No Matter What It Takes

     The reforms were mainly about eliminating CIA spying inside the United States, or doing stuff for the president that Congress did not approve of. There was also a desire to avoid any CIA connection with foreign unpleasantness (like using unsavory people as spies or informants, or paying foreign politicians for information). This led to a growing list of restrictions on what the CIA could do overseas, and at home. Congress was out to make sure no future president (the CIA works for the president) could use the CIA as had been done during the Vietnam war, and before. The CIA interpreted this as "no more James Bond stuff." From now on, just use your spy satellites and write up your reports. The Church Committee ensured that the CIA became a much less interesting place to work. A lot of the most capable people got out over the next two decades. Recruiting became difficult.

     But after September 11, 2001, the CIA was tossed a huge pile of money and told to staff up and get going and save us all from the Islamic terrorists. The Church Committee restrictions were largely, if not completely, discarded. Recruiting efforts were greatly expanded, and since September 11, 2001, several hundred thousand applications were received. The agency has had a hard time keeping up with that.

     This created some interesting personnel problems, especially in the operations division (the people who go to foreign countries and, well, sometimes do James Bond stuff.) There were few people left in the agency that remembered how to do field ops the old school way. By late 2001, many retired field ops guys were being lured back to active duty. You now had a situation where the field ops population was a cross between a college fraternity and retirement community. There are few people in the middle, age and experience wise. It was almost as bad in the analysis division (where the data is studied and reports prepared.)

     The area of the CIA that has flourished in the last three decades has been the geek side of things. These folks were always flush, thanks to a Congress that felt safer with spy satellites, than with spies on the ground. But those days were over. Much of the new technology was going to the analysts (better computerized tools to dig quickly through information) and the field operatives (like Predator UAVs, at 10 million bucks each.) A lot of money was going into training (learning Arabic, Pushto, Farsi and Dari was encouraged, and sometimes demanded) and the use of consultants (often former CIA operatives who would not come back full time.)

     But now Congress is resuming the cycle all over again. The CIA is being investigated for doing what was desperately demanded of it after September 11, 2001. Proposed new restrictions would outlaw things like the use of contractors for interrogations (even if there were no other source of manpower to do the job in time), the use of "vigorous interrogation", the detention of foreigners without giving them access to the U.S. criminal justice system, and many more items that most CIA officials know, from their own experience, will only get Americans killed. They know that because they paid attention to what the Church Committee restrictions did to degrade U.S. intelligence gathering capabilities.

     Thus the thousands of new people hired into the CIA since September 11, 2001, will be, for the foreseeable future, the only ones with practical experience in effective espionage. Congress wants new hires to stay away from anything that is unpleasant, politically incorrect, or potentially embarrassing when the media gets hold of it. What is different this time is that the "old hands" won't be overrepresented by Ivy Leaguers and men from the northeast. This time, a disproportionate number of the experienced agency personnel will come from the heartland (everything but the east and west coasts). The recent recruiting program relied heavily on mass media, using radio, newspapers and the Internet to cast the recruiting net as wide as possible. So the new generation of experts are, literally, coming from a different place than the generations that ran ops during World War II and Vietnam. Aside from that, it looks like history is going to repeat itself. Not the first time that has happened.

     But the new generation won't take over for another twenty years of so. In the meantime, those running the agency are those who came up in the shadow of the Church Committee. Promotions during this time went to the risk-averse. The ability to cover your ass and avoid responsibility was a major career enhancer. While the CIA could still fire at will, this was generally applied to low ranking personnel. Once you reached SES (Senior Executive Service), you became a member of the defenders, those who protected the CIA from Congress, bad media exposure and the dismissal of SES level officials. While the CIA exists to protect the United States, those who run the CIA are more concerned with protecting themselves and the agency. 

     Moral 

     It's Better Than Working For Steve Jobs

     November 1, 2010: A recent survey of personnel in a hundred large organizations, to determine which outfits were best able to maintain high morale, included U.S. military services as well. After all the U.S. Department of Defense is the largest single employer on the planet. To the surprise of most everyone, these military organizations scored very high. The U.S. Air Force (345,000 employees) was number 5, the U.S. Army National Guard (350,000) was 7, the U.S. Marine Corps (202,000) was 8, the U.S. Navy (360,000) was 9, and the U.S. Army (550,000) was 11. The scale was 1-5, with the average score 3.34. The top 11 also included Google (number 1), 3M, ABN AMRO, DTE Energy, Qualcomm and LSI Logic. The scores for the top 11 ranged from 4.04 to 4.36.

     The study used over a thousand surveys and other public data to measure five measures of employee satisfaction. These categories included; growth opportunity (lots of training and new tech all the time), pay (military pay is maintained at levels to comparable civilian work), benefits (excellent medical and retirement), work-life balance (not-so-good in wartime), promotion prospects (promotions come fast in wartime), senior management (not much better than civilian counterparts), job security (superior to civilian firms) and whether the employee would recommend his employer to others (very high for military personnel, and then there's the uniforms).

     The U.S. military has been all-volunteer since the early 1970s, forcing the use of incentives to attract and retain qualified personnel. As a result, the U.S. armed forces became something of an elite organization. Military personnel are better educated, and in much better physical shape than their civilian counterparts (in terms of age). This has apparently helped morale quite a bit. 

     Six Is The Magic Number

     September 21, 2010: The U.S. Air Force is switching from four month to six month tours of duty in combat zones. This saves money on transportation costs, and means fewer units have to be sent overseas. The air force also knows that the stress of a six month tour is not appreciably greater than for a four month one. The air force will phase in the new policy over the next year, first increasing tours to five months, then six.

     The British were the first to note that six months was the optimal length for combat tours. The U.S. Marine Corps also adopted the six month tour. The U.S. Army is under increasing pressure to use six month combat tours, rather than the twelve month ones it has been using for over half a century. This issue has come up increasingly over the past three years. For example, the army noticed that the emergency 15 month tours used for the 2007 Surge Offensive in Iraq led to much higher rates of PTSD and noticeably lower morale. The army has been aware of a "tour length problem" for some time. Four years ago, the army again seriously considered the use of shorter combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, largely because of the Internet buzz from troops who had been in touch with marines and air force personnel who already enjoy 4-6 month tours. But the brass decided against any change.

     Six years ago the army considered, and decided against, reducing 12 month tour of duty in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, to six or seven months. Then, and now, there were two main reasons for not having shorter tours. First, the army units are the most heavily involved in reconstruction and peacekeeping. This involves direct contact with locals and it takes time to build relationships. New units coming in take a month or so to get tight with the local relationships the units before them had built up, and are passing on. So if you cut the tour to six months, you have less time in country with all your local connections tight.

     The second problem has to do with the special training units go through before they are sent overseas. This would be the same for a twelve or six month tour. Actually, National Guard and reserve units go through more training than active duty troops, and would suffer even more from the shorter tours.

     The impetus for even considering a change has come from the troops themselves, via the Internet. Over the last six years, many soldiers and marines (both officers and enlisted) have been comparing notes. Not just via email, but often face-to-face while in Iraq or back in the states. The Internet has made it easier for soldiers and marines to get connected. Another factor is the greater respect the marines have for soldiers. Since World War II, the marines saw themselves as elite volunteers, obviously superior to all those reluctant draftees in the army. There was some truth to this, but that has changed since the army went all volunteer in the 1970s, and especially since the army developed exceptional new training methods two decades ago. First in the 1991 Gulf War, than in Afghanistan and Iraq, the marines could see that the soldiers were not just volunteers, but pretty professional and bad ass. This made it easier for troops from the two services to compare their experiences and exchange combat tips.

     One of the comparisons involved the seven month and twelve month tours. Bottom line was that, while there were hassles with the shorter tour, it was much better in the mental health, and domestic tranquility departments. Even if soldiers and marines did the same number of months in Iraq, the consensus was that it was easier to handle six or seven months at a time. Wives and kids liked it better as well, which is a big deal since over half the troops are married. A third factor has to do with the "no booze" policy in combat zones. While many guys can unwind with Xbox and a Marlboro, others really need a few beers. Twelve months, even if broken up by one or two short vacations, is a long time to go without an occasional drink.

     As a result of experience during the 2007 "surge" in Iraq, the army has decided there will be no more 15 month tours unless there is a dire emergency. But there won't be six month tours either, not just yet. First the army wants to give the troops more time at home between 12 month tours. Some officers, however, are urging that there at least be some experimentation with six month tours, to see to what degree morale, and re-enlistments increase. 

     Improvising Around A Disaster

     September 1, 2010: The first of the U.S. Air Force’s AEHF (Advanced Extremely High Frequency) communications satellites was launched on August 14th. It achieved its initial orbit, but then it was discovered that its main maneuvering rocket, needed to get the six ton satellite into its permanent fixed, 36,000 kilometer, orbit, was not working. Efforts to get the main engine going failed. The engineers then went to work and found a way to use the lower thrust maneuvering rockets to still get the AEHF bird into position. But the alternate method will be slower, and take about nine months. That’s a small price to pay for a satellite that is supposed to last 14 years, once you get it in the right position. AEHFs will replace the older MILSTAR birds, providing more abundant and reliable (jam-resistant) communications. Two more AEHFs are under construction, with one going up next year and another in 2012. Several more will be ordered if the first three (costing about $2.2 billion each) perform as expected. The cost of the first three includes development costs, so additional ones will cost less than half as much.

     While the AEHF are mainly to facilitate communications between headquarters in the United States and troops abroad, they are also up there to deal with the huge increase in wireless devices the troops are using. For example, the number of military radios has nearly tripled, to over 900,000, in the last decade. There has also been a huge increase in data transmission capability (“bandwidth”) from 46 megabits (million bits) per second in late 2001, to nearly ten giga (billion) bits per second now. This is just for troops in CENTCOM (the Middle East and Afghanistan). That’s 200 times more data being pushed through three times as many “wireless devices” (radios). This doesn’t even count the many cell phones and laptops used by troops in the combat zone, which often use civilian bandwidth. But it hasn't been enough.

     The major consumer of all this new bandwidth is live video being generated by the increasing number of vidcams on the battlefield. These vids are being exchanged by the units cooperating in an operation. This huge growth in bandwidth began in the 1990s, when the U.S. armed forces moved to satellite communications in a big way. This made sense, especially where troops often have to set up shop in out of the way places and need a reliable way to keep in touch with nearby forces on land and sea, as well as bases and headquarters back in the United States. At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, there was enough satellite bandwidth in the Persian Gulf for about 1,300 simultaneous phone calls. Or, 12 megabits per second. But while the military has a lot more satellite capacity now (the exact amount is a secret), demand has increased even faster. UAV reconnaissance aircraft use enormous amounts of satellite capacity. The Global Hawk needed 500 megabits per second, and Predators about half as much. The major consumer of bandwidth is the live video.

     UAVs have other sensors as well, as do aircraft. A voice radio connection only takes about 240 bytes per second, and each of the multiple channels needed to control the UAVs use about the same. But it adds up, especially since the military wants high resolution video. At the moment, the U.S. has far more demand for satellite communications than it can support. As a result, not all the Predator and Global Hawk UAVs in combat zones have sufficient bandwidth to send their video back to the United States. Data compression and using lower resolution is often necessary, or using satellite substitutes (aircraft carrying transponders) to send the video to local users. The substitutes are becoming more common, simply because there is neither the money, nor the time, to get sufficient satellites into orbit.

     While the larger UAVs need satcomm to send video back to the United States, most of the bandwidth demand now is for local use. Tanks, helicopters and aircraft are all sending and receiving more vids, maps and data of all sorts. AEHF is needed to get essential material to higher headquarters as quickly as possible. The basic idea is to keep everyone connected, all the time. More radios, and other wireless devices are on the way, as well as more features any Internet user would recognize, all available while under fire. AEHF is an essential link in this data chain. 

     Chinese Satellite Fleet Grows, And Grows

     July 22, 2010: By the end of the year, China will have at least sixty military space satellites in orbit. Fourteen of these will be dual-use photo reconnaissance or largely military radar satellites. These are smaller than those used by the United States. The Chinese models tend to be three tons or less and don't last as long. There are also fifteen military communications satellites and sixteen Beidou navigation satellites. There are another dozen or so miscellaneous scientific and research satellites. Most of these satellites have gone up in the last five years, and are of modern design.

     China put its first satellite up in 1970. Over the next 31 years, China put 50 more satellites into orbit, and developed satellite launcher rockets that were 90 percent successful. By 1986, Chinese launchers were considered reliable enough for Western companies to use them for putting their expensive (although insured)  satellites into orbit. In the last decade, China has developed modern (comparable to Western models) satellites for everything from communications, photo-reconnaissance to weather forecasting.   

     Recruiting Replacements

     April 26, 2010: The generals in charge of American space operations are asking that less money be spent on developing new satellites, and spend more on building up a reserve of GPS and communications satellites that can quickly be launched to replace wartime losses. The generals have already convinced the Department of Defense to buy more commercial satellites, rather than much more expensive, usually late, and sometimes cancelled, custom designed military birds. The generals had help from the bumbling bureaucrats who mismanaged these projects, and journalists who headlined the failures.

     As a result, last year, the Department of Defense agreed to spend $10 billion to build two military grade photo-satellites, similar to the ones already in orbit, plus two commercial grade photo satellites. This uncharacteristically prudent behavior was forced on them by Congress. The politicians were angry over the failure of the Department of Defense to design and build a new generation of military photo satellites. It was five years ago, that the U.S. cancelled the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) system. This disaster cost the government more than $10 billion, when a poorly conceived and run effort to create a more powerful new generation of intelligence satellites failed. Instead of FIA, the two existing military photo satellites will simply be replaced with similar designs. In addition, the Pentagon will buy two commercial photo satellites, for about $850 million each, to replace what the Department of Defense is currently spending ($25 million a month, and rising) on photos from commercial photo satellite companies. The two commercial birds, which will be owned by the Department of Defense, will be launched in two years.

     The Future Imagery Architecture system was to be a new generation of smaller and more numerous spy satellites that would provide more coverage of targets down below, and, because of the larger number of satellites, a more difficult target for anyone seeking to destroy the U.S. spy satellite capability. The project, begun in 1998, was poorly designed and managed. In retrospect, it was doomed from the start because of a lack of technical talent on the government side, and the selection of the low bidder (Boeing) that lacked the experience and capabilities to carry out a job like this.

     It has long been suggested that the government just rely on commercial photo satellites for their low resolution (able to detect vehicles and buildings) photo satellite needs. But the military and intelligence agencies often need more photo satellite time than the commercial companies can provide. The government also wants to insure secrets are kept by having complete control over a pair of commercial grade satellites.

     The two new commercial birds would take over the task of tracking troop movements, bases and military operations in general. The two new high resolution, military grade, spy satellites designs are improved versions of existing ones. These are used to get detailed (able to detect something smaller than an inch) photos of something the commercial grade images (able to detect something 12-18 inches in size) found interesting.

     The troops and military planners are also big users of Google Earth, which annoys the people running the military satellite program. But for many military satellite needs, Google Earth does the job. The two military, commercial grade, photo satellites will eliminate the potential for information leaks (about what the military is buying images of) and provide much more capacity to do low resolution jobs.

     The people who run the military satellite system are increasingly concerned with wartime needs, and that is what brought out the request for spare GPS and communications satellites. These are relatively cheap, compared to the spy satellites, and most needed if a future war spreads to the orbital zone, and puts some American birds out of action. There is also growing concern about the debris in orbit, and the increasing risk of satellites being damaged or destroyed by these small fragments of older satellites and the rockets that put them there.  

     Small, Quick And Combat Ready

     June 20, 2010: The U.S. Air Force is moving rapidly in developing and testing smaller reconnaissance and communications satellites. These birds weigh a ton or less (down to 100 kg/220 pounds). The smallest ones have limited usefulness and endurance. But when you get to half a ton or more, you have a very useful bird. It is believed these smaller satellites will be needed to replace wartime losses.

     Usually, the U.S. has four KH-11s and four Lacrosse radar satellites in orbit, plus several smaller, and more secret birds. Often, these satellites last longer than their design life of eight years (some have gone on for 10-15 years). Eventually they all wear out. The KH-11 and Lacrosse satellites weigh 14-16 tons. In a future war, existing recon and communication satellites will be attacked. Replacements will be needed, fast. The air force isn't releasing many details of this program, as that would simply make it easier for a potential foe to take down the replacements. But stockpiling small replacement satellites, and having rockets ready to get them in orbit, is now considered an imperative. 

     The quickest way to launch replacements is to use solid fuel ICBMs or SLBMs (Sea Launched, from a sub, Ballistic Missiles). Most of these missiles cannot lift more than a ton, which is one reason American little birds top out at that weight. Both the air force and navy have worked out what would be required to quickly convert ICBMs and SLBMs to satellite launcher use. The navy has even proposed that one or two silos on each SSBN (ballistic missile carrying sub) be dedicated to emergency replacement satellite delivery.

     It's different in Russia, where many recently retired Cold War era ICBMs use liquid fuel, and can carry more weight. These are being offered to carry commercial satellites. Retired RS-18 (SS-19) ICBMs were converted (by adding a third stage) to satellite launchers. Such missiles can lift 1.8 tons into orbit. Current technology enables small satellites (as small as 200 pounds or less) to do useful work. The heavier (217 ton) RS-20 ICBMs have a max satellite payload of nearly three tons. Russia could also use these older ICBMs to quickly launch mini-satellites, although they are not working on this at the moment.