CF's fight against IEDs in Afghanistan

The Toronto Star has an article about Canadian efforts to counter Improvised Explosive Devices in Afghanistan. The article has a picture of one of the new Husky mine clearance vehicles.

NATO troop contributions in Afghanistan

Flit has a blog posting about the numbers of troops contributed by the various NATO nations to the mission in Afghanistan. He calculates how many more troops each country would have to contribute to bring them up to the NATO average percentage of forces contribution.

Land Warrior Gear in Iraq

Danger Blog has an article about the US Army's Land Warrior programme and how the new equipment is being used in Iraq. While initially being unpopular with the troops due to its weight, the gear gained some acceptance once it was used in combat.

I found it interesting that the idea of letting users annotate maps was suggested by the troops themselves. That seem to me to be the sort of thing that the original designers should have included as one of the main features of the system.

As a bonus, ISR journal has an article about China's equivalent equipment.

Rage against the Machines

A very interesting paper that studies most modern counter-insurgencies and finds that increased mechanization of forces does not help with victory - in fact it seems to reduce the chances of winning.

via flit

UAV's Grounded by Red Tape

Danger Room has a posting about how bureaucratic red tape is reducing the usefulness of UAV's in Iraq. Many units with their own UAVs don't bother to fly them anymore because of all the permissions required.

Video games with real bullets

The Danger Room has a blog posting about a new training technology. Basically a unit's live fire training building is modified so that computer generated images are projected on the walls. Live rounds are still used by the troops and another computer detects the impacts of the rounds on the walls so that the images can react correctly - ie if you shoot someone they fall down.

I'm not sure how practical or expensive this is but it certainly sounds like it might be useful.