When the defense budget begins tightening, nervous lawmakers don’t circle the wagons – they set up a caucus. That’s what happened earlier this week as about a dozen lawmakers created the Congressional Mobility Air Forces …
BattlelandCongress
BattlelandCongress
BattlelandVeterans
“Stuff” Civilians Say to Veterans
Sometimes you get the impression Berlitz or Rosetta Stone should offer U.S. civilians classes on how to speak to folks who have served in the military. Just another sign of the growing gap between U.S. society and those defending it that Battleland wrote about last Veterans Day.
BattlelandProcurement
Update: About That F-35 Audit
Home At Last…
BattlelandMilitary
Afghanistan: First Tragedy, Now Farce
If you follow the commentariat on Afghanistan, you can sense a growing sense of pessimism. Some handle it more deftly than others:
The most insidious objection to realism in the AfPak region comes from those ready to label it a “cut-and-run” strategy. This is the kind of logic that leads some folks to sleep with an unattractive
…
BattlelandNavy
Sailors’ Time at Sea Heading Skyward
Wars come and go in cycles, and so does everything that accompanies them. The U.S. public wanted war after 9/11, but now they are exhausted. Weapons wax and wane from complex (F-111) to simple (F-16) to complex again (F-35). And …
BattlelandArmy
RIP: Magnificent Valor
In the spring of 1944, the focus of the American army in Europe was the fighting in Italy. Van Barfoot was a sergeant in the 157th Infantry, part of the 45th Division. The 25 men in his platoon, like the other 150,000 Americans on the beachhead, had been bombed and shelled regularly by German aircraft and artillery since they arrived …
BattlelandAir Force
Air Force Rocks
When Battleland thinks of an Air Force-related rock group, Jefferson Airplane for some reason springs to mind. But today’s Air Force isn’t relying on some psychedelic 1960s’-era band for its cred. Instead, it’s counting on Max Impact, made up of Air Force non-commissioned officers.
Granted, it’s not the Air Force Strings …
BattlelandPeople
Rush Hour
About 10,000 people have signed a petition on the White House website urging the Pentagon to remove radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh from the military’s radio network. The petitioners acted after Limbaugh called a college student a “slut” for advocating insurance-provided contraception. He has lost several advertisers …
BattlelandIsrael
Making Things Kristol Klear
This is a new documentary about how President Obama hasn’t been allied sufficiently with Israel, going so far, it notes, to discourage Israel from attacking Iran. It’s from an outfit calling itself the Emergency Committee for Israel, which Battleland hadn’t heard of before Monday morning.
We learned of it on the …
BattlelandJapan
Scant Fallout For Those Behind Japan’s Nuclear Disaster
TOKYO – Nearly a year after one of the worst man-made disasters in history, Japan has decided who’s to blame: no one. Even as government and private reports reveal the full extent of the Fukushima nuclear power disaster — …
BattlelandMilitary
Full Medal Jacket
BattlelandAfghanistan
Afghan Pullout Will Not Accelerate
The spate of killings of U.S. troops by their purported Afghan allies following the Koran-burning at Bagram has lots of national-security types wondering if that might trigger a speeded-up U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
No …