The general thinking among the human race is that we get smarter, over time. But this chart, from a new Government Accountability Office report into the Air Force’s F-22 program, suggests otherwise. It contrasts differences …
National Security
A Sad Anniversary Celebration
It’s sad that what should be a day of quiet satisfaction – the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, the killer of nearly 3,000 innocents – has degenerated into a political spitball fight.
Battleland well …
“Since ending the `stand-down' in September, the Air Force now requires every F-22 pilot to fly with a pulse oximeter strapped to a finger, measuring oxygen saturation in the blood.”
How U.S. Commanders Deal With Their Military Allies
We’re all familiar with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.
Well, over at Best Defense, Tom Ricks has come up with a similar construct detailing the six stages U.S. military commanders go through in their dealings with their local counterparts in …
PTSD: Treatments That Work
The recently-issued policy on screening and treating PTSD from the Army’s Office of the Surgeon General (OTSG) is dense, specific and should be helpful in advancing the field of post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis and …
The Pentagon’s Million-Dollar Aviation Plan
The Pentagon’s new, high-flying 30-year aircraft-buying blueprint – the Annual Aviation Inventory and Funding Plan Fiscal Years (FY) 2013-2042 – makes for depressing reading.
No, not because it predicts the loss of U.S. …
What’s Wrong With This Trahc?
This chart comes from a just-released Rand Corp. study that concludes U.S. military information operations – psyops or propaganda, in less polite company – in Afghanistan have grown increasingly unsuccessful with the Afghan population over the past decade.
Speaking of info ops – have you ever seen a chart with a timeline …
SIOP’s Sire Dies
The Single Integrated Operational Plan — SIOP, for short — was the non-descript label the U.S. military assigned to its doomsday plan to wage nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Born in 1961, the many-layered targeting list died in 2003, after the end of the Cold War. A key developer, Air Force Lieut. General Glenn A. Kent, died …
U.S. and Japanese Troops Draw Closer
The prospect of U.S. and Japanese troops fighting side by side in the next land war in Asia — and heaven forbid the need for either — comes a step closer with a little-noted provision in U.S. realignment plans announced last …
MIA: Nurse EMMA…
If you pore over the towering columns of reports and studies detailing the mental wreckage wrought by combat, you keep seeing that drugs prescribed to heal, or ease pain, are a double-edged sword. Just like a surgeon’s scalpel poking around your chest, they can help as well as hurt. There is a constant battle to keep track of the …
AVF = All-Volunteer Forever!
After recent ruminations on the wisdom of returning to some form of military conscription, a Reagan-era Pentagon official counters with the blessings of today’s All-Volunteer Force. Elliot J. Feldman writes in Saturday’s Washington Post that the woes of today’s force are due, in large measure, to civilians failing to keep a tighter rein …
Marines’ Move to Guam: Just the First Step
Over on Time’s Global Spin blog, Krista Mahr explains that the shift of 9,000 Marines from Japan’s Okinawa to the U.S. territory of Guam only fixes half the problem:
…many islanders recognize Japan’s geopolitical vulnerability next to China, and are okay with the U.S. military presence on the island. But they really don’t
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