BattlelandNational Security
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – regarded as one of the most liberal in the land – decided Monday that the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that bars openly gay men and women from serving in the military stays in place, at least for now.
A 2-1 ruling extends a stay preserving the ban as the Justice Department …
BattlelandNational Security
Sun Tzu, the Dave Petraeus of 500 B.C. China, coined the phrase. So just who is the enemy in Afghanistan? As we near President Obama’s promised December review – likely to lead to tweaking, rather than shifting, U.S. strategy there – it’s a vital question. Bill Roggio of Long War Journal has distilled the contents of a newly-released …
BattlelandNational Security
That’s not a boast – it’s the truth. The average Marine is younger than those in the other military services, and more likely to be a trigger-puller. Youth and weapons probably explain this rash of recent shootings at Marine targets in the Washington area, including a second fusillade at the National Museum of the Marine Corps at …
BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon always has had an exquisite sense of timing. Take this week, for example. The U.S. military announced Wednesday it has launched a website – myfuture.com – so youngsters can learn more about military careers. “The fact is, we found existing career and/or college exploration websites not affiliated with the DoD provide …
BattlelandNational Security
When I think of wars I’ve known, they seem to boil down to a three-legged stool: capability, will and time. The U.S. always has plenty of capability; will and time – not so much. Dollars can buy capability, but not the other two. Part of the dearth in will and time is due to the repeated perversity of Congress in shirking its …
BattlelandNational Security
You may recall early last week when we mentioned the pair of shootings at the Pentagon and the Marine museum at Quantico, Va., about 30 miles south. At the time, Pentagon officials thought the shootings “random” events but were studying “the possibility of a connection.” Today they connected them, after ballistics tests showed that …
BattlelandNational Security
Foreign Policy magazine has rounded up what it calls the top 10 “cockamamie military schemes” ever concocted by civilian thinkers supposedly on our side. “Many proposals — while informal or semiserious — are preposterous and overlook even a basic understanding of political objectives, military strategy, geography, and logistics,” the …
BattlelandNational Security
There’s been a simmering dispute between the U.S. and China over repeated U.S. declarations that the aircraft carrier USS George Washington would sail into the Yellow Sea – also known as the West Sea due to its location west of the Korean peninsula — to caution North Korea to behave. After months of Washington bluster, they’re …
BattlelandNational Security
The long-awaited wave of classified U.S. military documents from WikiLeaks crashed ashore Friday afternoon, detailing battlefield tales of Iraqi brutality, higher-than-acknowledged Iraqi civilian deaths, and Iranian perfidy — but no jaw-dropping revelations.
— The documents detail repeated killings and torture by America’s Iraqi …
BattlelandNational Security
The Navy — whose medical corpsmen have been treating wounded sailors and Marines since the days of the Revolution — are under a lot of stress in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s why the Navy has just published The Docs, a graphic novel designed to give those yet to deploy to a war zone a preview of what they’ll face. “Their dual roles as …
BattlelandNational Security
I recall watching some of the earliest firings of the Army’s Multiple-Launch Rocket System on a test range at Oklahoma’s Fort Sill nearly 30 years ago. The tracked vehicles “ripple fired” multiple rounds 20 miles downrange. It made a lot of noise and came pretty close to its targets, which generally were intended to be tanks and other …
BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon has just sent Congress Saudi Arabia’s latest shopping list, topped with 84 F-15 jet fighters and 190 helicopters, as predicted here last month. It’s always funny how some quantities are round — 200,000 20mm cartridges, 300 AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles, 1,000 2,000-pound GBU-31B V3 Joint Direct Attack Munitions — and some are …
BattlelandNational Security
National Public Radio has canned long-time commentator Juan Williams for remarks he made to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News Monday. O’Reilly, a provocateur of the right who only matters if you let him, has been blaming Muslims en masse for the 9/11 attacks. He asked Williams about what O’Reilly called a “Muslim dilemma,” and that “the cold …
