BattlelandR&D
No doubt the Pentagon is behind this: a human-powered quad-rotor helicopter. If this thing, ahem, really takes off, unmanned drones are doomed…
All kidding aside, congratulations to the team at the University of Maryland, and pilot Kyle Gluesenkamp, for getting this muscle-fueled whirlybird airborne for 50 seconds last Thursday …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Among the most interesting presentations at last week’s DoD-VA Suicide Prevention conference was one titled Time Bombs or Tidal Waves? The View from Blightly. It compared and contrasted the different psychological consequences …
BattlelandMilitary Women
The USS Gerald R. Ford will be the first aircraft carrier ever built without urinals, the independent Navy Times reports in a story not yet on line. In a related move, the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima now boasts a beauty salon.
BattlelandProcurement
From Monday’s contract announcements:
The Boeing Co., Huntington Beach, Calif., is being awarded a $36,197,205 firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to produce 12 modified wafers for the Minuteman III missile system. The location of the performance is Orange County, Md. Work is to be completed by Aug. 31, 2015.
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BattlelandCyber
Misha Glenny making a smart case in the New York Times for a cyber arms control treaty, but it won’t happen.
Why?
For the same reason why the U.S. has refused – for many years now – to engage other great powers on a treaty …
BattlelandMilitary Benefits
We posted the enlisted-vs.-civilian pay chart last Friday. One reader noted that doesn’t include officers. So here’s a chart from the same Pentagon report comparing U.S. military officers’ pay to that earned by their civilian counterparts with similar levels of education. The 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
Here’s an eye-opening chart from the green-eyeshade crowd over at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. It shows how far U.S. spending and revenues have veered from the projections made by the Congressional Budget Office in January 2001.
Key takeaways:
1. Entitlement and defense spending didn’t increase all that
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BattlelandAfghanistan
That was the headline, minus the question mark, atop Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s story on the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post. It dealt with the U.S. military’s focus on Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan in recent years instead of the more vital Kandahar Province next door.
The story comes from Chandrasekaran’s new book: …
BattlelandSuicide
The 4th Annual Department of Defense-VA suicide-prevention conference was a big deal here in the capital last week, with three days of presentations by top officials from the Pentagon and the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services. I put together the first military suicide-prevention conference, back in 2002. A …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Battleland contributor Bingham Jamison, a Marine who saw action in Iraq and came home the worse for wear, is the subject of a new video by Veterans Healing Initiative. That’s a nonprofit group dedicated to getting veterans treatment for substance abuse and PTSD. “VHI offers support to veterans from all conflicts, of all ages, men and …
BattlelandDon't Ask Don't Tell
The top enlisted sailor aboard a nuclear submarine was fired in March for not taking action against crew members who spent months harassing a fellow sailor they suspected of being gay. It marks the first known case of alleged anti-gay abuse since the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” last September, which allowed openly gay men and …
BattlelandClose-up
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines from around the world, and the home front.
BattlelandTerrorism
Virginians living just outside of Washington, D.C., are up in arms because of the constant drone of 230 high-velocity fans atop an unmarked office building on the fringe of their neighborhood. The CIA originally occupied the three-story building, but the spies left, only to be replaced by the FBI.
The FBI’s landlord gutted the …
