Famous Veterans

Alan Alda
Actor, Director, Screenwriter
Former Army Reserve Gunner



Former President Bush
Former Naval Aviator Lieutenant
(j.g.), U.S. Navy



Tony Bennett
Singer
Former Private, U.S. Army



Drew Carey
Comedian, Actor
Former U.S Marine



Johnny Carson
Host of the Tonight Show
Former Ensign, U.S. Navy



Bill Cosby
Actor
Former Hospital Corpsman,
U.S. Navy



Clint Eastwood
Actor, Director
Former Instructor, U.S. Army



Jocelyn Elders
Former Surgeon General
Former Second Lieutenant
Army Medical Specialist Corps



Malcolm Forbes
Publisher, Multimillionaire
Former Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army



R. Buckminster Fuller
Inventor/Engineer
Former Ensign, U.S. Navy



Rocky Marciano
Heavyweight Boxing Champion
Former Enlisted, U.S. Army



Chuck Norris
Actor, Martial Arts Champion
Former U.S. Air Force



Shaggy
Reggae/Pop Superstar
Former U.S. Marine



Fred W. Smith
CEO FedEx
Former Comminsioned Officer,
U.S. Marine Corps



George Steinbrenner
Baseball Executive, Businessman
Former General's Aid,
U.S. Air Force



Dave Thomas
Founder & CEO of Wendy's
Former Staff Sergeant,
U.S. Army



Charles Walgreen
Pharmacist, Drug Store Chain
Owner, Former Enlisted,
1st Illinois Volunteer Cavalry
(Spanish-American War)



George Westinghouse
Inventor, Engineer, Businessman
Former Engineer, Union Navy
(Civil War)


Montel Williams
Talkshow Host, Motivational
Speaker
Former Lieutenant, Naval
Security Fleet Support Division

Marines in Spaaaaaace!

"After three years of being laughed out of meetings, the U.S. Marine Corps' futuristic plans to deploy through space may finally be getting some traction," notes Aviation Week's spunky new spin-off, Defense Technology International. Although the chuckle factor hasn't altogether disappeared, the Air Force Research Laboratory and Darpa are beginning a study of options for a reusable upper-stage space travel vehicle -- the same kind of technology that the Marines might need for a ride halfway across the globe. The effort is called "Hot Eagle," and it could be the first step forward in the Marine Corps' hopes for space travel. Within minutes of bursting into the atmosphere beyond the speed of sound -- and dispatching that ominous sonic boom -- a small squad of Marines could be on the ground and ready to take care of business within 2 hours. [One presentation muses that the capsule might later be picked up by a Osprey or by a "balloon cable and C-17" transport plane. Or, the Marines might "hike out," and "leave [the] crew capsule behind." -- ed.] The Marine Corps calls the concept the Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion Capability (Sustain). This plan, a growing group of Marine supporters say, is the natural evolution of the service's proclivity for expeditionary warfare that began decades ago with amphibious landings... The concept is to deliver strategic equipment or a small squad of soldiers to any point on the globe -- even the most hard-to-reach location -- within hours of need. Once on the ground, those soldiers can carry out strategically critical missions like reconnaissance or destroying a specific target.

Merger Of Dental Techs Into Navy's Hospital Corpsman Field Set For Oct. 1

Oct. 1 has been set as the date to merge the dental technician rating into the hospital corpsman field rating, the Navy has announced. Dental Technician 3RD Class Petty Officer / Hospital Corpsmen 3RD Class Petty Officer Combining the fields shifts some 2,800 dental technicians into the more than 23,000-strong hospital corpsmen field, according to Navy Bureau of Medicine Force Master Chief Petty Officer Jackie DiRosa. With the merger comes new training, DiRosa said, providing sailors with the two ratings’ basic skills and knowledge. Now, hospital corpsmen and dental technicians learn the manuals for each others’ jobs from recruits through petty officers first class. Senior enlisted ranks have additional Web-based training. Active-duty and full-time support personnel have until July 30 to complete the training; those in the Reserves have until July 30, 2007. “Dental technicians are going to have the most to learn,” DiRosa said. “But this training is going to bridge the gap between the two ratings … give them the foundational skills of being a hospital corpsmen. They’ll have to show they are proficient in basic lifesaving skills." DiRosa said the dental assistant job still will be there; it’s just now one of 46 specialties within the hospital corpsman field. To make a smooth transition, she said, training at the Navy’s schools had to be revamped. The new 14-week hospital corpsman “A” school with a dental assistant training package kicked off at Naval Hospital Corps School, Great Lakes, Ill., in early August. A new six-week dental school for those who wish to specialize in the field was designed; the first class should start in November, DiRosa said, adding the Navy will train about 250 dental-assistant corpsmen each year. Training for Navy dental technicians was held at a joint military school at Shepherd Air Force Base, Texas. Seaman April Rogers, a dental technician at U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa, said the merger means “it will be easier for current dental techs to transfer to other specialties — say biomedical — that would have been a little more challenging under the current system. … I will still be working as a dental tech but will have more exposure to medical training.” Petty Officer 2nd Class Stephanie Santiago, a laboratory technician at the hospital, said the change gives more options but also will make getting promoted more difficult. “The merger will allow more diversity for new corpsmen coming into the career field,” she said. “As HMs, we are already required to have dental training and will be learning more to be competitive for advancement. Petty Officer 2nd Class Stephanie Santiago, U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa laboratory technician, prepares a sample of blood for testing. Santiago will be affected by the dental technician and hospital corpsman rate mergers.
… The merger will probably be hardest on the current dental technicians who will be required to train more in depth on medical procedures. Regardless, it will be more difficult competitively.” DiRosa said corpsmen who study and meet their requirements will be competitive and have equal opportunities for promotion. “It’s a win-win overall,” she said. “The Navy and Marine Corps benefit because we will now have greater flexibility and utilization of all our manpower assigned to the Marine Corps. … This increases our pool of available deployable corpsmen.”

Air Force Microsatellite Passes Key First Tests

XSS-11 successfully completes series of orbital rendezvous maneuvers Orbiting Earth for six months, the U.S. Air Force XSS-11 (Experimental Satellite System-11) has achieved an early objective—to rendezvous with other space hardware. The small, low-cost spacecraft was developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The XSS-11 is shaking out technology and techniques for future military space purposes, be it for in-space servicing and repair of other satellites to up-close inspection of objects in space. The XSS-11 was rocketed into space on April 11 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California atop an Orbital Sciences Minotaur booster. Launched in April, the Air Force XSS-11 microsatellite is testing technologies useful for space servicing and inspection — capabilities helpful for both military and civilian objectives.Maneuvers to upper stage
XSS-11 has flown repeat rendezvous maneuvers with the Minotaur upper stage that deposited it into orbit, reported Harold “Vern” Baker, AFRL’s XSS-11 program manager. “The satellite is doing outstanding,” and has accomplished “a significant milestone.” Baker told SPACE.com that the XSS-11 is carrying out “passively safe trajectories” to repeatedly reach the Minotaur upper stage. The Air Force experimental spacecraft approached the spent stage, maneuvering to as close as about 1,640 feet (500 meters) distance. “We do have some imagery” of the upper stage taken by XSS-11, Baker said. That data is still being reduced and reviewed, he added. The up-close look-see produced no surprises, Baker said, but there was “a lot of excitement when it happened.” XSS-11 is outdoing an earlier shakeout test satellite, the XSS-10. That spacecraft flew a 20-hour mission in January 2003, inspecting and navigating around the Delta 2 second stage that placed XSS-10 into orbit.
Next objective
Baker said that the XSS-11 may remain in its present phase of testing over the next 8 to 12 weeks before controllers plan for the next rendezvous. Its next operation depends on the completion of its current work, and what space hardware is reachable given fuel efficient maneuvers, Baker said. “Our fuel consumption has been extremely good,” Baker explained. “We’ve used about 10 percent of our fuel so far” after being in orbit for six months, he said. Baker said that the propellant onboard the XSS-11 should allow the vehicle to accomplish its mission. “We expect to go for another year,” he explained. Orbiting space hardware that might be reached by XSS-11 includes derelict rocket bodies and several old satellites. Selected objects are all dead or inactive property and U.S.-owned. For example, XSS-11 operators were considering a rendezvous in the near-term with an old Thor upper stage. “That was within the next three weeks, so we probably won’t go see it. We’ll wait for another one,” Baker said.
Air Force space technology
Baker said that XSS-11 is the best satellite he’s ever flown. The comment is made all the more sweeter given the total project cost: $82 million, including launch, operations, the spacecraft itself, and all the ground control hardware, Baker noted. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company near Denver, Colorado is AFRL’s structure, propulsion and systems support contractor for XSS-11. The groundwork for an XSS-12 mission – still to be fully defined – is already in motion. Perhaps by year’s end, Baker explained, the duties of such a follow-on satellite may be clear. To further hone Air Force space technology, not all progress depends on XSS-type satellites. “We’re a lab dedicated to developing technologies needed by the Air Force for future missions,” Baker said. Those needs could mean anything, he said, from docking, servicing, inspection to imaging.
RoadRunner and DSX
One such project in the works is RoadRunner, an experimental satellite that will have gone from concept to launch ready within 18 months. Loaded with hardware, RoadRunner equipment would collect radio, radar, and handheld communication signals. It would also tote a telescope to demonstrate low-cost, high-quality photography for use by war fighters in the field. This experimental satellite would show off autonomous operations attributes using a sophisticated autopilot system. Along with RoadRunner is the Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) satellite, once dubbed the Deployable Structures Experiment. Areas to be advanced by DSX involve conducting persistent global and tactical radar operations from medium Earth orbit; try out enhanced military satellite-based communication; and chart out how future Department of Defense responsive satellite platforms can best be protected from space weather phenomenon. Both RoadRunner and DSX are AFRL efforts.

Pentagon Overestimated Base Closing Savings

A federal commission approved all but 14 percent of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's recommendations for closing or consolidating U.S. military bases _ but it also took issue with the plan in a final report sent to President Bush. The nine-member panel said the Pentagon overestimated savings by $30 billion and that some of the proposals for streamlining the Army, Navy and Air Force might have made the services less efficient.Also, the commission questioned whether the restructuring should have been postponed until a major review of the national defense strategy was finished. The president now must decide whether to accept the panel's plan. Last month, Bush, using the commission's nickname, told reporters: "In order for the process to be nonpolitical, it's very important to make it clear that the decision of BRAC will stand, as far as I am concerned." Bush could reject the report altogether or send it back to the commission for more changes. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not say whether Rumsfeld, who has expressed reservations about some of the commission's changes, will recommend approval or rejection of the report. Overall, the commission signed off on roughly 86 percent of what Rumsfeld recommended. That's on par with previous years, when commissions changed only about 15 percent of what the Pentagon proposed. After Congress receives the report from the president, lawmakers have 45 days to block it. The report will become law unless the House and the Senate pass a joint resolution objecting to it. That has never occurred in previous base-closing rounds. The Pentagon has claimed its plan would save about $49 billion over 20 years, but the commission said in its final report that the Pentagon wrongly attributed most of the savings to the relocation of 26,830 military personnel to other facilities. Agreeing with an earlier assessment by the Government Accountability Office, the commission said taxpayers would not see actual savings simply by moving personnel from one base to another. Those workers' jobs would have to be eliminated for savings to be realized, it said. If the personnel "savings" were not included, the commission said, the Pentagon plan would save only $19 billion. While the Pentagon aimed to increase "jointness" among the service branches by streamlining operations and support across the Army, Navy and Air Force, "very few of the hundreds of proposals increased jointness, and some actually decreased or removed joint and cross-service connections," the panel said in the report. It said Rumsfeld's recommendations "will not move the ball across the jointness goal line" but that the commission's changes "will help move the ball down the field." The commission also said the completion of the upcoming report on national defense strategy, called the Quadrennial Defense Review, "may have better informed and assisted the commission in making its final decisions." The panel suggested that future rounds of base closings should be done only after such major strategic reviews are finished.

Navy Pilots Told To Stick To Supply Mission After Rescuing Storm Victims

Two Navy helicopter pilots who rescued more than 100 civilians in New Orleans last week were reminded, but not reprimanded, by their commander that their primary mission was to resupply rescuers on the ground, a Navy spokesman said. Two women are rescued by a US Navy helicopter 05 September 2005, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Two navy helicopter pilots who rescued more than 100 civilians in New Orleans last week were reminded, but not reprimanded, by their commander that their primary mission was to resupply rescuers on the ground, a Navy spokesman said The New York Times reported that the pilots, Lieutenant David Shand and Lieutenant Matt Udkow, were chided by their air operations commander for rescuing civilians when their assignment was to resupply military operations along the gulf coast. The Times said Udkow was temporarily taken out of the flying rotation and assigned to oversee a kennel that was set up to take care of pets of service members evacuees from hurricane damaged areas. A Navy spokesman at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, where the pilots were based, said they had flown eight missions since the incident last Tuesday. Udkow "was never taken off any mission," Lieutenant Jim Hoeft said by telephone from Pensacola. He said the pilot had volunteered to oversee the kennel as a side duty. "Our number one focus is to save lives, and these pilots are to be commended for what they did. In fact the air operations boss commended them for what they did. Nobody was reprimanded for their participation in these rescue efforts," Hoeft said. "What he did do -- and this is important for everybody in the military -- is he reminded them of what their primary mission was," he said. "We have search and rescue teams in place, and those teams are going out and performing rescues. Those guys have to be resupplied, and that was the primary mission of these helicopters," he said. The incident occurred August 30, the day the levees gave, flooding New Orleans. The military has since come under fire for being slow to respond in the days immediately after the flooding. Shand and Udkow were returning in their Navy H-3 helicopter from delivering supplies to the Stennis Space Center near the Mississippi coast when they heard a Coast Guard radio transmission calling for helicopters to help with a rescue mission at the University of New Orleans. Out of radio range with Pensacola, they responded to the call without getting permission from their air operations commander. Soon they were plucking civilians off the roof of a house; then they landed on an apartment building to pick up other stranded people. They ferried to safety others who had gathered on a bridge. During a refueling stop at a Coast Guard station, they called Pensacola and received permission to continue the rescue operations, the Times said. The next morning, though, the Navy air operations chief at Pensacola, Commander Michael Holdener, told them that while rescuing civilians was laudable the lengthy rescue effort was an unacceptable diversion from their main mission, according to the Times. "We all want to be the guys who rescue people," the Times quoted Holdener as saying. "But they were told we have other missions we have to do right now and that is not the priority."
Thanks to Michael Krulik for the heads up on this story.

Joining The Military

Your Decision
Your decision to join the U.S. Military will have life-changing implications. The lessons you learn in the military about yourself and the world around you will make an indelible impression on you for life. Below are a few facts, observations, musings, and more to help you in your decision about joining the military.
Background
The U.S. Military is charged with protecting the United States of America, and protecting the interests of the U.S. worldwide through the use of military force and persuasion. By joining the U.S. Military you will be part of that effort.

The military, of course, is not a civilian job. If you join, you should be prepared to take up arms against enemies of the United States. For example, the basic mission of the Marine Rifle Squad is "TO LOCATE, CLOSE WITH, AND DESTROY THE ENEMY BY FIRE AND MANEUVER, OR REPEL THE ENEMY'S ASSAULT BY FIRE AND CLOSE COMBAT. Not exactly like working in a cubicle! Many reservists and military personnel in support roles are finding out in Iraq that you don't have to be in a Marine Rifle Squad to find combat action.
Reasons for Joining
There are many good reasons to join the military:
Duty to Country
The anti-communist writer Robert Heinlein, in his book Starship Troopers (the original book, not the movie), commented on the differences between a citizen (civilian) and a soldier: "The difference lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not."
Personal Development
A Marine recruiting poster says it best: "MARINES MAKE MEN - BODY, MIND, SPIRIT."
Get an Education
The military academies provide a college degree free of charge. Enlisted personnel can earn up to $50,000 in financial assistance towards a college degree and other post-high school education. Benefits
VA home loans, veteran's franchise programs and other benefits will help you throughout life.
Travel
A popular U.S. Navy recruiting slogan says "JOIN THE NAVY - SEE THE WORLD."
Career
Join at age 18, serve twenty years, and retire at age 38!
Career Development
Gain valuable experience for civilian jobs. From military police to space science applications in the U.S. Air Force, you can gain valuable job experience in a wide variety of fields. Many officers use their military experience as a springboard to the corporate world or specialized government positions such as those in the ATF, CIA, FBI, State Department, etc.
Learn Life Lessons
Thomas E. Ricks, a civilian reporter for the Wall Street Journal, followed a group of Marine recruits from boot camp to graduation. These experiences formed the basis of his book Making the Corps. He found that the military does a better job in teaching life's important lessons than does for example the average American high school:
- Tell the truth
- Do your best, no how trivial the task
- Choose the difficult right over the easy wrong
- Don't pursue happiness, pursue excellence
- Money isn't the measure of a man, a person's real wealth is his character. Preparing for the Military
One of the many words of wisdom you may hear in the military are the "Seven Ps": "Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance." This statement should certainly be heeded in preparations for the military. A few hints:
1. Find the right military job for you. There are hundreds of military occupational specialties to pick from. Do your research, then talk to a recruiter. And then get it in your contract.
2. Realize that military jobs are military jobs, not civilian jobs. Remember Pauly Shore in the movie In The Army Now? His movie character's experience at cleaning swimming pools in civilian life didn't exactly translate into his military job of water purification in the desert!
3. Double check the info you receive from your recruiter with someone you trust who has served in the military. Recruiters have been known to "stretch the truth" from time to time.
4. Prepare yourself physically. Don't waste your time, and the military's, by reporting to boot camp or military school out of shape. If you are too out of shape to train with the others you may be placed in a separate remedial physical fitness program. In boot camp, placement in such a program will delay your graduation. Boot camp is generally not a fun place to be, and you will want to graduate in the shortest possible time.
5. Prepare yourself mentally. To maximize your opportunities in the military you will want to score as high as possible on military entrance examinations such as the ASVAB. Many jobs in the military require certain minimum scores on these exams. There are many study guides available - do your homework before taking the test(s).
Surviving Basic Training
Seven tips to help you make it through boot camp.
1. Have a positive attitude. Your time at boot camp will be one of the defining moments of your life. Make the best of it. Make yourself proud - do the right thing and you'll have something positive to remember for life. Moreover, inevitably there will be a few who develop bad attitudes about the situation. Don't buy into their negativity.
2. Just do it! Believe it or not, there's a purpose for every silly thing you do in boot camp. Diligently comply with all of your instructor's commands. U.S. military drill instructors/sergeants are consummate professionals - the best in the world at what they do.
3. Remember, it's not personal. Your drill instructors/sergeants will find some of the most obscenely funny things to say about you. But they don't really mean it, usually. At first, you will probably hate your instructors/sergeants, not believing that God could have created such vile persons. However, by the end of training, you might just have a grudging admiration for their efforts.
4. Don't eat anything you have been ordered not to eat, or you'll be eating a lot of it! Example: A private was caught eating the candy bar from an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) during field training. Since the recruits had already been ordered not to eat candy bars, and the forbidden candy bars had already been collected by the drill instructors, there was a ready supply at hand for punishment. "So you want to eat candy, well here's a few hundred bars - start eating." The rest of the platoon had to watch while the poor guy had to eat candy bar after candy bar until there was chocolate oozing from his mouth and running down his khakis. After that, he was known simply as "the candy man."
5. Don't draw undue attention to yourself: Unless you're a glutton for punishment or like living on the edge, do not volunteer for anything. (Attention at basic training is rarely good.)
6. Help your buddies: In basic training, you'll probably hear about the importance of teamwork in the military and that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If your buddy is struggling in a particular area, give them a hand.
7. Don't Worry: Though basic training may seem impossibly hard at first, remember that it is a process that has been successfully completed by millions of other people before you. In fact, as hard as it may seem, the drill instructors/sergeants want you to succeed and graduate - the military needs people and they don't bring people to boot camp just for harassment. Also, some people prior to boot camp are worried that their fellow recruits will all be six foot four inch blonde Marine killing machines. Although there is sometimes such a person in each recruit platoon, you'll be relieved to know that most recruits are average Americans - short, tall, overweight, underweight, country, city, bright, dumb - and most of them will be just as scared or concerned as you are about what faces them at basic training.

Military Crack Down On Internet Shenanigans

The U.S. Army is warning soldiers that posting photos on their Web logs may inadvertently reveal "vulnerabilities and tactics," and "needlessly place lives at risk." Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker circulated a memo to all Army personnel last week saying that "we must do a better job" at operational security -- "OPSEC" in military parlance."Some soldiers continue to post sensitive information" on the Internet and especially on their Web logs or online diaries, wrote Schoomaker, giving as examples "photos depicting weapon system vulnerabilities and tactics, techniques and procedures. "Such OPSEC violations needlessly place lives at risk and degrade the effectiveness of our operations," he wrote. Schoomaker promised that amendments to Army regulations would be promulgated within a month, and that officers would have access to new training materials on the issue by Sept. 2. In the meantime, he ordered Army staff at the Pentagon to "tracks and report, on a quarterly basis, (such) OPSEC violations." "Get the word out and focus on this issue now," Gen. Schoomaker concluded. "I expect to see immediate improvement." A copy of the memo was posted on the Web by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, who edits the e-newsletter Secrecy News. Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh told United Press International it was Department of Defense policy that military personnel, "while acting in a private capacity ... have the right to prepare information for public release through non-Department of Defense forums or media" so long as they did it in their own time and with their own equipment, and did not use "information generally not available to the public." But, she added, parts of the military "are permitted to issue additional guidance to their personnel as long as it doesn't conflict with" Pentagon policy. In Iraq, for instance, soldiers already have to register their blogs, as the popular online diaries are called, and are forbidden from revealing classified data, naming casualties until after their families have been informed, or writing about incidents that are being investigated. At least one soldier has already fallen afoul of the current restrictions. Arizona National Guard Spec. Leonard Clark was last month fined $1,640 and demoted to private for violating two provisions of the Uniform Military Code of Justice by posting what the military said was classified material on his blog. Other U.S. military personnel who have Web logs reacted in different ways to Schoomaker's announcement, with some applauding the move and others more cautious, fretting that this might herald a new era of restrictions. The Army intelligence officer who blogs as Blackfive wrote on his site that he had seen little in the way of descriptions of tactics "that could not be found in an Army manual from an Army-Navy surplus store or on E-Bay." Nonetheless, he warned that "Military bloggers must now be very, very aware that one mistake might, at best, get all of the MilBloggers shut down, and, at worst, cost lives," Blackfive concluded, using the shorthand terminology for military online diarists.The retired military blogger who calls himself "John, the armorer and master of Castle Argghhh," advises fellow bloggers to check with senior officers if they have any doubt about posting something. "We can talk all day about the pros and cons of what's more important, the flow of information, or the hoarding of it," John wrote in a post last week, "but the point is that the active duty milbloggers (and those of us who hold clearances, regardless) need to keep an eye on what we post and how it's sourced -- because the Chief just told all our bosses to keep an eye on it...." "Remember," he continued, "the (chief of staff of the Army) just kicked your bosses in the teeth, which means the weaker of them are going to go overboard in erring on the side of caution, which means pressure on you. Maintain a 360 scan guys, and when in doubt - don't post it. Ask," he concluded. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Pierett told UPI that battalion security officers, or in smaller units, the unit commander, had the authority and the training to review blog posts and other communications before they were sent, to make sure there were no violations of OPSEC. O'Grady-Walsh said blogging was only one of the ways that troops were using new technologies innovatively. Others included cell phones with cameras and the establishment of unit Web sites. She said the department was trying to exploit "the communications technologies (that) are changing the very fabric of our societies ... and the way our young people think and interact." She added that the use of official blogs as a "collaborative tool" had "become an integral part of current practices at all levels of the department." But Blackfive suggested that the unprecedented access troops had off-duty to the Web was part of the "experiment in expeditionary force theory" represented by Operation Iraqi Freedom. He gloomily predicted that "in the future, military blogging will be severely restricted" with senior officers deciding that the experiment was "risking much more than they are gaining." A note from Schoomaker's deputy, Gen. Richard Cody, circulated with his memo, spells out that risk. Cody's note says that Iraqi insurgents and foreign jihadists are using pictures -- of roadside bomb strikes, firefights, injured or dead U.S. soldiers or enemy and destroyed or damaged vehicles and other equipment -- "as propaganda and terrorist training tools.""The enemy is actively searching the unclassified (computer) networks for information, especially sensitive photos, in order to obtain targeting data, weapons system vulnerabilities, and (tactics, techniques and procedures) for use against the coalition," he wrote. He gave as an example the fact that "annotated photos of an Abrams tank penetrated by (a rocket propelled grenade) are easily found on the internet." "By showing the effect on a vehicle that way, you are revealing its vulnerabilities," Pierett said. "NETCOM tracks who is on the (military's public computer) networks," wrote John, referring to the Army's Network Enterprise Technology Command, "and the Jihadis are there, reading, sharing, learning."