BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon has always been larded with fat. It’s just that until recently, it involved gold-plated weapons, not super-sized soldiers. But as this chart shows, troops labeled overweight or obese more than tripled between 1998 and 2010. While the article in the latest issue the Pentagon’s Medical Surveillance Monthly Report didn’t …
BattlelandNational Security
Pentagon officials have been delighted at how the Egyptian army is treating its citizens, and hope such conduct continues. Some Americans wish U.S. leaders over the past 30 years had used the weapons the U.S. provided Egypt as a lever to press Cairo to relax its repression, but that has always been a no-go zone. U.S. officials concede …
BattlelandNational Security
The two men now running Egypt — Hosni Mubarak, 82, and his hand-picked successor, 74-year-old Omar Suleiman — both attended Moscow’s Frunze Military Academy as young officers (Mubarak also trained as a pilot in Moscow). That’s where they learned how to command subordinates — and deal with challenges. Like the rest of the …
BattlelandNational Security
Looks like there will be some other folks in the secondary, protecting against the long bomb:
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2011 – Military fighter jets will be busy this week preparing to protect the skies around Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, during Super Bowl XLV on Feb. 6.
Amalgam Virgo 11-05A, a North American Aerospace Defense
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BattlelandNational Security
For almost a decade, I’ve been getting statements from the Pentagon like this one:
If you can’t make out the small print, it’s an announcement of the combat death of Marine Cpl. Chad Wade, in Afghanistan, two months ago today. These terse messages are heartbreaking in their directness and numbing in their number. It’s important to …
BattlelandNational Security
[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPn3V3KuhaM]
It was just over a month ago that Gen. James Amos, the Marine commandant, was fretting that repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” could be a “distraction” that could get his Marines killed on the battlefield. “I don’t want to lose any Marines to the distraction,” he said of openly gay …
BattlelandNational Security
The last time the Government Accountability Office surveyed U.S. arms sales to Egypt, in 2006, it reported:
Since 1979, Egypt received more than $60 billion in military and economic assistance from the United States and is currently among the largest recipients of U.S. assistance worldwide, along with Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq. In
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BattlelandNational Security
The U.S. Marines have a pair of warships — the USS Kearsarge and the USS Ponce — just hanging around the southern end of the Red Sea waiting to see if they’re needed to rescue U.S. diplomats and citizens from Cairo. They’re half of the Marines’ 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a mini-armada that recently dispatched 1,400 of its 2,000 …
BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon, in its own slow way, is grappling with the coming end of the 18-year old “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that bars openly gay men and women from serving in the U.S. military. Top defense officials held a briefing today where they put a little bureaucratic meat on the bones of the change. But they refused to be pinned down …
BattlelandNational Security
You knew this was coming, right? In the tragicomedy of errors leading to the WikiLeaks dump, the notion that an Army private could not only access, but allegedly copy — and share with the world — data the U.S. government had labeled secret, we learn a key fact today: Army commanders sent Pfc. Bradley Manning to Iraq, where he …
BattlelandNational Security
here.
BattlelandNational Security
A couple of Navy doctors deployed to Helmand Province in Afghanistan with the Marines there spoke via long-distance to Pentagon reporters Thursday about the steps they are taking to tend to their troops’ mental-health needs. They emphasized their expanding and embedded nature of tending to Marine minds to make sure they remain healthy. …
BattlelandNational Security
It was only two weeks ago that the Obama Administration scrapped a plan to build a “virtual fence” along the U.S.-Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out. The program — under development by Boeing and slated to cost $7 billion — was designed to harness video cameras and other sensors to deter border crossings. The Department of …
