Secret Hours

While her husband is entering a decidedly less lavish living arrangement, it appears that Ruth Madoff is getting ready to live the Palm Beach life in her $9.4 million spread in Florida—a state known for property laws that protect owners from losing their homes even when other assets are seized.

Meanwhile, ABC reports that sons Andrew and Mark, the family’s junior set, are also under official scrutiny and may have to pay back $30 million they borrowed from Papa Madoff over the past four years.

Bloomberg via Gawker:

Ruth Madoff applied for and received a homestead exemption for property taxes, said Dorothy Jacks, assistant property appraiser for Palm Beach County. The Florida constitution protects homeowners who have obtained the exemption and seizing the property may be difficult, said Danaya Wright, a law professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

The U.S. government said this week it plans to seize assets including the Madoffs’ $7 million Manhattan apartment and the Palm Beach home. Bernard Madoff, 70, was jailed March 12 after admitting to masterminding the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. The exemption Ruth Madoff received may be an effort to protect the property from creditors, said Jack McCabe, founder of McCabe Research & Consulting LLC in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

“The two big drawing cards to Florida were sunshine and affordability,” McCabe said. “Now it’s for sunshine and the protection of your primary mansion.”

MIT engineers have created a kind of beltway that allows for the rapid transit of electrical energy through a well-known battery material, an advance that could usher in smaller, lighter batteries — for cell phones and other devices — that could recharge in seconds rather than hours.

The work could also allow for the quick recharging of batteries in electric cars, although that particular application would be limited by the amount of power available to a homeowner through the electric grid.

Active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar technology is a requirement for India’s Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition, the biggest in the world. Consequently, a lot of maneuvering was apparent at the Aero India show last month, as fighter manufacturers worked to define their AESA answers and (in some cases) stall competitors.

Boeing’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet has the simplest answer. Raytheon’s APG-79 radar is standard on the Block 2 airplane, the current variant, and Boeing has not indicated it’s considering alternatives. This allows Boeing to wave a low-risk banner, offering, essentially, the aircraft flying with the U.S. Navy and on order for Australia.

Lockheed Martin had a choice of three radars. Raytheon’s Advanced Combat Radar (RACR) and Northrop Grumman’s Scalable Active Beam Radar (SABR) fit in an F-16, but Lockheed ultimately chose Northrop Grumman’s APG-80, in service in the United Arab Emirates’ F-16E/F. Two reasons are behind this, says Northrop Grumman: The proposed F-16IN for India is similar to the E/F and can accept the APG-80, which needs more power and cooling than RACR or SABR, and is lower risk. Northrop Grumman says no APG-80 antennas have had to be repaired, in normal use, since tests started over four years ago. “The antenna will outlast the airframe,” the company says. A few modules might fail over its lifetime, but they won’t affect performance enough to make it worth unsealing the radome and replacing them.

Eurofighter holds a unique view of the AESA issue. Executives say the Selec Captor mechanically scanned array (MSA) beats any in-service AESA for the Typhoon’s mission. A clue to their thinking emerged at an Aero India seminar. Peter Gutsmiedl, senior vice president of engineering at EADS Military Air Systems, pointed out ways in which an AESA could be integrated into Typhoon, including small side arrays, an azimuth gimbal and the so-called “swashplate” radar, a canted antenna on a rotating mount. The goal is to overcome drawbacks of a fixed AESA: narrower field of view than an MSA and diminishing effective aperture and performance at the edges of that field.

Meanwhile, a spat between France and Sweden is developing. In 2007, Saab struck a deal with Thales to provide an AESA antenna for the Gripen Demo program, to be mated with the signal processor from the JAS 39C’s Saab PS-05 MSA radar. The Thales AESA replaced the passive-scan antenna of Rafale’s RBE2.

But three things happened: Thales and Dassault were given the go-ahead to develop and produce the AESA for Rafale; Dassault has taken a large shareholding in Thales; and the Gripen NG has emerged—in India and Brazil—as a competitor to Rafale. Thales will honor the Gripen Demo contract but its AESA will not be available for a production NG.

Sweden has talked about RACR, but would prefer the PS-05/A’s "back end" modules for ease of integration and to stay away from control issues associated with U.S. components. The answer may lie with Selex, which, first as Ferranti, then as GEC-Marconi and subsequently as BAE Systems, was Sweden’s partner on the original PS-05/A.

Is foreign drug violence a reason to reinstate the ban on assault weapons in America? U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder thinks so. And judging by its relentless and one-sided coverage in the last month, CNN agrees.

Let’s connect some dots: Remember that whole Obama "clinging to religion and guns" flap? Now, remember White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel saying never let a crisis go to waste? Good. Finally, remember how the media carried … sorry, is carrying water for Obama?

It looks like Holder has internalized Emanuel’s philosophy, and is looking at the bloody drug wars raging along Mexico’s northern border as the crisis he needs to ratchet up gun control.

Last month, during a press conference in which he announced that more than 50 members of Sinaloa Cartel, a Mexican drug cartel, were captured, Holder revealed his intentions. "Well, as President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum," he said.

"That’s your attorney general talking about selling out the second amendment and your rights for the benefit of the benefit of Mexico," Lou Dobbs said on his Feb. 25 program. But Dobbs must be a lonely man at CNN. The rest of the network took Holder’s statement as its cue, began hammering the point that American weapons are being used in Mexico’s increasingly violent drug wars.  

A Nexis search revealed that out of 57 reports on the Mexican drug violence that have aired since February 16,  half (29) of them have mentioned at least once that Mexican drug cartels are using American weapons.

Imagine a day when you turn to your own personal robot, give it a task and then sit down and relax, confident that your robot is doing exactly what you wanted it to do.

So far, that autonomous, do-it-all robot is the stuff of science fiction or cartoons like "The Jetsons." But a Brown University-led robotics team has made an important advance: The group has demonstrated how a robot can follow nonverbal commands from a person in a variety of environments — indoors as well as outside — all without adjusting for lighting.

Growing evidence of British complicity in “unacceptable activities,” including participation in U.S. torture practices, has prompted Prime Minister Gordon Brown to publish the rules that determine how U.K. intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 can interrogate suspects.

Following demands for full inquiries amid allegations that British intelligence officers took part in the torture of suspects under the U.S. “extraordinary rendition” process, Brown is reportedly moving toward more government transparency by publishing the interrogation rules officers must follow.

The Guardian:

Gordon Brown’s decision to publish guidance to intelligence officers and military personnel about interrogating detainees, and set up a system designed to ensure that guidance is observed, comes after growing evidence that they have routinely indulged in unacceptable activities including collusion in torture.

It is a tacit admission that, despite ministers repeatedly saying the government does not condone torture, all is not well.

Brown’s announcement, in a Commons written statement, came after the intelligence and security committee (ISC) disclosed that it had written to the prime minister about what it calls the “alleged complicity of UK security and intelligence agencies in torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has sent Congress an explanation of his plan to deal with the AIG bonus fiasco. Essentially, Treasury will dock the $165 million in bonuses from AIG’s next bailout payment. Here’s a question: If AIG can do without that $165 million, why were we giving it to the company in the first place?

Isn’t the whole idea that this company is too big to fail and we have to hand over our hard-borrowed funny money or the world will implode?

BBC:

In a letter to congressmen, Timothy Geithner said $165m (£116m) would be taken from $30bn the firm is due to get as part of its government bail-out.

The plan comes after Mr Geithner faced heavy criticism for his handling of the increasingly controversial issue.

On his way to his first visit to Africa, Pope Benedict XVI told attendant members of the press that he believes encouraging condom use not only doesn’t help in the fight against AIDS, but actually worsens the situation. 

Times Online:

In his first public comments on condom use, the pontiff told reporters en route to Cameroon that Aids “is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”.

Pope Benedict has previously stressed that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.

After his election as Pope, Benedict described Aids as a “a cruel epidemic which not only kills but seriously threatens the economic and social stability of the continent”, but reiterated the Vatican ban on the use of condoms.

A "dead heat" is a race, campaign or other contest that is so close that it is impossible to predict the winner.

That's what it looks like when it comes to the continuing race for cyber warfare supremacy, and experts agree this will be the case for the foreseeable future. With images of the Cold War and its associated arms race, as cyber warfare, cyber espionage, cyber attacks and cyber terrorism continues to evolve the top three leaders (US, Russia and China) are jockeying for position.

Leading economists have warned that the growing education gap between the U.S. and other industrialized countries will threaten our economic status and growth. I would add that this gap has a direct link to our national security. President Obama's economic stimulus plan has billions of dollars for schools that adopt new plans to boost teacher quality, hike test scores and come up with innovative ideas. If successful, this will help in about 15 years, but by then we may be ranked second, third or fourth in the global scientific and technical research and development space that drives our offensive and defensive military capabilities -- particularly cyber security. This would have catastrophic consequences with respect to our national security.

In any contest there is an outside chance a long-shot could come from behind and win. The race for cyber warfare dominance is no different. In the recently updated "Cyber Warfare Capabilities Estimate" (2009 version) those who could break out of the pack and come from behind and take a leadership position for cyber dominance are listed below.

1. Iran
2. India
3. North Korea

The development of cyber capabilities is directly dependent on two factors. The first factor is determination and the second is smart people. While testifying before the U.S. Congress I was asked how many people in the world could do what I did -- referring to a hacking demonstration I had just performed. My answer remains the same: tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. The bad news is this that number is growing as countries, extremist groups and terrorists support people developing skills in this area.

This is an arms race that we cannot afford to lose. That is the feeling of all three of the current leaders in the contest to dominate the cyber warfare domain. One thing we all must remember is that in this arms race, science and technology advances will continue to push the finish line further out so we will not get there any time soon.

Two great Pentagon business stories today, one from Defense Tech friend and congressional defense beat reporter Josh Rogin and another scoop from our boy Colin Clark at DoD Buzz.

As our readers know, Pentagon chief Gates put a major clampdown on any leaks from the Obama defense budget planning. My colleagues on the budget beat have been majorly frustrated with the lack of string for story-hungry editors (myself included).

As the "April" deadline for specifics on the '10 budget details approaches, cracks are starting to form.

First off, Rogin reports at Congressional Quarterly that the Obama admin has decided to delay purchase of a new tanker by five years and cut out altogether the Next Gen Bomber program (though he's quick to point out no final decision has been made).

Both of these are huge mistakes, in my opinion. The KC-135 has a few more years left on it for sure, but delaying it another five means delaying it another 10 in reality. It's one of those unsexy things that aren't that much fun to buy, but "you're sure glad you have them when you need them" kind of things that pushed off into the future could mean serious problems for a force as expeditionary as ours.

And the NGB...again, bombers have proven themselves to be highly adaptable platforms for a wide range of missions and munitions. They last a long time and evolve well to the threat. Our current fleet is either too small (B-2) or too old (B-52) to meet the long loiter, long range, heavy payload demands of operations, so it seems a big error to shunt this one to the side as well.

Also, Colin has an excellent grab from sources on the JSF/F-22 plans coming out of DoD. He hears that the F-22 line will be kept open, with production funding for as many as 40 more planes, and that the F-35 will be trimmed back from plans in 2010, but ramp back up in 2011 and the POM (though he has no numbers to attach to Lightning II buys).

This info would seem in line with persistent rumors that Gates and Co. will salami slice the F-22 buy, largely because they know that Congress will fund it, desperate to keep those jobs going. The F-35 trim is apparently the tactical trade-off for continuing the F-22 production. The strong out-year funding would be proof that the Pentagon remains strongly committed to the F-35, a signal that allies will peer at as closely as an anthropologist watches a rare ceremony celebrating, say, fertility.

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