Marine 1st Sgt. Joshua Clayton eats a live scorpion Feb. 17 as part of training during Operation Cobra Gold in Thailand.
Military Training
An Army Iwo Jima
Soldiers at Fort Bragg hook up a 105mm howitzer to a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during training Feb. 8.
Afghan Dawn
U.S., allied and Afghan troops greet the new day as they prepare to conduct “village stability operations” in Farah province’s Khak-E-Safed village on Oct. 20.
Launch Party
This simulated war thing is catching on. For the past 20 years, the U.S. hasn’t exploded a single atomic warhead to see if the stockpile remains potent. Instead, computer simulations under the so-called Stockpile Stewardship …
Trainin’ in the Rain
Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz practice deterring intruders during a force-protection exercise October 11 near San Diego.
Women 0-For-2 in Marine Combat Training
The second female Marine officer has washed out of the corps’ infantry-officer training, Marine Corps Times reports. That means both women – along with nearly 30 of 107 men – have failed to make it through the grueling …
The War Winds Down…
Two different, but mutually reinforcing, newspaper takes Sunday on the U.S. role in Afghanistan:
— In a lengthy editorial, the New York Times says it’s time to speed up the U.S. military’s withdrawal, well before the 2015 …
Bird of Pray
Love Boats
A retired Navy captain is sounding an alarm over women serving on warships.
“We can’t have both chastity and mixed-sex complements,” Kevin Eyer argues in October’s Proceedings, the professional naval journal published …
Afghan Police Kill a U.S. Special Operations Captain “To Make a Statement”
Army Major Greg Escobar served as an operations officer in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011, training Afghan police in Kunar province for the first half of his deployment, and Afghan troops in Paktika province for the second …
Cultural Misunderstanding
Bobby Ghosh, TIME’s Baghdad correspondent for much of the Iraq War, once told me a story. Early in the war he embedded with a company of soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard. They had been given the task of patrolling a …
Business Lessons from Iraq: Post-War Military Networking
While historians will be debating the effect of the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades to come, the young officers and noncommissioned officers charged with carrying out those missions are returning …
A Visit With General Dana Pittard
I just returned home from my third trip to Fort Bliss in two months. I made the first two trips so that I could learn about the installation and the leadership’s approach to preventing soldier suicide. On this most recent visit …