The cutting-edge U.S. Navy – all lasers, missile defenses and EMALS – is checking out airborne fax machines. What’s next – 8-tracks playing the Top Gun theme? This is from a Tuesday contract inquiry:
BattlelandMilitary Spending
BattlelandMilitary Spending
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 …
BattlelandProcurement
Telephony Irony Alert!
The Air Force is looking to hire someone to set up and run cellular phone service for some 500 phones at the Manas transit center in the Kyrgyz Republican in central Asia, a key U.S. logistics hub for the war in Afghanistan. Security concerns rank pretty highly in that part of the world, but this one takes the cake:
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
The PTSD Hand Grenade
PTSD is another kind of explosive often brought to you by the U.S. military, especially after a decade of war by the same troops over and over again. No, the Army didn’t break due to those rigors like many thought it would, but some individual troops were not so lucky. Diagnosing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder isn’t as easy as …
BattlelandAfghanistan
“Truth, Lies and Afghanistan”
That’s the title of a column by an active-duty Army officer published on-line Sunday by the independent Armed Forces Journal.
Army Lieut. Colonel Daniel L. Davis writes about what he says he witnessed traveling 9,000 miles around Afghanistan over the past year:
What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S.
…
BattlelandWeapons
The Army’s $86,000 Machine Gun
So there was this Army contract award (click on it to enlarge) last week:
Seems pretty simple: 900 240 machine guns for $77.4 million. Math was never Battleland’s strong suit, but a quick trip to the calculator says that indicates each gun costs $86,000. Must be those gold-plated barrels (actually, there’s no gold in those …
BattlelandAfghanistan
On a Cold Kabul Runway: Frères d’Armes
Kabul, Afghanistan — Roughly two weeks ago…I am home now, my peers are not. With some exceptions.
It is cold here today, and it is snowing. The tarmac is covered with a light layer of slick snow. We walk out towards the …