Apparently it’s not just the Pentagon’s weapons that represent relics of the superpower rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union — it is the Cold War way it continues to develop weapons despite today’s very different world. The chart above shows just how much time it takes the military to come up with new weapons — some as long as …
We read so much about the stresses and strains nearly a decade of war has put on our troops. Army boosters are formally acknowledging something just as important: spouses face challenges when their significant other deploys, too.
That’s why the Walter Reed Army Medical Center has just launched a “Significant Others Support Group” …
Sure, they call it the National Military Strategy of the United States of America. It’s a smart but eye-glazing document that oozes national-security platitudes on every one of its 21 pages:
The United States remains the world’s preeminent power, even as a growing number of state and non-state actors exhibit consequential influence.
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That’s what Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Egypt’s woes today. Zut alors! He may just have been trying to show up Alain Juppe, the French defense minister, with that verbal fusillade at a press briefing the two of them held at the Pentagon. Or his speechwriters may be working too hard.
The cash-strapped British military — remember our post on it putting the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible up for sale not too long ago? — is cutting the patrols of the Caribbean its warships have sailed since World War II, the Guardian reports. It’s another sign that a lack of funds is forcing a one-time world superpower to curb its …
I covered Donald Rumsfeld during his second incarnation as defense secretary, from 2001, through 9/11, and the two wars it triggered. President George W. Bush ousted him in 2006 as ever-grimmer news continued to flow out of Iraq. Rumsfeld vanished from the world stage. But he’s back, as of Tuesday. His autobiography, Known and Unknown, …
My colleague Massimo is right, for once. Things have slowed down dramatically in Egypt in recent days. But folks I have been talking to aren’t convinced this is necessarily a good thing, or in the U.S.’s long-term interests. Here’s Washington’s pickle: now that the protesters — and the international community, led by Washington — have …
[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnvxNdez84%5D
A strange-looking bird of prey took off from California’s Edwards Air Force Base on Friday, flying for a half hour at up to 5,000 feet before landing. While it flew above the Mojave Desert, make no mistake about it: this stealthy, unmanned aircraft will change how the U.S. fights …
The nearly 150,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan and Iraq will be chowing down like many other Americans when the Packers meet the Steelers in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Here’s what you’re feeding them. It sure seems like a lot of stuff, but maybe they like leftovers as much as we do — or perhaps they’ll just invite some of the roughly …
It was less than two weeks ago that we quoted lawmakers detailing how sunny life can sometimes be for the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay:
While it’s no tropical paradise, GOP lawmakers said it isn’t the hellhole that many paint it. “Despite some of the earlier and changing popular perceptions about Guantanamo Bay, there is a
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A Senate report into the murderous 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood released Thursday traces a familiar and depressing pattern: once again, as was the case in the months leading up to 9/11, dots telegraphing terror yet to come were ignored, overlooked, or slighted by federal personnel paid to detect and connect them.
The report found …
How isolated are some U.S. posts deeps in the nooks and crannies of Afghanistan? So isolated that they’ve been supplied totally by air — for years. Over two recent days, three huge C-17 aircraft parachuted in 120 bundles of fuel to keep Forward Operating Base Waza K’wah in the Paktika province of Afghanistan up and running. It was the …
Fraud is big business at the Pentagon. Always has been, always will be. When you’re spending more than $1 million a minute, some is bound to be pilfered one way or another. But it’s rare to find all such chicanery cataloged in one place. Thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, we now have one-stop shopping for Pentagon fraud.
He …