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 …
Sessions: bring back the interrogators who don’t know the job
Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions has penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post alleging that President Obama’s decision to yank the CIA from the lead role in questioning captured suspected terrorists has made the United States more at risk to an attack. His piece has an ominous tone and some frightening examples. Sessions …
Fancy Underwear Urgently Incoming for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan
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 …
Meet The New Boss. Same As The Old Boss.
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 …
Illuminating Kabul
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
…
TIME’s online map of jumbled burial paperwork at Arlington
TIME has published an interactive map to help readers understand and explore the jumbled, confusing, and sometimes-contradictory burial paperwork that lurks behind the scandal at Arlington National Cemetery.
Some background facts on understanding the scandal at Arlington:
Skunk at the Garden Party, Sir!
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 …
CBO Defense Option #5
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.
Purple Heart Clarity
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:
Sgt. Castro Comes Home Today
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 …
Collateral Damage on that Indian Fighter Non-Deal
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
…
End of the Line for the F-16?
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 …
This Is a Royal Wedding-Free Zone
…in case you were wondering…
