Word: 1st
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...PATROL: The U.S. 1st Cavalry is still hunting Baghdad's bad guys...
...When 1st Cav is in the neighborhood, you can hardly miss it. From his headquarters at Camp Victory, a sprawling base 10 miles west of downtown Baghdad, Chiarelli commands seven brigades comprising 29,000 soldiers and several thousand humvees, Bradley vehicles and Abrams tanks. At any given time, several groups of vehicles are on patrol or conducting raids, raising a huge dust cloud and a god-awful din. The base abuts Baghdad's most hostile districts, Khadra, Ghazalia and Abu Ghraib, which makes it a target of almost daily mortar attacks. Those areas are known to harbor al-Qaeda cells...
Flushing them out is the task of 1st Cav's 2nd Brigade, a.k.a. the Black Jack Brigade. The commander, Colonel Michael Formica, is keenly aware that when al-Zarqawi brings his jihad to the Iraqi capital, these districts will supply fighters and support...
...1st Cavalry lowers its physical profile, commanders are relying more on technology to police their turf. First Cavalry is the first fighting unit to use a computer-based information system billed as, with the military's characteristic immodesty, the Command Post of the Future, or CPOF. Much of what it does--and how it operates--is classified, but CPOF combines satellite imagery and digital maps with analytical software and constantly updated information from the field to give commanders a highly detailed view of their battle space. It allows Chiarelli to detect patterns in enemy activity and respond quickly. It also...
...meantime, 1st Cavalry commanders are trying unconventional techniques. When a raid turned up a huge cache of contraband cigarettes, Formica recognized an opportunity for outreach. He had the packs distributed with special wraps printed with hotline numbers, an exhortation to report suspicious characters and the promise of a reward. A smoker called in the first bit of intelligence last week, Formica says. "Here's something you don't hear every day," he says, "but that pack of cigarettes may have saved some lives." --With reporting by Christopher Allbritton/Baghdad