Random Nuclear Strikes

It’s The Armadillo!

PEORIA, Ill. — This industrial city, hard hit by the recession, has found a new, low-budget way to fight crime: Park an unmanned, former Brink’s truck bristling with video cameras in front of the dwellings of troublemakers.

Police here call it the Armadillo. They say it has restored quiet to some formerly rowdy streets. Neighbors’ calls for help have dropped sharply. About half of the truck’s targets have fled the neighborhood.

“The truck is meant to be obnoxious and to cause shame,” says Peoria Police Chief Steven Settingsgaard.

The Armadillo has helped alleviate problems like drug dealing that can make neighborhoods unlivable.

Police got a call at 2:30 one morning from Mary Smith, a 58-year-old computer operator at a Butternut Bread Bakery. Fighting back tears, she asked for relief from her neighbors’ incessant yelling.

She and her husband, Terry, 61, a Butternut baker, have lived in their home on North Wisconsin Avenue for 30 years, and have seen the neighborhood fall into drug trafficking. The police suggested using the Armadillo.

That weekend, the truck pulled up to the offending neighbor’s house. A police officer knocked on the door and told the residents a nuisance report had been filed. Within 24 hours, the Smiths say, the house was quiet. The occupants moved out soon thereafter.

“The difference was like night and day,” Mrs. Smith says. The landlord, Phil Schertz, credits the Armadillo.

I think it needs more lights. But it’ll do for now. Especially seeing as how the current plan is to burn the dealer’s house to the ground.

That option is seen as drastic by some folks. Maybe it is, but it is also very effective.

But I’m glad she is.

House member, Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) is refusing to have any town hall meetings with her constituents.

Her already announced 2010 challenger, Frank Guinta, Mayor of Manchester, NH has decided to hold some town hall meetings for her.

“It is unthinkable, that an elected leader who herself is famous for her attendance and outspoken opposition at her predecessors’ town halls, would simply refuse to allow the same opportunity to her constituents, “said Guinta.

Hit the link and see exactly how crazy Shea-Porter is (hint: she actually dressed up in Nazi garb to protest at a Bush rally).

It sounds as though Mayor Guinta heard of Mr. Kelly’s meeting in Arizona.

Two for two, with a bonus on the second slam.

Two different Thaad interceptors were launched against a single target, simulating an Army operational concept of dispatching a salvo of weapons to ensure a threat is destroyed. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and industry officials declared the flight test a success shortly after it was executed.

However, they disclosed to Aviation Week only recently that the results exceeded their expectations. Early reports from the Pentagon said the second interceptor was intentionally destroyed in flight after the first disabled the target in a hit-to-kill engagement.

“Actually, what happened on the flight test was that the first interceptor hit just as it was supposed to and the second interceptor looked at all of this debris and said, ‘OK, I’ve got another something that looks interesting,’ picked out another threat, and went out and killed it,” says Tom McGrath, Thaad vice president for prime contractor Lockheed Martin. “The second intercept hit another piece of hardware. We can’t talk about what that was, but it picked out what logically you would expect it to pick out and killed it.”

The left has been trying to kill this program for just about ever. Now that the technology has improved, you don’t hear much from them about how “It doesn’t work now, and it will never work in the future.”

Go to Closing Velocity to read more about this and the past successes the media isn’t telling us about because they use it as a cudgel to beat the Pentagon with.

Found via the AoSHQ