[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIS-MOcSCZw]
We’ve seen flying robots – drones – spying on the enemy, and beefy tracked robots disabling IEDs. So why not the ultimate traveling ‘bot – one that’s thrown by soldiers? Don’t laugh – the Pentagon’s anti-IED shop is planning to send 400 tossbots to Afghanistan …
If Battleland‘s earlier post Monday about that Army Human Terrain Team report didn’t give you an up-close look at the challenges facing the U.S. military in Afghanistan, check out this summary of how International Women’s Day was noted in the Afghan town of Meymaneh (also spelled Maymana, or Maimana) last year.
It sums up, in four …
Tuesday marks the final day in uniform for General Pete Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff. As the service’s No.2 officer, he has been the key driver on fighting to reduce the mental toll of the nation’s wars on its …
Stars and Stripes covers the U.S. military like a blanket and is funded, in part, by the U.S. military. Yep, that’s a built-in conflict of interest. Over the years, the paper has done numerous stories that have ticked off its funder, such as this, that, and the other thing. But that’s what makes it neat: it’s kind of like the grain …
Navy and Air Force missile expert Thomas S. Amlie has died at 85. His fingerprints – he was part of the simple-is-better school that waxes and wanes in the U.S. military — date back to the Eisenhower Administration:
Tom Amlie worked on the Sidewinder project as a young Navy lieutenant, and he later became technical director at
…
You can listen to generals testifying before Congress all you want – and chat with troops in, or just back, from Afghanistan – but nothing gives you a sense of how things are going as does listening to the folks the U.S. is …
Thursday’s budget details contained several sky-high decisions worth noting:
— New unmanned aircraft aren’t necessarily cheaper and/or better than old – and Battleland means very old – manned aircraft. (Interesting how the military seems to be able to go back to the future with reconnaissance aircraft, but not fighters or …
A few weeks ago I wrote about the last American service member killed as the U.S. pulled its final troops out of Iraq. Since then, I’ve been haunted by one fact that is sadly overlooked by the media (and even by the Commander in Chief in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night): U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Ahmed Kousay Altaie, …
Leon Panetta rolled out some of the first details on the new FY 2013 defense budget on Thursday. It’s the first since FY 1998 to actually decline in nominal terms (though FY 2011 and FY 2012 were “real” cuts, as they did not …
Shortly after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s penciled in some details on how he plans to cut $487 billion from the Pentagon budget over the coming decade (yielding a 6.8% increase in dollars spent between 2013 and 2017; a 1.6% cut when inflation is included) you’d have thunk he was a dentist practicing without Novocain.
Yet that …
The debate over defense spending will light its afterburner Thursday afternoon, when SecDef Leon Panetta and Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, invite us into the Pentagon kitchen and show us how they plan …
