…that will make the family feel better.
BattlelandAfghanistan
BattlelandAfghanistan
BattlelandMilitary Spending
Rhetorical Retreat
We’re cutting close to $500 billion out of the next decade’s defense spending. Then there’s another $500 billion to come if sequestration occurs next January because Congress can’t come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts or tax hikes, or some combo of both, over the coming decade.
That prospect of $1 trillion coming out of the …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Resiliency, Inc.
“Resilience” has become the new buzzword inside the Pentagon. It’s shorthand for our Army’s too small to fight the wars we’ve been fighting. The fourth annual Warrior Resilience Conference (or, as the Pentagon calls it, Warrior Resilience Conference IV) begins Thursday.
Instead of raising an Army big enough to send …
BattlelandMilitary Health
War Dog Roy Visits the Dentist
After three days of contentious debate before the Supreme Court on Americans’ right, or not, to health care, it’s nice to see that the Pentagon’s military working dogs get it for free. And get this – there’s no individual mandate, either.
Check out the full story of Roy, an eight-year-old Belgian Malinois, who broke his …
BattlelandMilitary
Grumpy Young Men
This will come as a big surprise to all those wives and girlfriends out there: a new study finds that men in uniform – even absent combat – are harder to get along with than civilian guys.
Military men tend to be more …
BattlelandNavy
If It’s Spring, Time to Wash…the F-18
BattlelandNational Security
North Korea: Launch or Lunch?
The Pentagon made it clear Wednesday: North Korea’s plan for a missile launch next month has led the U.S. to suspend its plans to provide food to North Korea’s starving millions.
“Our suspicions…were confirmed when North …
$903,500,000,000
BattlelandMilitary Health
War’s Benefits: A Face-Saving Gift
There are ancillary upsides to waging war and the defense spending that fuels it. It happens in technology – think the Internet and GPS, for the two most recent significant Pentagon-sparked advances – and medicine, …
BattlelandIran
Iran Plans to Launch “Monkey” Into Space Soon
Talk about back to the future. Tracing the rocket plumes that the U.S., Soviet Union and France blazed a half-century ago, Iran has announced plans to send a monkey into space before September.
“Kavoshgar-5 will carry a biological capsule containing a monkey into space,” Hamid Fazeli, the chief of the of Iranian Space Agency, …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Irregular Math
Seth Jones, a counter-insurgency expert now at the Rand Corp., and before that at the Pentagon, testifying at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Tuesday:
Us: “Today in Afghanistan we have about 432,000 counterinsurgency forces, we’ve spent over $100 billion per year…and deployed a range of sophisticated platforms …
BattlelandIsrael
The Rashomon Effect (Pentagon Cut)
Several ways to look at Tuesday’s announcement from Pentagon press secretary George Little:
1. It’s a push for Jewish votes in November’s presidential election.
2. It’s a carrot designed to convince Israel to keep its powder dry, and not attack Iran’s nuclear sites until after said election.
3. It’s a shield designed …
BattlelandMilitary Training
The Air Force’s Magic Carpet Ride
The Air Force Academy has just opened its new glider landing strip. It’s an area the size of 23 football fields carpeted in 1.3 million square feet of what the service calls “aviation turf.” The Air Force unveiled the …
