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Insurgencies are not put down in a fortnight. But considering the successes in the recent counter-insurgency sweep in Iraq's Al Anbar Province, one fact becomes obvious to anyone with so much as a sliver of an understanding of ground combat operations: Eliminating the insurgency in Iraq is best left to those who best know how to do it.

Berman was supposed to be part of the Blackwater team that was in Fallujah on that ill-fated day. But a last minute schedule change placed him in the south of Iraq at Camp Bucca, near Umm Qasr. On the highway to Baghdad the following day, Berman received the phone call: A Blackwater detail had been hit. Four men were dead.

VICTORIA, Seychelles (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy responded Nov. 7 to a request to dispose of suspected unexploded ordnance left over from a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) that struck the cruise liner Seabourn Spirit during a Nov. 5 attack by pirates near the coast of Somalia. Members of U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit (EODMU) 8, Detachment 4, were already in Seychelles to provide support to a previously scheduled port visit by USS Gonzalez. The EOD team met Seabourn Spirit at sea prior to its arrival in port. Two RPG rounds had struck Seabourn Spirit while the vessel evaded...

A cruise liner that was attacked by pirates over the weekend docked safely on this Indian Ocean archipelago Monday after changing its course to escape. Passengers described their horror as pirates in speedboats chased their luxury cruise liner at sea, firing rocket- propelled grenades and assault rifles _ with smiles visible on faces otherwise hidden by ski masks. [snip] The Seabourn Spirit had been bound for Mombasa, Kenya, when it was attacked by pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns on Saturday about 100 miles off Somalia's lawless coast. The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing...

MIAMI (AP) - Pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade and machine guns Saturday in an attack on a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast, the vessel's owners said. Two armed boats approached the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the coast of Somalia and fired as the boats' occupants attempted to get onboard, said Bruce Good, a spokesman for Miami-based Seabourn Cruises, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp. The crew initiated a trained response and avoided being boarded, Good said. The ship outran them and changed its course. "Our suspicion at this time is that the motive was theft," Good...

No matter where Marines are serving, from the Pentagon and Marine Barracks in Washington, to the loneliest outposts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Marines will stop, shake hands, say happy birthday, sing the Marines' Hymn and, if it is available, have a piece of cake. It doesn't matter to us if its an elaborate cake from some big hotel, a smaller cake from the great cooks aboard ship, or a cookie from an MRE, we're going to celebrate!

Seem's that a maintenance worker found a live Grenade somwhere here in Nevada (Reno I think) and loaded it onto his cart and called it in to police. The bomb squad determined that the round was live. I can't find the story anywhere on the internet. It was broadcasted on a local AM news station while I was scanning. Anybody have any info?

The U.S. military confirmed Thursday that all 16 servicemembers aboard a special forces helicopter died when it crashed into a mountain ravine earlier this week, apparently after being shot down. The remains of those killed were being recovered at the site in eastern Afghanistan where the MH-47 chopper went down Tuesday. The helicopter crashed while ferrying reinforcements to a battle against the insurgents, the military said in a statement. The military reported earlier that 17 people were on board but revised that figure to 16 later Thursday. "At this point, we have recovered all 16 bodies of those service men...

The U.S. military said Wednesday that hostile fire likely brought down a Chinook helicopter that crashed in eastern Afghanistan, and officials said the status of the 17 American servicemembers aboard was "unknown." The Chinook helicopter was carrying members of a special operations unit into an operation against al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the rugged mountains near the border with Pakistan when a second helicopter reported seeing an explosion, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin. It will take an investigation to determine whether or not this helicopter was, in fact, shot down, Martin added. If it was, this...

KABUL, Afghanistan — A U.S. Chinook helicopter (search) that crashed in eastern Afghanistan was likely shot down by hostile fire, and the fate of 17 American service members aboard was unclear, the U.S. military said Wednesday. The troops were on a mission against Al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan (search) when the helicopter went down on Tuesday in mountainous terrain near Asadabad, in Kunar province.

US pilots killed in Iraq helicopter crash Monday 27 June 2005, 17:07 Makka Time, 14:07 GMT US helicopters have been the target of RPG attacks Two American pilots have been killed in a helicopter crash north of Baghdad. The US Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter crashed in a field and burst into flames at about 11.45am on Monday in al-Mashahda, 30km north of the capital. Iraqi journalist Ziyad al-Samarai told Aljazeera that the aircraft was hit by a rocket in the farm-rich area. The journalist said a meeting of officials was being held in al-Mashahda police station at the time...

A Hamas member was killed in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as he tried to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at nearby Israeli targets, the Israeli Army said. Palestinian hospital officials said the man was critically injured by shrapnel and later died of his wounds at a hospital in the Gaza town of Khan Younis. The man was at the Khan Younis cemetery, near the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim, when he hurt himself. In a separate incident, in Gaza City, two Palestinians were hurt in a mysterious explosion. Palestinian police said they were investigating.

HAQLANIYAH, Iraq - (KRT) - After an hour of shooting, rocket-propelled grenades were still crisscrossing in front of Sgt. Aaron Hanselman, and he was looking at the horizon for backup as bullets snapped through the air around his men. "It was whizzing by. Our gunner swears that a couple hit the Humvee," said Hanselman, 28, a mobile assault team leader and Marine reservist from Marysville, Ohio. Their vehicle had started the firefight with 1,200 rounds of ammunition, he said, but the five men inside had whittled the supply down to 75 bullets. The four Humvees in Hanselman's unit - named...

Hi, I'm 16 and a high school student. My friend and I started a website that tries to simulate a country. We have a working economy and a political system. Any real-life job can be held as long as you set up guidelines as to how it's run. For example, if you wanted to get into the construction industry, you would need to determine how much wood would be needed per square foot and so on. We're trying to make it as realistic as possible. So far, our efforts have caught the attention of some of the teachers at my...

Link to FR thread with the related news report: freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1363252/posts United States Attorney David Kelley announced today that charges were filed against 18 individuals for various weapons trafficking offenses, including a scheme to smuggle rocket-propelled grenade launchers, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and other Russian military weapons into the U.S. for sale. Kelley said the first arrests were made in New York Monday night, and were quickly followed with arrests in Miami and Los Angeles, among other places. The smuggling ring included Armenians, South Africans and people from the former Soviet state of Georgia. The defendants brought AK-47s and an Uzi into...

In early 2003, the U.S. bought nine 62 ton D9 armored Caterpillar bulldozers into Kuwait for the Iraq campaign. The D9s, and their Israeli made armor kit, were purchased because of the Israeli success with the dozen in urban warfare against Palestinian terrorists. America had used the D9 during the 1960s in Vietnam, but after that only used the smaller (35 ton, with armor kit) D7. The D9 was not needed for urban fighting in Iraq during 2003, but was found very useful (much more so than the smaller D7) for combat engineering tasks. The D9 quickly cleared highways of...

With all the talk about not enough armor for the HUMVEE's and the lethality of the IED's against our vehicles, I think that maybe the DoD should examine what we currently use against what would be the best equipment for us to have. It is very easy for myself, or any of us to play armchair general and debate the merits of the vehicles used by our armed forces. The HUMVEE has become a household word for most Americans, and more and more people are learning about the Stryker, M1-A2, and Bradley Fighting Vehicle due to the coverage from Iraq....

December 15, 2004 - The battle over armor. After the televised bitch slap of Don Rumsfeld last week over the lack of armor for Humvees, I have been thinking about what that soldier said. Lets face it, the Army, like all government agencies is a bureaucracy. This is not to say the everyone at the DoD isn't taking their job seriously, but change is not made on the fly, and the Army thoroughly studies, tests, re-tests and summarized before doing anything. We cannot expect new armor that will protect against the variety of roadside bombs to be finalized in a...

Rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) are the typical weapons of choice when insurgents decide to attack trucks and armored vehicles. RPGs are cheap, simple to operate, and if used properly can inflict significant damage on Stryker and Bradley armored vehicles. Unarmed and armored Hummers are especially vulnerable, since the various armor kits for the Hummer are designed to protect occupants from small arms and machine gun fire, not anti-tank grenades. One quick fix to protect the Hummer is a unique airbag system developed by a small California company that deploys a "curtain" down outside the side of the vehicle being attacked....

You may have heard the term rocket-propelled grenade, and you've probably seen news images of their use and the destruction they can cause, particularly if you've kept up with current world events in the Middle East. Rocket-propelled grenades are a commonly used explosive projectile weapon, used by many armies across the world. They play a major part in contemporary warfare, and are also highly used among insurgent and terrorist groups. Photo courtesy Department of Defense Defense Visual Information CenterA British Soldier from the Queen`s Dragoon Guards prepares to fire an M-72 light anti-tank weapon (LAW) while taking part in weapons...