Now three members of the U.S. Naval Academy’s football team find themselves the subject of an investigation into charges they raped a fellow midshipman a year ago at a house the football team apparently rented illicitly …
War Stories: Psychiatrists on the Front Lines
Two of the most powerful workshops at the recent American Psychiatric Association annual meeting were the panels of psychiatrists talking about their personal experiences in war zones.
They were part of the Military Track, a …
Targeted Spending
Skeptics of the level of U.S. military spending sometimes like to say “We’re in an arms race – with ourselves!”
In other words, we’ve been known to peddle our fourth-generation fighters like the F-16 and F-18 to so …
General McChrystal’s New Mission
General Stan McChrystal made an important statement in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
He announced an ambitious new plan for serious national service. The plan—the Franklin Project—was hatched under aegis of the Aspen …
$108,828,819.75
— Each. Check out this Navy contract for CH-53K Super (Costly) Stallion helicopters awarded to Sikorsky on Thursday, here. Remember when choppers were cheap?
Building a Smarter, Smaller Army
It’s time to resize the U.S. Army given the nation’s fiscal realities and what we’re likely to need it to do in the foreseeable future.
In my new book, Healing the Wounded Giant: Maintaining Military Preeminence While …
A Boy and His Dog
Spc. Chase Couturiax and his dog, Sgt. Nina, during a foot patrol near Combat Outpost Baraki Barak in Logar province, May 21.
A Military Spouse’s Tale: Criminalizing PTSD
AURORA, Colo. — After fighting for his country in Iraq in 2004 as a member of the U.S. Air Force, and as a civilian contractor for nearly three years from 2007 to 2010, Maurice Lloyd — my husband — is now fighting the same …
+52%
— The increase in epilepsy cases among activity-duty U.S. troops from 2006 to 2010, according to a new Pentagon report, here. “This increase may be attributable, at least in part, to increases in moderate and severe traumatic brain injuries (prior to and during the same period) which are a well-documented predisposing factor for the development of epilepsy,” it notes.
A Vietnam-Era Marine on “Social Engineering” at the U.S. Naval Academy
U.S. Marines have never been shy when it comes to calling it how they see it. And in conversations with many current and no-longer serving Marines (they dislike being called “former”), it’s clear the corps is the service …
$174 Billion
— The amount the Pentagon spent last year on contractors to help run the U.S. military, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, here. The 710,000 contractors on the Pentagon payroll in 2011 represented a workforce 90% the size of the Defense Department’s civilian workforce of 807,000. Added together, these 1.5 million civilian employees (technically, full-time equivalents) are a bigger force than the nation’s 1.4 million active-duty uniformed military personnel.
The Difference Between the Army and the Marine Corps: To Huey, or Not to Huey
Oct. 2, 2009: The Army and Army National Guard announce the retirement of the UH-1 Iroquois, known to one and all as the Huey – and for the distinctive whoop-whoop-whoop of its two-bladed rotor. “It was our lives. It was our …
The Old-Fashioned Way
Sailors send Morse code messages May 25 in the Java Sea, maintaining a tried and true method of communicating between ships.