Word: pentagon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...towed farther out to sea by the U.S.S. Bainbridge. The shortened towline turned what could have been a trio of difficult shots across hundreds of yards of ocean into relatively easy 30-yd. pops. It's a safe bet future pirates won't be so naive. But the Pentagon is drawing up a project to make it easier to hit targets at much longer distances: a super-sniper rifle called the EXACTO, short for EXtreme ACcuracy Tasked Ordnance...
DARPA says the Pentagon needs the vastly improved rifle because the use of snipers has ballooned from 250 to 800 annually. The sharpshooters require extensive and expensive training - all of which could be reduced with a better gun. Snipers "are unable to take a shot the vast majority of the time" because of wind or other weather factors, and a lack of confidence in their ability to hit the target or flee if detected. Those shortcomings could be greatly reduced by the new longer-range rifle. How much longer range? "Specific system performance objectives (e.g., range, accuracy and target speed...
...look for quick action. "We do not have a military presence in Somalia," the command's chief, Army General William Ward, told Congress last month. In fact, the military is in no rush to head back to that lawless nation in the Horn of Africa. President Clinton's Pentagon was first bloodied there when 18 soldiers died in a 1993 firefight memorialized in Black Hawk Down. As a reminder of the volatile environment, local insurgents on Monday fired mortar rounds at a private plane ferrying U.S. Congressman Donald Payne out of Mogadishu after he had visited with the head...
...Even if the Pentagon had the stomach for this kind of fight, the confused command structure for the region would make it hard to succeed. You might think, after all, that Africom would be front and center in battling the piracy now rampant off Somalia's coast. But in fact Africom deals only with African territory, and not the seas surrounding it. Those are monitored by U.S. Central Command, also responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This disconnect - Centcom if by sea, Africom if by land - highlights the challenge facing the Pentagon as it tries to grapple with...
...unexpected twist, Stafford Smith now faces possible imprisonment himself. The British lawyer has been summoned with his Reprieve colleague Ahmed Ghappour to appear before the Columbia District Court on May 11, to answer a complaint of "unprofessional conduct" lodged by the Pentagon's Privilege Review Team (PRT). If found guilty in what amounts to a contempt charge, Stafford Smith and Ghappour face up to six months in prison...