US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

bd popeye said:

Fin, indeed the X-47B may be the aircraft of the future for USN CVWs. However only two experimental models have been funded and no new funds for further R & D have been authorized.

Click to expand...

China says U.S. spends too much on military

By Alexa Olesen - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 11, 2011 7:59:13 EDT

BEIJING — The United States is spending too much on its military in light of its recent economic troubles, China's top general said Monday while playing down his country's own military capabilities.

The chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army, Chen Bingde, told reporters he thought the U.S. should cut back on defense spending for the sake of its taxpayers. He was speaking during a joint news conference in which he traded barbs with visiting U.S. counterpart Adm. Mike Mullen.

"I know the U.S. is still recovering from the financial crisis," Chen said. "Under such circumstances, it is still spending a lot of money on its military and isn't that placing too much pressure on the taxpayers?

"If the U.S. could reduce its military spending a bit and spend more on improving the livelihood of the American people ... wouldn't that be a better scenario?" he said.

The visit by Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the first of its kind in four years. Mullen and Chen are trying to upgrade military-to-military ties after setbacks over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, cyberattacks traced to China and concern about Beijing's military plans.

Chen made a similar trip to the U.S. in May as part of efforts to improve often frosty relations between the militaries, especially as the economies of the countries become more codependent.

The two sides announced future exchanges, according to a statement released through the official Xinhua News Agency, with the commander of one of China's seven military regions visiting the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii later this year, followed by a return visit by the head of the Pacific Command.

It said the two sides agreed to hold more meetings in the first half of next year.

The world's two biggest economies frequently clash over financial issues, such as Beijing's resistance to exchange rate reforms and the ballooning U.S. trade deficit with China. Such issues are not usually at the forefront of military talks, though both sides chide each other for their defense spending.

China's military budget of $95 billion this year is the world's second-highest after Washington's planned $650 billion in defense spending.

Mullen acknowledged tough challenges to improving their military ties and called for more communication as well as "clearer and more pragmatic expectations."

"We need to continue to work toward an understanding as these differences continue to be out there," Mullen said. "That's why it's so important that we have a robust military-to-military relationship."

Chen said China is more than two decades behind the U.S. in terms of military technology and Beijing needs to upgrade by adding new hardware such as aircraft carriers.

"China is a big country, and we have quite a number of ships, but these are only small ships and this is not commensurate with the status of a country like China," he said. "Of course I hope that in future we will have aircraft carriers."

Chen said a former Soviet-era aircraft carrier that China bought from Ukraine in 1998 was "a valuable thing" for China and it was being used for research and development purposes.

The still-unnamed ship was bought as an empty shell without engines, weapons systems, or other crucial equipment and isn't believed to have traveled before under its own propulsion. Years of sea trials and flight training are needed before it will be fully operational.

Although no date has been set, once launched, it is expected to primarily be a training vessel for the navy and for naval pilots, while China moves swiftly to build its own carriers.

During their talks earlier Monday, Chen said he and Mullen also discussed China's development of a new missile system, the Dong Fang 21D. Analysts have said the "carrier killer" missile might threaten U.S. warships and alter the regional balance of power.

Chen told reporters the DF 21D system was "not operational yet," and was intended for defenses purposes only.

China's push to grow homegrown aircraft carrier and missile technology have raised the stakes for Washington, long the pre-eminent naval power in Asia, and jangled the already edgy nerves of China's neighbors, perceiving from Beijing more assertive enforcement of claims to disputed territories.

Over the past year, China has seen a flare-up in territorial spats with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam and seen its relations strained with South Korea — all of which have turned to Washington for support.

Chen criticized the U.S. for its recent military exercises with the Philippines and Vietnam, saying they should have been put off due to the heightened regional tensions. Mullen defended the operations as routine.

"The timing of those joint exercises was inappropriate," Chen said. "At this particular time, when China and the related claimants have some difficulties, have some problems with each other, the U.S. decides to hold such large-scale joint exercises ... at the very least this was bad timing."

Mullen countered that the exercises had been planned well in advance and that he wouldn't describe them as "large-scale," though he was open to a debate with Chen on the matter.

The host, Chen, took the last word, saying that even if the exercises were pre-planned, they could have been rescheduled.

Click to expand...

German town hit by shots from nearby U.S. range

The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 11, 2011 12:26:37 EDT

BERLIN — The U.S. military says it is investigating an incident in which rounds fired at an Army training range in southern Germany hit buildings in a nearby town. There were no injuries.

Grafenwoehr garrison spokeswoman Susanne Bartsch said Monday that the incident happened during a convoy protection exercise on Friday afternoon.

Machine-gun shots hit three buildings inside the base and three other buildings in the town of Grafenwoehr also suffered minor damage. Local police say they included a vocational school that was closed at the time.

Bartsch says that soldiers "were shooting in the wrong direction." The shots landed up to 3 miles from the training range that was being used.

An investigation and a review of procedures are under way.

Click to expand...

Army times said:

Army on brink of new ways to fight pain

By Michelle Tan - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jul 11, 2011 8:13:02 EDT

SAN ANTONIO — The Army is reinventing the way it treats pain.

Based on 109 recommendations from an Army-led Pain Management Task Force, the Army is seeking to move away from merely dispensing pain medication to embracing a holistic, multidisciplinary approach to caring for soldiers.

This approach could include traditional medications coupled with more unconventional treatments such as massage therapy, acupuncture and yoga.

“Morphine is an extremely valuable tool, but when it’s your only tool in your toolbox, you run into the problem of monolithic thinking,” said Col. (Dr.) Trip Buckenmaier, director of Army Medical Command’s Defense and Veterans Center for Integrated Pain Management. “[This is just] a means of providing a variety of different techniques that have proven worth and bringing those techniques to the patient.”

Buckenmaier, who is an anesthesiologist trained in acute pain management, said history has shown that pain is usually thought of as merely a symptom of a larger problem.

“Now we realize pain is far more complex than that,” he said. “Pain has an emotional component, it has a psychological component. It impacts the way you deal with your family. It impacts the way you deal with work.”

The key is to find a way to manage pain in the best way possible, said Col. Kevin Galloway, chief of staff for the Pain Management Task Force.

“It’s the dynamic of driving pain down to the lowest point possible and increasing quality of life, and the two points meet somewhere,” he said.

He also emphasized that the Army isn’t going to stop giving soldiers pain medication. It is merely seeking to also look at other methods and alternative treatments and therapies.

The issue of dealing with pain is not just an Army issue, Galloway said.

“There’s no Army pain,” he said. “There’s just pain.”

The wars in Iraq and Afghan- istan have spurred the medical community to take a closer look at treating and managing pain, officials said.

“Opioids, particularly morphine, have been the answer for pain for many decades and it worked OK, but in the current conflict, things changed,” Buckenmaier said. “We have a 90 percent survival rate now. We have more people surviving from horrible wounds than ever before, and we’re beginning to see that this tool we were relying on was beginning to fail us.”

Incidents of misuse, abuse or dependence on these medications also became a factor in exploring additional ways to treat pain, he said.

“We need to get a handle on the tsunami of pain that’s going to hit America from these conflicts,” Buckenmaier said. “Not just the wounded, but also the large population of pain we haven’t seen yet but will soon from the wear and tear on soldiers’ bodies and musculoskeletal pain.”

Practitioners of Western medicine are good at reactionary, acute medicine, Buckenmaier said.

“There’s nobody better at reacting to trauma and reacting to disease,” he said. “Where we lack is preventing disease, [whether through] diet, or maintaining fitness so you’re more resistant to musculoskeletal injuries.”

Soldiers put their bodies through a lot, and “our job is to make those soldiers as strong and resilient as possible beforehand, and when they do get injured, to provide things beyond medicine,” he said.

The Army — and the military as a whole — is the perfect place to bring about such change, Buckenmaier said.

“We have a system that allows us to affect change very rapidly,” he said.

However, changing a culture and maybe turning skeptics of certain therapies into believers will take time, Buckenmaier said.

“We have no illusions,” he said. “What we’re asking of our community truly is a reorientation of the way we think about pain and how we think about medicine in general.”

The Army is working to implement recommendations put forward by the pain task force. Highlights include:

• Interdisciplinary pain management centers. These centers consist of physicians and specialists in a variety of areas including acupuncturists, a clinical pharmacist, a movement therapist who specializes in areas such as yoga or tai chi, a chiropractor, a medical massage therapist, physical and occupational therapists and a neurologist.

Four centers will be stood up this fiscal year, at Tripler Army Medical Center, Hawaii; Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.; Eisenhower Army Medical Center at Fort Gordon, Ga.; and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany.

In fiscal 2012, the plan is to add four more teams, at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, N.C.; Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas; Darnall Army Community Hospital at Fort Hood, Texas; and William Beaumont Army Medical Center, Fort Bliss, Texas.

The work done by these teams, from their productivity to their outcomes in treating patients, will be collected and the data will be examined, Galloway said.

“If evidence comes in to show this works, we will argue for these teams to be everywhere [across the Army],” he said.

• Defense and veterans pain rating scale. This new scale, which is being validated for use, replaces the commonly used 11-point chart that asks patients to rate their pain. This new scale retains the 11-point scale but adds functional language to each rating. For example, instead of just choosing a number from zero to 10, patients can rate their pain based on the language accompanying each number. A rating of four would mean the pain is distracting but the patient still can conduct normal activities. An eight would represent awful pain that makes it hard to do anything, while a 10 signifies pain so excruciating that nothing else matters.

In addition to the revamped pain scale, patients will be asked supplemental questions about their general activity, stress level, mood and sleep patterns.

“The reality is, in many patients I can’t make your pain go away,” Buckenmaier said. “The goal of any pain treatment team is to provide the patient the maximum quality of life and function as we can. It’s not just about asking the pain question. It’s about asking, ‘What are your goals?’”

• Pain assessment and outcome registry. PASTOR is a clinical information and data system that allows patients to go online and fill out a comprehensive survey seeking information on areas such as lifestyle and health history that will be provided to the health-care provider before the patient’s appointment.

“It’s empowering the patient and giving them responsibility for their care,” Buckenmaier said.

PASTOR also will give care providers more information than they might be able to glean from a short, routine check-up.

The Army hopes the new approach becomes standard across the Defense Department, which is why representatives from the Air Force and Navy were members of the pain task force and the group’s report has been provided to the surgeon general for each service.

“We are embracing a cultural change within the military,” Buckenmaier said. “It’s going to take years, but we’re not going to wait around. This is the direction the Army is rolling, and it’s sometimes hard to get us to roll in a direction, but once we get moving, we get things done.” Ë
Ear acupuncture: headed to combat zones?

If you’re in pain, some Army doctors might stick a needle in your ear.

Auricular acupuncture focuses on points in the ear, and some Army doctors who have practiced this form of pain management are looking to introduce formal training for some medics and increase its use across the Army.

“Acupuncture has been used in the Army for over a decade,” said Maj. (Dr.) David Jamison, chief of the pain clinic at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “Since I was a resident in 2004, people were using it already, but it’s become much more mainstream. We’re using it a lot more in training more people, and we’re trying to have it be included more in our algorithms for treating pain, certainly here at Walter Reed.”

Jamison and his colleagues are developing a plan that would add auricular acupuncture training to Special Forces medic training.

“This past fall, I attended the Special Operations Medical Association annual conference and talked about several types of acupuncture,” Jamison said. “We’re trying to push out some of these methods to the field environment, and we’re trying to push it out so it can be used farther forward.”

Right now, there’s no formal training or requirement for Army medical personnel to be trained in acupuncture, auricular or otherwise. Instead, those who have the training will use it in addition to regular treatments.

“I’d say it’s not a standard of care,” Jamison said. “I use it in my practice, but it’s mainly as an adjunct to our other therapies. When I was deployed, I was at a combat support hospital, but I brought acupuncture supplies with me and lots of people loved it there.”

Auricular acupuncture would be an ideal way to introduce acupuncture to the battlefield because its basic form is easier to teach and simpler to practice than regular acupuncture, Jamison said.

“We think it can be used more in the field than it is,” he said.

You can teach someone a few basic auricular acupuncture techniques over a weekend, Jamison said. You can use traditional acupuncture needles for 20 to 30 minutes at a time or insert a small needle that’s attached to what looks like a small gold stud into the ear and the patient can leave it in for a couple of days, he said. Typically, an acupuncturist will put four or more needles in each ear.

Auricular acupuncture works, Jamison said. And with increasing acceptance of alternative therapies, he hopes this practice will become more common across the Army.

“I would say most people thought it sounded pretty strange to them maybe five years ago, but you hear a lot more about acupuncture now and there are enough people who have had it and had a good experience with it. Now people request it when they come in.”

Click to expand...

army times said:

Army unveils Kiowa helicopter display

The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Jul 9, 2011 17:10:54 EDT

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Army officials have unveiled a Kiowa Warrior helicopter display at Redstone Arsenal.

The Huntsville Times reports that officials in the Armed Scout Helicopter office on Friday dedicated the display to 49 fallen Kiowa pilots. A plaque with the pilots’ names is incorporated into the display.

Retired Lt. Gen. William H. Forster said the single-engine, two-seat Kiowa has outperformed every expectation on the battlefield.

The Kiowa made its debut in Vietnam in 1969 and was intended to be a temporary solution while a new generation of scout attack aircraft was developed. But its nimbleness and range of capability have made it the workhorse of Army Aviation despite its age.

The “Kiowa on a stick” static model was built from bits and pieces that were no longer flight-worthy.

Click to expand...

Army time said:

The Army sets its sights on its next carbine

Army seeks accurate, lethal contenders for new battle weapon
By Lance M. Bacon - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Jul 9, 2011 8:16:58 EDT

The Army has given gun makers that want to build your next carbine 90 days to throw their hats in the ring. The message is clear: The Army isn’t looking for the lowest bidder, it’s looking for the most accurate, efficient, quiet, lethal and reliable weapon available.

Service leaders detailed what they want — and how they plan to get it — in a June 30 request for proposal. It seeks “an assault weapon that will provide accuracy, lethality, minimized visual and aural signature and survivability enhancements to all Army formations. … This weapon will possess the capability, in offensive and defensive operations, to destroy or neutralize the adversary and their capabilities, at any time and in any place.”

The RfP allows competitors to submit only one weapon for consideration. There are no caliber restrictions. Although many modern carbines are multicaliber weapons, they will compete with one caliber. And if a weapon’s caliber is not 5.56mm or 7.62mm, the manufacturer must provide 234,000 rounds to cover all tests.

Top performers will be identified by way of two down-select phases that will start this fall. Phase I will grade the weapons in three key areas:

• Technical aspects, such as the ability to mount existing weapons, optics and suppressor kits;

• The company’s ability to produce 2,000 and a surge of 4,200 carbines per month;

• Cost. The Army says performance factors are more important than price.

Competitors who make the grade will proceed to Phase II. In what officials have described as “extreme and extensive” tests expected to last 12 to 18 months, the Army will fire more than 2 million rounds to produce piles of data.

Weapons will be scored in five areas. They are, in order of priority:

• Development tests. These are anchored by a detailed evaluation of accuracy and dispersion at distances of 100, 300 and 600 meters using 90 rounds at each range. Another 21,600 rounds will be used to test reliability, durability and barrel life. Weapons will be tested to their destruction point and to determine whether they maintain accuracy throughout their life cycle — something the military has not tested before. A weapon typically loses accuracy as it ages.

Other events will test recoil mitigation, signature reduction and firing compatibility with the M320 grenade launcher, M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun System and suppressor.

• Secondary development tests. Incapacitation is key here as the weapons must score kills in as few shots as possible. Sustained rates of fire and cook-off will be tested, as will the weapon’s ability to operate in extreme temperatures and environments.

Weapons will be beat up, dropped, submerged in water and fired while lacking lubrication and covered by ice and mud.

• Cost. The Army isn’t willing to get hoodwinked into high prices. But the RfP also states that “when all evaluation factors other than price are combined, they are significantly more important than price.”

• Government purpose rights. The Army will contract three vendors to produce a maximum of 178,890 carbines each. While this aspect of the contract is not a favorite among manufacturers, Army officials say it will keep costs down and ensure weapons keep coming even if one manufacturer can’t meet production goals.

• Limited user evaluation. These tests will use co-ed teams of 16 soldiers to determine each weapon’s probability and quality of hit, time of first trigger pull and mobility/portability in an operational environment.

The latter tests will be conducted at the Army Research Laboratory’s M-Range experimental facility and 500-meter obstacle course, according to the RfP.

The computerized M-Range has multiple stationary and moving targets in a scenario-based function. The twisting obstacle course has 16 pairs of identical obstacles that will make soldiers — wearing full battle rattle — do a variety of combat maneuvers such as running, jumping, climbing, crawling, balancing and negotiating buildings, stairs and windows.

Tests will include short- and long-range engagements, as well as close-quarters battle. Stationary, multiple and moving targets out to 600 meters will be used. Target exposure times will vary by range from 1.5 to 8 seconds.

Only the top three contenders will emerge from Phase II. Then, the competition becomes an exercise in analytics as officials weigh the good against the bad to determine which weapon has the best bang for its buck.
The dual-path strategy

The winning carbine will face off against the improved M4A1 in a battle to become your next weapon. But that point may be moot, as Army officials have said it is highly improbable that the M4A1 will stand a chance against a new carbine.

For starters, technology has driven new carbines to unprecedented levels. Gas and piston systems are much improved, and have even morphed into hybrid systems that have the best of both worlds. Interchangeable barrel sizes and calibers are common in such contenders as the FNH SCAR and Colt CM901.

Costs also have come down. For example, the Adaptive Combat Rifle — another leading contender — already costs less than the M4, according to Jason Schauble, vice president of Remington’s Defense Division. The M4 runs about $1,300 per copy.

Soldiers should see the new carbines in about three years, as the two testing phases are expected to take about two years, officials said.

Click to expand...

Navy times said:

Sunglass technology may improve troops’ goggles

The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 11, 2011 11:11:31 EDT

STORRS, Conn. — A chemistry professor at the University of Connecticut is engaging in some eye-catching business.

Greg Sotzing's work with transition lenses for sunglasses is getting the attention of the military, which is interested in his technology to make lenses change colors almost instantaneously.

Most transition lenses use polymers that darken when light hits them. The new technology developed by Sotzing and his colleagues uses an electric current that changes the lenses' colors when triggered by light.

Military officials are interested because it could help troops avoid the need to change lenses in their goggles, such as when they emerge from indoors to blazing desert light.

Sotzing, a member of University of Connecticut Polymer Program, starts a one-year sabbatical next month at the Air Force Academy to work on the ideas.

Click to expand...

Rockets hit Baghdad during Panetta visit

By Bushra Juhi - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 11, 2011 7:26:09 EDT

BAGHDAD — Three rockets hit Baghdad's Green Zone on Monday during a visit to the capital by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Iraqi police said. No casualties were reported.

The rockets were fired from a Shiite-dominated neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The Pentagon chief was visiting the U.S. military's Camp Victory on the capital's western outskirts at the time of the attack on the Green Zone, the heavily secured district in central Baghdad that is home to the U.S. and other embassies as well as Iraqi government offices.

Panetta, a former CIA director, was in Baghdad for the first time since becoming defense secretary.

He was to meet with Iraqi leaders to discuss the possibility of keeping some U.S. troops in Iraq beyond 2011. He was also expected to press Iraq for stronger action to stop stepped-up attacks on U.S. forces, especially from Shiite militia groups using Iranian-supplied weapons.

Click to expand...

Panetta: Iran supplying insurgents with weapons

BY Robert Burns - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 11, 2011 8:19:05 EDT

BAGHDAD — The U.S. will not "walk away" from the challenge of Iran's stepped-up arming of Iraqi insurgents who are targeting and killing American troops as they prepare to leave Iraq, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday.

Panetta also pointedly pressed Iraqi leaders to appoint a defense minister, after more than a year of indecision, and to make up their minds about asking the U.S. to keep a military presence here beyond December.

"Damn it, make a decision," he told a group of soldiers on his first visit to Iraq as Pentagon chief. He was responding to a soldier who asked whether Iraqi leaders are ready to properly govern their country. Panetta said the Iraqi indecision was frustrating to the American government, but added that political complications are part of being a democracy.

Panetta and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, expressed worry about increasingly deadly attacks on U.S. troops by Shiite militias using weapons that Panetta and others assert are supplied by Iran.

"We're very concerned about Iran and the weapons they're providing to extremists in Iraq," Panetta said.

"We cannot simply stand back and allow this to continue to happen" he said. "This is not something we're going to walk away from. It's something we're going to take on head-on."

Panetta said Iraq must more aggressively go after the Shiite militias that are using what he called Iranian-supplied weapons. And he said the U.S. is determined to act on its own to "go after those threats" from Iranian weapons.

"We're doing that," he said.

Asked later in an interview with a group of American reporters what unilateral action U.S. troops had taken against the Iranian-armed militias, Austin suggested that the emphasis was on defensive actions such as patrolling the perimeter of U.S. troop positions.

"We'll do what we need to protect ourselves," Austin said. Pressed to say whether Panetta was correct in saying the U.S. was acting unilaterally against the Iranian problem, he said, "I won't discuss our operations."

Three rockets fired from a mainly Shiite neighborhood hit Baghdad's Green Zone during Panetta's visit, Iraqi police said. No casualties were reported.

Panetta was visiting the military's Camp Victory on the capital's western outskirts at the time of the attack on the Green Zone, the heavily secured district in central Baghdad that is home to the U.S. and other embassies as well as Iraqi government offices.

In his pep talk to the troops on the sprawling compound outside of Baghdad that houses the U.S. military headquarters, Panetta appeared to slip on the politics of the Iraq war, which was started by the Bush administration in March 2003 on grounds that then-ruler Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Some in the Bush White House also suggested a Saddam link to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaida — a connection that President Barack Obama and other Democrats have called wrong and unproved.

Panetta told the troops he is firmly focused on ensuring that al-Qaida never again is able to attack the U.S. homeland.

"The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked," he said.

Asked later to explain that remark, he said he was not talking about the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq but instead the need to go after al-Qaida in Iraq once it developed a lethal presence in the country following the invasion. He has said there are about 1,000 al-Qaida fighters in Iraq. That compares with an estimated 50-100 in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden's group was sheltered by the Taliban until the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

Panetta will also huddle with the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Baghdad before meeting with Iraqi leaders to discuss the possibility of keeping some U.S. troops in Iraq beyond 2011. He will also press Iraq for stronger action to stop stepped-up attacks on U.S. forces.

Panetta was meeting separately with Austin and with Ambassador James Jeffrey.

Later, he was to talk with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani.

The Obama administration believes Iraq needs a slimmed-down U.S. military presence beyond 2011, when virtually all U.S. troops are scheduled to depart. Many Iraqi leaders agree, but they've been unwilling to make a formal request.

There are now 46,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Click to expand...

U.S., Iraq dispute ownership of Jewish trove

By Rebecca Santana - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 11, 2011 6:54:40 EDT

BAGHDAD — A trove of Jewish books and other materials, rescued from a sewage-filled Baghdad basement during the 2003 invasion, is now caught up in a tug-of-war between the U.S. and Iraq.

Ranging from a medieval religious book to children's Hebrew primers, from photos to Torah cases, the collection is testimony to a once vibrant Jewish community in Baghdad. Their present-day context is the relationship, fraught with distrust, between postwar Iraq and its Jewish diaspora.

Discovered in a basement used by Saddam Hussein's secret police, the collection was sent to the U.S. for safekeeping and restoration, and sat at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Maryland until last year, when Iraqi officials started a campaign to get it back.

Initially contacts went well, but now the deputy culture minister, Taher Naser al-Hmood, says "The Americans are not serious" about setting a deadline for getting back the archive.

U.S. officials deny that they are delaying its return. They say they only recently got the roughly $3 million needed to clean up the materials — the whole point of bringing them to the U.S. — and they question the rush to return the collection now, when the goal is so close.

"It is not U.S. government material, and we have every intention of returning it," said Phil Frayne, a spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

"We understand the frustration over the delay but we're happy that this is going to finally move forward," he said.

But al-Hmood was skeptical, saying he had not been told about the money. "Let the American side prove its goodwill," he said. "We cannot trust the Americans. They have not fulfilled their previous promises."

The case is complicated by the knee-jerk suspicions that cloud everything related to Jewish history in the Arab world, Iraq's attempts to assert its sovereignty after years of U.S. domination, and a diaspora trying to recover its history.

There are claims of Jewish pressure to prevent the return of the collection, and questions about why the U.S. didn't prevent the looting of Arab and Islamic treasures during the invasion but was able to bring the Jewish collection to safety in America. Among those voicing indignation about the transfer of the archive to America is Liwa Smaysim, the minister of archaeology, who belongs to a fiercely anti-American party in the government coalition.

On the other hand, once returned to Baghdad, the archive would likely be beyond the reach of Jewish scholars, especially Israeli ones, given the absence of diplomatic ties with Israel, and the anti-Semitism that exists here. Iraqi officials have vowed to restore the materials and digitize them so they're available outside of Iraq as well.

Besides parchments and photos accumulated over the years, the collection includes books printed in Baghdad, Warsaw and Venice, one of them a Jewish religious book published in 1568, and 50 copies of a children's primer in Hebrew and Arabic.

They are the lost heritage of what was once one of the largest Jewish communities in the Middle East, which dated to the 6th century B.C. and ended with an exodus after the creation of Israel in 1948. Today fewer than ten Jews are believed to be left here.

After the collection was found by a U.S. military team searching for weapons of mass destruction, the U.S.-headed agency temporarily governing Iraq signed an agreement with the Maryland archive to take its contents to the U.S.

It stipulated that the U.S. would restore and display the materials before returning them to Iraq., but that the Iraqi government could have them back any time it asked, regardless of whether the work was complete.

Iraqi Culture Ministry officials say they appreciate the U.S. efforts to save the materials, but are frustrated about getting them back.

They say that in meetings and conversations last year with the State Department and NARA, a decision was reached to return half the materials by the end of 2010, and the rest to be restored and displayed before also coming back to Iraq.

A NARA report, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by The Associated Press, says Saad Eskander, the head of the Iraqi National Library and Archives, met with U.S. representatives on June 23, 2010 and they decided upon a plan, including the immediate return of half the archive. But for reasons no one can entirely agree upon, things began to fall apart.

Al-Hmood said that when the December deadline passed, the Iraqis decided to officially ask for the archive back, and repeated the request six months later. In response, he said, the U.S. sent messages discussing what he says are "technical issues" and which he considers procrastination.

However, the Iraqi government seems in two minds about the matter. Deputy Foreign Minister Labid Abawi, whose ministry is Kurdish-run and has close ties to the U.S. government, said it prefers the U.S. do the restoration, on the grounds that Iraq lacks the capability.

But Eskander and al-Hmood say the Iraqi Cabinet tasked their offices — not the Foreign Ministry — with recovering missing documents, and they're trying to do their job. A letter from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. agency that ran Iraq after the invasion, and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, confirms the Ministry of Culture is charged with making decisions about the Jewish archive.

Eskander shepherded his library through the violence that followed the invasion and is getting a new five-story expansion project now being built. The rattle of gunfire has been replaced by the boom of construction, while staff repair other, similarly mold-infested documents — proof, Eskander says, that Iraq can and will do the needed restoration on the Jewish materials.

He himself is a Faihly, a member of a small Shiite-Kurdish minority persecuted under Saddam. He says it is vital that Iraqis know their history and that they be made aware that Jews were once part of this country.

He and al-Hmood also are pushing for the return of millions of sensitive security-related documents believed to be in CIA and Pentagon hands. These would be much more significant for the Iraqi people, but for now the Jewish archive has been the focus of activity.

Al-Hmood said "There are Jewish organizations that exert great pressure to prevent the return of the archive, claiming that there are no Jewish people in Iraq any longer."

The State Department says it has not succumbed to any pressure and is simply fulfilling its part of the agreement to restore the materials before returning them to Iraq.

Frayne said he understands the frustration over the delay but adds that with nearly $3 million in U.S. taxpayer money allocated, restoration can move ahead.

NARA will hire about ten people to do the work, and part of the money will go toward bringing Iraqi archivists to the U.S. and training them in restoration, said Doris Hamburg, NARA's director of preservation programs.

Frayne said the U.S. has reached out repeatedly to the Iraqi side to appoint an archival team to help draft an addendum to the 2003 agreement, but has received no response.

Although Al-Hmood and Eskander said they had not been told about the $3 million, Al-Hmood said talks could resume if a firm timeline was set for the archive's return.

The role, if any, of outside Jewish groups in the dispute is unknown, but Andrew Baker of the American Jewish Committee questioned why Iraqi officials were in such a rush and wondered who in the Jewish community would be able to make use of the collection once it is taken to Iraq.

A member of the Iraqi Jewish diaspora who follows the talks closely said it initially was hoped the archive would serve as a line of communication with the Iraqi government on other issues such as protecting Jewish cemeteries and shrines in Iraq.

But the perceived involvement of American Jewish organizations led to suspicions they were trying to block the archive's return, and the archive became an impediment to further talks, he said. He requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the archive issue.

———

Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

Click to expand...

Senator pushes to help unemployed veterans

By Verena Dobnik - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 10, 2011 17:25:29 EDT

NEW YORK — Thousands of military veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are living in New York City with no jobs — when they could be paid for skills learned in the military or be retrained, a U.S. senator said Sunday.

“Too many of our troops who risked their lives protecting our country are returning home to an alarming rate of joblessness,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told a news conference at her Manhattan office.

Nationwide, the New York Democrat said more than 20 percent of veterans ages 18-to-24 were unemployed in 2010.
Related reading

Jobs outlook darkens for veterans in June (July 8)

Congressman unveils $3B jobs bill for vets (July 7)

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gillibrand is sponsoring the Hiring Heroes Act of 2011. The legislation would help veterans through training, personal employment assessments and workshops on how to write resumes and conduct interviews.

The senator was joined by a group of the city’s veterans; Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the largest new veterans group headquartered in New York City; and Wesley Poriotis, founder of Veterans Across America, a nonprofit dedicated to helping veterans find jobs.

In New York City, unemployment among veterans in general is 13 percent. Of an estimated 17,000 soldiers from the city who have served since 2001, more than 2,000 Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans are unemployed.

“When our brave men and women come home, we need to ensure they are equipped with the job skills needed so they can provide for their families,” Gillibrand said.

The senator said she believes the bill will pass later this year.

Under the legislation, members of the military would be required to undergo the job training before they left service.

According to the Department of Defense, up to one-third do not participate in the voluntary Transition Assistance Program led by the U.S. Department of Labor with the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In addition, federal hiring practices would change so as to utilize existing skills — without duplicating them in the civilian labor force. For instance, veterans who drove military ambulances should not be required to repeat their training as civilians to do similar work, Gillibrand said.

Federal hiring practices also would change, allowing soldiers to begin the government employment process before they leave the military. And in the private sector, a competitive grant program for nonprofits would provide mentorship and job training programs to boost placements with companies.

Click to expand...

Marine Corps Times said:

Marines repel attack on U.S. embassy in Syria

By Matthew Lee - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 11, 2011 10:42:33 EDT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will formally protest Monday’s attack on the U.S. embassy and the American ambassador’s residence in Syria and may seek compensation for damage caused when a mob breached the wall of the embassy compound before being dispersed by Marine guards.

U.S. officials said the State Department would summon a senior Syrian diplomat to condemn the assaults and demand that Syria uphold international treaty obligations to protect foreign diplomatic missions. The officials said Syrian security forces who are supposed to guard the mission were slow to respond to the attack by supporters of President Bashar Assad, which was allegedly incited by government affiliated media.

Because the Marine guard contingent at the embassy reacted quickly, the attackers were not able to break into any buildings on the compound and there were no injuries reported to embassy personnel, who are all accounted for, the officials said. But the officials said the attackers did damage the chancery building.

A spokesman with Headquarters Marine Corps declined to comment when contacted by Marine Corps Times. He referred all questions to the State Department which is now working to provide details on how Marines repelled intruders.

After the crowd at the embassy was dispersed, protesters moved to the residence of U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford and attacked it, causing unspecified damage, the officials said.

No staff at either location were injured and no personnel were ever in imminent danger, the officials said.

Witnesses said the protesters smashed windows at the embassy and raised a Syrian flag on the compound. They also wrote anti-US graffiti referring to the U.S. ambassador as a “dog,” the witnesses said. The protests were over visits by the U.S. and French ambassadors last week to the opposition stronghold of Hama in central Syria.

On Sunday, the State Department complained that pro-government demonstrators threw tomatoes, eggs and rocks at the embassy over the weekend to protest Ford’s visit to Hama. There were no reports of injuries, but a senior department official said two embassy employees were pelted with food during the 31-hour demonstration.

Ford on Thursday visited Hama, where he was greeted by friendly crowds who put flowers on his windshield and olive branches on his car, chanting, “Down with the regime!” The State Department said Ford made the trip to express support for the right of Syrian people to demonstrate peacefully.

The Syrian government denounced Ford’s visit, saying the unauthorized trip was proof that Washington was inciting violence in the Arab nation. The main headline of state-run daily Al-Thawra read, “Ford in Hama and Syrians are angry.”

Last week, the Syria’s ambassador to the U.S. was summoned to the State Department to hear concerns about reports of Syrian diplomats conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in protests in the United States. Authorities may have retaliated against some demonstrators’ relatives in Syria, the department said in a statement on Friday.

The Obama administration has criticized Assad’s government for its violent crackdown on peaceful protests against his 11-year rule. Clashes between protesters and Assad’s supporters have resulted in the deaths of 1,600, in addition to 350 members of the security forces.

But the White House has so far refrained from calling for an end to the Assad family’s four decades of rule, wary of pressing too hard as it tries to wind down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces criticism for being part of the coalition battling Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Congressional Republicans have pressed the administration to withdraw Ford from Syria, an ally of Iran that supports the Islamic militant groups Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. did not send an ambassador to Damascus for five years in protest of Syria’s alleged role in the assassination of a political leader in Lebanon.

Click to expand...

Korean War veterans gather for special honor

By Samantha Henry - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 10, 2011 16:54:05 EDT

NEWARK, N.J. — When the Korean War broke out, about 70 percent of the 1950 class at Seoul High School in South Korea signed up to fight.

Although most of them were too young to enroll as regular troops, they still volunteered. And those who survived — many of whom immigrated to the United States later in life — still share a special bond.

On Sunday, the Seoul High School Alumni Association of the USA honored their fellow alumni, as well as American veterans of the Korean War, at an event in Fort Lee. They hosted the veterans at a breakfast, which was followed by a wreath laying ceremony at the Korean War Veterans Memorial Statue in Fort Lee.

The alumni, many of them in their 80s, traveled from as far away as California to attend the event. The U.S.-based alumni group also offered all-expenses-paid trips to veterans who live in Korea so they could attend the ceremony, which was attended by several municipal and elected officials from around the region — including Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who is a Korean War veteran.

“I didn’t cross the Yellow River, but I did cross the Hudson River to come to this event” Rangel said. “It’s good to know that we helped liberate and give the Koreans justice. It’s a great nation. Sixty-one years ago, I didn’t know how important stopping communism was.”

Dominick DiPaolo, a Clifton resident who fought in the war, voiced similar views.

“What has happened in Korea is a miracle. They went from being dead to a great country, and they are now here and they are educated and bring a lot to the U.S,” he said. “I think God is going to help them go very far.”

Korean immigrant groups across the U.S. have made it a point to honor not only their own veterans, but also the Americans who fought alongside them.

American veterans of the Korean War have a place of honor in Korean society, and immigrant groups across the U.S. often hold special dinners in their honor and give them gifts — ranging from engraved gold watches to all-expense-paid trips to Korea to discounts in Korean-owned businesses. It’s also common for Korean community groups in America to send a representative to their local chapter of Korean War veterans or attend their meetings.

Steve Kang, a community organizer and business leader in Palisades Park, a northern New Jersey town known for its large Korean population, was a 1974 graduate of Seoul High School.

Kang said it was very unusual for a high school to have such a high number of volunteers in the war effort, especially since the school had been established only four years earlier, in 1946, when Koreans took it over from the Japanese. He said a large percentage of the students at the time had come from the northern part of Korea — fleeing the communists — and volunteered to fight against them.

Kang, who at 56, is too young to have fought, said he feels it’s important for new generations not to forget the sacrifices the school’s alumni and their American counterparts.

“I feel very strongly that if we don’t do this today, these people will be gone,” Kang said. “Korean and American relationships ever since have been very close, and we always recognize and honor the American veterans. On all these occasions, Koreans and Americans are connected.”

Among the Seoul High School alumni attending Sunday’s events was Dr. Louis S. Shim, who was 16 when he entered the war and fought as a foot soldier for two years before coming to the United States and joining its Army.

“I’m really thankful for the Korean veterans’ service and sacrifice,” said Shim, who now lives in California.

Click to expand...

Marine Corps Times. said:

Marine Corps using X-rays to inspect armor

By James K. Sanborn - [email protected]
Posted : Saturday Jul 9, 2011 9:16:18 EDT

The Marine Corps has a new tool to identify life-threatening flaws in body armor: X-ray machines.

An X-ray can reveal hairline cracks in armor that, in worst-case scenarios, can allow projectiles to penetrate vests and injure or kill Marines, Marine officials said.

Marines typically test plates using what’s called a torque test, in which you grab catty-corner edges of the plate and twist as hard as you can. If you hear crunching or grinding, it’s the tell-tale sign of a crack.

But the method doesn’t catch everything; X-rays are more accurate, said Master Sgt. Mateo Mathis, operations chief at Program Manager Infantry Combat Equipment in Quantico, Va.
Tell us:

Have you had problems with your body armor? Email us at [email protected], and include your name, rank and duty station.

The Corps began scanning plates in January and is in a catch-up phase, attempting to scan all plates in its inventory.

So far, 40,000 Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert plates have been scanned. About 5 percent of the ceramic plates, designed to stop a 7.62mm armor-piercing round, have been found to have cracks, Mathis said.

Testing the inventory should take until October, Mathis said, as plates downrange won’t be scanned until Marines return home. Moving forward, plates will be scanned when they are received from manufacturers and again each time they return from a deployment or change hands.

In testing, plates on a conveyor belt are X-rayed and analysis is available immediately.

“If you are looking at a nice, dark image, and there is a long line that is white, we know that is a crack,” said Danny Rivera, a member of the Infantry Combat Equipment Training Team who operates an X-ray machine at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The Marine Corps has five X-ray scanners, which cost about $500,000 each. Other bases with scanners, which can check 240 pieces of body armor per hour, are Camp Pendleton, Calif.; Okinawa, Japan; Hawaii and Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow, Calif. There are plans to install a sixth in Virginia, at a facility near Norfolk.

Rivera said Marines should still check their plates regularly while deployed or in the field.

“We do encourage them every time they get a chance to pull out the plate and do a torque test and go around pinching the edges to verify the plate because ... there is not a machine they can turn around to, to get their plate scanned,” Rivera said.

Plates are more easily damaged than many Marines realize, said Carlos Jaramillo, also with the ICE training team at Lejeune.

“Since it protects against rounds, a lot of Marines think they can just throw it wherever, and it is going to be OK,” Jaramillo said. “But since they are made of ceramics, if the plate is dropped from 2- or 3-feet high, it could crack.”

Click to expand...

air force times said:

Officials: Joint training saves lives, money

By Markeshia Ricks - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Jul 10, 2011 9:27:11 EDT

When Col. Jay Fitzgerald entered the Air Force in 1985, it was unusual to see a soldier, sailor or Marine on base. Today, it would be unusual to not see one.

Airmen and members of other services work together more — and that’s a good thing, said Fitzgerald, who is chief of the Technical Training Operations Center and Current Operations at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.

So far this fiscal year, more than 30,000 members of all services have taken a joint training course, and several of the programs — cryptology, weather forecasting and military working dogs, for example — are taught by Air Education and Training Command.
Related reading

More airmen choosing interservice training (July 9)

Fitzgerald pointed out that interservice training serves two purposes: It saves lives by making sure troops, regardless of their service, all speak the same language and have the same skills so they can work together; and it avoids duplication, saving taxpayer dollars.

“I think we’re going to continue to become more and more a joint force,” he said.

The Army’s chief of interservice training agrees with Fitzgerald, particularly on cost savings.

“The practice of combining military training and education in one facility is cost effective and makes good fiscal sense,” Roger Spadafora wrote in an email.

Interservice training provides troops — especially instructors — a sense of the values, history and culture of the other services, Spadafora said.

Col. Charles Douglass commands Kessler’s 602nd Training Group (Provisional), which oversees combat skills training for airmen who fight alongside soldiers in the war zone.

Joint training has become more necessary because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Douglass said. Since 2006, more than 34,000 Joint Expeditionary Tasking airmen deployed with the Army.

“We’re the most joint that we’ve ever been in part due to our combat experience,” Douglass said.

Click to expand...

Mass. Air Reserve unit gets new commander

The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 10, 2011 15:00:21 EDT

CHICOPEE, Mass. — A native of Massachusetts is scheduled to take over as the next commander of the 439th Airlift Wing at Westover Air Reserve Base.

Col. Steven Vautrain is set to take command of the Chicopee-based unit in August. He takes over from Col. Robert Swain Jr., who is being promoted to brigadier general and transferred to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.

Vautrain is a native of Winchester and 28-year veteran of the Air Force and Air Force Reserves who’s currently stationed at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. A pilot, he has flown a variety of planes.

He has also served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Vautrain tells The Republican he’s familiar with western Massachusetts already because his grandparents lived in the area.

Click to expand...

Burial set for WWII airman identified by DNA

The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Jul 9, 2011 11:58:53 EDT

SOUTH PARIS, Maine — The remains of a World War II serviceman are being buried in Maine 66 years after he was killed when his bomber crashed in the Philippines.

A graveside funeral service for 2nd Lt. Robert Emerson of Norway is being held Saturday at Pine Grove Cemetery in South Paris.

According to his obituary, Emerson was one of six men who died April 3, 1945, when their bomber crashed in the Philippines. The aircraft was recovered two years later, but officials were unable to positively identify Emerson and four of his crew members.

The remains of the five men were laid to rest at a national cemetery in St. Louis, where they remained for decades until eventually they were positively identified through DNA analysis.

Click to expand...

warner robins patriot said:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Warner Robins Patriot - Pentagon wants more cuts in C 5 fleet wants more cuts in C-5 fleet
by GENE RECTOR, Staff Writer

Defense officials asked Congress Wednesday to reduce the statutory minimum for the nation’s strategic airlift fleet from 316 to 301 aircraft, enabling the Air Force to retire additional C-5A Galaxies.

The C-5, the largest of the airlift weapon systems, is managed and sustained by some 1,000 workers at Robins Air Force Base. If granted, the move would retain 27 C-5As along with 52 newer C-5s updated to the C-5M configuration and 222 C-17s. How the cuts might impact Robins is unclear.

In his prepared remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Duncan McNabb, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, said the C-5A retirements would “improve aircraft availability by removing maintenance intensive jets from the fleet and allow us to focus our critical maintenance, aerial port and aircrew personnel and resources on a right-sized fleet.”

McNabb said the most recent Mobility Capabilities and Requirements Study 2016 completed in February justifies repeal of the congressionally mandated 316 aircraft minimum.

“The strategic airlift aircraft reduction will allow the Air Force to retire an additional 15 C-5As and provide a substantial savings by freeing up over $1.2 billion in taxpayer dollars across the five-year defense plan,” he told the committee.

The most recent study underscored a strategic airlift requirement of 32.7 million ton-miles per day, the commander said.

“And our analysis confirms (that the requirement) can be met with approximately 300 strategic airlift aircraft,” McNabb stressed.

Gen. Raymond Johns, Jr., Air Mobility Command commander, told the same committee that new C-17s and updated C-5Ms allow the fleet to meet the most stringent of requirements with fewer aircraft. He said the 316 aircraft requirement forces the Air Force to keep unneeded, less capable aircraft.

“Each of these unneeded aircraft comes with a cost to maintain in flyable status – a cost not programmed in the Air Force budget,” Johns underscored in his printed remarks.

Read more: The Warner Robins Patriot - Pentagon wants more cuts in C 5 fleet

Click to expand...

Petraeus hands over command in Afghanistan

By Patrick Quinn - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 18, 2011 9:33:34 EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan — Gen. David Petraeus handed over command of American and coalition forces to

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

on Monday, ending a year that saw the costly counterinsurgency strategy he espoused and implemented coming under increasingly heavy criticism.

Petraues steps down at a time when the international forces he commanded have begun transferring responsibility for the 10-year war to the Afghans and the United States has started withdrawing nearly one third of its 100,000 troops in the country. Violence has also spiked, with insurgents carrying out attacks against high-profile Afghans, including the assassination last week of President Hamid Karzai's powerful half brother and the slaying of a close Karzai aid on Sunday.

As Petraeus departs, it is unclear whether his signature counterinsurgency strategy — with an emphasis on protecting the local population and decisive strikes against insurgents — has made Afghanistan any safer. Violent attacks have continued, though international military officials argue they are not as widespread or as intense as they would have been otherwise.

His commanders in Afghanistan have employed a strategy that brought some success in Iraq — coupling military force with an ambitious, troop-intensive plan to push insurgents from their strongholds so the local government could build a system of services and institutions to win the loyalty of the people.

It hoped to create the necessary groundwork for a process of reconciliation and reintegration to encourage insurgents to re-enter Afghan society.

But the plan has been costly, with the United States now spending about $10 billion a month to fund the effort in Afghanistan. Some of his detractors have argued that a more aggressive special operations-centered counterterrorism strategy may be more effective.

In his farewell address, Petraeus said that despite progress made in southern Afghanistan, there was still much work ahead for his replacement.

"Even as we note the hard fought progress of the past year and commence the transition process, we should be clear-eyed about the challenges ahead," he said, adding that Afghan and coalition forces "are clearly engaged in a tough fight."

He said the campaign against the insurgents was made even more difficult "when the enemy can exploit sanctuaries outside the country," a parting shot at neighboring Pakistan. The military has often accused Islamabad of not doing enough to fight insurgents taking refuge in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the border. That fight, along with America's fractured relationship with Pakistan, will be one of Petraeus' key issues as he takes over as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

"The progress you have made has not been without sacrifice. There have been tough fights, tough losses along the way, setbacks as well as successes," Petraeus said. He added that he was departing "encouraged by the progress, aware of the hard work that lies ahead and hopeful for the future."

Allen, who officially took command at a ceremony in Kabul on Monday morning, said the drawdown of U.S. forces that started earlier this month and the transition of some areas to Afghan control this week does not mean that international forces are easing up in their campaign to defeat the Taliban insurgency.

"It is my intention to maintain the momentum of the campaign," Allen said at the handover ceremony in the Afghan capital. He acknowledged, however, that the fight won't be easy.

"There will be tough days ahead. I have no illusions about the challenges," said Allen, who was promoted to a four-star general shortly before the handover ceremony.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lauded Petraeus's work but also said that "a lot of hard work, deadly work remains before us."

He said that during the past year under Petraeus "I have never seen our progress more real and our prospects more encouraging."

The insurgents, Mullen said, have "been dealt heavy blows over the last year. They have been pushed out of sanctuaries, they have been denied influence over local populations, they have been hounded and hunted, their leaders killed or captured by the score, their resources diminished and their training disrupted."

Petraeus, who is retiring from the military, and American officials in the U.S. have trumpeted success in reclaiming Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan and training Afghan security forces as signs that they are finally making progress toward peace in Afghanistan. But violent attacks have continued, including a number of high-profile assaults and assassinations in recent weeks.

On Monday morning, a bomb killed three international service members in the east, NATO said in a statement. It did not provide nationalities or further details. Most of the troops in the east are American.

At least 37 international forces have been killed so far this month in Afghanistan.

In the south on Monday, a roadside bomb killed a district police commander and his driver.

Wali Mohammad, the police chief for Argistan district in Kandahar province, was driving to work when his vehicle struck the explosive, said Sher Shah Yosufzai, the provincial deputy police chief.

The handover ceremony in Kabul came just hours after security forces in the capital killed the final attacker in the assassination of a close adviser to President Hamid Karzai.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack, in which two assailants gunned down Karzai adviser Jan Mohammed Khan and a parliamentarian he was meeting with in his house. One police officer was killed, the Interior Ministry said.

It was the second important Karzai ally in the south to be killed in the space of seven days. On Tuesday, Karzai's half-brother was gunned down by a close associate in Kandahar city. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for that attack.

Khan was governor of the Pashtun-dominated Uruzgan province in the south from 2002 until March 2006 and has remained influential in the area. Though he was often labeled a warlord and a thug by the international community, presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said Karzai considered him a key partner in the south and a bulwark against the Taliban.

"Jan Mohammed Khan was one of the most influential leaders in the south, especially in Uruzgan," Omar said.

———

Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez contributed to this report from Kabul.

Click to expand...

NATO troops hand over province to Afghan police

By Rahim Faiez - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 17, 2011 14:09:45 EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan — International military forces in Afghanistan handed over control of a peaceful province in the center of the country to Afghan police on Sunday, taking another step in a transition that will allow foreign troops to withdraw in full by the end of 2014.

Bamiyan province is one of seven areas going to Afghan security control this month in a first round of the transition. Another, Panjshir province in the east, began being transferred earlier this month. Both places have seen little to no fighting since the overthrow of the Taliban nearly 10 years ago and barely had any coalition troop presence.

Violence has increased in other parts of Afghanistan since the Taliban began a yearly offensive in April. Afghan and NATO troops killed at least 13 Taliban fighters in the east on Sunday, and three NATO service members were killed in roadside bomb attacks.

In the capital, gunmen attacked the home of an adviser to President Hamid Karzai, police said. There were no immediate reports of casualties. An unknown number of gunmen attacked Jan Mohammed Khan’s home in the western Kabul district of Karti Char, said Ashmat Stanekzai, a spokesman for the Kabul police chief. Karzai has dozens of advisers.

The transition to Afghan control will allow international military forces to slowly start withdrawing from Afghanistan until all combat troops are gone in just over three years.

Bamiyan only had a small foreign troop contingent from New Zealand. Bamiyan and Panjshir are the only two provinces that will be handed over in their entirety during this month’s transition phase.

Other areas to be handed over are the provincial capitals of Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan, Herat in the west, Mazer-e-Sharif in the north and Mehterlam in the east. Afghan forces will also take control of all of Kabul province except for the restive Surobi district.

Not all residents of Bamiyan were happy with the handover decision, which they said had resulted in increased violence in the province by insurgents seeking to make the Afghan government look bad.

“From my point of view, but also the point of view of many in Bamiyan, the transition that occurred today was not a good idea at all,” said Bamiyan lawmaker Abdul Rahman Shaheedani. “People are very concerned about security in Bamiyan right now. When several months ago they announced the areas where the first phase of transition would occur, and named Bamiyan, militant activities increased.”

In Sunday’s fighting, Afghan and NATO troops fought an overnight gunbattle with Taliban insurgents and called in an airstrike on the building where the fighters were holed up. At least 13 Taliban were killed.

Capt. Justin Brockhoff, a spokesman for the coalition, said the overnight operation targeted a Taliban leader in the Kuz Kunar district of Nangarhar province. The force of Afghan and coalition troops came under fire and insurgents refused requests to come out of the building, he said.

The fighting ended Sunday with a NATO airstrike, he said, adding that there were no casualties among civilians or security forces. The insurgents were armed with machine guns, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

“As Afghan members of the security force attempted to clear the building, they were met with continuing insurgent fire,” Brockhoff said. The coalition and Afghan forces eventually called in an airstrike, which “killed several more insurgents and destroyed the building,” he said.

Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the Nangarhar provincial governor, said the bodies of 13 insurgents have been found so far. He said the building occupied by the Taliban was a school, which was empty because the students are on summer break.

Also Sunday, NATO said three of its service members died. One was killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan and two were killed by a similar device in the south. It did not release their nationalities or any further details. The deaths bring the total number of coalition forces killed this month to 34.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense also confirmed that a British soldier had been shot dead in what Afghan officials said was an attack by a gunman in Afghan army uniform on Saturday. The ministry said the soldier from the 9th/12th Royal Lancers was on a joint NATO-Afghan army patrol in Helmand province when he came under small-arms fire.

“A report that the fatal gunshot was fired by an Afghan National Army soldier is now the subject of a joint International Security Assistance Force and Afghan National Security Force investigation,” said Lt. Col. Tim Purbrick, a spokesman for British forces in Afghanistan.

The soldier’s name was not released but his family has been informed, the ministry said.

Click to expand...

Military times said:

Surprise plan would transfer MC-12s to Army

By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jul 18, 2011 7:29:03 EDT

Army and Air Force officials admitted the proposed transfer of the MC-12 Liberty program surprised each service when it appeared in a bill passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It is rare that Congress surprises U.S. military leaders, but the proposal has left both services scrambling to figure out how to transfer the program from the Air Force to the Army.

Liberty aircraft have collected aerial battlefield surveillance data over Iraq and Afghanistan since 2009.

“I wouldn’t use the word shocked but definitely surprised,” said Army Lt. Col. Kodjo Knox-Limbacker, with the Army Intelligence and Security Command’s Aviation and Air Sensors operations directorate.

He said the Army expects to know for sure in the next two months whether the service is absorbing the Liberty program. No date has been scheduled for the full Senate to vote on the 2012 defense authorization bill. The House Armed Services Committee did not include the proposal in its markup of the authorization bill.

Army officials anticipate the Air Force’s Liberty aircraft will replace the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance Systems aircraft that the Army expected to buy, Knox-Limbacker said.

Funding for EMARSS got slashed in defense authorization markups by the House and Senate Armed Services committees. The House proposed cutting $524 million and the Senate $452 million from the $540 million laid out in the 2012 budget request to buy 18 aircraft.

Army EMARSS aircraft and Air Force Project Liberty MC-12s are both enhanced Hawker Beechcraft Super King Air 350s with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors installed.

“EMARSS and Liberty ships are so similar [that] it makes sense,” Knox-Limbacker said.

It’s unclear when the transfer would occur. The amendment in the Senate markup requires Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to submit a report by 2013 “to develop and implement a plan for the orderly transfer” of the fleet. Panetta’s report also “must estimate the costs” the government would save by canceling the EMARSS program.

Former Pentagon chief Robert Gates launched Project Liberty in April 2008, after telling the Air Force War College that deploying ISR assets was like “pulling teeth.”

The Air Force recently took over the Army’s C-27J Spartan program and retained control of Liberty. When the Air Force took the helm of Project Liberty, it puzzled many Army officials. Army aviation had traditionally taken on the tactical ISR mission while the Air Force has focused on strategic missions. Liberty aircraft fly tactical missions with ground units.

In their first missions, the Air Force processing, exploitation and dissemination teams struggled while sending intelligence collected by the sensors aboard the Liberty aircraft to ground commanders, an Army official said. Many thought in those first few years that the Air Force and Army would form split teams, with Air Force pilots in the front and soldiers controlling the sensors and making radio calls to units in the back of each plane.

The Army has flown RC-12 Guardrails since the 1970s and now flies 136 in different configurations, such as the Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance System and Aerial Reconnaissance Multi- Sensor.

Knox-Limbacker said the Army is considering different options to train soldiers who will fly and operate the MC-12s if they’re transferred. Either the service will allow soldiers to train on the aircraft at a U.S. base, or it will maintain operations in Afghanistan and provide the training while deployed, he said.

The hardest part of the transfer may be synchronizing the communications equipment onboard the planes with the Army’s networks and “making sure we have those right,” Knox-Limbacker said.

Click to expand...

Army times said:

Industry: Carbine competition lacks flexibility

By Lance M. Bacon - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Jul 17, 2011 8:26:50 EDT

Some industry leaders are suggesting soldiers may not get the best possible weapon because the Army’s $30 million carbine competition is too restrictive in scope and offers more risk than return.

Army Times spoke with more than a half-dozen senior industry leaders on the matter. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize their chances in the competition. Army leaders are at a disadvantage, as they cannot comment since the competition is now accepting official proposals. But they have in the past been swift to answer questions and give assurance that this competition will be honest and equitable.

The concerns and complaints are various, but largely fall into one of three categories: rights to technical data, quality control during production, and perceived limits on capabilities and calibers.

The rights to technical data are an especially hot issue. The Army’s solicitation requires the winner to turn over said data and rights. The Army will then distribute the blueprints to two other companies that will each produce one-third of the weapons purchased.

One senior industry official said that rule may keep the best weapons out of the competition. If a company entered its best weapon and won, all of the trade secrets that gave that carbine the advantage would be revealed. And while building a few hundred thousand weapons may seem worth the risk, most companies stand to make more in law enforcement and commercial sales if they remain a step ahead of the competition.

Another official saw a different problem. The Army solicitation allows each company to either request a flat fee for technical data rights, or royalties off of each carbine produced. This is to compensate for the proprietary data that is surrendered. But the official felt this approach could have unexpected consequences.

“All of the weapons are relatively close in capability,” the official said. “A laser gun is not going to show up. It is far more likely that the top three contenders will be very close in the various tests. Then, the deciding factor will likely be the cost.”

A scenario could play out like this, he said.

If ‘Weapon A’ was best, with ‘Weapon B’ close behind, and ‘Weapon C’ on its heels, the Army could choose Weapon A. But if that manufacturer imposes a hefty tech data fee, the price goes up. If Weapon B looks to recoup potential losses with royalties on each one sold, his price also escalates. But if the maker of Weapon C risks little or nothing for his tech data rights, the government will go with option three, which wasn’t the best weapon of the three.

Others see little reason for concern. “The Army’s decision to retain the General Purpose License Rights for the individual carbine they select for production is well within their purview in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulations and Defense Acquisition Regulations,” said Mark Cherpes, executive vice president for FNH USA. “FN has worked with the Army for more than 40 years in this manner and is comfortable with their chosen acquisition strategy.”

Perceived limits on capabilities and calibers have also drawn ire. Specifically, the lack of recognition for modular weaponry has left some surprised, and others frustrated.

The Army shot down an April 18 request by an industry official who asked that the allowance of only a single design be removed so multiple designs could be submitted.

“The Army kept pushing modularity. They even reinforced this at the carbine competition’s Industry Day,” one industry official said. “So companies spent millions and millions developing weapons that can change barrel lengths and calibers, and for what? The variations are not allowed in the tests, and you get no added credit for the added capability.

“If you had to choose between a weapon with one barrel length and one caliber that just barely outperforms a weapon that comes with three barrel lengths and two calibers, which would you chose?” the official asked. “Under these guidelines, the soldier will get the first.”

And speaking of calibers, one official said, “Don’t let the ‘open caliber’ clause fool you.”

The Army has said submissions can come in any caliber. But gun makers have to bring 234,000 rounds if the carbine is not 5.56mm or 7.62mm.

“Do you know how much it would cost to make that kind of switch?” the official asked. “Billions. So don’t count on it.”

Production provides the third area of discontent. The winning weapon will be built by three different companies. The Army would first award a contract of 178,890 carbines to the winning contractor. Additional quantities needed would be shared among the companies. This is to ensure production continues even if one company becomes unable to meet goals. While this is a common approach with most Army procurements, it is a new approach for individual carbines.

“If my company wins the competition, our name is on the side of that weapon,” said one industry official. “If two other companies are going to build that carbine, I want to know what kind of quality control is going to be in place. If the weapon has a lot of problems, the soldier isn’t going to look to see where it was made. He is going to look at the name on the side.”

Industry has until Sept. 27 to submit its proposals.

Weapons will be scored in five areas, in order of priority:

• Development tests. These are anchored by a detailed evaluation of accuracy and dispersion at distances of 100, 300 and 600 meters using 90 rounds at each range. Another 21,600 rounds will be used to test reliability, durability and barrel life. Weapons will be tested to their destruction point and to determine whether they maintain accuracy throughout their life cycle — something the military has not tested before. A weapon typically loses accuracy as it ages.

Other events will test recoil mitigation, signature reduction and firing compatibility with the M320 grenade launcher, M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun System and suppressor.

• Secondary development tests. Incapacitation is key here as the weapons must score kills in as few shots as possible. Sustained rates of fire and cook-off will be tested, as will the weapon’s ability to operate in extreme temperatures and environments.

Weapons will be beat up, dropped, submerged in water and fired while lacking lubrication and covered by ice and mud.

• Cost. The Army isn’t willing to get hoodwinked into high prices. But the request for proposals also states that “when all evaluation factors other than price are combined, they are significantly more important than price.”

• Government purpose rights. The Army will contract three vendors to produce a maximum of 178,890 carbines each. While this aspect of the contract is not a favorite among manufacturers, Army officials say it will keep costs down and ensure weapons keep coming even if one manufacturer can’t meet production goals.

• Limited user evaluation. These tests will use co-ed teams of 16 soldiers to determine each weapon’s probability and quality of hit, time of first trigger pull and mobility/portability in an operational environment.

Only the top three contenders will emerge from phase two. Then, the competition becomes an exercise in analytics as officials weigh the good against the bad to determine which weapon has the best bang for its buck.

The winning carbine will then face off against the improved M4A1 in a battle to become your next weapon.

Click to expand...

Army.mil said:

PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. (Army News Service, July 15, 2011) -- Any Soldier who has ever served as a squad automatic weapon gunner is resigned to the burden of lugging a heavy weapon and ammunition on patrol.

Soldiers may soon have a solution, however, one that cuts the weight of small-arms ammunition nearly in half and provides a potential replacement for the SAW that weighs a whopping 8.3 pounds less than the current M249.

The weight reduction comes in the form of a new light machine gun and ammunition developed by engineers from the Lightweight Small Arms Technologies program, or LSAT.

The program is managed by the Joint Service Small Arms Program, which is part of the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny Arsenal.

“LSAT is all about reducing Soldier load,” said Maj. Matt Bowler, a military adviser to the small arms program.

“We know that the Soldier is overburdened,” he continued. “The Soldier carries too much weight so anything we can do to reduce Soldier load increases the Soldier’s effectiveness, his capability on the battlefield and his survivability.”

The weight reduction provided by the LSAT will have a significant impact for the SAW gunner, the most heavily burdened Soldier in the squad.

According to a study conducted in 2005, the average fighting load for the SAW gunner is 79 pounds. That is nearly twice the weight a Soldier should carry, according to Army doctrine.

Excess weight significantly affects the speed of maneuver of the SAW gunner and therefore the entire squad, which relies on suppressive fire from the SAW gunner to support its movement.

So how is such a tremendous weight reduction achieved?

“We are using cased telescoped ammunition which uses a strong plastic case instead of a traditional brass case,” said Kori Phillips, a systems management engineer with ARDEC.

Weight reduction for the weapon was achieved by designing the new weapon platform using the latest materials technologies as well as modeling and simulation to achieve minimal weight without compromising performance.

With a basic load of 1,000 rounds, the LSAT light machine gun and its cased telescoped ammunition is 20.4 pounds lighter than a traditional SAW with the same amount of standard, brass-cased ammunition.

To try out the new lightweight ammunition and machine gun, a small group of Soldiers and members of the Army and Navy Senior Executive Service attended a live-fire demonstration in June at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va.

One Soldier who appreciated the lack of brass during the live-fire demonstration was Maj. Gen. Nick Justice, commanding general of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command.

“I’m used to getting hot brass in my face since I am left handed,” Justice said.

The Army’s chief scientist, Scott Fish, also attended the demonstration and tested the weapon first-hand. He later said he was extremely impressed and eager to learn more about the system.

As chief scientist, Fish identifies and analyzes technical issues and brings them to the attention of Army leaders. Additionally, he interacts with operational commanders, combatant commands, acquisition, and science and technology communities to address cross-organizational technical issues and solutions.

Sgt. Jason Reed of the Soldier System Center in Natick, Mass., demonstrated firing both the LSAT LMG and the SAW from various positions -- from prone to kneeling to standing while in full combat protective equipment.

“The difference between the two weapons is night and day,” Reed said.

Before his assignment with Natick, Reed was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment in the 82nd Airborne Division and carried the SAW as an Automatic Rifleman for a total of two years, including a deployment to Iraq.

“The main thing I would take away from this is the weight issue, especially when firing in the standing position,” Reed said. “Bringing up the SAW, especially if you have it up for a long duration of time, it starts to get the best of you and you have less accuracy on target.”

Despite the significantly reduced weight of the LSAT LMG and its ammo, there is no degradation in accuracy or lethality.

“The cased telescoped ammo still provides the same muzzle velocity, range and accuracy as the brass-cased ammo,” Phillips said. “We’re not sacrificing lethality for weight. The plastic case does the same job.”

In addition to significant weight savings, the LSAT is designed to provide other advantages over the current SAW. With a rotating chamber design, the cased telescoped light machine gun improves reliability.

“We’ve avoided the common problem of failure to feed and failure to eject,” Phillips said. “In the current SAW system, that’s one of the places where you primarily have failures and malfunctions.”

The chamber is unique in that the cartridge goes straight through from feed to eject.

“With a regular SAW, or M249, the chamber and barrel is one piece,” Phillips explained. “But in this new light machine gun, the chamber rotates back and forth. The system works in a cyclical pattern, so there’s no interference.”

Additionally, the rotating-chamber design provides better heat management. Combined with the insulating properties of the plastic ammo cases the LSAT LMG has potential to decrease the possibility of a cook-off or eliminate them altogether.

Another significant feature is the long-stroke, soft-recoil design, which provides a noticeable reduction in felt recoil over the current SAW. This significantly increases control, thus providing the shooter the ability to put more rounds on target and making the weapon much easier to fire from the standing position as a result of decreased muzzle rise.

Moreover, the LSAT LMG has one other unique feature that the current SAW lacks: the ability to switch to a semi-automatic mode. This feature increases the flexibility of the weapon, allows for the precise engagement of point targets, and helps to conserve ammunition in situations where full-automatic fire may not be necessary or desired.

In September, the weapon and ammunition will undergo a Military Utility Assessment that is intended to demonstrate the advantages that the LSAT LMG provides for the warfighter, as well as possibly influence the user community to develop a Capability Development Document, or CDD.

A CDD is required before the system can transition to a program of record and enter the engineering and manufacturing development phase.

That is a significant milestone. It has taken six years to get from a concept to a fully functioning weapon that is ready to be evaluated by Soldiers.

Thus far, the ARDEC team, along with prime contractor AAI Corporation, has built four light machine guns and has test-fired more than 12,000 rounds of cased telescoped ammunition. They plan to have a total of eight weapons and produce more than 100,000 rounds in time for the assessment.

The LSAT development is much broader than just a new light machine gun. It is applicable to a broad range of calibers and platforms to include a carbine that also fires the lightweight cased telescoped ammunition.

The carbine is the same overall weight and length as the standard M4, but with its modified design, there is more than a one-inch gain in barrel length, which provides a slight increase in muzzle velocity over the current M4 Carbine.

Also under development is a caseless variant of the ammunition that provides a slightly greater weight savings and a significant decrease in volume, providing a 50 percent reduction in weight and a 40 percent reduction in volume compared to current brass.

A video of the live-fire demonstration can be seen on the Picatinny Arsenal YouTube channel at

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Airforce times said:

Lawmakers denounce plan to retire six B-1Bs

By Brian Everstine - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Jul 17, 2011 9:11:52 EDT

Six B-1B Lancers, fundamental to operations in Afghanistan, are on the chopping block — a move that a handful of lawmakers are fighting because of what it would mean both for the war and for the communities they represent.

The Air Force wants to retire the bombers to finance nearly $100 million in avionics upgrades to its other 60 B-1Bs, but the lawmakers argue the Lancers are too important to lose because of their combat role and the hundreds of millions of dollars they generate for local economies.
Related reading:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Right now, the cuts are included in the White House’s fiscal 2012 defense budget as well as the House and Senate versions of next year’s defense authorization bill. The House measure, approved in May, protects 36 combat-ready Lancers; the Senate bill, passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee in June, requires a detailed retirement plan and an explanation of how the remaining fleet will be updated.

Four of the Lancers targeted by the Air Force are assigned to Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, and two are at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.

“The B-1 is reliable, capable and providing invaluable support to our troops in the field,” Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, who represents Dyess, told the House Armed Services Committee in April. “It seems to me that when a plane is so valuable ... that we should not be looking to cut six of them.”

“If we are more than 15 years away from a new bomber, isn’t it critical that we keep the ones we have?”

For Abilene, Texas, and Rapid City, S.D., the cities near Dyess and Ellsworth, the loss of the bombers could have a crippling effect.

“The bottom line is, it is yet to be resolved,” said Pat McElgunn, a retired colonel and director of military affairs for Rapid City’s Chamber of Commerce. “The Air Force has got to make a compelling argument to Congress.”
An economic blow

About 360 civilian and Air Force jobs — 200 at Dyess and 160 at Ellsworth — would be lost if the B-1s are cut, according to the Air Force.

The bases generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the communities they’re in, though no figures are available for how much the bombers alone kick into the local economies.

Dyess contributes $365 million a year to the economy of Abilene, according to the Abilene Chamber of Commerce. Rapid City reaps about $300 million annually from Ellsworth, according to McElgunn. The economic loss for Rapid City if the B-1Bs leave: at least $10 million a year.

Neugebauer and Rep. Kristi Noem, South Dakota’s only House member, are proposing an amendment to keep the Lancers for at least another year, according to their offices. Included as co-sponsors are Reps. Mac Thornberry and Mike Conaway, both Texas Republicans.

The four senators who represent South Dakota and Texas vow to fight to keep the Lancers.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, is on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which must weigh in on the Air Force’s detailed retirement plan. She has promised to protect the B-1Bs.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has asked the Defense Department and the Air Force to explain how the cuts are consistent with a need to sustain military force during war and why the B-1Bs, instead of the much older B-52s, are headed for the chopping block. He is waiting for answers.

“Senator Cornyn impressed upon the Air Force leadership the need to keep the B-1 healthy and fully capable in the years ahead. It proves its worth every day over Afghanistan, where it maintains a constant presence in support of our ground troops,” said Charles Chamberlayne, Cornyn’s spokesman.

Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., is opposed to the cuts, and he told the Rapid City Journal he would use his seat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee to block the cuts.

The office of Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., did not respond to requests for comment from Air Force Times.

Thune, however, voiced his opposition to the Rapid City Journal: “The fact that we are a nation at war and facing an uncertain world calls for sustaining the current military force structure of Army brigades, Air Force wings and Navy ships. We should not be cutting our military capabilities and force structure at a time when we are involved in three wars overseas.”
Déjà vu

Thirty-three Lancers went to the bone yard in 2003 for the same reasons the half-dozen appear headed there now — money and spare parts.

When the Air Force retired the B-1s, it recouped operational and maintenance costs, and cannibalized the bombers to keep the rest of the fleet in the air.

By retiring the six bombers, the Air Force estimates, it will get back $357.3 million over the next five years.

About a third of the savings, $125.4 million, will go back into the B-1 fleet — $80.7 million for avionics and $44.7 million for procurement of “critical spares,” according to Air Force figures.

The other $231.9 million will go toward strengthening the nuclear enterprise; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support; an investment in “building partnerships” capacity; and the modernization of Air Force inventories, according to the service.

Boeing Co. announced July 5 it had received a $99.5 million contract to upgrade the B-1B fleet with three avionics modifications: a vertical situation display unit in the forward cockpit and a fully integrated data link and central integrated test system in the aft cockpit. The modifications, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Hogan, will be installed on four Lancers next year, and all the bombers should be upgraded by 2019. If the six B-1s are spared, she said, they would be modernized.

Sheer numbers explain why the Air Force wants to sacrifice the B-1B and not its other two bombers, the B-2 and the B-52. There are only 20 B-2s, and the 85 or so B-52s have been flying for more than 50 years, according to defense analyst Loren Thompson.

Still, the Air Force relies heavily on the B-1B and has for the last decade. Since 9/11, Lancers have flown 72 percent of the bombing combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The B-52s picked up 27 percent of the work and the B-2s are in third place with less than 1 percent, according to statistics Neugebauer gave in his testimony.

The B-1 has flown more than 7,500 sorties for over 88,500 hours in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to statistics provided by Dyess.

“The default description of the B-1 is that it is a workhorse,” said Thompson, chief operating officer of the Washington-area Lexington Institute. “It’s considered to be the only low-density, high-demand asset. The Air Force has only got three bombers. ... Of course, it’s a workhorse because there’s not another option.”

Despite its heavy use, he said, the B-1B is not a popular aircraft with the Air Force — mostly because it’s expensive to maintain.

Popular or not, the Air Force’s decision leaves Thompson scratching his head.

“It’s hard to understand why more B-1s would be removed from the force when there are so few strategic bombers left and nothing waiting in the wings,” he said.

Click to expand...

Navy times said:

Fire Scout report outlines tech glitches

By Joshua Stewart - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jul 18, 2011 8:06:03 EDT

The combination of a technical glitch and an errant keystroke was all it took to initiate the self-destruct sequence in one of the Navy’s new unmanned helicopters.

While an MQ-8B Fire Scout was flying from the frigate Halyburton earlier this year, the wire on the operator’s headset pressed down the space bar on his keyboard, a keystroke that had the same effect as hitting the “Enter” key. In this case, it activated the self-destruct countdown counter, the first of several steps needed to destroy the aircraft.

The crisis was averted and the Fire Scout was saved. But the slip-up was one of the several technical troubles listed in a June 24 report from the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation on the Fire Scout. The report found that the Fire Scout completed 29 of 58 assigned missions while on the frigate — a 50 percent success rate — and failed 10 of 10 test missions at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., as it prepared to support Operation Enduring Freedom.

The report attributes the bulk of the troubles to a faulty data link between the Fire Scout and the command station, a problem that required operators to improvise. As a result, it can take over an hour longer than planned — the average delay is 67 minutes — to get the aircraft off the ground if the mission isn’t scrapped altogether.

When things are working properly the aircraft provides commanders with good intelligence while avoiding enemy detection, the report says, but the delayed flights and interruptions mean it’s too unreliable for quick responses to unexpected targets.

The report’s authors concluded that the aircraft in what could become a $2.8 billion program is incapable of providing ground troops with time-sensitive intelligence. The Navy plans to buy up to 168 Fire Scouts.
Recent success stories

The Navy and Northrop Grumman, the unmanned helicopter’s developer, agreed with parts of the report, but said that technical improvements made after the report’s data were compiled — January through April — create a rosier assessment. Also, recent missions have been successful and upgrades have stabilized the platform. Furthermore, since going to Afghanistan in April for a one-year deployment, Fire Scout has exceeded flight objectives and has provided reliable real-time video support.

Navy officials were unable to say whether the aircraft that were on Halyburton were the same ones that deployed to Afghanistan.

“There are certainly some things that we agree with [in] the report and certainly some things that we don’t, many of which, in the category of the ones we don’t, are based on timing and the data available at the time of the DoD report,” said George Vardoulakis, a vice president for tactical unmanned systems at Northrop Grumman.

The report attributes most of Fire Scout’s problems to the data link and said the connection would sometimes crash even while the Fire Scout was airborne, forcing operators to either re-establish the connection midflight or abort the mission.

Dave Maier, head of the Vertical Take Off and Landing Unmanned Air Vehicle Team at Naval Air Systems Command, said this problem caused a Fire Scout flying from Pax River to fly uncontrolled for about 30 minutes toward Washington, D.C., during an August test flight; the aircraft entered restricted airspace before operators regained control.

A software patch has since been installed. Several Navy spokespeople said they did not know the cause of a June 21 Fire Scout crash in Libya but said that it was not due to the data link.

The Navy and Northrop Grumman both said Fire Scout has performed well recently and that the report did not consider more recent successful flights.

Vardoulakis said the problems on Halyburton were largely caused by a broken antenna needed for the data link. Once the hardware was repaired, the mission success rate skyrocketed to more than 97 percent, he said.

Northrop Grumman and the Navy both said the self-destruct countdown initiation was the first in several steps before the aircraft would destroy itself.

Fire Scout is exceeding its 300 flight-hour-per-month goal in Afghanistan; has racked up 650 hours since May; and provided real-time, full-motion video support to troops in the field while being reliable and maintainable, said Rear Adm. Bill Shannon, program executive officer for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Systems.

Click to expand...

NASA astronaut corps shrinks as shuttles stop

By Marcia Dunn - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 17, 2011 13:25:44 EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s mighty astronaut corps has become a shadow of what it once was. And it’s only going to get smaller.

It’s down to 60 from an all-time high of 149 just a decade ago, with more departures coming once Atlantis returns this week from the very last space shuttle voyage.

With no replacement on the horizon for the shuttle, astronauts are bailing fast, even though the International Space Station will need crews for at least another decade.

The commander of Discovery’s last flight back in March, Steven Lindsey? Gone to a company whose proposed commercial spacecraft resembles a mini-shuttle; his last day at NASA was Friday.

The skipper of Endeavour’s last mission in May, Mark Kelly? Retiring in another few months to write a memoir with his wounded congresswoman wife, Gabrielle Giffords.

The captain of Atlantis, Christopher Ferguson, assured The Associated Press from orbit late last week that he’ll be sticking around after this final shuttle journey of them all. At least one of his crew, though, isn’t so sure.

After spending her childhood wanting to be an astronaut — and achieving that goal in 1996 — Atlantis astronaut Sandra Magnus now has to figure out what the next chapter holds.

“Now that I’m an astronaut, the whole idea of what I want to do when I grow up comes back full circle,” said Magnus, a scientist and former space station resident who’s flown in space three times.

What a difference a decade makes.

NASA’s fabled astronaut corps numbered 149 in 2000-2001, the biggest group ever. Then shuttles were zooming back and forth building the space station, and a crew was being groomed to fly aboard Columbia to the Hubble Space Telescope. Now the space station is finished, Columbia is gone and the 30-year shuttle program is ending.

These days, chief astronaut Peggy Whitson finds herself on overdrive, working hard to keep up the morale at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, astronaut headquarters, while trying to convince outsiders that America still needs a robust astronaut corps in the shuttle-less era.

After all, she’s got a space station to staff.

Two Americans usually are among the six people living on the orbiting lab at any given time, hitching rides up and down on Russian Soyuz capsules. Private U.S. companies hope to take over this taxi job in three to five years, freeing NASA up to explore true outer space. First the goal was the moon, now it’s an asteroid and Mars.

“It’s a very dynamic time, and a lot of folks aren’t real comfortable with all the uncertainties,” Whitson said. “None of us are.”

Ferguson observed from space Friday that former military pilots make up about one-third of the astronaut corps, so he’s not surprised so many commander types are departing.

“Pilots like to do what pilots like to do, and that’s fly airplanes,” the retired Navy captain told the AP.

Whitson — herself a two-time space station resident — figures she needs 55 to 60 active astronauts “at a bare minimum and for pretty much the duration.” She said she has to account for absences due to injury, illness, pregnancy, even maxed-out exposure to cosmic radiation.

The National Research Council is evaluating just how many astronauts America really needs. A report by a committee of retired NASA leaders, ex-astronauts and others is expected next month.

Depending on the findings, NASA may start taking applications soon for a new, albeit small, astronaut class. No matter the size, there will be plenty of applicants, all eager to join this exclusive club. Only 330 Americans have been chosen by NASA to become astronauts, beginning with the seven original Mercury astronauts in 1959. The number of applicants over the decades: nearly 45,000.

More than 3,500 applied for the nine slots in the 2009 astronaut class, the most recent, even though the shuttle’s fate was clear. Those selected were in their 30s and 40s.

The same thing happened after the Challenger and Columbia disasters in 1986 and 2003, said Duane Ross, NASA’s manager of astronaut candidate selection. He theorizes that the more NASA is in the news, the more the attention and, consequently, applicants.

Ross said he told the 2009 hopefuls up front: “You guys are not going to be flying shuttle period, you guys are space station astronauts.”

Translation: as much as five years of training, Russian language immersion, half-year space stays. No more sprinting back and forth to orbit for a week or two. Plenty of desk duty, too, in between flights, assisting from Houston with future exploration projects and other matters.

NASA’s first shuttle pilot, Robert Crippen, waited out the lengthy gap between Apollo and the space shuttle. Nearly 12 years passed from the time he became an astronaut in 1969 until his first spaceflight on Columbia in 1981 alongside moonwalker John Young.

“I figured, well, it’s the best thing in town as far as I’m concerned, so I went in knowing it was going to be at least a decade before I had an opportunity to fly,” said Crippen, now 73. “I believe there will be people who still would want to stick around and do that.”

Army Lt. Col. Mark Vande Hei, Class of 2009, is one of them. While he anticipates flying to the space station in the middle of this decade, he’d jump at the chance to fly to an asteroid in 2025. That’s the favored destination of the Obama administration, to be followed up with a trip to Mars in the 2030s.

“It’s an adventurous, challenging, interesting job,” Vande Hei said last week, “and even if you’re not flying in space, you’re participating in a space program where somebody else is getting up into space.”

But what if you’ve already flown in space? Then what?

Andrew Feustel, Class of 2000 and a member of Endeavour’s last crew in May, said that’s the topic of conversation at home and in the hallways of the astronaut office at Johnson Space Center.

“When I started with the program, I never realized there would need to be a third career,” said Feustel, a geophysicist who worked in mines once upon a time.

“That’s the trick, is to figure out how do you top that,” he said. “I don’t think you can.”

Click to expand...

Marine corps times said:

Marine pilots recount daring rescue mission

By Dan Lamothe - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Jul 16, 2011 10:14:53 EDT

Minutes after an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle crashed in Libya late on March 21, the pilot of the downed aircraft made a simple radio plea: “Tell my wife I love her.”

Air Force pilot Maj. Kenneth Harney and his weapons system officer, Capt. Tyler Stark, ejected safely but faced uncertain danger on the ground. They landed in rebel-held territory east of Benghazi, far from the heavily armed forces advancing on the port city in support of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but didn’t know if the armed rebels posed a threat, too.

Harney followed Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training “perfectly,” evading Libyans while on foot for nearly four miles, until a team of Marines rescued him in an MV-22B Osprey, Marine Col. Mark Desens, whose 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit responded from the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge, said during a June luncheon at a Washington think tank. Stark “did everything by SERE training wrong,” Desens said, and ended up in a Benghazi hotel that night after being taken in by Libyan rebels.

For the F-15 pilot, the fear was real, Marine officers said. It spiked when he heard dogs barking and guns firing, and saw vehicles with searchlights roaring toward him, said Marine Capt. John Grunke, an AV-8B Harrier pilot who responded to the call for help.

“Initially, when I made contact with him, I could see the vehicles he was talking about,” Grunke said. “I looked out … and I could see their searchlights on as they were making their way through the desert trying to find him.”

Grunke said he promised to assist the downed pilot. He dropped a GBU-12, a 500-pound laser-guided bomb, on an advancing vehicle after a low-flying show of force. He dropped another when other vehicles didn’t stay away from the airman.

“At that point, after two impacts, I got the indications that, ‘Hey, let’s take a step back,’” Grunke said. “I started soaking in the whole objective area, seeing if there were any other movements coming inbound of other vehicles.”

The comments about that night were made at the Institute for the Study of War, providing a better understanding of the situation as the 26th MEU, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., launched a daring Tactical Recovery of Aircraft Personnel, or TRAP, mission.

Grunke and other officers with the unit said they were concerned they would face anti-aircraft fire, especially because they weren’t sure why the F-15E had crashed. The Air Force later determined an engine malfunction brought it down.

“That area was still contested,” said Marine Capt. Erik Kolle, who picked up the pilot in his Osprey. “We were planning for the worst case.”
‘Fearing for his life’

Dozens of Marines, two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, two Ospreys, two Harriers and a KC-130J tanker were involved in the TRAP mission, which remains one of the highest profile incidents in the U.N.-backed military intervention in the Libyan civil war.

The crash occurred on the third night of the operation, as NATO planes bombed military forces advancing on Benghazi. The plane was based at RAF Lakenheath, England, but was flying out of Aviano Air Base, Italy.

Stark, the weapons system officer took an unconventional path to safety, accepting shelter and medical treatment from Libyan rebels. He eventually left the country after resting in a Benghazi hotel room and rejoining U.S. forces, Desens said. Harney followed the conventional route, communicating his position to U.S. forces and searching for cover until he could be rescued.

The Harriers launched at 12:50 a.m., joining an F-16 already over the downed pilot and communicating with him by radio, Grunke said. The gravity of the situation quickly struck him when the tactical air-control squadron linked him with the radio frequency being used by the pilot.

“As I made my way to the target area and I took over, the F-16 [ahead of me] had just done a couple of gun attacks to deter the pursuers, and at that point, I took over as on-scene commander. I was probably 60 miles from his position, and I could hear him whispering to the other aircraft that were on station ahead of me about how he could see the pursuers,” Grunke said.

“That was really the first moment where I said, ‘This is really no longer training. That’s really a guy on the ground down there that is fearing for his life,’ ” Grunke said.

After dropping the two 500-pound bombs, Grunke ordered other Air Force pilots in the area to search elsewhere along the ground for intruders. He selected a possible landing zone for the TRAP mission, but had to leave shortly afterward because he was low on fuel.
Into the fray

At that point, the TRAP team was scrambling to reach the pilot. The Ospreys — each carrying about 15 reconnaissance Marines with Lejeune’s Battalion Landing Team, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines — launched at 1:33 a.m. from the Kearsarge, about 130 nautical miles from the crash site. They crossed the beach line at about 300 mph, flying just 200 feet off the ground all the way to the landing zone, Kolle said.

The Osprey pilots could hear Grunke reassuring the downed pilot by radio that Marines were on the way. Sensing urgency, they “started cutting the corner a little bit” on the original route they had planned to avoid possible surface-to-air missiles, Kolle said.

The first Osprey — reportedly flown by Maj. B.J. Debardeleben — took the lead, but its personnel were unable to find the pilot before the aircraft was out of position to land. It circled back as Kolle landed his Osprey at 2:38 a.m. with the help of a laser designator from an F-16 overhead.

“I landed in front of him maybe 50 yards,” Kolle said. “We were on deck about five seconds and the crew chief said, ‘Hey, we got him.’ So I was like, ‘Roger that, we’re getting out of here!’ and they said, ‘Hold up, all the recon guys are off the back!’”

It took about 30 more seconds to get all the Marines on board and to take off, he said. The two Ospreys turned back toward the Kearsarge. The CH-53s, carrying a quick-reaction force from Lejeune’s 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, never needed to land.

The QRF Marines had been on the Kearsarge only a matter of days, after being called in to supplement the MEU. They were needed because most of BLT 3/8, the MEU’s ground combat element, was in Afghanistan after being called off the ships in January.

Desens, who has since stepped down as the MEU’s commander, said uncertainty about the Libyan rebels complicated the mission, especially for the rescued pilot.

“If you’re that pilot and you’d just had a bad event with your aircraft, you probably didn’t have reason to believe” they didn’t mean him harm, he said. “It was terrifically uncertain early on.”

———

Staff writer Scott Fontaine contributed to this report.

Click to expand...