The National Defense Panel presented yesterday to the Secretary of Defense its 95-page report on the future of US defense: "Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century." It's available in PDF format at: http://www.dtic.mil/ndp/FullDoc.pdf (386K) The report proposes an impressive 30-year overhaul for the military, with a recommendation that the two-major-wars strategy be replaced with that of preparing for one major war and a host of more limited defenses overseas and at home to combat enemies who will not challenge superior conventional armaments but will utilize "asymmetrical" NBC weapons, terrorism, information warfare. We've converted the Executive Summary to HTML: http://jya.com/ndp-pr.htm And a section on "Homeland Defense" which proposes a role for military forces to "protect against all enemies foreign and domestic" by providing intelligence, training, equipment and other aid to justice and law enforcement. http://jya.com/home-def.htm As noted in the NYT today, the report asks for a shakeup in intelligence, with renewed emphasis on training human spies to compensate for what technology cannot do. Along that line, the NYT also reports today on a huge Libyan deeply-buried pipeline system under construction which is suspected of being a distribution system for troops and equipment as well as CB weapons, placed underground to escape satellite spies. The report is based on descriptions of engineers and corporations working on the project. One feature of the NDP report, as well as other closed defense panel meetings, is the need for weapons to attack underground structures -- like those vast catcombs in Lybia and North Korea, and the US for that matter -- Cheyenne Mountain is still being re-hardened regularly, and its electronics re-Tempested, not that the local skinheads will not find a way to hack the bunker as trusted EEs and sys admins.