Staff Sgt. Donald Gray fires his weapon while participating in the Short Range Marksmanship training program. Gray is one of more than 300 Kansas National Guard soldiers from the 287th Sustainment Brigade. Gray is at Fort Lewis training for an upcoming deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Lui Kit Wong/The News Tribune)

Staff Sgt. Gregory Strite, far right, demonstrates Short Range Marksmanship to a group of Kansas National Guard Soldiers. More than 300 Kansas National Guard Soldiers from the 287th Sustainment Brigade, headquartered in Wichita, Kan., is at Fort Lewis training for an upcoming deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Lui Kit Wong/The News Tribune)

The Peninsula Daily News has an interesting piece about a squabble between the Navy and Jefferson County residents over an expanded undersea warfare test range in the Hood Canal.

Residents worry that expanded range would limit recreational and commercial water access.

From the article, the proposed changes are:

● The Dabob Bay Range Complex on Hood Canal -- comprised of the north and south military operating areas near Naval Base Kitsap Bangor and the area in Dabob Bay -- would increase from about 32.7 square nautical miles to 45.7 square nautical miles, and the number of days used per year would remain the same, at 200.

● The Quinault Underwater Tracking Range between Pacific Beach in Grays Harbor County and Kalaloch in West Jefferson County would increase from about 48 square nautical miles to 1,840 under the preferred alternative to the full size of a current military air space on nautical charts.

● The Keyport range site would increase from 1.7 square miles to 3.7 square miles, and the average use would increase by five days, to 60 days per year.

Check out the article if you get a chance. Lots of good context in there.

The U.S. Postal Service is offering a discount on flat-rate Priority Mail boxes to overseas military personnel this holiday season.

The largest flat-rate box costs $12.95 to domestic addresses and APO/FPO addresses. But the Post Office dropped the rate to $10.95 for the overseas military addresses.

Less than $11 to ship a box across the globe? That ain’t a bad deal.

Click below to read the full press release, including how to order a free Military Care Kit.

=> Read more!

The road from Kansas to Iraq goes through Fort Lewis.

Members of the 191st Infantry Brigade, Division West, is training 300 soldiers from the Kansas National Guard’s 287th Sustainment Brigade before it deploys to Iraq.

Lewis’ 191st is a mix of active, reserve and Guard soldiers who help train Reserve and Guard units before deployment. The drills include learning how to escape from a Humvee if it rolls over, short-range marksmanship and combat lifesaving courses.

The 191st has trained more than 35,000 Reservists since Sept. 11, 2001.

We’re planning on having a photographer at Lewis today to snap some shots of training. And we’ll post ‘em this afternoon.