April 1, 2010. Dallas, Texas, USA. I ran to the mailbox. I had seen the letter online but wanted to read the real thing, live and in person. My fingers trembled as I tore open the envelope, unfolded the single sheet of …
National
An Iraq War Planner Reflects on Lessons Learned
In 2002/03 as a colonel in the Army I directed the development of the plan for the ground invasion of Iraq.
Many learned people, pundits and academics have chimed in on supposed “lessons learned,” the waste, the inanity of …
North Korea’s Nuclear Cul-De-Sac
The mutual bluster and braggadocio persisted over the weekend on the Korean Peninsula, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continued to drive his state down an atomic dead end. He brayed anew at the state of war between his …
North Korea’s Secret Weapon?
Kim Jong Un has ordered North Korean rocket forces to be ready to strike the U.S. and South Korea as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel denounced the Hermit Kingdom’s “provocative actions and belligerent tone.”
Kim’s orders …
Learning to Drive Like a Marine Special Operator
It was only two weeks ago we learned of the Army’s plans to buy 130 used cars to teach soldiers how to drive in danger zones with bigshots – like generals – in the backseat.
Now it turns out the Marines Corps Special …
“There will be changes, some significant changes. There's no way around it. I would say also this is an imperfect process, and any decisions we make -- and we'll have to make some and will make some -- will be within the context of that imperfection. But we don't have any choices but get through a very significant analysis, back to why I asked the chairman and the deputy to lead a review on intensifying a review on everything. I mean, what do we really need? How do we protect those strategic interests? There are some opportunities in that, I think. I think everyone would agree we would just assume not have to find the high ground of opportunities this way, but we are where we are. So that's what we're going to do.”
— Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, outlining his strategy for cutting Pentagon spending to reporters on Thursday.
Muffling the Sound of Freedom
A pair of high school kids has turned concern over the noise generated by F-35s flying out of Florida’s Elgin Air Force Base into a science-fair project.
Or, as the Northwest Florida Daily News puts it:
Since September,
…
No Comp Time!
There’s less competition for Pentagon contracts these days. Click on chart for more.
The Golden Hawk’s Cost Per Ownership Hour
We had an item the other day about the cost of keeping the Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk drone fleet flying. We updated it Wednesday with answers from the Air Force that warrant further examination here.
The contract simply …
“Bomb. James Bomb.”
Kim Jong-un signs rocket orders under sign saying “Strategic force’s plan to hit the mainland of the U.S.”
12,345,678
That’s the total number of digits that Battleland’s tried and true Texas Instruments’ TI-1795+ calculator can display.
We bought it nearly 20 years ago, and have used it nearly every day to keep track of Pentagon …
“Eight of the 10 costliest programs in DOD’s portfolio…reported cost decreases over the past year.”
— Bottom line in a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday.
$4 Trillion
— The latest estimate, here, of the cost to the U.S. of waging the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, from Harvard researcher Linda Bilmes. The eventual cost could reach $6 trillion, she estimates, or nearly $20,000 per American.