Word: pentagonal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said this week that al-Qaeda is "in disarray" in northern Iraq and largely out of Baghdad. "There is a sense of normalcy that's returning to Iraq," he told Pentagon reporters. Austin spoke of a recent visit to a major outdoor market in Mosul that was "overflowing" with Iraqis, something he said "would not have been possible just a couple of months...
...quickly U.S. troops will be leaving Iraq (and in what numbers), the tentative agreement opens the door for strengthening the American military presence in Afghanistan, where both parties agree it is desperately needed. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will leave Iraq next year if present trends continue, Pentagon officials say. Defense Secretary Robert Gates may soon decide to divert a pair of 4,000-strong combat brigades - now slated to head to Iraq next spring - to Afghanistan instead...
...band of pre-eminent scientists and war-fighters has concluded that the nation's military might isn't powerful enough for the 21st Century; and so the National Research Council (NRC), an independent, congressionally-chartered body charged with assessing scientific issues, is urging the Pentagon and Congress to get cracking on developing a weapon capable of hitting any target in the world within an hour of being launched...
...Committee on Conventional Prompt Global Strike Capability believes that there are threats (like nuclear terrorism) that the Pentagon's fleets of attack planes and missiles cannot handle and which have to be stopped with the immediacy of the push of a button by a future U.S. President. It's not quite a "death ray" but it's the closest existing technology can get to that fantasy weapon. Still, skeptics roll their eyes and say that the report's authors are like a bunch of junior high school boys who have seen all the James Bond movies and believe that...
Sounds nifty, until you read the fine print. It notes that Pentagon studies "indicate that in most cases, a single CTM [Conventional Trident Modification] KEP [Kinetic Energy Projectile] will have a high kill probability against fixed soft targets if target geolocation accuracy and guidance, navigation, and control accuracy are as predicted." That's eight caveats right there. Such a weapon would be worthless against moving or heavily-defended targets (developing such a capability would take at least a decade and cost as much as $25 billion) and represents only a "niche capability" designed to attack stationary terrorists or nuclear weapons...