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Israel had been struggling to sell the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system abroad, but the Israel Defense website revealed on Sunday that a major purchaser has been found: the United States.

Apparently the US Army will acquire one Iron Dome battery, and based on tests it will conduct on the system decide whether or not to purchase more units of the Israeli defense system that reportedly boasted a 90% hit rate in Operation Protective Edge.

Israel Defense notes that at the beginning of Iron Dome’s development the US Army didn’t have much confidence in the system, which is why it was funded with a special budget and not the ordinary annual US defense budget that is allocated for other anti-missile systems such as the Arrow.

Having seen the system proven in war, the US now apparently is considering deploying it to defend military establishments and US soldiers around the world, as its short-range missile defense capability is not in great demand in America.

via US Army Buys Its First Iron Dome from Israel – Defense/Security – News – Arutz Sheva.

This is kinda interesting. The US paid some of the initial development work, and a good bit of the procurement for a second series of Iron Dome batteries.

The US uses a modified Mk15 Phalanx in the C-RAM role, or Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar.

But the Phalanx has a fairly small envelope that it can defend. For a larger outpost, it takes several to provide coverage. And the gun on the Phalanx is maintenance intensive.

Iron Dome, on the other hand, can cover a larger footprint with just one battery control. Further, the missiles are ammunition. That is, they require little or no maintenance in normal usage. The sealed cannister just sits there and waits to be used.

And since the majority of the development work has been paid for, it should be a relatively low cost acquisition.

Right now, I’ve got a splitting headache. And starting tomorrow, I’m going to be out of town, so I likely won’t post much.

If you guys want your Christmas bonus, this weekend would be a good time to step up!

“That’s a term for when you’re calling for air extract, like with helicopters,” says Adam Dillon, a staff sergeant in the US Army. “You throw out a smoke grenade and they vector in on it for extraction from a hot area.”

Say “let’s pop smoke” around veterans and we know exactly what you mean: It’s time to get the hell out of here. But if I say that in the newsroom here, I get blank, bewildered stares.

via Seven words and phrases used by soldiers that we could all learn from | Public Radio International.

I can think of a few more than seven.

Actually, when I left the Army, one of the real challenges in working in the civilian world was learning to speak English, not gruntish.

November has been coming for awhile. Specifically since October 1st of last year.

This electoral massacre was revenge. Revenge for failed promises of a President more concerned with his handicap than being a governing executive. It was revenge for cancelled health plans millions of people were promised they could keep… Period. It was revenge for being told repeatedly how great the economy is and how many jobs are being created, despite the lowest work force in 38 years. 38 years. It was revenge for Lois Lerner. It was revenge for the NSA. It was revenge for our dead veterans at the hands of the VA. It was revenge for not being about to play video games or watch football on a Sunday without a culture of protest screaming in our faces. It was revenge for a world spiraling beyond the control of President Hashtag’s celebrity PSAs. It was revenge for losing Iraq, negotiating with Iran and bringing Ebola to our shores for the first time since it’s discovery.

via Red Wedding: November Has Come. | The Wilderness | Conservative Viral Politics Done Differently.

Stephen Miller  aka @redsteeze, has a nice look at what was behind last night’s wave election.

Suffice to say, the electorate is frustrated by a great disconnect between themselves and the government.

Lot’s of exit polls say the economy was the number one issue. DC tells people the recovery is great, while everyone knows in their bones there simply is no recovery.

Moving forward, the Republican led Congress needs to send a series of popular bills to the desk of Obama, forcing him to either veto popular legislation, or sign them and advance policies that are friendly to the GOP (and, one hopes, good for the nation- though I’ll admit the two aren’t always one and the same).

It will be interesting to see in the next two years what the implications are for national security of a GOP led legislature. While the GOP remains strongly committed to defense, and is seen by the electorate as much stronger on defense, the shutdown and sequester of 2013 showed for the first time that fiscal hawks were willing to hold DoD dollars at risk as leverage to reduce the explosion of spending elsewhere. And while that has real short and long term consequences for DoD, I also think it’s inevitable that we have to do it if only to reign in the budget overall.

Of course, the GOP is often described (by those of us on the right) as the Stupid Party. They’ll get back to angering us very shortly, I’m sure.

But for one day, I’mma bask in victory.