of its Charter limits it from impinging on national sovereignty to prevent national governments slaughtering millions of their own citizens within their borders.

Since it was created, wars have been running at about the same rate they did in the second half of the 19th century, with the same disproportionate emphasis on colonial or postcolonial conflicts.

The U.N. track record is still vastly better than the first half of the 20th century that saw both world wars and the unprecedented genocides and mass slaughters inflicted by Adolf Hitler across Nazi-occupied Europe, Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China.

The ideal of the United Nations sounds noble, and the U.N. General Assembly came up with the idea of U.N. Day to blow its own trumpet. But its many failures need to be exposed and examined if the organization is to do a better job in the future.

© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.