“If military personnel costs continue growing at the same rate as the past decade while the overall budget remains flat, personnel costs will consume the entire defense budget by FY 2039.”
BattlelandIraq
“Bye-Bye Baghdad”
The U.S. is planning to cut the 16,000 personnel it has assigned to its embassy in Baghdad by up to half, the New York Times reports Wednesday. Apparently, the diplomats feel they’re too threatened by the locals now that the U.S. military has pulled out. As some of Battleland’s uniformed friends will say: Typical.
BattlelandMilitary
The Nobel Betrayal Prize?
Apparently, three members of the Icelandic Parliament have nominated Army PFC Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. On February 1, 2012, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Margrét Tryggvadóttir, and Þór Saari, all members of the Icelandic Parliament, sent their nominating letter to the Nobel nominating committee.
This is, of course, …
BattlelandMilitary Benefits
A Personal War-Cost Calculator You Can Use at Home
Sure, there have always been those anti-war sites, trying to undermine support for the nation’s wars by showing us how much they cost; the dollars – which just topped $1.3 trillion, according to this calculation — flash by like a Times Square news ribbon.
Then there is this, more personal cost calculator just launched by the …
BattlelandJapan
Why Okinawa Won’t Be Celebrating if 4,700 U.S. Marines Move to Guam
If you’re into planes, the hilltop park overlooking the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma is not a bad place to be. You can watch cargo planes make wide circles over the green hills of Okinawa all day, swooping down to the …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
The Navy’s Flying Fax Machine: Way Back to the Future
BattlelandAfghanistan
Grain-of-Salt Alert
We’re going to be hearing more in the coming weeks and months about how the Afghan army is increasingly ready to shoulder more of the burden of defending its nation from the Taliban. But there’s a Marine assessment from last fall now floating around, and it gives the ground truth a good scrub. Among the lowlights:
Afghans are
…
BattlelandProcurement
The Pentagon’s Top Weapons Buyer Wrote This Headline: `Acquisition Malpractice’
Frank Kendall shined a spotlight Monday into the F-35 program – the biggest weapons buy in the history of the world — and didn’t like what he saw. The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer said:
This will make a headline if I say it, but I’m going to say it anyway: putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was
…
“Half of the people we’re deploying into Afghanistan and Iraq were contractors…the boots on the ground include 50%, basically, contractor boots as well as uniform boots…it’s a different way of doing war…It is essentially part of the force structure.”
BattlelandMilitary Women
More Stars on Female Shoulders
Lieut. General Janet Wolfenbarger is slated to become the Air Force’s first female four-star general, the Pentagon said Monday. Assuming Senate confirmation, she will become commander of Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. AFMC spends $40 billion annually developing weapons and other gear …
BattlelandKorea
Kimchi Kamikazes
There are reports circulating that the North Koreans have bought some 1970s-era U.S.-designed MQM-107D target drones and is tarting them up into cruise missiles. According to unnamed sources (i.e., South Korean
…
BattlelandIraq
White House Bash for Iraq Vets
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Cracking Down on Rx Abuse
It was nearly four years ago that Battleland tapped out a cover story for the magazine on the wave of prescription drugs that was helping some troops make it through their deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, or cope with their aftermath after coming home.
The Pentagon has just announced it is expanding its drug screening program …
