Word: tanks
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...come as a surprise to many Americans that fitness and weight-lifting are fast-growing crazes in Kabul and a popular cult figure is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor's likeness can be found at makeshift gyms throughout the city, which use cinder blocks and old Soviet tank parts for equipment. To many young Afghans, Schwarzenegger embodies the virtues of discipline, goal-setting and accomplishment. Afghans prefer the U.S. to the Taliban, but they have suffered too long from 40% unemployment and a reconstruction that never arrived. Ralph Lopez, Cambridge, Mass...
...into a clan of warrior aristocrats whose Scottish home dates back to the ninth century (they supposedly earned the family name by clearing the area of wild boar), and who served prominently in every major British military and political skirmish for a thousand years. One recent ancestor invented the tank; another helped invent television. Over the millennium the Swintons were deeded huge swatches of prime Scottish real estate; Tilda's father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, a.k.a. the Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire, lives in the family estate, Kimmerghame...
What's going to happen to the tank? The Pentagon's 70-ton Abrams may be battle-tested and almost iconic but perhaps not as important to the kinds of fluid, counter-insurgencies the U.S. has been waging recently. At the same time, however, the Pentagon's latest budget proposal has just cancelled what was once a more future-looking program that would have developed 27-ton vehicles with lightweight armor and the ability to fire GPS-guided shells...
...survive explosive encounters. IED protection for prospective vehicles could be improved with V-shaped hulls that would better divert the force of the bombs. Additional armor could also be added to the existing designs of the 27-ton vehicles to better protect against RPGs and, just in case, enemy tank fire. The Army Research Lab could also receive more funding to speed up development of lightweight armor composites that would provide the protection of traditional steel at a fraction of the weight. (Check out a story on how the Army is developing robots...
However, a vehicle that is half the weight of an Abrams could more quickly be deployed to a combat area on board a C-17 aircraft. But lightening the tank would also put in jeopardy all the sensitive hi-technology that the Army wants in the vehicle as well: next-generation sensors, battle command equipment and active protection systems engineered to detect and destroy enemy fire before it hits. So any new vehicle has to be built tough enough to withstand roadside bombs and explosively formed penetrators, a senior Army official said. In addition, 70-ton vehicles simply will...