TOKYO – A shooting war with China may not be inevitable, but a dangerous arms escalation seems a dead certainty. That’s the take from a rare public discussion here this week among naval experts from Japan, the U.S. and …
BattlelandPacific
BattlelandPacific
BattlelandNavy
History’s Lesson: Sea Power Defines a Nation
Seventy years ago this month, the battles of Coral Sea and Midway set the United States firmly on course to become the world’s undisputed naval power. How long it will remain so and whether it matters are questions central to any debate about U.S. military spending. These questions should not be answered lightly. Few lessons from …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Mental Ills Top Reason U.S. Troops Now Hospitalized
BattlelandAir Force
F-22 In A Dogfight as Panetta Crimps Its Flight Envelope
You may have noticed that the Air Force’s prized F-22 fighter — the crown jewel of American air dominance — has had some negative press lately. The bad news peaked Tuesday when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered flight …
BattlelandPeople
Waiting for Bowe: America’s Last Captured Soldier
Nearly three years ago, Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, a machine gunner with the 4th Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, disappeared from his outpost in eastern Afghanistan. A short time later, the military learned …
BattlelandIran
How Come…
…the world goes crazy when North Korea says it is going to launch a missile into space, and there’s hardly a peep worldwide when Iran says the same thing? Especially strange given the fact that the two nations often share weapons technology, the fact that Iranian experts were on hand for last month’s failed NoKo launch, and the …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Money As a Weapon System Afghanistan (MAAWS-A)
Hard to believe – or maybe it isn’t – but that’s the title (complete with unpronounceable abbreviation) of a new, 268-page guidebook for U.S. commanders in Afghanistan. It tells them how to spend your hard-earned Commanders Emergency Response Program (CERP) dollars. Those are payments, usually in the thousands, but sometimes …
2012 Military Spouse of the Year
BattlelandTroops
Women in Direct Ground Combat? Not Quite Yet
In a decided lack of fanfare, the Pentagon announced a new assignment policy for women, set to take effect on May 14. The so-called collocation rules have been set aside, a policy that had been in effect since 1993 when Title 10, …
BattlelandAfghanistan
U.S. Casualties Drop Sharply in Afghanistan
A new Congressional Research service report is out detailing a steep decline in U.S. casualties in Afghanistan so far this year. Granted, the year is less than half over, but even if the 2012 data points (110 KIA, 634 WIA through May 10) are boosted proportionately to reflect a full year’s toll, wounded and killed Americans would …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Former Foes, Now Allied
I love all of the current dialogue between the American Psychiatric Association and the military. For years, they were at loggerheads, principally about the policy of not allowing gays to openly serve in the armed forces. Military psychiatrists could wear their uniform at APA events, but were often singled out for criticism over the …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
SOUTHCOM: Checking Out Its ‘Hood
You never know what you’ll stumble on perusing Pentagon contracts. On Monday, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., said it is planning to hire Vanderbilt University’s Latin American Public Opinion Project to survey 25 nations in Latin America.
Why? Well, it seems U.S. Southern Command (guess it lacks folks in the …
BattlelandProcurement
Why It is Time to Clean the Pentagon’s Augean Stables
The military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC, to its friends and foes), is a political economy that places the interest of the domestic factions benefitting from huge defense budgets ahead of the interests of soldiers, …