A heads up to DT read­ers out there…

This week is the annual Modern Day Marine Expo at MCB Quantico out­side DC. Ward and I will be hit­ting it today and may do some fol­low ups later in the week, so stay tuned here for updates and vids and please excuse the delay in posts.

– Christian

Just to clear up some con­fu­sion with some read­ers of yesterday’s camo post (“forested vales of east­ern Afghanistan.– lost ma (sic) right here..”).

OK, so, maybe the word “vales” wasn’t tech­ni­cally right since Afghanistan might not have lime­stone cliffs. But accord­ing to the def­i­n­i­tion online: “a long depres­sion in the sur­face of the land that usu­ally con­tains a river”…and forested? Well, I’ve seen sev­eral in my trav­els there.

I don’t do this that often, but I just thought I had to use my bully pul­pit this time to answer my detrac­tors. Let the pic­ture do the talking…

(Photo cut­line: Soldiers nav­i­gate across a creek dur­ing a dis­mounted patrol in the Nerkh Valley, Afghanistan, June 4, 2009.)

– Christian

An apol­ogy and expla­na­tion to Defense Tech readers…

For the last 48 hours, we have been expe­ri­enc­ing a net­work break­down due to a major elec­tri­cal fire in down­town San Francisco where our servers are based. The fiber optic line was sev­ered and there­fore we were unable to post and edit con­tent for Defense Tech or Military.com.

This shut­down unfor­tu­nately coin­cided with the July 4th hol­i­day so the gruel has been rel­a­tively thin around these parts. And for that, I sin­cerely apologize.

We’re back up to 100 per­cent and we’ll be post­ing com­pelling con­tent at our nor­mal — if not enhanced — rate. I hope you under­stand that some­times these con­tin­gen­cies pop up and you’ll bear with us as we spool back up.

Thanks,

– Christian

The 4th annual MilBlog con­fer­ence kicked off April 24 with a bunch of bang-bang last night as Bouhammer intro­duced the first “world pre­mier” of the docu-film “At War.” For many of the 150 blog­gers and blog­ger­fans in atten­dance at the Westin Arlington Gateway hotel just out­side DC it was a bit of a time warp — remem­brances of deploy­ments or embeds past — and for oth­ers it was a vivid, vio­lent, frus­trat­ing, heart­warm­ing win­dow into the world of the troops these blog­gers write and care about.

As TSO from This Ain’t Hell said: “I thought I was hav­ing flash backs…”

Here’s a tid­bit of the well-done movie shot and directed by Scott Kesterson, a for­mer build­ing con­trac­tor who at 41 decided it was time to be a war correspondent/blogger, which will have a lim­ited release across the United States.

– Christian

Last night I appeared on the Federal News Tonight show on Washington, D.C.‘s, News Channel 8 to dis­cuss the con­tro­versy over the Navy’s award­ing Rep. John Murtha the Distinguished Public Service award.

I thought I should at least share how stu­pid I look on TV…

[EMBED CODE DOES NOT WORK — CLICK THE LINK ABOVE]

– Christian

I ran into the mani­acs from Mil-Spec Monkey, a site devoted to gear reviews and news and also a designer of inno­v­a­tive (and hilar­i­ous) moti­va­tional patches.

We’ve run a few of their posts and reviews here before — they’re close friends with our bud­dies at BreachBangClear — but I’d never had the oppor­tu­nity to meet them in person.

The Monkeys are based in the Bay area and are either work­ing for, or alums of the America’s Army video game. They have a lot of tech­ni­cal exper­tise, no mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, but a lot of enthu­si­asm. Their moto patches are gen­er­at­ing quite a fol­low­ing and the “rad guy” ele­ment of the tac­ti­cal com­mu­nity are giv­ing their news and reviews a lot of credibility.

We look for­ward to work­ing more closely with the Mil-Spec Monkey crew of chimps, and will fea­ture some of their SHOT Show con­tent here when they’ve got it ready.

Now, back onto the floor of the show!

– Christian

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I wanted to share with you all a quick story on a Soldier’s valor to help us all remem­ber the hero­ism and sac­ri­fice our armed forces dis­play each and every day on the job:

On Sept. 24, 2008, Staff Sgt. Christopher Upp, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, was awarded the Silver Star for actions on July 31, 2007 in Chowkay Valley, Afghanistan.

While at Vehicle Patrol Base Seray, an incom­ing mor­tar round struck the bases mor­tar pit, killing the pla­toon leader and ini­ti­at­ing an attack. Staff Sgt. Upp led a small group through machine gun and rocket pro­pelled grenade (RPG) fire towards the mor­tar position.

The incom­ing fire knocked them to the ground sev­eral times. When they reached the 120-mm mor­tar, an incom­ing RPG dam­aged the tri­pod and shrap­nel tore a large gash in Staff Sgt. Upps left arm. With the mor­tars sup­port legs dam­aged, Staff Sgt. Upp used his hands — and when the tube got too hot, his back — to guide return fire. Through heavy fight­ing, he fired 75 rounds at the attack­ing enemy and sig­nif­i­cantly con­tributed to the suc­cess­ful defense of the patrol base. 

I’ve been hon­ored to wit­ness acts like this in my many days and months cov­er­ing the armed forces as a reporter. Thank you for all of the great times and endear­ing memories.

– Christian

All right folks, you’re about to get a true “first.”

Over the last sev­eral months, Ward and I have been brain storm­ing, kick­ing, scream­ing, cajol­ing, whin­ing and moan­ing to put together a new prod­uct for Military.com that focuses heav­ily on inves­tiga­tive report­ing of the defense industry.

Well, our tem­per tantrums have paid off and we’re going to launch the new online blog/newsletter in May (which will remain name­less until launch). But in the mean­time, I’d like to intro­duce the product’s new edi­tor, Colin Clark.

I’ve known Colin my entire career and we’ve been good friends out on the hus­tings as we both kicked over rocks for the next big story. He’s a pow­er­house in the defense indus­try news busi­ness, with a resume that sports stints at Defense Week, Defense News, Congressional Quarterly and, more recently, Space News.

While we’re putting together the final design and wrap­ping up mar­ket­ing plans for Colin’s new gig, he’s going to keep the engines turn­ing and post his con­tent here. He knows he’s being thrown into a pot of boil­ing oil head first with you guys, and I don’t expect you to pull any punches.

So please wel­come Colin and we all look for­ward to his kick butt reporting.

– Christian

Alright folks, here’s the deal.

I’m headed back to Iraq after about a two year hia­tus. It was pretty vio­lent and crazy the last time I was there and I’m inter­ested to see how things have changed for the bet­ter — or worse — first hand.

I go with a dif­fer­ent mind­set this time, how­ever. Though it’s my third trip there, I’m much more cau­tious this time around. Don’t be expect­ing rip roar­ing fire­fight dis­pacthes and daily raid and QRF debriefs from me. I’ve got a kid now, so run­ning into the Humvee at every sound of an IED or small arms ain’t gonna hap­pen, sorry.

But as you prob­a­bly imag­ine, I can’t stand sit­ting around the FOB pick­ing my nose. So, I’ll be “oscar mike” quite a bit, see­ing the lay of the land and get­ting into operations.

I plan to travel first to Anbar and hang out with the Marines for a week. I’ll get a gan­der at some of the “awak­en­ing” progress and hope­fully take a stroll down Route Michigan in Ramadi after spend­ing a vio­lent month there in ’05. Then I’m off for a few days to the MV-22 squadron based at al Asad. After that, I chop to the Army in Diyala and hook up with a unit employ­ing the interim Land Warrior suite of technologies.

I’ll be post­ing entries here when they per­tain to “techy” stuff, but I’ll be writ­ing a lot of con­tent for our reg­u­lar Military.com audi­ence and will be updat­ing a blog designed specif­i­cally for the “From the Front” assignment.

Ward will be hon­cho­ing the blog while I’m gone, so try not to give him too hard a time. I’ll be throw­ing blog posts, pics and videos his way, so I’ll stay in touch with loyal DT read­ers. Feel free to drop me a line if you have any bud­dies over there you want me to give a shout out to, or if you have any cov­er­age ideas where I’m gonna be.

So, for now, adios. I’m hop­ping on a United flight to Kuwait tonight, then off to “the suck.” I’ll be back in DC in a month. Keep in touch!

– Christian

Heres a cool idea from our friends at America Supports You:

This hol­i­day sea­son, America Supports You is giv­ing you a new way to send your thanks to the troops — by text mes­sage! When you send your mes­sage of thanks to 89279 (TXASY) between November 17th and 22nd, youll receive a spe­cial thanks in return. Also, well be dis­play­ing those mes­sages on our ASY Giving Thanks wid­get far and wide across the inter­net. Just another way that you can sup­port our brave mil­i­tary men and women serv­ing in 177 coun­tries around the world.

Click on the wid­get above to link to the ASY site. And Happy Thanksgiving to all of those serv­ing the nation away from home this year.

(Gouge: JF)

– Ward