Free Republic

This month, Russia lost two jet fighters during military exercises that simulated a major war with NATO. A naval task force was deployed in the North Atlantic on a mission to intercept and destroy U.S. reinforcements heading to the European theater of war. During exercises on Sept. 5, a Su-33 jet fighter fell off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov during landing and sank. The pilot ejected and was rescued. Then on Thursday, seven Air Force jet fighters were sent from the St. Petersburg area to fly over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea to Kaliningrad....

<p>FORWARD OPERATING BASE ST. MERE EGLISE, Iraq — For two nights in a row, the enemy — whoever that might be — varied his pattern and mortared and rocketed U.S. Army bases here in the Sunni Triangle west of Baghdad shortly after the sun went down, about 6:30 p.m. The enemy’s habit had been to wait until 8 p.m. or so. But despite the change in pattern, on both nights, artillery rounds from two of the six tubes of M119A2 105mm howitzers based here answered, in both cases, getting rounds off in less than five minutes.</p>

BALAD, Iraq - Stryker brigade soldiers are certain that sooner or later, they're going to catch the crew that's been lobbing mortars at their base camp. Troops from Fort Lewis' 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment say they'll corner the bad guys trying to flee after an attack, or scoop them up in a raid on their homes. Or bad guys will linger too long at their shoot site and the brigade's artillery will get them. "But what do they do in the interim?" said the battalion's operations officer, Maj. Larry Perino. Mortars have been a consistent threat to U.S. troops...