As China commissioned its first-ever aircraft carrier aviation unit, Asia's other rising power, India, gave its carrier aviators a serious equipment upgrade with the introduction of 16 brand-new Russian-made MiG-29K and four MiG-29KUB carrier-borne fighters earlier this week.

India has operated old British aircraft carriers for decades. Right now it flies aging Sea Harrier jump jets from INS Viraat, formerly the Royal Navy carrier Hermes. These Sea Harriers are subsonic attack planes with limited payloads operating from a carrier that was built in the 1950s.

The supersonic MiG-29K is an updated, naval version of the Soviet Union's 1980s-vintage MiG-29, which was designed to counter U.S. Air Force F-15s and F-16s in the skies over Europe should the Cold War ever turn hot. The planes are way faster than the 1980s-vintage Sea Harriers and can carry more weapons capable of shooting down enemy planes and hitting enemy ships.

The Indian navy's new MiGs are going to be flown off of India's newest carrier, the former Soviet navy "aircraft-carrying cruiser" Admiral Gorshkov. That vessel has been massively refurbished at a Russian shipyard into the soon-to-be delivered INS Vikramaditya, a full-on carrier that, after much work, looks remarkably similar to China's first carrier, the Liaoning -- herself an old Soviet carrier. (Vikramaditya is supposed to be delivered to the Indian navy sometime this year.)

(China is also reportedly building at least two aircraft carriers of its own, set to enter service in the next decade.)

India will get a second squadron's worth of MiG-29Ks to fly off its first locally made carrier, the INS Vikrant, which is slated for delivery in 2015. (Click here to see great images of her under construction and get a primer on the delays that have troubled India's carrier program.)  

So yeah, China isn't the only Asian nation that's building up its carrier force.

And keep in mind that India has one distinct advantage over China when it comes to carrier operations: it has been operating fighter jets from aircraft carriers for more than 50 years. It can take decades to master the art of flying fast jets off of the relatively tiny, floating airfields. Still MiG-29s are much bigger airplanes than the Sea Harriers and they can't just land vertically on a flight deck, as a Harrier can. This means that Indian navy pilots will have to relearn one of the toughest skills in aviation; landing on a pitching, rolling flight-deck and snagging an arrestor cable to come to a stop in a couple of hundred feet.

History was made this morning when the U.S. Navy's stealthy X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator (UCAS-D) drone became the first unmanned stealth jet to take off from an aircraft carrier's catapults.

The jet launched off the USS George H.W. Bush in the Atlantic Ocean at 11:18 this morning and landed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland at 12:24 p.m., according to Navy public affairs tweets:

• MT@bull_pao: Can confirm#X47Blaunched from BUSH at 11:18A. Operating around the carrier. Images and video to followabout 23 minutes ago
• #BREAKING:#USNavyhistory is made! Was airborne at 11:18A.
• @Bull_pao5m X47 landed at Pax River 1224--65 minute flight--video and images to follow

(To be fair, The Wall Street Journal's Julian Barnes may have beat the Navy in announcing the flight on Twitter)

The plane was supposed to conduct several simulated carrier landing approaches before flying inland and accross the Chesapeak Bay to Patuxent River, according to this Navy press release.

The plane followed  taxiid onto one of the ship's bow catapults and then lauched into the air where it was controlled by an operator aboard the ship, as the jet made its way closer to shore, control was passed to an operator stationed at Patuxent River who controlled the jet on its flight home through mainland airspace.  

Remember, the X-47B is meant to prove that a fighter-size stealth jet can operated from the crowded deck of an aircraft carrier. The Northrop Grumman-made drone is meant to test technology that will allow unmanned stealth jets capable of performing spy and strike missions to safely taxi on a flight deck and execute missions autonomously -- with a human supervising them but not flying them, even as the plane makes carrier landings, one of the toughest feats in aviation. (Click here to read about the technology the Navy will use for this.)

The X-47B program is set to continue until 2015, paving the way for the Navy's Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike program, which aims to have a fleet of stealth unmanned spy and strike jets operating from carriers by the start of the next decade.

Stealthy, unmanned jets capable of operating from carriers and doing everything from aerial refueling to spy and strike missions will play a role in the Navy's strategy for dealing with the great distances involved in operations in the Pacific region. Such craft could take off from a carrier far aways from an enemy's shores -- and hopefully out of the range of anti-ship missiles -- refuel each other and penetrate an enemy's advanced air defenses to perform strike or spy missions.

The U.S. isn't the only nation developing such UAVs. Britain, France, Russia and possibly China are also working stealthy, jet powered drones capable of performing combat missions in the face of modern air defenses.

Click here to read more about the X-47B.

Here's a little tidbit to impress your friends this weekend: Bloomberg Government just published a report on the Pentagon's and Intelligence Communities' classified spending and found that the vast majority of classified weapons development money goes to the U.S. Air Force.

That's right, the flyboys get the most cash to develop everything from super-secret stealth bombers and spy planes to space and cyber weaponry, according to the report. 

"Almost all classified procurement money and two-thirds of the research and development funds were allocated to the Air Force," reads the B-Gov report. "About $17 billion of Air Force classified funds are labeled ‘Other Procurement,' which probably includes money for space and cyber programs."

The report points out that big chunk of cash in the Air Force's classified budget is for the service's new bomber (I took the iPhone photo above of Northrop Grumman's concept design for the bomber a couple of years ago at a trade show. It apparently rides rainbows of doom).

The Air Force requested $292 million for fiscal 2013 to develop a new strategic bomber. The funding for it will quickly rise to $2.7 billion in fiscal 2017, making it the largest special access program in that year.

The bomber is a stealth jet that's supposed to work hand in hand with a "family" of other stealthy spy planes and fighter jets, along with satellites, to go out and hunt down targets in heavily defended airspace, Air Force leaders have repeatedly said.

The planned fleet of 80 to 100 new stealth bombers will be built using existing technology in order to get them into service by the 2020s (some think that the planes are already flying over the Nevada desert) and will be designed to be "optionally-manned."

This means that the aircraft doesn't need pilots aboard for the most dangerous conventional strike missions (it can also help for incredibly long missions that would be too long for pilots to endure.) However, for less risky sorties or nuclear strike missions, the plane would be manned.

Happy Friday!

The stealth arms race is spreading. This image, snapped by a Flight Global reporter, Tolga Ozbek, at this year's International Defense Industry Fair in Istanbul, Turkey, this week, is apparently one of three proposed stealth fighter designs for the Turkish Air Force.

The new jets are being developed under a program called TFX aimed at producing a locally made fighter (with a little help from Swedish jet-maker, Saab) to replace Turkey's fleet of F-16s. The plan is that they will be operational sometime in the early 2020s and compliment Turkey's fleet of 116 U.S.-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

If TFX gets past the design phase, Turkey will join the United States, Russia, and China as the sole developers and operators of manned stealth fighter jets. Japan may be Turkey to the Punch with its  stealth fighter program called ATD-X. (South Korea is trying to develop its own stealth jet by the 2020s, but that effort has been put on hold.)

But a big question remains for nations developing manned stealth jets: Are they even needed given the advent of stealth drones like the U.S. Navy's X-47B, France's nEUROn and Britain's Taranis that can perform reconnaissance and ground attack missions -- and even land on aircraft carrier decks? One can only imagine what unmanned planes under development 10 years from now will be capable of doing.

So what's new in the Defense Department's new report about Chinese military capabilities? The biggest news seems to be that the Pentagon is actually saying that Chinese-military hackers are attacking its networks. Not that this should be news to readers of Killer Apps.

The report states that numerous U.S. government computer systems around the world are being "targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military." It goes on to say that China is using cyber espionage to collect intelligence on U.S. diplomatic, economic, and "defense industrial base sectors that support U.S. national defense programs."

The same skills being used by Chinese cyberspies to steal information could easily be used in a destructive attack against U.S. networks, the report points out.

Again, nothing new. Heck, this isn't even the first time the U.S. government has called out China on hacking.

The real question is: what will it take to stop widespread cyber espionage before it leads to all-out cyber warfare: Sanctions? A military deterrent? What about a nuclear-armed military deterrent?

Preventing cyber espionage and cyber attacks is "a consequences calculation and the consequences aren't there," said one Senate staffer who works on cyber issues. For "everybody from your common hacker to your professional hacker to the nation states, the consequences aren't there" to deter these kinds of actions.

He went on to compare the current era of cyber espionage to the "Napster days" of free music downloading.

"There was nothing that was going to deter college-age students from ripping off music until there was a consequence that was associated with it and the RIAA [Recording Industry Association of America] had to go out there and start suing," said the staffer.

Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer at Mandiant, thinks that while it's important for the U.S. government to call out the Chinese government's bad behavior, it's going to take more than harsh language to deter state-backed cyber espionage. (Remember, Mandiant is the firm that published a report in February detailing the exploits of what is believed to be a PLA hacking unit against worldwide targets, including the U.S. government.)

"It's important for noncommercial, government entities like DOD to make definitive statements on Chinese cyber capabilities," Bejtlich told Killer Apps. However, "because the Chinese consider espionage a tool for economic development, and the economy is one of their top national security concerns, they will not change course if the U.S. only complains with words. They are more likely to constrain their behavior if the U.S. imposes specific sanctions and exercises all elements of national power."

Bejtlich's comments echo those of Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee who has repeatedly urged the State Department to impose sanctions on any foreigner found to aid cyber espionage against the United States government or businesses.

As the militaries of the United States and Britain purchase more and more of the same networked hardware, most notably the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (above), the two nations are increasing collaboration in cyber warfare, according to a Pentagon official.

"Cybersecurity is a growing area of cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom," the official told Killer Apps. "We're sharing more information and going deeper into threat analysis and response planning than we ever have before.  Both nations firmly agree we need improved multilateral cyber coordination and we're working to do just that.  Cyber will also be on the agenda for discussions at the upcoming NATO conference in June."

His comments come a day after British Defence (with a "c") Secretary Phil Hammond was in Washington meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to discuss the situation in Syria, the war in Afghanistan, how to deal with Iran, and visit U.S. Cyber Command at Fort Meade, MD. (As is sadly the norm, a spokesman for the command could not talk about Hammond's visit to Fort Meade.)

While much of the discussion between the two officials centered current or potential conflict zones and major weapons buys like the F-35, Hagel announced that the two allies will increase their cooperation in the cyber world.

"The United Kingdom's continued commitment to [the F-35] program, and our growing cooperation in new priority areas like cyber, is helping ensure this alliance has the kind of [cutting-edge] capabilities needed for the future," Hagel said during a Pentagon press conference yesterday.

"The U.K. and the U.S. remain in lock step on these projects, and as we take them forward, we will ensure the continuity of those vital capabilities," added Hammond.

It makes sense for the two to discuss F-35 and cyber in the same breath. The F-35 relies on tens of thousands of lines of software code to function. It is perhaps, the most networked plane in history, using software to do everything from fire weapons to beam chunks of data to other aircraft or command centers. Last fall, Killer Apps reported that the jet's computerized maintenance system was found to be vulnerable to hacking -- meaning that, if penetrated by spies, they could see everything from how many pilots were available to fly the jets to the maintenance status of all the airplanes in a squadron.

This comes just after Bloomberg news reported that QinetiQ, a British defense firm (that used to be a Ministry of Defense research agency until it was privatized in 2001 suffered) a series of major cybersecurity breaches at the hands of Chinese government hackers. QinetiQ works on a host of advanced technologies from cyber to robotics with U.S. government agencies such as the DOD  and the Department of Energy. In fact, the firm runs Britain's version of Area 51, a site known as MoD Boscombe Down and has been called the inspiration for the workplace of James Bond's gadget-maker, Q.

View U.S. military presence in Africa in a larger map

The United States may be deploying 10 have a handfull of troops helping the French in Mali, but that's just a drop in the bucket of the U.S. military's presence in Africa, which has been quietly building for the last decade. You've probably heard about the 2,000-troop hub at Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, and the 100 special operators hunting Joseph Kony. But less is known about the handful of U.S. drone bases scattered across the continent and the dozens of exercises involving hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops (Click the placemarks on the map above for a quick description of what U.S. troops are doing in each country.)

A quick look at exercises and other activities conducted by U.S. Africa Command this spring alone reveals a U.S. military presence in more than a dozen countries -- from Cape Verde in the West to the Seychelles in the East and Morocco in the North. These exercises have shared medical techniques with the Nigerian military, provided intelligence training in Congo, trained special operators in Cameroon, and even included an East African Special Operations Conference in Zanzibar.

Just look at the U.S. Army's page on Africa to find even more examples of soldiers deploying to Africa.

In 2012, Africa Command planned 14 major exercises with African militaries, according to the command's website. Meanwhile, the Foreign Military Financing program gave African militaries $45 million to buy American-made weapons in 2011. Tunisia received the most cash ($17 million), followed by Morocco ($9 million) and Liberia ($7 million).

Let's take a close-up look at the eight reported U.S. drone bases scattered across equatorial Africa that are depicted on this map.

1) First up is Camp Lemmonier, which houses thousands of U.S. personnel and has -- according to satellite imagery -- also hosted everything from F-15E Strike Eagle bombers and C-130 cargo planes, to PC-12 special ops planes and MQ-1 Predator or MQ-9 Reaper UAVS.

2) Next is the U.S. Indian Ocean drone base in the Seychelles that's used to hunt Somali pirates and other seaborne ne'er do wells. You can clearly see a tan-colored "clamshell" tent on the northwest end of the runway -- a common indicator of a U.S. military presence at an airstrip.

3) Speaking of clamshell tents, this Bing map shows several at what appears to be a fairly large and newly constructed facility near the old terminal at Entebbe Airport on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda. The old terminal at Entebbe is famous as the site of the Israeli commando raid that freed hundreds of passengers from a hijacked Air France flight in 1976.

We've been inundated with information about the threat that foreign cyber attacks pose to U.S. power systems, banks, and transportation infrastructure for years now. Now, the Air Force's research arm is turning its attention toward protecting space systems from cyberwar.

The military relies on its massive fleet of spacecraft -- from satellites to secret space planes like the X-37B shown above -- to do everything from providing precision navigation and targeting to passing secure communications from stealth bombers to their bases as they fly over hostile territory. It's such a critical asset that Air Force officials, worried about enemies like China or Russia taking out U.S. satellites with anti-satellite missiles, that the service occasionally practices operating for "a day without space," in order to get used to the notion that it may not be able to rely on its orbital infrastructure.

Anyone who has been paying attention to cyberwarfare knows that it would be far cheaper to disrupt or take down U.S. space assets via cyber attack than it would be to develop and launch a missile.

Just imagine if an enemy were able to scramble secure satellite communications or manipulate GPS coordinates, thus sending U.S. troops to the wrong locations.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has kicked off a new program looking at technology that would protect spacecraft from these kinds of cyber attacks.

(The Ohio-based lab is the Air Force's far-out research lab, responsible for developing insect-sized UAVs, stealthy, special ops transport jets, and air-breathing engines capable of propelling aircraft at speeds up to Mach 6.)

"AFRL seeks to gain understanding of the state of industry research pertaining to protecting both ground- and space-based assets that provide space services, ranging from the space parts supply chain to the conduct of integrated space operations," reads this RFI that was updated last week.

In English, that means that the Air Force wants to protect from cyber attacks the networks of every firm that has a hand in building spacecraft or space control systems, and of course the actual spacecraft once they are aloft.

Here are some highlights of the specific cyber-defense technology the lab is interested in:

• Novel techniques, technologies, and systems to enable spacecraft mission assurance in a contested cyber environment.

• Analytic tools to help understand space systems' current vulnerabilities to cyber attack and how to design future systems to resist cyber- attack.

• Technologies that will allow survivable spacecraft missions under adverse cyber stress.

• Technologies for effectively allowing space systems to distinguish among anomalies caused by system failures, enemy actions, and environmental effects.

• Survivable command, control and communications, autonomous self-healing systems, and trusted architectures.

• Methodologies for spacecraft cyber defense-in-depth, focusing primarily on threat avoidance through vulnerability mitigation, and allowing mission survival with graceful degradation under cyber-attack.

• Novel software or procedural approaches for providing protection to existing space systems.

• Technologies to provide indications of an active cyber-attack against a spacecraft.

So, if you want to drop that iPhone app you've been working on and get in on this project, you have until May 6 to pitch the service on  your "interests and capability," according to the RFI.

This is interesting. An April 2013 report by the Defense Science Board says that arcane safety procedures are actually making some aspects of the way the Air Force handles its nuclear weapons more dangerous.

Perhaps the best example is that nuclear weapons maintainers aren't allowed to use the hoists designed to lift B-61 nuclear bombs onto Weapons Maintenance Trucks because "the end of the bolt [securing the hoist to the truck] is flush with the outer surface of the nut while technical data require that two threads show beyond the surface of the nut," reads the report. While this condition has existed since the trucks were introduced 22-years ago and has resulted in no problems, the Air Force recently barred units from using the hoists due to their failure to meet technical safety specifications. The result?

"An awkward process entailing the use of a forkliftt to move the weapon into the truck and the manhandling of the 200-pound tail section," states the report. The document goes on to describe the workaround as a procedure "that by any informed judgment, impose[s] far greater safety risk than that presented by the deficiency in the bolt length."

Apparently, new bolts are supposed to be on their way and a whole new truck is expected to enter service around 2015.

The report goes on to cite a number of smaller examples where the service's adoption of a "zero defect" mentality for adhering to the rules and regulations for all things associated with its nuclear weapons combined with old equipment is harming the service's ability to perform what it says is one of its most important missions. It goes on to slam the Air Force's Personnel Reliability Program (PRP) -- aimed at ensuring that airmen involved in nuclear-related activities are top quality -- as overly bureaucratic and adhering to guidelines so strict the report describes them as "ludicrous."

"At one base, the PRP inspectors from [Air Force Global Strike Comand] declared it a major finding that the dimensions of the red status identification stickers [that identify a persons medical status] were 1.5 inches rather than the prescribed 2 inches," reads the report. "One medical group commander, referring to the bureaucratic excesses stated: ‘administrative paperwork and chasing regulations are the focus of PRP rather than serving the airmen on PRP to ensure they are ready to perform their jobs'."

In something that sounds like it's straight out of Catch-22, the PRP requires airmen who need to go off base for a routine dental visit to have their status allowing them to work on nukes temporarily revoked because some medical flaw could, in theory, be discovered during this visit that would disqualify them from working in the service's so-called nuclear enterprise.

For example, an off-base dental appointment to have an annual examination or a routine filling requires suspension until the individual proves upon return that there was no cause. While the system declares there is no stigma with suspension, the individual must physically visit the medical facility upon return (at a specified time in some wings) and cannot perform his work until this administrative process is accomplished. Individuals who care a great deal about their work team know that there is no cause for suspension and feel they are forced to let their team down for no reason. It can take three to five days to return to work when the eventual determination is that there was no cause for concern. This also requires the time and attention of medical technicians, doctors, and certifying officials.

We can't make that stuff up.

"Much of the risk assessment conducted across the Air Force nuclear enterprise has little to do with performance, safety, and security risk to accomplishing the missions," reads a memo from the board's chairman, Paul Kaminski, which accompanies the report." Decisions to avoid very small technical risk result in far greater risk to personnel to perform essential nuclear related-tasks."

The report is one of several published over the last few years aimed at assessing the Air Force's progress in revamping its nuclear weapons-related activities. A 2007 incident where nuclear-tipped cruises missiles were mistakenly flown across the country and left missing and unguarded for more than a day and a 2008 incident where Air Force nuclear triggers were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan led to the firings of then Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and the creation of a new command, Global Strike Command to oversee the service's fleets of ICBMs and nuclear bombers.

Retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch, now chair of DOD's Permanent Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Surety, notes that the Air Force has "implemented extraordinary measures" that have been largely successful in restoring the "high standards of professionalism and discipline" to the nuclear enterprise.  

Still, the service needs to, "provide faster and broader material evidence that the mission is indeed treated as Job 1 (or even as first priority behind the demands of ongoing combat operations)" reads a memo by Welch that accompanies the report. This can by accomplished by refurbishing dilapidated facilities, purchasing basic new materials (such as maintenance trucks described above) and by developing more intelligent ways to enforce performance standards, states the report.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA, just passed the House by a vote of 288 to 188.  Meanwhile, the Senate is working on crafting its own bill aimed at facilitating information-sharing on cyber-threats.

"We are currently drafting a bipartisan information sharing bill and will proceed as soon as we come to an agreement," Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein wrote in an email to Killer Apps.

Remember, CISPA allows private businesses to share "cyber-threat information" with each other and government agencies, including the military. 

Earlier this week, the White House threatened to veto CISPA unless it was amended to require that information businesses with the government go through a civilian agency, such as the Department of Homeland Security, before being sent to any military organization, such as the National Security Agency. The White House also wants to narrow the liability protections given to businesses that improperly disclose personal information or commit antitrust violations while sharing information with each other or the government.

"The version of CISPA that just passed the House floor includes an amendment that encourages, but doesn't require businesses to share cyber threat information with DHS instead of the military," a Hill staffer told Killer Apps.

Another amendment bans the U.S. government from using information gathered under the auspices of the bill to target a U.S. citizen for surveillance. Another one "reconfirms" that "the federal government may not use library records, book sales records, customer lists, fire arms sales records, tax returns, educational and medical records that it receives under CISPA," said the staffer.

Last week, the House intelligence committee removed language from the bill that would have allowed companies to collect and share information for "national security" purposes. Privacy advocates who oppose CISPA claimed using the broad term "national security" would allow the government to spy on people online without a warrant. The committee also added an amendment requiring that information shared with the government be scrubbed of all personal information.

Still, these amendments weren't enough to satisfy privacy advocates such as the ACLU. Here's what Michelle Richardson, one of the ACLU's lawyers, said after the bill passed today.

CISPA is an extreme proposal that allows companies that hold our very sensitive information to share it with any company or government entity they choose, even directly with military agencies like the NSA, without first stripping out personally identifiable information. We will work with Congress to make sure that the next version of information sharing legislation unequivocally resolves this issue, as well as tightens immunity provisions and protects personal information. Cybersecurity can be done without sacrificing Americans' privacy online.

The big questions that remain are whether the White House still opposes CISPA and whether the Democrat-controlled Senate will permit language included in CISPA to pass the conference process. So far, the White House has remained mum on today's news.

Last year's White House-backed Cyber Security Act of 2012, sponsored by former Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, failed to pass the Senate because Republicans objected to the bill's call for minimal cyber-security standards for certain banks, energy firms, communications providers, transport companies, and other so-called critical infrastructure providers.

In February, the White House issued an executive order allowing the government to share intelligence on cyber-threats with businesses and encouraging minimal best practices for critical-infrastructure providers.

Investigators sifting through the flood of cellphone, surveillance camera, and TV footage of Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon are being aided by technology similar to the software that the military has used to collect intelligence about IED attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There's a different twist to it this time. The different twist is the increased degree of crowd-sourcing if you will, in terms of providing information. You have many, many more sensors in the context of people with video devices in their smartphones," said retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, who was in charge of the Air Force's intelligence efforts from 2006 to 2010. "You had many, many more collectors than we had in the past."

The amount of video and photo documentation of the marathon attacks may be unprecedented, so how do you sift through all that data quickly to find clues? Software, naturally.

As ABC News reported, investigators from the FBI's Operational Technology Division are likely using a computer program that can do things like recognize faces in a crowd if they match those listed in a criminal database. This is similar to the software that the military has been developing for years in an effort to quickly glean information from UAV videos.  

As the U.S. military flocked to the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan with all manner of camera-equipped spy-planes, intelligence officials soon realized they were collecting far more footage -- thousands of hours a day -- than human beings could sort through in time to use the information it contained. The military turned to tech companies to produce software capable of quickly identifying certain things analysts were looking for -- say, a red Toyota pickup truck that had been seen at a bombing site.

"There are software programs that are out there that allow one to rapidly search through that information and key in on what the investigators may find of interest," said Deptula. "Exponential growth is not hyperbole when it comes to motion imagery, much less still imagery, because we've had an explosion in that kind of information. As the information [available] has grown, people have moved from human analytic teams to more automated means to sift through all that data."

"Let's say somebody reported that they saw somebody that was Caucasian, with a yellow sweatshirt, with powder burns on their hands running away before the explosion -- that's a hypothetical -- you could tell the software to look for a yellow sweatshirt, Caucasian running before a certain period of time," said Brian Cunningham, a former White House security official and now a senior advisor to the Chertoff Group who works with firms that develop this kind of software. New York City and London both have massive video surveillance systems that use similar software.

Still, another homeland security consultant who wished to remain anonymous tells Killer Apps that it might not be that easy. First of all, Boston doesn't have a massive, centralized video camera system the way New York does. Many of the images will come from people's phones and other private cameras, meaning that investigators will probably have to receive and review each photo and film clip individually.

"There are some automated tools that exist for this type of thing, but for the most part it's just a very labor-intensive process to go through things and try to correlate and sequence things in time and look for suspicious activity and then try to build a profile for how somebody's moving around," said the former DHS official. "There are capabilities like in London and lower New York where they can follow a person who is of concern as they walk from camera to camera. When you're dealing with public-source information it's just a different process."

Cunningham agrees that while the Boston Police Department or the FBI has the software capable of identifying a particular person or bag as they appear in the mountains of video, investigators still face the challenge of uploading all that footage so the software can analyze it. "The biggest challenge will be: how do you upload that volume of video onto a single server or a couple of servers that can be searched against?" he said.

Investigators have identified two people they want to talk to in connection with suspects (see the video above) in the Boston bombing. But, Cunningham said, "It's not clear yet whether it was good old-fashioned shoe leather as much as analytic software."

He explained how the process could work: "You'd figure out where the devices were, and while you had street cops out interviewing people and collecting video of cellphones and you would go to fixed cameras in department stores or ATMs and pole cameras that are right around the area of the devices" and then upload the footage into the software, said Cunningham. "They also may have just had officers sitting there watching the footage. Let's say there were 15 cameras that were fixed, that had a good line of site of where the device was, then you could throw 100 officers at it; you probably wouldn't need software."

Cunningham also points out that investigators are working with cellphone companies to find cellphone records of the calls that were made close to the site of the explosions. Cellphones might allow them to find calls that were used to detonate the explosives. It's not clear if the explosives were triggered by timing devices or cellphones. Initial reports suggest that at least one of the suspects sought by investigators was actually talking with someone on the phone rather than triggering a bomb.

"Once they know what cellphone was his, that's the jackpot because they can find out where he was right before, and they can find out where he is today if he's dumb enough to be carrying that same cellphone," added Cunningham. Even if the phone the suspect used was a cheap, pay as you go phone, investigators would immediately begin to look for the store where that phone was sold.

With news that the bombs used in yesterday's attack on the Boston Marathon were encased in six-liter pressure cookers, we've got our first clue about the tech that played a role in this attack

Reports of pressure cookers being used as bombs go back to at least the 1990s when they were first used by Maoists in Nepal during the civil war there, and they are still used in the mountain nation with alarming frequency. (In fact, do a quick Google search and you'll see that pressure cooker bombs are found all the time in South Asia from Nepal to Malaysia.)

By the 2000s, such weapons were being found across the region at terrorist camps on the frontier of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This 2004 warning from the Department of Homeland Security says that "a technique commonly taught in Afghan terrorist training camps is the use/conversion of pressure cookers into IEDs.

By 2010, DHS was reporting that such bombs were frequently used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. (Note this report from 2010 displaying a pressure cooker bomb found by British special operators after a raid on a Taliban bomb factory in Afghanistan.)

"Typically, these bombs are made by placing TNT or other explosives in a pressure cooker and attaching a blasting cap at the top of the pressure cooker. The size of the blast depends on the size of the pressure cooker and the amount of explosive placed inside. Pressure cooker bombs are made with readily available materials and can be as simple or as complex as the builder decides," reads the 2004 announcement. (Notice that the announcement says nothing about using the pressure of the pressure cooker, it's merely described as a vessel for the explosives.) While the DHS warning doesn't say exactly why pressure cookers are preferred over normal pots, their lids lock into place, perhaps making it easier to hide explosives inside.

Remember, doctors in Boston have reported removing "pellets, shrapnel and nails" from the victims of the marathon attack, indicating that the bombs were filled with these tools in order to cause more damage by shredding flesh.

"These types of devices can be initiated using simple electronic components including, but not limited to, digital watches, garage door openers, cell phones or pagers. As a common cooking utensil, the pressure cooker is often overlooked when searching vehicles, residences or merchandise crossing the U.S. Borders," the 2004 DHS announcement points out.

Still, the 2010 announcement notes that pressure cookers are not as innocuous in the United States as in developing nations: "Because they are less common in the United States, the presence of a pressure cooker in an unusual location such as a building lobby or busy street corner should be treated as suspicious."

That document was released several months after a pressure cooker filled with firecrackers was found to be one of the components used in the failed Times Square bombing of May 2010. In 2011, U.S. Army Private Naser Jason Abdo was charged in plotting to set off a pressure cooker bomb on Fort Hood, Texas -- a weapon he supposedly learned to make from reading al Qaeda's online magazine, Inspire. It's important to point out that investigators have said there is no indication so far of a connection to al Qaeda in the case of the Boston attack.

Happy Friday. Killer Apps sat down with Rob Ruszkowski, Lockheed Martin's man in charge of making sure its new stealth drone becomes the U.S. Navy's next light-strike and reconnaissance jet.

Remember, the sea service is looking to field an unmanned, stealthy, fighter-size jet capable of taking off from aircraft carriers and doing everything from spying to bombing to conducting air-to-air refueling by 2020 under a program called Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike -- or UCLASS. The Navy is about to give Lockheed -- along with Boeing, General Atomics, and Northrop Grumman -- contracts to develop prototypes.

Lockheed's bid uses technology that the company developed for its newest stealth planes, such as the RQ-170 Sentinel drone and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. This is meant to keep costs and development times down. Lockheed's aim is to have a first flight by 2017 or 2018, a pretty aggressive schedule given the fact that it has taken decades to field the U.S. military's most recent fighter jets: the F-35 and the F-22 Raptor.

"We're reusing a lot of systems, and software and hardware and technology that we have from other places -- F-35, RQ-170 -- and we're integrating those systems [onto a new airframe] not inventing them," Ruszkowski said. While the company doesn't have an actual prototype yet, it does have a full-scale mock-up sitting in a California facility, according to Ruszkowski.

The new plane's airframe borrows from the design of the RQ-170 and Lockheed's older, experimental drones like the Polecat, he said. It will take sensors, software, and stealth coatings that are able withstand harsh sea air from the F-35.

The plane is designed to easily accept new hardware, such as sensors, electronic warfare gear, and new software that may not be available when the first jets enter service

"We've tailored our [design] to meet, not only what we saw as the evolving requirements to be, but to have the foundation to grow beyond that," said Ruszkowski. What's this mean? "It could start its early operational career with a base model, and then you add to it later."

So, what kind of gear might the jet be equipped with to start? High-powered cameras and radars that will allow it to survey wide swaths of the sea and shore to identify targets from beyond the range of an enemy's most potent defenses.

The jet will carry some sort of electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) camera that's capable of doing wide area searches and battle damage assessment, "where you want a very, very high-resolution image," said Ruszkowski. "A lot of the things this type of aircraft might be used to gather intelligence on, might be in situations where you need to be further away" from the target in order to stay away from antiaircraft defenses. (The camera will not be based on Lockheed's Electro-Optical Targeting System, which is going on the F-35, he noted.)

The plane may also carry some sort of powerful surveillance radar -- similar to this one -- allowing it to identify targets moving along the sea or land and even to take snapshots through clouds using a technique called synthetic-aperture radar imaging.

While the jet will start its career as a spy plane that's capable of dropping about 1,000 pounds worth of bombs on targets it finds, it could eventually be used as an electronic-warfare platform or as a flying gas station refueling other Navy jets.

"I think the first aircraft that will go to early operational capability may only have an EO/IR sensor. That's up to the Navy. They might say, ‘Hey, we want to get this thing out there, fielded, doing some initial missions and maybe all it needs is an EO/IR sensor and the radar comes two or three years later,'" said Ruszkowksi.

Lockheed has yet to field a jet that can take off and land from an aircraft carrier with minimal human involvement -- something that the Navy and Lockheed's rival in the UCLASS effort, Northrop Grumman, are working to master right now with a program known as UCAS-D, which is meant to pave the way for UCLASS. Ruszkowski says he's not too worried about this since Lockheed has conducted simulated landings on carriers in rough seas and that it will receive information from the Navy about what it learns from UCAS-D. Hopefully, they will get the Sea Ghost's tail-hook design right. (We couldn't write an article about Lockheed and aircraft carrier jets without mentioning it.)

U.S. military commanders around the world are discussing how to integrate cyber weapons with all the other tools in their arsenals, according to the chief of the Navy's cyber forces.

Doing this will give battlefield commanders the ability to choose which weapon they want to use to achieve a desired effect.

"Whether we do that through the spectrum [via electronic warfare], we do that through the network [via cyber] or we do that through something kinetic [bullets and bombs], what we want to be able to do is be able to tee up to the commander, multiple options," said Vice Admiral Michael Rogers during the Navy League's annual Sea Air Space conference just outside Washington today. Then, "the commander can make the decision about what's the best tool to use. . . . I don't get any pushback on that idea at all."

"If we think we're going to do cyber off in some closet somewhere we have totally missed the boat on this thing," Rogers noted.

At the same time, the lines between traditional electronic warfare -- radar jamming, electronic eaves dropping, etc. -- and cyber warfare are containing to blur, at least in the U.S. Navy.

"I see those lines blurring increasingly There is great convergence between the spectrum [EW] and the cyber world at the moment which I think just offers great opportunities, as a SIGINT [signals intelligence] kind of guy by background, I just lick my lips at the opportunities that I see out there in that arena," said Rogers.

While Rogers didn't elaborate on the type of combined cyber-electronic warfare missions he envisions, a fellow admiral noted that the Pentagon is looking at non-cyber ways of shutting down an enemy's ability to fight without firing a shot. (Remember, cyber-philes often point out that cyber weapons can cripple a nation without a single missile being launched.)

"Cyberspace can be an enabler but there's [other] non-kinetic ways to disadvantage the enemy in cyberspace that don't require a cyber activity; [electronic warfare] capability, and other things like that," said Rear Admiral Michael Hewitt, deputy director of the special programs cross functional team on the Joint Staff, during the Navy League's annual Sea Air Space conference just outside Washington today.

Click here to read an example of a type of non-cyber electronic weapon that's capable of shutting down an enemy's electronics systems without blowing anything up.