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The US army has built a fake city designed to be used during combat training exercises. The 300 acre 'town' includes a five story embassy, a bank, a school, an underground subway and train station, a mosque, a football stadium, and a helicopter landing zone. Located in Virginia, the realistic subway station comes complete with subway carriages and the train station has real train carriages. The subway carriages even carry the same logo as the carriages in Washington DC

The US army has built a fake city designed to be used during combat training exercises. The 300 acre 'town' includes a five story embassy, a bank, a school, an underground subway and train station, a mosque, a football stadium, and a helicopter landing zone. Located in Virginia, the realistic subway station comes complete with subway carriages and the train station has real train carriages. The subway carriages even carry the same logo as the carriages in Washington DC. There are also bridges and several other structures which can be transformed into different scenarios. The $96 million is designed to...

It was Darby Day in Fort Smith, Ark., one Friday this snowy month, and the students at Darby Junior High held their annual observance in honor of the school's namesake. Just who was Bill Darby of Fort Smith, Ark.? He was a brigadier general, a West Pointer, and a legend. He wasn't just a U.S. Army Ranger, he was the Rangers' first commander and founder. He began not just a special force but a special tradition. The Brits had their commandos, and now we had our Rangers. They had their Orde Wingate and his Chindits, we had our Bill...

As Capt. Tom Davis stands at the tailgate of the military cargo plane, the night air sweeps through the hold. His eyes search the black terrain 1,200 feet below. He grips the canvas of his reserve parachute and takes a deep breath. Davis and the men who make up his Special Forces A-team are among the most highly trained soldiers in the U.S. Army. It's 1972, and Davis isn't far removed from a tour in Vietnam, where he operated along the Cambodian border. His communications sergeant served in Command and Control North, which was responsible for some of the most...

More than 1,200 people are under investigation for a US military recruitment fraud during the Iraq war, officials say. Two generals and dozens of colonels are implicated in the alleged scheme, in which referral fees were illegally collected for recruiting soldiers.

WASHINGTON — The Army is conducting an investigation into large-scale fraud tied to an Army recruitment program, Sen. Claire McCaskill, the head of the Senate Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight, disclosed Monday, a day before she held a hearing on the scandal. Investigators have found that $29 million in taxpayer money has been lost to fraud, but that number could increase to nearly $100 million by the time the probe is over, Maj. Gen. David Quantock, the Commanding General of U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, told lawmakers at the hearing Tuesday. The Recruiting Assistance Program began in 2005 at...

Lt. Tyler Tessman awoke in the desert one day this week with two problems. He had to rethink a tough training mission that stacked the odds against his Joint Base Lewis-McChord Stryker platoon. And he had to consider the possibility that his team might be grounded before he could even start on the battle plan. Three of the four Strykers vehicles in his platoon were immobilized — one from too many busted tires, one from a broken axle and one from an assortment of safety issues that made it undrivable.

The US Army is considering replacing thousands of soldiers with robots as it deals with sweeping troop cuts. A senior American officer has said he is considering shrinking the size of the Army’s brigade combat teams by a quarter and replacing the lost troops with robots and remote-controlled vehicles. The American military is still far from fielding armies of Terminator-type robotic killers, though. Ideas under discussion instead include proposals to see manned trucks and transporters replaced by supply trains of robot vehicles. Generals are studying proposals as the US Army is to slim down from 540,000 to about 490,000 soldiers...

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A member of an elite Army helicopter unit was killed and two crew members suffered injuries when their aircraft slammed into the ground as they tried to land at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, a military spokesman said Thursday. The MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was returning from a routine training flight when it made a "hard landing" just before 11:30 p.m. Wednesday on or near the airstrip at the base in coastal Georgia, said Army Maj. Allen Hill, a spokesman for the crew's aviation unit. The three-man crew was assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation...

The MXT135 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System has a range of roughly 7,800 feet - and is to be deployed in Afghanistan soon. I would call it the "Equalizer." Some call it the "Punisher".

Sometimes heroes are not recognized when they should be. The case of COL (RET) Kathy Platoni, and her fellow survivors and victims of the Ft. Hood Terrorist Attack of November, 2009, is a sad example of this. The prevalence of political correctness is not helping in this situation. COL Platoni believes she is far from alone and that there are many heroes of this horrific terrorist attack who remain forgotten. Dr. Platoni, a now retired Army Reserve psychologist who has had her own private practice for 20 years and has been a practicing psychologist for 34 years, has had a...

SAN ANTONIO – When Chance Darby received the helmet that saved his life in Afghanistan, he said it successfully stopped an enemy rifle bullet but left him with two big headaches. One headache lasted a few days after the impact from a high-velocity round. The other lasted several weeks as he tried to keep the news of the incident from his mother, Lynlee Darby, and his then-fiancée and now wife, Cheryl. Chance proposed to Cheryl shortly before deploying to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division. On May 31, 2012, Taliban ambushed his platoon while it was dismantling an improvised explosive...

Don’t say Christmas. That’s the message that was conveyed to a group of soldiers at Camp Shelby by an equal opportunity officer from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, according to a soldier who attended a recent briefing. “It’s unbelievable that the Army would ban ‘Christmas’ like it’s a bad word,” said Michael Berry, an attorney with the Liberty Institute, a legal firm representing the unidentified soldier. Two weeks ago, a routine meeting was held at the Mississippi base with various leaders of the 158th Infantry Brigade. During the meeting, they discussed an upcoming Christmas football tournament. The equal opportunity...

There was an article by Rowan Scarborough this week in the Washington Times which claimed that the US Army War College in Pennsylvania was considering removing portraits and statues of Confederate Army leaders such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The purported reason for the possible “purge” was depicted as being some sort of statement against the CSA. Nestled in rural Pennsylvania on the 500-acre Carlisle Barracks, the war college is conducting an inventory of all its paintings and photographs with an eye for rehanging them in historical themes to tell a particular Army story.During the inventory, an unidentified...

On Sunday night, the Philadelphia Eagles will honor one of their own, a former cheerleader who has served two tours in Afghanistan as an Army intelligence officer. Rachel Washburn, age 25, hasn't had a typical career path, to put it mildly. She joined the Eagles' cheerleading squad from 2007 to 2009 while a student at Drexel University. After graduation, she joined the Army and participated in paratrooper training while ultimately following a path into military intelligence.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of six soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Dec. 17, in Now Bahar, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered as a result of a helicopter crash. The incident is pending investigation.

The U.S. Army is sending roughly 19,000 active-duty captains and majors to a screening board for early separation this spring, the Army Times reported. Up to 20 percent of those screened — approximately 3,800 officers — could be scheduled to leave the service by the Officer Separation Board and Enhanced Selective Early Retirement Board. Officers with fewer than 18 years of federal active service will have their screening process done by OSB, and those with more than 18 years of service will see the E-SERB, according to the Army Times. “The Army’s drawdown plan is a balanced approach while maintaining

Revisionist history would remove portraits of Confederate legendsThe U.S. Army War College, which molds future field generals, has begun discussing whether it should remove the portraits of Confederate generals, including Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. The college, nestled in rural Pennsylvania on the 500-acre Carlisle Barracks, is doing an inventory of all its paintings and photographs with an eye toward rehanging them in historical themes to tell a particular Army stories. During the inventory, an unnamed official — not the commandant, Maj. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo III — asked the administration why the college is honoring two generals...

The U.S. Army general in charge of training recently wrote about the service's examination of gender neutral standards to open the infantry and other combat-arms jobs to female soldiers. The piece by Gen. Robert Cone, commander of Training and Doctrine Command, appears in the November issue of Army Magazine, the same month three female Marines made history by graduating from Marine infantry training. Last January, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered all services to open combat-arms roles to women that so far have been reserved for men.

Fort Hood officials plan to demolish the medical building where an Army psychiatrist killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others during a shooting rampage in 2009. Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug said Wednesday that Building 42003 will be razed, while other parts of the Soldier Readiness Processing Center complex are set to be moved.