BattlelandWeapons
Before the rebels finish celebrating — and catch Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi (or don’t) — it’s worth noting that 42 years of dictatorship can leave some dangerous residue behind. Olli Heinonen, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, is a former deputy director of the …
BattlelandWeapons
….is going to be released Wednesday afternoon. Can we all calibrate our threat-hype meters beforehand? Fearsome new warplanes? Check. Scary aircraft carrier? Check. Able to gobble up Taiwan as mainland China keeps our carriers at bay with its fearsome carrier-killing missiles? Check. May need to sell Taiwan — think of it as a …
BattlelandWeapons
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLYfaHkbe7U&feature=player_embedded]
The Dutch military intercepted a pair of Russian Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers several days ago. The hulking aircraft apparently got close enough to the Netherlands to draw the attention of its F-16s. Between the turboprop behemoths — first flight: 1952 — …
BattlelandTroops
As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told 2,500 troops Tuesday about the foreign-language skills he championed as a congressman, an active-duty Army officer was complaining about the paucity of military personnel who can speak anything other than English.
The current push to train soldiers to speak the local languages in Afghanistan …
BattlelandWeapons
The folks who get paid to stay up at night worrying about cyber-security are always telling us that our basic infrastructure — the online computer networks that run our water, electricity, banking and other vital systems — are big fat targets just waiting to be taken down by skilled hackers. Well, it hasn’t happened yet. Are we …
BattlelandNATO
When an airplane stops flying fast enough to generate the lift it needs to stay aloft, pilots call it a stall. We tend to call it a crash. That’s what has happened to the Libyan rebels in the last 36 hours or so. Their triumphant ride into Tripoli has crashed onto the pockets of tenacious resistance still occupied by those loyal to …
BattlelandWeapons
BattlelandPentagon
The word attribution always crops up when experts debate the challenges of deterring a cyber attack. It simply means determining just who is responsible for nefarious acts online — where anonymity has long been a prized asset. Here, I discuss the challenge of finding such digital fingerprints with James Lewis, a cyberwar expert at …
BattlelandWeapons
Muammar Gaddafi is falling as Libya’s leader after 42 years because of sharpening NATO air strikes, allied intelligence shared with the rebels, the rebels’ own improved military tactics, and the simple passage of time. Additional allied assistance — consisting of training and equipping the rebel forces – also has helped speed up …
BattlelandWeapons
[youtube+http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tO_Sw3P5Bs]
Always fun to watch the Navy’s Blue Angels fly — especially when their exploits are as skillfully edited as in the above video. WARNING: Do not watch on a large-screen monitor right after eating.
BattlelandPresident Obama
So the U.S. was able to spearhead the imminent collapse of Muammar Gaddfi’s regime in Libya on the cheap. We launched full-fledged invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq against murderous tyrants, but elected not to do the same in Libya. Is this a new template for U.S. wars, or just an acknowledgement of a war-weary nation?
It’s a …
BattlelandVeterans
There was a pretty big movement of U.S. troops this weekend, and here’s betting you didn’t even hear about it. Some 200 wounded military personnel traveled five miles from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. That’s because, on September 15, after 102 years in operation, …
BattlelandPentagon
This week on Command Post, John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security and I discuss the potential horror — and the potential hype — of cyber war with James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Kristin Lord of CNAS. Key question: now that the Cold War has melted into history, is the …
