Battleland was invited to be on Friday’s PBS NewsHour, but this invitation had a twist that made it different than all that had come before. Host Jeff Brown and his producer, Dan Sagalyn, wanted a two-fer: first, they wanted to …
Troops
“Keep Your Mouth SEALed!”
So a group of former Special Forces guys is complaining that national-security leaks from the Obama Administration are harming national security. Some of the recent leaks – about the Stuxnet computer virus aimed at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program, for example – have seemed brazen to Battleland.
But it seems a tad incongruous …
What U.S. Troops Are Doing to Curb Insider Attacks
On Tuesday, Pentagon leaders said they’d prefer to call the rash of “green on blue attacks” – where members of the Afghan security forces kill their U.S. and allied partners – “insider attacks” instead. They …
Black Hawk Down: Double-Edged Blades
Helicopters are wonderful machines that, like a bumblebee, are supposed to be unable to fly. It’s all that whirling hardware linked by shafts, masts, transmissions, cyclics and collectives that give them their amazing …
Grim Record: Soldier Suicides Reach New High
A record number of soldiers – 38 – are suspected of killing themselves in July, the Pentagon said Thursday. It marks a startling jump in the suicide epidemic that has been frustrating Army leaders for years.
This Isn’t Funny…
The Army’s failure to cut down on its suicide rate makes it a target for people without taste. Alas, the July figures due out shortly are unlikely to help.
As someone who has covered military suicides, and the folks waging the …
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“When I showed up for airborne school, they made me the stick leader. Now, stick leaders are always the first one out the airplane. And I thought, `Wow, a stick leader, a promotion already -- this Army stuff is all right’…Later I found out the truth: the black hats thought if the woman was the first one to jump out of the airplane, none of the men would chicken out.”
The U.S. Plot to Blow Up the Afghan Ministry of Defense
Times have gotten tougher in Afghanistan given the latest green-on-blue attacks, where Afghan troops – or at least killers clad like Afghan troops – have taken to killing U.S. and other allied personnel with firearms or suicide vests. Army Major David Fitzpatrick, who was deployed as a trainer for the Afghan military in Kabul from …
“At a time when I am sure that there's an awful lot to be mad about, there's a lot to be proud of when it comes to our men and women in uniform.”
Book-Learning
Planning for SNAFUS
The Air Force spent a lot of time and money a generation ago when it designed its C-17 cargo airplane to take off and land at short, unimproved runways around the world – “austere” was the word of choice. But it couldn’t imagine that capability would be needed because a pilot would someday err and land at the tiny Davis Islands …
The PTSD Merry-Go-Round Continues to Spin
Colonel Dallas Homas has been reinstated as commander at Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. That is great news.
What troubles me is that there remains a widespread belief that there …