Many mornings you can hear Boeing boasting over the Washington airwaves about how its ground-based missile system is protecting the United States. From what? There is no nation primed to attack the U.S. with I.C.B.M.s — or even close to it — in any military significant way. Yet we’re spending billions of dollars annually against …
Pentagon
Photo Op: Thirty Seconds Nearly Over Tokyo
The Haqqani Network Network
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RMp2BwK-4uk]
The Haqqani network in eastern Afghanistan is the biggest foe the U.S. and its allies face in that country. Manba al-Jihad, a media arm of the Taliban branch, just released a video of some of its forces in training (edited and posted to YouTube by the private …
“This Is Not About Country `X'”
Bizzaro is that D.C. Comics character whose every statement means the opposite. Got a two-fer on that score from the Pentagon on Wednesday. Inquiring reporters wanted to know if the planned basing of 2,500 Marines in Australia had anything at all to do with China. “It’s not about China,” Pentagon spokesman George Little …
Feeling Safer?
This just in from the Pentagon, hypersonically, of course:
Department of Defense Announces Sucessful Test of Army Advanced Hypersonic Weapon Concept
Today the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command conducted the first test flight of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) concept. At 6:30 a.m. EST
…
Yardsticks.
There are many different ways of measuring how much the nation spends on its military. Folks who think we spend enough, and think cuts can be safely made, talk about how it has nearby doubled since 9/11 and remains above the Cold War average. But those opposed to cuts prefer different yardsticks. They point out how an ever-shrinking …
Dwell Time: Not So Swell?
Military leaders have been telling us for years that troops need to spend more time at home between combat deployments – dwell time, as it’s known – to help keep the detritus of war: depression, suicides, divorce, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental ailments, at bay:
When deployed for 12 months, we must get them to
…
PTSD Programs Proliferate Prodigiously
It was only a couple of months ago we noted that the Senate had urged the military services to pare back their geysers of competing programs fighting with one another to fight the plague of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries afflicting U.S. troops. “They’ve launched dozens of programs with multiple …
The Air Force’s $2.6 Million Defender Fender-Bender
Ever yawn while at the wheel, maybe slumber a little bit at a stop sign – and tap the car in front of you? I’m sure it has happened to a lot of us. Just be thankful you weren’t at the controls of an F-16 when it happened. Back in July, one U.S. F-16 ran into the other at South Korea’s Kusan air base. Thankfully, both were on …
“Does Fear of Getting Mental-Health Help Drive Up Suicide in the Military?”
The military has long known that many troops won’t take advantage of the roster of mental-health care options the military offers. That’s because they fear the stigma it might generate could hurt their career prospects. Does that aversion contribute to the military’s increased suicide rate? Dr. Margaret Harrell, a Center for a …
MREs: Money Related to Eating
The Pentagon just announced three contracts (above, click on it to enlarge) totaling up to $7 billion for Meals-Ready-to-Eat for troops – and victims of humanitarian disasters – to eat through 2016. Sure, MREs are getting tastier, but $7 billion? We just called the folks who bought them – Philadelphia’s Defense Logistics Agency …
U.S. Troops Heading Down Under
The U.S. is shipping 250 Marines to Australia by the middle of next year, a force that eventually will grow to 2,500. U.S. Air Force units will increasingly cycle in an out of bases in northern Australia – a full Marine Air-Ground Task Force. A MAGTF — pronounced mag-taff — is the Marines’ key unit for conducting missions across …
Afghanistan: Female Airborne `Dude’ Helps Grunts on the Ground
It’s hard for most Americans to realize, as we noted in our cover story this week, that there is a major war involving U.S. troops underway in Afghanistan. It’s a splotchy kind of war, with no well-defined front. That makes it a difficult war to cover. Sometimes we have to rely on the folks wearing military uniforms to give us a …