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Flea highlights a Military.com story on the use of EA-6B Prowlers in IED jamming ops in Afghanistan, noting:

More remarkable than this, however, is how long Military.com - and their sister site, DefenseTech.org - have known about the story and sat on it.*

And:

You have to hand it to the Americans. It is impressive to have so important an asset in theatre and have so few people know about it. (cough)Camp Mirage(cough) (cough)

I somewhat endorse the first statement. The end-state in the second is probably less impressive than random.

Marines in Iraq told me to keep hush-hush about a related technology that accomplishes the same task as the Prowlers. I immediately went and googled a report from a tech magazine (a la, but not, Popular Mechanics), that detailed the model and operation of the technology, including exposition of their weak points and counterstrategies, all presented in a tone of dispassionate analysis. I forwarded the article to a Marine who became a proper mix of pissed and horrified. This technology is commonly discussed on the web (in mainstream outlets) to varying degree, in articles several years old. The tactic is widely understood by insurgents, who have moved on to new tricks (some of which are still legitimately classified). The fact that military.com withheld similar information is indeed odd and to their credit, though I suspect it wasn't terribly newsworthy, and therefore less tempting. On the whole, media has but one goal, and that is to reveal information, consequences be damned.

I was also told that I couldn't report on the Explosive Ordinance Disposal robots that grab suspected IEDs and put them in a safe place to be detonated. I thought that was a bit much, but wasn't bothered by complying with the request. But after arriving back in the States, I saw an EOD robot in a stylized Army recruiting commercial broadcast on national television, in addition to seeing them in dozens of other places in various media.

Cats quickly claw their way out of bags, these days.

Posted by Bill at June 14, 2007 10:59 AM | TrackBack (0)