BattlelandPentagon
Army Gen. David Petraeus is leaving his successor, Marine Lieut. General John Allen, “tangible progress” in Afghanistan to build on, according to the Pentagon’s semi-annual assessment of how the war is going. Easy for him to say, since by fall he’ll be running the CIA in Langley, Va.
BattlelandTroops
In 2006 and 2008, pregnancy accounted for the most hospitalizations among members of the U.S. military, with mental-health ailments ranked second. In 2010, those two swapped places: mental-health problems were the No. 1 cause of hospital stays for members of the U.S. military last year. “In contrast to recent prior years, in 2010 …
BattlelandTroops
The Navy is on a tear: it has just relieved its third commanding officer this week. That makes 10 so far this year, putting it well ahead of 2010, when 17 were canned over the entire year. The latest man overboard (the ninth, in fact, was a woman, relieved last Saturday) is Commander Jay Wylie, captain of the destroyer …
BattlelandTroops
We’ve reported on the problems IEDs can cause troops’ private parts when they detonate underneath them. Things have gotten so dire that the Pentagon is now skipping normal procurement rules mandating competition, to speed up the purchase and deployment of so-called “ballistic undergarments.” The justification for the no-competition …
BattlelandPentagon
I remember when Harold Brown was Jimmy Carter’s defense secretary. Heck, I remember when Bob McNamara was JFK’s defense secretary, so let me rephrase that: I covered Harold Brown as Jimmy Carter’s defense secretary.
There’s been a flurry of reports over the last couple of days about how the shift of Leon …
BattlelandNational Security
U.S. cities like San Diego are debating the wisdom of putting solar-powered street lights along their roads. Heck — that’s already happening in…Kabul, Afghanistan? You bet. In fact, Colonel Thomas Magness IV, the commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan, was raving about them Thursday:
There is no reliable
…
BattlelandPentagon
Retired Army colonel Douglas Macgregor has always been a bomb-thrower. His 1997 book on the future of the U.S. Army, Breaking the Phalanx, was equally loved and hated by those inside the service. An innovative battle tactician who some saw as arrogant, he’s one of those guys who colors just a little too much outside the lines for the …
BattlelandWeapons
The Congressional Budget Office says killing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in favor of buying more F-16s and F-18s would save $26.9 billion in outlays over the next five years. The F-35 is the biggest Pentagon procurement program in history, slated to buy some 2,500 planes for $382 billion over the next 25 years or so.
BattlelandVeterans
Troops suffering from traumatic brain injury — one of the signature wounds of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — have long been eligible for the Purple Heart. But now the Pentagon is clarifying the rules:
BattlelandTroops
Insurgents killed Army Sgt. John Paul Castro April 22 in Afghanistan’s Paktika province. He was on his third combat tour — one to Iraq, two to Afghanistan — in his less-than-seven-year career. Castro’s last mission was “a fight that occurred at distances measured in hand-grenade range, within a complex environment of walled mazes …
BattlelandNational Security
Colleague Jyoti Thottam reports from New Delhi on Time‘s Global Spin blog that U.S. ambassador to India Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, has quit following India’s scratching of both U.S. warplanes from its shopping list:
We are…deeply disappointed by this news. We look forward to continuing to grow and
…
BattlelandWeapons
There are reports from the subcontinent that India has eliminated the two U.S.-built planes from its $10 billion competition to buy about 126 fighters. Both the Lockheed F-16 and Boeing F-18 have reportedly been scratched from the list of candidates, in favor of a pair of European-built planes. The F-16 is built in Fort Worth. I was …
BattlelandNational Security
…in case you were wondering…
