BattlelandPentagon
The Army created its Accessions Command in 2002. On Wednesday, with encouragement from the Pentagon, it killed it. The U.S. Army Accessions Command was 9. The Army says it will shut down the command, based at Fort Monroe, Va., over the next 18 months. That will lead to the elimination of two general’s slots, 65 other military …
BattlelandNational Security
Colleague and columnist Joe Klein, over on Swampland, doesn’t like the way LTG Dave Rodriguez is being shown the door after his long service in Afghanistan.
BattlelandTroops
Our country loves our troops so much we’ll do anything to give them more money — like extending, yet again — for the sixth time — the government’s deadline for them to apply for bonuses if they had to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq beyond their enlistment period. You may recall the controversial “stop loss” orders issued to troops …
BattlelandPolitics
…here, from TIME’s Hilary Hylton in Texas.
BattlelandNational Security
Tony Cordesman is one of the most prolific national-security analysts working these days. The Center for Strategic and International Studies scholar is important because he doesn’t live in the fringe, as do so many of his contemporaries. He inhabits, generally, a sensible middle, and imbues his work with a gravitas based on his wide …
BattlelandNational Security
While the third-largest Libyan city, the rebel stronghold of Misrata, continues to burn — ignited by Muammar Gaddafi — the West continues to fiddle. Rhetorical war rages between European capitals and Washington, even as a growing number of European nations — including Britain, France and Italy — say they will be dispatching dozens of …
BattlelandVeterans
Troops back from war and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder can download a new app put together by the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments to help them cope. PTSD Coach lets users track their symptoms and links them to local agencies that can offer assistance. It provides accurate information and individual strategies …
BattlelandWeapons
President Obama was sharpening his Pentagon ax in remarks at a town hall meeting in northern Virginia earlier today. Defense contractors hang on every word when the government is in a cutting mood like this. They’re eager to adopt any strategy to blunt the impact of the coming cuts on their programs. So let’s look at what the President …
BattlelandNational Security
A Taliban suicide bomber reached deep into the Afghan defense ministry Monday — one of the most secure buildings in the country — before he was discovered, The Long War Journal reports.
The bomber reached the third floor of the Ministry of Defense and came close to the Afghan defense minister’s inner circle. He was stopped by Afghan
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BattlelandWeapons
BattlelandTroops
BattlelandTroops
Here’s a sentence in a new report, The Psychological Costs of War: Military Combat and Mental Health, that should give any soldier, or soldier’s loved one, or taxpayer, pause:
Our preferred estimates suggest that combat-induced PTSD in the Global War on Terror imposes two-year costs of $1.5 to $2.7 billion on the U.S. health care system.
BattlelandWeapons
They’re called “SARs” inside the Pentagon, and they’re not referring to what the doctors called severe acute respiratory syndrome nearly a decade ago. Nope, these are the Pentagon’s quarterly reports on how well the military is doing at buying weapons. The latest SARs – it stands for Selected Acquisition Reports in the Pentagon – …
