BattlelandWar Story
Army Major Stephen Bussell served as a personnel officer at Iraq‘s Camp Speicher north of Baghdad in 2004 and 2005. Once again, his recollection serves to remind us that the guys and gals running patrols “outside the wire” in …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
Two hundred years ago, the U.S. military was fighting the Creek Indians and their allies, who responded by slaughtering some 250 white and mixed-blood Native Americans at Fort Mims, Alabama. Such a heritage may come in handy, now that the U.S. military has awarded the Creeks, doing business as the Muscogee Nation Business Enterprise of …
BattlelandAfghanistan
The Pentagon tends to cite small arms fire, insurgent attacks, and IEDs as the causes of death when U.S. military personnel are killed in Afghanistan. But, once again, the specter of so-called “green-on-blue” – Afghans …
BattlelandVeterans
Veterans routinely complain about how much paperwork they have to generate to apply for VA benefits. They may have a point: the Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general reported Thursday that paper had piled so high at …
BattlelandAfghanistan
A just-released Army report offers insights into the challenges associated with weaning the Afghan military off its dependence on U.S. and allied support. The ability for Afghanistan to defend itself after U.S. combat forces pull …
BattlelandAfghanistan
A senior U.S. defense official met Wednesday with defense reporters in Washington to discuss the way ahead in Afghanistan. He insisted he’s a “glass half-full” kind of guy, and blasted the press for its continued reporting …
BattlelandR&D
The Army has finally got its football-field-sized Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) airborne over the Jersey coast. The huge unmanned spy platform is designed to give the U.S. military “more than 21 days of unblinking stare,” contractor Northrop Grumman says.
Not all of its numbers are so stupendous: it boasts a …
“It seems unlikely that female members of the Army versus those of the other service branches are truly at higher risk of clinically significant mental, musculoskeletal, reproductive system, and respiratory disorders as well as headaches (including migraines) after wartime service in the same geographic regions…Whatever the case, the finding deserves further investigation.”
BattlelandMilitary Spending
Rent-seeking is a phrase increasingly in vogue by folks without real jobs. Wikipedia defines it as “an attempt to obtain economic rent by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth.” Synonym: the U.S. defense industry and its allies, c. 2012.
Thomas …
BattlelandVeterans
What have I learned from the tragic shooting that took the lives of six Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin on Sunday? It reminded me of who I am.
People wept for the senseless loss of life. Some were afraid to come out of their homes. They complained that their leaders had segregated them and that their pleas for justice had fallen …
Wade Michael Page may have been quiet, but there was already something noticeably odd about him in the three weeks he lived above Jennifer Dunn’s apartment
BattlelandTroops
Like many others, the question of military service and the mass shooting by Wade Page at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin got me curious.
So I simply Googled “military extremism Ft Bragg.”
A fascinating mélange of …
BattlelandNavy
The military’s suicide woes are profound enough without a sailor adding to them. Yet that’s just what Petty Office 2nd Class Paul Bricker did. He helped a superior, Chief Petty Office Gerard Curran, kill himself. Their goal: …
