Boeing has scored the first international sale of the Laser JDAM, signing a commercial contract with the German government for an undisclosed amount of the munitions, the company announced yesterday. The work will include support for integrating the modified 500-pound bombs on Tornado strike aircraft. Delivery is expected to begin in mid-2009, with options for additional units in 2009, Boeing said. Laser JDAM is a GPS-guidance-aided joint direct attack munition with a laser kit added so that the bomb can be used to attack both stationary and fast moving targets. Boeing said it expects additional orders in the near future. The US Air Force took delivery if its first Laser JDAMs earlier this year to address one of pressing warfighter needs in Southwest Asia: countering fleeting targets with precision.
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.…