In a recent Battleland post, Mark Thompson noted the cost of a crashed Global Hawk: $72.8 million according to the Air Force. Some will automatically think that price equates to the unit cost for the drone. As they say, that’s …
Intelligence
“Warning! The Nation Is Under Missile Attack!”
Always best when those kinds of disconcerting messages turn out to be false alarms. The ace FOIAers over at the National Security Archive at the George Washington University have just released a two-page once-SECRET memo that then-defense secretary Harold Brown sent to President Carter in 1980 over such a couple of false alarms that …
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The Nobel Betrayal Prize?
Apparently, three members of the Icelandic Parliament have nominated Army PFC Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. On February 1, 2012, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Margrét Tryggvadóttir, and Þór Saari, all members of the Icelandic Parliament, sent their nominating letter to the Nobel nominating committee.
This is, of course, …
Watching the Cracks Widen in Iraq
“Al-Maliki is pushing my country to reach a turning point with deeply sectarian dimension.”
— Tariq al Hashimi, Iraqi vice president, January 29
Is Tariq Hashimi’s statements to Nuri Al Maliki a thinly veiled threat or a …
What Makes Insurgents Tick?
It’s not – surprise! – what you think:
…We see insurgency as a form of collective, goal-focused activity that comes about when nefarious people exploit the weaknesses of a political system…And since insurgency is
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More From Afghanistan…
If Battleland‘s earlier post Monday about that Army Human Terrain Team report didn’t give you an up-close look at the challenges facing the U.S. military in Afghanistan, check out this summary of how International Women’s Day was noted in the Afghan town of Meymaneh (also spelled Maymana, or Maimana) last year.
It sums up, in four …
A Half-Masted `Stars and Stripes’?
Stars and Stripes covers the U.S. military like a blanket and is funded, in part, by the U.S. military. Yep, that’s a built-in conflict of interest. Over the years, the paper has done numerous stories that have ticked off its funder, such as this, that, and the other thing. But that’s what makes it neat: it’s kind of like the grain …
Girth of a Nation
North Korean television has released a 50-minute video honoring the Sunday birthday of Kim Jong Un, the country’s new leader. U.S. intelligence analysts are poring over it, looking for clues into what new direction, if any, the …
The Pentagon’s New Year’s Resolutions
You make them, I make them, we all make them…but few of us keep them. In keeping with the seasonal delusion, let’s imagine our favorite world’s biggest office building is a sensate creature, and suffered shortcomings and …
Is “Don’t Ask” to Blame for Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks?
No single man has made gays in the military look worse than Army PFC Bradley Manning: alleged leaker of hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks. Anyone found guilty of intentionally weakening our nation’s security is deplorable and deserves harsh punishment. The one thing still irking me about …
$60 Billion
Pakistan: Nuclear Road Rage
Fascinating peek inside the latest Atlantic (in a cover story shared with sister pub National Journal) on the perilous security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Payoff grafs:
…instead of moving nuclear material in armored, well-defended convoys, the [Pakistani government] prefers to move material by subterfuge, in civilian-style
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