Word: pentagon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pentagon is working to speed up the purhase of 6,000 or more of such lighter, more mobile transport called MRAP-ATVs (the initial-loving military's monikker for "Mine Resistant Ambush Protection All Terrain Vehicles"). The vehicles "will have a smaller turn radius and be capable of keeping up with some of the pickup trucks [run by insurgents] they may be chasing," says Gen. Robert Lennox, the U.S. Army's assistant deputy chief of staff for operations. The specifics required by the Army and the Marines are spelled out in the request for bids: blas-resistant, off-road vehicles...
...addition to ODIN, the Pentagon is spending millions of dollars more on other drones to track IEDs and their makers. The names are colorful: Yellow Jacket, Copperhead, the Sentinel Hawk. The Yellow Jacket project, which involves an almost self-contained robot aircraft, will cost nearly $10 million...
...these technology upgrades are necessary, says Rickey Smith of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, because "the Taliban have evolved and the more robust they get, the more counterinsurgency and elements of national power are needed to kick into the effort." The urgency felt by the Pentagon is reflected by Gen. Richard Cody, formerly the Army's vice chief of staff, as he talked about fielding ODIN throughout Afghanistan: "We are building as many as we can as fast...
...about the best strategy for the war in Afghanistan, he shrugged. "Unlike Iraq and some of the other problems, this is an area where I've been somewhat uncertain in my own mind what the right path forward is," he said with weapons-grade candor rarely heard from the Pentagon podium...
...there's a problem with the option of doubling the size of the Afghan security forces: Officials inside and out of the Pentagon warn that the bill for setting up such a large force, estimated at $2 billion to $3 billion annually for several years, could prove daunting - more than double the budget of the Afghan government, and way more than could be sustained by Afghanistan's own economy for the foreseeable future. Even U.S. trainers for these new forces are in short supply: the Government Accountability Office, in a report issued earlier this month, said the Pentagon...