BattlelandAuthor Q&A
There’s going to be a raft of books on the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, and one of the first is a fascinating look at a pivot point in naval warfare. In Knights of the Sea, author David Hanna breathes life into the …
BattlelandChina
Nice piece in the New York Times on Tuesday, previewing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s much-anticipated announcement of almost a half-trillion in defense cuts over the next decade.As Mark Thompson just noted, not a whole lot …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
So this is the week where Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is going to give us a peek into where he wants to cut $450 billion in military spending over the coming decade. It’s the lead story in the New York Times Tuesday morning, …
BattlelandAir Force
Major Kale Mosley was getting ready to board his KC-135 refueling tanker for Iraq last June when a commander pulled him aside. He was being fired as of Nov. 30, contrary to a long-standing Pentagon policy that lets officers stay …
BattlelandRussia
It is hard now to recall the electricity that surged through Washington, D.C., when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev first visited late in 1987, and jumped out of his limousine right in front of Time’s Washington bureau. Reported …
After steady jumps over each of the past four years in the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan, 2011 brought a welcome decline. After peaking at 499 dead in 2010, last year ended with 418 killed, according to iCasualties.org.
The key question is what the reduction means. Some U.S. officers say the allied forces have broken …
BattlelandPentagon
You make them, I make them, we all make them…but few of us keep them. In keeping with the seasonal delusion, let’s imagine our favorite world’s biggest office building is a sensate creature, and suffered shortcomings and …
BattlelandMissile Defense
He’s wearing a $3.5 billion grin because of this contract the Pentagon announced New Year’s Eve eve (click on it to enlarge):
But enough real-world woes. May all Battlelanders have a joyous New Year’s celebration…even if many of you tend to focus more on fiscal new years than the calendar variety, and FYDPs instead of …
BattlelandPolitics
Mark Thompson’s 27 December posting, “General Newt,” alerted readers of Battleland to Karen Tumulty’s pastiche of mini portraits of Newt Gingrich’s martial prowess. Mark highlighted one the few passages that zeroed in on the insubstantial essence of the K Street Clausewitz.
Unable to contain my mirth, I immediately forwarded Mark’s …
BattlelandAfghanistan
BattlelandAfghanistan
The U.S. has spent a decade, $500 billion and 1,863 lives trying to square away Afghanistan. Yet China – which has done nothing in the past 10 years to bring stability to that troubled land – has just become the first foreign …
BattlelandArms sales
Sure it’s just a coincidence that one day after Saudi Arabia says it will help fill any oil shortage caused by cutting off Iranian exports to world markets, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia announced they have finalized a deal for 84 …
BattlelandDefense Contractors
Suzanne Kelly over at CNN’s Security Clearance blog pulls back the curtains on what it’s like to be a private contractor toiling in Iraq or Afghanistan. Hint: the big-money dreams seem to be just that.
