Marine Corps Gazette – Activity-Based Costing and Activity-Based Management is designed to give greater visibility to actual costs, thereby enabling senior leaders to make better decisions on how Marine Corps funding should be spent.
US Marines – They Came Here to Die
Washington Post – Screaming “Allahu Akbar” to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at U.S. Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade. Through Sunday night and into Monday morning, the foreign fighters battled on, their screaming voices gradually fading to just one. In the end, it took five Marine assaults, grenades, a tank firing bunker-busting artillery rounds, 500-pound bombs unleashed by an F/A-18 attack plane and a point-blank attack by a rocket launcher to quell them. The Marines got their fallen man, suffering one more dead and at least five wounded in the process. And according to survivors of the battle, the foreign fighters near the Syrian border proved to be everything their reputation had suggested: fierce, determined and lethal to the last.
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Piracy – Resurgence of piracy on tsunami-hit seas
BBC – After a period of relative quiet following December’s tsunami, maritime piracy appears to be re-emerging in Asia and is sparking concerns about a potential terrorist attack.
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US Navy – Navy Cyber Cafes Help Keep Many in Touch
Associated Press – Since the Navy began setting up ”Internet cafes” for soldiers overseas to keep in touch with their loved ones, almost 200 of the high-tech tents have sprung up in war zones.
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US Marines – Article Prompts Marines to Recall Vests
Associated Press – The Marine Corps is recalling 5,277 combat vests issued to troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Djibouti after a newspaper article raised concerns that they failed a test to determine whether they could stop a bullet.
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US Marines – Three Point Sling
Marine Corps Gazette – As the 7th Marines regimental gunner, the author provides tactical advice for young Marines going into combat.
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US Marines – Marines Kill 100 Fighters In Sanctuary Near Syria
Washington Post – More than 1,000 Marines backed by Cobra helicopter gunships and F-18 jets attacked targets Monday in a region of northwestern Iraq that commanders called a sanctuary for foreign fighters. As many as 100 insurgents were killed and 10 captured in the assault near the Syrian border.
More from the Daily Telegraph – US in border battle to curb Iraq insurgency
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US Marines – Larger Special Operations Role Being Urged on Marines
Washington Post – With conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan tying up many U.S. Special Operations forces, the Pentagon has found itself short of the elite teams it typically deploys around the world for specialized combat missions and for training foreign militaries, defense officials say. To help fill the gap, the Marine Corps has stepped forward with a decision to establish a standing force of “foreign military training units” by this autumn.
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Iraq – A Little Learning
New Yorker – The Pentagon’s Douglas Feith looks back on the case for invading Iraq.
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Russian Navy – What's Wrong With Russian Submarines?
StrategyPage – When people look at the Russian Akula and Oscar-class submarines, they wonder why these vessels have not been given as much respect and praise as Western submarines like the Los Angeles, Seawolf, and Trafalgar-classes. The answers are, illuminating, and are worth keeping in mind.
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US Navy – Navy Outlines Errors Preceding Fatal Submarine Crash
New York Times – Navy investigators have found that a series of mistakes both at sea and in preparations onshore helped cause a nuclear submarine to crash into an undersea mountain in January, killing one sailor and injuring 97 others.
More from the BBC – Crew blamed for grounding US sub.
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US Marines – The Marines' flawed body armor
Marine Corps Times – The Marine Corps issued to nearly 10,000 troops body armor that government experts urged the Corps to reject after tests revealed critical, life-threatening flaws in the vests.
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Geopolitics / Media – The Media as an Instrument of War
Parameters – The media, in the modern era, are indisputably an instrument of war. This is because winning modern wars is as much dependent on carrying domestic and international public opinion as it is on defeating the enemy on the battlefield. And it remains true regardless of the aspirations of many journalists to give an impartial and balanced assessment of conflict.
Pakistani Navy – Pentagon moves to sell Pakistan anti-ship missiles
Reuters – The US agrees to sell Pakistan anti-ship missiles.
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History – Three Sheets to the Wind – How Naval History has Shaped the English Language ó Part II
Sea Power – From politics to intoxication, naval terminology has filtered into every area of modern discourse. The English language is filled with words and phrases that were derived from naval history.
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Iraq – The Way of the Commandos
New York Times Magazine – Peter Maass on the “El-Salvadorization of Iraq:” The campaign against the insurgency in Iraq is increasingly being waged by an elite regiment of Sunni-led fighters. Their leader is a former general in Saddam Hussein’s army, their American adviser is a veteran of the Central American campaigns of the 1980’s and they sometimes play by the rules of the old Iraq. Is the war getting dirtier?
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US Marines – US Marines land on Somali coast to hunt militants
Reuters – U.S. Marines landed on Somalia’s coast in one of their most visible hunts for militants in the country since they set up a Horn of Africa counter terrorism force in 2002.
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US Navy – Navy sonar under scrutiny
Virginian Pilot – The Navy plans to create a sonar training range where its forces can learn to detect enemy submarines. But with sonar known to have contributed to some whale deaths and possibly linked to other cases of animal distress a battle is brewing.
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US Navy – The Secrets of Centric
Sea Power – New technologies are one element of success as the Navy applies its theory of warfare, but new structures and processes also are essential.
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Editorial Note – NOSI on break until May 6
NOSI is taking a short break and will next be updated on Friday May 6th. See you then???
Information Warfare – The Network Way of War
Air Force – Data flowing to and from all Air Force elements will cause a dramatic new form of combat.
US Navy – Tightening the Net
Sea Power – After years of planning, the Navy is about to breathe life into the FORCEnet concept mandating change to every aspect of naval warfare.
Geopolitics / Iran – Taking on Tehran
Foreign Affairs – If Washington wants to derail Iran’s nuclear program, it must take advantage of a split in Tehran between hard-liners, who care mostly about security, and pragmatists, who want to fix Iran’s ailing economy. By promising strong rewards for compliance and severe penalties for defiance, Washington can strengthen the pragmatists’ case that Tehran should choose butter over bombs.
US Navy – U.S. Navy hospital ship ends Indonesia mission
Reuters – The USNS Mercy completes her mission in Indonesia for a second time.
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History – Okinawa Fight Matched Overwhelming Firepower With Desperate Resistance
Sea Power – A look at the battle for Okinawa.
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