Fuel problems, sabotage, regional disputes and overdue maintenance dogged the first months of 2007, contributing to average generation of 3,877 megawatts of power, less than the estimated 4,300 megawatts produced before the war. Though outlying provinces gained more electricity than they had under Saddam Hussein, feeble production and surging demand have meant far less for Baghdad, and it is reliable nowhere.

The U.S. Embassy says there are now enough generators to provide 8,400 megawatts.

James Janega “After 4 Years, Electricity Still Luxury: Iraqi struggles endure despite billions spent” Chicago Tribune, June 25, 2007, Pg. 1

Snip from today’s WaPo:

[DEPSECDEF] England, a former corporate executive and a former secretary of the Navy, signaled broad opposition to inserting a new layer of management officials, saying that “the department already has a lot of structure” and too many rules. As an example, he said Defense officials have found 219 legislative and regulatory sections dealing with flag officers.

“Whenever there is an issue, we add something to it,” England said. “After a while you just have a much larger bureaucracy that has to deal with all this.”

Where possible, England suggested, the Pentagon should avoid centralized control of operations. “I am of a mind when it comes to management that less is better. That is, have the authority and responsibility but move it down as far in the organization as you can to hold people accountable, and we provide the top level of direction and the oversight.”

The always-appealing political solution of throwing more people and more structure at the problem is one of the ways we got into the current management mess. More of the same won’t lead to anything different.

Snazzy post up by Noah on Danger Room looking at the USMC’s urgent request for solar and wind turbine stations. The request was turned down after the Joint Staff decided that the technology was too immature.

The Army, meanwhile, is testing containerized solar and wind generators from Sky Built Power, which claims to offer users:

Military and Intelligence Uses:
Lower cost, more reliable power
No logistical tail, no heat signature

Mobile Power Stations:
Containerized, rapidly deployed power, expandable from 0.5 kW to
150 kW or more; use the inside of the container for any purpose in the field
Power without fuel and virtually no maintenance

Commercial Applications:
Cell tower conversions to renewables
Geo Exchange systems to reduce HVAC costs

Homeland Security:
Disaster relief power, baseload or backup
Emergency Ops centers for first responders
Power for CBW and other sensors
Border control power

International:
Water pumping, desalinization and irrigation for Sustainable Economic Development
Mobile clinics and health facilities
Self-contained, self-powered classrooms, offices

This listing of potential customers makes clear the strategic significance of instant infrastructure like this. In addition to the ability to rapidly deploy electrical generating capacity to areas in need, the smaller logistical tail would reduce the number of convoy targets for IEDs and ambushes.

SysAdmin tech like this isn’t as sexy as big war platforms, but it will become key to the soft power projection needs of 21st Century conflict (just as carriers are giving way to amphibious warfare ships as the primary power projection assets).

Fred Burton has an excellent analysis up on Stratfor discussing the campaign against al Qaeda nodes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. In his summary, Burton offers one of the best succinct descriptions of the challenge I’ve seen:

Though the campaign to disrupt the local nodes… has been very successful, it is important to remember that this is not so much a war against a group of individuals as it is a war against an ideology.

The problem for the United States is that it cannot fight this ideological war, and any efforts it openly supports — including the Arabic television station Al Hurra — are quickly tainted and discredited. The U.S. government, therefore, must sit on the sidelines while moderate Muslim scholars refute the theology of jihadism. Meanwhile, Washington can only hope the message gets through.

This realization gets overlooked in much of the day-to-day discussion of winning hearts and minds in Iraq or of fighting radicalism. Of course, direct and ham-handed attempts to do this are recognized as the sales jobs that they are and ignored. Which is why transparency has been such a theme in my posts. [1] [2] [3] We cannot directly influence the revolution within Islam, so all we can do is show the world as honest a portrait of ourselves as possible. Even when we may wish we could airbrush that portrait, it will be better to demonstrate that we’ll follow the principle of openess rather than try to fool the world and end up looking silly when the truth inevitibly comes out. Turning such inevitable embaressing incidents into demonstrations of principle, instead of the standard scandal narrative of cover-up and superficial fixes, will indirectly challenge closed societies to answer why they are not as open. This indirect approach won’t appeal to those with a penchant for direct action, but it may be one of our best tools in 21st Century conflicts.

[1] Knowing the Enemy Part II: Strategic Perspective
[2] Transparency, not Secrecy
[3] IO and PR

Thanks to NYkrinDC, came across Pageflakes today. Very snazzy RSS aggregator that lets you dispay your feeds in columns like a newspaper. Not that I’m thinking of changing; I’m still partial to Bloglines for sheer readability (I adore the ability to force the text into a narrow column for reading and to minimize all other distractions). I played around with Google Reader, but I think Bloglines knocks it out of the water.

Picking up on the theme of asymmetric innovation cycles, a clip from today’s WaPo:

American officials have said that the majority of car and truck bombs are built outside the capital by members of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni-dominated insurgent group. But a preliminary investigation showed that the truck used in Tuesday’s blast was rigged with TNT a little less than a mile from where it exploded, near the Shiite al-Khilani mosque.

If that proves to be the case, it would mean that al-Qaeda in Iraq has shifted strategies once again, this time in reaction to increased security efforts meant to control access to Baghdad.

In an interview on state-run al-Iraqiya television, Brig. Gen. Qassim Atta, an Iraqi spokesman for the four-month-old Baghdad security plan, suggested as much, saying that insurgents are now building car bombs inside Baghdad, hoping to avoid driving through the city and being detected at newly erected security checkpoints.

Now that Joost is offering unlimited licenses, I was hoping that someone reading this might have one to spare.

Very sharp post up on Mapping Strategy discussing some prediction markets and how to appropriately set them up.