Word: troop
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...maintained that the land, which comprises its northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, is an inalienable part of its territory. Tensions over the border dispute have flared recently, raising the specter of a budding rivalry between the two Asian giants who fought a brief, wintry war in 1962. Reports of troop buildups and border incursions have increased. A visit to the state by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in mid-October to campaign in local elections was cited by Beijing as an act of provocation. (See pictures of the Dalai Lama's 60 years of spiritual leadership...
...choking off the main roads, troop commanders on the ground are confident that they are bleeding the militants dry and protecting against their flight to other areas. But a visit to Kotkai - the hometown of Taliban leaders Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, which was cleared by the army last week - was not possible due to the continuing threat of rocket fire from militants nearby. There is no clear idea of either of the Taliban commanders' whereabouts, though there have been unconfirmed reports of Mehsud hiding atop Preghal in Badr Valley, South Waziristan's highest peak. Some observers speculate that...
...That forces the U.S. military to rely on helicopters, not only to reach remote outposts, but also to carry out dangerous combat missions that thinly spread troops couldn't do without the helicopter's ability to hopscotch hundreds of miles. It was precisely such an antidrug mission that a twin-rotor Army MH-47 Chinook was flying when it went down in western Afghanistan, killing 10 Americans including three civilians with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Earlier in the day, a Marine UH-1 Huey troop helicopter collided in midair with an A-1 Cobra helicopter gunship over southern Helmand province...
...over the past year doubled its number of helicopters based in Afghanistan to about 225, but troop numbers have risen even faster, making for a more acute chopper shortage. Helicopters are swift but delicate machines. The physics of flight make them inherently unstable, and therefore less reliable, than fixed-wing aircraft which generate their lift from stationary wings instead of egg-beater-like rotor blades. More critically, chopper pilots are commonly expected to fly in hot weather at high altitudes, where less-dense air offers them less control over their aircraft...
...Laikipia now finds itself caught up in the politics of faraway warmaking. As Britain increases its troop levels in Afghanistan (numbers there have doubled to about 10,000 in the past three years), it has ramped up its training exercises in Kenya, with more than 3,000 soldiers passing through the region each year. The army says Laikipia is perhaps its best training ground because the conditions there - high altitude, extreme heat, hilly terrain - are remarkably similar to those found in Afghanistan...