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UNDERWAY ON THE U.S.S. MISSISSIPPI — The Navy’s newest fast-attack submarine is speeding down the Florida coast, on its way to its commissioning ceremony in its namesake state, at 15 knots. And it’s getting outraced by dolphins.

Hours before the U.S.S. Mississippi dives several hundred feet beneath the Atlantic, its sail juts proudly into the warm, whipping southern air. Submariners allow me to see the highest point on the sub for myself — provided I can keep my balance up three steep levels’ worth of ladder and hoist myself out onto a platform the size of a fancy refrigerator. A harness hooked to an iron bolt on the sail keeps me from falling to my death. There’s no land in sight, just blue water turned white around the sub’s wake, a tall BPS-16 military radar spinning in front of us, and a family of dolphins jumping out of the surf in front of the 377-foot boat.

Apparently it’s typical. Where subs travel in the southern Atlantic, dolphins tend to tag along, eager to say hi to their large, silent playmate. “Dolphins like to sing,” notes Petty Officer Joshua Bardelon, a 32-year old from Pascagoula, the site of the Mississippi’s destination, who supervises the boat’s sonar systems.

Those systems are part of why Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is eager to take possession of his newest Virginia-class submarine when it formally joins the fleet on June 2. As much time as it spends listening to dolphin symphonies, the Mississippi is everything from a weapon to destroy other ships to an electronic-attack system to a stealthy transport for Navy commandos.

The multiple sonar arrays allow the submarine to detect other ships before it’s detected itself. Underway, the boat is dead silent except for the hum of the air conditioning, an indication of the classified tools that mask the Mississippi’s acoustic and electronic signatures to maintain its exceptional stealth. Then comes the boat’s electronic warfare capabilities — which its crew will discuss only vaguely.

“If I’m at periscope depth and I stick my periscope out of the water, people who are looking for me will be using a radar system to find me,” says the sub’s commander, Capt. John McGrath, a 20-year submarine veteran. “But I will know that that radar is in the area and I will use that to my advantage.”

Some of its other weapons are more traditional. The torpedo room, down in the deepest level of the boat, hosts 16 intimidating metal tubes, each wider than bicycle wheels, the bays for its 28-foot torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles. The room looks like a machinist’s workshop, except for the exercise bikes and the racks where the torpedomen sleep beside their weapons — the primary means for the Mississippi to complete its future missions: hunting and destroying enemy ships and subs.

“There are two types of ships in the Navy,” explains Chief Nathan Holmes. “We have submarines, and we have targets.”

Even though the Mississippi isn’t on a combat mission — which is why the Navy allows me to tag along on a boat overflowing with classified systems — McGrath is eager to demonstrate that his boat is a predator, not prey. After I climb down from the sail, he orders the boat’s pilot to dive to 155 feet, a way-station depth that’s far enough underwater to avoid sea traffic but shallow enough so he can get surface rapidly should something go wrong. When nothing does, McGrath orders the pilots to continue on to a depth of 400 feet. The faster the captain wants to go, the deeper he dives.

The dive is surprisingly imperceptible. Even though we’ve just dropped 400 feet in a minute, I barely lean forward. If I had been drinking anything, it wouldn’t have spilled.

That’s the case during my entire four-day stint on the boat. With the exception of a 20-minute exercise in dipping the Mississippi up and down — a queasy affair nicknamed “Angles and Dangles” — I’ve had rockier trips aboard surface ships. The fast-attack submarine is downright placid, even at 20 knots.

The steadiness will be an asset for one of the Mississippi’s other missions: aiding Navy SEALs. There’s a special bay, called a lockout trunk, that allows a tinier sub to dock and deposit a small number of SEALs onboard. Once they’re aboard, the Mississippi will become a Navy special warfare platform — as are many subs that don’t carry nuclear missiles — performing reconnaissance missions and getting SEALs stealthily in and out of where they need to go. The Virginia class’ smaller size allows the sub to “be more maneuverable in a littoral,” says Master Chief Bill Stoiber, the chief of the boat, or senior enlisted man aboard, making it particularly useful for SEAL insertion missions. After the summer, the Mississippi will head for southern Florida to test its special-warfare skills.

As much as the Mississippi is the newest in new for Navy subs, not everything aboard is super-advanced. Satellite connectivity is limited. Submariners like to stay autonomous when they’re below the waves, but that means that information aboard the sub largely stays on the sub, and outside information doesn’t always reach the boat quickly. The Mississippi rises to periscope depth — that is, shallower than 60 feet below, so its periscope can stick its neck out of the water — in order to fire off e-mails or receive communications through classified and unclassified-but-secured networks. Even so, submariners roll their eyes at how slow their connection speeds are. (Think dial-up. In the late ’90s.)

When the sub needs it, it can request extra satellite bandwidth from the Navy — often to send off a video or larger data file. But that “spot beam” is only for special occasions, and it’s a one-off event. Persistent, available undersea bandwidth is a challenge the Navy hasn’t yet figured out how to solve.

Then there are the traditional joys of life aboard a submarine. The Mississippi is home to 138 men, who have to get very comfortable with each other, since there’s nowhere to go for privacy. The halls are barely wide enough for two people hugging the walls to traverse. Submariners are billeted up to 47 per room, stacked up in threes on narrow racks. A typical deployment entails six months of living in these cramped conditions, and the Mississippi is capable of staying underwater for 90 days at a stretch.

Still, the ship makes a virtue out of solitude. The food is unexpectedly excellent. It’s difficult to store bread underneath the sea without it molding or going stale — and there’s no place to buy more — so the kitchen bakes it fresh every day. It’s tempting to forego a lunchtime hot dog just to eat a delicious empty roll an hour old.

The most striking demonstration of the crew’s tightness comes in the control room. Unlike older subs, the Virginia class doesn’t hive away its sonar stations. The dark room, illuminated by dozens of screens displaying torrents of highly classified data, joins up the pilots, navigators, weapons experts and sonar technicians. Five sonar techs stare at screens filled with green representations of the sounds of the ocean while they listen through headphones. Should they hear an enemy ship they’re hunting, they can holler at the fire control station on the other side of the control room that it’s time to attack.

For now, one of those techs passes me his cans. When I put them on, all I hear is a high-pitched squeak that sounds a little like a squeal of glee. Dolphins.

Photos: Mark Riffee/Wired.com

The logo for Sabritas, a Mexican snack chip subsidiary of PepsiCo, which saw dozens of vehicles and five warehouses burned by a drug cartel this month. Photo: chrizar/Flickr

Mexican drug cartels are not strictly drug cartels. One of their fastest-growing markets is extortion of private citizens and businesses. Don’t pay, and you can be threatened — or worse. But largely, the cartels target small businesses and individuals, and stay away from the larger industries. Now several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time the cartels have targeted a multinational corporation.

That corporation would be PepsiCo. According to press reports, masked men attacked five warehouses and vehicle lots on Friday and Saturday nights belonging to the U.S. snack and soft drink giant. More specifically, PepsiCo’s Mexican subsidiary: Sabritas. Dozens of yellow delivery trucks — which transport Sabritas chips and Fritos, Cheetos and Ruffles (among other brands) for the Mexican market — were burned. The good news: No one was injured or killed. At least one member of the Knights Templar cartel was reportedly arrested. Video has also emerged of firefighters battling the blazing trucks and the European Pressphoto Agency released images of Sabritas’ smiley-face mascot illuminated by the flames.

“What we cannot allow is for this kind of isolated case to become generalized,” Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council, told the Associated Press. “The authorities have to take forceful action.”

What’s already generalized is kidnapping, carjacking and extortion of private citizens. Corporations are simply too large, too complex, and it’s not easy — from a cartel’s perspective — to determine who within a corporation should be threatened in an extortion attempt. (Sabritas dominates the Mexican snack food market with about 75 percent market share.) If you’re looking to coerce the manager who is writing the checks, you might as well try to threaten a computer database. Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Pemex, has been subject to attacks on its oil pipelines. But this is due to theft, not extortion. Maquiladora factories — the duty-free workshops that sprawl along the U.S.-Mexico border — have largely been spared. So why did the cartel attack PepsiCo?

Again, it’s probably an extortion attempt. But another explanation involves rumors originating in the western states of Michoacán and Guanajuato — where the arson attacks occurred – that allege some of the company’s 14,500 delivery trucks are used by the federal security services for undercover intelligence operations. PepsiCo even issued a denial: “We repeat that in accordance with our code of conduct, all of our operations are carried out in the current regulatory framework and our vehicles and facilities are used exclusively to carry our products to our customer and clients,” read a company statement.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of the story: the perpetrators. A smaller splinter group of the western La Familia cartel, the Knights Templar have emerged only recently as a self-styled Christian military order. Before the March visit to Mexico by Pope Benedict XVI, the cartel pledged to cease fighting for the duration of the pontiff’s visit. The cartel has also sought to boost its appeal to the public through populist rhetoric, and has claimed it convinced Michoacan meat and tortilla vendors to lower their prices under “no pressure, no blackmail, much less charging fees.”

Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official for CISEN (Mexico’s equivalent to the CIA), suggested to the AP that the Knights Templar “have to be more aggressive in their use of extortion and alternative sources [of income] than practically any other cartel, except the Zetas,” he said.

Knights Templar propaganda likewise paints them as a muscle-bound medieval knights. Who are now at war with Cheetos — and Pepsi. Read that again. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

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A Lockheed Martin "unattended ground sensor," or UGS, disguised as a rock.

Photo: Lockheed Martin

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America is supposed to wind down its war in Afghanistan by 2014. But U.S. forces may continue to track Afghans for years after the conflict is officially done. Palm-sized sensors, developed for the American military, will remain littered across the Afghan countryside — detecting anyone who moves nearby and reporting their locations back to a remote headquarters. Some of these surveillance tools could be buried in the ground, all-but-unnoticeable by passersby. Others might be disguised as rocks, with wafer-sized, solar-rechargeable batteries that could enable the sensors’ operation for perhaps as long as two decades, if their makers are to be believed.

Traditionally, when armies clash, they leave behind a horrific legacy: leftover mines which can blow civilians apart long after the shooting war is over. These “unattended ground sensors,” or UGSs, won’t do that kind of damage. But they could give the Pentagon an enduring ability to monitor a one-time battlefield long, long after regular American forces are supposed to have returned home.

“Were going to leave behind a lot of special operators in Afghanistan. And they need the kind of capability that’s easy to put out so they can monitor a village without a lot of overt U.S.-made material on pathways and roadways,” says Matt Plyburn, an executive at Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor.

The U.S. military has used unattended ground sensors in one form or another since 1966, when American forces dropped acoustic monitors on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Tens of thousands of UGSs have been emplaced around Afghanistan and Iraq, forming electronic perimeters around combat outposts and keeping tabs on remote locations. It’s a way to monitor the largest possible area with the smallest number of troops.

“You use them to cover up your dead space — the areas you’re concerned about but can’t cover with other ISR [intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance] assets,” says Lt. Col. Matt Russell, an Army program manager overseeing the deployment of unattended sensors.

But earlier UGSs — even ones of the recent past — were relatively large and clunky, prone to false alarms, and had lifespans measurable in days or weeks. “What we found in the field was significant under-usage,” Russell tells Danger Room. Plans to incorporate them into every combat brigade fizzled as the Army’s proposed $200 billion revamp, Future Combat Systems, went south.

The new models are dramatically smaller and consume far less power, enabling them to operate for months — maybe even years — at a time with only the slimmest chance of being detected. Lockheed calls them “field and forget” systems for “persistent surveillance.”

And they won’t just be used overseas. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol today employs more than 7,500 UGSs on the Mexican border to spot illegal migrants. Defense contractors believe one of the biggest markets for the next generation of the sensors will be here at home.

“They could be used for border security or even around corporate headquarters,” Plyburn tells Danger Room.

In early 2011, commanders in Afghanistan issued an “urgent operational needs statement” for better sensors. In response, the Army shipped a new line of about 1,500 “expendable” UGSs to the warzone. The size of a few stacked hockey pucks with a four-inch antenna, these sensors are easily hidden, and can “pick up wheels or footprints” for up to three months at a time, Russell says. It’s a perfect surveillance tool for the remote valleys of eastern Afghanistan.

Soon, when one of the sensors picks up a signal, it’ll queue a spy blimp to focus in on the spot. “That’s a capability coming to a theater near you soon,” he adds.

Even more sophisticated are the UGSs being tested northeast of Norfolk, Virginia, at a Lockheed proving ground. Arrays of up to 50 palm-sized acoustic and seismic sensors form a mesh network. When one sensor detects a person or a vehicle passing by, it uses unlicensed radio frequency bands to pass an alert from one node to the next. The alert finally hits a communications gateway, which can send the signal via satellite, tactical radio network, or Wi-Fi to a command and control center. That signal can tip off additional sensors — or it can send a Twitter-like message to an intelligence officer’s phone or tablet.

When they’re not picking up signals or passing along messages, the sensors are all-but-shut-down, barely consuming any power. That allows them to last for weeks, buried underground. Or the sensors can be encased in hollow “rocks” equipped with miniature solar panels. A quick recharge from the sun will allow the sensor to “get through the night anywhere on Earth that U.S. forces operate,” says Plyburn.

Plyburn claims that the sensor’s battery, about the size of a postage stamp, has been able to go through 80,000 recharges, compared to a few hundred cycles for a typical lithium-ion battery. Even if he’s off by a factor of 10, the sensor’s battery could keep the machine operational for nearly twenty-two years.

Russell is skeptical of these assertions of longevity. “I’m sure there are a lot of claims by contractors,” he says. “My experience is: the longer the lifespan, the bigger the battery.”

Nor does Lockheed currently have a contract with Defense Department to mass-produce the sensors. But Plyburn says there has been interest around the armed forces, especially since the system is relatively cheap. Plyburn says each sensor could cost as little as $1,000 each — practically expendable for a military paying $80,000 for a single guided artillery round.

Lockheed isn’t the only company claiming that its sensors can operate for years on end. U.S. Special Operations Command has handed out at least $12 million in UGS contracts to tiny Camgian Microsystems, based out of Starksville, Mississippi. Company CEO Gary Butler, who spent years developing ultra-low power integrated circuits for Darpa, was awarded in March a patent for such a next-gen unattended sensor suite.

Rather than relaying alerts from node to node, each of Butler’s sensors is designed to send signals directly to a satellite — speeding up notifications, and cutting down on power consumed. Rather than a simple acoustic or seismic detector, the sensor relies a steerable, phased-array radar and moving-target indicator algorithms. That could give it a much greater ability to detect people and vehicles on the run. High-powered solar cells provide will enable up to “500,000 recharge cycles” could give the sensor a “10-20 year life,” according to the patent.

Butler won’t say how U.S. special operators are using his research, if at all. But when I ask him about the possibility of leaving UGS networks behind after American troops have officially left, Butler calls that “plausible. Very Plausible.”

Camgian’s patent claims that the sensor’s ease-of-use and small size means it “is easily emplaced in difficult areas, using airborne assets such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.” Edward Carapezza, who has been overseeing UGS research for more than two decades, says drones are already dropping unattended sensors into hostile locations.

“In certain areas, we certainly are using unmanned vehicles and unattended sensors together,” says Carapezza, who now works at the defense contractor General Atomics. He declined to name where these operations were being conducted. He simply gave the rationale for the missions. “Instead of sending patrols of our guys in, we send in drones and unattended sensors — dropping arrays, locating bad guys, and then putting weapons on target.”

The “MicroObserver” UGS from defense contractor Textron has been in the field since 2008. The U.S. Army is currently using the sensors in Afghanistan. “Another customer — we’re not allowed to say who or where — used it as part of a comprehensive border security program in a Middle Eastern country,” says Patty Shafer, a Textron executive.

Textron’s seismic sensors come in two varieties. The smaller, three inch-long model, weighing 1.4 pounds, will last about a month. The bigger system, a 4.4 pound spike, can be buried in the ground and gather intelligence for more than two years. It can detect and characterize people from 100 meters away, and vehicles from three times that distance, Shafer says. A conformal antenna allows it to communicate with a gateway five kilometers away.

Northrop Grumman employs a family of sensors for its Scorpion surveillance network.

“Seismic sensors work well detecting vehicles on bumpy roads, but lose range as the road becomes smoother, or the vehicle lighter. Typically, magnetic sensors sense only large vehicles at fairly short distances. The range of acoustic sensors depends upon environmental conditions such as humidity and surroundings. Most sense engine exhaust noise or other periodic pulse trains and measure the period to determine numbers of cylinders and classify the source,” explains a Northrop presentation to an academic conference on unattended sensors.

The Army has purchased over a thousand of the original versions, with an average of four sensors, each. The vast majority have been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 20 Scorpion II systems were recently bought by the Army Research Lab. The sensors can today spot people from 800 meters away, and vehicles from 2,100 meters. The sensors’ batteries wear out after a month.

These might have been eye-popping results, not long ago. But the U.S. military now has plans to keep its network of tiny, hidden spies going for much longer than that.

Brig. Gen. John Uberti, center, shows off some apps on his smartphone to Army Secretary John McHugh and Lt. Gen. Michael Ferriter, January 2012. Photo: U.S. Army

The Army’s mad for smartphones. It’s testing Android devices it bought from the local electronics store to see how they operate on its experimental, homebrewed data network. And one thing it seems to have forgotten to buy for the dismounted soldiers who’ll have to furiously tap the screens to send data during firefights: texting gloves.

A recent request for information from the Army says that there’s a need for a “capacitive touch screen compatible Army combat glove.” It’s a simple request: a “combat survivable” glove with enough stuff on the fingertips to ensure the “tactile accuracy” of troops mashing the screens on their handsets.

Combat survivable, in this case, means flame-retardant. As anyone who has ever served in the Army or spent time with those who have knows, you’re not getting off the base, into a truck and onto a mission unless your hands are wrapped in gloves that can withstand extreme heat. Taking off the gloves to text is not an option.

The Army is still working out all the details of how to equip soldiers with smartphones. The Android OS has the likely edge, largely owing to relative cheapness of devices running Android. But it’s still unclear if every soldier will someday use smartphones as a standard piece of kit. It’s also unclear how soldiers will get the phones — that is, if the Army will play favorites and require soldiers to purchase a specific phone; or if it’ll give soldiers a renewable stipend to purchase upgradable handsets, provided they meet Army standards for securing data. (Recent remarks from a top official in the Army smartphone program suggest the latter option has an edge.)

But the Army’s query about what texting gloves are on the market contains one new clue about how soldiers will one day use smartphones. The devices “will reside inside a protective case making the corners of the capacitive touch display difficult to reach,” the Army’s request reads. Prepare for some amazing auto-corrections.

Still, it’s a necessary question, and one that gets the Army thinking about something it doesn’t always consider: the user experience.

An F/A-18 from the Blue Angels demonstration squadron is fueled with a biofuel blend. Photo: U.S. Navy

The Navy’s ambitious renewable-energy plans aren’t sunk quite yet. But they took a major hit Thursday, when the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to all-but-ban the military from buying alternative fuels.

The House Armed Services Committee passed a similar measure earlier this month. But the House is controlled by Republicans, who are generally skeptical of alternative energy efforts. Democrats are in charge of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And if anything, the Senate’s alt-fuel prohibition goes even further than the House’s. If it becomes law, if would not only sink the Navy’s attempt to sail a “Great Green Fleet,” powered largely by biofuels. It would also sabotage a half-billion-dollar program to shore up a tottering biofuels industry.

Like their counterparts in the House, senators prohibited the Pentagon from buying renewable fuels that are more expensive than traditional ones — a standard that biofuels may never meet. In addition, the committee blocked the Defense Department from helping build biofuel refineries unless “specifically authorized by law” – just as the Navy was set to pour $170 million into an effort with the Departments of Energy and Agriculture to do precisely that.

The measures — amendments to the Pentagon’s budget for next year — were pushed by two Republicans. Sen. James Inhofe has long been one of the Republican’s fiercest critics of renewable energy efforts; Sen. John McCain has in recent years turned away from long-held eco-friendly positions.

“Adopting a ‘green agenda’ for national defense of course is a terrible misplacement of priorities,” McCain told National Journal Daily on Tuesday, calling it “a clear indication that the president doesn’t understand national security.”

Which Democrats joined McCain in passing the amendments is unclear; the vote was held in a closed session of the committee.

This was supposed to be a moment of triumph for Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who pledged to get half of the service’s energy from sources other than oil by 2020. Late next month, the Great Green Fleet was supposed to go on its inaugural, two-day demonstration voyage, with the destroyers plowing through the Pacific and F/A-18 jets will screaming into the air, thanks to a 50/50 mixture of bio- and fossil fuel. A full mission is planned for 2016.

“The Great Green Fleet doesn’t have an environmental agenda. It’s about maintaining America’s military and economic leadership across the globe in the 21st century,” Mabus told a Senate hearing in March, noting that every time the price of oil goes up by a dollar per barrel, it costs the Navy $31 million.”When anyone says we can’t afford to invest in developing alternative sources of energy, my reply is, ‘We can’t afford not to.’ We can’t afford to wait until price shocks or supply shocks leave us no alternative.”

In the short term, though, biofuels were going to cost significantly more than petroleum. After all, the biofuel industry is tiny, compared to the massive, century-old oil business. The science behind biofuels is relatively new. The Navy is still buying cupfuls off the stuff, compared to tanker-loads of oil it gets every day. In December, the Navy spent $12 million for 450,000 gallons of biofuel for the Green Fleet — paying about four times its price for fossil fuel.

Opponents pounced, calling it a waste of money in a time of relative austerity. ”Wouldn’t you agree that the thing they’d be more concerned about is having more ships, more planes, more prepositioned stocks?” Rep. Randy Forbes asked during a February hearing with Mabus. The alt-energy foes found justification in some of the Navy’s own studies, which openly questioned whether biofuels would ever be as cheap as oil products.

Then came the House vote. And now, the Senate.

“It is a disappointment that a slim majority of the Senate Armed Services Committee has chosen to restrict efforts by the Department of Defense to reduce dependence on foreign oil.  Today’s vote will hurt the DoD’s efforts to protect its budget from oil price shocks, diversify its energy mix and ensure security of supply,” Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate, said in a statement. “This is a step backwards.”

Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Dearborn guides a truck carrying boxes of food at Patrol Base Alcatraz, Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2011. Photo: DVIDS

In 2008, the Pentagon began investigating whether the main supplier of food to troops in Afghanistan overcharged taxpayers. Since then, there have been audits, recriminations and the discovery that the supplier may have overbilled the military as much as $756.9 million. Now lawmakers are squeezing both the Pentagon and the contractor in an attempt to find out what happened.

That’s according to a statement released today from the two heads of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations. The congressmen want documents and information within 10 days from both the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the Switzerland-based company, Supreme Foodservice GmbH. This might be difficult, because the Pentagon has alleged Supreme Foodservice — which has been paid $5.5 billion since 2005 to supply food to more than 250 bases and outposts – did not maintain invoices and truck manifests (.pdf) while transporting food, water and other materiel; nor did the company provide data to investigators on fuel costs, price estimates and even correct flight plans.

“It is outrageous that DLA could ever be in the position of possibly overpaying any vendor by three quarters of a billion dollars — especially at a time when troop levels are being scaled back because funding is tight,” said subcommittee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz in a statement. “The Subcommittee will work with the Department of Defense to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding this apparent lack of oversight.”

Supreme, meanwhile, maintains the high costs reflect the difficulty of operating in Afghanistan. The contractor also claims it is owed more than $1 billion by the Pentagon beyond the billions already paid, which when combined with the Pentagon’s own claims, “raises serious concerns regarding DLA’s contracting oversight,” according to the congressmen. It also calls into question the Pentagon’s consideration of Supreme Foodservice for another contract in December, worth a massive $10 to $30 billion over the next five years.

“The American taxpayers refuse to accept a government contractor that bills more than $750 million in unsubstantiated charges, and they refuse to accept the Pentagon’s failure to manage this contract properly,” Rep. John Tierney, the  ranking member on the committee, said in a statement.

A majority of the unaccounted costs ($455 million) involved airlifting fresh fruits and vegetables from the United Arab Emirates to Afghanistan and onto bases and isolated outposts — without oversight. The Pentagon claims the contractor also billed for nonexistent cargo and overcharged $124.3 million for “transportation and corrugated packing boxes,” according to Bloomberg.

Supreme also grew too big, too fast. The original contract between Supreme and the Pentagon applied to only four Afghanistan bases. Within months, Supreme grew to supplying 64 bases. Today, the number of bases and outposts supplied by Supreme exceeds 250. Just getting fuel and food in and out of the country alone is a challenge — let alone supplying the goods to a slew of different military organizations.

“It was hard enough to locate appropriate items when we had to make substitutions in the goods we delivered and cope with other anomalies in the field,” Gaurav Kumar, Supreme’s information technology director, said in a June 2009 promotional “case study” for Microsoft’s Dynamics AX resource planning suite, which Supreme adopted in 2009. “But we also constantly struggled with invoices not matching the goods delivered, containing errors, and inconsistent data.”

Kumar added then: “When I looked at our inventory module, I saw that it had no checks built in for handling inventory management and addressing the principles of warehousing, such as systematic stock management and stock traceability, which are especially important with food service,” he said. “We tried to program some functionality to that end, but the effort was extremely frustrating and produced inconsistent outcomes.”

Supreme’s resource software was also designed by a German company — in German. This meant few of Supreme’s international workforce, which speaks English as a common language, could understand it. Tracking fuel costs were prone to errors, given the effect of changes in temperature and monetary value to the price of gas. ”Tracking changes in volume was difficult, and price management for us was inelegant, time-consuming, and error-prone,” he said.

The Microsoft promo suggests Supreme mostly resolved its logistics problem. But this also needs a heaping dose of skepticism. And with an upcoming contract worth tens of billions, and with pressure from Congress, it’d be a wonder if the military renews with the company again.

The filming of Act of Valor. Photo: Relativity Media

TAMPA, Florida — Adm. William McRaven, America’s top commando officer, loves movies about his special operators. “My introduction to Special Operations Forces was the movie The Green Berets,” he tells Danger Room, referring to the classic 1968 John Wayne flick set in Vietnam. But that doesn’t mean McRaven is eager to spill the secrets of Special Operations Command to today’s filmmakers. And in the case of one controversial upcoming movie about the May 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, McRaven says he and his command provided no assistance whatsoever.

“We don’t have a partnership” with the filmmakers, McRaven says. “I have no interaction and no one on my staff has any interaction with — what’s her name? Bigelow?”

McRaven is referring to director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, who are making the movie Zero Dark Thirty about the bin Laden takedown. They’re the same creative team that was behind the 2008 Iraq War flick The Hurt Locker, which benefited from high levels of military support but still ended up disappointing many viewers for its sensationalistic portrayal of Army bomb squads.

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the White House, Defense Department and CIA all offered rare, if not unprecedented, access to Boal and Bigelow. The access included a guided tour of a secret CIA planning facility called The Vault and linking Boal up with what a Defense Department official described as “a planner, SEAL Team 6 operator and commander.” The only restriction was that Boal not disclose the SEAL’s name.

Defense Department Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Douglas Wilson stressed that Bigelow’s and Boal’s access would be unique. “We need to be careful here so we don’t open the media floodgates on this,” Wilson wrote in an e-mail obtained by Judicial Watch.

The government-Hollywood collusion has at least one lawmaker up in arms — especially considering that Zero Dark Thirty was originally timed to hit theaters right before the November elections, potentially giving Pres. Barack Obama, who ordered the bin Laden raid, a big PR boost. The movie has since been bumped back to December, but Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, still considers the administration’s collaboration with the filmmakers “dangerous” and “troubling.”

McRaven insists his command will not get involved in anything even remotely partisan. “We are completely apolitical,” he says.

Col. Tim Nye, Special Operations Command’s top media handler, tells Danger Room he did receive an informal inquiry regarding possible cooperation between the filmmakers and the command. Nye says no one ever followed up on the informal inquiry — and besides, he says, Special Operations Command would not have agreed to help out on the movie unless specifically directed to do so by higher authority. That didn’t happen, and the command sat out entirely from any government collaboration with Bigelow et al., Nye says.

Nye explains that it would have been bad form for McRaven to be involved in the film, as McRaven oversaw the forces involved in the bin Laden raid. “He’d be approving a movie about himself,” Nye says.

The White House and CIA apparently had no such qualms. And according to McRaven and Nye, whatever access Bigelow and Boal had to special operators occurred outside of Special Operations Command — and without the command’s knowledge.

Which is not to say Special Operations Command would never help out with a Hollywood production. Navy SEALs under McRaven’s command actually starred in the recent Act of Valor movie. Beyond that, Nye says the command is advising filmmakers on no fewer than 11 current productions that don’t represent the conflict of interest that Zero Dark Thirty does. Nye even lists movies he says are good examples of joint military-Hollywood productions. At the top of the list: 2001′s Blackhawk Down … and all three Transformers flicks.

It’s only been three months since the Pentagon’s latest robot — the one able to staple paperwork and answer phone calls with a single autonomous arm —  demonstrated some of those amazing skills. Now, the freaky humanoid ‘bot is back. And this time, he has two arms. And a name.

Meet Robbie. This particular robot was designed by RE2, a robotics firm in Pittsburgh, which showed him off to IEEE Spectrum at their International Conference on Robotics and Automation last week. RE2 was one of six teams initially contracted by Darpa, the Pentagon’s robo-loving research agency, to work on their Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program. Launched two years ago, the program aims to develop robots that can perform complex tasks with minimal input from their human overlords.

Initially, Darpa gave each of the six teams a one-armed robot to work with. With the program entering its next phase, according to RE2′s Patrick Rowe, the playing field has narrowed to three groups. And — as evidenced by the video above — Darpa’s asked them to work with ‘bots who boast two roving arms instead.

Both of Robbie’s arms move with seven degrees of freedom, along with a rotating wrist and multiple, dexterous fingers. Those fingers also incorporate pressure sensors, allowing Robbie to touch and sense its environs in a manner akin to humans. And take a good look at the ‘bot’s head. That gaping mouth is actually a LIDAR camera. Behind those beady eyes lurks a stereo-vision camera. And what look like ears are, in fact, microphones.

With features like that, there’s no doubt that Robbie has plenty of skills to show off. Already, the one-armed version of the robot can perform 18 tasks with relative autonomy. This latest video doesn’t include demos of any fantastical new abilities, but Rowe says that Darpa wants the ‘bot to “perform two-armed tasks … something like changing a tire on a small car.”

The ARM program is only one of several recent Darpa initiatives to develop robots with enhanced skills and greater autonomy. In its latest contest, the agency is asking robotics aces across the country to develop a bipedal robot that can do things like drive cars, make repairs and traverse rough terrain. And let’s not forget AlphaDog, a behemoth four-legged ‘bot meant to rove for miles while lugging tons of gear, or the Cheetah, an uber-speedy robot being designed to “zigzag to chase and evade.”

Fortunately, Cheetah-Bot is still confined to a laboratory treadmill. But later this year, robot aficionados just might get to see Robbie’s abilities up close and personal. A version of the robot is being shipped off for a display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. And the ‘bot already seems to be getting ready: At video’s 1:40 mark, Robbie actually holds the videographer’s camera and adeptly films his own ‘bod. Impressive, and also astute. As any model would attest, if you’re gonna be on display, you’ve gotta know your best angles.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference on May 23. Photo: Luanne Dietz/Wired.com

TAMPA, Florida — The Special Operations Forces Industry Conference had a surprise guest on Wednesday — one that had some here scratching their heads. At a black-tie dinner following the day’s panel discussions, product displays and tech demos, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived behind a phalanx of State Department and Special Operations Command security. Clinton’s presence seemed incongruous at the gaudy Tampa Convention Center packed with weary-looking commando staffers, paunchy industry reps and chipper media handlers. Special Operations Forces are a big deal, sure, but it was still just a trade show.

Then Clinton, wearing pearls and a silver and black blouse, climbed the stage and began to speak. And soon it all made more sense. She had an idea to sell — and to defend — to some of the people she’s counting on to make it happen.

In a 30-minute speech preceding a dinner of beef tenderloin and roasted red potatoes, Clinton first heaped praise on Adm. William McRaven, chief of Special Operations Command and her host at the conference. Then she described a vision in which shadowy U.S. and allied Special Operations Forces, working hand in hand with America’s embassies and foreign governments, together play a key role preventing low-intensity conflicts. And where prevention fails, the same commando-diplomat team goes on the attack, combining the Special Operations Forces’ fighting prowess with the language and cultural skills of State Department officers.

She cited the U.S. intervention in Yemen and the American-led manhunt for rebel leader Joseph Kony in Congo as early examples. In Congo, diplomats met with Congolese officials, preparing the ground for commando manhunters months in advance. In Yemen, the State Department counters extremists’ propaganda with its own pro-government messages while Special Operations Forces partner with Yemeni troops to attack the insurgents.

This new inter-agency Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, housed at the State Department, got into an online advertising war with the local al-Qaida affiliate recently, Clinton revealed. A couple of weeks ago, that group “began an advertising campaign on key tribal web sites bragging about killing Americans and trying to recruit new supporters. Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaida attacks have taken on the Yemeni people. We can tell our efforts are starting to have an impact because extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the internet.”

In principle what Clinton described is the same “smart power” that she’s been advocating for years — only now it’s smarter, and more powerful, than ever before. “Special Operations Forces exemplify the ethic of smart power,” she said. “Fast and flexible. Constantly adapting. Learning new languages and cultures. Dedicated to forming partnerships where we can and acting alone when we must.”

For its part, the State Department has stood up a new bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which Clinton said “is working to put into practice lessons learned over the past decade and institutionalize a civilian surge capacity to deal with crises and hotspots.” Together, Special Operations Forces and State’s new Conflict Bureau are the twin arms of an expanding institution for waging small, low-intensity shadow wars all over the world.

But rumor has it Clinton’s vision has its detractors — and that its implementation in hotspots such as Yemen and Congo has made some Special Operations Forces officers very unhappy. In Yemen, in particular, some commando officers look upon the State Department’s expanding shadow-war powers as a bureaucratic intrusion on what should be military territory. A source tells Danger Room that in Yemen State has effectively hijacked all U.S. counter-terrorism funding, requiring a labyrinthine approval process for even small expenditures. According to detractors, the funding control is a way of cementing State’s expansion into the Special Operations Forces traditional remit.

McRaven does not share the officers’ objections. The admiral has enthusiastically widened and deepened his command’s alliances with commando forces from allied nations — all in a bid to build what he calls the “global SOF partnership.” The Army 10th Special Forces Group’s ongoing deployment to Afghanistan is a perfect example: 10th Group’s Afghanistan task force includes commandos from Poland, Romania and several other countries. In a sense, McRaven is becoming more of a diplomat as Clinton becomes more of a warrior. Meeting in the middle, they’ve apparently chosen to be allies instead of rivals.

In that context, Clinton’s appearance at an otherwise minor military trade show is an important signal. McRaven is showing his officers that if he and America’s top diplomat can get along, then they can get along with their own State Department counterparts, as well. An evolving vision of American warfare is counting on it.

TAMPA, Florida — Dial down the god-awful soundtrack and try to ignore the choppy camera work, but re-watch Lockheed Martin’s promo video depicting its two-year-old Human Universal Load Carrier exoskeleton. Because inside of the year, an improved version of this combat exoskeleton could be headed to Afghanistan for combat trials. That’s right: cyborg soldiers might, might just be months away from becoming a front-line reality.

At least, that’s what a Lockheed rep indicated today at a Special Forces trade show in Tampa. Asked if there were plans to deploy the HULC exoskeleton overseas following its next round of Army testing, Lockheed’s special operation program manager Keith Maxwell nodded yes and said, “after that.”

Maxwell was wearing what he described as a “smaller, lighter, more energy-efficient” version of the battery-powered external skeleton, complete with an unloaded machine gun on a pivoting mechanical arm. He asked us not to photograph the exoskeleton, but he was happy to discuss it.

In essence, HULC adds an artificial, external spine, hips, legs and the aforementioned pivoting arm to a soldier’s flesh and bones. The machine extremities, powered by a lithium-ion battery, redistribute and transfer up to 200 pounds of weight down and off the wearer’s body, allowing him to carry more, longer. “There’s a 10 percent metabolic cost for the benefit of a heavy load removed,” Maxwell says.

Add loads of food, water, batteries and other supplies, and you become a human pack mule for your squadmates. Swap them out for a heavy machine gun and you transform into what Maxwell calls a “one-man crew-served weapon.” Maxwell says he live-fired his machine gun just before the trade show and “felt the recoil eliminated down to one-third.”

Lockheed originally rolled out HULC in 2010, but in a heavier, bulkier form that tended to run down its batteries in just an hour. The current model can go for up to eight hours “on the march,” and lasts “days and days” on a single charge if you’re just standing guard with a machine gun. Lockheed is still working on a fuel cell meant to provide 72 hours of power in even the most strenuous conditions.

Two summers ago the Army paid Lockheed $1.1 million to test HULC at the Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts. There, Lockheed discovered that training was critical. Maxwell says soldiers who expected to strap on the exoskeleton and leap into action without training on it first generally disliked the system. But with 90 minutes of instruction on “the right series of movements,” wearers were able to move comfortably.

In September the Army will take the improved exoskeleton out for field tests in the United States. If all goes well and Lockheed can get the required safety certifications, HULC will head to a deployed location for a front-line trial. (These days “deployed” almost always means Afghanistan.) That won’t leave HULC much time for testing in a combat environment, as regular U.S. forces are accelerating their withdrawal after 11 years of war.

But Special Forces are slated to remain in Afghanistan for years to come. If they adopt the exoskeletons, we could be seeing (one-sided) cyborg combat on a growing scale in the near future.