“China and US create less pacific ocean”
Military
Military Women Moving Closer to the Front Lines
One problem with insurgent wars – like that we waged in Iraq, and are currently fighting in Afghanistan – is that there are no front lines. Without sharply-defined FEBAs – Forward Edge of the Battle Area – or FLOTs – Front Line of Own Troops — how do you keep women out of combat?
Bottom line: you can’t. That’s why the …
Dive! Dive! Dive! Navy Fleet Has Been Cut in Half!
The U.S. Navy fleet peaked at 568 battle-force ships (aka “big boats”) in 1987.
Ever since, the Navy has been on a glideslope to a smaller fleet, according to a Congressional Research Service report sent to lawmakers Tuesday, and obtained by Battleland:
The report notes that the fleet has shrunk to 284 ships – precisely 50% …
March of the ESRobots
The Pentagon is determined to hunt down and kill explosive devices – including crude roadside bombs – that account for about 50% of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here’s its latest effort, in a contract solicitation posted Wednesday: it wants 15-pound Engineering Squad Robots to hunt those killers down and destroy them, …
“[The Taliban] didn't reach the tempo they had the year before. It was down about 9% overall in a year...their complex attacks are down about 36% compared to last year. Their offensive activities are down…between 13 and about 25% here as we went out of the summer into the fall.”
“Bye-Bye Baghdad”
The U.S. is planning to cut the 16,000 personnel it has assigned to its embassy in Baghdad by up to half, the New York Times reports Wednesday. Apparently, the diplomats feel they’re too threatened by the locals now that the U.S. military has pulled out. As some of Battleland’s uniformed friends will say: Typical.
“Half of the people we’re deploying into Afghanistan and Iraq were contractors…the boots on the ground include 50%, basically, contractor boots as well as uniform boots…it’s a different way of doing war…It is essentially part of the force structure.”
More Stars on Female Shoulders
Lieut. General Janet Wolfenbarger is slated to become the Air Force’s first female four-star general, the Pentagon said Monday. Assuming Senate confirmation, she will become commander of Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. AFMC spends $40 billion annually developing weapons and other gear …
Kimchi Kamikazes
There are reports circulating that the North Koreans have bought some 1970s-era U.S.-designed MQM-107D target drones and is tarting them up into cruise missiles. According to unnamed sources (i.e., South Korean
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White House Bash for Iraq Vets
Telephony Irony Alert!
The Air Force is looking to hire someone to set up and run cellular phone service for some 500 phones at the Manas transit center in the Kyrgyz Republican in central Asia, a key U.S. logistics hub for the war in Afghanistan. Security concerns rank pretty highly in that part of the world, but this one takes the cake:
“Truth, Lies and Afghanistan”
That’s the title of a column by an active-duty Army officer published on-line Sunday by the independent Armed Forces Journal.
Army Lieut. Colonel Daniel L. Davis writes about what he says he witnessed traveling 9,000 miles around Afghanistan over the past year:
What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S.
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The Army’s $86,000 Machine Gun
So there was this Army contract award (click on it to enlarge) last week:
Seems pretty simple: 900 240 machine guns for $77.4 million. Math was never Battleland’s strong suit, but a quick trip to the calculator says that indicates each gun costs $86,000. Must be those gold-plated barrels (actually, there’s no gold in those …
