Making a Good Thing More Versatile: Boeing officials say that the company has successfully tested its laser version of the Joint Direct Attack Munition. The Laser JDAM launched by a USAF F-16 flying at 20,000 feet “scored a direct hit on an armored personnel carrier moving at 25 mph,” states a company release. All that’s needed to turn a standard GPS/inertial navigation system-guided JDAM into an LJDAM is to install a modular kit on the front end—right in the field. Boeing expects to complete development of the 500-pound LJDAM this year and could begin production in early 2007.
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.