Nearly every military installation, from our many stateside posts to larger bases in combat zones, have some form of a Morale, Welfare and Recreation center, what the troops call MWR. At Brooke Army Medical Center, the place of refuge is more than just a recreation center; it’s a central part of their healing and journey home. Our trip …
Troops
The Buried IED…Here at Home
The military’s fight against improvised explosive devices along roads in Afghanistan and Iraq — which have killed more than 3,000 Americans — has cost more than $20 billion. But that’s only the money spent by the Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO, pronounced ji-dough) to stop them over there. …
Afghanistan: It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas
Trouble on the blimp front: there apparently isn’t enough helium around to float the latest humongous lighter-than-air vehicles the U.S. military wants floating in the skies over Afghanistan to keep an eye out for bad guys.
The new Northrop Grumman unmanned Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle has “huge gaseous helium …
The D-Word
Things have gotten so grim in the defense world that advocates of maintaining current levels of military spending have started rolling out the heavy artillery. “Do we want to reinstitute the draft?” Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asked Wednesday on Fox News. “Some of the cuts we’re talking …
Dispatches From the Third Front: Day 1–The Hero
In north San Antonio, just off of Interstate 35, a towering hospital building dominates Brooke Army Medical Center, one of two hospitals–along with the newly unified Walter Reed National Military Center–that treat some of the most grievously wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. BAMC, as the soldiers call it, is one of the …
Evaluating Army Officers, Top to Bottom
For years there has been debate inside the Army about the optimum way to assess the performance of its officers. In an institution with more than a half-million people in uniform, what yardsticks work best to promote the good officers while weeding out the bad? Plainly the service needs some help: a recent study found than more than …
Officer X: Behind the Mask
What a fascinating time to be a gay man in the U.S. military. This time last year, I was sure the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy was here to stay for the next 2 to 3 years.
These initial words from my first post on Battleland are as true today as they were when I first Photoshopped a hastily-taken picture from my iPad, …
Wars, Yesterday and Today
There’s a profound sense of deja vu among those of us who came of age — in uniform, at school, in politics — during the Vietnam war. So much of what is happening today resonates with that conflict in ways both good and ill.
Lee Barnes has just written When We Walked Above the Clouds about his experiences early in the southeast …
Officer X “Comes Out” Thursday
He’s that young U.S. military pilot who has been blogging here on Battleland anonymously since May. Officer X – or Ox, as he’s known around here — has kept his identity hidden because under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” saying he was gay could have ended his military career. That formal ban had been in place for 17 years…ever since …
Air Force’s F-22s Are Flying Again: Of Smoking Guns, and Smoking Holes
The Air Force has decided to let its fleet of F-22 fighters back into the air beginning Wednesday without fixing the problem that led to their grounding in the first place. Concerns that Raptor pilots were passing out due to a lack of oxygen — there’s another reason for drones — led to the fleet-wide grounding May 3.
After …
Leading Afghan Indicators…Of What, We’re Not Sure
As the Taliban — or somebody — was assassinating former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul on Tuesday, a top U.S. Air Force general was explaining what he called “an amazing success story” in that war-torn land. But one needs to be careful in drawing lessons from such successes. Especially given the fact that it …
“Morally, Ethic’lly, Spiritually, Physically, Positively, Absolutely, Undeniably and Reliably Dead”
Sure, the Munchkins said it about the Wicked Witch of the East.
And the Pentagon personnel chief has finally and officially said it about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
PTSD Overload
Pity the poor grunt who comes back from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He goes online to learn how to cope and is overwhelmed. There’s the Real Warriors website, the My Army OneSource, and the Defense Centers of Excellence (as opposed to the military’s other centers of mediocrity) for Psychological Health & Traumatic Brain …