The 
new Sniper XR targeting pod, used first on fighters, will soon go on bombers, too. The B-1 Systems Group at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, are engaged in adapting the B-1B so it, too, can use the Sniper. The big advantage: It provides positive identification capability. The current radar system that was used to hunt Scuds in Iraq did not provide sufficiently clear resolution. The B-1B pilots had to call on fighters to ID the target. Full integration is projected for FY 2009.
About 10 rockets struck Al-Asad Air Base, Iraq, on the morning of March 3, just over a year after an Iranian ballistic missile attack ravaged the installation and left more than a hundred U.S. troops with traumatic brain injuries. An American contractor suffered "a cardiac episode while sheltering" and died.…