As combat operations in Iraq wind down, it’s important to remember that many of the costs of that war, and the one now raging in Afghanistan, remain to be paid. Toward that end, former Pentagon official Noel Koch offers a sobering stare inside the Army’s Warrior Transition Units in the latest issue of Proceedings magazine, a feisty …
Captain Dale Goetz became the first Army chaplain to die in combat since Vietnam when a roadside bomb killed him and four fellow soldiers in Afghanistan on Monday. His is a passing worth pondering. Chaplains represent a special category of troop, especially in the lengthy wars the U.S. has been waging in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many Army …
“The American combat mission in Iraq has ended,” President Obama told the nation Tuesday night, but the 50,000 U.S. troops still on the ground there will continue to pocket combat pay of up to $680 a month. The troops are going to spend most of their time over the next 16 months training Iraqi security forces to fight. But in reality …
It was almost like the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan — where every male is a suspected terrorist — had been plopped down just outside Washington, D.C. That’s because of what happened to nine senior Pakistani military officers Sunday. They felt mistreated at Washington’s Dulles airport, leading their government to …
Now that the U.S. officially has ended its combat role in Iraq — relying on Baghdad to wage its own wars from here on out — it’s time the Iraqis began buying U.S. weapons. That’s just what they’re doing, as U.S. officials report the still-struggling nation has some $13 billion of American-made military hardware in the pipeline (the …
The U.S. military has a usually-good policy of “after action” reports that tries to capture the “lessons learned” from every experience, from basic training to battlefield (the Army itself even has a Center for Army Lessons Learned). But sometimes that learning occurs in a less-structured way — like the experience gleaned over more than …
Even as the Pentagon struggles to tighten its own belt, Air Force personnel in Italy apparently need to start doing more to tighten theirs, too. One in three at Aviano air base — 45 miles north of Venice — failed to pass the service’s ramped-up physical fitness test in July, the first month it was in place. And that was the good news. …
Apparently the U.S. military doesn’t only have a surplus of generals (see earlier post), but colonels as well.
Army Reserve Col. Lawrence Sellin offers a keen peek at what happens inside the headquarters running the war in Afghanistan.
The blog Danger Room reports he has already been booted for his observations.
Interesting story in this morning’s New York Times about the military brass’ concerns with Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ plan to trim their nearly-1,000-strong ranks by, ahem, 50 slots. While reporters Ginger Thompson and Thom Shanker quote only retired generals on the record, their views are shared by active duty officers as well. It’s …
It was the late Ted Kennedy who galvanized his fellow Democrats at their 1980 convention by pledging “the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” Thirty years later, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency seems to have adopted those stirring words as its own. You may recall the Pentagon’s …
General James Conway, the Marine commandant, told reporters at the Pentagon Tuesday that his 202,000 Marines are “pretty macho” compared to the 1.2 million Americans in the other services. He might just as well have been speaking about himself and his willingness to say what he thinks. After all, the Marines are the smallest — and like …