Flag burning Occupy Charlotte camp 4 charged - WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC

 

Four protesters, including the spokesman of Occupy Charlotte, were charged after setting fire to two American flags early Friday near the Occupy camp in Center City, police said.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police weren't sure earlier if the four men who set fire to two flags were associated with the Occupy Charlotte movement.

But, WBTV has learned that one of the men is the media spokesman for the Occupy group and has been the contact person listed on press releases from Occupy Charlotte.

The fires happened with in feet of the group's encampment.

Earlier reports indicated one flag was burned, but a police report says that 2 US flags were burned.

Officers said they noticed the suspects lighting something on fire directly in front of the Occupy camp along Trade Street around 12:30 a.m. Friday morning.

Police swarmed the area, and detained the men while firefighters were called in to knock down the flames. About $30 worth of damage was caused to landscaping at the site.

Flag burning Occupy Charlotte camp 4 charged - WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC

US Ends Afghan Info Center Aid After Criticism | Military.com

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul this week said it would cut off aid and called back staff working at an Afghan government media center after a press conference held there that criticized foreign troops over civilian casualties, center officials said Wednesday.

Ezatullah Safi, deputy director of the Afghan Government Media and Information Center, said it was told after the press conference that the embassy would review its aid to the center.

An Afghan fact-finding team appointed by President Hamid Karzai on Saturday blamed NATO-led troops for what it said was the unnecessary killing of dozens of civilians. The press conference the team held at the center criticized foreign forces as "brutal."

But U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall denied that the U.S. moves were linked to the criticism.

"This decision to begin the transition was under consideration and happened to coincide with the press conference," Sundwall said.

Just watch. If the administration has time, this will become the flashpoint issue, the excuse, for full withdrawal from Afghanistan, just as legal immunity was for Iraq. There are negotiations that can be made, and could have been made in the former case, but they won't be, because this is the cover, the excuse, that will be used.

Wanted: Full Auto for Accuracy, not Rock 'n Roll | Military.com

The Army began using three-round burst setting in 1986, when it adopted the Marine Corps-developed M16A2 as a replacement for its fleet of M16A1s. The A2 fired the M249 squad automatic weapon’s M855 round and featured a number of modifications over the A1, such as improved sights, a rounded handguard and, of course, three-round burst instead of a full-auto capability.

The Marines developed the burst setting to help riflemen conserve ammunition instead of wasting it during long bursts of full-auto fire. But the Marines and the Army later realized that the mechanics of the three-round burst setting caused an inconsistent trigger pull in the semi-auto mode. This means that the trigger doesn’t feel the same every time a shooter fires, making it harder to shoot with the same degree of accuracy from one shot to the next.

“The trigger is the soldier’s primary interface with the weapon for delivering the round,” said Lt. Col. Tom Henthorn, chief of the Small Arms Branch at Benning’s Soldier Requirements Division.

This is one of the reasons U.S. Special Operations Command equipped its M4A1 carbines with full-auto triggers in the mid-1990s.

The Army’s senior leadership decided to start issuing M4A1s last year as an interim step as it moves ahead with the M4 Product Improvement Program and its improved carbine competition, which could ultimately replace the M4.

“We had some M4A1s on the range … and even the guys from the Army Marksmanship Unit had thought we had [improved] the trigger somehow,” Henthorn said. “The AMU guys were fairly impressed with the trigger.”

Korea: The Prince Of Potential Takes Over

Kim Jong Ils death might be considered a good career move. He had made a desperate promise that, by 2012, North Korea would undergo a massive increase in living standards. Amazing things were supposed to happen by Kim Jong Ils birthday on February 16^th. This was in response to the growing popularity of consumerism in North Korea and knowledge of the higher South Korean and Chinese living standards. Most North Koreans are having a hard time getting enough to eat, but in the capital, Pyongyang, the promises included 100,000 new housing units. The capital is a special place in North Korea. You need permission to live there, and the city is obviously much better off than the rest of the country. This is because the most loyal, and crucial, government employees live in Pyongyang. However, Kim Jong Ils building plans had turned out horribly wrong. Not only would the plan not produce 100,000 new apartments, but many were built using substandard materials and unsafe practices. Hundreds of students drafted to help in the construction were killed or mutilated by work accidents. The construction managers were under tremendous pressure to get the 100,000 new apartments built, at any cost. The new buildings were so poorly built that Pyongyang residents feared being given an apartment in one of the new buildings. Some of the shoddy new buildings had already collapsed, and city residents were wondering how the government would spin the collapse of finished, and inhabited, ones.

Warplanes: The Year Of The Reaper

Two months ago, the U.S. MQ-1 Predator UAV fleet hit a million hours in the air. Over 20 percent of those hours were flown this year. The Predator replacement, the MQ-9 reaper has flown nearly 250,000 hours so far. America's large UAVs (MQ-1, MQ-1C, MQ-9, RQ-4 and RQ-170) flew some 400,000 hours this year. That's compared to 300,000 hours last year, 185,000 hours in 2009 and 151,000 hours in 2008. It took 12 years of service (1995-2007, including development) for the MQ-1 Predator alone to reach its first 250,000 hours. It took another two years (2007-2009) to fly an additional 250,000 hours (500,000 total). It took less than a year to reach another 250,000 hour milestone (Spring 2010).

Someone tell my why we need governors or legislatures or even voters … [Darleen Click]

Someone tell my why we need governors or legislatures or even voters … [Darleen Click]

… when we have judges who obviously know exactly how to run everything

The Associated Press: NORAD Santa trackers having record holiday

 

Santa's piling up more than presents this year. The big man's trackers at NORAD say Santa Claus is also breaking records this Christmas Eve.

Volunteers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado were fielding 4,000 calls an hour Saturday morning, on pace to break a record. Also, Santa's NORAD Facebook page exceeded 840,000 "likes" by midmorning. Last year, Santa had 716,000 "likes."

Volunteers at NORAD Tracks Santa said kids started calling at 4 a.m. Saturday to find out where Santa was.

"The phones are ringing like crazy," Lt. Cmdr. Bill Lewis said Saturday.

The Associated Press: NORAD Santa trackers having record holiday

Afghanistan: Taliban Take A Tumble

 

The U.S. has completed the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Afghanistan, reducing the American force from 101,000 to 91,000. All foreign troops are planning on leaving by 2014. Meanwhile, the foreign troops remain fully engaged in combat. The Taliban and drug gangs continue to run a terrorism campaign against civilians who will not cooperate or submit to Taliban or gang control.  Foreign troops often go after Taliban who participate in these terrorist acts (especially murders and kidnappings.) Increasingly, the guilty parties are caught, and kidnap victims freed.

For the first time in five years, Taliban attacks were down (nearly 20 percent) over an entire year. Despite the hostile relations with Pakistan, the Taliban bases in Pakistan are increasingly unsafe, denying the Afghan Taliban sanctuaries. The Pakistanis are not happy with the growing activity of Islamic terror groups inside Pakistan. Unfortunately, Pakistan is itself headed for more unrest, or even civil war, as public anger against the military and ISI (the local CIA) increases.

Despite the often corrupt behavior of the police, Taliban and outlaw efforts to disable the Afghan police are increasingly failing. The police are better armed and trained, and attacks on their bases tend to fail. Police patrols are more difficult to ambush and the cops more frequently win firefights with the Taliban and gangs.

Afghanistan: Taliban Take A Tumble

Leadership: Australian Army Reorganizes For The Future

 

Australia is reorganizing its army. With only 27,000 active duty troops (and 17,000 reservists), the core of the force is currently three combat brigades (one mechanized, one light infantry and one motorized). These will be converted into identical multirole brigades, with more support and supply capabilities. In effect, each of these brigades will be a miniature army able to operate independently. In addition, ten smaller (battalion size) battle groups will be formed. A small amphibious brigade will be organized, which will use new amphibious ships and be trained for disaster relief as well as combat. Reservists will be more thoroughly integrated into active duty units.

With this reorganization, Australia will have a more flexible force, able to handle a wider range of contingencies. The Special Operations Command will not change much, although this outfit, which has been most active in the last decade, has already evolved quite a bit, and provided some of the new ideas for the overall army reorganization.

Leadership: Australian Army Reorganizes For The Future

Murphy's Law: Victory In Iraq And Vietnam

 

The army and marines have a long history of success fighting guerillas. Even Vietnam, which conventional wisdom counts as a defeat, wasn't. The conventional wisdom, as is often the case, is wrong. By the time the last U.S. combat units pulled out of South Vietnam in 1972, the local guerilla movement, the Viet Cong, was destroyed. North Vietnam came south three years later with a conventional invasion, sending tank and infantry divisions charging across the border and conquering their neighbor the old fashioned way.

When the United States got involved with South Vietnam in the late 1950s, there was good reason to believe American assistance would lead to the defeat of the communist guerilla movement there. In the previous two decades, there had been twelve communist insurgencies, and 75 percent of them had been defeated. These included Greek Civil War (1944-1949), Spanish Republican Insurgency (1944-1952), Iranian Communist Uprising (1945-1946), Philippine Huk War (1946-1954), Madagascan Nationalist Revolt (1947-1949), Korean Partisan War (1948-1953), Sarawak/Sabah "Confrontation" (1960-1966), Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), Kenyan Mau-Mau Rebellion (1952-1955). The communists won in the Cuban Revolution (1956-1958), the First Indochina War (1945-1954) and the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). The communists went on to lose the guerilla phase of the Second Indochina War (1959-1970).

Murphy's Law: Victory In Iraq And Vietnam

Morning Jay: Let's Go Back to the Old Nominaton System | The Weekly Standard

"I learned that it was open, in most respects: roll call votes were public, the speeches were public, and so on. You can go online and find all of the formal acceptance addresses and a lot of the nominating addresses without much effort. Very little of it was hammered out in secret; correspondence from generations long gone suggest that there was much less wheeling and dealing than we might otherwise expect, at least by the nominees themselves, who usually stayed away from the convention for fear of giving the impression that they were actively in pursuit of the prize.

I learned that the nominees tended to be fair reflections of the sentiment of the party during the period. There were some exceptions – like for instance in 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt was probably the choice of the grassroots of the Republican party but William Howard Taft won the nomination anyway – but by and large you had men on both sides who represented the majority sentiment of their own faction. A great example of this was the victory of William Jennings Bryan in the Democratic nomination in 1896. He was young and inexperienced, certainly not what you’d call an insider, but he tapped into the mood in his own party, and it gave him the nomination.

And I learned that, by and large, the nominees tended to be decent men. For instance, when you look at the Gilded Age – which spans from about the end of the Civil War to the Panic of 1893 – it was a very corrupt time in politics; but when you look at the nominees on both sides, you generally see honorable human beings. Sure, Ulysses S. Grant allowed corruption to fester in his administration and James G. Blaine – the GOP nominee in 1884 – was kind of smarmy, but they were the exceptions."

Murphy's Law: A Three Part Invention

 

On December 8th Iran displayed what appeared to be an American RQ-170 jet powered UAV, which they claimed had landed intact in Iran two weeks earlier. Iran claimed they had hijacked the control signals for the RQ-170 and landed it themselves. This seemed highly unlikely, but not impossible. Experts on Iranian military technology immediately suspected something else. First, the Iranians are constantly lying about their military exploits, especially when it comes to developing new weapons and technology. This is apparently done mainly for domestic propaganda, as satellite photos never show more than a few prototypes of these wonder-weapons. Then many Americans familiar with the RQ-170 carefully studied the pictures of the "captured" RQ-170 and immediately suspected something was off. For one thing, the RQ-170 shown was the right size and shape, but the wrong color. Not just a different color from that seen on many photos of the RQ-170s in Afghanistan, but also a color unknown in American military service. A closer examination of the Iranian RQ-170 photos indicated that the Iranians had reassembled an RQ-170 that had crashed, and broken into three or more pieces. Then the Iranians apparently gave the UAV a new paint job (which was obvious to anyone seeing those photos.)

At the moment, the only things one can be sure of is that the American operators of the UAV lost the satellite signal connection with the RQ-170, and the aircraft eventually crashed. There was no indication of Iranians jamming the satellite signal. Iran has jammed satellite signals before, but wide area entertainment programming, not encrypted UAV control signals. Thus many mysteries remain, but some have been cleared up because the Iranians could not resist creating a photo opportunity.

Murphy's Law: A Three Part Invention

Israel: Outrage

 

Palestinians are enraged because an American politician recently pointed out that "Palestine" does not exist, never existed, and was invented during the Cold War by the Soviet KGB as yet another ploy to expand Russian influence in the Middle East. The 1964 charter founding the Palestine Liberation Organization was created by the KGB and "approved" by 400 pro-communist Palestinians. This charter explicitly denied any Palestinian claims on the West Bank (then part of Jordan) and Gaza (then part of Egypt). After Israel conquered these two areas, in the 1967 war, the PLO dropped that clause. But there was no real effort to push the concept of "Palestine" until the 1970s. The Arab world, humiliated from losing five wars with Israel, and seeing Israel outstrip its Arab neighbors in so many ways (economically, educationally, politically, and so on), got behind the idea that the Jews and Israel were oppressing the newly invented "Palestinian people" and must be destroyed. Most Western media ignored the ensuing decades of ugly anti-Israel propaganda. This myth of the "Palestinian State" became popular with pro-communist groups and leftists in general, and that enthusiasm survived the collapse of most communist states in the late 1980s and the end of the Cold War. But just because a lie is widely accepted does not make it true. So Palestinians are outraged at this exposure of their origins.

Israel: Outrage

Naval Air: Russia Gets An Ultimatum

 

Senior Indian officials recently visited Russia to remind the Russians, in no uncertain terms, that the INS Vikramaditya (the former Russian Gorshkov), which is being refurbished and upgraded in a Russian shipyard, must be ready on time (March 2012) for sea trials. The Indians had cause for concern. That's because, last April the first 152 Indian naval personnel arrived in Russia to begin training on the Vikramaditya. The Indians were there to learn about all the ship's systems, so they can instruct the other 1,250 members of the crew. But at the same time, the Indian sailors could see exactly what progress the Russians were making on getting the Vikramaditya ready for service. Apparently some of these reports were not encouraging. This led to the high level reminders. The Russians responded by promising to do whatever needed to be done to have the carrier ready in time.

This project is already four years behind schedule and $1.5 billion over the original budget. This has become a major cause of ill-will between Russia and India. This was made worse by revelations that Russian officials were bribing their Indian counterparts to help make up excuses for the delays. This was made public ten months ago when, after a year of investigating the senior naval officer in charge of the aircraft carrier Gorshkov procurement project, it was determined that the officer (commodore, equivalent to U.S. rear admiral, Sukhjinder Singh) was guilty of something, and he was dismissed from the navy.

Naval Air: Russia Gets An Ultimatum

Armor: M-1 Evolution Beats Obsolescence

 

So far, over 9,000 American M-1 tanks have been produced, and most of them subsequently updated at least once. But the army, seeking to save a billion dollars, sought to close the plant that builds and modifies the M-1. The closure would be for three years, and when it was reopened, there would be a backlog of upgrades and parts orders to fill, to keep the plant open until, perhaps, an M-1 replacement comes along.

Politicians and the operators of the plant sought to keep the plant open in order to save jobs, votes and operating profits. Thus in a largely political decision, the plant appears to be getting the money (from the taxpayers) to stay open. How long the plant will remain in business is uncertain, as is the future of the M-1 tank.

Armor: M-1 Evolution Beats Obsolescence

Leadership: America Legalizes Cyber War

 

The U.S. Congress approved a new law on December 14th that allows the Department of Defense to conduct offensive Cyber War operations in response to Cyber War attacks on the United States. That is, the U.S. military is now authorized to make war via the Internet. The new law stipulates that all the rules that apply to conventional war, also apply to Cyber War. This includes the international law of armed conflict (meant to prevent war crimes and horrid behavior in general) and the U.S. War Powers Resolution (which requires a U.S. president to get permission from Congress within 90 days of entering into a war).

The U.S. Department of Defense has long advocated going on the offensive against criminal gangs and foreign governments that seek (and often succeed) to penetrate U.S. government and military Internet security, and steal information, or sabotage operations. Over the past year, and without much fanfare, the Department of Defense has been making preparations to do just that.

Since the military cannot afford to pay enough to recruit qualified software and Internet engineers for this sort of work, it has turned to commercial firms. There are already some out there, companies that are technically network security operations, but will also carry out offensive missions (often of questionable legality, but that has always been an aspect of the corporate security business.)

Some of these firms have quietly withdrawn from the Internet security business, gone dark, and apparently turned their efforts to the more lucrative task of creating Cyber War weapons for the Pentagon. It may have been one of these firms that created, or helped create, the Stuxnet worm.

Leadership: America Legalizes Cyber War

Missing Bush | The Weekly Standard

 

As Bad Rachel notes, "5,000 Syrians have been massacred by Bashar Assad since March, including 300 children. How are those sanctions workin’ out, Mr. Obama?"

Missing Bush | The Weekly Standard

Missing $4,155? It Went Into Your Gas Tank This Year - US Business News - CNBC

 

When the gifts from Grandma are unloaded and holiday travel is over, the typical American household will have spent $4,155 filling up this year, a record. That is 8.4 percent of what the median family takes in, the highest share since 1981.

Gas averaged more than $3.50 a gallon this year, another unfortunate record. And next year isn't likely to bring relief.

Missing $4,155? It Went Into Your Gas Tank This Year - US Business News - CNBC

The Washington Examiner warns conservatives that they should think twice about Newt

The Washington Examiner warns conservatives that they should think twice about Newt

"Here: let me just get this out of the way. Not a vote has yet been cast. So the race is not down to Romney and Gingrich (and maybe Huntsman, with a 10% chance of Uncle Ron letting loose a downpour of abject crazy) — unless, of course, we the GOP sheep allow our kingmakers to sell us on the “extremism” evident in our outlandish, “purist” desire for conservative / classical liberal representation."

For LTC Yingling, REP Rangel and others...

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, & parents from their children, & compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous & baleful aspect, to trample down & destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? --Daniel Webster

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Webster%27s_Speech_Against_Conscription

The fact that we have gotten away with being wrong before does not excuse deliberately being wrong in the future.

Winning: Deja Vu All Over Again

 

The main reason Afghan violence is down 15 percent this year is because of the damage to the Taliban. Some 80 percent of civilian combat/terror deaths are the result of Taliban action. The same with casualties to Afghan security forces and foreign troops is Taliban related. Thus if you want to reduce violence, you have to reduce Taliban capabilities. The Taliban are betting on the withdrawal of foreign troops after 2014 to rescue them from this death spiral. While foreign aid is supposed to continue paying for the 300,000 Afghan troops and police after 2014, the Taliban believe they can bribe or intimidate the security forces into inactivity and allow another Taliban takeover of the country.

Winning: Deja Vu All Over Again

Afghanistan: Will Kill For Cash

 

NATO has learned use cash to reduce violence. For example, hiring and arming villagers to simply keep bandits, terrorists and Taliban out of their area has proved successful in keeping the countryside peaceful. With weapons, organization and a little cash, Afghans are very capable of defending themselves. Without these items, a large armed group can dominate most rural areas. The exception is where there is a strong tribal militia organization. This is relatively rare as it depends on tribal leaders of exceptional skill. There are never enough of these leaders around, and many of them have gone on to form drug gangs. NATO plans to expand this village defense program from 10,000 armed men to 30,000. 

Afghanistan: Will Kill For Cash

Marines Flee To Sea

After nearly a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq the U.S. Marine Corps wants to get away from being a U.S. Army auxiliary and back to being an amphibious strike force. Talk in Congress about "what do we need two ground combat forces for?" adds to the urgency. The marines have always been sensitive about criticism that they are a second army, a second ground combat force that simply duplicates what the U.S. Army does. In terms of active duty forces the marines are about 40 percent the size of the army. Add in organized reserves and the marines are closer to 30 percent the size of the army.

The marines can perform the same jobs as the army but consider themselves mainly an amphibious force trained for assaults and other difficult special operations. These are things the army has also done but the marines invented modern amphibious operations during the 1930s and 40s and continue to specialize in it. The marines noted how the British Royal Marines went on to help develop the modern concept of commandos and went in that direction as well.

With all this in mind, in the last decade, the navy and marines have sought to reorganize into 12 ESGs (Expeditionary Strike Groups; i.e., a reinforced battalion of marines and their amphibious ships, including a smaller amphibious aircraft carrier). While not a new concept, the ESG was meant to add some new twists to an old idea. This has been difficult because of the need to send marines to Iraq and Afghanistan. September 11, 2001 came as a surprise to the marines as well and they had to adapt. The marines like to consider themselves good at adapting.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htamph/articles/20111211.aspx

NASA clears SpaceX for trial run to space station

A private company will make a trial cargo run to the International Space Station in February, a key step in a new U.S. program to buy spaceflight services on a commercial basis, NASA said on Friday.

California-based Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo capsule from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on February 7.

The mission would mark the second flights of the Falcon 9 and Dragon, which debuted in December 2010.

"SpaceX has made incredible progress over the last several months preparing Dragon for its mission to the space station," NASA associate administrator William Gerstenmaier said in a statement.

"We look forward to a successful mission, which will open up a new era in commercial cargo delivery for this international orbiting laboratory."

Since the retirement of the space shuttles this summer, the United States is relying on partner countries like Russia to transport supplies and crew to the space station.

To encourage commercial cargo runs, NASA has hired SpaceX and a second company, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to fly cargo to the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 countries, which orbits about 240 miles above Earth.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/09/us-space-business-idUSTRE7B825D20111209

Space: X-37 Evolves Into A Mini Space Shuttle

 

A U.S. Air Force X-37B UOV (unmanned orbital vehicle), launched last March [PHOTO], is still in orbit despite its official orbital endurance of only nine months. This is largely because it carried with it a large solar panel, which came out of the cargo pay, unfolded and produced enough power to keep the X-37B up there for much longer.  No one is saying how much longer. Nor is there any information about what the X-37B [PHOTO] has been doing up there all this time. The air force has revealed that it is designing an X-37C, which would be twice the size of the X-37B and able to carry up to six passengers. Think of it as Space Shuttle Lite, but robotic and run by the military, not NASA. This has the Chinese worried, and they are not being quiet about their fears.

A year ago, after seven months in orbit, the first X-37B flight (of 224 days) ended. Three months later, the second X-37B was launched. The X-37B also demonstrated that it could not be easily tracked while in orbit.

Ever mysterious, the X-37B proved elusive to amateur astronomers. Little is publicly known about what either X-37B was doing up there. The best guess is that it testing the endurance of new satellite components. That does not give amateur astronomers much to look at. The international collection of amateur sky watchers have proved remarkably adept at spotting orbital objects in the past, including classified ones like the X-37B. But not this time. The air force said this flight was simply to test the aircraft, but would not say what, if anything, was in the cargo bay for the first flight. It was revealed that the second one took up a folded solar panel. No details on what other items were tested. The amateur orbital observer community has concluded that one thing the X-37B tested was how well it could constantly switch positions, and stay hidden. In that respect, the X-37B was a resounding success. That's because these amateur observers are generally very good at tracking what's up there.

One notable incident occurred three years ago, when a U.S. spy satellite fell out of orbit (apparently because of a failure in its maneuvering system). The amateur astronomers were able to track it. If this had not been an American reconnaissance satellite, there would have been no media attention to this, because 4-5 satellites a month fall back to earth. Since most of the planet is ocean, or otherwise uninhabited (humans like to cluster together), the satellites tend to come down as a few fragments, and rarely is anyone, or anything manmade, hit.

Before the Internet became widely used a decade ago, you heard very little about all these injured or worn out space satellites raining down on the planet. But with the Internet, the many thousands of amateur astronomers could connect and compare notes. It was like assembling a huge jigsaw puzzle. Many sightings now formed a pattern, and a worldwide network of observers made visible the movements of hundreds of space satellites. These objects were always visible at night, sometimes to the naked eye, but unless you knew something about orbits and such, they could be difficult to keep track of. These days, a lot of the activity is posted and discussed at http://www.satobs.org/. But the X-37B has proved elusive, and became a frustrating challenge to the amateur sky watchers. This is pleasing to American air force officials, who designed the X-37B to be elusive to terrestrial observation.

The X-37B is a remotely controlled mini-Space Shuttle. The space vehicle, according to amateur astronomers (who like to watch spy satellites as well), appears to be going through some tests. The X-37B is believed to have a payload of about 227-300 kg (500-660 pounds). The payload bay is 2.1x1.4 meters (7x4 feet). As it returned to earth, it landed by itself (after being ordered to use a specific landing area.) The X-37B weighs five tons, is nine meters (29 feet) long and has a wingspan of 4 meters (14 feet). The Space Shuttle is 56 meters long, weighs 2,000 tons and has a payload of 24 tons.

The X-37B is a classified project, so not many additional details are available. It's been in development for eleven years, but work was slowed down for a while because of lack of money. What makes the X-37B so useful is that it is very maneuverable, contains some internal sensors (as well as communications gear), and can carry mini-satellites, or additional sensors, in the payload bay. Using a remotely controlled arm, the X-37B could refuel or repair other satellites. But X-37B is a classified project, with little confirmed information about its payload or mission (other than testing the system on its first mission). Future missions will involve intelligence work, and perhaps servicing existing spy satellites (which use up their fuel to change their orbits.) The X-37B is believed capable of serving as a platform for attacks on enemy satellites in wartime.

Next Article → POTENTIAL HOT SPOTS: It Could Get Very Nasty In Syria

Send Link to a Friend

Print Article

Make A Comment View Comments (1)

GROUND COMBAT +

Infantry
Armor
Artillery
Support
Paramilitary
Reserves

AIR COMBAT +

Warplanes
Air Weapons
Air Defense
Warplane Database

NAVAL OPERATIONS +

Surface Forces
Submarines
Naval Air
Marines

SPECIAL OPERATIONS +

Counter-Terrorism
Special Operations
Information Warfare
Peacekeeping

HUMAN FACTORS +

Morale
Leadership
Intelligence
Murphy's Law
Winning
Peace Time

SPECIAL WEAPONS +

Electronic Weapons
Space
NBC Weapons
Strategic Weapons

WARFARE BY THE NUMBERS +

Logistics
Attrition
Procurement

LOGISTICS +

Sea Transportation
Air Transportation

TOOLS +

Weapons
Forces

Books of Interest

How Carrots Won the Trojan War: Curious (but True) Stories of Common Vegetables

Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation Into War

Sniper Elite: The World of a Top Special Forces Marksman
From of Amazon

• 

• News
  • How To Make War
  • Wars Around The World
  • Austin Bay's On Point
  • StrategyTalk
  • Dirty Little Secrets

• Features
  • Al Nofi's CIC
  • Prediction Market
  • Wargames
  • Measure of Respect
  • On War and Warfare

• Videos

• Photos

• Jokes

• Community
  • Military Discussion Boards
  • Military Jokes
  • Military Photos
  • Military Book Reviews
  • Military Movie Reviews

• Wargame Store

• StrategyPage
  • Subscribe
  • Login
  • Feedback
  • About Us
  • Search
  • Account Manager
  • Advertise With Us

Search

StrategyWorld.com© 1998 - 2011StrategyWorld.com. All rights Reserved. StrategyWorld.com, StrategyPage.com, FYEO, For Your Eyes Only and Al Nofi's CIC are all trademarks of StrategyWorld.com Privacy Policy

<div style="display:none;"> <img src="//pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-52y14_ye9p_lM.gif" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt="Quantcast"/> </div>

Space: X-37 Evolves Into A Mini Space Shuttle

Information Warfare: DET And The Dark Side To The Rescue

 

For the last three years, U.S. Central Command (which controls American forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan) has used a Digital Engagement Team (DET) to monitor the Internet for misinformation about American military operations, or outright lies and slander. The DET personnel then post an official rebuttal. DET contains staff fluent in Arabic, Dari, Persian, Pashto, Urdu and Russian (still used by older folks who came of age when Russian foreign aid was abundant in the region).

Other branches of the U.S. government engage less openly, and use hackers to get into hostile sites, to find out who is running them, or to insert disruptive messages. Intelligence agencies often do this, and also use native speakers of Middle Eastern languages to covertly engage anti-American talk on message boards and chat rooms. But most of those doing this sort of thing are not U.S. government employees, but migrants from the Middle East, living in the United States and hostile to the lies being posted about their new home, and Moslems who have moved there.

Information Warfare: DET And The Dark Side To The Rescue

Support: German NTC Moves To Russia

 

Russia is joining Germany, China, Israel and many other major military powers by building an instrumented combat training range for its ground forces. Russia has hired the German firm (Rheinmetall) that built the German training range three years ago, to basically build a very similar one in Russia. 

This is all based on a breakthrough training system developed by the U.S. Army in 1982. This is the National Training Center (NTC), a 147,000 hectare (359,000 acre) facility in the Mohave desert at Ft Irwin, California. There, the United States Army revolutionized the training of ground combat troops in the 1980s with the development of MILES (laser tag) equipment for infantry and armored vehicles, and the use of MILES in a large, "wired" (to record all activities) combat training area. Other countries soon realized the importance of these innovations and a few built their own NTC clones. NTC type training centers are usually built to enable a combat brigade to go through several weeks of very realistic combat exercises.

Support: German NTC Moves To Russia

Duqu Goes Dark

On October 20, Duqu went dark, and no one is sure why. This computer worm has spread far and wide and is very similar to a more famous computer work. Stuxnet hit the news before its less well-known cousin.  Duqu appears to be preparing for an even broader attack on industrial targets. Duqu first showed up two years ago, but the October event saw all known Duqu servers (computers copies of Duqu sent information back to) mysteriously erasing all evidence of Duqu and, as far as anyone could tell, Duqu had shut down. But security experts believe that the Duqu operators were simply seeking to hide their activities from the Internet security experts who have been trying to track this new worm.

Stuxnet, a computer worm (a computer program that constantly tries to copy itself to other computers) showed up two years ago. It was designed as a weapons grade cyber weapon, and was designed to damage Iran's nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities. It succeeded.

But now Duqu, a Stuxnet variant, has been discovered, and it appears to have been created by the same group that designed Stuxnet, and released about the same time. Duqu, however, does not attack. Rather it was being used to probe industrial computer systems and send information about how these systems are built and operate, to someone. Duqu was revealed to the public earlier this year, and further searching revealed that Duqu was all over the place.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20111204.aspx

OU, OSU to honor 45th Infantry Brigade by wearing Thunderbird emblem on helmets for Bedlam

The University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University both will honor Oklahoma's 45th Infantry Brigade during Saturday's Bedlam football game in Stillwater.

Brigade commander Col. Joel Ward issued a statement Friday saying the troops were "honored and touched" by the gesture.

The Oklahoma National Guard announced Friday that players from both teams will wear the 45th's historic Thunderbird emblem on their helmets during the game. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. [RTO:  0530 in Afghanistan] Saturday at Boone Pickens Stadium.

About 3,000 soldiers with the Oklahoma Army National Guard's 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team currently are deployed to Afghanistan and Kuwait. They're expected to return home in March 2012.

Brigade commander Col. Joel Ward issued a statement Friday saying the troops were "honored and touched" by the gesture. He says the soldiers will be watching the game live in Afghanistan.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/778997b35aa7439cb4efa2d0fec8daf7/FBC--Bedlam-Thunderbird-Emblem/

Getting Our Veterans Back to Work

Actually, let's forget for a moment that this is all targeted to Veterans.  We can come back to that.

The Department of Labor recently reported that there were 3.2 million American jobs available and companies were looking for a few good men and women to fill them. Yet, despite unemployment hovering over 9 percent, and with nearly 1 million veterans out of work, many of these jobs have remained open because employers can't find qualified workers.

We have seen this trend increasing in recent months, especially in the manufacturing industry where it is estimated that more than 600,000 jobs are unfilled. According to the Wall Street Journal, this has had a severe impact on the energy, transportation, and labor industries and has created what the author called "a ripple effect" throughout the rest of the business world by straining the positions that are currently filled.

What is the biggest problem cited by employers in not being able to fill these positions?  The answer is, plain and simple, skills.  While college degrees are important and substantially increase chances for employment, the key is providing unemployed veterans in the middle of their working careers access to these unfilled jobs by learning specialized trades at vocational schools and community colleges. The power of American industry is still in high demand, therefore, we must apply our resources to help those where resources will provide the greatest return on the investment.

The problem is the emphasis placed on college today.  Not everyone is naturally equipped to handle college, or rather what college is supposed to be, what it once was before it was watered down to allow  higher volumes of the less equipped to get those all-important diplomas, oh and pay tuition.  Did I say "pay tuition"?  I meant, take out loans to pay tuitions that would be too high if they were for a quality product, ensuring that the borrowers become part of the new slave class to the lenders--all providing the opportunity for government to swoop in to save the day by guaranteeing tuitions and offering loans and financing of their own which allows the colleges to raise rates for declining quality.

The veterans issue is as simple to explain.  By continuing to heap special benefits on us, eventually the general public will not see us as dedicated servants, but just as one more special interest with out hands out--a role we are starting to embrace.  That a corps of highly trained combat veterans, who might cause trouble otherwise, is also made beholden to the glorious state, is just a bonus.

(emphases added)

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,239110,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

Afghanistan: Bad Habits Are Hard To Break

 

NATO has agreed to turn over all security responsibilities to Afghan forces by 2015. It's uncertain if the national security forces can maintain the peace throughout the country. That's because national governments in Afghanistan do not succeed at maintaining law and order throughout the country. The current government has also failed to disarm regional warlords, including drug gangs and the Taliban. Without Western air support, the local warlords will be better able to resist control from the national government. The worst case is a resumption of civil war, which has been common in Afghanistan for thousands of years. The drug gangs and Taliban urge their supporters (about ten percent of the population) to encourage media opposition and demonstrations against continued cooperation with foreigners (especially India and NATO). Foreigners are growing weary of persuading Afghans to get their act together. Too many Afghans prefer the old school way to fighting, stealing and, in general, acting against their own interests. Bad habits are hard to break.

Russia and Iran are increasingly angry at the lack of effort by Afghanistan to curb the flow of opium and heroin out of the country. Russia and Iran see themselves as major victims of this drug trade, and have millions of drug addicts each to prove it. Pakistan is also a victim of this, but is less vocal in its criticism. That's because Pakistan sees the Afghan drug gangs as a tool in helping Pakistan gain more control over Afghanistan. Moreover, many Pakistanis make a lot of money supplying the Afghan drug gangs with essential supplies (to refine the opium into heroin) and in transporting the heroin to the port of Karachi, where most Afghan heroin is shipped to foreign markets.

Afghanistan: Bad Habits Are Hard To Break

Oklahoma at War: Ada model for national military support

And yet we are slowly eroding the kind of support described.

Once there were armories in small towns all across the state. The National Guard was truly community based. Today, the Guard is being more and more centralized into monster super-facilities that they don't even call armories anymore--Armed Forces Reserve Centers. Once, you'd drill somewhere nearby. Now you might have to drive across the state each month.

And that's not just a problem for community support of the Guard. It's like an onion--multilayer-ed and it kind of stinks.

The flip side of wearing away community support; Guardsmen no longer know the people in the communities they support--that'll impact how Guard units respond to disasters and civil disturbances someday.

But it's also something of a shot across the bow of the very idea of the Constitutional militia--something we only bear a passing resemblance too any more anyway. That strong community tie is supposed to make the community jealous and protective of how *their* units are used.

So, Ada, OK, enjoy them while they are still yours. Fight for them and they'll fight for you.

Ada is a bustling town of about 17,000 in southeastern Oklahoma, boasting a state university and wealth of Native American culture.

Veterans can always anticipate gratitude when they return, said Clint Patton, a veteran of the 45th and longtime resident of Ada.

“People here in Ada really do support the Guard and the Reserves, constantly saying ‘Thank you for your service,’ and things like that,” Patton said. “So they do back up the military here in town.”

Oklahoma at War: Ada model for national military support

Korea: Why The North Fears An Invasion From The South

 

The North Korean government is increasing fearful of an invasion from the south. This is something that is not even mentioned publicly. But the northern leadership is aware of how their armed forces have deteriorated in the last two decades. The decline has accelerated in the last few years as the troops have lost their faith in North Korea. Part of this was hunger, for in the past the troops always had food. But most troops are conscripts, and they are coming from families who have known only increasing deprivation. The troops also noted that their senior officers live very well. The northern leadership is also aware that the South Korean armed forces have loyal, well-armed and trained troops. North Korean military experts point out that the southerners are strong enough, especially if their American allies help out, to invade the north. Of course, the south has no interest in doing this. The only talk of moving into North Korea is to restore order after a government collapse up there, or a civil war. But the northern leadership doesn't care what the reason the southerners use to invade, just that they are planning to move north, and that they could get away with it.

Korea: Why The North Fears An Invasion From The South

Logistics: Water From The Air

 

For the last decade, the U.S. Army has invested millions of dollars in research to develop a practical device that could extract water from the air. In the last five years several of these devices were developed, but none has yet proved suitable for wide use in a combat zone. The latest one can reliably produce 2,000 liters (500 gallons) a day from one 20 foot shipping container size device. The down side is that this system uses a liter of fuel for each five liters of water produced. In addition, even with sound-proofing, this system is very noisy. But this device means you don’t have to run as many truck convoys (carrying water) through hostile territory.

An older system uses salts, and can produce water for less than 30 cents a liter. This system also can fit into a standard twenty foot long shipping container and turns out 600 gallons a day. But the developer has run into a number of technical problems that kept the system from wide use by the military. Most of these devices need at least 20 percent humidity to function, and all but the most arid deserts can supply that.

Logistics: Water From The Air