Defense Articles

IF YOU want to buy an anti-tank weapon, a rocket-propelled grenade, a couple of anti-personnel mines, or an AK-47, then the gun souk in Jihana is the place to go.

Me, I was just curious. Jihana is 20 miles south of Sanaa, and my friend Mohammed offered to take me.

A successful businessman in Sanaa; he knows things and has serious connections. “I’ll bring the kids” he said. “We’ll make it a picnic.” I bought some baklava from the Lebanese bakery, some tangerines and Pepsis from the corner store. Mohammed came by my house, his three boys in the back of the Jeep Cherokee, his cousin/bodyguard, Aziz, up front with a scowl and an AK-47.
A boy will usually get his first gun at 13 or 14 and, if he proves responsible, may graduate to an AK-47 within a few years. Mohammed’s boys were still too young, but they were keen and had been promised a chance to shoot Aziz’s automatic.

In Jihana, a scrappy village surrounded by steep, rocky mountains and qat fields, only a half-dozen stores were open, their wares on casual display: Belgian FLN rifles, AK-76s and -47s, and a large number of Spanish pistols. Behind the counters were Claymore mines and German grenades. Impressive, sure, but the boys and I wanted to see the big stuff.

A man with a very dirty headscarf led us up the street. We ducked between two empty cinder-block buildings and along a treacherous path. Through a series of dirty rooms and here were the goods: several American anti- tank LAWs, and two Russian ZSU-23s, dual- barrelled anti-aircraft guns. The ZSUs were battered and rusty. They’d seen a lot of action somewhere but they still worked.
Dirty Headscarf said these things moved fast, within the week. Usually they were sold locally but, he said, you could find Ethiopians, Somalians and Eritreans here often enough. Just load the weapons into a sambuk and sail back across the Red Sea. Stuff found its way north, too, across the border into Saudi Arabia.

Back out in the sunshine, we watched a potential buyer try out a rocket- propelled grenade. There was an incredible explosion, a landslide of rocks in the distance, a murder of crows snapping into the cloudless sky. Aziz got out his AK-47 and Mohammed’s boys fired off a few rounds.

As we ate the baklava and drank the Pepsis I thought about all these weapons; where they’d come from, where they were going, who had died, who would die. Mohammed is not a violent man. He seemed to sense what I was thinking. “Let’s go,” he said to the boys.

The Army National Guard continues to modernize, while simultaneously embracing new missions and force-structure designs.

A modern, technologically advanced force is vital to the Army National Guard’s ability to fulfill its warfighting mission in support of the National Military Strategy. The reason is quite simple-modem equipment makes Guard units and soldiers interoperable with their active counterparts, thereby making them deployable in time of conflict.

Maj. Gen. Roger C. Schultz, Army National Guard director, has stated he is committed to ensuring the Army Guard’s equipment mirrors the active Army’s. This would generate a new array of equipment requirements ranging from new helicopters to digitized information systems and upgrades to combat systems.
Some help is on the way. The fiscal year 2001 Defense Appropriations Act signed last month by the president contains $1.7 billion for Army National Guard procurement. The figure is $321 million more than the president requested, and reflects Congress’ continued support of Guard modernization.

A situation report on the Army National Guard’s progress toward modernization follows.

The AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was widely used by the active-component Army in the Persian Gulf War. It has become the standard attack helicopter, succeeding the AH-1 Cobra in this role.

The Apache employs a two-man crew, with a pilot and a gunner. In its anti-armor role, it fires missiles after hovering at low altitudes; while the spotter helicopter, usually an OH-581), flies high and out of the range of tank guns.
The Army National Guard has some Apaches, but the current mainstay of the Guard attack helicopter fleet is the Vietnam-era AH-I Cobra, which the Army wants to retire. The Army National Guard needs the Apache to achieve interoperability with active forces.

The AH-64 is manufactured by Lockheed Martin at its Arizona plant. Lockheed Martin is a Legion de Lafayette and an annual NGAUS Corporate Associate member.

The Javelin anti-tank weapons system is the leading mounted anti-tank weapons system offering the latest in smart missile technology.

Employing “fire and forget” smart technology that allows the gunner to lock on to a target and pull the trigger, the missile’s guidance system takes over from there.

Weighing less than 50 pounds and with a maximum range of more than 2,500 meters, the Javelin surpasses its predecessor, the Dragon.

It is the product of a joint venture by Raytheon TI Systems in Lewisville, Texas and Lockheed Martin in Orlando, Fla. Both are Legion de Lafayette and annual NGAUS Corporate Associate members.

The Light-Armored Vehicle, or LAV, has been the subject of much attention and controversy since Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K Shinseki announced plans to purchase lighter, wheeled combat vehicles as part of his Army “Transformation.”

The Army has yet to settle on an exact model and manufacturer, but the Army National Guard has been operating LAVs for several years. Since the mid-1990s, units in eight states have acquired one or two specially modified, unarmed light-armored vehicles apiece for use in counter-narcotics work.

The vehicle is suitable for transportation of infantry and military police troops. It provides protection against individual weapons and artillery fragmentation. Its eight rubber wheels enable it to reach speeds exceeding tracked vehicles, even on rough terrain.LAVs can also travel primative roads and cross bridges that would stop much heavier tanks.

The LAVs in the Army National Guard inventory are manufactured by GM Canada. The vehicle is the standard armored-personnel carrier in the Canadian Army, which has lent several LAVs to the first two Army combat brigades at Fort Lewis, Wash., undergoing the transformation.

General Motors is a Legion de Lafayette and an annual NGAUS Corporate Associate member.

The Patriot Missile System provides high- and medium-altitude defense against aircraft and tactical ballistic missiles to critical assets and maneuver forces belonging to the corps and echelons above corps. The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 system upgrade, along with the PAC-3 missile, will also be able to counter cruise missiles.

The combat element of the Patriot is the fire unit, which consists of a Radar Set, an Engagement Control Station, an Electronic Power Plant, an Antenna Mast Group, and eight remotely located launching systems.

It is currently being fielded in Europe, Korea and Southwest Asia. The Army National Guard has Patriot battalions in Alabama and New Mexico.

The Patriot is a joint venture by Raytheon Systems in Bedford, Mass., and Lockheed Martin Vought Systems in Grand Prairie, Texas. Both are Legion de Lafayette and annual NGAUS Corporate Associate members.

The M109A6 Paladin provides the primary indirect fire support to heavy divisions and armored cavalry regiments.

Like the earlier M109 models, the Paladin is a fully tracked, armored vehicle with a 155-mm howitzer.

The Paladin includes an on-board ballistic computer and navigation system, secure radio communications, an improved cannon and gun mount, automatic gun positioning, automotive improvements, improved ballistic and nuclear-biological-chemical protection, driver’s night-vision capabilities and built-in test equipment.

There are four categories of federal safety regulations that apply to teddy bears made and sold in America. There are zero that apply to guns. — PAX

Well that can’t be true,” said my husband. “You have to have a license to own a gun, for example. Isn’t that a federal law?” We had just returned home to Brooklyn from Washington, DC, where we had joined 750,000 other parents, children, and friends in the successful Million Mom March, held on Mother’s Day, May 14. My husband is not alone in his confusion about firearms and the law. There is very little clarity about the topic and not much that makes sense. In fact, the average person, even one who has just attended a march to end gun violence, is likely to be surprised when discovering the truth. There is no federal law, for instance, that requires gun owners to have a license, and in many parts of our country, there is no state requirement either. Yet the pain of innocent victims’ families is borne by our society every day.
“It’s so hard for me to say I will never hold her again, she will never get married or have children,” said Veronica McQueen, the mother of six-year-old Kayla, shot in her classroom in Michigan by another six year old in February 2000. Spoken with unbelievable bravery by a woman who had lost her small daughter only last February 29, McQueen’s words were mind-numbing–her pain so inconceivable I almost couldn’t think about it. I stood in the midst of a weeping crowd and felt thankful that my own four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Adelaide, was sitting safely with her dad and our friends on a blanket under a nearby tree.
I met, face to heart-breaking face, women who had come in groups to the march with a common bond: each had lost a child to a gunshot. Looking into the eyes of these women as they told their stories was an incredible experience.

“My son, Greg, was shot in the chest trying to protect my sister on Labor Day 1996, when he was 24,” Debra Lampole of Butler, Pennsylvania, told me during the rally portion of the march. Standing only 3 feet away from her, I could actually feel her tired grief, and, for a moment, I could not push the possibility of losing my own child to violence out of my head. On average, 12 other women like Debra will lose a child today, 12 more tomorrow, the next day, and so on.

There’s no question that the Million Mom March’s message–to apply common sense to our gun laws and protect our children–was heard. Attended by more than double the expected number and conducted with peace and superb organization, it accomplished its mission easily and elegantly. The spirit in the air on that blessedly clear and comfortable morning was palpable.

The Million Mom March was most remarkable, however, for its success at bringing together people who have many different ideas about what it means to own a gun. Certainly many attendees, such as myself, do not own a gun and have no desire to ever do so. Many others think that gun ownership itself is not a problem and just want that ownership, and the guns themselves, to be more strictly regulated.

As parents with a common goal–keeping our children safe–we have to contend with these differences in beliefs about guns and the very confusing variations in gun laws from state to state, or even, in some places, from town to town. Our biggest roadblock, however, is our own ignorance about what is regulated in the first place. Most of us do not know just how much freedom the gun industry and potential gun owners really have. Here follows a gun primer.

Regulating People, Regulating Products

First, the gun issue is really two separate issues. There is the matter of regulating the people who buy and use guns, and there is the issue of regulating the products–the guns, and the industry which manufactures them. Gun owners are subject to the licensing and registration laws of their state, if it has any such laws at all–35 states do not.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no federally controlled system of licensing or registration for gun owners at this time. The closest thing we have to this is the Brady Law, which requires a potential gun buyer to undergo a background check to ensure they are not a convicted criminal.

The Brady Law has prevented more than 400,000 convicted felons from purchasing a gun, according to Talmage Cooley, the co-executive director of The Movement to End Gun Violence (PAX), a nonprofit organization that is devoted to increasing public awareness of the gun violence problem and one of the organizers of the Million Mom March. “Unfortunately, though, there are all kinds of loopholes in the Brady Law,” he says. “One of the biggest problems is gun shows in which your mentally insane and crack-addicted neighbor, the felon, can just pop in and purchase a weapon if he feels like it.”