Posts by Nigee

Quicker to walk

It takes about 15 mins to walk 3/4 mile, I reckon it'll take more than that to fuel the beast and don it. Then there's the small matter of what you do at the other end with the empty thing. Call up the wife to bring the car to collect it (I say wife because no woman is going to be stupid enough to waste her time actually using it).

Reality?

This sounds like an opportunity crime and it seems to have been announced a few days after the loss.

I thought the standard procedured after nicking a laptop was to clean it quicksmart so that it wasn't clearly not yours? And even if the thief didn't clean it I'd guess he offlloaded it PDQ to someone who did.

I'd also expect MoD to only issue laptops with encryption as standard. However, is there not a 'Recruitment Agency' or something which while it belongs to MoD may be on a longer leash.

Incidentally the Naval Disciplie Act ended a year or two back with the introduction of a joint service discipline act. That said I'm of the view that people who leave laptops visible in unattended cars are adverts for introducing penal battalions for mine clearing duties in Afghanistan.

driver chappies

The UK Army Air Corps has always been mostly SNCO and WO pilots. Furthermore it was often said that their best pilots were those from infantry and armoured corps because they had good tactical sense.

The whole purpose of UAVs is that they are more expendable than crewed aircraft. Takeoff and landing can be automated (target aircraft have been for years). Most civil airliners spend more time on auto pilot than off. The UAV operator's job is to handle the air vehicle to ensure the image analyst can do their job as directed by the mission commander who in turn has their orders. If it's armed then the attack decision will be made by the mission commander.

Points

As I understand it a significant chunk of the electronics on T45 are UK, starting with the main radar (active phased array) and including the C&C suite.

Next as I understand it UK costs for T45 include missle stocks. Not all countries account this way. Furthermore UK has traditionally been fairly 'generous' with their stocks unlike some other nations that procure very few (there's a lot of 'parade ground' armies around and presumably 'fleet review' navies). Superficial and underinformerd comparisons can be very misleading.

innovation

The reality is that over the past 50 years there has been good, bad and indifferent kit from suppliers of all nations. Uk defence has a pretty good track record of producing some rather good stuff. The traditional failing was reliability (a hang over of WW2 attitudes where an AFV was expected to do more than a couple of thousand miles in its life). However, circa 1980 the Army at last got serious about reliability and UK designed and developed systems such as Cha2, AS90 and warrior are on a par with if not better than anying coming out of the US. Anybody who has the delusion about wondrous US kit should pay attention to the Cold War artillery, mostly equipped with US kit, the best that can be said is 'very ordinary', but it was cheap and in all cases the only option available.

The issue is that UK has often demanded higher capability than what was available off the shelf, this means either significant modification or a new design. The 1 tonne LR is an example, suggesting a Willies jeep could tow Rapier or a light gun and its ammo is a joke. The need was for a compact and light vehicle to fit inside small aircraft (eg Andover and the NASR for Chinook (that one failed that time around)) with the power to pull the required loads. Fleet management and logistic considerations then meant that this vehicle was then more widely used in a general purpose role.

It useful to note that many nations demand a significant level of local content when they buy foreign equipment. There are several reasons: guarantee of supply, ability to make modifications during the equipment life, fitting classified gear that you don't want getting into the hands of the foreign supplier, jobs, and in the past foreign currency. There are probably others.

I'm amused that most of the procurement failures shouted about are ancient history, although some are intersting (eg Nimrod AEW was basically a failure to recornise Moore's law and in consequence a daft policy for chips). The change to 'Smart procurement' and CADMID in the late '90s is having a good effect. The capability managers in MoD have to establish the required capbility in consultation with their constituency and overall defence policy (one of the reasons some current kit has problems is that it was designed for NW Europe, the policy at the time). They do not write specification, the relevant IPT then gets on with the acquisition including a heap of risk reduction. Obviously other issues can get in the way, like a political commitment to some arbitrary deadline. If anyone knows a better approach then they are wasted on this list, or better still tell someone starting with your local MP.

process?

There seem to be some other points, namely UK Govt security procedures for information that is not National Security related. Do these exist? Is there a classification regime? Is there policy that relates privacy requirments to security classification and associated procedures? Are there handling procedures covering the requirements for the different media and each classification level? A simple and reasonably pragmatic example is at http://www.gcio.nsw.gov.au/documents/Labelling_Sensitive_Info.pdf

cost effective

Technology demostrators/explorers are not unusual. BAE produced one for Typhoon. You can't do all research by computer simulation alone.

As for deep attack, well unmanned is surely cheaper than manned, but firing a msl of the back of a truck is cheaper still. Note the Army's IFPA initiaite (first(?) order (for BSFM) announced a couple of days ago) includes a smart msl able to shoot out to 300km, well into traditional RAF territory.

I think the RAF will reach their 100th birthday but wouldn't put money on the 125th.

For a good laugh check back about 3 years into the Commons Defence Cttee reports, where the whole matter of RN/RAF using only officer driver chappies for heli while the Army uses mostly NCO/WO. Some of the RAF's justifications are classics in bullshit. And the elected members hammering the RAF over being elitist unlike the Army were delicious.

Policy violation?

Doesn't govt infosec policy require a risk assessment before systems are developed? Blind Freddy should have seen this one coming. Too much to hope that the moron concerned will be sacked for incompetance.

Land Titles are the Crown Jewels of developed economies. If the land title system ceases to be trustworthy then the economy of the affected country has had it. Welcome to the third world.

real world

Amzing the US is considereing adopting the same sort of rules as the rest of the world and the usual suspects oppose it. Says something.

Actually the whole IP thing in the US is a source of endless amazement to me, in the 19th Century the US economy was built on wholesale IP theft from otehr countries (read Europe and mostly UK), its about time this bunch of whinging crooks were brought into line.

Surely

And there was me thinking Gordon Bennett was the Aussie general who did a runner from Singapore to further his career.

As for Glasgow Kiss, what about Liverpool? IIRC that was around a lot earlier.

to spec

Phoenix is "unable to fly a large amount of the time because of the hot environment",

Good to see the gear is performing according to specification. Phoenix was designed during the Cold War to operate over the somewhat less than tropical North German Plain. It seems those cheapskate incompetants in MoD couldn't see the end of the Cold War coming and that 25 years later the system would be needed in a desert. Therefore they set the environmental spec at temperate zones and hence lower cost, this is clearly a national disgrace, the guilty should be dragged from retirement and horsewhipped around Basra.

real reason

Doesn't the SNP live in a socilialist time warp? This being the case then maybe the silly woman's real agenda is that the actors aren't proper luvvies and are not union members.

again

A couple of years back a major govt agency with security and law enforcement responsibilites had a couple of servers stolen from their offices in Aust (to a certain amount of amusement). Turned out the thieves were doing it for a relative who was 'known to the police', this relly was opening an internet cafe and wanted a couple of cheap servers (one wonders which truck the PCs fell from). What this tells is is that 'interesting' people are in the internet cafe biz. Is UK any different?

not alone

There was a photo a few weeks back of the RAF doing this same thing, taken from a/c flying alongside showing Tornado crew with hands in air but with probe and drogue. Also part of UAV development.

oh dear

A good report. However, the root cause of the sorry saga is yet another woeful govt contract. Even in 2004/5 any customer authority that signed a contract that could involve a web application dealing in sensitive personal information and did not require independent security testing by a competant body was guilty of gross negligence.

In my view the 'finding' that nobody in the UK govt was to blame is a whitewash. The finger points fairly and squarely at whoever from UKvisas put their mark on the contract with VFS, it was their duty to ensure the contract was appropriate and they should have sought expert advice if they did not fully understand the issues involved.

rent a quote?

The good Cambridge prof should know better. Biometric systems can be tuned in terms of the balance between false pos and false neg. The trick is for ambiguous cases to be looked at by a human expert, of course this costs money. Also invites the question whether prof's quote refers to a single fingerprint or two handfuls (do toes have prints?). Use enough and the relaibility should be pretty good.

Incidentally Aust is now using good German software for facial recognition in their passport issuing process, even I was impressed to learn that they run a pic against the entire db of 12 mill records and get an ans in 6 secs. What's more the matching is a lot more reliable than immigration offrs comparing the passport pic with the face in front of them. Obviously the next step in UK is to used both fingerprints and pics.

My wife is also foreign, but she got a UK passport with a certificate of patriality ASAP after she married me (outside UK). However, that cert has disappeared and now she just has a ordinary UK passport. Needless to say I live well away from UK. I didn't grease any palms either.

Re re reality really

A couple of points, first the Economist is not written by economists, it actually employs the best serious journos in UK (and from elsewhere). Of course it assumes a reading age above 10.

There's nothing to indicate that Younis Tsouli (Irhad007) was the author of the email about blowing up the JFK etc. The Economist indicates it was merely found on his computer, the only clue to the writer being the claim of having served in the Jordanian Army. They also say the FBI had investigated the 'plot' and found it not credible. A point that seems missing from the above article.

What they do credit Tsouli with is a lot more serious, although I had to laugh at his using the Arkansas Highway & Transportation Dept's web site to distribute large files of jihadi videos (suicide bombs are of course 'transports to delight' :-)

The point they make about using the internet is not that it 'recruits' people off the streets, obvious nonsense, but that it provides a near foolproof and counter-measure proof means of preaching and teaching to the near and actually converted. No doubt the energetics section of the jihadist online 'Encylopedia of Preparation' will be updated to stress the need for a proper mix of both fuel and oxidiser in explosive mixes, after so much helpful advice in the media dealing with recent events.

The Economist actually says "the Internet gives jihadists an ideal vehicle for propganda,, providing access to large audiences free of govt censorship or media filters, while carefully preserving their anonimity. Its ability to connect disparate jihadi groups creates a sense of a global Islamic movement fighting to defend the global ummah, or community, from a common enemy." Seems a very fair assessment to me.

Tsoulis' role seems to have been significant in developing this online capability. The Economist states he was "a tireless webmaster for several extremist websites, especially those issuing the statements of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi'. Attempts to present him as a misguided buffoon who has no idea about ships doesn't do anybody any favours, particularly the author.

MS?

Moons ago when I worked for organs of HMG I remember using two WP apps - Lex on a Vax and Perfect Writer on a PC (this was a Ferranti app). I'm glad to hear that MS and TNA are going to make my pontifications available for future generations :-)

Well done

The fact that 'nae knickers' got posted suggests that the right thinking filters are not entirely wickedness-proof. I think the limits of their sensitivity should be further explored (the filters that is).

ho hum

I've certainly seen more specaticular results from a thunderflash in a deep dug dunny, and the whole thing is way below amateur night at the village hall.

However, I'd suggest the reason is actually the CT effort. Obviously the group lacked training, AQ seems to have been quite good at this and Afg gave them the space to test and train. They now lack the secure development and training facilities so rely far more on 'theory' and wannabee bombers lack practical skills. Next, the recent wannabees used materials easily obtained without raising suspicion. It also seems likely that they avoided hanging out around fundamentalist imams, visiting iffy countries, etc, so as not to attract attention. Again fear of CT.

I had thought that all this indicated that AQ had no role, however, as information about the arrested emerges it invites the question about how this disparate group came into being, how did they they find each other so quickly without being noticed? It might have been luck, but the obvious conclusion is it was before they got to UK, or that they were part of an organisation and were put in contact with each other after arriving in UK, this suggests a bit more of an organised conspiracy and real sleepers, fortunately undertrained thus far.

Real sleepers with half decent training and some without suicide tendencies would present a serious challenge. Could the govt really convince the voters that 50 deaths a year in UK through islamic terrorism is just the price of democracy? Could the media be persuaded to accept that line? Logically its obvious that it should, but logic doesn't have much to do with it.

perhaps hindus are right millions of gods are better that one

A few hunder thousand years ago or whatever as our ancestors gained awareness with their increasing brain size they perhaps looked around at the totally inexplicable world around them and developed the idea of the supernatural as an explanation of it all (this is in the area of paleo psychology, a tricky subject for experimental science). This continued until a couple of hundred years ago when the scientific method reached the stage of starting to understand some of the physical aspects, and this knowledge has been accelerating ever since. It's only in the last few years that the full role of RNA has started to emerge and even a hypothesis that in may 'learn' and hence influence evolutionary direction (which would help explain the varying rates of evolutionary change in different species). Of course its also possible that the null hypothesis will prove correct and others will doubtless emerge. This growth in knowledge and understanding over the last couple of centuries means that 'belief' in the supernatural is no longer a tenable position as a rational explanatation of the universe.

I'm very happy to have chimpanzees as very distant (but nearest surving non-homo sapien) relatives. However, I don't believe in the monkey god. I'm sad for those unfortunates that have a problem with this but the UK govt is totally right in giving their fantasies short shrift.

futureology

UK military assessments of the future are not notably better or worse that anyone else's. In fact those that have had access to them (the real ones not the ones tarted up for presentation) recognise that they are generally quite reasonable.

It's blindingly obvious that climate change is liable to cause mass population movements, and if the movers get fired up it could turn very nasty. Obviously to the prophet's followers, since the prophet was totally right and they are languishing then they must have been robbed, and its obvious to them that the West are the robbers - and inferior because they don't believe in the Truth (the message that their own culture might be part of their problem isn't going to get a hearing). This should prove an effective message to get the huddled masses fired up (it seemed to work OK on middle class Saudi youth).

What did you say your name was?

Er, am I missing something - the recipient obtains the private key from the repository? How does the repository now that it's the legit recipient asking for it? Because they've pre-registered and been given an authentication credential? And how did they prove that they really were the owner of the identity? Etc, etc.

Are keys static or do they change with every message or are they actually formed from sender/recipient id pairs? If the former, whoppee, I persuade the originator to send me an encrypted message, a simple bit of social engineering, I then get the private key and read all other messages they sent and I've got my hands on. Even better if recipents own computer security is a bit flakey, someone else can get at their collection of private keys. There's a whole new entreprenurial opportunity for the criminally inclined here.

surprise?

So a jet jockey slags unmanned aircraft. That's a surprise then.

And this is the US airforce where you have to be a qualified pilot to control a UAV from the ground.

Who?

Ministers don't write this sort of twaddle, which invites the question Who? If it was a civil servant then standards have clearly collapsed, more likely it was one of the 'ministerial adviser' jerks probably the daughter of a party hack after too much nose candy.

reality

Good to read anon's post and one or two other sensible ones, at least some folk know how reality works. Important too to emphasise MoD's recognition of reality, it's not platforms that matter it's what you put in/on them that's important and this is where the national R&D effort goes. The characterisitcs and capabilities of the sensors are seriously sensitive because the more you know about them the easier it is to avoid/defeat them.

I'd add that I suspect the contract value includes years of support, spares and possibly base maint after so many flying hours. Also a bit for initial introduction into service training, probably of the gunnery staff instructors at Larkhill. There could also be the issue of flight control software and UK safety critical standards with associated costs. After the Chinook saga I suspect MoD won't be taking cheap short-cuts on this one!

The big worry is only 54 birds, the USAF bought 130 Predators (there's another couple of hundred on order) but of the 130 they've lost 59. Given that Predators have long flights and landing is the big risk (so less landings per flight hour than short endurance birds), then Phoenix doesn't look too bad! Lets hope the Watchkeeper flight control software is top of the line, probably full automated landings - needed for unlight strips at night.

Title

Good to see the cheese eating surrender monkeys are still behind the game.

6 Dec 2006, media releases from several sources

"The MoD has just awarded a BAE Systems led team, which includes QinetiQ, Rolls-Royce and Smiths Aerospace, a £124 million jointly funded MoD and UK industry programme, to develop a world-class UAV (Unmanned Air Vehicle) ‘Technology Demonstrator’ project called ‘Taranis’. "

I particularly like the new level of imagination in names by MoD - Taranis = Celtic God of Thunder. What sort of wimpy name is "Neuron"?

In fairness to BAe (yes I know it's unfashionable) they've actually been quite a lot of work at their own expense and been a tad coy about it.

Title

Total cost of watchkeeper is not just the birds. It's also assorted

sensors (expensive), ground control stations and probably 10 yrs of

spares and at least some contractor support, plus bits and pieces such

as initial training. Then there's mods, takeoff and landing on

something other than concrete or tarmac, changes to the flight control

s/w for different payloads, not to mention probably getting it safety

certified to UK standards (to enable flight outside military airspace in

UK), maybe even re-writing s/w to safety critical standards (the

precious citizenry of UK might get a tad agitated about 'unmanned war

machines' hitting their roofs). Then there's standardisation, NATO

seems to be getting excited about any nations' birds being controllable

and able to dump data to the ground stations of any nation, means

standardisation and new equipment that has to be integrated. It all

costs and has no shortage of engineering challenges. (particulary given

UK's totally woeful system engeering skills), a big contingency sounds

wise to me.

The reported loss of 70 birds in Iraq is probably not just Phoenix.

They've being buying mini-rpvs (ie hand held and launched by 2 bods +

bungy cord). No doubt some of these have become the worse for wear.

Phoenix has done a surprisingly good job considering it was designed

for NW Europe where there are no sandstorms and it doesn't get too hot.

They've also being flying them at ranges from their control stations

that were beyond what the book said was possible (perhaps the book was

sometimes right).