High-Tech Stryker for Combat

The Strykers of Christmas Future?

The U.S. Army decided this week to sign over a combat vehicle to a new Pentagon program that seeks to defeat rocket-propelled grenades, explosive devices, sniper fire and hostile crowds during urban combat.

The Army dedicated $3 million and one of its Stryker vehicles–a cross between a Humvee and a tank–for the initiative, said the Office of Transformation, which initiated “Project Sheriff.” The office, which is charged with transforming the military to combat 21st-century threats, has contributed $9 million in funding from its fiscal 2004 and fiscal 2005 budgets to the effort.

Beyond combat vehicles, the office envisions telecommunications-operated, unmanned aerial vehicles with advanced technologies and electrical power that can reach extended ranges.

The sherrif would be equipped with crowd-control heat beams, anti-sniper laser “dazzlers”, senstive acoustic listening devices, automatic weapon aiming systems, and a computer-controlled anti-RPG shotgun.

Tests begin late this year and the Army hopes to deploy a few of these next year for further testing in the real world.

Scenes from planet MSNBC

Wow:

From last evening’s “Hardball w/ Chris Matthews” comes this bizarre bit: Shortly after New York Times columnist Bob Herbert condemned the US for forcing democracy on Iraqis “at the point of a gun,” Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen had this to say: “There’s another word for ‘insurgents’ in Iraq, and that’s ‘residents.’”

Not to be outdone, Matthews himself (channeling Brian Williams) then added: “‘Insurgents’ are what the British called us in the Revolutionary War. It’s true”–an observation which, if I didn’t know better, might lead me to conclude Chris was trying to draw some sort of parallel or something.

More at Balloon Juice and Polipundit, plus the video itself at The Political Teen.

Remember:

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win. –Michael Moore, April 2004

But DO NOT DARE question their patriotism! (via Malkin)

UPDATE: Say Anything notes the Moore parallel, as well. And, thank goodness, commenters are playing the moral equivalence games:

I don’t see what the big deal is. During the revolution, we WERE insurgents, we DID use the tactics of terror, and it WAS a rebellion. Pretty much the same as in Iraq.

And don’t miss:

What about what our rebels did to loyalists during the American revolution?

In areas under Patriot control, they were subject to confiscation of property and even tar and feathering or worse. They could be arrested for being loyal to the British, some were even blackmailed, whipped, abused, threatened, and attacked by mobs of Revolutionaries.

I think that could be considered terrorism. I’m not saying that the Iraqi insurgents are the same as our founding fathers, but to say there aren’t any similarities is a lie.

It’s the old “panties on the head is mean and removing the head is mean, therefore American guards at Abu Gharib and terrorists in Iraq are both mean–end of story” argument in colonial terms.

Rotomotion UAVs

Navy using software from older ships in DD(X) program

Boeing lobbyist faces inquiry

HK M416/M418

How long inkjet-printed photos last depends on who you ask, experts say

Property Rights Advocates Brace for Another Betrayal

Truth is the First Civilian Casualty

Iran To Resume Nuclear Conversion, Khatami Tells EU

One Person’s Terrorist…

Solar Hot Water Heaters

Ill-equipped soldiers use excess force

Defense Department Special Briefing on Announcement of New Locations for The Active Duty Army’s Modular Brigade Combat Teams

Joe Buff: Littoral Sub Ops

How to Stop the Contagion

I’ll be on the road again Friday through Sunday, though there will probably limited posting as time allows. Plus Linkzookery will post Friday afternoon automatically.

Civil libertarians question subway searches

I’ve long argued that significantly increased security before 9/11 based on “chatter” and the 8/6/01 PDB would not have gone over well. Like the No-fly list that the ACLU is fighting:

What if this list had gone into effect on September 1st, 2001? Maybe, just maybe, many if not all of the 9/11 hijackers would have been on the list. We’ve heard over and over again how they had already been identified by one agency or another as potentially dangerous.

Then in comes the good old ACLU. They march up a number of people on the list who probably don’t deserve to be, and then BOOM! The FBI and the CIA and especially the White House are singling out people and profiling and generally being racist bastards. Lawsuits are filed. Press conferences are held. Stigma is applied. Cain is raised.

Then 19 guys get through security one Tuesday morning.

Lists like this have their place. The issues the ACLU are raising have their place. Regular law enforcement has its part to play in the War on Terror.

But so many people wonder why we didn’t do more before 9/11 when they ignore what we struggle to do even AFTER 9/11.

Now, this doesn’t mean to say that we need a GOP Gestapo running around looking into everyone’s library records. But if we’re having so much trouble after 9/11 and 7/7, when these attacks on Western cities are a PROVEN FACT and PEOPLE HAVE DIED, how much trouble would we have had before?

Let’s say that President Bush took that PDB and the little scattered tidbits of unspecific, dated, inaccurate information it contained and figured out the 9/11 plot on September 1st. He sends National Guard troops to guard airports. He freezes bank assets. He sends the FBI to arrest 19 Muslims. He goes on television and tells us that he’s fired 250 cruise missiles at Afghanistan and that Special Forces are landing as we speak to destroy what’s left of the terrorist camps and capture Osama bin Laden. From now on security would be stepped up. He’s going to create a Department of Homeland Defense and rejigger the leadership and organization of our intelligence agencies.

And he’s going to do it all because those 19 Muslims were going to hijack some planes and knock down the World Trade Center.

90% of America and 99.9% of the world would go “Yeah. Sure they were.”

You know it’s true.

But today, after we’ve learned lessons we would rather not have, it’s a constant struggle just to put some basic security measures into place. And yet if (when?) something slips through we’re sure to hear all about how Bush let it happen.

In this particular case, over the searching of bags on the New York City subway:

Some civil libertarians have already concluded the search policy violates the 4th Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

“It represents a change in the balance between citizen rights to privacy and the ability of the state to intrude on that,” said Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

I wonder what it’s going to take to make searches “reasonable”. Because National Guard soldiers with M-16s and a new Transportation Security Administration would have seemed pretty “unreasonable” on 9/10/01.

Stryker Brigade to say farewell to Fairbanks

The 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, the third Stryker Brigade, is leaving its Alaska base. They’re the “Arctic Wolves”, but they aren’t likely to see much snow over the next year or so. They’re headed for Iraq.

Unlike the second Stryker Brigade, this one is taking its own vehicles. The vehicles from the first brigade were left for the second last year, and they must be getting a bit ripe by now. Bring ‘em home and hose ‘em out.

I’m very curious to see how this brigade performs. This will be the first time that lessons learned by Stryker units in the real world will have been really incorporated into pre-deployment training, as the second brigade was packing up about the time those lessons were being worked out. So I expect that we’ll see even more good stuff out of this brigade than we’re used to seeing from the Strykers. In addition, a number of small and easy fixes have been made to the vehicles themselves, so hopes are high.

A couple of weeks ago I noted a post on Volokh Conspiracy by Jim Lindgrin about (in part) Joseph Wilson’s public statements concerning classified information. I wondered how much of this was gamesmanship on Wilson’s part, since he probably knew that some of things he was claiming couldn’t be disputed since to do so would require the release of info that cannot be released, and compared it to the questioning of Condeleeza Rice by Richard Ben-Veniste during the 9/11 Commission hearings. The point was that Ben-Veniste seemed to be playing games with the title of the famous (or infamous) 8/6/01 Presidential Daily Briefing which was classified at the time.

Just yesterday a reader calling himself Peon (you can’t make this stuff up!) started raising points about the PDB and (to paraphrase) how it was juicy stuff that the Bush administration just ignored and helped 9/11 come to pass.

He made some “Nazi” and “simple-minded” references, and, when I noted them he said (in effect) that he hadn’t been calling me a “Nazi” or “simple-minded”, but since I reacted the way I did I might be, after all. And he was amazed by his “precognition”. After a bit more back-and-forth in the comments section, I decided that an off-topic debate about something that was debated to death over a year ago wasn’t really a game that I felt like playing and I said so. That earned this response:

Spoken like a true republican. Their apathy is contagious throughout the entire party. The only information worthy of note is what the President says, and it is mantra. Sieg Heil!

Now, I should recognize that this Peon apparently hasn’t read much of my site, so I’m willing to overlook his generalizations. But is this what passes as debate? Never mind that it’s off-topic. He implies that I’m one of the teeming mass of (apparently jackbooted) Republican zombies or some such, when in fact his reasoning and manner seem to fall into the stereotypical “Bush-hating Liberal” category.

I’m simply pointing this out on the main page so that no one thought I was hoping no one would notice how I got my head handed to me by a less-simple-minded reader. Go read if you dare.

Asking and telling

Glenn Reynolds on his MSNBC site:

When William Brennan was appointed to the Court, nobody asked his views on whether there was a constitutional right to abortion, or what he thought about affirmative action. I don’t think anybody asked John Paul Stevens about gay marriage, either. Justices tend to outlast issues, which is why character and temperament matter more.

Move Like a Cat, Instructor Tells Sniper Candidates

Ooorah:

To pass the stalking test soldiers had to pick out an instructor in their site and identify a letter printed on a card he was holding. If they got the letter right they fired a blank round and crawled back to the start point. If an instructor saw trainees poking their heads up or moving the grass they were disqualified.

Smith said the stalking section of sniper school required trainees to use a variety of skills they learned in the weeks leading up to it.

“First they learn range estimation with their eyes, binoculars and scope,” he said. “Then they practice target detection, which is like a military Easter egg hunt. We put military items on the range and they have to find them with their binoculars and scope.”

Snipers also learn rifle marksmanship at distances of 300 to 800 yards during the day and at night, shoot at moving targets at ranges out to 600 yards and fire .50-caliber sniper rifles at vehicle-size targets 1,400 to 2,000 yards away. They also study the history of sniping, employment, tracking and foreign weapons, Smith said.

Hopesuflly, by the time the next assault rifle is adopted in 2019, the brass will have realized that it’s not only snipers and sharpshooters that could benefit from something larger than a 5.56.

UPDATE: In response to some comments about non-lethal snipers, I’m posting this link.

Tonight on MSNBC:

And just now on Murdoc Online: