The Corps updated the media tonight and Water Management Division Chief Jody Farhat said already about 500,000-acre-feet more storage is open now than a year ago. “The total system storage in the main stem reservoir system is currently at 56.4-million-acre-feet. That’s 400,000-acre-feet below the base of annual flood control pool, thus providing an additional 400,000-acre-feet of additional flood control storage for the 2012 runoff season. Last year at this time system storage was at 56.9, about 100,000-acre-feet above the base of annual flood control zone.”

Farhat says that gives the Corps some wiggle room. “What this additional storage gives us is the opportunity perhaps in the spring to hold additional water back if we get rainfall events downstream. Having that additional storage provides just a little bit of additional flexibility.”

The extra space also allows more room for higher inflows upstream as well, but right now Farhat says the snowpack does not look threatening. Farhat says the snow-water equivalence on the plains reported by the National Weather Service remains less than one inch, with few exceptions. NWS shows a below-normal mountain snowpack throughout the Missouri River basin as well, though storms this week have increased that amount.

With the River and most of its reservoirs having frozen up this week, Farhat says the Corps will increase flows into the River beginning tomorrow. “We’ll step up our releases from Garrison at a rate of about 1,000-cubic-feet-per-second every other day until we reach 26- or 27,000 in early February.”

Major General Stephen Danner says the 23 members of the 139th Airlift Wing of the Air National Guard are home just in time to be with their families for Christmas. Those soldiers were providing security at Bagdad International Airport.

Missouri's Adjutant General, Major General Stephen Danner extends holiday greetings to Missourians from the Missouri National Guard. Photo courtesy, Missouri National Guard.

The 139th is based in St. Joseph.

Danner says for a military man or woman, being home for the holidays is tremendous. “When you’re out in the field you’ve got your buddies with you that you celebrate the holidays with, but we all know that no matter how good our friends are, our families are our blood. You always want to be home with your family and especially with your kids. That’s something you just can’t replace and you can’t live over again.”

Had it not been for this withdrawal, the General says it is unclear how long the Guard might have had a presence in Iraq. The 139th was on a 6 month deployment. Danner says, “I know that at one point they thought that the Iraqi government would ask them to stay on maybe another couple of years. But, obviously that did not happen and I know these airmen, being the last Missourians out of Iraq, will be glad to be home this week.”

Though the last Missouri National Guard personnel have left Iraq, General Danner points out there are many still deployed across the globe. That includes, “…a medical unit and an administrative unit in Egypt, right now in the Sanai with U.N. forces, we had the 138th infantry in Japan not too long ago, we’ve had Air Guard in Thailand, we’ve been in Africa with the Army Guard and with the Air Guard went down to Chile in their earthquake earlier this year, and we also have Air and Army Guard in Central America.”

The general notes, the Guard has remained on State Emergency Duty since April 2, and he expects to remain on that status through March and perhaps longer. “We’ve had over 2,500 Army and Air Guardsmen activated for our state mission.”

Thousands of Missourians are or will be overseas by the time February 7th gets here.  Absentee ballots for them are available tomorrow from local election authorities. For those out of the country, applying for one of those ballots is a little more complicated than it is for stay-at-homes.

Deputy Secretary of State Waylene Hiles in the elections office says applications for those ballots are available on the Secretary of State’s web page. In most circumstances the ballot cannot be cast on the internet.  They have to be sent back through regular mail or through shipping services.  .

However, a person in one of more than fifty hostile zones can use the internet or a fax machine to return the ballot.  The rest have to use regular mail or express services to get their ballots back by February 7th. 

It’s possible to authorize a guardian or a relative get a ballot and return it to the election authority office without the voters waiting for weeks to get the ballot and for weeks to get it back.

AUDIO: Interview with Waylene Hiles 8:02 mp3

One connection to that battle can be found over 4,000 miles east, at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. It houses more than 56 million records on U.S. military individuals dating back to 1841. Among them are several hundred files on crewmembers of the Arizona.

Those files were aboard the battleship when it sank. They are now are undergoing conservation measures by the Center’s archivists.

Director Bryan McGraw says he and his staff didn’t know what they had until a request came in for one of those records. “Wow, this one is from the Arizona; that type of thing. So we’ve started a process to take the ones that we know of based upon crew manifests and things, to pull those records and give them some additional conservation treatments because they’re in such fragile condition.”

McGraw says he knows of a few hundred such personnel files from the Arizona that survive. These include a wealth of information on each sailor. “It would have things about their entrance and physical, it would have their assignment history, it would have a variety of demographic data about the individual, various awards or decorations if they earned it, training reports, fitness reports, performance appraisals; those types of things, any kind of discharge or separation documents.” They also including facts of particular interest to families. “It may also have information about dependents; if they got married while they were in the service, if they had children, beneficiaries, things like that. So, if you’re constructing a family history…family tree, these types of records are very, very popular for researchers.”

McGraw says the documents have sustained water damage, bear residue from fires from the battle, and some still smell like fuel. A variety of steps are being taken to save them. That includes mending, humidifying and flattening and removing fasteners, rust and debris.

To see images of some of the documents, courtsey of the Center, visit this [slideshow of documents].

Once each document has been treated as necessary, McGraw says it goes back on file. “These will be kept in a secure room that we have where we store prominent records of famous and historic individuals and figures. They will be kept in there because of the damage that they sustained, and the historical value.”

The project could take months or years before it is completed, as the staff continues to answer other requests for information.

For information on the Center and to learn how to make a request, visit its website.

AUDIO:  interview with National Personnel Records Center Director Bryan McGraw – 10:34

McCaskill is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has regularly criticized military contracting programs in Iraq and in Afghanistan.  She wants to cut as much as 700-milion dollars out of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program and put it into the federal highway trust fund. 

McCaskill says the money is in a program that was intended for finance small projects designed to win the hearts and minds of people.  But she says it’s become a runaway program. She says hundreds of millions of dollars are being used for projects built in unsecure environments and cannot be sustained.  .

McCaskill says teams of inspectors have reported many major projects cannot be protected from insurgent attacks and are not improving services to people or loyalty to a government.  She says the defense department inspector general has reported as much as 38-milion dollars in the program is vulnerable to abuse, fraud, or waste.

The Pentagon calls the program “critical” to fighting insurgency. 

McCaskill introduced her proposal during debate on the new defense appropriations authorization bill but the Senate did not vote on it before approving the bill. McCaskill still has other avenues to remove the money from the budget.

 McCaskill speaks in senate 9:11 mp3

He says the book will have some journal pages in the back of it for guardsmen to fill out with some memories of their service. Brown says this book will be an asset to future generations who want to know about military service in a post-September 11th world.

Brown says the guard has been deployed around the word, and started the Agribusiness Development Team in Afghanistan, as well as helped out domestically with Katrina and the tornado in Joplin. All of these missions and interviews with families are documented in this project.

Brown says the guardsmen will get their book and DVD this December, most likely when the platoons have Family Day. Copies will be available to anyone else who wants to see the Missouri National Guard history later.

AUDIO Allison Blood reports. Mp3 [1:01]

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler

The Super Committee charged with coming up with a trillion dollars in budget recommendations has failed, and Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler says now defense spending is on the line.

She says President Obama has defended those cuts as necessary for balancing the budget, and that’s not the case. She calls him irresponsible as Commander in Cheif to let the funding take a hit. She says the percentage of the budget allocated to defense spending is already the lowest its been in years, and more cuts would cripple national security. But not everyone in Congress agrees. She says she’ll be working with others to find someplace else to cut, like mandatory spending programs.

She says she’ll be introducing legislation that reforms mandatory spending programs to save the country money that could be put into defense spending. Hartzler represents the areas that contain Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman Airforce Base.

AUDIO Allison Blood reports. Mp3 [1:00]

Wreaths Across America at the Jacksonville Veterans Cemetery, 2008. Photo courtesy, Larry Carmer.

Wreaths Across America began as something of a happy accident involving the Worchester Wreath Company in Maine in 1992. The company found itself with a surplus of wreaths near the end of the holiday season, and placed them on graves at Arlington Cemetery. Since then, the program has grown to a nationwide effort to put wreaths on as many veterans’ graves as possible, to make sure their sacrifice is remembered over the holidays.

Each year the program involves a nationwide, simultaneous ceremony followed by the placing of the wreaths. This year, that event is December 10 at 11:00 a.m., Missouri time.

17 cemeteries in the state are participating. Organizers in Missouri say as it stands, however, several of those sites will not have enough wreaths to place one on the grave of each of their veterans.

Art Compton is the organizer at the St. James Veterans Cemetery. He says it takes 761 wreaths to accommodate all the graves he looks after.  As of Tuesday morning he has commitments for 581.  Other cemeteries in the state also need more wreaths to meet their goals.

Seven wreaths are presented at the Jacksonville Veterans Cemetery in 2010. Each participating cemetery receives at least seven wreaths; one for each branch of the military. Photo courtesy, Larry Carmer.

Compton says even one grave going unadorned impacts him deeply. “In my heart, I’ve failed ‘em. These are the people that I would not have my freedom that I so wonderfully enjoy and treasure so deeply. Without their commitment I would not have that, so therefore my commitment is to make sure they do not go without being respected on a holiday.”

Donations and commitments for this year can still be made through Friday. To find out how to donate, visit the Wreaths Across America website. You can also use the site to find participating cemeteries with contacts and other information for each of them.

A nationwide State House Ceremony precedes the wreath-laying event. On December 5 at 11:00 a.m. Central, a wreath will be presented at Missouri’s State Capital in Jefferson City.

Sergeant David Silas of Jackson returned last winter from a year-long deployment with the 1141st Engineer Company. He and several other soldiers later met with researchers at the U.S. Army Laboratory.

The Huskey Mounted Detection Systems vehicle, as operated by Missouri National Guardsman Sergeant David Silas while deployed in Afghanistan. Photos courtesy of Missouri National Guard.

Branch Chief with the Lab, Doctor Alan Davison, was part of that team. He says Sergeant Silas’ superiors told the researchers, “You gotta meet this soldier. He really is special.” Davison describes the Sergeant as having mastered driving the Husky Mounted Detection Systems: a one-man vehicle that travels at the front of a convoy with equipment to detect improvised explosive devices (IEDs), but also having developed visual detection techniques.

Sergeant Silas says a Husky operator has to be good at balancing multiple tasks. “They’re looking in front of them looking for all the visual indicators, they’re watching the people, they’re driving the vehicle, they’re talking on the radio, they’re monitoring their technology, looking underneath the ground, they’re looking behind ‘em watching for anything hidden behind rocks, the people that are paralleling the convoy and watching us, they’re kinda doing all of this at once.”

He describes the knowledge he is sharing as “…skills that a lot of Huskey drivers don’t get to learn when they get into country,” and have to develop while doing the job.

Sergeant David Silas stands in a hole left by an IED that destroyed a road in the Khost province of Afghanistan. Photos courtesy of Missouri National Guard.

Doctor Davison says the Huskey is a complicated piece of equipment. The Sergeant has helped his team to understand everything an operator must do and interpret, in making snap decisions about potential threats along a convoy route.

With that input, the team is working to develop new training techniques and technology to help the Huskey and its operator work together. “We have an individual that works a model, that looks at the equipment that a soldier has to operate. It helps us understand how much of his resources; his cognitive and visual resources and other resources had to be committed to that machine versus the other tasks that he has to do.” Davison says that information could lead to equipment designs that are less distracting and easier for a soldier to use and interpret.

As his work progresses, the Doctor says a visual detection research project will take place in the second week of December at Fort Huachuca in Arizona.  Soldiers will participate in varying training programs. The ability of those soldiers to detect IEDs will be compared to the ability seen in soldiers who have undergone the standard Army training program, to look for differences and improvements.

Sergeant Silas continues to work with that research team. “To be able to take what little bit of information I learned and begin to pass it on to the next generation of war fighters out there, the next generation of engineers that are truly doing this job day-to-day and they have to make that life-and-death decision in an instant? Yeah, I want to pass this on. I want to teach other people, and that really is what motivated me.”

The Lab has also recommended Silas work with other groups studying route clearance and new equipment development.

AUDIO:  Mike Lear reports – 1:00

AUDIO:  Mike Lear interviews Sergeant David Silas with the Missouri National Guard – 10:51

AUDIO:  Mike Lear interviews Dr. Alan Davison with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory – 11:24

Army Ranger Jacob Vogel speaks to fellow veterans at American Legion Post 5 in Jefferson City.

He says talking to other veterans about how wars are different now than they were ten or fifty years ago. Vogel served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Sniper and a Gunner. He says his father, who was also in the military, inspired him to be part of something he called “a wonderful happy fraternity.”

He says now the enemy is less clearly defined. He says a lot of the technology has changed over the years, but he says “old-fashioned boots on the ground” work is what wins wars. He says Veterans’ Day is especially important now because its easy for people to forget about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because the enemy is not as easy to picture, and the battlefield is so different from conflicts in the past.