Free Republic

The Army hit a milestone in its continuing efforts to provide a capability to counter the indirect fire threat with the 100th successful intercept of a rocket or mortar round fired at high value Multi-National Corps-Iraq assets in late March. Achieving its first intercept in March 2006 by disabling an inbound mortar round and precluding damage on the ground, the Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar capability has also provided over 1,500 localized warnings of incoming attacks allowing troops time to take protective cover - all since it initial operational capability was declared in July 2005, according to C-RAM Program director,...

Nowhere in the Inland area is the crunch to house the poor more evident than in the Coachella Valley, where 15,000 migrant workers are expected to arrive in the next few weeks for the grape and citrus harvest. Most will spend each night outside or crammed in a car or shed, said Nadia Villagran, special projects manager for the Indio-based Coachella Valley Housing Coalition. "They're working hard during the day and have to sleep at night in cardboard boxes, in a tree or in a car," she said. "It's shocking to see." Migrant-housing programs in the desert are confronting the...

The U.S. Army is looking at a Raytheon-made ship-defense system to shoot down mortar rounds that are fired at U.S. troops in Iraq. The Army is studying Raytheon's Phalanx Close-In Weapon System - a radar-guided, ship-mounted version of a multibarreled Gatling gun - among several technologies to counter mortar and small-rocket threats, the company and the Army said. The program is called C-RAM, short for "counter rocket artillery mortar" system. The Phalanx is made by Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems in Louisville, Ky. The Army has received two of the latest Phalanx 1B systems for evaluation under a Navy contract signed...