In the future, the power of magnetism will be harnessed to make today\u2019s high explosives seem feeble, \u201cguided bullets\u201d will put the current crop of snipers to shame, and new multi-purpose missiles will strike targets in a flash from high-flying drones. \u00a0At least, that\u2019s part of the Pentagon\u2019s battlefield vision of tomorrow\u2019s tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Ordinarily, planning for the future is not a U.S. government forte.\u00a0 A mere glance at the national debt<\/a>, now around $14 trillion and climbing, or two recent studies<\/a> showing how China’s green technology investments have outpaced U.S. efforts should drive home that fact.\u00a0 But one government agency is always forward-looking, the Department of Defense\u2019s blue skies research branch, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).<\/p>\n Born in the wake of an American panic over the 1957 <\/strong>Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite, DARPA set to work keeping the Pentagon ahead of potential adversaries on the technology front.\u00a0 It counts the Internet and the Global Positioning System among its triumphs, and psychic spying and a mechanical elephant designed for use in the jungles of Southeast Asia among its many failures.\u00a0 It also boasts a long legacy when it comes to creating and enhancing lethal technologies, including M-16 rifles, Predator drones, stealth fighters, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and B-52 bombers, which have been employed in conflicts across the globe.<\/p>\n Today, DARPA is carrying on that more than half-century-old tradition through a host of programs designed with war, death, and destruction in mind. Wielding a budget of about $3 billion a year and investing heavily in futuristic weaponry and other military technology, it is undoubtedly helping to fuel the arms races of 2020 and 2030.\u00a0 While the United States seems content to let China sprint ahead in green technology, a number of its future weapons appear to be designed with a country like China in mind.<\/p>\n All of its planning is, however, shrouded in remarkable secrecy.\u00a0 Make inquiries about any of the weapons systems it\u2019s exploring and a barrage of excuses for telling you next to <\/strong>nothing pour forth — a program is between managers, or classified, or only now in the process of awarding its contracts. DARPA spokespeople and project managers even prefer not to clarify or explain publicly available information.\u00a0 Still, it\u2019s possible to offer a sketch of some of the future weaponry the Pentagon has in development, and in the process glimpse what messages it\u2019s sending to other nations around the world. <\/strong><\/p>\n Mayhem Without the \u201cY\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Even in military culture, where arcane, clunky, or sometimes witty acronyms<\/a> are a dime a dozen, DARPA projects stand out.\u00a0 Sometimes it almost seems as if like the agency comes up with a particularly bad-ass name first and then creates a weapons system to suit.\u00a0 Take as an example the Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition or — wait for it — MAHEM<\/a>.<\/p>\n This program, run out of DARPA\u2019s Tactical Technology Office, seeks to \u201cdemonstrate compressed magnetic flux generator (CMFG)-driven magneto hydrodynamically formed metal jets and self-forging penetrators (SFP) with significantly improved performance over explosively formed jets (EFJ) and fragments,\u201d according to the agency\u2019s website.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re scratching your head about what that could mean, don\u2019t ask DARPA.\u00a0 When I inquired about the basics of how the weapon would function, a simple lay definition for the folks paying for this wonder-weapon-to-be, spokesman Richard Spearman insisted that \u201csensitivities\u201d prevented him from giving me any further information.<\/p>\n As near as can be told, though, you should imagine an anti-tank round with a powerful magnetic field.\u00a0 Upon impact, it will utilize magnetic force to ram a jet of molten metal into the target.\u00a0 Theoretically, this will pack more punch that today\u2019s high-explosive-propelled projectiles and lead, according to DARPA, to \u201cincreased lethality precision.\u201d<\/p>\n Hasta La Vista, Baby<\/strong><\/p>\n In the 2003 science-fiction sequel Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines<\/em><\/a>, or T3<\/em>, a metal monster from the future, a Terminatrix, is sent back to alter the present in order to ensure a future where machines rule the world and humans face extinction.\u00a0 Today, DARPA, the Air Force, and a couple defense industry heavyweights are seeking to change the future of munitions with a monster of their own — \u201ca high speed, long-range missile that can engage air, cruise missile, and air defense targets.\u201d\u00a0 The name of the program?\u00a0 I kid you not: Triple Target Terminator (T3)<\/a>.<\/p>\n Designed to be fired by either manned aircraft or drones, the Triple Target Terminator seeks to \u201cincrease the number and variety of targets that could be destroyed on each sortie\u201d by allowing an aircraft to engage in air-to-air combat or air-to-ground attack with the same armament.\u00a0 Just what future air force the U.S. military imagines itself attacking with this weapon is not the sort of thing you\u2019ll find out from DARPA.\u00a0 Spokesperson Spearman told me that \u201csensitivities\u201d again prevented him from explaining even the basics of the system or its future uses.\u00a0 \u201cA good part of the program itself is classified,\u201d he assured me.<\/p>\n Last fall, Defense Industry Daily<\/em> reported<\/a> that Raytheon had received a $21.3 million contract for the Triple Target Terminator (T3) program.\u00a0 This was followed, a few weeks later, by the same sum being awarded to Boeing for work on the project.\u00a0 These contracts constitute an initial one-year attempt to design a missile that meets \u201cprogram objectives\u201d and will set the stage for future efforts.<\/p>\n In a prepared statement provided to TomDispatch late last year, DARPA declared: \u201cDepending on successful phase completion, follow on efforts will continue in two more phases with multiple-technology risk reduction demonstrations, including live fire from tactical aircraft. The program is structured to last three years, culminating in test demonstrations in 2013.\u201d<\/p>\n Anti-Ship Shape<\/strong><\/p>\n Once upon a time, broadsides and boarding parties typified warfare on the high seas.\u00a0 In the future, the U.S. military has its sights set on something slightly more high tech.\u00a0 To that end, DARPA is now developing a Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) that seeks to provide \u201ca dramatic leap ahead in U.S. surface warfare capability.\u201d<\/p>\n Designed to evade advanced enemy countermeasures, this would-be smart weapon is supposed to permit \u201chigh probability target identification in dense shipping environments, and precision aimpoint targeting for maximum lethality.\u201d\u00a0 DARPA isn\u2019t talking about this program either.\u00a0 LRASM, Spearman told me in December, was \u201cin the final throes of getting all its contracts awarded.\u00a0 Until that happens and we have an official announcement, I can’t set up any media engagements on that one.\u201d<\/p>\n By mid-January when I followed up, <\/strong>the final throes had yet to cease, but just days later DARPA awarded two contracts, totaling $218 million, to military-corporate powerhouse Lockheed Martin<\/a> for work on two different LRASM missiles.\u00a0 \u201cLockheed Martin is proud to offer our technology for Navy solutions,\u201d announced<\/a> Lockheed\u2019s tactical missile honcho Glenn Kuller. \u201cThese LRASM contracts will demonstrate two mature tactical missiles for new generation anti-surface warfare weapons capability; one low and stealthy, the other high and fast with moderate stealth.\u201d<\/p>\n Bullet Ballet<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s the farthest thing from a fair fight.\u00a0 A man peers through an advanced telescopic sight.\u00a0 He zeros in on his prey, a figure without a sporting chance who has no idea that he\u2019s being targeted for death.\u00a0 The sniper, who has lugged his 30 pound, .50 <\/strong>caliber rifle up a ridgeline in order to kill with a single shot, breathes slow and steady, focuses, waits, waits, and finally pulls the trigger.\u00a0 A breeze he never felt, somewhere in the 4,000 feet between him and his target, sends the round off course.\u00a0 The sniper doesn\u2019t log another kill.\u00a0 The human target gets to live another day.<\/p>\n To the U.S. military, this is a terribly sad story, and so they\u2019ve turned to DARPA to look for a happier ending — in this case via the Extreme Accuracy Tactical Ordnance<\/a>, or EXACTO program which aims to allow \u201cthe sniper to prosecute moving targets even in high wind conditions, such as those commonly found in Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n The plan is for DARPA scientists to develop \u201cthe first ever guided small caliber bullet.\u201d\u00a0 If you\u2019ve ever watched a heat-seeking missile follow a fighter jet in a lame 1980s action flick (or the smart bullet<\/a> from the 1984 Tom Selleck sci-fi disaster Runaway<\/em><\/a>), then you get the idea.\u00a0 DARPA is focused on creating a maneuverable bullet (controlled by a guidance system) that moves with the target, adjusting in flight to slam into a human head and turn it into a red mist — thus writing an upbeat ending to tomorrow\u2019s sniper stories.<\/p>\n When asked for further information in mid-December, Spearman told me that \u201cthe PM [project manager] for EXACTO is in the process of transitioning his replacement into DARPA, making neither of them available for interviews.\u201d\u00a0 About a month later, the new project manager, he said, was still not up to speed and thus both officials remained unavailable for comment.<\/p>\n The New Blitz<\/strong><\/p>\n As Nazi air power pounded London during World War II, England\u2019s Prime Minister Winston Churchill sheltered<\/a> in an underground bunker to stay alive.\u00a0 Today, the leaders of other nations have bigger, stronger bomb shelters than Churchill\u2019s and the U.S. military wants the means to destroy them without generating the negative press that using nuclear weapons might incur.<\/p>\n To bust those bunkers, DARPA\u2019s Strategically Hardened Facility Defeat<\/a> program is investigating nuke-free, earth-penetrating munitions to counter the \u201cthreat posed by our adversaries’ use of hard and deeply buried targets.\u201d\u00a0 Specifically aimed at the \u201csenior leaders, command and control functions, and weapons of mass destruction\u201d employed by \u201c\u2018rogue\u2019 nations,\u201d these powerful, high-impact weapons will be designed to tunnel deep into the earth before exploding.<\/p>\n Things That Don\u2019t Go Boom in the Night<\/strong><\/p>\n Not all DARPA projects are designed to kill people and destroy hard targets.\u00a0 Some are geared toward delivering men, materiel, and someday robots<\/a> to do the job instead.\u00a0 Others are aimed at intrusive surveillance, cyber-war, or making silver-screen dreams come true.<\/p>\n One long-term focus<\/a> of military futurists and DARPA scientists has been the \u201curban environment.\u201d\u00a0 (Think: the billion or more poor and potentially rebellious people already living in the slum cities of our planet.) The Urban Ops Hopper<\/a> program, for example, seeks to develop small robots or semi-autonomous land drones — unmanned ground vehicles or UGVs in mil-speak — that can \u201cadapt to the urban environment in real-time and provide the delivery of small payloads to any point of the urban jungle while remaining lightweight [and] small to minimize the burden on the soldier.\u201d\u00a0 And yes, they might even hop.<\/p>\n For many years, the Pentagon has dreamed of persistent surveillance of planetary hot spots, developing, for instance, drone technologies to serve as spies in the skies across the globe.\u00a0 In 2003, Noah Shachtman<\/a>, writing for the Village Voice<\/em><\/a>, profiled the military\u2019s Combat Zones That See, or CTS program.\u00a0 The rationale for the effort was, he wrote, to \u201cprotect our troops in cities like Baghdad, where\u2026 fleeting attackers have been picking off American fighters in ones and twos.\u201d \u00a0However, he added, \u201c[D]efense experts believe the surveillance effort has a second, more sinister, purpose: to keep entire cities under an omnipresent, unblinking eye.\u201d<\/p>\n All these years later, Americans are still in Baghdad, still periodically under siege<\/a> there, and still, in the case of DARPA, dreaming of snooping on whole cities.\u00a0 With an acronym that brings to mind over-priced polo shirts, preppies on tennis courts, and an angry little alligator<\/a>, DARPA’s Large Area Coverage Optical Search-while-Track and Engage<\/a>, or LACOSTE program is dedicated to achieving the dream of CTS: imaging technology that will allow for \u201csingle sensor day\/night persistent tactical surveillance of all moving vehicles in a large urban battlefield.\u201d\u00a0 Think of it as placing an entire city in a panopticon where the jailor has true omniscience.<\/p>\n Through its Gravity Anomaly for Tunnel Exposure<\/a>, or GATE, program, DARPA is also developing technologies that could someday allow drones, flying overhead, to \u201csee\u201d <\/strong>below the Earth\u2019s surface and identify areas with underground tunnels.\u00a0 And just this month, DARPA kicked off<\/a> a new program called Mind\u2019s Eye \u201caimed at developing a visual intelligence capability for unmanned systems.\u201d<\/p>\n Partnering with defense giant General Dynamics, Roomba vacuum cleaner<\/a> manufacturer iRobot, and long-time Pentagon contractor Toyon Research Corporation<\/a>, as well as scientists from military-academic powerhouses<\/a> like Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of Southern California, the Pentagon is exploring the idea of creating robots with artificial intelligence that could roll ahead of infantry patrols, scan the scene, analyze it, and figure out what to do next.\u00a0 In other words, the quest to build a robotic point man will now join a long list of DARPA projects certain to inspire fears<\/a> of a future<\/a> straight out of the Terminator films.<\/p>\n In 1977\u2019s The Spy Who Loved Me<\/em><\/a>, secret agent James Bond\u2019s Lotus Esprit sports car morphed into a mini-submarine.\u00a0 Never one to let an old silver-screen dream go to waste, DARPA is now attempting to one-up 007.\u00a0 Through its Submersible Aircraft<\/a> program, the agency seeks to \u201ccombine the speed and range of an airborne platform with the stealth of an underwater vehicle by developing a vessel that can both fly and submerge.\u201d\u00a0 Revolutionary it may be as a machine, but the reasons for creating it remain thoroughly predictable: the \u201cinsertion and extraction of expeditionary forces at greater ranges.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, it\u2019s meant to facilitate deploying forces overseas, perhaps for the next Iraq or Afghan War.<\/p>\n DARPA and the New Arms Race<\/strong><\/p>\n Recently, some military experts went into mild hysterics<\/a> over the unveiling<\/a> of China\u2019s first stealth fighter plane and word that the Chinese military was developing a \u201ccarrier killer\u201d missile.\u00a0 Never mind that the jet is not unlike the F-22, a relatively useless fighter in the U.S. arsenal, and is still years away from production; never mind that the man who garnered headlines for the aircraft-carrier story, Admiral Robert Willard, the alarmist chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, said intelligence indicated<\/a> only “that the component parts of the anti-ship ballistic missile have been developed and tested.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, advances like the proto-plane and not-yet-effective<\/a> missile have made great hyperbolic copy for the military-corporate complex. \u00a0Some pundits went so far as to suggest<\/a> that U.S. military \u201cweakness\u201d in Asia was emboldening China.<\/p>\n From the Chinese point of view, it undoubtedly looks quite different.\u00a0 After all, the U.S. has all-but-encircled China with military bases, sites, and facilities — more than 100 in Japan, around 85 in South Korea, even a few in Central Asia — and has around 50,000 troops deployed to East Asia and the Pacific, and another 100,000 or more deployed in South Asia, as well as the largest Navy on the planet patrolling offshore waters.<\/p>\n As for the future, perhaps the Chinese don\u2019t quite believe that DARPA\u2019s Long Range Anti-Ship Missile is meant to take out Somali pirates, or that the Triple Target Terminator is geared to counter the al-Qaeda air corps (which mainly seems to consist of ill-constructed bomb-laced underwear<\/a> and explosive printer cartridges<\/a> on commercial aircraft), or that the U.S. military plans to deploy Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munitions to fight off non-existent <\/strong>Taliban tanks.<\/p>\n Amid talk of a new arms race<\/a>, the American people should know more about just what billions of their tax dollars are paying for and what message they\u2019re sending to the world.\u00a0 With Beijing holding<\/a> close to $1 trillion in U.S. debt, it\u2019s unlikely that either country has actual military designs on the other.\u00a0 It\u2019s far more likely that such DARPA projects (and pundit saber-rattling) will simply lead to needless expenditures on weapons designed for wars the U.S. won\u2019t fight.\u00a0 In the end, if history is any guide, many of these weapons will become the overpriced means of killing lightly armed men, along with unarmed men<\/a>, women<\/a>, and children<\/a> in one poverty-stricken country or another in the decades to come.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Americans can\u2019t begin to have an honest conversation about any of this until DARPA comes clean about exactly what billions of their tax dollars are being spent on — and why.\u00a0 Only then can the taxpayers begin to consider what message their future weapons plans are sending to the world and whether the U.S. really should be spending increasingly scarce dollars on making MAHEM.<\/p>\n ____________________<\/p>\n Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, investigative journalist, the associate editor of <\/em>TomDispatch.com<\/em><\/a>, and currently a fellow at Harvard University\u2019s Radcliffe Institute. His latest book is <\/em>The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan<\/a> (Verso Books).\u00a0 He is also the author of <\/em>The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives<\/a>.\u00a0 You can follow him on Twitter <\/em>@NickTurse<\/a>, on <\/em>Tumblr<\/a>, and on <\/em>Facebook<\/a>.\u00a0 His website is <\/em>NickTurse.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n