…obviously something to do with all those Russian-built choppers we’ve been using in Afghanistan and Iraq. Amazing. Large-text version here.
Afghanistan
One of the 6,000
On Memorial Day, Americans paid tribute to the men and women who have fought our nation’s wars, especially those who didn’t come home. My new colleague Mark Thompson, who has generously invited me to contribute to Battleland, had some powerful observations about the Pentagon news releases that have trickled down in a “ …
Different Wars, Same Reaction: Grenade-Throwing Heroes
The White House has announced that Army Staff Sergeant Leroy A. Petry is the second living post-9/11 Medal of Honor recipient (seven others have been awarded posthumously). President Obama is slated to bestow the light-blue-beribboned medal — the nation’s highest — at the White House on July 12. Petry earned the honor for what …
AfPak: Simply Swapping Sanctuaries
The U.S. military has long complained that Taliban and al Qaeda forces have sanctuary inside Pakistan along the Afghan border, and can launch attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan and then scoot safely back into Pakistan. So it seems only fair to note, as Long Wars Journal does Wednesday, that al Qaeda and Taliban forces have begun …
Sometimes Tough Telling Friend-from-Foe In Current U.S. Wars
The Pentagon has long had troubles developing an IFF system — a sophisticated electronics box aboard an aircraft that tells the pilot if the blip on her heads-up display represents a friend or foe many miles away (IFF stands for identification friend or foe). Now it seems to be having the same challenge in the wars it’s …
Afghanistan: Bombs Away
Once again, Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned Tuesday against air attacks that kill innocent civilians. If they continue, “we will be forced to take unilateral action in this regard,” he said in Kabul three days after a NATO air strike killed nine civilians, most of them women and children, in southern Helmand Province.
This is …
Memorial Day, in Real Time
Powerful piece from Rajiv Srinivasan, an Army platoon leader in Afghanistan last year, on the passing of a comrade:
The hardest part about writing this piece was not the recollection of the sights and emotions of a friend’s passing but deciding what to call him. Perhaps it will mean more to you if you reread the roll call, inserting the
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Memorial Day, 2011
Memorial Day is a strange holiday when so many Americans are disconnected from the wars now underway. Did you know that over the past week, more than a dozen U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan? It’s easy for me to keep track: I get Pentagon press releases every time a U.S. soldier is killed, sprinkled in among those …
U.S. Wars Used to be Fought By Privates — Now, Increasingly, They’re Fought by Privateers
Privateers, strictly speaking, are private individuals who have been granted the power by a government to attack enemy ships in the government’s name. Privateering was a key part of naval warfare from the 16th to 19th centuries. But a pair of Congressional Research Service reports, released Friday by the invaluable Steven Aftergood of …
Army not lucky, just desperate to avoid Leviathan supremacy over next decade
Picking up on Mark’s thread this morning, Galrahn, the eminent blogger at Information Dissemination, likewise sees a fight that’s getting nasty, arguing yesterday that the Army was “lucky” (in that, Will-no-one-rid-me-of-that-meddlesome-flag-officer! way) to see two of its great rivals for the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs …
Long Deployments for Reserves to Continue?
The Army is reviewing its strategy for employing the Army Reserve and National Guard after Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom end. Reserve forces make up slightly more than half of the total force of 1.1 million soldiers, and the reservists have pulled their weight in combat deployments over the past decade: over a third of …
Spouse Training at Walter Reed Wraps Up
Here’s our final dispatch from Gayla Romanowsky, who has been filing to Battleland from the new Significant Others Support Group at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Her husband, Dave, served in Iraq, where he earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Gayla attended the sessions, funded by the non-profit Walter Reed Society, to …
Painful Chopper Rides: Maintaining Your “Optimal Buttocks Reference Point” Can Kill Your Back — Failure to Do So Can Kill You
A decade of war certainly takes its toll on the brains and minds of those waging it. We’ve seen that in the numbers of troops returning with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Pentagon leaders refer to them as the “signature wounds” of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because of their prevalence due to …