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00:18This is the future of warfare, a bombing run over North Korea, done virtually with 3D glasses
00:24and an electronic glove. Today, it's a practice run, but in a few years' time, with a wave
00:30of a hand, American commanders could control an entire battlefield. That's the ambition.
00:38It is within our capability today to see a battlefield that is perhaps 200 or 300 miles
00:45on the side, and to see everything that goes on in that battlefield, and to know what is
00:51happening there. If you see a battlefield that way, and an enemy doesn't, you have dominant
00:57battlefield awareness, and you win. It is the essence of the revolution in military affairs,
01:04and I don't think anybody other than our Western democracies will be able to do that in the
01:09rest of our lifetime.
01:10With this scientific advantage, Americans believe they can win any war, anywhere in the world.
01:23It's called full-spectrum dominance.
01:45The future as seen by the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency. It spends billions
01:51of dollars every year turning cutting-edge science into defense systems.
01:58Have we determined the size of the insurgent force holding the consulate?
02:0130 to 40. That's based on humage from an island.
02:04Global positioning system satellites map the battle zone with pinpoint accuracy.
02:08Don't see where the hostages are in the compound.
02:10We'll be getting full-spectrum surveillance. We'll have that analysis.
02:12Computers integrate real-time data and images.
02:15Mission rehearsals are underway.
02:17Aye, sir. Simulated air support and helicopter operation rehearsals commenced at 1,800 hours.
02:24Everything works perfectly.
02:28Integrating Hilo EVAC option event list into J-Flex timeline. Critical path analysis executing.
02:34Sir, we have no civilian losses in the consulate operation.
02:38Is that confirmed?
02:39Yes, sir.
02:40And of course, the Americans win with few casualties.
02:44Less than 30 minutes ago, American helicopters...
02:51...the Mojave Desert, California.
02:54Here, scientists and engineers are making full-spectrum dominance a reality...
02:58...at Edwards Air Force Base, America's high-security test flight center.
03:03Ryan, this is Ryan 3. How do you copy?
03:05Yeah, you copy. Five by, sir.
03:07Ryan, ground. Gate is open. Personnel are clear. Wing walkers left, right in place. We're ready to go.
03:13Takeoff executed.
03:17Power coming up.
03:22Command is accepted. Rest release. Power up.
03:27Looking good.
03:30We are airborne. Flight number one.
03:34This is Global Hawk, and it's revolutionary.
03:37A pilotless battlefield spy plane.
03:40It can fly up to 14,000 miles to anywhere on Earth.
03:44There it can circle for 24 hours, sending back real-time panoramic images of the battlefield.
03:51These can be seen at the same time by commanders on the ground and generals in the Pentagon.
03:57America's strategists believe this will revolutionize warfare.
04:02When you start to have that kind of capability, you start to bring a lot of knowledge to war fighting.
04:10And when you can do that, you can fight wars in radically different ways.
04:14If you were a country considering pursuing interests inimical to the United States, how would you reflect upon Global Hawk?
04:21I would think that maybe I should start to undertake different kinds of warfare.
04:27That perhaps the day of tank battles or the day of ship battles, airplane battles, are nearing an end.
04:35That the time has come when I can no longer win in a situation where I'm faced with this kind
04:44of technology.
04:45It's not just Global Hawk, it's also Dark Star, a similar capability that is very difficult to see.
04:54Dark Star, America's ultimate secret agent.
04:58Unlike Global Hawk, it's invisible to radar.
05:01It can fly secretly over enemy territory and send back target imagery so detailed you can see if your enemy
05:07is wearing his hat.
05:16These unmanned spy planes use a lot of technologies already in service on other aircraft.
05:22So hundreds can be built at low cost once in production.
05:28But today, Global Hawk and Dark Star are eating up hundreds of millions of pounds in development costs,
05:34which probably no other nation than America can afford.
05:37All right.
05:41These new scientific developments are largely classified, off-limits to the American public,
05:47still used to seeing the military perform in more familiar roles.
05:50On behalf of Major General George Harmeyer, the commander of the United States Army Armour Centre,
05:55in Fort Knox, the home of modern warfare, welcome to the modern combined arms battlefield
06:00and the 1998 Fort Knox combined arms live-fire exercise.
06:16Ladies and gentlemen, just six short months ago, I was platoon leader,
06:21betraying the Korean DMZ and enforcing international peace across the dense terrain of the Korean border.
06:27Today, I'm assisting my commander in coordinating the efforts of eight major weapons systems
06:33and a high-intensity demonstration of combined arms warfare.
07:01The weapons and troops with which the Allies defeated the Iraqis during Operation Desert Storm.
07:07The weapons and troops with which the Allies defeated the Iraqis during Operation Desert Storm.
07:07At Washington's Institute of Defense analysis, they view the campaign as a giant laboratory.
07:13It's been minutely dissected and analyzed.
07:16They've made a detailed digital reconstruction of one of the battles.
07:19The results are revealing.
07:23American technical superiority was overwhelming.
07:26Their tank crews had global positioning system receivers, so they knew where they were in the desert.
07:31The Iraqis did not.
07:33Only the Americans had uranium-tipped armor-piercing shells and infrared thermal sights.
07:39But there was something more.
07:41Many of the Iraqi tanks were out of action before the battle began.
07:46The Iraqi forces were a little skittish in that they had just been through a hundred days of bombing.
07:54And quite often what happened, they noticed the tank on the right, the tank on the left, burst into flames.
08:03And soon decided that being in that tank is not the healthiest place to be.
08:09And they would get out of the tank and into the little personnel bunkers that they dug adjacent to the
08:15tanks.
08:17Many Iraqi crews took the tanks' batteries into the bunkers.
08:21Without power, their tanks couldn't start, their guns couldn't fire.
08:25It was no contest.
08:26To American defense scientists, this holds a warning.
08:30They know they must maintain their technological advantage to avoid the risk of heavy casualties in future wars.
08:37Had the Iraqi forces been equipped with the same sights and munitions and the same tank that we had,
08:48it probably would have been a very different story, a very different outcome.
09:07But today, the American public have other thoughts on their mind.
09:11American spending on defense research is now as high as at any time during the Cold War.
09:18Just a few miles away from this Florida beach is Eglin Air Force Base.
09:24Here, scientists and pilots are busy developing the next generation of weapons,
09:29ones that risk few American lives and actually think for themselves.
09:36Bingo, fuel.
09:36Good tracking, good laser.
09:41Three is ten, nine, eight, seven.
09:46Six, five, four, three, two.
09:51Impact.
09:52Good one.
10:00Well, we refer to this as the world's smallest cruise missile.
10:04It's 30 inches in length, has the capability of flying greater than 100 kilometers,
10:10and is equipped with a state-of-the-art laser radar seeker, a multi-mode warhead that's effective against a
10:18wide variety of targets.
10:20It's going to know what it's going after with that laser radar seeker on the front.
10:23It's going to know it's a tank, it's going to know whether maybe it's a radar vehicle van, and the
10:27difference between those two is the way you want to try and kill it.
10:29And the people in it.
10:30And the people in it.
10:33How did you get involved in weapons design?
10:35With my aerospace engineering degree, I really wanted to apply it to aerospace vehicles, and the opportunity here at the
10:42Air Force Research Lab presented itself,
10:43and I was very excited to be able to find employment here, and I've been here since 1979.
10:50And this is perfect. This is the job that I want to do as far as physics in the Air
10:54Force goes. This is a good place to be.
10:57So you enjoy the work?
10:58I thoroughly enjoy the work. This is great.
11:00The new mini-cruise will revolutionize tank battles, and it's cheap, 200 for the price of a tank.
11:07Hundreds can be dropped from a single aircraft, but scientists are especially proud of its unique warhead.
11:14What we have here is a multi-mode warhead that combines a copper liner, as well as a high explosive,
11:23and what we refer to as multi-point detonators.
11:26And those multi-point detonators allow this multi-mode warhead to form into one of three modes, depending upon the
11:33type of target you want to defeat.
11:37Against a soft target, like a Scud missile launcher, the warhead blasts down fragments and rips it to shreds.
11:44If it senses a heavier target, like an armored personnel carrier, the warhead changes its shape into a heavy slug.
11:51For those modes where you really want to go through a tremendous amount of armor, such as a tank,
11:57where you're penetrating through maybe six, twelve inches of steel, you want to form finally this explosively formed penetrator.
12:08It's essentially a jet of copper that flies down into the tank.
12:14And when you do so, you form a copper jet that essentially will penetrate, and in this case, something on
12:22the order of ten to twelve inches of steel.
12:26Now, how does a copper jet defeat a tank?
12:30Because when you detonate this copper liner, it causes that liner to accelerate into the target over six thousand feet
12:38per second.
12:39And that tremendous amount of kinetic energy is allowed to penetrate through the steel like it was butter.
12:46And how thick is that copper disk?
12:48The copper disk is probably something less than a quarter inch, roughly.
12:53And that can destroy a tank?
12:54And that can destroy and go right through a tank and just kill the components inside of that.
12:58And if, unfortunately...
12:59Components being the men in the tank?
13:01Men in the tank, equipment in the tank, motors, whatever happens to be there in the tank that this item
13:08in particular penetrates through.
13:10Is the spell the end of tanks?
13:12You can imagine, as this technology progresses, so too will technology to try to counter these type of new warheads.
13:20So, is this an end? No, I don't think it's ever an end. It's kind of a tit for tat
13:24that we always go through.
13:26But as of right now, yes, those guys are sitting ducks.
13:30At Eglund, they're also developing the new jumbo cruise missile to be launched from the air against key targets in
13:37enemy cities hundreds of miles away.
13:42I'm Terry Little, the program director for the Joint Air Surface Standoff Missile, this little baby right here.
13:50It's a next-generation cruise missile for both the Air Force and the Navy.
13:57The missile flies to the target using inertial guidance updated with Global Positioning System.
14:07Once it gets to the target, it has an infrared seeker.
14:10It senses the radiation coming from the target and then matches it to pre-stored information that's in the missile.
14:19The overall result is the missile has an accuracy of around 10 feet.
14:25So you're saying this missile can be fired from 200 miles away and hit a target within 10 feet?
14:31That's right.
14:32With a 1,000-pound bomb?
14:33With a 1,000-pound bomb, and 10 feet away from a 1,000-pound bomb is not a road
14:38that anybody wants to go down.
14:40You know, that's not a good road to be going down.
14:44And it only costs $400,000?
14:47$400,000 is, considering what we're getting, a bargain basement price.
14:54How many of these are you going to make?
14:56The plan right now is to buy about 2,400 of these.
15:04That's a lot of missiles.
15:06The Americans fired just 288 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Iraq in Desert Storm.
15:12All were shipped launched, relatively slow, and not that accurate.
15:16The designers claim the new missiles can't miss.
15:19They're almost invisible, we'll know exactly where they're going, and there will be no warning.
15:26This really changes the equation with warfare.
15:32On the enemy side, faced with this kind of threat, he's got to be able to come to grips with
15:40the fact that there's essentially no sanctuary from this missile.
15:45Essentially, the first indication that he would have that the missile was there would be the explosion.
15:50A lot of people are going to say the Cold War is over.
15:54Who's the enemy?
15:54We've got enemies all over.
15:57We've got lots of sort of major power threats that potentially could work against our interests.
16:07We've got emerging countries that, even today, we may not think of them as being a threat, that at some
16:15point may pose a threat to the United States.
16:20Countries that we don't, you know, we don't have a sense, even today, that they're going to be a threat.
16:26And this could be used against?
16:28This could be used against anything.
16:29This is not something that's dependent on some kind of a desert storm kind of a scenario.
16:38You could even use one of these against a group or a country and make your point with just one.
16:49And, you know, not too dissimilar with what we did when we used the atomic bomb against the Japanese,
16:57where we didn't have to go and, you know, destroy the country and drop a lot of bombs.
17:03In that case, there were two. They got the point, they surrendered, and that was the end of that.
17:08I envision that in a much less spectacular way, this could serve that same function.
17:14You know, it is that much of a quantum leap forward in our capability.
17:23If you go to war against the United States today, and it is a genuine war, you don't have a
17:30chance.
17:31This ability to do precision strikes, this ability to do dominant maneuver in a battlefield,
17:38is becoming so profound that your chances are very limited.
17:49But the next war may be so different, there's no battlefield.
17:53The first strike may not be from a cruise missile, but from a computer.
17:58Computers are becoming new weapons in their own right.
18:01And today, scientists are imagining and planning for the inevitable, full-scale cyber war.
18:08John Woodward is head of information warfare at one of America's largest defense contractors.
18:14It works closely with the intelligence community.
18:18Most of the infrastructure today and increasingly in the future depends on underlying information technology.
18:24So the power grid, telecommunications infrastructure, the transportation industry, air traffic control,
18:30they could all be damaged by information warfare.
18:34A technology that is used increasingly in terms of information warfare is commonly called hacking,
18:41trying to break into computer systems.
18:44Teenagers do this a lot, there's been a lot of news reports about that.
18:47But there would be a difference between a teenager carrying out this kind of hacking attack
18:53and a professional information warrior carrying out the attack.
18:56Hackers break into computer systems indiscriminately.
19:00A professional might choose a critical computer system that was a key node in making some particular type of operation
19:08or some function work,
19:10and would choose the key node to attack first or to disable.
19:16If he were a determined cyber warrior, what could he do to bring a government to its knees?
19:24If I was trying to influence a nation state to change their behavior in some way,
19:33I might be willing to shut down the telecommunications system of a city for an hour,
19:38so I can reach out and I can impact the lives of the citizenry in a relatively minor way.
19:43But if I can convince them it's at my will, then I may have an influencing effect on them.
19:50Now, information warfare can be theoretically at least quite surgical.
19:56If I'm really good, and in some cases you might say if I'm really lucky,
19:59I might be able to go in and specifically target what I cut the power to,
20:03but the fear is unless you are really good at what you're doing and have practiced it,
20:09that you might do a little bit more than you want to.
20:12So I might attack the electrical structure in a country with an intent, for example,
20:19to disable the transportation system or an airport,
20:23but have as a collateral damage taking the power out for a hospital.
20:29If you shut down power someplace and somebody's on an iron lung, you know, they're going to die.
20:35One could also imagine that if you made a big information,
20:40structured information warfare attack on a metropolitan area that shut down power,
20:45that impeded transportation, that shut down communications,
20:50that, quite frankly, rioting and looting would probably occur.
20:57This could all be done covertly, without declaring war.
21:01Are there any defences against it?
21:04Most countries would have some level of defences against an information warfare attack.
21:11But inherently, it's probably impossible to defend against every type of information warfare attack.
21:21From what you've been saying, it sounds to me as if other countries are going to need people like you
21:26and your colleagues,
21:28if they're going to be able to provide adequate national defence in the future.
21:35That's fair, but you say that other countries are going to need people like us.
21:41They may have people like us already.
21:45People like us are computer scientists, radio frequency communication engineers, and there's a lot of those.
21:57The Pandora's box of cyber war is now open.
22:01In future wars, scientists will fight scientists.
22:04Yet Americans know they still have a problem.
22:07However great their scientific advantage, inevitably US troops will get sent overseas,
22:13and that means casualties, particularly in far-off foreign cities.
22:18So they're gathering intelligence to build virtual models of the world's cities.
22:23The aim is, US troops will know them like the back of their hand before they get there.
22:30What we are attempting to do is to give our troops and our command authorities as well the ability to
22:40visualize a situation as it's beginning to occur.
22:43We're working on Washington DC right in our own backyard.
22:47Once we have mastered the things that we need to do to satisfy a variety of customers and requirements,
22:55then the next step is to essentially be able to go overseas at a moment's notice to a hot spot
23:01anywhere overseas,
23:03or for that matter within the country to help military or law enforcement.
23:11Military tend to want not to operate in cities.
23:15They're very dangerous environments.
23:17Things happen very quickly right in front of your face,
23:20and a soldier, maybe an 18-year-old, has to make a decision as to whether or not he'll pull
23:25a trigger,
23:25perhaps in a split second.
23:27And his decision may be broadcast within minutes or hours by CNN or other news media around the world,
23:35and within 24 hours it may affect national policy.
23:38And we've seen that happen already in places like Mogadishu, Somalia.
23:42I'm sure very well aware of the one instance in which a helicopter was downed,
23:50and that resulted in the part of the crew being dragged through the streets within hours that was on national
23:57television,
23:58and in fact beamed around the world.
24:02Within days, American troops were ordered home.
24:08Checking the play box.
24:10Today, the Marines are trying to avoid another Mogadishu by applying science to urban combat.
24:16In this experiment at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina,
24:20they're testing the role of precision bombs, dropped virtually of course,
24:23in a Marine assault on rebel forces in a foreign city.
24:28This really isn't an exercise, it's an experiment.
24:31And we're experimenting with the different tactics, techniques,
24:34that we want to use to help us in urban combat.
24:37What are the problems with urban combat?
24:40One of the big problems with urban combat is just the intensity of the fire that's needed to clear buildings.
24:47They also have problems with command and control.
24:50Once you go into an area, it's very easy to lose track of where your forces are.
24:55And what about casualties?
25:00Is that a problem?
25:02That's always a problem, particularly when you go into an industrial type area, or a very heavily populated area,
25:09there's a real problem between determining the things that you can target and what you can't target.
25:15There are civilians in this area, and we don't want to target them.
25:19We don't want to target them.
25:21Out on the ground, the precision bombing is already getting messy.
25:25These are Marines playing the role of the rebel opposition forces.
25:28The government building where most of them were hiding has been bombed by the Americans, killing over half of them.
25:34So they're taking civilian hostages to act as human shields.
25:39Why do you think you've been captured?
25:41They want to keep us in this building so that the American forces don't bomb it.
25:46So you're a hostage?
25:48Yes, sir.
25:50We thought that by taking some of the civilians hostage, moving them into the buildings,
25:54we'd have a better chance of staying alive a little bit longer for the rest of this battle.
26:00And that's where we're at right now.
26:02Sounds like a messy war.
26:03Yes, very messy, very messy.
26:05Scott, if you will, let's bump to...
26:08Back at the experiment headquarters, the Marine Air Force is evaluating the bombing of the opposition forces.
26:14It's all done virtually, of course.
26:18We've taken Camp Lejeune, a base, and we've made it an urban training range for aviation.
26:25The folks can go about their business day to day on the ground.
26:28We have no idea what's going on overhead, but going on overhead is an urban fight where we're dropping bombs
26:37on their heads and shooting rockets down into the streets in support of this urban operation.
26:44OK?
26:45Let me show you what happens when this type of structure has been hit by a Hellfire missile.
26:50We had a penetration hole that came through the roof into the building itself.
26:55You can actually see where the detonation occurred inside the room at that entry point where it traveled roughly that
27:02eight feet.
27:03And it's the first calculation of the blast radius of what it is.
27:07And so you see the spherical area inside the house itself.
27:11Now, turn it off.
27:12You can actually go inside this building.
27:15You can walk through these buildings in a virtual world or fly through them, as we call it.
27:21And now you can come in and see where it is actually cratered out.
27:25You can see why the pressure in one room is the way it is and how the bleed path starts
27:29and actually goes throughout the house.
27:32The potential goes well beyond this exercise.
27:36Using foreign construction codes, maps, and other intelligence,
27:39scientists aim to determine the type of plane, munition, and warhead needed to destroy any building in the world.
27:48What the Marine Corps can do is anticipate certain areas in the world where we might find ourselves employed.
27:55We can take those cities and the objective areas or certain key nodes in that city,
28:01and we can replicate them as you see here.
28:05Having done that, we can do the necessary planning with our weapons and weapons employment
28:12to make ourselves more effective and efficient once we actually get there and conduct operations.
28:18Having done it before, virtually, when it comes to doing it for real, be a piece of cake.
28:29Night falls. Despite the precision bombing, the Marines will have to attack to clear the city.
28:34I expect them to try a beach assault. I expect them to try helo assaults on the LZs.
28:41That's why we've got the squad back here to cover this.
28:44Do you think your forces have a chance?
28:45I think we have a chance. We always have a chance. Sure.
28:51The remaining opposition forces move into position and wait for the Marine assault.
28:58What do you think of this exercise?
29:00I think it needs to be done because it's basically the war of the future.
29:04That's what's upcoming because of the past events, past battles that we've had,
29:09mostly urban environments.
29:13Are you expecting to win this engagement?
29:15Oh, hell yeah. By far.
29:18Why do you think you win?
29:20We did this last time. Last time they put us out in the woods because we were winning too much.
29:25So they had to get rid of us. The Marines always got to win.
29:31The Marines arrived and the fighting began.
29:53We crossed the lines to join the Marines and find out how they were doing.
29:58Machine guns first!
30:00Fill up on water and then get back outside.
30:02How long ago did you arrive here?
30:03About 40 minutes ago, sir.
30:04Were there op forces in here?
30:06Yes, sir, there were. Approximately three op forces were inside the building when we arrived here, sir.
30:10And what did you do?
30:11When we arrived, we took a small shot on the front hatch and then moved inside the building and cleared
30:15from the first deck up, sir.
30:17So the building is now in the hands of the Marines?
30:19Yes, it is, sir.
30:20And what's going on outside?
30:21Right now, we're holding position until we get our other forces come in for our plan of attack.
30:27And then after that, we're going to move out to another position, sir.
30:29Move, move, move, move!
30:31Move, move, move, move, move, move.
30:33Hey, look, got the damage.
30:34Who's got the assault?
30:35What assaults we do?
30:36No, we're not.
30:37We're not going to get machine guns right now.
30:38Hey, assaults!
30:40Assaults!
30:42As the Marines left, we went upstairs, where we found the captain of the Opposition forces very much alive.
30:50Captain, what are you doing here?
30:55They didn't come through this room, by the way, that's your weapon safe.
30:59Ah, where's the phones at?
31:01Right there, sir. Oh, there, sir.
31:03So you're still alive?
31:04Oh, yeah. They didn't come through here.
31:06And your troops are still alive?
31:08Well, the troops that I have here are still alive, yeah.
31:10How do you feel about that?
31:12I'm lucky, but they weren't through them. That's just it. They weren't through them.
31:16So, like any good guerrilla commander, he called in artillery strikes
31:20on the marine armoured vehicles just outside.
31:25Assess an appropriate number of casualties inside, such as your hatches open,
31:30and you'd be getting bomblets, a few bomblets probably flying in.
31:33As the marines count casualties, the experiment's coordinators take stock.
31:38It's probably about the squad of the bad guys left.
31:43The only real weapons they have to fight back with at this time are their artillery.
31:47What about the captain in charge of the opposition forces?
31:50He's still alive.
31:52Are you surprised?
31:53Uh, not necessarily surprised.
31:56The, uh...
31:57That's a large area, a lot of buildings, a lot of rooms.
32:00It's gonna be difficult to click.
32:02It's an uncomfortable truth.
32:04There's no substitute for good soldiering.
32:07For some time yet, it seems urban warfare is likely to pose problems
32:11that science alone cannot solve.
32:17Here in the New Mexico desert, the role of science in warfare is more assured.
32:23Among the sagebrush and behind-wire fences,
32:27weapon scientists are busy keeping America's nuclear stockpile in perfect working order.
32:33The United States has signed treaties saying it won't make any new explosive packages at the core of nuclear weapons.
32:40But at the Sandia National Laboratory, they're free to modify and upgrade the other 6,000-odd parts in each
32:48warhead and bomb.
32:49It's part of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, with a budget of more than $4 billion a year.
32:55There isn't any weapon in the stockpile that doesn't have something that's in the process of being changed.
33:00A manual, a part, a piece, or that isn't on the schedule to have something changed.
33:06There, one group of people would believe that this is a violation of the, uh, of the intent of the,
33:12uh, Test Ban Treaty.
33:13Frankly, uh, the intent of the Test Ban Treaty was to stop qualitative improvements in nuclear explosives.
33:21So at Sandia today, they're tailoring nuclear weapons for new roles.
33:26Already, the B61 bomb, which used to explode on impact, has been modified to penetrate underground bunkers.
33:33The scientists insist that this is allowed.
33:36Under no circumstances do we, or do the official policies of the government, recognize that in the current status,
33:43that our ability to modify the weapons to increase their reliability, their safety, their, uh, use control or security,
33:53to allow its adaptation to be modern and to fit the needs of the military.
33:56None of these things are either prohibited or even assumed to be prohibited in the sense of the policies of
34:02the United States.
34:06The Stockpile Program is important in another way, too.
34:11Unfortunately, people age, they get older, and eventually they leave, and so we have to replace old people with new
34:17people.
34:18As it turns out, the stewardship program becomes an indispensable element of attracting some subset of the best and brightest
34:26minds.
34:28Sandia attracts young scientists by giving them the chance to work with new technologies, like micromachines,
34:34complex silicon components built on the scale of a dust mite.
34:44I think that the first challenge that we face in being a nuclear weapons laboratory is,
34:50how do you create a burning desire on the part of brilliant young scientists in the country to come to
34:56Sandia and to work on weapons?
34:59And we feel that these technologies, like micromachining, are not only really relevant technically for nuclear weapons,
35:06but they also create a sense of excitement about getting people to come to Sandia and work on the weapons.
35:12How do you feel about working on nuclear weapons?
35:17It hasn't really bothered me at all. It's an area that's interesting.
35:24I guess one view is that the U.S. has always viewed this as kind of just a, how do
35:35I say, kind of in a benign position,
35:40just a preventative position to have nuclear weapons, and they've never used it offensively, and so I do not see
35:48a problem.
35:49I think this is leading a technology that's going to be around for decades.
35:53And for nuclear weapons, I think the role that we play here is vital, and I'm glad to be part
35:59of it.
36:00In order to arm the weapon, you need to pop up a mirror that would complete an optical fire chain.
36:07It works very similar to the traditional macro component, only it's microscopic in dimensions.
36:13What you can see here, if you look at them, it's kind of hard to see, are one of these
36:19locking-type mechanisms.
36:21It also contains some of these pop-up mirrors which redirect an optical signal.
36:26Some of the individual pieces that move on here are on the order of, say, the same as the diameter
36:32of a human hair.
36:34All of which means more space in the warheads for new devices to tailor more precisely what the weapons will
36:40do.
36:41But will the new components work when the bombs explode? That's what nuclear testing was for.
36:48Today, the tests have been replaced in part by this machine, which costs over $5 billion.
36:54This is the Z-accelerator. It's an electrical generating device that produces more electrical power in one place than anywhere
37:04on the surface of the Earth.
37:07The way it works is that we store energy we get from the Albuquerque electric power grid in a set
37:14of capacitors over a period of two minutes.
37:17When we release that energy, it comes out in the timescale of one microsecond, and the power is amplified by
37:24a factor of 100 million.
37:26Then on this side, where we have water as an insulator, we compress that pulse another factor of 10,
37:33to the point that we have an electrical source of energy that exceeds 50 trillion watts of electrical power,
37:41and it occurs over a timescale of 100 billionths of a second.
37:46Now, if you could picture all of the electrical power in the world on the surface of the Earth being
37:53used at any time,
37:54in all of the factories, every electric motor, all of the automobiles, all of the airplanes,
38:00you would find that we have significantly more electrical power for the brief instant of time in this machine than
38:08everything else put together.
38:09That power occurs in the space of only one millimeter in a timescale of 100 billionths of a second.
38:19Now that underground tests are banned, Sandia needs the Z machine to replicate what happens when nuclear weapons explode.
38:28In underground testing, what happens when a nuclear weapon device goes off is that an immense temperature is generated,
38:36a temperature of many millions of degrees.
38:40What we're trying to do with the X-ray source in the Z-accelerator and with other capabilities across the
38:47U.S.
38:47is to mimic the effects of a nuclear explosion to get the physics of what happens right.
38:56So today at Sandia, scientists are working on nuclear weapons, just as they were during the Cold War.
39:08When I came to Sandia, I was asked a very simple question.
39:12That question was, did I have a fundamental objection to working on nuclear weapons?
39:18I thought about the question, and I answered no.
39:20I believed that it was important to have nuclear weapons to ensure world peace.
39:26Not everybody believes that.
39:28But this is a question that I learned to ask routinely of people coming in the door,
39:34and that's everyone hired in the Pulse Power Sciences Center,
39:38whether they have a fundamental objection to working on nuclear weapons.
39:42If they had an objection, then Sandia would not be the place to work.
39:46They're not hired.
39:49But how will the modernized weapons be used?
39:52Sandia scientists are thinking about that too,
39:55imagining new roles for their bombs on the battlefield.
40:00The nuclear weapon itself is an amazingly powerful system for, for instance, destroying a pass,
40:06and keeping the movement of material or troops between two countries from occurring.
40:12As I said, you can take out a chemical or biological facility,
40:17you could, in fact, terminate a major war at the battlefield by having a couple of weapons that break up
40:25large concentrations of manpower,
40:27and, in fact, give time and ability of forces to regroup from a defensive position.
40:39So we have to get out of the mode that occupied our mind for 50 years, which is exchanges against
40:47principal cities across the world,
40:49and imagine that as we move away from that time there may be a role for nuclear weapons in a
40:55much more limited sense,
40:56and we should be prepared as a world to recognize that that may occur, and we as a lab have
41:02to be prepared not to advertise it as a great idea,
41:06but to have the technologies available should they be needed.
41:18Across the desert, close to the Sandia lab, another revolution is in progress.
41:23America's $7 billion program to build an airborne laser that can shoot down medium-range missiles from a 747 jumbo
41:31jet at a distance of up to 300 miles.
41:36Today, more than 30 nations possess theater ballistic missiles.
41:41At least a dozen nations are known to have nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, and the threat is growing every
41:48day.
41:49The solution? The airborne laser.
41:53ABL uses a multi-megawatt chemical oxygen-iodine laser, or COIL, to destroy missiles in their boost phase.
42:01The resulting debris and the missile's deadly cargo falls back on the aggressor's own territory.
42:08This speed of light weapon will dramatically change the way in which future conflicts are fought.
42:15At the heart of this massive research program have been father and son Don and Steve Lamberson.
42:21The fascination of airborne lasers is the ability to kill a target from some distance from the airplane, to do
42:28that at the speed of light.
42:30And we think that that's an important thing to do, and it will happen.
42:35That's right. We're going to be doing the demonstration to prove that the entire system works,
42:41and then we plan to field the system four or five years after that as an operational system.
42:46That's where we're headed, and that's what the Air Force is off doing.
42:50Come on. Isn't it really science fiction?
42:52No, no. We actually think it will work.
42:54We are in the process of building some of the initial components now and testing them.
42:59We've done the risk reduction experiments.
43:02We're confident it's going to work, and we're reasonably confident it's going to work on schedule.
43:07Science fiction has to do with things for which the laws of physics do not support.
43:12The laws of physics support this very clearly. That has been shown over and over, and so this is not
43:17science fiction.
43:21The Lambersons have been involved in the project since its earliest days.
43:26Father Don headed the Air Force program.
43:29Son Steve is chief scientist today.
43:32Do they think the age of the death ray has arrived?
43:36I think we're the death ray is here, and we're killing targets, but we can kill specific targets that we're
43:43specifically interested in.
43:45Does it cause you any concerns?
43:47No, absolutely not. We can pick out what we shoot at and make sure we only destroy what we are,
43:54and it's primarily a defensive weapon, taking out targets that are headed towards us.
43:59Does any other country have this capacity?
44:01Not that I know of.
44:03We would hope that we are at the cutting edge of this research.
44:08Beyond airborne lasers, space, the next, the ultimate battlefield.
44:14American scientists estimate that within ten years, over a thousand new commercial satellites will be orbiting the Earth.
44:22U.S. Space Command believes America has to take charge.
44:26I think the control of space is, the nature of the word sounds a little confrontational.
44:33I think another way to say control of space, and a way I would like to view it is, is
44:37we want to ensure space is there for everybody to use.
44:41In other words, we want to ensure, much like the seas, free access.
44:45The same thing is true with space. In order to be able to ensure free access, you've got to be
44:49able to control pieces of it at certain times.
44:51It doesn't mean dominance. It doesn't mean continuous dominance for sure.
44:56It just means that when the time is necessary, the United States wants to make sure that space is accessible
45:03to us and our allies for purposes which we think are important to our security.
45:06That's what control of space is about.
45:08So the logic from your position is that the militarization of space is inevitable.
45:15I hope I'm wrong.
45:19But the fact is, if you look at history, history would say that just like we militarized the land, the
45:28sea, and the air, because we were protecting our national interests in land, sea, and air as nations, that as
45:36our interests move to space, we're going to have to protect those interests in space.
45:43But does the science to do this exist?
45:46Ten years ago, the United States launched a Star Wars program.
45:50It floundered. What about now?
45:55To take a satellite out from the ground, the science and technology is here today.
45:59It's just a matter of national will if you choose to do it.
46:02What about putting lasers in space?
46:04Yeah, very doable.
46:05We currently have a program underway here in this country to do a demonstration of a space-based laser, demonstrate
46:13conceptually that a laser can operate in space.
46:17This will happen in the next decade.
46:21Today, international treaties ban deploying these weapons.
46:25Yet as America reaches out to control space, these treaties may succumb to the power of science.
46:32This is a sensitive issue because there are lots of treaties that are out there that, when they were crafted,
46:38make tremendous sense at the time they were crafted.
46:43The world is changing.
46:46As we look to the future and the world has changed, some of the bedrock agreements that we've had in
46:52terms of arms control may require a modification to support the national security.
47:02The Pentagon predicts that for the next 15 years, the U.S. will have no superpower rival.
47:08Within that time, American military scientists aim to achieve their dream, full-spectrum dominance over land, sea, air and space,
47:18over any enemy, anywhere in the world.
47:29The realidade remains to be a requirement, and people семьies to a sea of determinants.
47:29A fountains of power.
47:30The U.S. has beenכלia.
47:31Within a couple of years, the U.S. has to go to the country's authority of silver.
47:31The U.S. has beençons of the vast majority on earth.
47:31The U.S. has been Chrysler Clinic.
47:32On the U.S. has been diagnosed with the U.S. of the U.S. of the U.S. with
47:32the U.S. and the U.S. has to go to the power of the U.S.
47:40The U.S. has been moved to the U.S.
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