Every war generates its own poignancies. Some are in that twilight zone of fearful waiting and longing, felt by those the soldier has left behind since before the Trojan War happened, or didn’t, more than 3,000 years ago.
Amalie Flynn married a Navy officer shortly after 9/11, and has experienced the separation only a military …
There’s a military-history professor down Texas way by the name of Joyce Goldberg who has given up teaching military history after nearly 30 years. Increasingly, she writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, her classes have been filled with recent military veterans more interested in binding their own mental war wounds than …
Republican staffers on the House Armed Services Committee are warning that the cuts are coming and the results will be dire:
— Resultant force structure is insufficient to decisively win an engagement in one theater while defending vital national interests in another.
— Jeopardizes ability to respond to potential contingencies
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Sure, the former defense secretary was an Air Force intelligence officer deep in the heart of the Cold War, not a naval officer. But since he left the Pentagon in June, he’s acted more like a stealthy bubblehead, slipping silently beneath the waves, surfacing only occasionally to lob missiles at the American government he served for …
The New York Times front-pages a story Tuesday on a 2007 attack on U.S. troops — in which an Army major was killed — as a deliberate blow designed to show the Americans that the Pakistani military can’t be pushed around. It’s like throwing gasoline on a fire, given Adm. Mike Mullen’s declaration last week — long overdue, according …
Here’s another gem from that recent study on the defense industrial base — or rather the prospective lack of it — by the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Instead of tracing weapons’ cost growth over time, the folks at CSBA have simply divided each warbird’s fly-away cost (the cost of the plane, minus R&D …
In just about every war, the military ends of taking care of prisoners of war (POWS) or other detainees. However, military medical providers receive very little standardized training on detainee care. Why don’t we train better for that?
I am recently back from teaching at a course on the Law of Armed Conflict in Switzerland. …
Continuing this week on Command Post, our tour of the national-security challenges associated with the Middle Kingdom. John Nagl, of the Center for a New American Security, and I ask if China, beginning to flex its military muscle, is readying to tell the Pentagon: the western Pacific is ours, so scram! We’re joined in the discussion …
This is sort of the Sgt. Pepper’s cover of military-industrial complex complex charts (click on it to enlarge). Its a classic graphic telling you how the U.S. military builds its weapons. “It really sums up everything that’s wrong with defense acquisitions,” says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, …
Interesting take on last week’s assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani in Afghanistan, relayed by someone calling himself KabulHipster, via U.S. Army Capt. Crispin Burke:
After Rabbani’s assassination, CJCS Mike Mullen testified before the Senate for the last time, and pretty much threw the ISI and their Haqqani connections under
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TOKYO – The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may be winding down, but news reporters still go out daily to cover US troops risking their lives in combat zones — stories that can serve the purposes of both news organizations and the military alike.
The Institute for Defense …
Concern inside the U.S. military that Afghanistan is not going to end well is heating up. It’s always been simmering, but now seems to be coming to a slow boil. Lately, at least in private conversations with officers up and down the chain, the concerns are becoming louder.
“There is no endgame and there hasn’t been one from …
