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Marines Mount Defense for Shore-Storming Vehicle
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL News(May 27) -- The secretary of defense doesn't seem to want it, but the Marines definitely do. The question now is, who will win? The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which is designed to carry Marines from ship to shore, has faced numerous budget woes and cost delays over the course of two decades of development, prompting Defense Secretary Robert Gates to question whether the military even needs such a technology. After all, critics of the program argue, the Marines haven't stormed many beaches since World War II. But the Marine Corps, for its part, is pushing forward with what it says is a ...
Pentagon Sends Blimps to Battle Roadside Bombs
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL NewsFORT BELVOIR, Va. (May 18) -- A type of aircraft dating back more than 100 years, blimps were used in World War I to drop bombs and conduct reconnaissance over enemy territory. Now, updated versions are making a comeback in military operations in Afghanistan. As troops face a deadly escalation in roadside bombings, the U.S. military is responding with a new surveillance system featuring tethered, sensor-equipped blimps to protect forward operating bases by monitoring the ground below. Alison Miller, Sky Sentry LLC / U.S. Army The Pentagon is sending blimps, like the one pictured, to ...
Times Square Bomb: The Growing Threat of 'Improvised' Explosives
By David Wood - Politics DailyAdd Times Square to the growing list of places like Peshawar, Kandahar or any crowded Iraqi market where car bombs, suicide bombers and IEDs are now a deadly threat. Expertise in making bombs -- especially using common materials like those found in the smoldering Times Square truck bomb Saturday night -- is spreading like wildfire across the globe with technical data and training widely shared among terrorist groups, experts have found. In Afghanistan, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or roadside bombs have killed 89 Americans so far this year. The dead include three in the past week: ...
General: Iran Increasingly Meddling in Afghanistan
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL News(April 8) -- The general in charge of the Pentagon's efforts to counter deadly roadside bombs says Iran's attempts to aid anti-U.S. forces in Afghanistan is still modest, but increasing. "I do think we've seen a slight uptick in their support, in terms of training and some limited material support, but it's not the extent we saw in Iraq," Army Lt. Gen. Michael Oates told reporters at a roundtable held at the Pentagon today. Oates heads the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, known as JIEDDO, which was formed in 2006 when the rapid proliferation of homemade bombs in Iraq ...
Roadside Bomb Hunting: Learned Skill or Intuition?
By David Wood - Politics DailyIt was dusk and just over 100 degrees as the truck convoy designated Dagger Three Seven snaked past concrete barriers and coils of razor wire and crept onto a road pocked with scars where previous convoys had been hit with IEDs. Our gun truck was escorting two dozen tractor trailers carrying food, ammo, and spare parts from an air base to an outlying post, and to make sure we got there OK, Army Specialist Francisco B. Fimbres was up in the turret, sweeping the landscape with eagle eyes. Left ... front ... right ... front ... left. ...
From Hollywood Fantasy to the Medical Fast Track
By not in system - AOL News(Dec. 21) -- The Department of Defense has announced plans to fast-track face transplant surgery, with a $3.4 million grant for surgeons at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. An estimated 200 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are candidates for the procedure; better body armor and trauma care mean more troops survive the frequent roadside-bomb attacks that are a grim fixture of modern war – but return permanently disfigured. The grant means that face transplants could move from obscure science to clinical medical practice within two years. Brigham surgeons hope to operate on six ...
Pentagon Mounts New Effort to Stop IEDs
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL News(Nov. 13) - Given the number of years and the billions of dollars that the Pentagon has sunk into finding ways to counter the crude bombs, improvised explosive devices still make up a devastating portion of U.S. troop casualties -- some 80 percent. But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has a new plan to combat the problem. On Thursday, he announced plans to create a new task force to look at the continuing problem of homemade bombs, which remain the top killer of troops in Afghanistan. The roadside bombs would be "one of my top priorities for, say, the next six months," Gates told reporters ...
Women's Intuition May Not Be Enough for Bomb Squad
By Bonnie Goldstein - Politics DailyMy husband and I and a woman friend saw the film Hurt Locker this weekend. It centers on a three-man U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit whose daily job is to deactivate improvised explosive devices on the streets of Iraq while distinguishing between enemy insurgents and innocent civilians. ...
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