War Is Boring

Insurgents in Mogadishu get serious, shoot down Ethiopian Hind attack chopper.

Despite cuts to some of the unmanned components of the Army’s ambitious Future Combat Systems in the 2008 budget, the service is driving on with development of the systems and procedures for controlling aerial drones from manned helicopters. The idea, says Colonel Charles Bush, FCS chief for the Army’s force development division, is to eventually [...]

“The Japanese Cabinet approved a two-year extension of Japan’s air force mission in Iraq after it expires in July, the foreign minister announced Friday,” the Associated Press reports: Tokyo has been airlifting U.N. and coalition personnel and supplies into Baghdad and other Iraqi cities from nearby Kuwait since earlier last year as part of efforts [...]

As far as China is concerned, the democratic island nation of Taiwan, which acheived independence from the communist Chinese mainland in the wake of a post-World War civil war — is no more than a rebellious province. The eventual retaking of Taiwan has long been the engine driving Chinese military modernization. But until recently, the mainland lagged behind Taiwan in [...]

This just in from the Associated Press: Shiite militants and police enraged by massive truck bombings in the northwestern town of Tal Afar went on a revenge spree against Sunni residents there Wednesday, killing as many as 60 people, officials said. The gunmen began roaming Sunni neighborhoods in the city, shooting at residents and homes, [...]

Iran: captives stew; carriers threaten Iraq: Congress votes for pullout; Baathists back in Kurdistan: new refineries!; happy new year Somalia: Burundian peacekeepers happy; Ugandans not Afghanistan: Italians stick around Lebanon: Iraqi bad guys in Leb refugee camps Sudan: EU sanctions; China invests Timor: Aussies accused … and again Taiwan: new fighter debuts North Korea: slowly [...]

Ongoing “surge” operations in Baghdad are doubling as training opportunities for Iraqi soldiers, airmen and government officials. U.S. strategy entails turning over responsibility for security in Iraq to native entities as soon as they’re ready; the demands of the surge have forced Iraqis to be readier, sooner. Iraqi army battalions “disintegrated last year when we [...]

Rebels in Sri Lanka used light airplanes (pictured) to drop bombs on a government airfield, killing three people, Reuters reports: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said more such attacks by its air wing would follow, threatening to deepen renewed conflict in the island state off the toe of India. Airline and government officials [...]

We in the aviation press thought we’d been scooped in early February when Flight International magazine published a report on a new duct-fan medical evacuation drone being developed by a world-beating alliance of Elbit, Israeli Aerospace Industries, Urban Aeronautics and … Aerospace Medicine Research Center? That last one was a total mystery, but the first three [...]

Insurgents in Baghdad strike back against the surge.

Three years ago eight British sailors and Marines were seized while delivering boats to Iraqi forces on the Shatt Al Arab waterway in southern Iraq. Last week it happened again: 15 Brits were grabbed by Iranian gunboat crews after completing a boarding operation. I resisted posting about this before because, quite honestly, I figured the [...]

Gunfights in Basra in the wake of the British withdrawal from their downtown base: militia rivalry blamed. U.S. Hornet fighters swoop in to scare off the fighters.