BattlelandVeterans
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Friday is Veterans Day, and, like clockwork, the Pentagon has rolled out a 75-second video of new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta – an Army vet himself — thanking all who have served. Do these celluloid Hallmarks mean anything? Most troops I speak with never see them; this one had …
BattlelandVeterans
The military has been seeking the causes of a spike in military suicides for the last several years so it can begin knocking it down. New evidence just coming to light makes clear that the frequency of military deployments may play a role. John Nagl, of the Center for a New American Security, and I discuss this persistent challenge …
BattlelandProcurement
A senior auditor with the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) was subjected to years of reprisal in violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act after she blew the whistle on flawed audits produced by DCAA, according to an April 2010 Office of Special Counsel (OSC) investigative report made available today by the Project On Government …
BattlelandTroops
Combat is often seconds of terror surrounded by months of boredom. So troops play video games, visit the gym – and paint graffiti. OK. So it’s not what we think of when we think of graffiti. It’s more informational graphics, depicting unit insignias and other stuff that helps weld units together. The U.S. military is currently …
BattlelandTroops
The nation is always expressing gratitude and thanks for all that military families do (did you know we’re in the middle of Military Family Appreciation Month?). In typical bureaucratic fashion, Congress ordered the Defense Department to certify that appreciation by creating a Family Readiness Council, designed to let the brass …
BattlelandVeterans
Only one in three military veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq wars says he or she is getting the help they believe they need from the federal government. That’s the grim bottom line in a new report out Tuesday from the Pew Research Center:
Veterans badly hurt in the post-9/11 era also are more likely than other veterans,
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BattlelandPentagon
TIME has just posted photographs of some of Washington’s most famous desks, past and present. This one caught our eye: it’s the desk of Adm. Mike Mullen, when was serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The USELESS stamp was all in fun…mostly,” says Navy Capt. John Kirby, Mullen’s long-time spokesman. “He wanted it …
BattlelandPentagon
Winslow Wheeler is a Capitol Hill veteran who has turned himself into a pain-in-the-military-industrial-complex. He’s persistent and precise, two qualities that make what he says worth hearing. He issued some charts Monday (click on them to enrage) in what will no doubt be a vain effort to calm the howls now emanating from certain …
BattlelandWeapons
Last Friday marked the graduation from submariners’ school of the first women slated to board U.S. Navy submarines as official, full-time. members of their crews. They’ll start reporting to their subs as early as this week. Thank God we had the New London Day to tell us about it:
The women who are about to break through a
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BattlelandWeapons
Despite our best efforts, we keep hearing that we’re a year out from the next presidential election. Not sure if that means it’s time to start paying attention, but we’ll be citing some of what the candidates say about defense in the coming months. Last week, GOP candidate Mitt Romney went after the Navy:
Let me give you an
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BattlelandWeapons
BattlelandTerrorism
In theses times of layoffs, deficits and budget cuts, anything involving finances that grows at a 37% clip over two years is good news, right? Well, here’s the latest on the pirate front, from Kenya’s The East African:
Ransom payments paid by shipping companies to Somali pirates have reached nearly $110 million this year — a
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BattlelandTroops
The Obama Administration has said it had no choice but to pull out of Iraq by year’s end after the Iraqi parliament made it clear it would not grant U.S. troops immunity from Iraqi law for any alleged wrongdoing. Was that a reason — or an excuse — to come home? John Nagl, of the Center for a New American Security, and I debate the …
