BattlelandMilitary History
BattlelandJapan
TOKYO – Pity the poor V-22. The Marines’ beleaguered tilt-rotor aircraft can’t get any love even overseas. Even before the crash this week of an Air Force V-22 in Florida, local leaders in Japan were lining up against plans …
BattlelandDefense Contractors
game-changers, a new technology or tactic that will render war as we know it obsolete. Turns out they also embrace name-changers. Here’s a nifty little $17 million contract buried deep in the Pentagon’s Wednesday contract announcements. It’s to defend a U.S. forward operating base in Afghanistan.
The name of the company may not …
BattlelandAuthor Q&A
Merrill “Tony” McPeak served as the U.S. Air Force’s 14th chief of staff – its top officer – from 1990 to 1994. A fighter pilot — who flew over Vietnam, in war, and as a member of the Air Force’s Thunderbirds aerial acrobatic team, in peace – McPeak ran the service during 1991’s Gulf War. He has always been an outspoken …
BattlelandVeterans
Hiring a veteran is not charity. It is good business.
That’s the premise of the new report from the Center for New American Security presented Wednesday at its annual meeting. Drs. Margaret Harrell and Nancy Berglass interviewed representatives from 69 companies. The report listed both the pluses and minuses associated with hiring …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
For years, motor-vehicle accidents have killed more U.S. troops than any other non-combat cause. There have been safe-driving campaigns on military posts since troops and transportation first got together. “Many military members are young, single, male, and high-school educated,” the Pentagon’s Medical Surveillance Monthly Report …
“It is clear that sequestration would risk hollowing out our force and reducing its military options available to the nation. We would go from being unquestionably powerful everywhere, to being less visible globally, and presenting less of an overmatch to our adversaries. And that would translate into a different deterrent calculus and potentially therefore increase the likelihood of conflict.”
BattlelandSyria
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s in for a strafing on Capitol Hill today. He’s appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, but he’s likely to face tough questions on the Defense Department’s …
BattlelandMissile Defense
OK, so it lacks Don McLean’s songcraft, but it was a decade ago Wednesday that the U.S. walked away from 1972’s ABM treaty with the Soviets. Despite predictions from arms controllers that the sky would fall, not much has happened.
Sure, the Treasury is lighter by $100 billion or so, but we did that to ourselves by building a …
“As a military force today, if you're in Afghanistan, you get up in the morning, you get in an armored vehicle, you go on patrol, and then you come back. You're heavily armored; you're heavily defensive; it's called an occupation force. Is that what we want for our military?”
BattlelandPentagon
Here at Battleland, we take pride in airing both sides of the issue, from Mackenzie “F-15 Strike” Eaglen on one side of the military-might debate to Winslow Wheeler-Dealer on the other.
Amid all the doom about looming sequestration, we’d like to arm you with an important chart – no matter what side of the debate you’re on.
