Pentagon
Mac Attack
Apple computers tend to cost a good deal more than their PC counterparts. But when duty calls, the Army salutes. That’s why it recently issued a so-called Simplified Acquisition Justification for Restrictive Competition. You parents of whiny teen-agers know the drill: “Macs are the only cool computer there is,” the youngster …
Pentagon Considering Improved “Groin Armor”
We’ve reported on the nasty wounds that improvised explosive devices are inflicting on our troops. Not only do they lead to amputations, but they can damage the genitals, especially when troops are dismounted — out of their vehicles — and on foot when IEDs detonate, often beneath them. So it’s good news that the Pentagon on …
Gingrich on Defense Cuts: Calling His Bluffton
GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, speaking Tuesday in Bluffton, S.C., called the impending budget cuts to be levied on the Pentagon under sequestration – paring back military spending to 2007 levels — “destructive” and “very dangerous to the survival of the country.”
The rhetoric on this topic bedevils chances …
The Warrior State of Mind
Todd Purdum takes a big look in the January issue of Vanity Fair at the national-security state through the prisms of Ike Eisenhower – a key player in World War II – and George Kennan – the architect of Washington’s “containment” policy in the Cold War. He finds it a grim, grey place that these American national-security …
An Army Apart…At the Airport
Our troops deserve every good thing that comes their way. Yet the House vote late Tuesday – designed to whisk them through airport security, unlike their fellow citizens — is another wedge between the defenders and defended that we wrote about in a Time cover story a couple of weeks back. The House approved the relaxed standards …
Star Creep: The Empire Strikes Back
The Air Force has been busy adding more generals. But the same has been happening across the Defense Department, although the overall DoD growth isn’t quite as striking as it is within the Air Force alone. In a post this afternoon on the POGO blog, my colleague Ben Freeman wrote that:
Seventeen general and flag officers were scheduled
…
U.S. Military in Decline, or Just a “Historic Cycle of Resources”?
It’s not a good thing when the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff visits Europe and it leads to a story like this from his own press shop:
It’s not his emphatic answer that counts, of course; it’s the fact that he felt obligated to state, in response to a question, that the U.S. military is not in decline — and then say …
Panetta’s Dilemma: A Trillion Here, A Trillion There
When we first wrote about how the Pentagon could save $1 trillion over the coming decade way back in April, we felt more alone than an Air Force pilot in a drone hanger. Now everyone’s getting into the act. The most recent to weigh in: BusinessWeek magazine and the Financial Times newspaper. They write in the wake of the Super …
Update: AfPak Attack
Saturday’s strike on two Pakistani military outposts by U.S. airpower near the village of Salala isn’t the first time such an attack has been carried out in response to fire from such Pakistani forts into nearby Afghanistan.
This from Pajhwok Afghan News in June:
Afghan officials said the [NATO helicopter] attack in Mohmand
…
All Forklifted Up
The best thing about the military is the way young men and women in uniform get things done. What they get done, of course, isn’t always their choice. Take the airdrop mission flown last week by the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron out of the main U.S. base in Afghanistan at Bagram: the troops air-dropped a six-ton forklift to …
Air Force: Pagan Worshippers
You’ve got to feel a little bit sorry for the U.S. Air Force. First of all, their taxpayer-funded academy, out in Colorado Springs, Colo., gets rapped for being a hive of evangelical Christianity. The Air Force then earnestly tries to deal with – and encourage – religious diversity, and they get stung by stories like this in …
Controlled Blast, Uncontrolled Death
After we reported last March on the stupidity behind the death of Air Force Senior Airman James Hansen in Iraq, we spoke to his father. Like any Dad who sends his son off to war, he expressed something – let’s call it disillusionment and sorrow, more than anger – that no one had yet been held accountable for his 25-year old son’s …