Posted By:
Catherine Moy
Permalink

JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq – The U.S. Air Force has deployed in combat for the first time, the guided bomb unit-54, Laser Joint Directed Attack Munition – or LJDAM.

The GBU-54 is the U.S. Air Force’s newest 500-pound precision weapon, equipped with a special targeting system that uses a combination of GPS and laser guidance to accurately engage and destroy moving targets.

On, Aug. 12, 2008, F-16s from the 77th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron deployed to Joint Base Balad, Iraq, successfully executed this “combat first” when the weapon was employed against a moving enemy vehicle in Diyala province, Iraq.

“This employment first represents a great step in our Air Force’s ability to deliver precise effects across the spectrum of combat,” said Lt. Gen. Gary North, U.S. Air Forces Central commander and US Central Commands Combined Force Air Component commander. “The first combat employment of this weapon is the validation of the exacting hard work of an entire team of professionals who developed, tested and fielded this weapon on an extremely short timeline, based on an urgent needs request we established in the combat zone.”

Identified as an urgent operational need in early 2007, the Air Force completed the GBU-54’s development and testing cycle in less than 17 months, fielding it aboard 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing aircraft in May.

“We have consistently used precision-guided weapons to engage stationary threats with superb combat effects,” said Brig. Gen. Brian Bishop, 332nd AEW commander. “This weapon allows our combat pilots to engage a broad range of moving targets with dramatically increased capabilities and it increases our ability to strike the enemy throughout a much, much broader engagement envelope.”

Go here for the rest of the story.

UN report hails progress in war against opium trade in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan has been fueled by radical Islam and the illegal trade of opium. About 50 percent of the country’s GDP has been from opium, but that’s changing, thanks to drought and some hope that farmers can make money in other crops.

The United Nations reports today that the opium trade has dropped for the first time since 2005. This is great news for the war against radical Islam just as more U.S. troops are moving into Afghanistan as Iraq is stabilized. The criminal terrorists make their money for weapons from the sale of opium.

The Times Online reports:

The tide may have turned in the war against Afghanistan’s £2 billion drugs industry, the United Nations said today as it revealed a decline in opium cultivation and production for the first time since 2005.
An annual report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) attributed the downturn less to security improvements than to factors including drought and a 198 per cent increase in wheat prices, which had encouraged some farmers to stop growing poppies.
Afghanistan produces 90 per cent of the world’s opium and the report offered a rare glimmer of hope for the country amid growing public anger about civilian casualties and the slow pace of development since US-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001.

“The opium floodwaters in Afghanistan have started to recede,” Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of UNODC, said in the report.

“The time to act is now. Unlike coca, opium is a seasonal plant. In a few weeks farmers will decide whether or not to plant opium for the 2008-09 harvest.”

Last year the UNODC estimated Afghanistan’s opium output at a record 8,200 tonnes and exports of the drug at $4 billion — or 53 per cent of GDP. It also said that the Taleban earned about $100 million from the trade.

The report said the country was expected to produce 7,700 tonnes of opium — a decline of 6 per cent — but did not give a figure for exports or profits reaped by the Taleban. The area under cultivation had dropped by a larger margin of 19 per cent, to 157,000 hectares (388,000 acres), because of higher yields per hectare.

Another positive sign was that the number of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces that were now poppy-free had increased from 13 to 18, it said.

The report attributed these successes partly to drought and to strong leadership from governors, tribal elders and religious leaders.