To military bloggers and conservative hawks, Michael Yon was a super hero — a fearless Green-Beret-turned-citizen-journalist who spent years on the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan when most big media outlets kept their reporters at home. But now, those same military bloggers are turning their sights on Yon, after he began savaging America’s top general in Afghanistan and warning that the American war effort is all but doomed.

There was a time when Yon lauded U.S. commanders, and military bloggers celebrated Yon. Now Yon, reporting solo from Afghanistan, tells Danger Room that he’s the victim of a “smear campaign” orchestrated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s closest advisers. And milbloggers are reluctantly telling their former star to knock it off.  “He has called his own competence into question,” writes Jim Hanson at the popular Blackfive.net blog.

Online writers have been sniping at one another since the Internet’s Cretaceous era. But this “is not just another dumb blogosphere flap,” writes blogger and Boston Herald editor Jules Crittenden. It “apparently involves some serious issues potentially compromising a vital asset for anyone trying to understand these wars of ours.”

The troubled started earlier this month, when the military ended Yon’s embed with the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province after three months. That’s weeks — months — longer than most reporters are permitted (or want, or are able) to hole up with a single unit.

But to Yon, it was still a betrayal. The 5-2’s commander agreed to let Yon stay until the brigade went home. The shorter embed was to him a sign that “McChrystal himself thinks we are losing the war.”

“Today, I do not trust McChrystal any more than some people trust the New York Times, Obama or Bush,” Yon added. “McChrystal is a great killer, but this war is above his head. He must be watched.”

No reporter has spent more time embedded with American and coalition troops since 9/11. Few reporters have put themselves at more personal risk — or spent more of their own money — during their times on the battlefield. Yon produced one of the most iconic images the Iraq war, and defended the conflict as winnable when most experts assumed the opposite.

But this wasn’t the first time Yon had been separated from his unit, or started public fights with military leadership. As early as 2006, Yon was warning that the United States was falling behind in the Afghanistan war. The following year, when he felt he was being treated unfairly in Baghdad, he unloaded on “Public Affairs officers [who] stagger like sway-backed mules with shifting excuses.”

Last September, he was told to leave the British 2 Rifles in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. In return, he blasted the local British media officer as “Bullshit Bob.”

But that came after weeks of friction over Yon’s criticisms of the British lack of helicopters in the region. This time, Yon tells Danger Room, there were no early warnings. “There was no back story. None. Zero indication from the brigade company or unit level,” he says over an intermittent cellphone connection from Jalalabad, Afghanistan. “I’m mystified.”

Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, says there’s a simple explanation: Yon’s extended embed was holding up other reporters who wanted similar access.

“The problem is that there are more than 100 other reporters on a waiting list to get into embeds with the 5-2 and other units — especially in and around Kandahar — which is why embeds are established for defined periods of time. Since demand far exceeds supply, we try to balance the needs of individual reporters with our responsibility to provide information through embeds to a large and diverse a field of reporters,” Sholtis tells Danger Room in an e-mail.

Yon did ask the commander to stay, and the commander said OK, but he did so in ignorance of the fact that Yon’s embed had been granted under terms set by [the regional headquarters]….  Frankly, given Yon’s request, the commander was only faced with the choice of whether to be a nice guy or not. The region[al HQ], on the other hand, was faced with the choice of whether being nice to Yon was worth turning away a significant number of other reporters. They determined it was not.

Yon couldn’t accept that rationale. “McChrystal’s crew has declared an information war on me,” he posted to Facebook. “If McChrystal knew what he was doing, he would not be drawing attention to his staff.”

He called McChrystal’s aides “crazy monkeys,” and said that he had “compelling evidence of General McChrystal’s smear campaign” against him. “Official statements by his people — in writing — have been defamatory and libelous.”

I asked Yon what that evidence was. He pointed me to an e-mail exchange between Sholtis and blogger Herschel Smith. In it, Sholtis said Yon’s campaign to stay with the 5-2 “amounted to a choice to disrespect his colleagues,” and that contrary to the blogger’s claims in this case, “the most significant impediment to independent reporting from Afghanistan has been Michael Yon himself.”

It’s a pair of phrases Sholtis now says he regrets. But they’re hardly libelous.

Yon still has his defenders in the tight-knit community of military bloggers. Smith, for one, likens Yon to legendary World War II journalist Ernie Pyle.

But many of his biggest fans and advocates are now speaking out against him. “I swear, I really need to step up my game and start posting completely randomly made-up tweets or Facebook comments about public figures like ’so-and-so is the world’s biggest idiot,’” writes Milblogging.com founder J.P. Borda.

“Michael Yon has done some excellent reporting from both Iraq and Afghanistan, but if my count is correct he has now been kicked off four embeds. Each time he has excoriated those who booted him and blamed them for his predicament,” blogs Blackfive.net’s Hanson. “There comes a time when you have to look in the mirror and accept responsibility. It is not a collection of incompetent public-affairs officers or some conspiracy to silence truth telling, it is his own fault.”

Yon, for his part, says he’ll remain in Afghanistan — but not as an embedded journalist. “I’m still reporting,” he says, but now I’m outside the wire.”

Photo: Wikimedia.org

The Obama administration is poised to take up one of the more dangerous and hare-brained schemes of the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon. The New York Times is reporting that the Defense Department is once again looking to equip intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. The missiles could then, in theory, destroy fleeing targets a half a world away — a no-notice “bolt from the blue,” striking in a matter of hours. There’s just one teeny-tiny problem: the launches could very well start World War III.

Over and over again, the Bush administration tried to push the idea of these conventional ICBMs. Over and over again, Congress refused to provide the funds for it. The reason was pretty simple: those anti-terror missiles look and fly exactly like the nuclear missiles we’d launch at Russia or China, in the event of Armageddon. “For many minutes during their flight patterns, these missiles might appear to be headed towards targets in these nations,” a congressional study notes. That could have world-changing consequences. “The launch of such a missile,” then-Russian president Vladimir Putin said in a state of the nation address after the announcement of the Bush-era plan, “could provoke a full-scale counterattack using strategic nuclear forces.”

The Pentagon mumbled all kinds of assurances that Beijing or Moscow would never, ever, never misinterpret one kind of ICBM for the other. But the core of their argument essentially came down to this: Trust us, Vlad Putin! That ballistic missile we just launched in your direction isn’t nuclear. We swear!

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld couldn’t even muster that coherent of a defense.

“Everyone in the world would know that [the missile] was conventional,” he said in a press conference, “after it hit within 30 minutes.”

The new “Prompt Global Strike” plan is a little different from the old one. It relies on land-based missiles, instead of sub-based ones. The idea is that these conventional missiles sites would be open to Russian inspection, and wouldn’t accidentally drop debris on a superpower.

But Moscow doesn’t exactly seem soothed by this new plan. “World states will hardly accept a situation in which nuclear weapons disappear, but weapons that are no less destabilizing emerge in the hands of certain members of the international community,” Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this month.

When the idea of Prompt Global Strike was first proposed, the goal was to hit anywhere on the planet in under an hour. Old-school weapons had proved ineffective at catch terrorists on the move. Newer, quicker arms might be able to do the job, instead. Flight tests for some of those weapons — like a hypersonic cruise missile — are just getting underway. Until then, relying on conventional ICBMs to do the job, and risking a nuclear showdown, is just plain crazy.

UPDATE: Our pal Robert Farley raised these same concerns weeks ago, when the Nuclear Posture Review came out (and I was still on full-time daddy duty).

[Photo: Air Force]

See Also:

• Mach 6 Cruise Missile, Ready for Prime Time?
• Air Force’s Zombie Bomber, Back from the Grave
• Ballistic Missiles vs. Al-Qaeda?
• Hit Anywhere on Earth with ICBMs, “Cans of Whup-Ass”
• $100 Million for Worldwide, Instant Strike Weapon
• Congress Shoots Down Hypersonic Plane
• It’s Not a Nuke, Vlad. We Promise!

The Air Force launched a secretive space plane into orbit Thursday night from Cape Canaveral, Florida. And they’re not sure when it’s returning to Earth.

Perched atop an Atlas V rocket, the Air Force’s unmanned and reusable X-37B made its first flight after a decade in development shrouded in mystery; most of the mission goals remain unknown to the public.

The Air Force has fended off statements calling the X-37B a space weapon, or a space-based drone to be used for spying or delivering weapons from orbit. In a conference call with reporters, deputy undersecretary for the Air Force for space programs Gary Payton acknowledged much of the current mission is classified. But perhaps the most intriguing answer came when he was asked by a reporter wanting to cover the landing as to when the X-37B would be making its way back to the planet.

“In all honesty, we don’t know when it’s coming back for sure,” Payton said.

Payton went on to say that the timing depends on how the experiments and testing progress during the flight. Though he declined to elaborate on the details. The vague answer did little to quell questions about the ultimate purpose of the X-37B test program.

Artist rendition of X-37 in orbit

At only 29 feet long, the X-37B is roughly one fourth the size of the space shuttle. It’s onboard batteries and solar arrays (pictured at left from its NASA days) can keep it operating for up to nine months according to the Air Force. It is similar to the shuttle with payload doors exposing a cargo area, and uses a similar reentry procedure before gliding to a runway. In the case of the X-37B, the vehicle will autonomously return to earth and land itself using an onboard autopilot. The primary landing spot is Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

In his conference call, Gary Payton told reporters the primary goal is to see if the system is a viable option for the Air Force.

“Top priority is an inexpensive turn around,” Payton said. “Do we have to do a lot of servicing? If that’s the case, it makes this kind of vehicle less attractive to us in the future.”

Payton described an ideal turn around to be similar to a large airplane.

“I would like to see this X-37 handled much more like an airplane, maybe an SR-71″ he said referring to the legendary spy plane. “Handled more like that than what we see with other space launch mechanisms, space launch vehicles.”

The military has been looking into the idea of an orbital space platform for decades. And the X-37 program itself has been around for quite a while. Built by Boeing’s Phantom Works division in the mid 1990s, it was first developed for NASA as a reusable space vehicle that could be carried to orbit either inside the space shuttle or using a booster rocket. The unmanned X-37 would then orbit for a period of time before launching or retrieving a payload and return to earth.

X-37B being prepared for launch

The program was transferred to the Department of Defense in 2004. Since that time the X-37 has become a classified program, raising questions as to whether or not it would become the first operational military space plane. During the 1960s, the Air Force and Boeing conducted research on the X-20 Dyna-Soar space plane. After initial development, much of it with then test pilot Neil Armstrong, the Dyna-Soar was canceled in 1963.

A vehicle such as the X-37 could be a valuable platform for intelligence gathering with the advantage of a satellite’s point of view, but the flexibility of an aircraft that can be launched relatively quickly and maneuvered in orbit much easier than a traditional satellite.

With the lack of specificity expected from a classified program, and without a translator, the Air Force described the X-37B program as “a flexible space test platform to conduct various experiments and allow satellite sensors, subsystems, components and associated technology to be efficiently transported to and from the space environment. This service directly supports the Defense Department’s technology risk-reduction efforts for new satellite systems. By providing an ‘on-orbit laboratory’ test environment, it will prove new technology and components before those technologies are committed to operational satellite programs.”

Once the current mission is over, the miniature unmanned space shuttle will be inspected to determine if  it is a truly reusable vehicle. A new generation of protective tiles, similar to those that plagued early shuttle flights will be examined as well as the autonomous flight control systems that pilot the space craft. The other key component to the program, the overall time needed to prepare the X-37 for another flight, will also be closely watched. The goal is to have it flight ready again in 15 days.

A second X-37B is in the works and the Air Force said it could be ready for a 2011 launch.

[Photos: Air Force, Boeing]

It’s starting to feel like hardly a week goes by without getting a press release regarding a jet flying on a new biofuel somewhere in the world. The Navy and Boeing did manage to time this latest move well by flying an unmodified F/A-18  Super Hornet on Earth Day with a 50/50 blend of camelina sourced biofuel and traditional JP-5 fuel powering the jet.

The Navy is calling the airplane the “Green Hornet” and today’s test flight out of Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland was the first of 15 planned test flights that will last through the middle of June. The Green Hornet program will test the biofuel blend throughout the operational flight envelope for the F/A-18 Super Hornet. This will include the first supersonic test flights using biofuel. In March, the Air Force flew an A-10 Warthog at Eglin Air Force Base using a similar blend of Camelina based biofuel and traditional jet fuel.

During the Hornet’s 45 minute flight, the aircraft flew as expected with no surprises, according to the pilot. Once the flight test program is complete, the Navy hopes to certify the F/A-18 E and F models to use the blended biofuels throughout the fleet.

Last year, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced plans to have an operational strike group burning biofuel for local operations by 2012 and could be fully operational by 2016. If that actually happens, then we’ll really know that the military is going green. Until then, these demonstrations are nice, but not exactly packed with meaning.

The Navy already uses nuclear energy to power several of its ships and submarines, giving it a head start on the other branches. But there are still several hurdles to clear before a green fleet could be put into operation. In addition to the ongoing testing of jets as well as ships and other vehicles, there is still the question of meeting production demands for not only the Navy, but the other fuel thirsty branches of the military.

Darpa is working on the problem as well, researching various biofuels that might be used for military operations and produced on a scale to make them economically viable as well as a secure source of fuel. To date there is no consensus on what kind of feedstocks will be the preferred fuel source for the Pentagon or where the feedstock for the fuel will come from.

And there is no word which airplane will be playing the role of the faithful sidekick, Kato.

Photo: Navy/Kelly Schindler

See Also:

• Air Force Debuts Biofuel-Guzzling Warthog
• Pentagon Researcher Promises Cheap Biofuel for Jets
• DARPA Hearts WIRED, Bio-Fuels
• ‘Bin Laden Hates This Car’
• Obama Shines Light on Air Force’s Super Solar Array
• Army Wants Portable Wind Power for Grunts
• Joint Chiefs Neg “Urgent” Green Power Plea

A quick question for anyone who recently been in Afghanistan — or is still over there. Have you seen any non-lethal weapons or “escalation of force” kits used at checkpoints? I’m talking anything from laser dazzlers to vehicle-stopping nets to simple caltrops and loudspeakers. Drop me a line either way.

The future of American combat aviation is wrapped up in a single jet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. And right now, that future is looking pretty damn cloudy, with skyrocketing costs, missed deadlines, and slowed production rates.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairmen Admiral Mike Mullen tells Danger Room he’s “concerned about the increasing costs of the F-35. We’ve got to bound that. That’s one of the reason we’ve got a new program executive officer and a tremendous amount of focus. We think we’ve got much better cost estimates now. What we have to do is contain ourselves within those estimates — and not have the program skyrocket in terms of cost. [If] the unit price keeps going up. And we’ll be in a position where we’ll buy many fewer that we planned.”

If you’re not familiar with the F-35 saga — and even if you are — this primer segment from PBS’ News Hour is worth watching. Plus, you get to see Danger Room pal Bill Sweetman’s snazzy new glasses.

See Also:

• $337 Billion Stealth Jet Not So Stealthy: Report
• Nuclear Upgrade for the Pentagon’s Gajillion-Dollar Fighter
• Super Stealth Plane Breaks Through Cost Barrier
• Gates Sacks Stealth Jet Chief, Blasts ‘Troubling Record’
• Report: Two-Year Delay for Joint Strike Fighter
  
• Joint Strike Fighter’s Outrageous Claim

Ordinarily, James Richard Sauder spends his time writing books like Underground Bases and Tunnels: What is the Government Trying to Hide? and Kundalini Tales, “which deals with paranormal and mind control themes.” But earlier this month, Sauder took a break from his investigations to scale the fence of a nuclear missile silo.

“We need cooperative, mutually beneficial economic arrangements, and harmonious relations between peoples and nations on this planet. As a symbol in that regard, I have left a skein of multi-colored Red Heart yarn at the missile silo to signify that here the thread of a new, world-wide narrative begins. It is a new global narrative with heart,” he wrote just before his arrest at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota for federal criminal trespass.

“I leave here as a ceremonial gift a pouch of Virginia tobacco, symbolic of the matrimonial union of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, their marriage itself being a symbol of the union of the European and Native peoples and cultures on this continent,” he continued. “Many other large crystals adorn my headdress – from Arkansas, New York, Tibet and Brazil. The crystals represent the living Earth. The feathers in my headdress are from the Rio Grande species of the North American wild turkey. Benjamin Franklin felt that the American wild turkey should be the national bird. I agree! For me the wild turkey exemplifies the natural spirit of this continent.”

It will shock you to learn that Sauder’s manifesto also touches on the “inside job” of 9/11, the death of the American dollar, and “DNA data bases.”

Still, when it comes to loony symbolic protests, Sauder is still running a distant second. A few years back, a retired Catholic priest and two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. No crystal-festooned headdress can top that.

[Photo: Keyhole Publishing; direct hit: JS]

The U.S intelligence community has a long history of blowing big calls — the fall of the Berlin Wall, Saddam’s WMD, 9/11. But in each collective fail, there were individual analysts who got it right. Now, the spy agencies want a better way to sort the accurate from the unsound, by applying principles of mathematics to weigh and rank the input of different experts.

Iarpa, the intelligence community’s way-out research arm, will host a one-day workshop on a new program, called Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE). The initiative follows Iarpa’s recent announcement of plans to create a computational model that can enhance human hypotheses and predictions, by catching inevitable biases and accounting for selective memory and stress.

ACE won’t replace flesh-and-blood experts — it’ll just let ‘em know what they’re worth. The intelligence community often relies on small teams of experts to evaluate situations, and then make forecasts and recommendations. But a team is only as strong as its weakest link, and Iarpa wants to fortify team-based outputs, by using mathematical aggregation to “elicit, weigh, and combine the judgments of many intelligence analysts.”

The system Iarpa’s after should be able to collect and evaluate expert opinion based on each expert’s specific expertise, learning style, prior performance and “other attributes predictive of accuracy.” It’ll then parse out the different predictions offered by analysts, and assign them degrees of probability based on where a particular expert sits in the rankings.

If Iarpa is able to master the mathematical art of aggregated probability, the agency’s program would likely be in hot demand. Using probabilistic expert aggregation to make decisions has been toyed with in circles as diverse as big business, climatology and even criminal court. But until Iarpa’s also mastered their plan to nip biases and memory lapses, they’ll still be forced to contend with the inevitability of human imperfection. Notes risk communications expert Professor Morgan Granger in a decades-old paper, “One can only proceed with care, simultaneously remembering that elicited expert judgments may be seriously flawed, but are often the only game in town.”

[Photo: Wikimedia.org]

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Maryland — America’s top military officer believes there’s a cyberwar already in progress. He believes that the Defense Department’s controversial new Cyber Command should become the “engine” of our national network security — not just the builder of better Pentagon firewalls. He believes it’s time to end Afghanistan’s drug war. He believes in the battered presidency of Hamid Karzai; “there is no plan B” in Afghanistan, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen tells Danger Room. And he believes in tweeting for himself (well, with a little help from his staff).

Those are just some of the surprising answers the Mullen provided in a wide-ranging interview with Danger Room, as we flew from Morgantown, West Virginia to Washington.

Danger Room: I’ve been following the creation of the military’s new Cyber Command for — ugh — almost three years now. And I still can’t figure out what the heck it’s really supposed to do: protect military networks, logic bomb other countries, handle civilian cybersecurity, or all of the above. Help?

Michael Mullen: It is focused most centrally on having a command that spends its time addressing a very, very significant challenge of our day: the whole cyberwar. It’s become such a large-scale concern that the Secretary of Defense and the President and others, including myself, thought it absolutely critical to stand up a command that devotes itself full-time to this challenge. [New White House network security czar Howard Schmidt, on the other hand, says "there is no cyberwar" -- ed.] I think initially, principally, it’ll be focused on defending. But there’s a blurring, if you will, in the speed of cyber between defense and offense. And so I think you’ll see that, as well.

But more than anything else, I believe Cyber Command will be the engine for us as a country to look a how we meet this challenge. [Others have described Cyber Command as focused almost exclusively on securing .mil domains -- ed.] And all of us — the senior leadership, the senior military leadership — recognize the growing threat that’s out there. And that’s why we think this new command is so critical to set up.

Danger Room: That new command is based at Ft. Meade, Maryland, the headquarters of the National Security Agency. It’s headed up by the NSA’s director, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander. So how can Americans feel comfortable about what seems like the arm of an intelligence agency becoming the “engine” of our network defense?

Mullen: There’s no better agency or commander — there’s no better commander, there’s nobody who understands this better than Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander …

I understand the concern. I can only say that this command is stood up in full disclosure of everything that we’re doing. And it is focused on a threat that’s very real. We’re being attacked today, from other countries. I’m confident that both in its stand-up and in its oversight that we’ll be able to execute the mission successfully and keeping in mind those concerns you expressed in your question. Not just keeping in mind, but regarding them, paying an awful lot of attention, making sure we’re fully complying.

Danger Room: I’m almost as confused about Afghanistan as I am about Cyber Command. In a recent speech, you talked about wartime victories being “iterative.” So what would the next one or two iterations looks like over there? Because I have a hard time imagining what they might be.

Mullen: Well, I think the strategy that the president laid out — that we are now executing — is reversing the momentum of the Taliban. That’s really the goal this year. I think the operation in Kandahar, which ha[s] commenced, will go a long way towards doing that. So that’s sort of the next big step for me, is Kandahar.

But it’s not just the security aspect. It’s the governance piece. Y’know, I was in a shura with the governor of Kandahar and 60 or 70 elders three or four weeks ago, my last trip. They’re asking for goods and services. They want security, safety. They want their government to deliver for them. I think in the near term, that’s the next big step. Not to say that there aren’t significant operations going on in the east — there are, as well as [in] the north and the west. [Kandahar] is the next big one.

Danger Room: The Army recently commissioned a poll in Kandahar. It found that the people there trusted the Taliban more than the government. You’ve said in the past that we need the local people’s support before any big operation can start there. Is that still your thinking?

Mullen: We know what we need to do. Clearly, even in the shuras that I sat in, the governance issue was a significant issue. And I think that’s really key. And that’s been a big part of strategy from the beginning — not just the governance in Kabul, but how do you get down to the provinces, to the districts, and to the subdistricts. That’s very much part of the strategy. We know we’ve got to do that. And we have to do that, quite frankly, because of the backdrop you just described, where that hadn’t been in case, as evidenced by that poll.

Danger Room: So do you need have the elders’ or the people’s buy-in before an operation starts?

Mullen: I think you’ll see the same kind of approach that General McChrystal used in Marja [before the offensive there began]. They are going to meet with a lot of leaders before the operation. That approach worked there, and I think you’ll see it again.

Danger Room: I’m also mystified to our approach to drug policy over there. Do we have a single approach to narcotics there?

Mullen: The overall strategy is to replace the poppies with crops that will provide a standard of living for the farmers. I was there in Helmand [province] the other day … with a full-blown poppy crop sitting there. At the high level, the strategic approach is to create an agriculture capability that moves to what it used to be. Y’know, there was a time a few decades ago where they fed their own people and actually exported agriculture. So I think from an overall strategic approach, that’s where we’re headed. There are some tactical things that we’ve got to work our way through. But, as ambassador [Richard] Holbrooke said, we are out of the eradication business. That’s not the strategy any more.

Danger Room: And you agree with that?

Mullen: Yes, I do. I think it’s got to be a standard of living issue, be an income issue. These farmers, they’ve got to be able to feed their families.

Danger Room: There’s been a lot of talk lately about Karzai and whether he’s really a reliable partner. Do we have an alternative to him if he makes good on his threat to join the Taliban, or doesn’t clamp down on the corruption in his government?

Mullen: President Karzai is the duly elected leader of Afghanistan, and we support him.

Danger Room: Well, maybe he’s not so duly elected.

Mullen: We’ve been through the elections, he’s duly elected, he’s their president, we are very supportive of him. And at the same time, it is also clear that there are things in governance and in corruption, rule of law and security, quite frankly, that he has his ministers have to execute. We know that. We’re very supportive of that. And awfully lot of people are working very hard to try to make sure that that all heads in the right direction.

Danger Room: So what’s plan B if he’s plan A?

Mullen: The plan is to work with president Karzai. There is no plan B.

Danger Room: You’ve talked a lot about the need to minimize civilian casualties in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. But those casualties are on the rise in Afghanistan. And, if the reports are to be believed, they’ve been high for a long time in Pakistan. Is this good counterinsurgency?

Mullen: I think low civilian casualties is critical in counterinsurgency. We’ve worked it hard. There has been an uptick in Afghanistan. Some of that’s ties to an increased level of operations — we’ve got thousands of more troops there. But it’s an area we continue to focus on and that we have to get right. We cannot win this war if we keep killing Afghan civilians.

Danger Room: And how about Pakistani civilians?

Mullen: Well, I think there underlying principle of counterinsurgency is there. I know it’s a concern [Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Army] General [Ashfaq Parvez] Kiyani has, as well. He and I have talked about this.

Danger Room: Okay, finally: As the highest-ranking Twitter user in the military, folks want to know: Is that really you, or is it an aide tweeting? Or is it really you?

Mullen: I tweet. I personally tweet, yeah. But the staff also put tweets up.

Photo: Specialist Chad J. McNeeley

* Army: arm our small drone

* Gates: make sense of military exports

* “Space Station lightsaber-sparring hoverdroids to be upgraded”

* Internet security’s privacy impact? Classified, CYBERCOM says.

* Al Qaeda leader is dead. Does that mean he was real?