BattlelandAir Force
Last week the Pentagon inspector general confirmed that its investigators are looking into the November 2010 fatal crash of an F-22 fighter. Pilots have long grumbled that the super-jet’s oxygen-supply system doesn’t always …
BattlelandWeapons
IEDs are an interesting tool of war: they have accounted for nearly half of the U.S. KIAs in recent years, and their very simplicity is an erect middle finger to U.S. military might and technological prowess. The Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization has just issued its Counter-Improvised Explosive Device …
BattlelandMilitary Women
Following last week’s decision by the Pentagon to change some of the conditions under which servicewomen can serve in a limited number of combat roles, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta attacked the Department of Defense for increasing spending on support programs for victims of sexual assault. Trotta proffers that “servicewomen want …
BattlelandAuthor Q&A
Baghdad-born Joseph Sassoon has peeked into the heart and soul of the late Saddam Hussein and his Ba’th party, thanks to the millions of documents, audiotapes and other regime remnants the U.S. military collected inside their homeland following the 2003 U.S. invasion.
In Saddam Hussein’s Ba’th Party: Inside an Authoritarian …
BattlelandCounter-Insurgency
BattlelandVeterans
The Pentagon brass are trekking to Capitol Hill this week to detail how they’re trimming their budgets now that all U.S. troops are out of Iraq, and have begun coming home from Afghanistan. But it’s important to remember that wars’ costs last far longer than wars’ duration.
Here’s a new chart from the Department of …
BattlelandNuclear Weapons
The Obama Administration is considering slashing the nation’s nuclear arsenal to as few as 300 deployed strategic nuclear weapons, Robert Burns of the AP reports. That’s an 80% cut from the 1,550 currently permitted under Washington’s treaty with the Russians.
Certain circles will scream it’s unilateral disarmament. But it seems …
BattlelandVeterans
Jeff Hackett died in the war. He was a career Marine, a mustang who rose through the enlisted ranks to become a gunnery sergeant, then through the officer ranks to become a major. In Iraq, Jeff led a highly specialized unit of …
BattlelandMarines
The corps – which likes to think of itself as the most elite of the nation’s military services – finds itself grappling with Nazi SS flags, scout-snipers urinating on Taliban dead, and a young leatherneck who committed suicide after intense hazing by fellow Marines on the front lines in Afghanistan. Over at the independent …
BattlelandTroops
Monday the Pentagon warned its troops that some of them may be laid off, future raises are going to be smaller, and retirees will be paying more for health insurance. Seems only fitting, then, that the next day – Valentine’s Day, ironically – the Pentagon’s own Defense Logistics Agency is seeking a shaft.
BattlelandMilitary Spending
The Obama Administration came to a fork in the road this year on military spending: given the financial pressures facing the nation, it could have fundamentally set U.S. defense policy on a new path. Or it could have kept pretty much everything and just sucked it in as it tightened its belt.
It has elected to do the latter, and …
BattlelandJapan
TOKYO – What were they thinking?
A plan that was supposed to ease the controversy over a noisy Marine Corps air base in Okinawa has instead infuriated local officials and galvanized opponents. And could hasten the removal of …
BattlelandClose-up
U.S. Marines were introduced to some of the extreme cuisine on offer in the jungle — bugs and snake blood anyone? — during a lesson in survival with the Thai Navy. It was part of “Cobra Gold 2012,” a joint military exercise in …
