10 February 2010 by admin.

As an advisor to the Dept. of Defense (DoD) on issues of advanced technology, I have been called into observe or test or evaluate a number of advanced weapons systems and other combat related new technology equipment. Let me tell you about the latest I investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was asked to evaluate the combat durability of a new multi-use sensor and communication system that can be deployed from an aircraft. I was flown to Baghlan and after a day’s rest; I was invited on a flight in a C-130. We flew north east over the mountains near Aliabad and approached an outpost base near Khanabad. Just before we landed, we were vectored to a large flat area just north west of the base. The ramp on the C-130 was lowered and we all put on harnesses. A man in combat fatigues carried a large canvas bag to the real of the ramp and pull out one of several devices from the bag. It looked like a small over-inflated inner-tube with two silver colored cylinders on top. It had several visible wires and smaller bumps and boxes in the hub and around the cylinders. It looked like it was perhaps 16 to 18 inches in diameter and perhaps 6 inches thick. The man pulled a tab which pulled out what looked like a collapsible antenna and tossed it out the ramp. He then took others out and did the same as we flow in a large circle – perhaps 20 miles in diameter - over this flat plain near the camp – tossing out 12 of these devices and then a final one that looked different. We then landed at the base.

I was taken to a room where they gave me a slide show about this device. It was called Solar Eye or SE for short. The problem they were addressing is the collection of intelligence on troop movements over a protracted period of time, over a large geographic area. The time periods involved might be weeks or months and the areas involved might be 10 to 25 square miles. It is not cost effective to keep flying aircraft over these areas and even if we did, that covers only the instant that the plane is overhead. Enemy troops can easily hide until the plane or drone is gone and then come out and move again. Even using very small drones gives only a day or two at most of coverage. The vast areas of Afghanistan demanded some other solution.

Stationary transmitters might work but the high mountains and deep valleys make reception very difficult unless a SATCOM dish is used and that is so large that it is easily spotted and destroyed. What was needed was a surveillance system that could monitor movements using visual, RF, infrared and vibration sensors. It had to be able to cover a large area which often meant that it had to be able to look down behind ridge lines and into gullies. It had to be able to operate for weeks or months but not cost much and not provide the enemy any useful parts when and if they found it. This was a tall order but those guys at NRL figured it out. Part of why I was called in is because I worked at NRL and a few of the guys there knew me.

After lunch, we got back to the lecture and I was finally told what this device is. When the device is tossed out, a tiny drogue chute keeps it stable and reduces its speed enough so it can survive the fall. The extended antenna helps to make it land on its bottom or on its side. If it lands on its side, it has a righting mechanism that is amazing. The teacher demonstrated. He dropped an SE on the floor and then stepped back. What I thought was a single vertical antenna was actually made up of several rods that began to bend and expand outward from a single rod left in the center. These other rods began to look like the ribs on an umbrella as then slowly peeled back and bent outward. The effect of these rods was to push the Se upright so that the one center rod was pointing straight up.

When I asked how it did that, I was told it uses memory wire. A special kind of wire that bends to a predetermined shape when it is heated – in this case by an internal battery. After the SE was upright, the wires returned to being straight and aligned around the center vertical rod.

“OK, so the device can right itself – now what?” I said. The instructor referred me back to the slide show on the computer screen. I was shown an animation of what looked like a funny looking balloon expanding from the center of the SE and inflating with a gas that made it rise into the air. He was pointing to the two cylinders and the inflatable inner tube I had seen earlier. The balloon rises into the air and the animation made it appear that it rose very high into the air – thousands of feet high.

The funny looking balloon was shaped like a cartoon airplane with wings and a tail with some odd panels on the top of the wings and tail. I finally said I was tired of being spoon fed these dog and pony shows and I wanted to get to the beef of the device. They all smiled and Ok, here is how it works.

The SE lands and rights itself and then those rods which were used to right it now are rotated and sent downward thru the center of the SE into the ground. They have a small amount of threaded pitch on then and when rotated, they screw into the soil. While they are screwing into the hard ground, they are also being bent again by an electrical current that is making them bend in the soil as they penetrate. The end result looks like someone opened an umbrella under ground beneath the SE. Since these rods are nearly 3 feet long, they anchor the SE to the ground very firmly.

The cylinders then inflate a special balloon that is made of some very special material. The Mylar is coated with a material that makes it act as a solar panel, creating electricity. The special shape of the balloon not only holds it facing into the wind but it also keeps it from blowing too far downwind. Sort of like the way a sailboat can sail into the wind, this balloon can resist the upper level winds by keeping the tether as vertical as possible. The balloon rises to between 5,000 and 15,000 feet – depending on the terrain and the kind of surveillance they want to do. It is held by a very special tether.

I was handed a tangled wad of what looked like the thin fiberglass threads that make up the cloth used for fiberglass boats. It was so lightweight that I could barely feel it. I had a wad about the size of a softball in my hand and the instructor told me I had nearly 2,000 feet in my hand. This tether is made from a combination of carbon fibers and specially made ceramics and it is shaped like an over-inflated triangle. What is really amazing is that it is less than one centimeter wide and made with an unusual color that made it shimmer at times and at other times it seemed to just disappear. The material was actually very complex as I was to learn.

The unique shape and material of the tether uses the qualities of the carbon fiber coating and metallic ceramic core to provide some unusual electromagnetic qualities. The impedance of the tether as seen by the RF signal in it is a function of the time-phased signal modulation. In other words, the modulation of the signal can cause the tether to change its antenna tuning aspects to enhance or attenuate the RF signal being sent or received. Using the central network controller, all of the SEs can be configured to act as alternating transmitters to other SEs and receivers from other SEs. This antenna tuning also comes in handy because every SE base unit also can function as a signal intelligence (SIGINT) receiver – collecting any kind of radiated signal from VLF to SHF. Because the antenna can be tuned to exact signal wavelengths and can simulate any size antenna at any point along its entire length, it can detect even very weak signals. The networking analysis system monitor and processor (SMP) records these signals and sends them via satellite for analysis when instructed to do so by the home central command.

The system combines the unique properties of this tether line with three other technologies. The first is an ultra wide-band (UWB) high frequency, low power and exceptionally long range transceiver that uses the UWB in a well controlled time-phase pulsed system that makes the multiple tethered lines act as a fixed linear array despite their movement and vertical nature. This is sometimes called WiMax using a standard called 802.16 but in this case, the tether functions as a distributed antenna system (DAS) maximizing the passive re-radiation capability of WiMax and making maximum use of the dynamic burst algorithm modulation. This means that when the network controlling system monitor determines that it is an optimum time for a specific SE to transmit, it uses a robust burst mode that enhances the power per bit transmitted while maintaining an optimum signal strength to noise ratio. By using this burst mode method in a smart network deployment topology, the SE overcomes the limitations of WiMax by providing both high average bit rates and long distance transmissions – allowing the SEs to be spaced as much as 100 miles apart. The SE tethers function as both a horizontal and vertical adaptive array antenna in which MIMO is used in combination with a method called Time Delayed Matrix-Pencil method (TDMP) to distinguish direct from reflected signals and to quantify phase shifts between different SE tethers connected to the system monitor. This creates a powerful and highly accurate Direction of Arrival (DOA) capability in very high resolution from nano-scale signal reflections.

Combining the precision DOA capability with an equally precise range capability is accomplished using the time-phased pulse which creates powerful signals that are progressively sent up the tether and then systematically cancelled out at certain distances along the tether using destructive echo resonance pulses. The effect is to move the emitted signal from the bottom of the tether along the tether as if it were a much shorter antenna but was traveling up and down the height of the tether. Since effective range is directly proportional to the height of the transmission, this has the effect of coordinating the emitted signal to distance. Using the range data along with the DOA, every detail of the surrounding topography can be recreated in the computer’s imaging monitor and the processor can accurately detect any movement or unusual objects in the field of coverage.

The second adapted technology is loosely based on a design sometimes referred to as the Leaky Coax or ported coax detector. The unique metallic Mylar and conductive ceramics in the tether give the electrical effect of being a large diameter conductor – making insertion losses almost zero – while allowing for an optimum pattern of non-uniformly spaced slots arranged in a periodic pattern that maximizes and enhances the radiating mode of the simulated leaky coax. The idea is that the emitted signal from one SE is coupled to the receiver in adjacent SEs in a manner that can be nulled out unless changes are made in the area in which the emitted signal is projected. The advantage of using the ported coax coupling method is that the signal needed for this detection process is very low power partly because the system makes use of the re-radiation of the signal in sort of an iterative damper wave that maximizes the detection of any changes in the received direct and reflected signals. In simple terms, the system can detect movement over a very large area by detecting changes in a moving temporal reference signal if anything moves in the covered area. In combination with the ultra wide band, spread spectrum transceiver, this detection method can reach out significant distances with a high degree of accuracy and resolution.

The third adapted technology is loosely based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI’s are used to detect non-metallic and soft tissue in the body by using a method that blankets the subject in a time-phased magnetic field and then looks for minute timed changes to reflections of that magnetic field. In the case of the SE, the magnetic field is the WiMax, ultra wideband time-phased signal emitted by the tethers. It can blanket a large area with an electromagnetic field that senses changes in the signal reflection, strength and phase so that it can detect both metal and non-metal objects, including humans.

Variations on these three technologies are combined with a networking analysis system monitor and processor (SMP) that can receive signals and control the emissions from multiple SEs and process them into intelligence data. The system uses a combination of wires and lasers to speed communications to and from the SMP and the SMP can use any one or all of the SEs for selective analysis of specific geographic or electromagnetic signals.

Finally there is the balloon. It rises up above the clouds and sits in the bright sun. It has a surface that performs several functions. The outer layer acts sort of like the reverse of automatic dimming sunglasses. That is, it turns a pale blue under bright direct sunlight but it gets darker and darker as the light dims so that by the time the sun is down completely, the balloon is almost black. Although moon light does cause it to slightly brighten in color, the moon light is so direct that it only affects the top and most the bottom half remains black. During the day, the balloon is one to three miles up and is almost impossible to see without binoculars and knowing exactly where to look. During the night, the only way to know it is there is to see the stars that it blocks but at the long distances, it only blocks a very few stars at a time so again it is nearly impossible to see it. Since the tether is also nearly invisible, you have to be standing right next to the SE to be able to see any of it.

Just under this outer coating is a layer of flexible solar sensitive material that acts as a giant solar panel. It produces about 25 watts of power at peak performance but the SE system uses only about half that so the rest charges a Lithium-Cobalt Ion battery in the SE base unit. This is more than enough to power the system at night with enough left over to cover several cloudy days.

The bottom half of the balloon is coated with a reflective Mylar facing the inside of the balloon while the upper half of the balloon does not have this coating. This creates a reflective collection surface for RF signals being sent to and from satellites and high flying planes. Inside the balloon are antenna elements in this semi-parabolic reflector of several feet wide – making it easy to send and receive signals at very low energy levels. The SHF signals being sent are brought to the balloon’s internal antenna by superimposing them on top of the UWB signals on the carbon fiber Mylar surface of the tether. This is done with remarkable efficiency and hardly any signal loss.

Now that I had gotten the entire presentation, I was taken back into the C-130 where there was a small desk with a computer monitor and other equipment. The screen showed a map with the 12 SEs marked with red blinking dots. An internal GPS provided exact positions for both the SE base units, the central network SMP and the balloons. Beside each red dot was a blue dot off to one side showing the relative position of the balloon. Around each red dot was a light-blue circle that represented the coverage area – each light blue circle overlapped two or more other coverage area circles. Finally, there was a larger light yellow circle around all of the SEs showing the coverage area of the central networking SMP that dropped near the center of the SEs. Altogether, these circles covered an area of about 100 square miles but were capable of coverage over three times that area.

The operator then flipped a few switches and the screen changed over to what looked like an aerial monochrome view of a 3-D topographical map – showing the covered terrain in very good detail using shading and perspective to relate the 3-D effects. Then the circles on the screen began to pulsate and small lights appeared on the screen. These lights were different colors – red for metal objects, blue for animals or people and green for anything else that was moving or was inconsistent with the topography. It was programmed to flag anything that MIGHT be unusual such as objects that had sharp corners or smooth rounded edges or a symmetrical geographic pattern. When the operator moved a circular cursor (trackball) over any of these objects, the data lines on the bottom of the screen would fill with all kinds of information like its speed, direction, height above ground, past and projected paths, etc. Once an object was “hooked” by the trackball, it was given a bogie number and tracked continuously. The trackball also allowed for zooming in on the bogie to get increased detail. We spotted one blue dot and hooked it and then zoomed in on it. It was about 4 miles outside the SE perimeter but we were able to zoom in until it looked like a grainy picture from a poor signal on an old TV set. Despite that detail, it was clear that the object was a goat – actually a ram because we could see his horns. Considering it was about 1 AM at night and this was a goat that was 69 miles from where we were and 4 miles from the nearest SE, that is resolution that was incredible.

We zoomed out again and began a systematic screening of all of the red, blue and green dots on the screen. For objects the size of cars, we could reach out more than 40 miles out from the ring of SEs. For people, we could reach out about 15 miles outside the ring but inside; we could see down to rabbit size animals and could pick out individual electrical power poles and road signs.

I was shown a map of the other locations when the other Solar Eye arrays were located and their coverage areas. This is the primary reason and basis for the upcoming Marjah campaign into the Helmand Province – a huge flat plateau that is ideal for the invisible Solar Eyes.

Posted in This Happened or Will !, Future History, Maybe True | No Comments »

5 July 2009 by admin.

When I was working for NRL, I had an opportunity to work on a biomarine project that had to do with seeding the ocean with time released pills that would attract sharks and other man-killing creatures (sea snakes, squid, rays, etc.) with the intent of protecting naval vessels.  The object was to find a chemical mix that would be a powerful attractant that could be put into the water and it would work for hours or days.  The attractant would bring in killer sharks or other sea creatures that would reduce or eliminate the underwater threat.  We called the program BAIT – bio-attractant interdiction and targeting. 

With the advent of METs or NETs on land, in the air and at sea, the idea of hiding or making a surprise attack is a thing of the past.  Warfare will never be the same again.

Posted in This Happened or Will !, Maybe True | 1 Comment »

5 July 2009 by admin.

I was recently a part of a beta test group for the MDR192 – Military Digital Rifle.  This new weapon is a cross between a video game and a cannon.  In its prototype form, it begins as a modified Barrett M82, 50 cal. sniper rifle in a bullpup configuration.  This SASR (Special Applications Scoped Rifle) uses an improved version of the moving recoil barrel and muzzle mounted recoil deflector to reduce recoil while improving the ability to reacquire the sight picture.

A further modification consists of a small box attached to the monopod socket of the rear shoulder rest and another small box attached to the underside of the fore stock where the detachable bipod would normally be attached.  Inside these two boxes is an intricate mix of servos, gyros and electronics.  There is a quick-mount connection between these boxes and two motorized and articulated tripods that fully support the rifle at any predetermined height and angle.  These boxes are extensions of the Barrett BORS ballistic computer that integrate optical ranging with digital and computer interpolated capabilities. 

The sight has been replaced with very sophisticated video camera with superior optics.   The sight’s camera feed and the two control boxes are then connected to another small box that sits beside the rifle with a radio digital transceiver that uses frequency hopping to avoid jamming and detection.

The system is not done yet.  There are at least two additional video camera sights (VCS) that are placed at some distance from the rifle on their own motorized and articulated tripods.  Up to 6 scopes can be used with this system and they can be placed to completely surround the target area at distances up to 4,000 yards.  This gives a target circle up to 8,000 yards in diameter or about 3.4 miles.  The rifle mounted sight and the multiple VCS’s all have night vision capabilities and can switch to infrared imaging.

The MDR192 shoots a modified M82 50 cal round that uses depleted uranium for weight and an oversized action and barrel to withstand the more powerful gunpowder used to push the 12.7×99mm bullet up to 3,977 fps out the 62 inch barrel.  The rated effective range is 8,290 feet with a maximum range of 29,750 feet; however, this cartridge is lethal out to 24,000 feet.

The perimeter video camera sights (VCS) and the one on the MDR192 are all fed into a laptop computer that communicates with all of them by a wireless network.  The shooter can be located as far away as 500 feet from the rifle.  The computer is on his backpack.  He wears a pair of video goggles that gives him a 3-D image of the target area and using the depth of filed, interpolation and imagery of the multiple VCS’s, he can move his point of view to any position in the target zone that can be seen by or interpolated by the VCS’s and computer.  This includes the real time position of moving human targets.

Using an arm mounted control panel, which includes a button joystick, he can move a tiny red dot around on the screen of his goggles.  This red dot represents the impact point of the MDR192’s bullet.  The computer will fade the red dot to a yellow one if the bullet must penetrate something before hitting the designated target and it fades to blue when it is unlikely that the bullet can penetrate to the target.

The 20 round clip is loaded with Raufoss Mk 211 mod 5 round which is called a multipurpose projectile having the depleted uranium core for armor-piercing, an explosive and incendiary component giving it the HEIAP qualification but these modified rounds also have an adaptive trajectory using one or more of 5 small jets on the boat-tail of the bullet.  These tiny jets do not propel the bullet but rather steer it by injecting air pressure into the slipstream of laminar airflow around the moving bullet.  The gain is the ability to steer the bullet into as much as a 22-degree curve in 2 dimensions.  Given the high explosive aspects of the bullet, hitting within 6 feet of a human would be lethal.

The shooter’s target dot placement controls a laser pointer on each of the VCS’s and the rifle in order to place the hit point on anything that can be hit or killed.  The actual laser dot that the shooter sees in his goggles is not actually projected from the VCS’s but rather is created artificially inside the digital camera as if the shooter was placing it.  This gives the advantage of placing a designated hit spot onto a target that is not actually visible but within the capabilities of the rifle to hit using its penetration, explosive or bullet bending capabilities.

There is, however, a laser and ultrasonic acoustic emission from each of the VCS’s that allow for the precise determination of the air movements in the target zone.  This includes measures of air density, humidity, movement, elevation, etc.  This data is automatically fed into the computer to correct the rifle aim point to compensate for these parameters.

Once the VCS’s are set up and the rifle is mounted on its computerized tripods, the shooter can move away from the rifle’s location and activate the wireless connection to all the scopes and tripods.  The shooter has the ability to move the tripods up and down and left and right.  The rifle’s tripods can actually relocate the rifle by walking the weapon across the ground to reposition it, recover from recoil or to hide it.

The computer is preprogrammed with the full capabilities of the rifle and its ammo so that it will give an accurate and very precise aiming of the weapon based on the dot target and the guns capabilities.  This means that it has been programmed with the exact bullet trajectory so that it can accurately aim and him targets at the extreme range of the bullets – out to 24,000 feet (4.5 miles).  The computer uses this data plus the corrections for air movements and the capabilities of the weapon with respect to kill radius, bullet bending and penetration to accurately aim the rifle to hit the point that the shooter has designated.

The MDR192 passed its beta testing.  My part in the testing was to work on just the trajectory aspects of the computer programming since I had a hand in the original M82 testing to create the adjustable trajectory optical sight that is used on that weapon.  Since I was working with the weapon’s accuracy, I was privy to all of the tests and results.  The official word has not come back yet but from what I observed, it passed its tests with flying colors.  At just over $15,000 each with three VCS’s, this will be a weapon that will be deployed to Afghanistan within the next year.

Modifications that are already being alpha tested include digital timed projectiles similar to the XM25 “smart bullets”.  This will allow for increased reach into protected locations.  They are also developing an add-on to the VCS’s that will sense RF emissions and portray them on the shooters 3-D goggles as shades of colors.  This will allow the pinpointing of cell phones, radios, transmitters, etc.  A third modification is the use of advanced shotgun microphones to pinpoint acoustic emissions.  This will be integrated into existing inputs to refine and improve target locations.

As the inventor of the microencapsulated tags (METs), I was asked to create an interface with the MDR192 and METs.  Once this is done, camouflage of any kind will be completely obsolete and it opens the door for all kinds of possibilities.  For instance, a completely automatic sniper rifle that can autonomously fire at targets that have been precisely verified as enemy combatants.  It can prioritize targets by their threat level.  METs also allow the use of Exacto rounds (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance) currently being developed by Teledyne.  Currently laser guided bullets are the focus of the guided bullet program but using MET’s, the bullet could be guided by the target – no matter how the target moves.  My computer modeling is almost done and I will be turning over my finding to DARPA by the end of Sept.  I suspect they will move on it quickly as they have earmarked $10 million to develop a guided bullet.

Posted in This Happened or Will !, Maybe True | 1 Comment »

29 March 2009 by admin.

And He knows Everything You have Ever Done! Sometimes our paranoid government wants to do things that technology does not allow or they do not know about yet. As soon as they find out or the technology is developed, then they do it. Case in point is the paranoia that followed 11 Sept 2001 (9/11) in which Cheny and Bush wanted to be able to track and monitor every person in the US. There were immediate efforts to do this with the so-called Patriots Act that bypassed a lot of constitutional and existing laws and rights – like FISA. They also instructed NSA to monitor all radio and phone traffic, which was also illegal, and against the charter of NSA. Lesser known monitoring was the hacking into computer databases and monitoring of emails by NSA computers. They have computers that can download and read every email on every circuit from every Internet user as well as every form of voice communication. Such claims of being able to track everyone, everywhere have been made before and it seems that lots of people simple don’t believe that level of monitoring is possible. Well, I’m here to tell you that it not only is possible, but it is all automated and you can read all about the tool that started it all online. Look up “starlight” in combination with “PNNL” on Google and you will find references to a software program that was the first generation of the kind of tool I am talking about. This massive amount of communications data is screened by a program called STARLIGHT, which was created by the CIA and the Army and a team of contractors led by Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). It does two things that very few other programs can do. It can process free-form text and it can display complex queries in visual 3-D outputs. The free-form text processing means that it can read text in its natural form as it is spoken, written in letters and emails and printed or published in documents. For a database program to be able to do this as easily and as fast as it would for formal defined records and fields of a relational database is a remarkable design achievement. Understand this is not just a word search – although that is part of it. It is not just a text-scanning tool; it can treat the text of a book as if it were an interlinked, indexed and cataloged database in which it can recall every aspect of the book (data). It can associate and find any word or phrase in relation to any parameter you can think of related to the book – page numbers, nearby words, word use per page, chapter or book, etc. By using the most sophisticated voice-to-text messaging, it can perform this kind of expansive searching on everything written or spoken, emailed, texted or said on cell phones or landline phones in the US! The visual presentation of that data is the key to being able to use it without information overload and to have the software prioritize the data for you. It does this by translating the database query parameters into colors and dimensional elements of a 3-D display. To view this data, you have to put on a special set of glasses similar to the ones that put a tiny TV screen in from of each eye. Such eye-mounted viewing is available for watching video and TV – giving the impression you are looking at a 60-inch TV screen from 5 feet away. In the case of STARLIGHT, it gives a completely 3-D effect and more. It can sense which way you are looking so it shows you a full 3-D environment that can be expanded into any size the viewer wants. And then they add interactive elements. You can put on a special glove that can be seen in the projected image in front of your eyes. As you move this glove in the 3-D space you are in, it moves in the 3-D computer images that you see in your binocular eye-mounted screens. Plus this glove can interact with the projected data elements. Let’s see how this might work for a simple example: The first civilian application of STARLIGHT was for the FAA to analyze private aircraft crashes over a 10-year period. Every scrape of information was scanned from accident reports, FAA investigations and police records – almost all of this was in free-form text. This included full specs on the aircraft, passengers, pilot, type of flight plan (IFR, VFR) etc. It also entered geospatial data that listed departure and destination airports, peak flight plan altitude, elevation of impact, distance and heading data. It also entered temporal data for the times of day, week and year that each event happened. This was hundreds of thousands of documents that would have taken years to key into a computer if a conventional database were used. Instead, high-speed scanners were used that read in reports at a rate of 200 double-sided pages per minute. Using a half dozen of these scanners completed the data entry in less than one month. The operator then assigned colors to a variety of ranges of data. For instance, it first assigned red and blue to male and female pilots and then looked at the data projected on a map. What popped up were hundreds of mostly red (male) dots spread out over the entire US map. Not real helpful. Next he assigned a spread of colors to all the makes aircraft – Cessna, Beachcraft, etc.. Now all the dots change to a rainbow of colors with no particular concentration of any given color in any given geographic area. Next he assigned colors to hours of the day – doing 12 hours at a time – Midnight to Noon and then Noon to Midnight. Now something interesting came up. The colors assigned to 6AM and 6PM (green) and shades of green (before and after 6AM or 6PM) were dominant on the map. This meant that the majority of the accidents happened around dusk or dawn. Next the operator entered assigned colors to distances from the departing airport – red being within 5 miles, orange was 5 to 10 miles…and so on with blue being the longest (over 100 miles). Again a surprise in the image. The map showed mostly red or blue with very few in between. When he refined the query so that red was either within 5 miles of the departing or destination airport, almost the whole map was red. Using these simple techniques, an operator was able to determine in a matter of a few hours that 87% of all private aircraft accidents happen within 5 miles of the takeoff or landing runway. 73% happen in the twilight hours of dawn or dusk. 77% happen with the landing gear lowered or with the landing lights on and 61% of the pilots reported being confused by ground lights. This gave the FAA information they needed to improve approach lighting and navigation aids in the terminal control areas (TCAs) of private aircraft airports. This was a very simple application that used a limited number of visual parameters at a time. But STARLIGHT is capable of so much more. It can assign things like direction and length of a vector, color of the line or tip, curvature and width and taper to various elements of a search. It can give shape to one result and different shape to another result. This gives significance to “seeing” a cube versus a sphere or to seeing rounded corners on a flat surface instead of square corners on an egg-shaped surface. Everything visual can have meaning.  Having 20+ variables at a time that can be interlaced with geospatial and temporal (historical) parameters can allow the program to search an incredible amount of data. Since the operator is looking for trends, anomalies and outflyers, the visual representation of the data is ideal to spot this data without actually scanning the data itself by the operator. Since the operator is visually seeing an image that is devoid of the details of numbers or words, he can easily spot some aspect of the image that warrants a closer look. In each of these trial queries, the operator can using his gloved hand to point to any given dot and call up the original source of the information in the form of a scanned image of the accident report. He can also touch virtual screen elements to bring out other data or query elements. For instance, he can merge two queries to see how many accidents near airports (red dots) had more than two passengers or were single engine aircraft, etc. Someone looking on would see a guy with weird glasses waving his hand in the air but in his eyes, he is pressing buttons, rotating knobs and selecting colors and shapes to alter his 3-D view of the data. In its use at NSA, they add one other interesting capability. Pattern Recognition. It can automatically find patterns in the data that would be impossible for any real person to by looking at the data. For instance, they put in a long list of words that are linked to risk assessments – such as plutonium, bomb, kill, jihad, etc. Then they let it search for patterns. Suppose there are dozens of phone calls being made to coordinate an attack but the callers are from all over the US. Every caller is calling someone different so no one number or caller can be linked to a lot of risk words. STARLIGHT can collate these calls and find the common linkage between them, and then it can tack the calls, caller and discussions in all other media forms. Now imagine the list of risk words and phrases to be tens of thousands of words long. It includes code words and words used in other languages. It can include consideration for the source or destination of the call – from public phones or unregistered cell phones. It can link the call to a geographic location within a few feet and then track the caller in all subsequent calls. It can use voice print technology to match calls made on different devices (radio, CB, cell phone, landline, VOIP, etc.). This is still just a sample of the possibilities. STARLIGHT was the first generation and was only as good as the data that was fed into it through scanned documents and other databases of information. A later version, code named Quasar, was created that used advanced data mining and ERP (enterprise resource planning) system architecture that integrated the direct feed from information gathering resources. For instance, the old STARLIGHT system had to feed recordings of phone calls into a speech-to-text processor and then the text data that was created was fed into STARLIGHT. In the Quasar system, the voice monitoring equipment (radios, cell phones, landlines) is fed directly into Quasar as is the direct feed of emails, telegrams, text messages, Internet traffic, etc. So does the government have the ability to track you? Absolutely! Are they? Absolutely! But wait, there’s more! Above, I said that Quasar was a “later version”. It’s not the latest version. Thanks to the Patriot Act and Presidential Orders on warrantless searches and the ability to hack into any database, NSA now can do so much more. This newer system is miles ahead of the relatively well known Echelon program of information gathering (which was dead even before it became widely known). It is also beyond another older program called Total Information Awareness (TIA). This new capability is made possible by the bank of NSA Cray computers and memory storage that are said to make Google’s entire system look like an abacus combined with the latest integration (ERP) software and the latest pattern recognition and visual data representation systems. Added to all of the Internet and phone monitoring and screening are two more additions into a new program called “Kontur”. Kontur is the Danish word for Profile. You will see why in a moment. Kontur adds geospatial monitoring of a person’s location to their database. Since 2005, every cell phone now broadcasts its GPS location at the beginning of every transmission as well as at regular intervals even when you are not using it to make a call. This was mandated by the Feds supposedly to assist in 911 emergency calls but the real motive was to be able to track people’s locations at all times. For those few that are still using the older model cell phones, they employ “tower tracking” which uses the relative signal strength and timing of the cell phone signal reaching each of several cell phone towers to pinpoint a person within a few feet. A holdover from the Quasar program was the tracking of commercial data which included every purchase made by credit cards or any purchase where a customer discount card is used – like at grocery stores. This not only gives the Feds an idea of a person’s lifestyle and income but by recording what they buy, they can infer other behaviors. When you combine cell phone and purchase tracking with the ability to track other forms of transactions – like banking, doctors, insurance, police and public records, there are relatively few gaps in what they can know about you. Kontur also mixed in something called geofencing that allows the government to create digital virtual fences around anything they want. Then when anyone crosses this virtual fence, they can be tracked. For instance, there is a virtual fence around every government building in Washington DC. Using predictive automated behavior monitoring and cohesion assessment software combined with location monitoring, geofencing and sophisticated social behavior modeling, pattern mining and inference, they are able to recognize patterns of people’s movements and actions as being threatening. Several would-be shooters and bombers have been stopped using this equipment. To talk about the “Profile” aspect of Kontur, we must first talk about why or how is it possible because it became possible only when the Feds were able to create very, very large databases of information and still be able to make effective use of that data. It took NSA 35 years of computer use to get to the point of using a terabyte (1012) of data. That was back in 1990 using ferrite core memory. It took 10 more years to get to petabyte (1015) of storage – that was in early 2001 using 14-inch videodisks and RAID banks of hard drives. It took four more years to create and make use of an exabyte (1018) of storage. With the advent of quantum memory using gradient echo and EIT (electromagnetically induced transparency), the NSA computers now have the capacity to store and rapidly search a yottabyte (1024) of data and expect to be able to raise that to 1,000 yottabytes of data within two years. To search this much data, they use a bank of Cray XT Jaguar computers that do nothing but read and write to and from the QMEM – quantum memory. The look-ahead and read-ahead capabilities are possible because of the massively parallel processing of a bank of other Crays that gives an effective speed of about 270 petaflops. Speeds are increasing at NSA at a rate of about 1 petaflop every two to four weeks. This kind of speed is necessary for things like pattern recognition and making use of the massive profile database of Kontur. In late 2006, it was decided that NSA and the rest of the intelligence and right wing government agencies would stop this idea of real-time monitoring and begin developing a historical record of what everyone does. Being able to search historical data was seen as essential for back-tracking a person’s movements to find out what he has been doing and whom he has been seeing or talking with. This was so that no one would ever again accuse them on not “connecting the dots”. But that means what EVERYONE does! As you have seen from the above description, they already can track your movements and all your commercial activities as well as what you say on phones or emails, what you buy and what you watch on TV or listen to on the radio. The difference now is that they save this data in a profile about you. All of that and more. Using geofencing, they have marked out millions of locations around the world to including obvious things like stores that sell pornography, guns, chemicals or lab equipment. Geofenced locations include churches, organizations like Greenpeace and Amnesty International. They have moving geofences around people they are tracking like terrorists but also political opponents, left wing radio and TV personalities and leaders of social movements and churches. If you enter their personal space – close enough to talk, then you are flagged and then you are geofenced and tracked. If your income level is low and you travel to the rich side of town, you are flagged. If you are rich and travel to the poor side of town, you are flagged. If you buy a gun or ammo and cross the wrong geofence, you will be followed. The pattern recognition of Kontur might match something you said in an email with something you bought and somewhere you drove in your car to determine you are a threat. Kontur is watching and recording your entire life. There is only one limitation to the system right now. The availability of soldiers or “men in black” to follow-up on people that have been flagged is limited so they are prioritizing whom they act upon. You are still flagged and recorded but they are only acting on the ones that are judged to be a serious threat now.It is only a matter of time before they can find a way to reach out to anyone they want and curb or destroy them. It might come in the form of a government mandated electronic tag that is inserted under the skin or implanted at birth. They have been testing these devices in use on animals under the disguise of tracking and identification of lost pest. They have tried twice to introduce these to all the people in the military. They have also tried to justify putting them into kids for “safety”. They are still pushing them for use in medical monitoring. Perhaps this will take the form of a nanobot. If they are successful in getting the population to accept these devices and then they determine you are a risk, they simply deactivate you by remotely popping open a poison capsule using a radio signal. Such a device might be totally passive in a person that is not a threat but might be lethal or it can be programmed to inhibit the motor-neuron system or otherwise disable a person that is deemed to be a high-risk person. Watch out for things like this. It’s the next thing they will do. You can count on it. 

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11 March 2009 by admin.

Nanobots Contamination of over-the-counter (OTC) Drugs

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Introduction

Update on FDA’s Investigation

FDA’s Executive Office Warnings/AdvisoriesIntroduction

September 12, 2008: In light of recent evidence from the National Security Agency (NSA), concerning over-the-counter (OTC) Drugs contaminated with nanobots, the FDA has issued a Health Information Advisory to proactively reassure the Office of the President that there is no known health threat from contaminated OTC Drugs manufactured by companies that have met the requirements to sell such products in the United States. Nanobot contamination, if present, poses no apparent risk to health, even to children; however, there may be a risk to privacy.

The nanobots were discovered by NSA because they appear to be activated by an external radio frequency (RF) signal and in response emanate a coded signal. They were found to be less than 1 centimeter long and apparently contain a passive RFID device in addition to a rudimentary mechanism for sensing and memory retention. So far, neither NSA nor FDA has been able to decipher the coded signal. Although this is considerable smaller than the Verichip developed by Kevin Warwick, it is well within the current technology.

These nanites have been found embedded in the center of OTC drugs that come in 325 mgs and larger solid pill form. Contaminated pills range from a low of 1% to a high of 3% of all pills sampled. This is an unusually high level but the method of insertion of these contaminated pills into the manufacturing process of multiple producers has not been determined yet.

Analysis of their exact nature has been complicated by the fact that they seem to be encased with a protective coating that is also highly reactive to light. If a contaminated OTC pill is broken open and the nanite is exposed to light, it immediately disintegrates. Further studies are underway.

The FDA had no knowledge of the presence of these nanobots prior to the notification by NSA in August 2008 and has been hampered in its analysis by a total lack of cooperation from the NSA, however, with NSA’s help, we have been able to determine that in most urban centers, the level of contaminated adults is approximately one in four with slightly greater percentages found in the larger urban centers of New York, Boston, Miami and Dallas.

For some people that take OTC drugs on a regular basis (more than 2 a week), it is possible that they might accumulate more than one nanobot in their system. This does not appear to increase or decrease the health risk to the person but does appear to alter the RF signals emanating from the RFID circuits of the nanites.

The FDA has broadened its domestic and import sampling and testing of OTC drugs from suspected sources but has been unable to define the exact source or sources. FDA has recommended that consumers not consume certain products because of possible contamination with Nanobots. A list of those products is below.

Update on FDA’s InvestigationFebruary 19, 2009: FDA’s ongoing investigation continues to show that the domestic supply of over-the-counter (OTC) Drugs is safe and that consumers can continue using U.S. manufactured OTC Drugs. FDA has concluded that levels of Nanobots alone are at or below 1 pill per thousand (ppt) among all OTC Drugs. This level does not raise public health concerns. FDA has updated its interim risk assessment, issued in early October, with this information:

The FDA has been collecting and analyzing samples of domestically manufactured OTC Drugs for the presence of Nanobots and Nanobots-related RF signal responses. To date, FDA tests have found extremely low levels of Nanobots in one OTC Drugs sample and moderate levels of RF signal responses from concentrations of OTC drugs, such as in a commercial drug store. The benign nature of the nanobots found so far indicate they were designed for tagging, tracking and collection of health information and do not interact with the body or its system and therefore pose no health risk to the public.

To date, statistical data on those individuals that have been contaminated with the nanobots has been limited but several trends have begun to emerge. The number of people contaminated seems to be equally divided among men and women and in a proportional distribution among ethnic and racial groups. The passive RFID tag is responsive to various frequencies in the high UHF and SHF range (922 MHz to 2202 GHz) and appears to makes use of the backscatter coupling method, however, a few known contamination’s could not be activated with any signal source.

Studies have shown that these passive RFID tags can be activated by signals from satellites but have to be read by a receiver located within ten feet. During the testing of nanobots that were actually ingested by people, it was discovered by NSA that the cell phones of the people being tested emanated an unusual signal pattern in response to a band sweep of SHF RF signals. The cell phone activation is being further investigated.

For unknown reasons, some people eliminate or pass their nanobot out of their systems relatively quickly and other people retain the nanobots for either extended periods or permanently (until surgically removed). Further studies are trying to determine what, if any health condition is common among those that retain their nanites. In our sampling of US cities using roaming teams with sweep generators and receivers, it was discovered that the signal being emanated from the RFID tags lasted about 21.7 milliseconds longer than in any other urban center.

As of this FDA Warning, there appears to be no immediate health risk and no reason to unduly alarm the general public with a general public announcement. NSA has indicated they will separately report to the Executive Office of the President on their findings.

Transcript for FDA’s Executive Office Briefing: FDA’s Updated Interim Safety and Risk Assessment of Nanobots and its Analogues in OTC drugs for Humans

November 28, 2008

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7 March 2009 by admin.

I was involved in a long career of classified work for the military and then did classified work for the government after I got out of the military. Doing classified work is often misunderstood by the public. If a person has a Top Secret clearance, that does not mean they have access to all classified information. In fact, it is not uncommon for two people to both have Top Secret (TS) clearances and still not be allowed to talk to each other. It has to do with what the government calls “compartments”. You are allowed your clearance only within certain compartments or subject areas. For instance, a guy that has a TS for Navy weapons systems may not know or allowed to know anything about Army weapon systems. If a compartment is very closely held – meaning that it is separately controlled even within the TS cleared people, then it is given a special but often obscure names and additional controls. For instance, for years (back in the days of Corona but not any more) the compartment for satellite reconnaissance was called “talent-keyhole” and “byeman” and was usually restricted to only people within the NRO – National Reconnaissance Office.

These code words were abbreviated with two letters so talent-keyhole became TK and byeman became BY. As a further safeguard, it is forbidden to tell anyone the code word for your compartment – you are only allowed to tell him or her the two-letter abbreviation. And you cannot ask someone if they are cleared for any particular compartment, you have to check with a third party security force. So if you work in a place like CIA or NRL or NSA, and you want to have a meeting with someone from another department, you meet them at the security station outside your department office area (every department has one). When they arrive, you ask the guard if they are cleared for “TK” and “BY”. The guard then looks at the visitor’s badges and then checks them against a picture logbook he keeps. The picture and codes on the badges and the log book have to match and if they do, then gets out another book that has just the visitor’s numeric coded badge number and looks up his clearances. If he has TK and BY after his badge number, then you are told that he can be admitted to your area for discussions on just the TK and BY programs and subjects. In some departments, the visitors are given brightly colored badges identifying them as being cleared only for specific subject areas. This warns others in the department to cover their work or stop talking about other clearance areas when these visitors are nearby.

There are hundreds of these coded compartments covering all aspects of military and civilian classified topics and programs. If you are high enough or if your work involves a lot of cross-discipline work, you might have a long string of these code words after your name….as I did.

If a program has any involvement with intelligence gathering (HUMINT – human intelligence, SIGINT – signal intelligence or IMINT – imagery intelligence), then it may get additional controls that go well beyond the usual TS background checks. For instance, you might be subjected to frequent polygraph tests or be placed in the PRP – Personal Reliability Program. PRP was a program that constantly monitors people’s lives to see if they ever get even close to be vulnerable or easy targets for spies. In the PRP, your phone might be tapped, your checking accounts are monitored, you debt and income are watched, and your computer is hacked. This is all with the intent of making sure you never get into debt or get psychologically unstable. PRP administers a series of psychological tests that can take up to 3 days to complete every year. These tests can peer into your mind so well that they can feel reasonably confidant that you are mentally stable if these tests say so.

Because of my work, I had a TS clearance for more than 40 years and had a string of two-letter codes after my name that went on for three or four lines on a typewritten page. I was in the “Poly” program and in the PRP and some others that I still can’t talk about. The reason I had so many was because I was involved in doing decision support using computer modeling – Operations Research, Math Modeling and Simulations. This meant I had to have access to a huge range of information from a wide variety of intelligence sources as well as other kinds of R&D work. I then had to be able to analyze this information, model it and present it to the senior decision-makers in an easy to understand form. This meant I was often briefing congressmen, senators, people from the CIA, FBI and high ranking officers from all of the services, JCS and OSD as well as the working level analyst that were giving me their classified data for analysis.

Now I can begin telling you some of what I learned by being exposed to all of that intelligence over all those years but I still have to be careful because although most of my limitations have expired, some are still in effect and I can’t violate them or I will join the ranks of the “disappeared”.

First, let me make it clear that the entire military is run by the top most 1% of the people in the services combined with the top 5% within the federal government. Imagine a pyramid in which only the guys at the top point are deciding where all the rest will go. I’ll call them the “Power Elite”

There are just a handful of officers in the Pentagon and in JCS that make all of the decisions of what the services will do and what direction they will take. Perhaps 50 officers total. These guys are so high in rank and so close to retirement that they have, for intents and purposes, ceased being military people and are simply politicians that wear a uniform. They are essentially the liaison officers for the highest ranking congressmen and the office of the President. They cater to these politicians in order to gain additional power through the control of more money or to feather they nest of future involvement in the political arena.

There are of course a few – a very few notable exceptions. Colon Powell and Dwight Eisenhower are two that come to mind. Officers like General Norman Schwarzkopf are not in this group because they chose not to seek political office or extend their power or control beyond doing their military jobs.

It is easy to see why all of the military is controlled by 1% of the officers. This is an organization based on the “chain-of-command” structure and everyone is taught to follow orders. In fact, once you are in the military, you can go to jail if you do not follow orders and in time of war, you can be executed for not following orders. Most of the bulk of the military is so biased by the indoctrination and propaganda created and put out by the government, that they willingly follow orders without questioning them.

What this 1% of high ranking military and 5% of the federal government have in common is that they measure their success in money and power. The source of that money and power comes from commercial, industrial and business sources. By making decisions that favor these businesses, those businesses, in turn, empower and enrich those involved. What is truly tragic is that this is not a recent occurrence but rather thee has been a Power Elite in our government for many decades – going back to the mid 1800’s.

The 5% of the federal government refers to the most powerful members of the Executive branch – President, VP, Sec. of Defense, Sec. of State, etc. and the top most powerful congressmen and senators. The reason that the newer, younger and less powerful legislators do not fall into this group is because of the way the political parties are setup behind the scenes. The most senior congressmen and senators are put into positions of power and influence over the committees and programs that have the most influence on contracts, budget money and funding controls. When one congressman can control or seriously impact the budget for the entire military or any major commerce area, then he has control over all of the people in those areas. To see who these people are, list all of the congressmen and senators by length of service and take the top 5% and you will have 99% of the list. Not surprisingly, this top 55 also includes some of the most corrupt members of congress – Murtha, Stevens, Rangel, Renzi, Mollohan, Don Young and others.

At the highest levels of security clearances, many people gain insights into how this Power Elite manipulate and twist he system to their gain. When Dick Cheney orchestrated the fake intelligence to support his war on Iraq, don’t think for a minute that the CIA, NSA and Pentagon did not know exactly what he was doing but being good little soldiers that are, by law, not allowed to have a political opinion, they kept quiet. If they had not kept quiet, their personal careers would have been destroyed and their departments or agencies would have been punished by under-funded budgets for years to come.

The money and power comes from lobbyists and donations of funds and promises of votes so that the Power Elite can remain in power and extend their control and riches. A study by Transparency International found that of all the professions and jobs in the world, the one job that is most likely to make you a millionaire the soonest is being a congressman and senator in the US. In a job that pays less than $200K peer year, the net income and wealth of most congressmen and senators rises by 30-40% per year while they are active members of the legislature. That’s a fact!

So where’s the SciFi in all this? It’s just this, these members of the Power Elite have so much control that they can operate a virtual parallel government that functions out of sight of the public and often in complete opposition to the actions of their publicly expressed policies. Of course, statements like this cannot be made without positive and verifiable evidence and I can provide facts you can check and a long history of this occurring going back decades. Read about these incidents in the rest of this series of stories – Government Secrets #2, #3 and #4.

Posted in This Happened or Will !, This IS True ! | 1 Comment »

18 July 2008 by admin.

January 10, 1987

As for longevity, there has been some very serious research going on in this area but it has recently been hidden behind the veil of aids research. There is a belief that the immune system and other recuperative and self‑correcting systems in the body wear‑out and slowly stop working.  This is what gives us old‑age skin and gray hair.  This was an area that was studied very deeply up until the early 1980’s.  Most notably were some studies at the U. of Nebraska that began to make some good progress in slowing the biological aging by a careful stimulation and supplementation of naturally produced chemicals.  When the AIDS problem surfaced a lot of money was shifted into AIDS research.  It was argued that the issues related to biological aging were related to the immune issues of AIDS.  This got the researchers AIDS money and they continued their research, however, they want to keep a very low profile because they are not REALLY doing AIDS research. That is why you have not heard anything about their work. 

Because of my somewhat devious links to some medical resources and a personal interest in the subject, I have kept myself informed and have a good idea of where they are and it is very impressive.  Essentially, in the inner circles of gerontology, there is general agreement that the symptomology of aging is due to metabolic malfunction and not cell damage.  This means that it is treatable.  It is the treatment that is being pursued now and as in other areas of medicine in which there is such a large multiplicity of factors affecting each individuals aging process, successes are made in finite areas, one area at a time.  For instance, senility is one area that has gotten attention because of the mapping to metabolic malfunction induced by the presence of metals along with factors related to emotional environment.  Vision and skin condition are also areas that have had successes in treatments.

  When I put my computer research capability to look at this about a year ago, what I determined was that by the year 2024, humans will have an average life span of about 95‑103 years.  It will go up by about 5% per decade after that for the next century, then it will level out due to the increase of other factors.

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18 July 2008 by admin.

October 15, 2002As you may already know I have been a SWAT Sniper for about 3 years. My specialty is Counter Sniper for executives and dignitary or high profile protection. What this basically means is, I am posted at certain locations looking for a sniper/assassin. Once a threat is detected, I am charged in countering his/her ability to attack by early detection and neutralizing (killing) him/her. Now on to business…This Sniper killing people in the DC Metro area is a skilled sharpshooter and very calculated. Unfortunately he appears very disturbed and has just left a calling card stating he was God. What that probably means is he may escalate the matter by increasing the rate of killing in each attack because he acknowledges the police’s hot pursuit. This sniper knows it’s a matter of time before he is discovered. He thinks he is superior to everyone, but knows eventually he will be caught. He is playing a very sick game that he feels he is winning. He will probably want to sensationalize his confrontations with the police and eventually stop running and have a standoff. The police may be his future targets. 

It is very important that you adjust your regular routine because this is a very deadly individual. I am going to give you my Personal/professional advice on the matter. The Sniper’s MO (his methods) are the following. 

a. 1st wave of attacks were concentrated in an area the suspect was very familiar with.b. It appears these initial attacks were closer, probably less than 100 yards away. Witnesses were hearing loud cracks. c. He definitely is showing off. He is trying to maintain 100 %, one shot for one kill. (Sniper’s creed).d. He is probably not shooting the first person that appears. He is looking for the highest probable kill. This encompasses distance, position, and movement of the individual and excludes physical barriers (vehicles, tress, columns, etc). 

e. He is shooting from areas adjacent to major roadways, thoroughfares, highways, etc. (quick egress). First group was within a couple of miles from the beltway. Child shot in Bowie was a block away from the US 50 on the 197. f. He went up to northern Virginia (70 miles away) to throw police off his trail (diversion, used by snipers for stalking targets and eluding enemy). 

g. He is making this to be a giant ‘Stalk’ around the Metro area. It is a game now. He wants them to come after him (like he is in his own war against the enemy). h. He is probably using any foliage (tree line, woods, bushes) that is around the malls, shopping center, gas stations, and parking lots. 

i. He is able to shoot accurately out to 500 yards (5 football fields) with a scope (depends on individual’s abilities). j. The farther out he/she is, the more difficult of course it is to detect or pinpoint location. This aids in egress as well. (He knows this). 

My advice is to consider the following.  1.      Avoid unnecessary errands.2.      Bring someone along.3.      Do not stand outside your vehicle grabbing things out the car.4.      If you go to the store, put items in back seat of car (nothing in trunk) so that you can grab items and exit quickly.5.      When slowing down or at a stop, keep windows closed (glass deflects bullets, he knows this and he is not shooting through glass anymore).6.      Never walk straight to a door more than 20 feet away. Zig zag and walk at angels. The shooter is setting up on doorways/entrances and waiting for victims to line up on entrance. The hardest shot for a sniper is a target traversing laterally to his/her position (perpendicular)6.      Walk between cars, use them for protection, and NEVER walk in a straight line to a doorway. Park as close as possible.7.      Be mindful of wooded areas and any bushes around establishment. More than likely surrounding areas. Look for reflections (glare of the scope or weapon).8.      Use drive-thru at fast food9.      Look around and make it obvious (looking over your shoulder in the distant) he may hesitate if they think someone notices him. Point to what you are looking at as well. You want to telegraph yourself to others and get them involved.10.  Keep clear of abandoned vehicles, but concern yourself with them. He is probably parking along roads and walking to his shooting position.11.  You are probably safer inside the DC area only because congestion will prevent him an easy egress for the sniper. So if there is a toss up for a store then pick the inner city (not the outer boundaries). The main thing is being careful. Everyone is at risk even the police. He is able to pick the time and place so he has the overall advantage over the police; however, his greatest advantage is that he has no particular target.  He can take what is called “targets of opportunity”.  This means that if he thinks a shot isn’t going to be a clean kill shot, he will wait for one that will be.  That may be the next person of 50 people later.  Some additional considerations:You are safer on a windy day than on a calm day.  It is harder to shoot accurately in the windContrast and a clear edge makes for a good target:                At night try not to let yourself be backlit.  A solid dark backlit shape is a high contrast target and is easy to sight-in on.

· At night, wear dark colors.  If you are not backlit, then you will have a very low contrast with the background and hard to sight in on.

·              In the day, wear light colors but not loud or bright colors.  You do not want to attract attention or provide a high contrast target.

·              Wear scarfs, long coats, hats, loose clothes, carry bags, etc.  Anything that will make it hard to detect the exact aim-point on the torso or head.

The one-shot, one-kill credo often causes the shooter to go for a headshot, as has been the case several times so far.  If a zigzag walking path is not possible and dodging and weaving would make you feel like a weirdo, then try just moving your head.  Rubbing your neck while you move your head looks natural and still makes for an almost impossible headshot from any distance. 

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18 July 2008 by admin.

This is one of two email exchanges I had with some other writer/scientists in which we explored the outer edge of science.  You have to remember that way back then, there were some ideas that have since died off - like the monuments and face on Mars and the popularity of UFOs. 

Some of this is part of an on-going dialog so it may seem like there is a part missing because this is a response to a previously received message.  I think you get the gist of what is going on.  Despite the fact that this is mostly from 9 years ago, the science described and projected then is still valid or has not yet been proven wrong. You might find these interesting. 

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October 13, 1998

I want to thank you for letting me post your article about gravity shielding that appeared in the March ‘98 WIRED magazine.  Your comments on my article about lightning sprites and the blue-green flash are also appreciated.  In light of our on-going exchange of ideas, I thought you might be interested in some articles I wrote for my BBS and WEB forums on “bleeding edge science” that I hosted awhile back.  Some of these ideas and articles date back to the mid-90’s, so some of the references are a little dated and some of the software that I use now is generally available as a major improvement over what I had then.

What I was involved with then can be characterized by the books and magazines I read, a combination of Skeptical Enquirer, Scientific American, Discovery and Nature.  I enjoyed the challenge of debunking some space cadet that had made yet another perpetual motion machine or yet another 250 mile-per-gallon carburetor - both claiming that the government or big business was trying to suppress their inventions.  Several of my articles were printed on the bulletin board that pre-dated the publication of the Skeptical Enquirer.

I particularly liked all the far-out inventions attributed to one of my heroes - Nikola Tesla.  To hear some of those fringe groups, you’d think he had to be an alien implant working on an intergalactic defense system.  I got more than one space cadet upset with me by citing real science to shoot down his gospel of zero-point energy forces and free energy.

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These articles deal with the fringe in that I was addressing the “science” behind UFO’s.

  I have done some analysis on life in our solar system other than Earth and the odds against it are very high.  At least, life as we know it.  Even Mars probably did not get past early life stages before the O2 was consumed.  Any biologist will tell you that in our planet evolution, there was any number of critical thresholds of presence or absence of a gas or heat or water that, if crossed, would have returned the planet to a lifeless dust ball.  Frank Drakes formulas are a testament to that.  The only reason that his formulas are used to “prove” life exists is because of the enormous quantities of tries that nature has to get it right in the observable universe and over so much time.

  One potential perspective is that what may be vesting us, as “UFO’s” could be a race or several races of beings that are 500 to 25,000 years more advanced than us.  Given the age of the universe and the fact that our sun is probably second or third generation, this is not difficult to understand.  Some planet somewhere was able to get life started before Earth and they are now where we will be in the far distant future.

  Stanley Miller proved that life, as we know it, could form out of organic and natural events during the normal evolution of a class M planet.  But Drake showed that the chances of that occurring twice in one solar system is very high against it.  If you work backwards from their formulas, given the event of earth as an input of some solution of the equations, you would need something like 100 million planets to get even a slight chance for another planet with high‑tech life on it.

  Taken this into consideration and then comparing it to the chances that the monuments on mars are natural formations or some other claim of extraterrestrial life within our solar system, you must conclude that there is virtually no chance for life in our solar system.  Despite this, there are many that point to “evidence” such as the appearance of a face and pyramids in Mars photographs.  It sounds a lot like an undated version of the “canals” that were first seen in the 19th century.  Now we can “measure” these observations with extreme accuracy - or so they would have you believe.

The so‑called perfect measurements and alignment that are supposedly seen on the pyramids and “faces” are very curious since even the best photos we have of these sites have a resolution that could never support such accuracy in measurements.  When you get down to “measuring” the alignment and sizes of the sides, you can pretty much lay the compass or ruler anywhere you want because of the fuzz and loss of detail caused by the relatively poor resolution.  Don’t let someone tell you that they measured down to the decimal value of degrees and to within inches when the photo has a resolution of meters per pixel!

   As for the multidimensional universe; I believe Stephen Hawkin when he said that there are more than 3 dimensions however, for some complex mathematical reasons, a fifth dimension would not necessarily have any relationship to the first four and objects that have a fifth dimension would have units of the first four (l,w,h & time) that are very small ‑ on the order of atomic units of scale.  This means that according to our present understanding of the math, the only way we could experience more than 4 dimensions is to be able to be reduced to angstrom sizes and to withstand very high excitation from an external energy source.   Lets exclude the size issue for a moment since that is a result of the math model that we have chosen in the theory and may not be correct.

  We generally accept that time is the 4th dimension after l, w, and h which seem to be related as being in the same units but in different directions.  If time is a vector (which we believe it is) and it is so very different than up, down, etc, then what would you imagine a 5th dimension unit to be?

  Most people think of “moving” into another dimension and it being just some variation of the first 4 but this is not the case.  The next dimension, is not capable of being understood by us because we have no frame of reference. 

Hawkin makes a much better explanation of this in one of his book but suffice it to say that we do not know how to explore this question because we cannot conceive of the context of more than 4 dimensions.  The only way we can explore it is with math ‑ we can’t even graph it because we haven’t got a 5-axis coordinate system.  I have seen a 10 dimensional formula graphed but they did only 3 dimensions at a time.  Whatever the relationship of a unit called a “second” has with a unit called a “meter”, may or may not be the same relationship as the meter has with “???????” (Whatever the units of the 5th dimension are called).  What could it possibly be?  You describe it for me, but don’t use any reference to the first 4 dimensions.  For instance, I can describe time or length without reference to any of the other known dimensions.  The bottom line is that this is one area that even a computer cannot help because no one has been able to give a computer an imagination ……..yet.

  As for longevity, there has been some very serious research going on in this area but it has recently been hidden behind the veil of aids research. There is a belief that the immune system and other recuperative and self‑correcting systems in the body wear‑out and slowly stop working.  This is what gives us old‑age skin and gray hair.  This was an area that was studied very deeply up until the early 1980’s.  Most notably were some studies at the U. of Nebraska that began to make some good progress in slowing the biological aging by a careful stimulation and supplementation of naturally produced chemicals.  When the AIDS problem surfaced a lot of money was shifted into AIDS research.  It was argued that the issues related to biological aging were related to the immune issues of AIDS.  This got the researchers AIDS money and they continued their research, however, they want to keep a very low profile because they are not REALLY doing AIDS research. That is why you have not heard anything about their work. 

Because of my somewhat devious links to some medical resources and a personal interest in the subject, I have kept myself informed and have a good idea of where they are and it is very impressive.  Essentially, in the inner circles of gerontology, there is general agreement that the symptomatology of aging is due to metabolic malfunction and not cell damage.  This means that it is treatable.  It is the treatment that is being pursued now and as in other areas of medicine in which there is such a large multiplicity of factors affecting each individuals aging process, successes are made in finite areas, one area at a time.  For instance, senility is one area that has gotten attention because of the mapping to metabolic malfunction induced by the presence of metals along with factors related to emotional environment.  Vision and skin condition are also areas that have had successes in treatments.

  When I put my computer research capability to look at this about a year ago, what I determined was that by the year 2024, humans will have an average life span of about 95‑103 years.  It will go up by about 5% per decade after that for the next century, then it will level out due to the increase of other factors.

_____________ Are They Really There? ___________ Life is Easy to Make:

 Since 1953, with the Stanley Miller experiment, we have, or should have discarded the theory that we are unique in the universe.  Production of organic life and even DNA and RNA have been shown to occur in simple mixtures of hydrogen, ammonia, methane and water when exposed to an electrical discharge (lightning).  The existence of most these components has been frequently verified by spectral analysis in distant stars but, of course, until recently, we can’t see the star’s planets.  Based on the most accepted star and planet formation theories, most star systems would have a significant number of planets with these elements and conditions.

 Quantifying the SETI

 A radio astronomer, Frank Drake developed some equations that were the first serious attempt to quantify the number of technical civilizations in our galaxy.  Unfortunately, his factors were very ambiguous and various scientists have produced numbers ranging from 1 to 10 billion technical civilizations in just our galaxy.  This condition of a formula is referred to as unstable or ill‑conditioned systems.  There are mathematical techniques to reduce the instability of such equations.  I attempted to do so to quantify the probability of the existence of intelligent life.

 I approached the process a little different.  Rather than come up with a single number for the whole galaxy, I decided to relate the probability to distance from Earth.  Later I added directionality.

 Using the basic formulas Drake used to start, I added a finite stochastic process using conditional probability. This produces a tree of event outcomes for each computed conditional probability.  (The conditions being quantified were those in his basic formula: rate of star formation; number of planets in each system with conditions favorable to life; fraction of planets with on which life develops; fraction of planets that develop intelligent life; fraction of planets that develop intelligent life that evolve technical civilizations capable of interstellar communications and the lifetime of such a civilization).

 I then layered one more parameter onto this by increasing the probability of a particular tree path inversely to the relation of one over the square of the distance.  This added a conservative estimate for the increasing probability of intelligent life as the distance from Earth increases and more stars and planets are included in the sample size.

 I Love Simulation Models

 I used standard values used by Gamow and Hawking in their computations, however, I ignored Riemannian geometry and assumed a purely Euclidean universe.  Initially, I assumed the standard cosmological principles of homogeneity and isotropic distributions.  (I changed that later) Of course this produced 1000’s of probable outcomes but by using a Monte Carlo simulation of the probability distribution and the initial computation factors of Drake’s formula (within reasonable limits), I was able to derive a graph of probability of technical civilizations as a function of distance.

 But I Knew That

 As was predictable before I started, the graph is a rising, non‑linear curve, converging on 100%.  Even though the outcome was intuitive, what I gained was a range of distances with a range of corresponding probabilities of technical civilizations.  Obviously, the graph converges to 100% at infinite distances but surprisingly, it is above 99% before leaving the Milky Way Galaxy.  We don’t even have to go to Andromeda to have a very good chance of there being intelligent life in space.  Of course, that is not so unusual since our galaxy may have about 200 billion stars and some unknown multiple of planets.

 Then I made It Directional

 I toyed with one other computation.  The homogeneous and isotropic universe used by Einstein and Hawking is a mathematical convenience to allow them to relate the structure of the universe to their theories of space‑time. These mathematical fudge‑factors are not consistent with observation in small orders of magnitude in distance from earth ‑ out to the limits of what we can observe ‑ about 15 billion light years.  We know that there is inhomogeneous or lumps in the stellar density at these relatively close distances.  The closest lump is called the Local Group with 22 galaxies but it is on the edge of a super cluster of 2500 galaxies.  There is an even larger group called the Great Attractor that may contain tens of thousands of galaxies. 

By altering my formula so that I took into account the equatorial system direction (ascension & declination) of the inhomogeneous clustering.  Predictably, this just gave me a probability of intelligent life based on a vector rather than a scalar measure.  It did however, move the distance for any given probability much closer ‑ in the direction of clusters and super clusters.  So much so that at about 351 million light years, the probability is virtually 100%.  At only about 3 million light years, the probability is over 99%. That is well within the Local Group of galaxies.

 When you consider that there are tens of billions of stars and galaxies within detection range by Earth and some unknown quantity beyond detection - it is estimated that there are galaxies numbering as many as a 1 followed by 21 zeros - that is more that all the grains of sand in all the oceans, beaches and deserts in the entire world.  And in each of those galaxies, there are billions of stars!  Now you can begin to see that the formula to quantify the number of technical civilizations in space results in virtually 100% no matter how conservative you make the input values.  It can do no less than prove that life is out there.

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