Once again, body size on the Korean peninsula is in the news:
Are North Koreans really three inches shorter than South Koreans?
…the BBC asks. Examining a 2008 inquiry by Daniel Schwekendiek, then with Germany’s …
BattlelandKorea
BattlelandKorea
War Dog
BattlelandMilitary
Los Angeles Times’ Atrocity Photos: Truth Teller, or Newspaper Seller?
I just read about another reprehensible incident that has come to light after two years. Photos of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., posing with body parts of dead suicide bombers in Afghanistan, were recently published by the Los Angeles Times. The troops were stationed in Afghanistan in 2010.
Americans …
BattlelandVeterans
“Told Ya So…”
Vets have been saying for years that mental-health care at the Department of Veterans Affairs has been inadequate. Lawmakers have echoed that refrain. Last year, a federal appeals court ruled vets’ access to mental-health care …
$42,446,866,959.53
BattlelandWeapons
Rocket Science: Unexpected Aeroshell Degradation
BattlelandTroops
“Let’s Bring Back the Draft”
Tom Ricks, veteran Pentagon correspondent and author, calls for doing away with the all-volunteer force in Sunday’s Washington Post:
It has been too successful. Our relatively small and highly adept military has made it all too easy for our nation to go to war — and to ignore the consequences. The drawbacks of the all-volunteer force
…
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Beyond the Headlines: Care With Compassion
I visited Joint Base Lewis-McCord in Washington state last week, to attend the retirement of a good friend of mine, another Army psychiatrist who has served for many years.
I have blogged before about my dismay at the allegations swirling around the post’s Madigan Army Medical Center. But this was my first time back to Madigan in …
BattlelandProcurement
How Not to Buy Weapons
This simple graphic, from a Government Accountability Office report released Friday, shows how weapons should be developed:
After all, it makes sense: you don’t start building something until you’ve developed the technology it needs to work. Then you develop the weapon. Only after those two steps do you begin bending metal, as they say, …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Life On the Front Lines, Back Home
My heart sinks to my toes…my head spins with worries: is it someone I didn’t call back? Is it someone I couldn’t get onto my calendar for four weeks? Oh, God – please don’t let the name be familiar, please…
The last …
BattlelandClose-up
Battleland Diary, April 14-20
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
BattlelandDon't Ask Don't Tell
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Kill”
There’s a lesson in here, somewhere: early Saturday, a Marine stabbed another Marine, just down the street from the Marine commandant’s house in Washington, D.C. Marine guards tried to break up the fight, and apprehended the suspect. Marine Michael Joseph Poth, 20, apparently stabbed fellow Marine Philip Bushong, 23, after Poth used an …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
iPod, You Pod, He, She, It Pods
So the Air Force announces this contract Friday afternoon. The only description of what’s being bought and/or upgraded are “pods.” C’mon Air Force: Aim High, and tell us taxpayers what you’re buying for $53 million.
Northrop Grumman Technical Services, Herndon, Va., is being awarded a $52,848,888 fixed-price-incentive-firm,
…