Videos

Battleland Battleland

Combat, Up Close

Two things are striking about this just-posted three-and-a-half minute video of a firefight in Afghanistan’s Kunar province last April:

— Just how unseen the enemy is.

— Just how unconnected Private 1st Class Red Daniels of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division is.

Clad in body armor, he’s hit four times and falls to the …

Battleland Battleland

Unmanned Jet Headed to Carriers

Young boys of a couple of generations ago loved to get dizzy, flying their yellow Cox PT-19 with its buzzing .049 Babe Bee engine in endless circles. The “pilot” was connected to the plane via a pair of control lines that allowed the model planes to climb and dive…and occasionally crash.

That’s why the X-47B is so exciting. …

Battleland Battleland

He NOEs What He’s Doing…

When helicopter pilots deftly hug the earth at treetop level, it’s called nap-of-the-earth – NOE – flying. It’s a technique designed to avoid enemy detection – flying under the radar, as it’s sometimes called.

It’s altogether something else to do it in a Navy F-18 jet fighter as in this video, anonymously posted on …

Battleland Battleland

Tunnel Vision

The U.S. is eager to rebuild the Salang Pass tunnel in Afghanistan. It’s a vital conduit linking Kabul to everything north of the capital. Just how important is it?

The site is located at high altitude and is a critical part of the infrastructure of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA); and as such shall

Battleland Battleland

No “Green-On-Blue” Blues Here

Amid “green-on-blue” attacks, it’s plain to see from this video from the Pakistan-bordering Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan that U.S. Army troops don’t have the blues (sure looks like friendly Afghan troops popping up at about 1:45 into the video).

Check out this just-posted cover of Call Me Maybe (as sung by Carly Rae Jepsen), …

Battleland Battleland

“Keep Your Mouth SEALed!”

So a group of former Special Forces guys is complaining that national-security leaks from the Obama Administration are harming national security. Some of the recent leaks – about the Stuxnet computer virus aimed at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program, for example – have seemed brazen to Battleland.

But it seems a tad incongruous …

Battleland Battleland

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 …

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