Flash Gordon Left Me The Keys

After watching the Iraqi soldier that did not want to get out of the tank... that left very little desired for technology... the Coallition soldier took all golf course training as he mounted the vehicle and mounted a nice kilo of explosive on top and disabled man and tank. Makes me want to smoke another cigarette...With U.S.-led forces closing in on Baghdad, ground troops may face the toughest challenges yet in this war against Iraq.

Arrayed against allied armored tanks and combat soldiers are the numerous tanks and armored fighting vehicles of the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard units, reportedly the best-equipped and most dedicated of Saddam Hussein's ground forces.

And while the Iraq tanks — composed mainly of Soviet models designed and built in the late 1970s — might not be as advanced as those in the coalition's ground forces, they are still worrisome, especially against infantry soldiers.

What's more, troops may have to face these metal beasts in close quarters in Baghdad and so-called "built-up" areas where tanks may remain hidden in buildings and out of view from coalition aircraft and precision-guided bombs.

But, coalition foot soldiers have some smart weapons of their own to attack modern-day dragons.

Better Than a Dragon
The newest arrow in their quiver is a portable anti-tank missile called the Javelin. In development since the 1980s, the 50-pound missile is about two-thirds the weight of previous medium-range anti-tank missiles fielded by the U.S. Army.

Designed to attack tanks, ground targets such as bunkers and forts or even low-flying helicopters, the Javelin offers a significant advantage over a majority of current portable missiles.

Traditional shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, such as the Army's Dragon missile, are so-called command guided. In order to hit a tank, the soldier must keep the weapon's sights on the target and direct the missile's flight.

And firing such missiles often produce a lot of noise and "back-blast" — smoke and debris that shoots out the rear of the missile's launch tube — that the enemy can use to spot where the missile came from and fire back. The soldier must either hope to destroy the tank before the hostile fire reaches him or break away from the attack.

But the Javelin is a true "fire-and-forget" missile — meaning once it's launched, the Javelin guides itself to the target without any further input from the soldier. That allows the trooper to move away and avoid return fire or quickly prepare another missile for launch.

At the heart of the Javelin's guidance system are a set of digital imaging chips that "see" detecting invisible infrared light that bounces off of objects on the battlefield. A soldier uses a separate optical or infrared viewer attached to the missile's launch tube to spot a target such as a tank.

Once the infantryman finds a target and pushes the fire button, the missile's imaging chip captures an electronic picture of the target and launches itself out of the firing tube. As the missile flies toward the target, its camera takes new images of the target every second and compares it to what's stored in its memory.

The image processing computer and software is so robust that even if the target moves — which changes what the missile would "see" — the missile remains "locked on" to the target until the very end.

Take It From the Top
Robert Sherman, a weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, says the Javelin is one of the first of a few such smart anti-tank weapons for ground troops.

"For an anti-tank weapon for the foot soldier, there is just no comparison," said Sherman. "You put the [sight] box on a target — like a tank or any ground target — and the missile remembers the image of the tank. That is an amazing thing."

It also allows the missile to attack a target unlike any other man-portable anti-tank weapon in the coalition's arsenal.

The Javelin is programmed to attack a ground target just like its hand-thrown namesake. Once it's launched against a tank, the missile flies in a high arc to ultimately slam into the target from above.

Such "top attacks" help the missile evade common countermeasures that might be employed by the tank, such as producing smoke that obscures the view of the missile and infantry. More importantly, the Javelin strikes where the tank's armor is thinner and more vulnerable to attack.

The Javelin is carried by the U.S. Army and Marines as well as the British Royal Marines in Iraq and has an effective range of about 2,500 meters. But the missile also can be used against targets as close as 65 meters, making it ideal for close-quarters fighting such as within urban areas.

Another benefit of the Javelin: It uses a so-called soft launch that produces no telltale back-blast. Sherman says that a small explosive charge produces just enough force to push the missile out of its launch tube a few feet. Once it's safely away from the launch tube and its human crew, the missile's motor kicks in to propel it to the target.

"With a Dragon, when you pull the trigger, you're literally putting yourself in danger," says Sherman. "That doesn't exist with Javelin. You fire it and then duck down and hide or move to a new location. It's up to you."

Another Shot
Other countries are developing similar smart anti-tank missiles with similar capabilities as the American Javelin.

Israel, for example, has a Javelin-like equivalent called the Gill. Although the missile is slightly heavier than the Javelin, the Gill also contains an extra set of imaging chips. The chips, similar to the ones used in digital cameras, can be used to "command guide" a version of the missile called Spike.

In command guidance mode, the Spike actually sends what it sees back to the soldier over a set of fiber optic wires that trail behind the missile as it flies. The soldier uses the images to "fly" the missile, sending steering commands back through the same fiber optic wire. And unlike other portable anti-tank missiles, the Spike can be launched against targets up to 4,000 meters away — more safely out of the range of return fire.

Military analysts note that the Western digital imaging technology is a big edge when it comes to anti-tank weapons. And it's unlikely that the Iraqi forces have any weapons of similar capabiliy among its Soviet-era arms cache. But, less-advanced arms doesn't mean the coalition's tank forces are completely safe from harm.

Less Tech, But No Less Efficient
Last week, ABCNEWS' Ted Koppel, embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, reported that the division lost as many as four vehicles — including two Abrams tanks — to a capable Russian anti-tank missile called the Kornet.

Although the Kornet requires a crew to guide the missile to the tank using a laser, the Kornet, like the Javelin and Gill, has dual explosive warheads and can defeat the toughest, modern tank armor.

"For a Russian system, it's a fairly good weapon," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. "It's similar to the American TOW [anti-tank] missile as far as capability and its laser guidance system is hard to countermeasure."

And for now, there doesn't seem to be any way to protect tanks and their crew of soldiers from these improved anti-tank missiles. Adding extra armor would already make a tank such as the 70-ton Abrams even more unwieldy for battle.

"The tank is too heavy as it is," said Sherman. "The main criticism of the M1A2 [Abrams] is that only a few bridges can carry its weight." And its gross tonnage also makes the Abrams impossible to transport quickly to distant battlefields such as Iraq by plane, hindering U.S. ability to react quickly to land-based threats.

"The balance between armor and anti-armor is a constant see-saw," said Sherman. "And for now, it seems the see-saw's tipped in the anti-armor's favor."

If the earth is a theater of war, why waste all the eggs on this one basket?
Last night the world's most powerful war machine launched its biggest assault so far on its road to Baghdad.

Once in the city, of course, coalition forces hope to fulfill their mission by capturing or killing Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein.

But a question remains: Can they find him? It is speculated that Hussein has scores of caves and bunkers hollowed out beneath the ancient city, bomb-proof labyrinths where he could hide for days, perhaps weeks.

Hussein's hideaways twist through the earth -- as much as 300 feet deep -- below his palaces, below relatives' homes, maybe even below schools and hospitals.

Tales of these secret bunkers abound. Ears pop on lifts that carry down the rare visitor, sometimes blindfolded. When a British Labor Party leader met with Hussein last summer in a bunker, the elevator ride lasted about 20 seconds.

Many bunkers are thought to be connected. A person could enter from, say, the basement of a downtown conference center and exit through the front door of an inconspicuous house blocks away.

Some experts contend the hideaways provide a safe haven from even the most powerful conventional bombs. Others wonder just how secret -- and, thus, how safe -- Hussein's bunkers really are.

It takes time, manpower and convoys of heavy equipment to build a labyrinth of tunnels and living quarters as elaborate as the Iraqi leader's are said to be.

Designs and contracts are drawn up. Workers talk. Satellites may record images of the activity from space.

"I'm sure there are a number of locations U.S. intelligence already knows about, and maybe a number it doesn't know about," said Patrick Garrett, an associate analyst at GlobalSecurity.org who researches military and energy policy.

"At some point, once the U.S. finds out, bombs will fall on a bunker and it becomes pretty clear to Hussein, if he survives, that it's not so smart to sleep there," Garrett said.

In recent days, a German architect and a former Yugoslav army officer have told the Reuters news agency they helped build some of Hussein's underground lairs. Both men described the bunkers as virtually impenetrable -- lined with rounded, reinforced concrete walls four, six and even 16 feet thick.

A palace bunker reportedly designed by German architect Karl Esser "could withstand the shock wave of a nuclear bomb the size of the Hiroshima one" detonating less than a quarter-mile away, Esser said.

In a separate interview with Reuters, retired Lt. Col. Resad Fazlic identified other Iraqi shelters constructed in the late 1970s in the cities of Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and Nasiriyah.

Fazlic said the strongest bunkers could resist massive bombardment and "keep those inside independent of the outside world for six months."

"...If Saddam does not leave (Iraq), and I think he has nowhere to go, they will find him in one of these facilities -- if he does not find a way out by then," said Fazlic, the Yugoslav builder.

Despite the bunkers' purported indestructibility, their known whereabouts in some cases threaten that security, as evidenced by the first missile strike of the war. U.S. military planners aimed missiles at a residence thought to be housing the dictator's inner circle, leaving the health of Hussein himself still in doubt.

"No bunker on the planet can survive permanently if everyone knows its location and is determined to annihilate it," said Kenneth D. Rose, author of One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture.

"Maybe 10 bombs won't get to it, maybe 100 bombs won't, but something like 500 bombs could."

"...When you're building a system of bunkers as elaborate at Saddam's, it requires so much material and expertise (that) it's impossible to keep it a secret," Ross said. "Once the secret is out, the effectiveness of all that work is somewhat compromised."

Con Coughlin's biography, Saddam: King of Terror, details a German company's construction of a bunker "about 300 feet beneath the Tigris River" near Hussein's Presidential Palace complex, which has been the target of repeated air attacks in recent days.

The bunker "rested on huge springs, 2 feet in diameter, on a cushion of hard, molded rubber" to absorb the shock of bombardment, Coughlin wrote. He described the structure as a "James Bond-like fantasy hideout" with two entrances guarded by automatically controlled machine-gun nests.

David Kay headed a U.N. weapons inspection team in Iraq after the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. One of the sites he searched was a two-story bunker covered by a concrete roof poking out of the sands of a Baghdad suburb.

"Iraqi officials called it a residential civil-defense bunker," said Kay, now with the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. "But it was a lot nicer and more elaborate than the homes around it."

It boasted dozens of separate, well-furnished living quarters.

Allied forces attacked the bunker during the 1991 war. At least one laser-guided missile whistled into a ventilation shaft and detonated, reportedly killing hundreds of Iraqi civilians who were huddled inside.

The deaths triggered global scorn of the U.S.-led attack. In later inspecting the facility, however, Kay suspected American authorities were correct in believing it to be a potential command-and-control bunker for the Iraqi military, using civilians as human shields.

Sophisticated devices had been built into the bunker to protect high-tech circuitry, Kay said. "If this had been built for residential use, were they expecting civilians to bring in their big computers and TVs?" he asked.

Pentagon officials express worries that some of Hussein's hideouts today may be located beneath hospitals and other buildings housing civilians.

The United States' 5,000-pound "bunker-busting" bombs probably would destroy an above-ground structure -- punching through several floors at a time -- before even denting a bunker buried deep below, said Garrett of GlobalSecurity.org.

Known as the GBU-28, the most widely used bunker-buster has been shown in flight tests to penetrate more than 20 feet of concrete and up to 100 feet of earth before it explodes.

"The whole idea is to punch through, then blow up," Garrett said.

During Operation Desert Storm, only two crude versions of the GBU-28 fell on targets. Hundreds have been manufactured since then, poised now to sniff out the elaborate bunkers of Baghdad.

The satellite patrol never came to record the event...Nine days before the war in Iraq began, the Air Force launched into orbit a one-ton, $200 million satellite meant to speed communications between defense officials and battlefield commanders. It joined an orbital fleet that is quietly making this war different from all others.

Scores of satellites are providing coalition forces in Iraq with an invisible web of communications, guidance, reconnaissance, weather forecasting, missile warning, target acquisition and damage assessment.

The Persian Gulf war in 1991 drew heavily on spacecraft, experts agree. But in the dozen years since then, the American military's reliance on satellites has soared. The expanding fleet, officials and experts say, is now empowering dozens of new weapons and tactics on the battlefield.

And there is more to come.

"We have 12 national-security space launches scheduled for 2003, compared to only one conducted in 2002," Peter B. Teets, Under Secretary of the Air Force, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 12.

At the Pentagon that same day, Maj. Gen. Franklin J. Blaisdell, the Air Force's director of space operations, said orbital power translated into terrestrial might. "It's the ultimate high ground," General Blaisdell told reporters.

Skeptics wonder whether the overwhelming advantage that the United States now enjoys in space-aided warfare has led to overconfidence. Gadgets cannot subdue dust storms or fight door to door, they argue, and history shows that even outgunned troops can fight back.

Other analysts urge patience. Advances in electronics and space-aided warfare, they say, have increased the American military's flexibility, speed and precision. They say Iraq is the laboratory that will show the depth and effectiveness of the shift.

"The information revolution has fundamentally changed the nature of combat," said Bruce Berkowitz, author of "The New Face of War" (Free Press), a recent book about military satellites and networks. "To win wars today, you must first win the information war."

On March 10, a $200 million part of the information war blasted into space from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The spacecraft, an element of the Defense Satellite Communications System, joined a network of 10 that provide the American military with secure high-speed voice and data transmissions among forces on land, in the air and at sea. Made by Lockheed Martin, the craft now orbits above the Indian Ocean.

Such satellites, in addition to linking troops and commanders, are performing new missions like relaying signals between ground controllers and Predator pilotless drones, military experts said. In Iraq, military commanders are using Predators to scout ahead.

John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based research group on military and space topics, said satellites are also proving important for disseminating surveillance images. During the 1991 gulf war, he said, such images often moved slowly by fax machine, frustrating military planners eager for the latest reconnaissance.

"Now this stuff flies effortlessly," he said. "Twelve years ago you couldn't do that."

On another front, the satellites of the military's Global Positioning System have nurtured a revolution in exact bombing. Each of the system's 24 satellites constantly beams radio signals to the earth. Receivers on the ground then compare the signals coming in from three or four different satellites to calculate their position with great precision, usually within yards.

The Air Force launched one of the G.P.S. satellites into space in January, and plans to send up another on Monday, bringing the number of orbital spares and workhorses to 28, each worth $50 million.

The navigation satellites are a guiding force behind Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles and in Iraq have spearheaded waves of bombing. The missiles, made by Raytheon and launched from ships or submarines, are propelled first by a rocket launcher, then a jet engine.

For guidance during the 1991 gulf war, a missile would compare radar ground readings with a stored digital map and make course corrections while zooming toward the target.

Now, Tomahawks also have G.P.S. guidance. Along the route, the missiles receive signals from as many satellites as possible and adjust their courses.

In interviews, Raytheon and military officials said the method improves flexibility more than accuracy. Digital maps are costly and have limited coverage, officials said. Only certain attack routes are mapped in advance, a process that takes much time and preparation.

Satellite guidance allows virtually unlimited target routing of the Tomahawks, officials said, which increases not only the number of course options but, importantly, the speed with which military leaders can plan attacks.

Another use of satellite guidance centers on the JDAM, or Joint Direct Attack Munition. The military makes them by taking old free-falling bombs and fitting them with tail guidance units. During an attack, a pilot sends target coordinates to the JDAM's guidance system. Once released, the bomb continually gets updates from the G.P.S. satellites and adjusts its tail fins to zero in on the target.

The Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington that analyzes military data, says JDAM's can hit within dozens of feet of their intended targets.

A final advance centers on early warning satellites, which track enemy missile launchings. During the 1991 gulf war, Patriot antimissile batteries in Israel and Saudi Arabia got news of Iraqi launchings from the United States, which collected the early-warning data and relayed it overseas. But numerous delays cost precious seconds.

Now, the Army has developed what it calls the Joint Tactical Ground Station, a portable complex for battlefield commanders that receives the early warning data directly and greatly improves the accuracy of antimissile weapons. Col. Steven G. Fox, director of the Army's Space Program office, told Pentagon reporters March 12 that it "allows us to disseminate missile-data warnings very quickly."

Analysts caution that only time will tell if the military's space edge will prove decisive against Iraq. Decades ago, noted Mr. Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, Washington had similar confidence in technology at the start of the Vietnam War. "And we saw what happened there," he said.

Crítica
Estamos juzgando a los artistas de hoy con los criterios de hoy, pero es difícil saber qué es lo que va a interesar dentro de una década. Se necesitan veinte años para identificarse con una nueva imagen y es muy arriesgado prever qué nombres pasarán a la historia.
El genio creador de la artista Maria José Errasti en su exposición la lleva a trascender los límites de lo usual, eso es lo maravilloso en ella como destino, como conocimiento, como pasión, como creación, como pintora. Creo que trae Errasti, todo eso al mundo de la pintura a través del amor que precisamente desestabiliza lo real. Pero no del deseo. El deseo en las artes y en la vida misma, es como la glotonería: algo te apetece y entonces lo capturas para incorporarlo a ti buscando la satisfacción inmediata.
Maria José Errasti, en cuanto creadora que desea, reduce al mundo lo que ella siente. Mientras que en el mundo del amor en su pintura, añade un matiz importante: el cuidado del objeto. En cuanto artista que ama, ella quiere acercarse a lo que desea, pero que siga existiendo, y es muy importante para esta pintora encontrar esa llave que le permita regresar a lo real, y lo logra con creces.