Through my uncle in the Navy League, this month I had the honor to attend the change of command ceremony aboard the USS Green Bay, a new amphibious assault ship based in San Diego. Tradition is one of the things the Navy does best, and this was no exception. Everyone looked sharp in their dress whites, and you could have eaten off any ship surface you chose, from the well deck up. When the band struck up the Navy hymn and Anchors Aweigh, I got goose bumps. I leaned over to my father-in-law, a Navy veteran, and asked him if this made him want to re-up. “Where do I sign?” was his response.
Afterwards I introduced my father-in-law Jackson Chambers to Rear Admiral Earl Gay, who officiated at the ceremony. When I mentioned that Jack was a naval corpsman on Guadalcanal, he became instant royalty. The admiral presented his coin to him (see my March 2006 blog entry below as to the significance of that) and invited him back to speak to the active duty corpsmen under his command about his wartime experiences.
The admiral’s coin was more like a medallion—big, heavy, and gold plated. For the rest of the trip, my father-in-law teared up every time he looked at it. He said, “If you ever told me an admiral would treat me with such respect, I never would have believed it!” Thanks, Admiral, for making a veteran’s day. More like his month, actually.
As fate would have it, my father-in-law was seated at the ceremony next to Captain Dominic DeScisciolo, commanding the USS Bunker Hill, which was docked across the pier. When Jack told the Captain that the Bunker Hill was mentioned in my book Datashark, we were invited over for a tour after the ceremony.
The Bunker Hill is a guided-missile cruiser, 567 feet long, displacing about 10,000 tons. It’s equipped with phased-array radar and 122 vertical launch missile tubes, as well as cannons and other weapons. It also has a hangar and landing pad for two helicopters. The Green Bay is visible in the background, the comparative size of that 25,000 ton monster readily apparent.
Below is the aft "business end" of the Bunker Hill showing the 61 Vertical Launch System (VLS) tubes. The VLS is a versatile system, allowing the tubes to be filled with anti-aircraft or anti-ship missiles, land-attack Tomahawks, even rocket-assisted torpedoes, or any mix thereof. And that's not counting the aft cannon or the dual-quad Harpoon missiles launchers also visible here. On top of that, except for the Harpoon launchers, this same layout is duplicated on the forward end of the ship, which is why the Bunker Hill is nicknamed the "Sword of the Fleet." It can cut you coming or going.
I asked the lieutenant escorting us what kind of missile mix they normally carried in the VLS tubes. He said that it varies with the orders the ship receives for each mission, but only the captain and the weapons officer knew the exact loadout. I thought that was interesting.
I was amazed at how much of the ship we were allowed to see; the officer guiding us took us from the quarterdeck all the way up to the bridge and then down to the Combat Information Center, or CIC. Here’s what a ship’s wheel looks like nowadays. I’d be terrified to be responsible for that much machinery unless I was WAY out at sea!
The only place we weren’t allowed to take pictures was CIC, so here’s a Navy-supplied photo. It was such a cool feeling to stand in the very spot on the very ship where an important scene in my book Datashark takes place (p. 188 for those of you who already have the book). CIC was very Battlestar Galactica, and I had no idea the ship was over 25 years old until I read the ship’s plaque. The sailors on the Bunker Hill are taking very good care of the tools we’ve bought for them. Funny story—on our way up to the bridge I spotted a patch of rust on the deck. I didn’t think too much of it, but on our way back down there was already a crewman chipping it off, with another sailor on his heels waiting to repaint the deck. Rust has a very short life expectancy on the Bunker Hill.
One of the new weapons I wasn’t familiar with was the remote-controlled 25-mm cannons on the aft missile deck (sorry, no photos, they were covered up). They’re basically the same guns as on the M2 Bradley, but controlled from the bridge or CIC. Here’s one of the terminals. I kept looking for a place to put in a quarter, but no luck. The Phalanx cannons for last-ditch cruise missile defense also had cameras mounted, so I’m betting they can be remote-controlled from here as well. I’d give a whole paycheck to have one of these and a boatload of Somali pirates to play with!
I simply must give a tip of the hat to Lieutenants Andy Rapacke and Jordan Murray (Lt. Murray pictured below). These young men were incredibly knowledgeable ambassadors for their ship and in a few years I fully expect both of them to have their own commands. If they and the young officers we met aboard the Green Bay are any indication, the future of the US Navy is in very good hands indeed. I am no fan of big government spending, but I wish every taxpayer could have seen what we did that day, because I left incredibly impressed.
Oh, and don't tell the Captain I sat in his chair!
April 2010
THE LATEST ON BOOK NUMBER 3
For the last several months I've had the privilege to work full time on my third book, FINAL SECURITY, courtesy of my incredibly supportive wife and a layoff at the Boeing Corporation. No hard feelings there, the last few years were the high point of my professional career so far, and I hope to be called back soon. But now that I'm over halfway done with book 3, I can say with certainty I could never have written this book with a day job. It's by far my most challenging book to write, but the preliminary critiques from my writer's group are extremely positive. One member told me, "You know, I went back and re-read portions of DATASHARK and SPECTERS just to be sure, but I can honestly say your writing is at a whole new level with FINAL SECURITY!"
That's good to hear. I'll keep you posted as book 3 gets closer to completion.
December 2009
WHAT THE HECK IS THAT THING OVER NORWAY?
In the mid-morning hours of 9 December, residents of Tromso, Norway were treated to a unique aerial display almost directly over the city (see upper left photo). A perfectly formed luminous white spiral gently turned in the sky, while a glowing blue plume rose from the ground, apparently drawn to center of the spiral. It was both beautiful and eerie, and I instantly knew something VERY odd was going on.
That feeling was immediately reinforced when the Norwegian Defense Ministry issued a poorly-thought-out cover story that the spiral was merely the exhaust trail of an out-of-control Russian submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Take a look at the photograph of an actual Trident SLBM failure at the upper right and you tell me how much similarity you see. It really grew laughable when the Russians came out and said, "Dudes, our missile wasn't anywhere CLOSE to Norway. Not us!" A day or so later (I'm sure after some frantic phone calls), the Russians backtracked and said (without a whole lot of enthusiasm), "Whoops, yep, that was us." But despite this cavalcade of lameness, every major media outlet latched onto the missile explanation like sharks on a tuna, with the normally skeptical Fox News swallowing the bait hook, line, and sinker. Even the UFO study websites mostly bought the cover story. Sigh.
So, if it's not a missile gone awry, what is it? I believe this was a purposeful demonstration of UNCONVENTIONAL PHYSICS. Everybody knows that the US has vehicles at Area 51 that make the Space Shuttle look like a Model T (which it is). The Russians probably not only have similar vehicles, but may even be cooperating with us on joint ventures in space that the public never gets to see. I believe the Norway Spiral was like a signal flare to the rest of the world saying, "Hey, Norway can play this game too!" This message may have been for the Russians benefit (Hey, Ivan, stay off our yard), or ours (Hey DARPA, how about some funding or we take this technology public), or both. But while the Norway Spiral photos appear to be taken at night, it was actually between 9 and 10 in the morning (Tromso is almost at the Arctic Circle), so they had to KNOW that people would see the spiral. This was NOT an accidental disclosure.
Many websites postulated that the Norway Spiral was a product of EISCAT, an auroral studies project similar to HAARP in the US. The EISCAT facility is about 20 miles southeast of Tromso. But because of the multiple photos and videos of the event, I was able to triangulate the location where the "blue plume" was rising from the ground using GoogleEarth. Imagine my surprise when I found a well-concealed bunker (photo below) at that exact location! Note the razor-straight edges on the "retaining pond." As a former Corps of Engineers worker specializing in earthen dams, I can tell you for a fact you will NOT get sharp edges like that with dirt. That's a concrete structure. So why make it look like trees are growing up the sides? VERY curious. By the way, the scale bar reveals that the "pond" is exactly 100 meters by 50. That's a sliding DOOR, my friends, probably to conceal whatever made that pretty spiral. What do you think? All I know for sure is that we're not getting the truth, which means this must be Tuesday.
April 2009
RYAN, WHERE YA' BEEN?!?
A casual scanning of my blog will find a two-year gap in my recent entries, mainly because of work. My biggest achievement during this time was manufacturing a folding wing for the naval version of the X-45C. This was in support of Boeing's (alas) unsuccessful bid for the Naval UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle for you acronym junkies) contract. We lost the contract, but I learned more in the last two years than in the previous ten, putting together a real wing that passed structural test. I also worked on the inlet design for the Air Force version, the X-45C.
The last six months I've worked on a classified program. Sorry, no details about that. But I will say that every time you hear about us playing "pop goes the weasel" with a terrorist in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I'm proud to have been a very, very small cog in the machine that helped make that happen.
April 2007
It's official: United States now at war with China!
Bet you didn't see that headline on the evening news, but that doesn't make it any less true. On February 6, China threw away all pretense of covert action and engaged in a direct attack on the root servers that control Department of Defense Internet traffic. Called Domain Name Servers (DNS), they direct URL addresses (www.umpty-ump.com) to the specific IP address that contains the data you're asking for. Without a DNS server, all you would get is the dreaded "site not found" error.
What are they up to? Because the Chinese know they cannot go toe-to-toe with us militarily, they have chosen to engage in what is called "asymmetric" warfare. Asymmetric warfare is a lot like judo; you use your enemy's strength against him. In this case our strength is the ability to move information rapidly across the globe. Smash that network, and suddenly China's forces and ours are much closer to parity. The attack on February 6 was a "reconnaissance in force," in preparation for a much bigger attack to come.
Marine General James Cartwright, the commander of Strategic Command (STRATCOM), testified before Congress that the gloves have come off, and he needs greater legal leeway to go after threats when they present themselves. What exactly STRATCOM intends to do remains classified, but getting a Marine ticked off at you is usually an excellent first step toward getting your butt kicked.
The Chinese would not engage in this kind of blatant provocation with their biggest trading partner if the decision had not been made at the highest levels that war with the United States was inevitable.
It's no longer a question is if, but when.
February 2007
Will Google be the next big Brother?
As reported in The Guardian, an expert heading the Royal Academy of Engineering study into surveillance said that in five years the Internet will hold so much digital data that will be possible to find out what any individual was doing a specific time and place.
Nigel Gilbert said that individuals will be able to Google "what was a particular individual doing at 2:30 yesterday and would get an answer." The answer would come from a correlation of data from video cameras, financial record databanks, and even RFID (radio frequency identification device) chips planted in clothing, ostensibly for anti-shoplifting purposes.
Another expert at the conference exclaimed that Britain was "waking up to surveillance society that is all around us." Well, old boy, if you're just now waking up to the fact that Great Britain is a police state, you hit the snooze button way too many times. Take a look at this actual security poster from a London Metro station. This is not a joke.
Sir Stephen Lander, the former head of MI5 (the British equivalent of the FBI) said, "Significant intrusion into the privacy of the small minority is justified to protect the safety and well-being of the majority." Well now, doesn't that make you feel all better?
Britain is already a Big Brother socialist police state because the English were lackadaisical about defending their individual liberties when they still had the chance. You can be sure that there are plenty of power-hungry American politicians eager to duplicate Britain's Big Brother system on our soil of right now. So keep your eyes open and your powder dry.
November 2006
Air Force forms Cyberwar unit
Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne announced this week that a new unit in the 8th Air Force is now the United States' lead element for warfare in cyberspace. Wynne said that terrorist and rogue states are increasingly using cyberspace to prosecute their attacks against US interests and the Cyberspace Task Force was created to counter that threat.
We are not the first nation to create a dedicated cyberwarfare command, that honor would probably go to China. As I mentioned in my February 2006 column, the Chinese have thousands of specialists assigned to the task of attacking their potential rival's business and defense web sites worldwide.
Wynne noted that America's new warfighting strategy is data dependent. He who controls the flow of information will control the battlefield of the next war.
And that war is coming, probably with China.
So welcome to the party, US Cyberspace Task Force. It's about time.
September 2006
Don't become a zombie!
A recent experiment by the BBC showed that the average PC with an "always on" connection to the Internet (like cable or DSL) can expect to be attacked by hackers up to 50 times a night.
The BBC team set up a "honeypot" PC, one that appeared to be unprotected, but that was actually recording every electronic attack for future analysis. It showed that there was an attempt to plant a virus that would have crippled an unprotected PC at least once an hour. And at least once a night there was an attempt to hijack the computer completely, which would turn it into a remote PC for the hacker's criminal activities.
An expert for Symantec told BBC that 86% of all hacker attacks are targeted at home computers, with over 200,000 malicious programs in existence. A hacker BBC interviewed claims to have earned up to $10,000 a day from his criminal activities. Another said that most business web sites can be "cracked" in three to four hours, giving the hackers access to customer records and credit card files. Each of these records he could then sell online for $100-500 to other criminals for use in credit card fraud and identity theft.
In another report I heard on NBC, a security expert postulated that so many business and government web sites had been cracked by so many hackers that everyone's personal and financial information is in the possession of some hacker somewhere, and if we haven't been the victim yet of online crime or identity theft, "the criminals just haven't gotten around to your name yet, but they will."
The bottom line is that just because your computer doesn't control millions of dollars of financial transactions or contain the plans for the Pentagon's newest stealth aircraft doesn't make you safe. You are a target, if for no other reason than your computer, turned into a "zombie PC" under a hacker's control, can then be used without your knowledge to attack much more "high-value targets."
And keeping your PC from turning into a zombie is simple enough that if you're reading this blog, you're smart enough to protect your PC. Okay, maybe a caveman couldn't do it, but this isn't about insurance. Just install a quality firewall and virus protection software package onto your PC, and keep it current with online updates. If that task sounds daunting, just find a teenager and ask for their help. Or one of your grandchildren.
March 2006
DATASHARK GOES TO SEA!
Late one evening this month my phone rang; it was my Uncle Earl from California. "Guess who I'm having dinner with tonight?" He announces without preamble.
"Someone from the Navy, I'll bet." As a member of the Navy League, Earl gets invited to all sorts of cool stuff, like watching the Blue Angels' last practice in the desert before they left on tour.
"That's right!" he chatters excitedly, like a 10-year-old boy waiting to meet his favorite ball player. "I'm going to have dinner with the captain of a Navy cruiser! Oh, what did they call it, a Taco-rogo or something like that."
"A Ticonderoga?" I offered. The hair on the back of my neck started standing up for some reason.
"Yeah, that's it! A Ticonderoga-class cruiser!"
No, it couldn't be. "Earl, which one? Which Ticonderoga-class cruiser?"
The fluttering of paper over an already noisy cell phone connection. "It says here the Bunker Hill."
The hair on the back of my neck abandoned standing at attention and started doing the wave. "The Bunker Hill? Earl, the Bunker Hill is in my book! (pages 185-194 for those who already have a copy) Please tell me you've got a copy of Datashark handy!"
"Yeah, we've got the copy you gave us.."
"I'll get you another one! Just give your copy to the Captain with my compliments, mark the page I told you, and I'll send you a new one!"
A week later I received a large envelope in the mail. The first thing I saw was a photo of my Aunt Annie with Captain Chuck Gaouette, USN:
The next photo was of a three-star Air Force general. The back of the picture said, "Lt. General Michael Hamel would like to read your book."
Okay, a three-star general wanting to look at my book is impressive all by itself, but when I Googled Lt. General Hamel, I found out he's responsible for the design, manufacturing, launching, and operation of almost every military satellite in use today, including the GPS constellation, MILSTAR communication satellites, and the next generation of satellites under development, and has several thousand people reporting to him.
And since she only had one copy of Datashark, he gave her his address and asked me to mail him a book. Wow. No problem, General!
Annie and Earl were served dinner aboard the ship. If you look closely, from the deck markings you can tell that they set up the buffet line on the helipad.
As you would expect, Captain Gaouette was the perfect host and they enjoyed their tour of the Bunker Hill immensely. The Captain autographed a photo of the Bunker Hill for everyone, one of which he signed to me at Annie's request:
Honestly, how cool is that? Well, by this time as I go through Annie and Earl's package I'm wiping drool with my sleeve, but the next thing I found resulted in my briefcase and the rest of that day's mail ending up on the floor.
As the tour ended, Captain Gaouette said farewell each guest at the gangway, but when he got to my aunt and uncle, he asked them to wait for a moment while he retrieved something from his cabin. He returned and thanked them for coming, but Earl noticed something strange about the handshake; he thought Captain Gaouette was giving him some kind of secret Navy handshake, and in a way he was. When Earl walked down the gangplank and looked down in his hand, Captain Gaouette had slipped him this:
It was the unit coin for the Bunker Hill. It's about the size of the old fifty-cent piece, but it's bronze and quite thick, so it weighs about the same as a silver dollar. My hands literally started shaking when I saw this. A unit coin is issued to every serviceman or woman when they join a unit or a ship. It is a token of comradeship, and the sailor, soldier or airman is expected to keep that coin with them at all times. Also, when ashore, any member of the ship or unit can approach a companion and slap his unit coin down on the bar in what's called a "coin challenge." If the challenged shipmate can't produce his or her unit coin, they get to buy that round of drinks.
But it goes deeper than that. Any serviceperson can "drop his coin" on a civilian (usually a family member or close friend), in effect saying, "You could sail with me anytime." The service member has to pay to replace that coin out of their own pocket, so in effect the civilian has been accepted as an "honorary shipmate." The only higher honor a serviceman or woman can give to a civilian is to present them with a flag they have personally carried into battle. Earl had no idea of the honor Captain Gaouette had secretly bestowed on him until I explained the tradition.
Of course, I offered to return the coin to Earl, but he declined. So I keep it as a treasured connection between the world of my fiction and the world of the real-life warriors who put their lives on the line for our freedom every single day. But if any soldier, sailor, airman or Marine reading this someday "asks to see my coin," I'll just have to buy that round of drinks, because my USS Bunker Hill, CG-52 unit coin is staying in a very safe place.
If you would like to learn more about the Bunker Hill, click one of the links below:
When I returned to my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma in April to do a booksigning with two other local authors, the ever-resourceful Barnes & Noble Community Relations Manager Jeff Martin had arranged a TV interview for the three of us to promote the event. I had never been on TV before, unless you count the Foreman Scotty show when I was five. That time I got a microphone thrust in my face by the friendly host because I was the only kid in the studio audience wearing full-up cowboy attire like his. I was so petrified the only thing I could think of to say was to parrot his trademark tag line (something like, "Yee-haw, pardner!"). So I was understandably nervous not to repeat that performance.
I was immediately put at ease by the staff at KJRH, especially the anchor doing the interview, Scott Jones (no relation). He met us in the green room and told us the questions he was going to ask, when the segment would come in the program, what our cues would be, etc. He said to relax and have a good time; it was his job to make us look good. On screen, he comes across a bit like Dr. Angus from the Burger King commercial ("Hey baby, I've got a PhD in cheeeesey!") but he couldn't have been nicer to us.
The first thing that surprised me was how comfortable the TV set was. I was expecting blinding hot klieg lights that would require make-up to cover the glow of sweat. Apparently that's last century technology. With the exception of the cameras and a single bank of very tolerable fluorescent lights in front of the set, it was very much like a large living room. We took our seats, the producer clipped a mike to each of our lapels, and away we went.
You can watch the interview by clicking the picture below. It's a 1-megabyte file, please be patient if you have a dial-up connection.
The two other gentlemen being interviewed with me are Richard Cox, author of The God Particle, and Jonathan Neff, author of Power Play. They were a pleasure to work with, both at the interview and the booksigning. And to our surprise, someone actually watched our interview; Jeff Martin said that people came to Barnes & Noble after the show asking for our books. We each sold three or four even before the booksigning.
Here's myself, Jon Neff and Richard Cox on the right. You can read more about Richard and John's books below:
This month I had the opportunity to read about myself and Datashark in the newspaper for the first time. The following article was published in West Newsmagazine, a St. Louis County regional newspaper. The reporter, Marcus Eder, got my name from one of my press releases for an earlier booksigning, downloaded my press kit from this site (see the Press Kit page from the menu on the left), then interviewed me over the phone to "fill in the blanks." I thought Marcus did a great job, click on the link below to read the article for yourself.
Several times this month my firewall went on red alert from intrusion attempts from multiple internet addresses that all originated from the same street address in Beijing, China:
I finally was able to stop the intrusions by blocking a whole range of internet addresses, not just one IP address at a time. Discussing the incident at work, one of my coworkers mentioned his son worked at Scott Air Force Base (just across the Mississippi from St. Louis), and his sole responsibility was, "keeping an eye on the Chinese."
That certainly got my attention. Upon further questioning, he said his son referred to an entire military base outside Beijing staffed by 8,000-10,000 personnel, all of them hackers. He said the Chinese were assaulting the systems at Scott with increasingly sophisticated attacks, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
That certainly stands to reason, Scott is the transportation hub of the entire Air Force; infiltrate their servers and you could anticipate every major troop movement before it happens, certainly something the Chinese would like to know. But why would they be attacking my little PC?
I thought it was interesting that this barrage attack took place shortly after my business website went online. But a lesser-known strategy of the Chinese military is to probe the computers of every American business, large and small, to see who is vulnerable to attack. Should hostilities ever break out between the US and China, a tidal wave of attacks against systems previously marked as "vulnerable" could hopefully cripple not just units of the US military, but vast sectors of the American economy as well.
Make no mistake about it; if you have a portal to the Net, you are on the front lines of the next war. You have a responsibility to have a full suite of internet security software on every PC you own, and keep that software up to date. Even if you don't own a business, your penetrated PC can be "zombied", or hijacked to serve a hacker's agenda without you lifting a finger. Your PC could then be used as a launching pad to attack your neighbors, your bank, or a military base.
Very Serious Stuff.So keep an eye on that firewall, and let's be safe out there.
For an excellent resource concerning Information Warfare in general, and to see what the Chinese are up to in particular, try StrategyPage.Com
For my very first post, I think it's fitting to comment about the "scandal" concerning the National Security Agency that's in the news. You've probably heard all kinds of hype about how the NSA is listening in on your phone calls, reading your e-mails, and breaking into your house at night to find out whether you really did cut that tag off the corner of your mattress. I've done a fair bit of research into the NSA in the course of writing DATASHARK, and I'd like to share some of that knowledge with you .
First, what is accused: that the NSA, under direct orders from George W. Bush, ran roughshod over the established legal framework for conducting domestic surveillance and listened in on the phone calls of innocent Americans on a massive scale. Depending on the media outlet you listen to, these "facts" will be presented with the tone of quiet consternation, or with a frenzied call for pitchforks and torches, but the story is uniformly the same and uniformly wrong.
Now, the facts: American soldiers and intelligence officers are reaping a windfall of cell phones and laptops from captured Al Qaeda operatives worldwide. Each of these items can contain dozens or even hundreds of phone numbers of potential terrorist contacts. The NSA routinely feeds intelligence "take" such as this into the NSA's worldwide communication monitoring system known as Echelon. This monitoring is conducted over vast swaths of territory from Egypt to Indonesia, and is entirely legal under the NSA's charter, which has been upheld by both Congress and the courts multiple times since the NSA's inception in 1952. One of the best ways to stop a bad guy from hurting you is to listen in when he's talking over his plan of attack with his evil buddies.
Here's what's different: the President, using his authority as Commander-in-Chief in a time of war, expanded the NSA's authority to monitor to include phone calls where one end of the conversation was in the United States. The scope of this additional surveillance was reportedly in the hundreds of persons here the United States. But remember, you can only become a member of this special club by receiving a call from overseas from a phone number with a concrete connection to international terrorism. Granted, some of these calls could have been innocent (even terrorist have relatives who are model citizens), or they could have been to the next Mohamed Atta from his controller in Saudi Arabia with the final orders to carry out the next 9/11. But there is no way to know for sure unless we listen. That's it, listen. No snatching of American citizens in the night, no breaking and entering, no placing of women's underwear over the prisoner's head (the horror!).
Just listening.
And the life the NSA saves may be your own.
I am no fan of big government, and I have seen abuse of power inside classified programs with my own eyes, but this is no such animal. This is a legitimate use of Presidential authority in a time of war. So if you hear a politician or a reporter claim otherwise, tune them out. They have an agenda, but it is not the national security of the United States.
The next squeal you will hear from the New York Times and their fellow travelers is about the FISA court. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Let's use that in a sentence: "The FISA court was good enough for Bill Clinton, why isn't it good enough for George W. Bush?"
That's an excellent question, which I'll answer in my next blog, where I'll also make some projections on who's going to go to jail over this scandal. Stay tuned!
