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U.S. Army troops in Iraq have fielded a weapon allowing them to be more precise in targeting and limiting collateral damage.

Col. John Tanzi, of TCM-Cannon Systems at the Fire Center of Excellence in Fort Sill, Okla., says the GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shell was deployed to Iraq in May 2007. According to Tanzi, Excalibur is a unitary high explosive projectile like the M107 155mm shell but with unique characteristics that give it unmatched precision.

“The original requirement was a munition that would impact within 20 meters of target,” Tanzi says. “With Excalibur in theater, we’re seeing impact within 4 meters on all targets at ranges between 7 and 24 kilometers.”

A M107 155mm shell can miss a target by up to 180 meters at maximum ranges. Excalibur also limits collateral damage.

“With standard projectiles, you have a low angle of attack, producing a teardrop-shaped fragmentation pattern on the ground that’s unpredictable,” Tanzi says.

But Excalibur comes in virtually vertical on target, making a circular fragmentation pattern.
Also, within three seconds of impact, if Excalibur loses GPS guidance or misses its intended target by 30 meters or more, it renders itself inert.

“Then it’s just 106 pounds that hits the ground,” Tanzi says. “That’s proven itself 100 percent of the time in test shots, and it’s happened on two occasions in theater.”

Excalibur is made by Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Ariz. David Brockway, Raytheon’s business development manager, says the total objective procurement for Excalibur is approximately 30,000 rounds.

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz. freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the historical mystery, Full Moon (JoNa Books, 2005).

Because It’s Right

It’s hard to serve your country in Baghdad or Kabul. It shouldn’t be hard to pay for college once you’ve come back home.

James Webb, the Vietnam Vet and senator from Virginia who was once secretary of the Navy, likes to share the chart he prepared for five of his Senate colleagues. They are men who fought in World War II and afterward went to college and even law school on the American taxpayer, a free ride in exchange for their service. Webb’s chart quantifies how much of their education costs would have been covered if they had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Not even close.

Read the rest of this article at www.newsweek.com.

Want to rub elbows with Hollywood stars, filmmakers, and military top brass? Well, here’s your chance!

The 2nd Annual GI Film Festival is happening on May 14-18, 2008, at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C., with film screenings hosted by Hollywood actors Gary Sinise, Jon Voight, and James Franco, among others.

Overall, the five-day festival will present both classic and premier films honoring the nation’s men and women in uniform, and will include world premier military film screenings featuring the work of promising new filmmakers, and a congressional reception honoring members of Congress who served in the military.

Panel discussions, including “The 100 Greatest War Films of All Time,” and “War Stories” featuring Medal of Honor recipients are also on the schedule.

For more information, and to view a complete schedule of events, please visit www.gifilmfestival.com.

Are you looking for a way to cut your time in the gym, boost your cardiovascular fitness, and blast that extra weight from around your midsection? Who isn’t?

These are all possible thanks to a technique used by elite athletes that is effective for almost everyone. It’s called interval training, and it’s one of the best ways to ramp up your cardio routine. If you can’t walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes at a moderate pace, this isn’t a technique for you — not yet, anyway. But if you can, use this method to boost results and keep your routine interesting.

The concept of interval training is simple: after a five-minute warmup, pick up the pace for 30 seconds to one minute. Then go back to your normal pace (called “active recovery”) for approximately one minute. By the end of each faster-paced interval period, you should feel ready for a break. Continue alternating between easy and hard intervals for 20 to 25 minutes, and then gradually cool down for five minutes.

It doesn’t matter what exercise machine you’re using or what activity you’re doing — if you’re a walker, you can incorporate jogging intervals or increasing the incline on your treadmill; if you bike, you can increase resistance or speed during the more intense intervals.

Interval training can be challenging, so it’s a good idea to start slow, beginning with one or two intense intervals during a cardio workout and gradually increasing the number of intervals in later workouts.

According to the Mayo Clinic, interval training helps you burn more calories because the harder you work — even for short intervals — the more calories you burn. Also, interval training can increase the amount of fat burned by more than 30 percent in the hour after you’ve stopped exercising, according to a study in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
You’ll also improve your fitness, so what used to take you 45 minutes to accomplish in the gym can be done in only 30 minutes. In addition, alternating workout intensity helps keep your routine both interesting and challenging.

Don’t overdo the interval training — it can be tough on your cardiovascular system, so try adding it to your workout once or twice a week at first. And if it’s difficult for you to exercise for 30 minutes straight at a moderate pace, gradually increase the length of your workouts so you are at the 30-minute threshold before giving interval training a whirl.

Wendy Watkins is a personal trainer certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine and the American Council on Exercise.

It is one of the most politically sensitive questions on Capitol Hill: Are the troops getting paid the right amount?

A new Defense Department study suggests that the answer is yes, when basic pay, cash allowances, free health care, pensions and tax breaks are taken into consideration.

When those elements are combined, military officers and enlisted personnel are compensated as well or better than 80 percent of their counterparts in the private sector of similar ages and educations, the study said.

Get the full story, including what Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF-Ret., MOAA’s director of Government Relations has to say about it, at The Washington Post.

During his nearly four years as a translator for U.S. forces in Iraq, Saman Kareem Ahmad was known for his bravery and hard work. “Sam put his life on the line with, and for, Coalition Forces on a daily basis,” wrote Marine Capt. Trent A. Gibson.

NARSAD’s fifth annual “Mission Possible” Mental Health Research Symposium will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, located at 730 21st Street, N.W. (On the Metro, take the orange line to Foggy Bottom.) This event is free and open to the public.

Mental health professionals and residents of the Greater Washington, D.C., area will have an opportunity on Sunday, March 30th, to learn more about the growing crisis of PTSD in the military and about other serious mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and childhood disorders, in an all-day, free public forum with some of the country’s leading mental health experts.

View the complete schedule of presentations at this year’s NARSAD “Mission Possible” Symposium.

While the symposium is free and open to the public, reservations are recommended to ensure seating. To make a reservation, send an e-mail to events@narsad.org, or call 703-535-1577.

This year’s symposium is made possible through a partnership of NARSAD, the World’s Leading Charity Dedicated to Mental Health Research; the Washington Psychiatric Society, and the Uniformed Services Branch of the American Psychiatric Association.

Killeen, Texas, is home to more widows whose husbands lost their lives in the Iraq war than any other place in the United states. These brave women have banded together to share their grief -— and to save one another’s lives. Read the whole story at glamour.com.

Salary negotiations are the workplace equivalent of meeting the in-laws — we dread the thought, but they are an essential step in the courtship process with a prospective employer. It is best to defer any discussion of salary until an offer has been extended. In addition, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of your new duties and responsibilities and the relative importance of your role to the financial success of the organization you might join.

It’s also important to be aware of what the position is worth before salary and benefits are discussed. The best sources for this information are people doing the same type of work in the same geographic location and several online tools.

• www.salary.com – offers free “Salary Wizard” data from reputable compensation consulting firms on 1,200 unique jobs and 4,000 job titles that correlate to these jobs. A low-cost personal salary report also is offered, although independent analysis determined that paid results rarely differ from the free tools.

• www.payscale.com – collects salary information directly from the people using the site. It takes approximately five minutes to complete the survey regarding your current compensation before visitors can access the salary data. Because of a high number of visitors from these professions, the company reports its greatest accuracy with high-tech, health care, and nonprofit jobs.

• www.payscroll.com – presents salary data from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics and bills itself as a combination salary web site, job board, and career networking site.

• www.parade.com/archive – allows access to Parade magazine’s annual income report, last published in the April 15, 2007, edition and includes self-reported information from more than 120 participants. However, this survey does not account for geographic differences in compensation. Salary data normally is adjusted between 74 percent and 124 percent to account for regional variation.

• www.compensationresources.com – provides specialized salary support services to companies and private clients. Paul Dorf, a managing director, reports the firm’s private client service is billed by the hour and tailored for mid-level managers coming from a “semi-protected salary environment,” such as military service.

Finally, consider the consequences of accepting an offer at the low end of the salary range for your new position. Every subsequent raise will come from a proportionately lower base and can easily total hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost compensation, depending on the duration of your employment. First-time negotiators might want to consult Black Belt Negotiating (AMACOM, 2007) or Knock ‘em Dead (Adams Media, 2008) for strategies to maximize salary negotiation success.

About the author: Jim Carman is a graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management and a retired Navy Captain. He writes and lectures on career transition topics.

Linda West, author of Beyond the Rice Paddies, thanks American soldiers by donating half of all her book royalties to the Vietnam Veterans of America and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Written from the perspective of an innocent child, Beyond the Rice Paddies is the captivating story of West’s experiences resulting directly from the Vietnam War, and America’s involvement in it, while she was still a young girl.

Beyond the Rice Paddies is available for sale online at Amazon.com, BookSurge.com, Beyondthericepaddies.com and through additional wholesale and retail channels worldwide.