
A new documentary on life on the USS Nimitz.
This development so close to the Southeast Asian sea lanes so vital to the economies of Asia can only cause concern far beyond these straits.
"...his son's unit was driving cross-country, staying away from the road on purpose in order to evade IEDs."It is possible that the deaths were caused by an old landmine.
"...indicated the IED (or mine) may have been there for a long time as there has been no evidence that it was placed recently."The battle to combat IEDs is one that will need a combination of solutions. RIP to the fallen.
Michael Yon
Mosul, Iraq
10 March 2008
Men crept in darkness to plant a bomb. They moved in an area where last year I was helping to collect fallen American soldiers from the battlefield.
Terrorists. The ones who murder children in front of their parents. The ones who take drugs and rape women and boys. The ones who blow up schools. The ones who have been forcibly evicted from places like Anbar Province, Baghdad and Baqubah by American and Iraqi forces. Terrorists are here now in Mosul. They call themselves al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). AQI cannot win without Baghdad, and cannot survive without Mosul. The Battle for Mosul is evolving into AQI’s last great stand.
And there were the men planting the bomb. It is unknown if the men with the explosives were al Qaeda, but they were planting a bomb and that was enough. Many terrorists murder only for money. Like hit men. They might have nothing against the victim. It’s just business. Although understanding enemy motivations is key to winning a war, out on the battlefield, such considerations can become secondary, as divining the motives of a would-be killer is less important than stopping him.
The bombers were being watched. Invisible to them, prowling far overhead, was a Predator.
The Predator is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) whose eye sees through the darkness. The night sky is the jungle where it hides. The Predator strikes with more suddenness and force than any tiger. I often watch the live feed streaming down into the Tactical Operations Centers (TOC) around Iraq, while crosshairs track the enemy, and the screen lists data such as altitude, azimuth, ground speed, and the precise grid coordinates of the target. The Predator carries a deadly Hellfire missile, but also has other weapons, like the crosshairs on its eye, which links down to soldiers watching the video and data feed. The soldiers have radios to other soldiers with massive arrays of weapons. With that combination, every weapon in the US arsenal can be brought into action. Unarmed spy planes, like the Shadow, often allow enemies to escape—the difference between success and failure is often measured in seconds. The Predator can launch an attack with its Hellfire, but the most devastating attacks are usually the result of closely-coordinated teamwork between soldiers on the ground and in the air, using information provided by the Predator above. Combat at this level is an elegant dance under a burning roof.
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This is how fragile the robotics industry is: Last year, three armed ground bots were deployed to Iraq. But the remote-operated SWORDS units were almost immediately pulled off the battlefield, before firing a single shot at the enemy. Here at the conference, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Forces, Kevin Fahey, was asked what happened to SWORDS. After all, no specific reason for the 11th-hour withdrawal ever came from the military or its contractors at Foster-Miller. Fahey’s answer was vague, but he confirmed that the robots never opened fire when they weren’t supposed to. His understanding is that “the gun started moving when it was not intended to move.” In other words, the SWORDS swung around in the wrong direction, and the plug got pulled fast. No humans were hurt, but as Fahey pointed out, “once you’ve done something that’s really bad, it can take 10 or 20 years to try it again.”Read the response below, and see if you agree. opswarfare finds that the original paragraph sounds misleading (in light of the clarifications below).
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The M3 can be driven into a river and used as a ferry or, when a number are joined together from bank to bank, as a bridge, capable of taking vehicles as heavy as the Challenger MBT. A 100m river can be crossed in 30 minutes, using 8 rigs. |
The percentage of those considered unfit and therefore exempt from service has been steadily rising, from eight to 12 percent until 1999 to 16.9 percent in 2002, 32.6 percent in 2004 and 41.9 percent in 2007. |
The case followed an inquest into the death in 2003 of Private Jason Smith, a 32-year-old Territorial army soldier sent to Basra, southern Iraq, in June 2003. Two months later, he died from heat stroke in temperatures reaching 60C.Another recent case seems to contradict the above judgement. A quick blurb below.
At the inquest in November 2006, Oxfordshire's assistant deputy coroner, Andrew Walker, said Smith died because of "a serious failure to recognise and take appropriate steps to address the difficulty that he had in adjusting to the climate".
However, the coroner refused to consider whether the death breached Smith's rights under article two of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), covering the right to life.
Smith's mother, Catherine, challenged this in the high court, with the MoD listed as an "interested party" after Browne sought legal guidance on whether corners could talk of "serious failures".
While risk was inherent in a soldier's job, the judge ruled today, the MoD had to provide them with proper care.
The nine law lords who heard the case - an unusually high number reflecting the importance attached to it - said they sympathised with the families. But they unanimously ruled that the human rights convention did not apply to war.opswarfare will be looking for more information on this issue.
- The state must possess well-based, thoroughly verified information regarding the identity and activity of the civilian who is allegedly taking part in the hostilities; the burden of proof on the state is heavy.
- A civilian taking a direct part in hostilities cannot be attacked at such time as he is doing so, if a less harmful means can be employed. Thus, if a terrorist taking a direct part in hostilities can be arrested, interrogated, and tried, those are the means which should be employed. In the words of the Court, ‘‘Trial is preferable to use of force. A rule-of-law state employs, to the extent possible, procedures of law and not procedures of force.’’
- If a civilian is indeed attacked, a thorough and independent investigation must be conducted regarding the precision of the identification of the target and the circumstances of the attack, and in appropriate cases compensation must be paid for harm done to innocent civilians.
- Finally, combatants and terrorists are not to be harmed if the damage expected to be caused to nearby innocent civilians is not proportionate to the military advantage directly anticipated from harming the combatants and terrorists.