Flash Gordon Left Me The Keys

U.S. embarks on global shuffle of military forces

The United States has begun a dramatic realignment of its military forces abroad, making key changes in the Middle East and Asia and preparing a restructuring in Europe to confront emerging 21st century threats.

U.S. officials say the changes are intended to enable American forces to combat terrorism and rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction.

Some moves already have been made in Saudi Arabia and South Korea in the aftermath of the Iraq war, and a major reduction in U.S. forces in Germany is expected to follow.

A central element of the restructuring is the creation of stripped-down bases in eastern Europe, Central Asia and elsewhere, and a de-emphasis on big permanent bases in nations such as Germany, defense analysts said.

"We have been reviewing our presence around the world, in every portion of the globe," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week. He argues U.S. forces still are arranged as if the Soviet Union existed.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has said America now faces "a very different threat" requiring a new approach. "It's appropriate to look at how those forces are postured, how we can get the most effectiveness out of them," he said.

"The concept behind the Pentagon's decision to change our basing structure is this ability to be flexible to respond to a broad array of unknown threats around the world," said defense analyst Charles Pena of the Cato Institute.

"So rather than lumping all your forces in one area that you think is strategic, you spread your forces around the world so that if something happens you have some ability to get there quickly."

Defense analyst Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute said the realignment is the most significant since the retrenchment after the Cold War, when U.S. troop levels in Europe plummeted from 300,000 to 100,000.

"In terms of moving into new places rather than coming back from places, this is the first time we have been doing that in just about 40 years," Goure said.

The United States announced in April that nearly all its 5,000 troops would be pulled out of Saudi Arabia, from which it had staged air patrols for a decade over southern Iraq. The move increased the importance of U.S. military facilities in other states in the region such as Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.

KOREAN AND GERMAN BASES
On June 5, the United States and South Korea announced an agreement to shift U.S. troops from the demilitarized zone, separating South Korea and North Korea, and establish "hub bases" south of Seoul.

Germany, an opponent of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, is expected to see a major decline in U.S. troops, although Ramstein Air Base is expected to be remain unscathed. Germany currently hosts 68,000 U.S. troops, but U.S. officials say many of them could be relocated, primarily to eastern Europe.

Pentagon officials have not revealed the scope of the reductions in Germany, a front-line state in the Cold War. Goure said the realignment may leave only 15,000 U.S. troops there.

Former Soviet bloc countries such as Romania, Bulgaria and Poland could benefit from the shift of U.S. forces out of Germany, with analysts noting it is cheaper to maintain bases in such places and there are fewer environmental and other constraints than in western Europe.

Patrick Garrett, an analyst with the Globalsecurity.org military think tank, said Turkey might end up like Saudi Arabia with virtually no U.S. troop presence, particularly if America ends up with long-term access to bases in Iraq. He said the United States may give up Turkey's Incirlik Air Base.

Despite local resentment of U.S. troops in Okinawa, Pentagon officials said there are no plans to relocate the 20,000 Marines stationed there to elsewhere in the Pacific.

Analysts said key Pacific countries for U.S. forces in coming years might include Australia, Singapore and even Vietnam. A defense official said the Philippines, mentioned as a possible site for bases, has made it clear "they have no desire" for that.

Tiny Cracks From Test Fill Nasa With Dread (You would think by now that Boeing wants NASA contracts)

NASA faces a significant challenge in its effort to return the shuttle fleet to flight if testing on tough wing panels proves a tiny crack was enough to cause Columbia's fatal breakup, agency head Sean O'Keefe said Wednesday.

The results of a test done last week for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board - part of a series to determine whether a chunk of foam that separated from the shuttle's external tank could fatally damage the wing panels - were sobering, O'Keefe said.

A 1.68-pound piece of foam shot at one of the reinforced carbon-carbon panels that envelop the wing edges left a 3-inch crack in a panel, as well as a smaller crack in an adjacent, so-called T-seal.

But only roughly three-quarters of an inch of the crack was visible on the surface - and even then, only up close. The crack is larger inside the panel.

That indicates NASA may have to put in place an even more extensive inspection system for the panels, O'Keefe said, as well as make sure astronauts can get outside an orbiter in space to check for damage.

"When you look at this piece … that may very well have been the extent of the damage that morning," O'Keefe said of the foam strike that occurred 82 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 16. "That poses some significant challenges for us, because if that was the extent of the damage at that time, we've got to construct an inspection regime that will be extremely meticulous."

An analysis of the impact suggested that the foam had not done enough damage to threaten the orbiter and the seven crewmembers. As a result, mission managers neither sought satellite images of Columbia nor scrambled to put together a spacewalk to let astronauts survey the wing.

The test results, if they hold up, will probably prompt NASA to have the option of a spacewalk during a mission, O'Keefe said.

"If somebody needs to get their face 2 inches from the problem, there's no better way to do it than to have a human being do it," O'Keefe said.

The agency is also looking at adding some kind of hand- and footholds to the outsides of the remaining three orbiters to make such an inspection easier, and examining whether an in-flight repair kit would be a valuable tool.

Story Musgrave, a former astronaut who did several spacewalks in his career, said designing and training for the expedition would be easy.

"This is really Spacewalking 101," said Musgrave, who said he recently presented an option he designed to the accident investigation board. "A walker can get their face within one inch of it."

The shuttle's robotic arm would probably be needed, Musgrave said, but otherwise getting astronauts' eyes and hands on the panels would be simple. But whether astronauts could fix a damaged wing is tougher to predict.

"I personally have very little confidence in that," Musgrave said. "You have a one of a kind system. When you've patched that thing, it's never been tested. Now, you do the best you can, but it's going to be an exceedingly difficult problem."

The tiny surface crack also seemed to raise doubts in O'Keefe's mind about whether satellite photos of the shuttle - a controversial topic since the accident - would have helped Columbia, or would be useful in the future.

The investigation board has already recommended that NASA seek images of the shuttle on every flight, and the agency has committed to doing so.

O'Keefe wouldn't discuss the capabilities of the military's spy satellites, but his answer was blunt.

"If you can put your face within 2 inches of that leading edge, you can see it," he said. "I'll let you use your imagination as to whether you think it's accurate enough to do that."

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a space and defense think tank in Virginia, said satellites can get very up close and personal - but that the size of the damage and the contrast are crucial.

"I would say that if the crack was long and if it was high contrast, there would be a fair chance that a satellite would detect it," he said. "I think that it starts to go to the contrast issue as to how detectable it would be."

But again, knowing about the damage is a far cry from formulating a repair option or plan to rescue the crew if an orbiter cannot safely return to earth. Pike said he's as interested as anyone in seeing what NASA comes up with in both scenarios.

"My gut hunch is that the crew rescue options probably look a lot better than the on-orbit repair options," he said.

If NASA does add a repair kit and train astronauts for emergency spacewalks, that would lengthen the list of things NASA must do before the shuttles can return to flight.

It's unclear what impact, if any, that decision would have on the agency's timetable. NASA has set a working target date of Dec. 18 but officials say next spring is a much more likely scenario for the first launch.

The primary hardware change - a redesign of the bipod area of the massive external tank, the source of the foam that struck Columbia - should get final approval shortly after the investigation board's report is released late next month. The bipod region is where the orbiter attaches to the tank.

NASA has already decided to launch shuttles only during the day, at least for the foreseeable future, so that cameras can look for any pieces of foam or other debris hitting the orbiter.

The agency is still looking at a number of other options, O'Keefe said, including having a second shuttle ready to launch should there be a problem in orbit.

But O'Keefe emphasized that there will be no arguing with the board's recommendations. And in an effort to backstop the agency's work in putting those suggestions into practice, O'Keefe announced Tuesday the full membership of a task force that will oversee the changes before the next launch.

Thomas Stafford, an Apollo-era astronaut, will oversee the task force, which will be led by Richard Covey - the commander of the first shuttle flight after the 1986 Challenger accident.

The 20-member panel includes several former military officers, including some who have experience with the Navy's nuclear submarine program, as well as Robert Sieck and Forrest McCartney, two former NASA managers who now serve on the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.

Dan Crippen, who until recently was the director of the Congressional Budget Office, also is on the task force.

O'Keefe said the panel will act as a "sanity check" to ensure that NASA doesn't move too fast or miss something. The members will "pass judgment on the efficacy, as well as the propriety" of NASA's fixes, he said.

In the end, he added, it's NASA's sole responsibility to make the shuttle as safe as it can be. There is no way to reduce the risk of flying into space to zero, he said.

"Nevertheless, we're going to try and try awfully hard. But it cannot and will not stop the larger exploration agenda," O'Keefe said. "It can't."

Not Just the Foam... NASA to Take Hits in Columbia Report... and I blamed the Babylon Gun

eMail Downs Spaceshuttle

June 11— The board investigating the Columbia disaster plans to release a final report that will go far beyond the direct cause of the accident and will focus heavily on underlying factors that contributed to it, according to a draft outline obtained by ABCNEWS.

From the very start, crash investigators have been looking at what happened when the the space shuttle lifted off on Jan. 16 and a piece of insulating foam broke away, hitting the left wing. The final report will say this was the likely caused Columbia to break up on Feb. 1 as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts.

But the Columbia Accident Investigation Board will go further and will note other factors that played a role, including budget restraints, NASA's safety culture and decision making.

The report, which is expected to be released in late July, talks about eroding safety margins at NASA. It says the agency had "a system that failed to identify the true hazards."

The foam strikes are one example: There had been numerous strikes in the past without an accident, and NASA had decided this was an acceptable risk. It was seen as a maintenance issue, not a safety problem.

"The shuttle was giving off warning signs of an impending failure and NASA's safety organization — and their attitude toward safety — was that their organization was not listening to what the shuttle was trying to tell them, that there was an accident waiting to happen," said John Pike, an ABCNEWS consultant and director of GlobalSecurity.org. Pike previously was in charge of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists.

Anybody There?
One section of the report, titled "The Machine Was Talking, but NASA Failed to Separate Signals from Noise," talks about missed signals. The focus is on those in charge of the Columbia mission, and their decision-making processes.

The report points to a communications breakdown. After the disaster, e-mails revealed engineers voiced concern during that mission that not enough was being done to determine if the shuttle was at risk.

Plus, the report will revisit the 1986 explosion of the shuttle Challenger as it was lifting off. The Challenger and Columbia tragedies are the only two accidents to take place in the U.S. shuttle program.

The Challenger disaster was traced to a problem in an O-ring seal — a problem that had shown up on previous flights. The board that investigated that accident also focused on the NASA safety culture as a factor in the Challenger accident.

The document obtained by ABCNEWS is the sixth revision of the report outline and there will no doubt be further changes. It will include findings and recommendations — things that NASA must do in the short term to return to flight — and in the long term to lessen the risk of another tragedy.

Boeing admits misdeeds in bid for rocket deal

Boeing Co. used full-page newspaper ads Monday to acknowledge that some of its employees unethically used documents from rival contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. during a 1998 competition for a lucrative contract to build rockets for the Air Force.

Though the ads didn't specifically mention Lockheed or the documents, they discussed ongoing Justice Department and Air Force investigations into Boeing's corporate behavior during the competition for the more than $2 billion Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle contract.

The investigation centers on Boeing's efforts to win the contract and involves two former employees who worked for the company at Cape Canaveral.

The ads, published as a letter from Boeing Chairman and CEO Phil Condit, appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and Roll Call, a Washington newspaper aimed at policymakers.

"It has become clear that some of our employees didn't behave properly during the EELV competition," Condit wrote. "Boeing has worked very hard to justify its reputation. However, we are a large organization, and we are not always perfect."

During the past several weeks, watchdog groups and some politicians have become increasingly critical of Boeing's business ethics.

Last month, the nation's No. 2 defense contractor informed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it was under investigation and that it was cooperating. The company beat No. 1 Lockheed in the competition, winning a contract valued at $1.38 billion to launch 19 of 28 missiles in the EELV program. Lockheed won a contract worth $650 million to launch the remaining nine.

The filing said that in 1999 Boeing discovered that two employees in its Cape Canaveral rocket division possessed information from a competitorfor the EELV contract. It said the employees had been dismissed and a third had been disciplined.

The former employees, who weren't named in the SEC filing, later sued Boeing for wrongful termination. Engineers Kenneth Branch and William Erskine claimed they were "essentially sacrificed" as part of a "cover-up," which the suit alleged involved a Boeing effort to collect confidential competitor information.

Suit dismissed last year
The two leveled those accusations in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Orlando in 2000 and dismissed last year.In its response to the suit, Boeing denied the charge and said that the men were dismissed after a company investigation discovered that they had reviewed Lockheed documents that Branch, a former Lockheed engineer, had obtained before joining Boeing in 1997.

Lockheed spokesman Tom Jurkowsky said his company had no comment on the matter while the federal investigations continue.

Industry analysts were surprised at Boeing's decision to run high-profile ads Monday. Though a number of newspapers, including the Orlando Sentinel, published stories about the federal investigation last month, there has been little news about it during the past several weeks.

"I was only vaguely aware of this until now," said John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va. "It's raised the visibility of the thing far beyond what it had otherwise been."

Worse news to come?
Paul Nisbet, a defense industry analyst with JSA Research in Newport, R.I., said the company might be anticipating worse things to come.

"Possibly they were worried that there would be more damage," Nisbet said. "It seemed to be sending a message to Washington saying, 'Don't suspend our business; this was something beyond our control.'"

Boeing spokesman Dan Beck said the letter seeks to snuff out suggestions that Chicago-based Boeing, with 167,000 employees, was at fault itself.

"We felt it was important at this time because there were starting to be allegations going around that were portraying the Boeing Co. as entirely unethical," Beck said. "We wanted to send a message that unethical behavior is not tolerated at Boeing."

Beck said the buzz about Boeing was growing.

"In the past couple of weeks, there have been statements from various organizations and individuals in Washington trying to project to other programs," Beck said

Condit's letter came as several Washington-based watchdog groups, including Taxpayers for Common Sense, prepared to release today a letter criticizing a $16 billion Air Force plan to lease 100 767s from Boeing. It could buy the refueling tankers for another $4 billion at the end of the lease.

Boeing's stock price dropped $1.69 a share, or 4.85 percent, Monday to close at $33.17.