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The US Army has executed its grand rotary-wing aviation restructuring plan that saw the ousting of hundreds of Bell JetRanger derivatives from service—653 airframes in total. These included the Army's entire fleet of 187 TH-67 Creek primary trainers and the roughly 340 OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed reconnaissance/armed scout helicopters that performed so brilliantly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, just months after the final Kiowa Warriors were officially retired, the US Army is whining about how badly they need...an armed scout helicopter. Under the same aviation plan, the OH-58D was partially "replaced" by far more complex and expensive AH-64E Apache Guardian...

Remember when the Boston Globe prematurely declared this political scandal over last May? Good times.  Four outraged Cherokee activists who say Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has ignored their emails and phone calls will trek to Boston this week in hopes they can force a meeting with the Democratic Senate candidate over her “offensive” Native American heritage claims.“It’s almost becoming extremely offensive to us,” said Twila Barnes, a Cherokee genealogist who has researched Warren’s family tree. “We’re trying to get in contact and explain why her behavior hurts us and is offensive, and she totally ignores that. Like we don’t exist.” Late...

CUTAWAY: Ultimate Survivor - OH-58 enters fifth decade stronger than ever By Stephen Trimble Scout helicopters have a torturous legacy in the US Army acquisition system. Three attempts to buy a light observation helicopter - the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse in 1967, the Sikorsky/Boeing RAH-66 Comanche in 2004 and finally the Bell Helicopter ARH-70 Arapaho in 2008 - have failed, with billions of dollars wasted in the process. The Bell OH-58 Kiowa is the only aircraft to survive the gauntlet. In the 37-year interval between the cancellations of the Cayuse and Comanche, the army fielded four major versions of the basic...

Mike Morgan grew up in Virginia Beach, a self-described "average, undersized kid." He played soccer, got decent grades and didn't know what he wanted to do after he graduated from Kempsville High School. He certainly never expected to receive one of the military's most prestigious medals for valor in combat. Defense Secretary Robert Gates clipped the Silver Star onto the 43-year-old Army helicopter pilot's desert camouflage uniform in Afghanistan in March. The lieutenant colonel, commander of the 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment, earned the military's third-highest decoration for his actions in August when he and his team came to the...

An Army helicopter on a training exercise crashed this afternoon at Wheeler Army Airfield at Schofield Barracks, and there are initial reports of multiple injuries. Honolulu Fire Department Capt. Earle Kealoha said firefighters responded to a call of a downed aircraft at 3:34 p.m. But when they arrived four minutes later, federal fire crews already had the fire under control. The airfield houses helicopters assigned to both 25th Infantry Division and the Hawaii Army National Guard. The Federal Aviation Administration said initial reports indicate that the crash involved a military helicopter. An Army spokesman confirmed that the aircraft was a...

Mosul, Iraq Men crept in darkness to plant a bomb. They moved in an area where last year I was helping to collect fallen American soldiers from the battlefield. Terrorists. The ones who murder children in front of their parents. The ones who take drugs and rape women and boys. The ones who blow up schools. The ones who have been forcibly evicted from places like Anbar Province, Baghdad and Baqubah by American and Iraqi forces. Terrorists are here now in Mosul. They call themselves al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). AQI cannot win without Baghdad, and cannot survive without Mosul....

By Associated Press Monday, May 7, 2007 Greensburg, Kan.— Paramedic Annette Gasten and her German shepherd, Greta, had a grim weekend searching amid the piles of wreckage left by one of the strongest tornadoes to rake across the Plains. Every business on Greensburg’s main street was demolished and officials estimate as much as 95 percent of the town was destroyed. Tree trunks stood bare, stripped of most of their branches. All the churches were destroyed. At least eight people in this community of 1,500 were dead, putting the state’s total death toll at 10. No one was found Sunday in...

WASHINGTON -- Retired 1st Sgt. Mark Matthews, 111, one of the last of the nation's legendary Buffalo Soldiers, died of pneumonia Sept. 6 at Fox Chase Nursing Home in Washington. ---snip--- Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where he was first stationed, was still using local Indians as guides.

ST. PAUL - The son of a Minnesota state senator was killed in Iraq when his helicopter was shot down, officials said. It was the second tour in Iraq for Chief Warrant Officer Matt Lourey, 41, who flew helicopters with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division — though his mother, Sen. Becky Lourey, and other relatives opposed the war and had tried to talk him out of it. "He didn't want to die, but nonetheless he signed up for military service and he understood what that meant," said his brother, Tony Lourey.(snip) Chief Warrant Officer Matt Lourey, 41 (snip) When he...

Can someone confirm

TAJI, Iraq - An Army helicopter gunship pilot is being recommended for a bravery medal for the rescue of a pair of wounded American fliers whose helicopter crashed in hostile territory south of Baghdad this month. Capt. Ryan Welch, 29, who co-pilots an AH-64 Apache helicopter with the 1st Cavalry Division's 4th Brigade, led a risky night mission that saw him strap himself and a wounded flier to the exterior of the two-seat gunship that flew them to safety, said 4th Brigade commander Col. Jim McConville. Two Army pilots were killed in the Oct. 16 crash, which happened when two...

Saturday, February 28, 2004 Unit honors pilots killed in Kiowa crash By Scott Schonauer, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Saturday, February 28, 2004 Scott Schonauer / S&S U.S. soldiers pay their respects to helicopter pilots Chief Warrant Officer 2 Matthew Laskowski and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Stephen Wells during a memorial ceremony at Al-Asad Air Base, Iraq on Friday. AL-ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq — Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Matthew Laskowski carried a framed picture of his daughters, Isabel and Aniela, everywhere he slept in Iraq. The frame is the kind that plays a short, recorded audio message with the push...

Just breaking on MSNBC...

Posted on Sat, Feb. 07, 2004 U.S. Copter Crew Kills Iraqi Insurgent Associated Press TIKRIT, Iraq - A U.S. Army helicopter crew killd one insurgent and wounded another during a rocket attack against an Army base north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Saturday. The two pilots of the OH-58D "Kiowa Warrior" helicopter from the 4th Infantry division's, 10th Cavalry Regiment saw smoke trails from two rockets leading toward Logistical Support Area Anaconda near Balad, 65 miles north of Baghdad on Friday. The crew saw an insurgent who tried to evade the helicopter as it approached. The pilots fired on...

TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) - A U.S. Army helicopter crew killed one insurgent and wounded another during a rocket attack against an Army base north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Saturday. The two pilots of the OH-58D "Kiowa Warrior" helicopter from the 4th Infantry division's, 10th Cavalry Regiment saw smoke trails from two rockets leading toward Logistical Support Area Anaconda near Balad, 65 miles north of Baghdad on Friday. The crew saw an insurgent who tried to evade the helicopter as it approached. The pilots fired on the attacker, killing him, the military said in a statement. A patrol sent...

Just breaking...Two pilots dead.

BAGHDAD - American soldiers on Friday detained three Iraqis working for Reuters as they covered the aftermath of a U.S. helicopter crash near the volatile town of Falluja. A Reuters driver who was working with the three said they had earlier been fired on by U.S. troops as they filmed a checkpoint close to the site where a Kiowa observation helicopter was shot down by guerrillas. One pilot was killed and another injured in the crash. "We were fired on and we drove away at high speed," driver Alaa Noury said. He said Reuters cameraman Salem Uraiby had been filming...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents shot down a U.S. military helicopter west of Baghdad on Friday, killing one soldier, and attackers posing as journalists fired assault weapons and rocket-propelled grenades at American paratroopers guarding the burning aircraft, the military said. Elsewhere, Arab gunmen shot and killed a Kurd amid rising ethnic tensions in the northern, oil-rich city of Kirkuk, and a minor Baath party official was assassinated in an apparent revenge killing. An American tanker was set ablaze in a rebel attack, and coalition forces raiding a Sunni Muslim mosque arrested 32 suspected non-Iraqi Arab insurgents and seized an arms...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. military helicopter crashed west of Baghdad on Friday, killing one soldier and wounding another, the U.S. military said. The cause was not immediately known.</p> <p>The OH-58 Kiowa Warrior crashed near the town of Fallujah, a flashpoint in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where U.S.-led troops have seen the fiercest resistance since the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Rebels in the area have previously shot at and brought down U.S. helicopters.</p>

Lawton-AP) -- A Lawton man says game fowl breeders licensed by a group he founded will be protected from a new state ban on cockfighting. Mike Turner says his Kiowa Association for the Preservation of Rural and Cultural Lifestyles is a recognized sub-entity of the Kiowa Tribe. Turner breeders can get a license which essentially leases their birds and equipment to the association and protects them under tribal law. He says any cockfights would have to take place on Indian land. Turner says he doesn't know if Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson will challenge his plan, but says he's ready...