BattlelandMilitary
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BattlelandMilitary
BattlelandAfghanistan
No “Green-On-Blue” Blues Here
Amid “green-on-blue” attacks, it’s plain to see from this video from the Pakistan-bordering Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan that U.S. Army troops don’t have the blues (sure looks like friendly Afghan troops popping up at about 1:45 into the video).
Check out this just-posted cover of Call Me Maybe (as sung by Carly Rae Jepsen), …
BattlelandMilitary Justice
Three Crash Reports…
A trio of detailed reports on sad, and sordid, military misfortunes have surfaced in recent days. They make for great time-wasters at work. But here are the cases summed up in a nutshell:
— Regarding the crash of an Air Force …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Lucky Shot
Army General Martin Dempsey’s C-17’s fuselage got pockmarked by shrapnel from some overnight shelling while it was parked outside on the tarmac at Afghanistan’s Bagram air base north of Kabul. A couple of airmen were …
BattlelandCongress
Fallout Shelter 2.0
You might think this story from Monday’s Washington Post is simply about some Maryland congressman who believes the end of the world may be drawing near and wants to be prepared:
The electrical grid could fail tomorrow, he
…
BattlelandMilitary
Perspective, Not Pedestal
One-time Army Ranger turned think-tank dweeb Andrew Exum, now at the Center for a New American Security, says the pedestal that American society has placed its military atop since 9/11 is “unhealthy”:
…American society as
…
BattlelandTroops
Air Force Heroes…And Heroines
Latest roster of Air Force heroes – or, as the service prefers to call them, “Portraits in Courage” – consists of 20 airmen who recently performed heroic feats, mostly in Afghanistan. They all make for inspiring reading, especially if you’re stuck behind a desk. Four of the 20 – 20% — are women. Females make up 19.1% of the …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Semper Infidelis
Of all the horrible “green on blue” killings that have happened recently in Afghanistan, perhaps the most horrific took place in Helmand province on Aug. 10. That’s when Aynoddin, who like many in that country goes by a single …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Better Late Than Never
Interesting Pentagon contract buried deep in the long list it announced Friday. The Army awarded nearly $15 million to Jorge Scientific of Arlington, Va., to “provide for the modification of an existing contract to research and develop a methodology for counter insurgency operations. Work will be performed in Arlington and Afghanistan…”
BattlelandMilitary
Of “Green-on-Blue” Killings, and Army Suicides
Battleland was invited to be on Friday’s PBS NewsHour, but this invitation had a twist that made it different than all that had come before. Host Jeff Brown and his producer, Dan Sagalyn, wanted a two-fer: first, they wanted to …
BattlelandSpecial Operations
“Keep Your Mouth SEALed!”
So a group of former Special Forces guys is complaining that national-security leaks from the Obama Administration are harming national security. Some of the recent leaks – about the Stuxnet computer virus aimed at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program, for example – have seemed brazen to Battleland.
But it seems a tad incongruous …
BattlelandAfghanistan
What U.S. Troops Are Doing to Curb Insider Attacks
On Tuesday, Pentagon leaders said they’d prefer to call the rash of “green on blue attacks” – where members of the Afghan security forces kill their U.S. and allied partners – “insider attacks” instead. They …
BattlelandWeapons
Bigger Bang For The Buck
The Navy has just authorized full-rate production of the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, a laser-guided rocket system that manufacturer BAE Systems says costs only a third as much the Hellfire missile commonly …