A pair of Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment readies for a night fight in Afghanistan April 22.
National
Rock Star
A U.S. soldier faces possible disciplinary action for allegedly throwing stones at a picture of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in an eastern Afghanistan province several days ago.
The provincial government investigated reports …
“One reason I am here is because I have pledged to the Foreign Service, as part of my campaign to be state vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, that none of us should ever again experience what we went through in Tripoli and Benghazi on 9/11/2012.”
— Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. The panel is probing what happened in Benghazi last September 11 that led to the death of four Americans, including Hicks' immediate superior, Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Six Weeks That Saved the Nation
Steve Vogel takes on a critical month-and-a-half in U.S. history that he argues saved the United States. In Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks that Saved the Nation, out this week, the Washington Post military reporter dives …
“We'd like to think that the destructive power of our military forces, which is pretty significant, will resolve whatever conflict-of-the-day the nation faces -- end of destruction equals end of fighting, equals end of war, equals end of problem, though history -- and, of course, the last 12 years of war -- should teach us exactly the opposite.”
— Retired Army lieutenant general James Dubik, now a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, at a Center for Strategic and International Studies confab May 1 on the future of ground warfare.
Carrier Landings For Dummies
Landing a warplane on the deck of an aircraft carrier – especially one underway at night in rough seas – isn’t something for the fainthearted to try.
But imagine doing it without a heart of any kind inside the …
Big New Green Marine Machine
Marine HMX-1’s first V-22 at Quantico, Va. White House aides and reporters will fly in the tilt-rotor, but not the President.
Sexual Assault in the Ranks
Battleland discussed the infuriating problem of sexual assaults in the ranks of the U.S. military on the PBS NewsHour Tuesday night – just as we did more than 16 years ago. Battleland may be a lot older, but the plague of …
$252,228.44
— The price, more or less, of an F-18 ejection seat, according to this recent contract announcement.
“Sexual assault is an outrage. It is a crime. That's true for society at large, and if it's happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they're wearing. And they may consider themselves patriots, but when you engage in this kind of behavior, that's not patriotic; it's a crime. And we have to do everything we can to root this out...so I don't want just more speeches or, you know, awareness programs or training, but ultimately folks look the other way. If we find out somebody's engaging in this stuff, they got to be held accountable, prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged -- period. It's not acceptable.”
— President Obama, speaking Tuesday about a new Pentagon report showing an increase in sexual assaults in the ranks, and the arrest of an Air Force officer responsible for preventing sexual assault on charges of sexually assaulting a woman early Sunday.
Benghazi Revisited
Fireworks are in place and set to explode Wednesday on Capitol Hill over whether the U.S. military could have done more to save the four trapped U.S. diplomats who died in Benghazi last September 11.
It’s all going to boil …
MacArthur’s Flawed Genius
There are some military commanders who, like Cher, Elvis and Oprah, are known by a single name: Napoleon, Patton and MacArthur come quickly to mind.
Army General Douglas MacArthur is historically significant not only because …
Hurt, But Helping…
Last November, we featured the love story of Army Captain Greg Galeazzi and Summer Buckley here on Battleland. Galeazzi, 27, was wounded in an IED blast nearly two years ago in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, losing both of his …