US military warned of S.Korea, Japan cost overruns

AFP/File Jung Yeon-Je

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US government report warned Wednesday that the Pentagon was likely underestimating billions of dollars in costs for a controversial restructuring of bases in South Korea and Japan.

The Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan investigative arm of Congress, pointed in particular to the costs from a plan to allow more US troops in South Korea to bring their families.

The Pentagon "is transforming the facilities and infrastructure that support its posture in Asia without the benefit of comprehensive cost information or an analysis of alternatives," the report said.

Obama remakes Afghan war braintrust

US Marines on patrol in Helmand Province
© AFP/File Adek Berry

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Barack Obama will Thursday unveil new military and diplomatic commanders for the increasingly unpopular US Afghan war effort, in a sweeping reshuffle of his national security team.

Obama will use a White House Rose Garden event to nominate a new defense secretary, ambassador to Kabul and top war commander, engineering a shake-up permitted by the June retirement of powerful Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

The president will recall talismanic General David Petraeus from Afghanistan to head the CIA in place of veteran Washington bureaucrat Leon Panetta, who will be nominated as defense secretary as Obama seeks Pentagon spending cuts.

Army surveillance bot approved for use by police, firemen

By Matthew Lasar  
ARS Technica 

You can send it into buildings where hostages are being held, then move it from room to room as it transmits video via its miniature camera. Sleek and unobtrusive, the gadget can slip under furniture and roll down stairs. Only eight inches long and 1.2 pounds, it can be tossed through windows or onto burning roofs without sustaining damage.

Used in Iraq and Afghanistan for several years now, the Recon Scout Throwbot could be of great use to domestic police and fire departments, but there's one thing the little machine can't do—apply for a spectrum use waiver from the Federal Communications Commission. Without that waiver, the bot can't transmit its live video feed.

Thanks to the law firm of Fletcher, Heald, and Hildreth, however, bot maker Recon Robotics has just obtained such a waiver and may now bring the Throwbot to local law enforcement.

US seeks Guantanamo trial for USS Cole suspect

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
© AFP/File Michelle Shephard

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US military prosecutor is recommending the prime suspect in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole be tried at Guantanamo in what would be the first military tribunal under the Obama administration, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

"Military commissions prosecutors have sworn charges against Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri of Saudi Arabia," the Defense Department said in a statement.

The trial, in which the prosecutors were recommending the death penalty, would be the first since President Barack Obama announced in March that military tribunals could be used at Guantanamo, in a reversal from his 2009 freeze of such trials at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.