The military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC, to its friends and foes), is a political economy that places the interest of the domestic factions benefitting from huge defense budgets ahead of the interests of soldiers, …
Military Spending
How America Settles Down Somalia (And, By Extension the Piracy Problem)
U.S. Still Grappling with Human Trafficking by War Zone Contractors
Congressional hearings and recently-introduced legislation have put the spotlight on the issue of U.S. taxpayer-funded labor trafficking, and the abuse of third-country nationals overseas by U.S. military contractors. One of the leading associations of U.S. overseas contractors has devoted the latest issue of its journal to the topic …
“A Moral Outrage”
The over-deployment of a too-small military since 9/11 has led to a peculiar situation where Congress and the nation feel a subtle sense of guilt over what they have put the nation’s young men and women in uniform through. It has warped military compensation and retirement policies, Lawrence J. Korb, Alex Rothman, and Max Hoffman write …
Final Raptor Flies Home
Good Drugs, Bad Drugs
There’s two kinds of drug trafficking Afghanistan — the good, detailed in the map on the left, and the bad (click on either to enlarge). Last year, the U.N. charted the still-thriving opium trade from inside Afghanistan to the world’s narcotics markets. Monday, the Pentagon inspector general detailed problems with the Afghan National …
$240 million
How To Build a War Machine
Arthur Herman is one of those scholars who grips the past and just won’t let go, which is lucky for those of us stuck in the present. In these days where attention spans are collapsing into overflowing rivers of data, every once in awhile you need a historian to point out what’s important.
Herman’s new book, Freedom’s Forge: …
EAGLE
…otherwise know as the Army’s Enhanced Army Global Logistics Enterprise. Or, as the Army says:
The Enhanced Army Global Logistics Enterprise (EAGLE) program will be used to procure logistics services requirements, primarily Material Maintenance Services, Retail/Wholesale Supply Services and Transportation Support Services in support
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Bravo Zulu, Navy!
We don’t mind razzing the Navy when it comes to Breathalyzers for sailors, or its increasingly strange ship-naming practices, so it seems only fair to tip our cover when warranted. The Government Accountability Office notes in …
Ain’t Misbehavin’ Artwork
The Army buys lots of things for the troops, but this is one we haven’t seen before. Behavioral artwork?
What’s especially surprising is that Thursday’s announcement was simply a declaration that the contracting office at Fort Gordon, Ga., intends to award a contract for an unspecified amount to “Perspective, LLC” of …
F-22 Modernization: Breaking the Sound (Spending) Barrier
The general thinking among the human race is that we get smarter, over time. But this chart, from a new Government Accountability Office report into the Air Force’s F-22 program, suggests otherwise. It contrasts differences …
The Pentagon’s Million-Dollar Aviation Plan
The Pentagon’s new, high-flying 30-year aircraft-buying blueprint – the Annual Aviation Inventory and Funding Plan Fiscal Years (FY) 2013-2042 – makes for depressing reading.
No, not because it predicts the loss of U.S. …