We were fortunate to find DARPA’s FY 2011 Presidential Budget Request file while searching the DARPA website.  DARPA, of course, is the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, where the future of U.S. military technology is funded today.  Let’s be clear:  just because DARPA asks for funding is no guarantee the agency will receive it.  That said, looking at the budget request (link here) is a glimpse into the future.

The budget request discusses cognitive computing systems and machine intelligence, network-centric warfare technology and “materials and biological technology.”  It’s science fiction, except that it’s a list of the military research areas of today.  For example, DARPA is requesting $53.8 million for –

… investigating and developing the intersections of biology, information technology and micro/physical systems to exploit important technological advances and leverage fundamental discoveries for the development of new technologies, techniques, and systems of interest to the DoD. This research is critical to the development of rapid responses to engineered biological warfare agents, radically new biomolecular computers, and novel materials for the DoD. Programs in this project will draw upon the information and physical sciences to discover properties of biological systems that cross multiple scales of biological architecture and function, from the molecular and genetic level through cellular, tissue, organ, and whole organism levels. This project will develop the basic research tools in biology that are unique to the application of biological-based solutions to critical Defense problems.

Here’s another project description that caught our eye:  “The program will also create technology to reliably integrate nanoscale and microsystems payloads on insects that will extract power, control locomotion, and also carry DoD relevant sensors.”  Talk about bugging the opposition forces!

Or how about this one?

One focus is on techniques that can efficiently process and ‘understand’ massive data streams. Deeply layered machine learning engines will be created that use a single set of methods in multiple layers (at least three internally) to generate progressively more sophisticated representations of patterns, invariants, and correlations from data inputs. These will have far-reaching military implications with potential applications such as anomaly detection, object recognition, language understanding, information retrieval, pattern recognition, robotic task learning and automatic metadata extraction from video streams, sensor data, and multi-media objects.

Or this one?

The Programmable Matter program will develop a new functional form of matter, constructed from mesoscale particles that assemble into complex 3-Dimensional (3-D) objects upon external command. These objects will exhibit all of the functionality of their conventional counterparts and ultimately have the ability to reverse back to the original components.

In other areas, we learned that DARPA recently “Devised full characterization and manipulation of entangled quantum systems,” and also that NACHOS stands for “Nanoscaled Architecture for Coherent Hyper-Optic Sources.” 

This one might scare you.

The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) program will demonstrate compressed magnetic flux generator (CMFG)-driven magneto hydrodynamically formed metal jets and self-forging penetrators (SFP) with significantly improved performance over explosively formed jets and fragments. Explosively formed jets (EFJ) and SFP are used for precision strike against targets such as armored vehicles and reinforced structures.  MAHEM offers the potential for higher efficiency, greater control, the ability to generate and accurately time multiple jets and fragments from a single charge, and the potential for aimable, multiple warheads with a much higher EFJ velocity, hence increased lethality precision, than conventional EFJ/SFP.

There is more, of course, roughly 500 pages of discussion.  What brought us to the budget request was some research on the ArcLight Program.  This is not the Vietnam-era program that used B-52’s.  Instead, it is an attempt to design and build a long-range hypersonic strike weapon.  The concept uses the Navy’s SM-3 Block II booster stack and a hypersonic glider, and should be “capable of being launched from a Mark 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) tube.”  In other words, DARPA is researching dropping a 100-200 lb. payload from up to 2,000 miles, at hypersonic speeds.  If one were to speculate that the MAHEM warhead (described above) might be mated to the ArcLight missile that would be a formidable piece of ordnance, indeed.

In this article, Aviation Week not only mentions the ArcLight program, but other projects within the DARPA budget request.  We don’t think AW’s summaries are a cool as the actual DARPA descriptions, though.

Check out the budget request.  See the future of warfare.

In October, 2009 we wrote about the serious fraud charges facing BAE Systems PLC.  We noted allegations of “bribery and corruption in arms deals in South Africa, Romania, and the Czech Republic dating back to the 1990’s.”  Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was seeking an admission of guilt as well as payment of fines ranging from £500 to £1billion (US$1.6 billion to $3.2 billion at the currency conversion rates in effect at the time).  At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was conducting an investigation into allegations that the US-subsidiary of BAE Systems “used a U.S. bank to funnel bribes to Saudi Arabian officials.”    We predicted that, “given the current U.S. government stance on contractor integrity and ethical conduct, a sustained finding in this area could prove problematic for the company,” since it derived slightly more than half of its £18.5 billion pounds annual revenue from U.S. operations.

Reports have emerged that on February 5, 2010, BAE Systems settled its case, agreeing to pay the U.S. $400 million to settle charges of making a False Statement and agreeing to pay the SFO £30 million (US$47 million) for improper accounting (“breach of its duty to keep [accurate] accounting records”) in connection with a payment to a former consultant in Tanzania.  The settlement permits BAE Systems to avoid suspension or debarment, and thus to continue to bid on U.S. government contracts.  As such, it is seen as a victory for the company; its stock price rose 1.6% on the day of the announcement.

According to the WSJ article linked above—

[BAE’s CEO] on Friday stressed that the transactions in relation to which the company pleaded guilty all occurred nearly a decade ago and outside the U.S.  U.S. court documents detailed what prosecutors allege was BAE's use of secretive offshore entities and shell companies, and its efforts to conceal where payments were going, in 1999 deals to lease fighter jets to Hungary and the Czech Republic. According to prosecutors, BAE avoided communicating with so-called ‘marketing advisers’ in writing and maintained scant information about its payments. After 2001, prosecutors allege, BAE made payments totalling more than £135 million and an additional $14 million-plus to marketing advisers through one offshore entity, according to the court documents. The U.S. filing also alleges that BAE paid tens of millions of dollars to a Saudi government official and other associates, as well as to intermediaries, as recently as 2002. The payments were made as part of its management of a long-term agreement begun in the 1980s between the U.K. and Saudi Arabia to supply military hardware to the Saudis, U.S. prosecutors say.  ‘Beginning in 1993, BAE [Systems] knowingly and willfully failed to identify commissions paid to third parties for assistance in the solicitation or promotion or otherwise to secure the conclusion of the sale of defense articles, in violation of its legal obligations,’ the court documents filed by Justice Department prosecutors said.

Interestingly, the false statement stemmed not from the payments themselves, but from management’s assertions and certifications regarding its commitment to ethical business conduct.  As the WSJ article reports, “In the court documents, prosecutors allege that BAE promised to institute antibribery programs and filed false documents to the U.S. Defense Department stating it had implemented such programs when none existed.”

According to the Financial Times, “BAE ‘undertook no adequate review’ of any of the services it gave the official, the DoJ said, even when the BAE employee who was handling the matter submitted $5m in invoices. The DoJ said that until early 2002, the company transferred millions more to an account in Switzerland controlled by an intermediary, though the company ‘was aware that there was a high probability’ that the payments would be transferred to the Saudi official.”

We have discussed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) before.  We have also discussed, in passing, the False Statements Act (18 U.S.C. 1001).  This is an interesting blending of the two statutes.  The U.S. DOJ certainly earned its $400 million settlement.

In the U.K. though, watchdog groups are not as sanguine about the paltry settlement negotiated by the SFO.  This report from the BBC states that the “Campaign Against the Arms Trade” (CAAT) was “shocked and angered” by the settlement, as well as “outraged and angry,” and ‘dismissed the UK fine as a “tiny price” for the lucrative deals the company struck.  The CAAT spokesperson asserted that “Ultimately the charges that we see admitted are administrative charges, not charges of corruption."

This Financial Times article quotes a former African National Congress MP as calling the settlement a “travesty of justice.”  Certainly, US$400 million is no small fine—but does the UK settlement of $47 million represent a mere slap on the wrist?  What do you think?  Members are encouraged to leave their comments below.