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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Cry me a river. Not.
On this one, you can cry me a river. Not because of the conviction, but because of the failure of leadership that led to the ruination of several lives - not least the murder victim. -the Armorer
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Beachamp Investigation Concluded
Matt Sanchez blogs about the result of the Scott Thomas investigation.
After a thorough investigation that lasted nearly a week the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division has concluded that the allegation made by Private Thomas Scott Beauchamp, the "Baghdad Diarist", have been
"refuted by members of his platoon and proven to be false"
h/t The Corner....Maggie
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Continuing in that theme about TNR and Scott Thomas - Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee has more. -the Armorer
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Howdy. You may remember from the July 31 H&R a note from Denizen Steve about Operation YouTube Smackdown, going after YouTube for hosting jihadi videos. I'm happy to report John has authorized me to share a Daily Featured Smackdown with you. Each day I'll be posting a link to one of our Repeat Offenders, an uploader with a large number of jihad videos on his account, but one we haven't been able to get YouTube to close down (we've got dozens of videos and five accounts closed in our first few weeks).
You can click the link, and watch the video until you see something objectionable, then flag it. Typically under hate speech or graphic violence. As a rule, we won't put the worst up on our Daily Feature, so it'll be as 'work-safe' as this kind of jihad video can be. We've begun this over at Rachel Lucas' site, and yesterday we had an account with over a dozen videos taken down.
You can click on the link above to visit our site, where we have more how-to info, and a Daily Dozen of such links we're posting to make it easier for folks to find and flag these videos. We'll appreciate as much or as little time as you have for the effort. Today's Featured Smackdown video: Insurgent sniper video from iraq - by huz999
Thank you. - Rickbert
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The Armorer notes - we've signed on to help Rickbert in his quest because it's all a part of the emerging battle of ideas and cultures - and how we use and exploit the Internet. For those of you who participate in this - you are engaging in what the services term an "Information Operation," and are in fact doing something DoD would probably like to do, but faces some real legal challenges to do on their own. That said - remember when you are clicking links they are going to be real war videos, take into account where you are and who you are and who is around you.
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Given that the Armorer is a redleg, and given that the Canadian army rarely beats the U.S. Army to the punch, I found this piece at Jane's IDR quite gratifying:
The A2 version of BAE Systems' M777 Lightweight 155 mm towed howitzer was awarded Full Material Release by the US Army Tank Automotive and Armaments Command in July.The M777A2 incorporates a software update enabling it to programme and fire the Raytheon M982 Excalibur GPS/INS-guided projectile, substantially increasing the howitzer's range and accuracy.
The US Army and US Marine Corps (USMC) have so far ordered a total of 591 M777s, of which approximately 250 have been completed. The majority have been M777A1 models fitted with the General Dynamics TAD (Towed Artillery Digitisation) fire-control system, but these were preceded by 96 baseline M777s delivered to the USMC with conventional optical sights as part of low-rate initial production.
The M777A2 version of the howitzer will be the version issued to all US Army and USMC units. Those army units currently operating the M777A1 will receive a software upgrade to bring their TAD systems to A2 standard, as will the USMC M777s.
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The Canadian Army has so far purchased 12 baseline M777 howitzers through Foreign Military Sales and was the first to commit the weapon to battlefield operations, having had a battery of four M777s (since raised to six) in service in Afghanistan since February 2006. These have been modified with a bespoke Canadian-conceived digital gun management system (DGMS) based on the Selex LINAPS automatic gun laying and navigation system, in combination with a handheld ballistics computing terminal. DGMS allows the Canadian gunners to programme and fire Excalibur.
Actually, what amazes me about this story is that my country's Department of National Defence could actually come up with a customized gun management solution quickly enough to deploy it when we bought the guns from the USMC in the first place. Normally, that sort of thing takes years and years and years.... - Damian
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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"
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