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H&I Fires* May 26, 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...

Close Air Support in Urban Areas. Heh. You *can* use an airplane for non-lethal CAS.

Battery Commander, Policeman, and second fiddle to an Iraqi. The last part is how we want it to be. That middle part isn't quite what Redlegs signed up to do, but it does result in less damage, perhaps!

An assessment of the surge so far:

Top U.S. commanders have cautioned that any verdict on the overall success of the plan will have to wait until after all units are in place and conducting operations. But Canda and his paratroopers have been on the ground long enough to begin drawing their own conclusions.

Three months after they arrived in Sha’ab, the bodies are gone, the murders have stopped, and the neighborhood has come back to life, Canda said.

“It’s night and day from when we got here,” he said.

Now if only we'll give it time to work, and that time is sufficient to make it take hold and for the Iraqis to not only maintain security in conjunction with us - but on their own. Read the rest here.

Lastly, meet Ray "Bubba" Sorenson, and his rock.

Be safe this weekend - but have fun, too! -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 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".

1 Comments

Bubba has a web site with more background and pictures of previous "editions" of the rock. http://bubbazartwork.com or if you want to go direct to the rock section http://bubbazartwork.com/patriotic_rock.html He's not a vet, he just thinks and acts like one. I salute his service to our country, where he has done more to honor our troops with a rock and a few gallons of paint than the New York Times has with all its paper and barrels of ink. THANKS BUBBA!