Senators: Marines bungled video system

[unhappycamper]

Senators: Marines bungled video system
By Tom Vanden Brook - USA Today
Posted : Wednesday Jun 4, 2008 8:04:48 EDT

QUANTICO, Va. — The Marines have mismanaged a four-year effort to develop hidden video cameras to track insurgents planting roadside bombs, according to a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates from two senators.

Sens. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and Joseph Biden, D-Del., told Gates that the Marines failed to support the Tactical Concealed Video System, which was developed by St. Louis-based Sentrus. Adequately supported, they write, the system might have prevented bomb attacks on Marines serving in Iraq.

Bond and Biden say Marines in the field still want the system. Lt. Gen. Keith Stalder, commander of the II Marine Expeditionary Force, which commands troops in Afghanistan, has asked for a demonstration of the system. Lt. Col. Curtis Hill, a spokesman for Stalder, says it may have use in combat.

Officials at the Marine Corps Systems Command, which helps equip Marines for combat, say the system doesn’t work.

“Our operating forces have told us explicitly that this system does not meet their performance expectations,” said Col. Phillip Chudoba, the command’s program manager for intelligence systems. “It does not function as it was intended to function. It does not yield the results that they expected.”


Rest of article at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/06/gns_marines_video_060308/

[Crowman1979]

1. Added with some other factors

Such as:

-How is this camera system going to be powered?

-What happens if the insurgents receive inside info from the Iraqi police on where these cameras are located?