With land wars wrapping up, the Army is doing what comes naturally – setting up a new office to ensure it’s not ignored as the Pentagon pivots toward the Pacific and begins pumping money into globe-girdling air and naval …
Troops
The Candywoman…Makes the World Taste Good!
The Survivors Gather
This weekend, relatives of many of the U.S. troops who have killed themselves in the suicide epidemic gripping the American military are gathering in San Diego. They’re coming together to support one another and figure out how to move on with life. It’s the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors’ National Military Suicide Survivor …
“In the last year -- year to date compared with last year -- our casualty rate is down by nearly 40%. And this reflects the fact that across the force as a whole, the risk to our people is reducing as we hand over responsibility for the combat operations to our Afghan partners.”
There’s Johnny!
Clips from classic early broadcasts of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson – long feared lost – have turned up in a military storage unit.
The 16mm film reel had been stored in Riverside, Calif., for nearly a …
Solemn Semper Fi
“My Daughter Was Scared of Me”
Army Major Andrew March has pulled three combat tours – a pair in Iraq and his most recent, in 2010 and 2011, in Afghanistan. In this recently-posted June interview with the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, March details his role keeping aircraft flying – and spying – as part of Task Force Odin.
Cultural Misunderstanding
Bobby Ghosh, TIME’s Baghdad correspondent for much of the Iraq War, once told me a story. Early in the war he embedded with a company of soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard. They had been given the task of patrolling a …
More Navy Women Joining the Silent Service
The Navy has announced that women officers will start to be assigned to Virginia-class attack submarines as soon as next year. And that enlisted women would likely follow.
It also is assigning women to five more crews of the …
Business Lessons from Iraq: Post-War Military Networking
While historians will be debating the effect of the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades to come, the young officers and noncommissioned officers charged with carrying out those missions are returning …
A Visit With General Dana Pittard
I just returned home from my third trip to Fort Bliss in two months. I made the first two trips so that I could learn about the installation and the leadership’s approach to preventing soldier suicide. On this most recent visit …
Return to Pur Chaman
The Trust Deficit
COMBAT OUTPOST GARDA, WARDAK PROVINCE — Increasingly, coalition troops feel they cannot trust the Afghan soldiers and police with whom they live and serve. The increasing toll of “green-on-blue” killings drives a wedge of …