Last month we noted the efforts of the Navy to come to the Air Force’s aid by diving 18,558 feet deep into the Pacific, off …
Snafus
General Misconduct
96 Seconds
It takes years to become an F-16 pilot, but only seconds to lose your plane – and perhaps your life – when things go haywire. On May 4, an Air Force pilot aboard a Viper during a routine war game over Utah ran into serious …
Iraq: How the CIA Says It Blew It on Saddam’s WMD
Now that we’re out of Iraq, the CIA has come clean on how it came to be bamboozled about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ferrets over at the National Security Archive (NSA) …
Three Crash Reports…
A trio of detailed reports on sad, and sordid, military misfortunes have surfaced in recent days. They make for great time-wasters at work. But here are the cases summed up in a nutshell:
– Regarding the crash of an Air Force …
“For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”
Planning for SNAFUS
The Air Force spent a lot of time and money a generation ago when it designed its C-17 cargo airplane to take off and land at short, unimproved runways around the world – “austere” was the word of choice. But it couldn’t imagine that capability would be needed because a pilot would someday err and land at the tiny Davis Islands …
What’s It Like When Your Warship Runs Into an Oil Tanker?
Ever wonder how one of the Navy’s most sophisticated warships, the guided missile destroyer USS Porter, could collide with an oil tanker just outside the Strait of Hormuz early Sunday? Well, safe to say the Navy is trying to …
Rocky Road from Air Force to Ambassador
The latest issue of the Air Force’s Air & Space Power Journal complains that the service’s promotion system leaves a lot to be desired, and quotes from its own officer’s training guide to prove it:
“Throughout the
…
Navy Skippers: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
Ernest Borgnine, God bless him, may have passed on, but real Navy skippers can fill the void left by Lieut. Commander Quinton McHale’s passing. Check out the latest from the New London Day:
Navy Cmdr. Michael P. Ward II, who
…
Iraq: The Steaks Were High
Major Bryan Cecrie spent much of 2005 in Iraq’s “triangle of death” south of Baghdad. The horrors of war were real, and meals were supposed to be an opportunity to take the edge off, he told the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in this April interview:
The cooks always think they are doing you a favor when
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Real Lessons From an Unreal Helicopter
The Army’s RAH-66 Comanche helicopter was going to be totally awesome, dude. This super-stealthy light attack helicopter, bristling with advanced sensors and communication gear, was going to perform loads of armed …
