watching 60 minutes earlier today and heard something that caught my ear, while Woodward was being interviewed about his new book talking about the surge these few lines came out

(CBS) But beyond all of that, Woodward reports, for the first time, that there is a secret behind the success of the surge: a sophisticated and lethal special operations program.

"This is very sensitive and very top secret, but there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target, and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, insurgent leaders, renegade militia leaders. That is one of the true breakthroughs," Woodward told Pelley.

"But what are we talking about here? It's some kind of surveillance? Some kind of targeted way of taking out just the people that you're looking for? The leadership of the enemy?" Pelley asked.

"I'd love to go through the details, but I'm not going to," Woodward replied.

The details, Woodward says, would compromise the program.

"For a reporter, you don’t allow much," Pelley remarked.

"Well no, it’s with reluctance. From what I know about it, it's one of those things that go back to any war, World War I, World War II, the role of the tank, and the airplane. And it is the stuff of which military novels are written," Woodward said.

"Do you mean to say that this special capability is such an advance in military technique and technology that it reminds you of the advent of the tank and the airplane?" Pelley asked.

"Yeah," Woodward said. "If you were an al Qaeda leader or part of the insurgency in Iraq, or one of these renegade militias, and you knew about what they were able to do, you'd get your ass outta town."

so apparently the military has something new that would rival the invention of the plane and tank for modern warfare. and if it truly has the capibility to find anyone why havent they found Bin Landen

i myself think it may be sometype of NSA space station in stationary orbit over the middle east with the capibility to zoom in anywhere with night vision and maybe even weapon capable. what you all think???

I believe that 'something' is the media. There's nothing more dangerous or controlling than that.

than why would he say "If you were an al Qaeda leader or part of the insurgency in Iraq, or one of these renegade militias, and you knew about what they were able to do, you'd get your ass outta town."

that sounds more focused on them not us

It's pretty easy to put together. sophisticated UAV's with weapon systems and advanced visual capabilities plus enhancements in facial recognition means you can have swarms of automatic targetting systems that just need a human to verify the target and press a button.

The trick is then monitoring communications and networks to find out who they are.

it smells of HAARP to me.

"And it is the stuff of which military novels are written,"
im sure there are enough books about UAV's already, i have a feeling this is something new entirely

Originally posted by Shere Khaan
It's pretty easy to put together. sophisticated UAV's with weapon systems and advanced visual capabilities plus enhancements in facial recognition means you can have swarms of automatic targetting systems that just need a human to verify the target and press a button.

The trick is then monitoring communications and networks to find out who they are.

i thought that was old news, i remember watching a doco on that 2-3 years ago, its not really that top secret.

i was thinking maybe along the lines of a virus custom made for a single persons DNA, you could spray a whole town with the virus but it would only effect the person it was custom made for.

They might referring to so called smart dust. It is a system that gives us the ability to over fly an area and drop without detection smart intelligence gathering micro systems that are a dynamically networked system and are all tiny specs of material that look like nothing and are composed of microphones that transmit using a burst pulsed modulation transmitters in the quasi optical frequency range that can only be detected with specialized equipment. These are being deployed and they are passive solar designed to work for months at a time and are not transmitting in the normal radio spectrum so they go undetected.

Maybe they have figured out how to eavesdrop in on conversations, even when held indoors, from space, or other remote locations. Sound is vibration, low frequency, which may even put out variations on things like windows, or other types of basic building materials, that can be observed with special instrumention by subtle changes in light frequencies as the surface vibrates in reflection of the sounds vibrations. Ok, pure speculation, but it seems possible.

I was wondering if it involved one of the ufos people are seeing. I think those silver balls on google earth are hovering UAVs. my other vote goes to robust personal camoflauge

That smart dust is intriguing too but I bet theres a way to disable a bunch of them at once.

[edit on 9/8/08 by stikkinikki]

I bet the gov. reactivated their remote viewing psychics. U can run, but u can't hide.

Well the first thing that popped into my head were the unmanned drones, if they operate them stealthily enough, im sure they could do a great job killing off those high targets of interest...

Originally posted by robertnesta
i myself think it may be sometype of NSA space station in stationary orbit over the middle east with the capibility to zoom in anywhere with night vision and maybe even weapon capable. what you all think???

Well just there you would have to think what orbit that station would have to be in, space stations don't just hang over a specific location - and you sure as hell cant go flying the thing just anywhere! The GPS satalites do stay over specific points on the globe - they are put in to a geo sync orbit, which is pretty far out.

A circular geosynchronous orbit in the plane of the Earth's equator has a radius of approximately 42,164 km (from the center of the Earth). A satellite in such an orbit is at an altitude of approximately 35,786 kilometersabove mean sea level. It will maintain the same position relative to the Earth's surface. If one could see a satellite in geostationary orbit, it would appear to hover at the same point in the sky, i.e., not exhibit diurnal motion, while one would see the Sun, Moon, and stars traverse the heavens behind it. This is sometimes called a Clarke orbit. Such orbits are useful for telecommunications satellites.

(emphasis mine)

Nearly 36 thousand km is a hell of a long way to be launching attacks me thinks.

I am surprised nobody mentioned invisibility cloaks. I remember seeing a video of a tank crew being rescued after an IED hit by someone that was cloaked. Imagine being able to spy or take anyone out without being detected, I would say that's pretty revolutionary...

I just came here to start a thread on this very subject, but the OP beat me to it!

These comments last night from Woodward really stuck with me, and they've had me wondering what this secret could be. It clearly has something to do with locating al Qaida leaders, and using already established means (ie: Predator drone, etc.) to kill them.

So it may be safe to assume that we are talking about a sophisticated surveillance system. Someone in this thread has already mentioned the possibility of facial recognition via satellite or UAV. This could very well be the case. But the problem with that is that for some of these shady terrorist leaders, we don't even have any known pictures of them. And if you're taking a picture or video from a UAV or satellite, then wouldn't you only be getting the tops of heads, and not faces? Unless they're staring up into the sky, then it may be difficult to get a good shot of someones face and use facial software to identify them. But, I could be wrong.

If I had to guess what it was, and this is not based on any military knowledge (of which I have little to none!), I would say it is an ability to monitor every phone call made inside Iraq. This system would monitor all land line, cell phone, and satellite calls made in the area. Maybe even radio frequencies, too. Anyway, this sophisticated program would have the ability to detect, through voice recognition software, any communications made by a known terrorist leader. They could then zero in on their location and take them out.

Another theory that I have involves some kind of UAV or satellite monitoring of Iraq. Let's say that it focuses on some of the main cities, or hotbeds of terrorist activity. Imagine if they could record some kind of live video feed, and be able to zoom in down to incredible levels where they could read some one's newspaper. Anyway, let's say there's a suicide bombing. Imagine if you could go into the system and use some type of "rewind" feature, and follow the trail of the suicide bomber over the previous few days. You could see where he came from, who he met with, and so on and so forth. From there, you could see who the people he talked to spoke with. Anyway, you could follow all of these trails right to the door of the leadership, and then take them out.

Anyways, I'm sure I'm way off on my guesses. It will probably be a couple of decades before we even know what this secret weapon is. But it is extremely exciting and fascinating. And if Woodward is as impressed with it as he seems, then I'm sure it is partially responsible for turning the tide of this war.

it sould like a very accurate microwave cannon that can be used from space indeed. I know they made satelites able to recognise people as they walk around , however i am not sure if this could be combined with a pin-point microwave cannon .. this could be very dangerous in the hands of a bad government.. as it could kill all the inconvenient people just by sending the list to the on-board computer of the sattelite. I am sure they do not care very much about the "confussions" as long as the target is also hit..

edit : the Blue Gene computer (or similar) could do the processing, technically every person could be traced in real time and sure circles of "friends" can be created as the subject is interacting with the other people. So, imagine that you have a dedicated satelite that would trace 1 person only - every single step counted, it would know where the person is located at any given moment etc - and it would build a database on how the subject behave or what would be "unique" about the person (heat signature , walk , etc) . Also it is said that if you have a friend of a freidn of a friend of a friend ( like 14 times friend of a friend) you can get from any person to any person on this world .. here we go!

[edit on 8-9-2008 by sty]