Lockheed Gets Big Bucks to Prep Soldiers for Urban War | Danger Room | Wired.com

Lockheed Gets Big Bucks to Prep Soldiers for Urban War | Danger Room | Wired.com: "American soldiers spent seven years patrolling the urban neighborhoods of Iraq; its troops battled insurgents there block-by-block and house-by-house. Now that the Army is getting out of Iraq, it wants to make sure its urban combat skills don’t wither away. So it today it gave Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $287 million to build Urban Operations Training Systems — essentially, giant simulation facilities and modules to help soldiers get ready for life in the big, bad city.
Versions of those training systems can be as simple as shipping containers tricked out to resemble multi-story houses and arranged in village formations, so soldiers can practice how to seize a building without causing needless damage. The Army’s got an entire 1000-acre facility in Indiana it uses to train soldiers in urban combat.
The contract will include structures like those, which are known as Mobile Military Operations on Urban Terrain systems, or Mobile MOUTs. Lockheed says it’ll help soldiers drill on everything “from traditional war fighting tactics, to nation-building, to overseas contingency operations.” Overseas contingency operations is the new bureaucratic and budgetary term for what we used to call “wars.”"

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NATO Missile Defense for Europe

NATO has agreed to provide ballistic missile defense or BMD for all of Europe. This NATO BMD will protect NATO (European and American) military forces in Europe. It will also – for the very first time – protect the civilian population throughout Europe from ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction launched from the Middle East.
Much of this NATO missile defense for Europe – known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach – will actually be provided by the United States armed forces. This will include seaborne AEGIS missile defense on board US Navy ships in the Mediterranean, as well as land based radars and interceptor missiles.
This e-book describes how NATO missile defense for Europe will be organized and implemented.

Joint STARS Successfully Supports JSuW JCTD

Joint STARS Successfully Supports JSuW JCTD: "Northrop Grumman's E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) test bed aircraft recently completed the second of two deployments to Naval Air Station Pt. Mugu, Calif., in support of the U.S. Navy Joint Surface Warfare (JSuW) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) to test its Network-Enabled Weapon (NEW) architecture.

The Joint STARS aircraft executed three Operational Utility Assessment flights and demonstrated its ability to guide anti-ship weapons against surface combatants at a variety of standoff distances in the NEW architecture.

The Joint STARS aircraft served as the network command-and-control node, as well as a node for transmitting in-flight target message updates to an AGM-154 C-1 Joint Standoff Weapon carried by Navy F/A-18's using its advanced long range tracking and targeting capability.

'The demonstration enabled participants to see how Joint STARS helps protect pilots by enabling the delivery aircraft to stay out of the anti-aircraft missile envelope of warships and shore based anti-aircraft missile batteries,' said Jay Casey, Northrop Grumman JSuW program manager.

'The fact that Joint STARS performed almost flawlessly is a testament to the exceptional efforts by the team and will help bring this critical net enabled weapons capability to the warfighter,' said U.S. Navy Capt. Carl Chebi, Precision Strike Weapons program manager."

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NATO Missile Defense for Europe

NATO has agreed to provide ballistic missile defense or BMD for all of Europe. This NATO BMD will protect NATO (European and American) military forces in Europe. It will also – for the very first time – protect the civilian population throughout Europe from ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction launched from the Middle East.
Much of this NATO missile defense for Europe – known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach – will actually be provided by the United States armed forces. This will include seaborne AEGIS missile defense on board US Navy ships in the Mediterranean, as well as land based radars and interceptor missiles.
This e-book describes how NATO missile defense for Europe will be organized and implemented.

U.S. pitches jets to Japan

U.S. pitches jets to Japan: "on his administration's drive to bolster military cooperation with Japan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested Tokyo consider buying U.S. combat aircraft.
Gates made the pitch while in Japan for talks with defense officials.
In a meeting with his Japanese counterpart, the U.S. defense secretary suggested 'Japan consider three U.S. planes to upgrade their fleet,' the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F/A-18 Hornet, now a product of Boeing and Northrop Grumman, and Boeing's F-15 Eagle.
He said the Pentagon could provide details on the merits of each aircraft to Japan for review.
Japan has been considering upgrading its military arsenal in the face of China's growing military might and assertive stance in the Pacific."
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NATO Missile Defense for Europe

NATO has agreed to provide ballistic missile defense or BMD for all of Europe. This NATO BMD will protect NATO (European and American) military forces in Europe. It will also – for the very first time – protect the civilian population throughout Europe from ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction launched from the Middle East.
Much of this NATO missile defense for Europe – known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach – will actually be provided by the United States armed forces. This will include seaborne AEGIS missile defense on board US Navy ships in the Mediterranean, as well as land based radars and interceptor missiles.
This e-book describes how NATO missile defense for Europe will be organized and implemented.

US-backed bio-weapons lab irks Kazakh opposition

US-backed bio-weapons lab irks Kazakh opposition: "The Kazakh opposition voiced alarm Tuesday over comments by the US ambassador revealing that the United States intended to help the republic build a 'dangerous biological pathogens' facility in its largest city Almaty.

The comments by outgoing US Ambassador Richard Hoagland were made at an official reception last week and then published on the embassy website.

Hoagland praised the two countries' cooperation on efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.

"Just very recently, Kazakhstan and the United States, with the assistance of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom, fully secured for the next half century ... enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium to make 775 nuclear weapons," Hoagland said.

He then added: "And today, we are closely engaged with Kazakhstan to construct a world-class facility in Almaty to secure dangerous biological pathogens."

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NATO Missile Defense for Europe

NATO has agreed to provide ballistic missile defense or BMD for all of Europe. This NATO BMD will protect NATO (European and American) military forces in Europe. It will also – for the very first time – protect the civilian population throughout Europe from ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction launched from the Middle East.
Much of this NATO missile defense for Europe – known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach – will actually be provided by the United States armed forces. This will include seaborne AEGIS missile defense on board US Navy ships in the Mediterranean, as well as land based radars and interceptor missiles.
This e-book describes how NATO missile defense for Europe will be organized and implemented.

U.S. and Afghan agents ramp up war on drugs - The West Australian

U.S. and Afghan agents ramp up war on drugs - The West Australian: "Drugs provide $100 million (62 million pounds) to $400 million dollars a year to the Taliban, who use it to pay wages and buy arms, making stamping out the trade crucial to containing the conflict.
And the challenge of bringing trafficking under control is made worse by massive political corruption and the willingness of senior officials to support or dabble in the trade.
Hopes to end this flow of cash are pinned on building Afghan capacity, with the U.S. in particular ramping up staff and spending to train agents like Aziz and Wais -- and then persuade them to stick with a grim and dangerous job.
'In the end it's going to be the Afghans and their system, and their rule of law, that's going to make a difference,' said Jay Fitzpatrick, assistant regional director with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He says it could take decades."

Oil from eateries powers Humvee - Hawaii News - Staradvertiser.com

Oil from eateries powers Humvee - Hawaii News - Staradvertiser.com: "An Army Humvee at Fort Shafter Flats has started tooling around with a faint smell of french fries and tempura coming from its exhaust.
The 8th Theater Sustainment Command vehicle was fueled up Wednesday with a blend of 80 percent petroleum diesel and 20 percent biodiesel from Oahu restaurant cooking oil as part of an ongoing Defense Department test of biofuel blends in tactical vehicles.
The evaluation -- which includes a loader and Humvee at Marine Corps Base Hawaii running on what is known as 'B20' -- also is being conducted at Port Hueneme, Calif; the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif.; Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; Moody Air Force Base, Ga.; and the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind., officials said.
'One thing we like about the biodiesel is yesterday it cooked your lunch, and today it takes you to lunch,' Lt. Col. Matthew Garner said Thursday at a presentation on the Humvee test.
The Pentagon wants to reduce its dependence on foreign oil, and the biodiesel blend also reduces emissions and utilizes an alternative source of fuel -- used cooking oil -- obtained in Hawaii."

Pakistan’s Failure to Hit Militant Sanctuary Has Plus Side for the U.S. - NYTimes.com

Pakistan’s Failure to Hit Militant Sanctuary Has Plus Side for the U.S. - NYTimes.com: "Pakistan’s refusal to attack militants in a notorious sanctuary on its northwest border may have created a magnet there for hundreds of Islamic fighters seeking a safe haven where they can train and organize attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan. But theirs is a congregation in the cross hairs.

A growing number of senior United States intelligence and counterinsurgency officials say that by bunching up there, insurgents are ultimately making it easier for American drone strikes to hit them from afar.

American officials are loath to talk about this silver lining to the storm cloud that they have long described building up in the tribal area of North Waziristan, where the insurgents run a virtual mini-state the size of Rhode Island. This is because they do not want to undermine the Obama administration’s urgent public pleas for Pakistan to order troops into the area, or to give Pakistan an excuse for inaction.

“We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without shutting down those safe havens,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week, underscoring a major conclusion of the White House’s strategic review of Afghanistan policy last month.

But as long as the safe havens exist, they provide a rich hunting ground, however inadvertent it may be.

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