Time to add a new caveat, because from email it's not clear to some folks (mind you, if you don't read this it won't matter...) Being an open post, people (collectively, the Denizens) other than I post in the H&I. They sign their work (most of the time) - keep that in mind when you want to flame someone in email please - if it doesn't say "The Armorer" or "John" then I didn't write it! And honestly - if you don't like something said or posted... leave a comment, and hash it out (within the context of The Rulez which are clearly posted on the comment form, I would add).

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Here's a gem from George Will today:

Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe and vow to change Washington's culture, each would aggravate its toxicity. Each overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them, and who therefore think opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.

Sound like any of our trolls? Well, actually, I have two in mind, the not-much-missed Nunya from last election cycle, and the not terribly informative but amazingly preachy Cliff.

While I've not endorsed (nor yet decided, unlike SWWBO, who's a Thompson fan) I do know who I don't like of the current crop of candidates. And Messr's Huckabee and Edwards are in that group. And I tire, mightily, of the class-war rhetoric.

Moving along - Jim Dunnigan over at Strategy Page has this interesting bit of flex and adapt... that probably ought to find it's way to the borders in large numbers.

PROCUREMENT: More Towers of Power for Iraq

January 6, 2008: The U.S. Army has bought nine additional Eagle Eye surveillance tower systems for Iraq, at a cost of $556,000 each. This is a security system of day/night cameras, laser range finder and designator, all mounted on a truck mounted tower, which has evolved in the last four years. This system has gotten more mobile, and seen its tower grow taller. The current Eagle Eye tower is 107 feet tall, allowing the cameras to spot vehicles up to 25 kilometers away. Great for keeping an eye on thinly populated areas in a desert, which western Iraq has plenty of. The earlier 30 foot tower can see out to eleven kilometers, the 60 foot tower out to 16 kilometers and 84 foot tower out to 20 kilometers. The 30 foot tower was adequate for most situations, which usually involved guarding a base, but the taller tower also serves as a communications relay for widely dispersed troops. The towers can be easily taken apart or erected by troops. When temporary bases are set up, an Eagle Eye tower provides the equivalent of a permanent UAV presence, which, just by being there, tends to discourage attacks, or any misbehavior in the vicinity of the base.

Eagle Eye is part of the RAID system. Four years ago, the U.S. Army sent 22 blimps aerostats,
actually) to Iraq and Afghanistan. These RAID (Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment) blimps float at about a thousand feet up, tethered by a cable that provides power and communications to the day and night cameras up there. The big problem is ground fire from rifles and machine-guns. Iraqis, in particular, like using the RAID blimps as targets. Rifle fire won’t destroy the blimps, but does cause them to be brought down more frequently for repairs. Normally, the blimps can stay up for 30 days at a time, but the bullet hole repairs have some of them coming down every few days. There are surveillance systems similar to RAID, but mounted on tall steel towers. These also suffer gunfire damage, but rarely any that damage the equipment. It was soon found that tower mounted cameras were just as good as the aerostats, in most situation, and much cheaper.

-the Armorer

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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."