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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...

Life from the battlefield: Eyewitness accounts By Jason Chudy, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Sunday, September 12, 2004 What follows are accounts of the battle in the soldiers’ own words:Staff Sgt. Jeff Young, 25, from Killeen, Texas A sniper with 2-7 Cav.’s scout platoon, Young was one of dozens of snipers from all services and even other coalition partners.“The ones we were getting shots on and killing were really obvious.“Ninety percent of the job is observation and reporting, and 10 percent is the actual trigger-pulling. I thought it would be the other way around.“We actually got pinned down a couple times...

United Defense Defeats RPGs with Close-In Counter Measure Active Protection System On Sept. 8, United Defense Industries announced that its Close-In Counter Measure (CICM) active protection system successfully intercepted and destroyed incoming Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) during end-to-end testing at the U.S. Army’s Redstone Technical Test Center at Redstone Arsenal, Ala. In successful end-to-end tests, the United Defense CICM system detected launched RPGs, tracked incoming rockets, launched its countermeasures and defeated RPGs before they reached the protected system. "This successful counter-RPG mission was accomplished in less than nine months through targeted research and development efforts and rapid prototyping capabilities by...

New Russian weapons are showing up in Iraq, apparently smuggled across the Syrian border. One of the more dangerous has been the RPG-29. This is a larger version of the widely used RPG-7. With a ten pound launcher firing a 14.7 pound 105mm rocket, the RPG-29 warhead is designed to get past some forms of reactive armor (ERA). The larger weapon (3.3 feet long when carried out, six feet long when ready to fire and 65 percent heavier than the 85mm RPG-7) is more difficult to carry around and fire, but some have been captured, and the damage on some...

CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq — When Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Summers arrived last fall, the Army knew he’d be able save lives. The 7th Transportation Battalion asked the ship hull technician to attach makeshift steel plates to trucks and Humvees. Poorly protected vehicles had been coming under fire every time they left this central logisitics hub for points all over Iraq. Many of the vehicles did not have the extra protection of “armor-up” kits. And the Army didn’t have enough to go around. “I’m a welder by trade,” said Summers, a 33-year-old Naval reservist from Frisco, Calif. “When I got...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Former Notre Dame basketball player Danielle Green lost her left hand during an attack in Iraq (news - web sites) while serving in the Army. Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said she got a call from a friend of Green's on Wednesday saying Green had been injured. "It was just a shock to hear she had been injured because she had said that her job was going to keep her on the sidelines," McGraw said. The athletic department at Chicago State, where Green was an assistant women's coach in 2002, said Thursday she lost her hand...

May 2, 2004: The American Stryker Combat Vehicle is seeing its first war in Iraq. As the Army’s newest armored combat vehicle, the Stryker has endured its share of criticism, some of which is not without substance. The Stryker has some major advantages over its predecessors, the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier and the M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, such as speed and its ability to fire its heavy weapons from controls inside of the vehicle. However, its biggest weakness, ironically, is a new version of the four decade old Russian RPG-7 anti-tank weapon. The Stryker was designed to be a well-protected...

FALLUJAH, Iraq - A U.S. military helicopter was hit by ground fire Tuesday and forced to land, and three crew members were wounded. One Marine in a rescue squad was killed by insurgents who attacked with mortars, small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, the military said. Insurgents said they downed the craft with a rocket-propelled grenade. Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, the Marine commander in the area, said the H-53 Sikorsky helicopter went down before dawn. "This morning a helicopter made an emergency landing due to ground fire. The attack resulted in three wounded and a quick reaction force secured the crew...

How Rocket-Propelled Grenades Work by Shane Speck 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 training at Abu Hydra Range during Operation Desert Shield. 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...

Abizaid, Swannack Escape Injury in Fallujah Attack By Donna MilesAmerican Forces Press ServiceWASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2004 -- The top military commander in Southwest Asia and the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division escaped injury today when their convoy was attacked while entering an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps battalion headquarters in Fallujah, Iraq. Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., 82nd Airborne Division commander, and all other members of their group were reported safe following the incident, which took place at about 1:30 p.m. local time (5:30 a.m. EST). Army Brig. Gen....