PDs Learn ‘Free’ Military Hardware Isn’t Cheap

• Repurposed military hardware is already coming under significant negative scrutiny after civil rights issues have become a dominant domestic topic, and midwestern police departments making what appears to be unneeded shows of force. Topping that off are reports that the civilian agencies are discovering what the military has known for centuries: military hardware is costly to own. New Jersey has spent more than $2 million on its “free” helicopter, a repurposed Bell Kiowa.

Europe

• Britain is relatively happy with its current military hardware spending trends, as a new report indicates its top 11 programs are costing it 397 million pounds less per year. The island nation’s MoD intends to spend 163 billion pounds on hardware over the next 10 years along the lines of its equipment plan.

• Estonia, hard up for naval resources and worried about how easy it would be to deny access to its ports with the use of mines, is considering opting out of its Baltic Naval Squadron requirements next year in favor of investing in its own national minesweeping capacity.

• The Russian magazine version of the irreverent BBC TV series Top Gear may have unwittingly published a picture of the as-yet unseen AC-12 secret Russian submarine.

Asia

• Afghan government officials are confirming reports that ISIS is successfully recruiting allies in Southern Afghanistan.

• India and Pakistan both joined Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security body designed, according to Russia’s Tass, to fight threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from Afghanistan. This hasn’t prevented it from weighing in on issues such as missile defense.

• China’s navy will soon eclipse that of Japan, at least in terms of long-range protective capacity destroyers. By 2018, with current build schedules, China will have 20 phased-array radar ships. Even, China, however, has been keen to note that its equipment isn’t necessarily equivalent to its competitors’ navies.

U.S.

• The Pentagon is reorganizing yet again its cyber warfare assets, standing up a centralized command called the Joint Force Headquarters DoD Information Networks. The news comes from a Breaking Media scoop.

• Today’s video shows a slightly cheesy video the U.S. Army produced to brag about its Active Denial System, the odd, non-lethal system to push back combatants and non-complying civilians…

Project Sheriff: ADS Continues to Jump Through Hoops

ADS mounted on Hummer

Airmen of the 820th Security Forces Group are busy these days. Not only are they conducting the user trial and training for the GSAT ShotSpotter + ScanEagle anti-sniper system, they’re also the first unit selected to conduct the extended user evaluation portion of the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) process for “Project Sherrif,” otherwise known as the Active Denial System. ADS won Popular Science magazine’s “Best of What’s New Award” in general technology back in 2001, and DID has been covering this system since May 2005; despite funding and requests from combat commanders, however, the system continues to move toward approval at a very slow pace.

More than 700 volunteers have been tested with the system. Of those, 2 experienced second-degree burns, the last in 2007. It was briefly deployed in Afghanistan in 2010, but reportedly withdrawn without having seen action, according to reports from an interview between Noah Schactman (then of Wired) and General Stanley McChrystal.

In the last month, the Army has been promoting its ADS system, with exercises held in late December, as well as promotional civilian communications, such as the YouTube video appearing in today’s Rapid Fire. The communications come from the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program.

ADS uses invisible, focused microwave beams at a frequency that that can’t penetrate human skin, but does stimulate nerves within it, producing an imaginary but painful burning sensation that instinctively forces people to move away. Past Project Sheriff reports also describe an escalating series of measures, from a “Long Range Acoustic Device” (sonic blaster), up to a Laser Dazzler, then on to the ADS pain ray before things escalate to live ammunition. Tech. Sgt. John DeLaCerda, the NCO in charge of the 820th SFG advanced technologies section, put it this way: