BattlelandAuthor Q&A
We’ve had a flurry of books written by troops recounting their battles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now come the books detailing the battles fought once they got home.
Mike Scotti served with the Marines in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and saw war’s horrors up close and personal. When he came back home, he gradually felt himself being …
BattlelandProcurement
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 …
BattlelandWar Story
Some soldiers get along, and others don’t. It’s the latter that make for the most interesting tales when they speak of their time at war. Army Major Ryan Ussery is a logistician – the guy who keeps the beans, bullets and boots coming to the troops on the front lines (motto: Sustinendum Victoriam). He has pulled three tours in Iraq, …
BattlelandSouth China Sea
TOKYO – Japan has one year, maybe two, to resolve the ownership dispute over a tiny group of islands or risk an honest-to-goodness shooting war with China. Unfortunately, neither Japan’s diplomats nor public seem to realize …
BattlelandMilitary Health
In this week’s dead tree edition, I have a piece about a small medical team at Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio who are having incredible success helping limb salvage patients return to an active life, and many …
BattlelandNational Security
The professional nitpickers over the Center for a New American Security have just issued a report saying the Defense Department remains welded to the past:
…the Pentagon still has not enacted the types of reforms that we believe are necessary to sustain U.S. military pre-eminence into the future. Too many DOD structures, processes,
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BattlelandVeterans
President Obama’s campaign rolled out this “Sacred Trust” ad Wednesday. His re-election effort says it “highlights the President’s strong commitment to honoring our veterans.” It’s part of a $25 million, four-week ad buy in nine states: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and …
BattlelandVeterans
Despite the fact that the Department of Veterans Affairs Budget has more than doubled – to about $120 billion – since 2004, it and the Pentagon are falling further behind in assessing whether or not veterans are due disability benefits. This chart, from a Government Accountability Office statement released Wednesday, tells the …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
I’m an old guy from the Vietnam era, a psychiatrist who studied violence in the 1960s, who treated survivors of trauma in the ’70s and who helped create and nurture the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder through the …
BattlelandProcurement
“We have extraordinary access now. Access is something that we have, and what the Chinese and others are trying to do is to drive us out of places that we already are. They're not putting up a barrier other than the most close-in kind of barrier, because we're already inside the wire, from their perspective.”
