FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hughes Expands High-Speed Satellite Internet Access for U.S. Troops in Middle East and Central Asia

Troops in Afghanistan and Iraq Connect with Families via Hughes-Delivered Service

Germantown, Md., December 7, 2009—Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), the global leader in broadband satellite networks and services, today announced that it has expanded provision of high-speed satellite Internet access for U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Available at U.S. military bases, the broadband Internet service is being delivered via the company’s new operations hub in Dubai, enabling troops to stay in touch with family and friends at home, including sending photos and videos, connecting over social networking sites and making VoIP telephone calls.

03 November 2009

British soldiers at war are an incredible group.  Courageous, competent, and committed in very difficult conditions.  An email came today from London, from a BBC correspondent who has been to Afghanistan saying that Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid had been killed.

Please give the gift of independent reporting. Your gift goes far and is used for transport, lodging, living expenses, satellite communications and for repairing and replacing gear that fails due to the rigors of the battlefields.  Millions of people, in more than a hundred countries, see these photos and words.  Your generosity goes very far, and is greatly appreciated.

On Pharmacy Road

24 August 2009
Helmand Province, Afghanistan

The British soldiers of 2 Rifles had a mission:  clear and hold Pharmacy Road.

FOB Jackson is currently home to Battlegroup headquarters for 2 Rifles.  The area around the river is called the “Green Zone,” but just as appropriately could be called the Opium Zone.  During season, the area is covered with colorful poppies, whose 2009 products are probably showing up by now on the streets in Europe.  European money flows back here and buys fertilizer in the Sangin Market, which can be used to make bombs, produce more opium, get more money and make more bombs and grow more opium and make more money and bombs and grow more opium.  Sangin is at once an ATM and weapons bazaar for the enemy.  Nearly all fatalities in this unit have been caused by fertilizer bombs.  The decision to mostly ignore the drug dealers has been a strategic blunder.

This mission was about tactical exigencies created by the strategic realities.  Though FOB Jackson is small enough to walk from one end to another in a few minutes, it is the main base in Sangin, with smaller patrol bases spread around the Sangin area of operations.  Two of those bases are Patrol Base (PB) Tangiers and PB Wishtan.  Tangiers is an Afghan National Army (ANA) PB often used by 2 Rifles, while PB Wishtan is manned by C Coy of 2 Rifles.  (“Coy” is British for “Company.”)

14 September 2009
Helmand Province, Afghanistan

With the war increasing, Air Force Pararescue has been crisscrossing the skies picking up casualties.

17 August 2009
Sangin, Afghanistan

The roads are so littered with enemy bombs that nearly all transport and resupply to this base occurs by helicopter.  The pilots roar through the darkness, swoop into small bases nestled in the saddle of enemy territory, and quickly rumble off into the night.

A witness must spend only a short time in the darkness to know we are at war. Flares arc into the night, or mortar illumination rounds drift and swing under parachutes, orange and eerily in the distance, casting long, flickering but sharply defined shadows.  The worst that can happen is that you will be caught in an open field, covered by nothing and concealed only by darkness, when the illumination suddenly bathes you in light.  Best is to stay low and freeze and prepare to fire, or in the case of a writer, to stay low and freeze and prepare to watch the firing.

Market Garden

A Remembrance During Time of War

Kandahar City, Afghanistan

Slowly, surely, the city is being strangled.  Signaling the depth of our commitment, security forces are thinner in Kandahar than the Himalayan air.  During the days and evenings, there were the sounds of occasional bombs—some caused by suicide attackers, and others by firefights.  The windows in my room had been blown out recently and now were replaced.  We came here to kill our enemies, but today we want to make a country from scratch.

05 October 2009

In July, British soldiers and I boarded a CH-47 helicopter at Camp Bastion for the flight to FOB Jackson at Sangin where fighting is brutal.  The helicopter was so stuffed with men, gear and supplies that the cargo was not even strapped down.  We steadied the long stack with our hands and prayed that the pilots not begin flying violent evasive maneuvers.  The tail gunner partially lifted the ramp to prevent bundles from tumbling into the skies, and that was it for securing the bundles.  Just a week before, a giant MI-26 helicopter was shot down on final approach to this same landing zone.  All aboard died in flames, as did two children on the ground.