If you are a defense contractor and you make weapons or trucks or planes or whatever, beware the “enforcement mechanism” in the budget deal. Here is the summary from the White House.
- Immediately enacted 10-year discretionary spending caps generating nearly $1 trillion in deficit reduction; balanced between defense and non-defense
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I’ve written more than most about the cost in blood and treasure of the seemingly endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. We’ve also heard a lot about the well-founded concern about the endless grind creating a “hollow Army,” drained of talent like the post-Vietnam era.
These are all valid concerns, of course. But there …
Charlie Moskos, the nation’s most pre-eminent military sociologist and the architect of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” is dead. So is Les Aspin, who as a defensive defense secretary battling the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” official Pentagon policy in 1994. Friday, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will join those two men – …
There’s talk in Washington that the failure to raise the debt limit could lead to a halt in military paychecks. This — surprise! — does not please soldiers currently fighting or deployed elsewhere overseas.
Compared to many of my gay and lesbian colleagues, my time in service has treated me well. In general gay officers have it easier than our enlisted counterparts, and our options with housing play a large role.
Many newly enlisted troops are forced to live in small dorms with roommates. It’s usually not the barracks scene that …
The Pentagon seems to be distancing itself from an increasingly bungled-looking effort by the White House to use condolence letters to acknowledge military suicides as legitimate casualties of war, according to a statement sent to TIME.
President Obama announced on Wednesday that the White House would reverse a longstanding policy and …
Reports about struggling veterans are usually grim, so it’s always nice to trumpet good news: the number of homeless veterans in this country has been cut nearly in half between 2004 and 2009, according to a new Congressional Research Service report just released by Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists (such …
Navy policies and programs work optimally under a retention rate of 55 to 60%. The Navy is currently operating at 71% retention. We have more people wanting to stay in the Navy than we presently have billets.
— Vice Admiral Mark Ferguson, chief of naval personnel
So why is the Navy paying bonuses like a drunken sailor?
A new White House policy to send condolence letters to the family of troops who go to war and commit suicide excludes the vast majority of those soldiers and their families, undercutting President Obama’s stated effort to defray the stigma associated with mental health problems from combat. The loophole has also disappointed veteran …
It’s been over ten months since I filed my application with the Veterans Administration for benefits related to a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That’s three hundred or so days waiting to find out if one part of the VA – the Veterans Benefits Administration – agrees with another part of the VA – the Veterans …
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Thousands of soldiers, gravely wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq, become as much as they can be through months of rehabilitation in the Army’s Warrior Transition Units. Every once in awhile a story pops up about how things fells apart for a specific WTU …
Folks don’t think a lot about the advances the U.S. military brings to everyday life. For starters, there’s the Internet, via which you’re now reading Battleland (yes, it was the brainchild of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, not Al Gore). DARPA also played a major role in creating something else we take for …
News from the Pentagon Tuesday afternoon:
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. Air Force Capt. Darrell J. Spinler of Browns
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