SE COLORADO IS NOW A MILITARY PLAYGROUND AND THE DRONES ARE COMING

via email: Not 1 More Acre! PO Box 773 Trinidad, Colorado 81082
January 2, 2015

Jabba the Hutt

Star Wars' most powerful, bloated, gluttonous gangster with far reaching influence in politics and criminal spending.
Just as many people around the world were preparing to celebrate the Night Before Christmas, December 24, 2014, Jabba's bagman, Department of Army delivered yet another 'environmental' study, this one disclosing that Gray Eagle drones -- Army's version of Killer Predator drones -- are coming to southeastern Colorado.

Gray Eagle UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ) are part of the standard configuration of Fort Carson's new $3.5 billion Heavy Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB). Four Shadow UAV's accompany each Gray Eagle and AH-64 ('Apache') attack helicopter. Shadow drones have already been added to Fort Carson's illegal training and operations at 236,000-acre Joint Force Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site.

According to its own documents, Department of Defense (DOD) will maneuver Fort Carson's new Heavy CAB between 4,960 and 7,652 hours per year at Piñon Canyon. But DOD's Christmas Eve environmental assessment says Gray Eagle drones will NOT operate at PCMS. These are the same gangsters who repeatedly deny military expansion is happening.



Army is equipping each of its ten active-duty divisions with at least twelve of the Army's new MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAVs. The Gray Eagle is an upgrade of the MQ-1 Predator UAV with a more powerful engine and larger payload. Each Gray Eagle weighs about 4,200 pounds and can carry up to four Hellfire missiles.

Fort Carson with its 30,000 soldiers, 1,082 tracked vehicles, 4,300 wheeled vehicles, Brigade Combat Teams and Combat Aviation Brigade is only one of many installations intensifying and expanding operations at Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site.

Each Heavy Combat Aviation Brigade includes 113 - 120 helicopters, reconnaissance battalions, an assault helicopter battalion, a general support aviation battalion, and an aviation support battalion -- about 5000 special operations and support personnel -- operating lasers, unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles and other electronically integrated air-ground weapon systems and all the old weapons too.

The attack reconnaissance battalions consist of 48 AH-64 Apache helicopters. The Apache is armed with a 30-millimeter chain gun, and it can carry up to 16 laser-guided Hellfire missiles and 76 rockets (in pods of 19 rockets each). At the end of 2011 the Army reported that an Apache Longbow Block III helicopter pilot had controlled the payload and flight path of a Gray Eagle UAS while both aircraft were airborne.

The Gray Eagle Environmental Assessment (EA) for Fort Carson also fails to disclose its proposed operations on Landing Zones multiplying on public lands. We're waiting for another study to see if DOD will disclose its plans for military operations on public lands bordered by Guffey, Cripple Creek, Cañon City, Victor, CO. And the Gray Eagle EA makes not a peep about their plans at Bullseye, DOD's new Joint Force airstrip in southeastern Colorado.

DOD's expansion across southeastern Colorado is being segmented into lots of pieces to confound the public and disguise what DOD, its contractors, and politicians intend: the number one "world class" Joint Force electronic war testing, training, and operations center anywhere. Jabba the Hutt is on the loose.

Military operations are daily being driven deeper into our civilian lives and livelihoods on the last native shortgrass prairie just as the cost of bloated, gluttonous military spending is digging deeper into every taxpayer's pocket.

And all the while, DOD, its contractors, and politicians ignore the federal court order throwing Transformation (a/k/a: electronic warfare) out at Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, aggressively pushing ahead full-bore to expand lethal high-tech warfare on the backs of generational ranchers, rural communities, and the last shortgrass steppe almost healed from the catastrophe that was the Dust Bowl.

DOD continually thumbs its nose at our nation's public disclosure and environmental laws, threatening private property rights, degrading citizens' quality of life, recklessly tearing up the last native shortgrass and upending rural communities and generations of family ranchers whose large mother-calf ranches keep the grassland healthy.

Politicians and contractor operatives also snatched the people of the largest remaining shortgrass steppe out of our rural western Colorado congressional district and placed us in the district with the nation's most rapidly sprawling exurbs for the purpose of killing a six-year-old congressional funding ban. That spending ban blocked DOD's planned 7,000,000-acre military land and airspace expansion at Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, Colorado, for seven years straight. The funding ban is dead as DOD piles on at the headwinds of the Dust Bowl.

Stand up against everything that's wrong with American politics today.
Tell DOD to CLOSE Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site!
CLOSE PCMS!

The Public Comment Period on the Environmental Assessment for Gray Eagle UAV at Fort Carson is OPEN UNTIL FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6.

Why not take a minute now to tell DOD to CLOSE PCMS!
usarmy.carson.imcom-central.list.dpw-ed-nepa@mail.mil

Snail-Mail CLOSE PCMS comments to:
Fort Carson National Environmental Policy Act Program Manager Directorate of Public Works, Environmental Division
1626 Evans Street
Building 1219
Fort Carson, Colorado 80913-4362

("There were no second chances with Jabba, something Han Solo would find out-- though the slug-like alien would ultimately fall victim to his own hubris and vengeful ways." StarWars.com)