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H&I* Fires, 17 MAR 2007

Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.

You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...

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Discussion as to whether India would or wouldn't help against Iran.
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Some good news from Danger Room for once. Army may have solved an electronic warfare problem.
--ry
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Unintended Consequences. From Jim Dunnigan at Strategy Page.

Cluster Bomb Gold Mine In Sight by James Dunnigan March 17, 2007

Renewed international efforts to ban cluster bombs was welcomed by Chinese arms manufacturers. When landmines were banned by international treaty, a document China did not sign, China instantly got a much larger share of the landmine market. They expect the same thing to happen if the cluster bomb treaty is signed.

-the Armorer
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*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires.

Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.

Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*

The UAVs (oops, can't call 'em UAVs anymore - they're now Unmanned Aerial Systems... some Colonel got his Legion of Merit for that change...), er, um UAS's we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.

I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to. It's also an open trackback, so if (Don Surber uses it this way a lot) someone has a post they're proud of, but it really isn't either Castle kind of stuff, or topical to a particular post, I've basically given blanket permission to use that post for that purpose. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone".