BattlelandTerrorism
WARNING: Danger! Western Europe! Scotland!
Steven Metz, one of the Army War College’s best brains, has scrapped a trip to the British International Studies Association conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, because the U.S. Army’s European Command told him he couldn’t …
BattlelandVeterans
Veterans: Two Good Pieces of News…in a Single Day!
U.S. military veterans don’t get an awful lot of good news, but a pair of good-news items was tossed over our transom on Tuesday. We felt they were worth sharing:
First, homeless among veterans is on the decline, falling by 12% during the year ending January 2011. Secondly, almost 30% of federal government hires in fiscal 2011 went to …
BattlelandPentagon
Michèle Flournoy Departs
If Michèle Flournoy were a man, no one outside of nerdy defense circles would have noted her announcement Monday that she will be leaving the Pentagon’s No. 3 post – the under secretary of defense for policy – come …
BattlelandDrones
Grim News: Reaper Down
A week after the U.S. lost a drone over the Afghan-Iran frontier, the Air Force announced Tuesday morning that one of its MQ-9 Reaper drones crashed at the Seychelles International Airport earlier in the day. “The MQ-9 was not …
$370,251.45
BattlelandPiracy
Somalia: A Navy Without Boats
We’ve reported frequently on the Somali piracy infesting the Indian Ocean. The good news is that the Somali navy wants to do something about it. The bad news, according to a fascinating but dispiriting account in …
BattlelandIraq
Is Iraq Headed for a Crackup?
Patrick Cockburn, one of the best reporters now covering the Middle East, recently described the growing tensions in Iraq over the question of sharing its oil wealth among its constituent regions. Specifically, Exxon is
…
BattlelandPentagon
Is Leon Panetta the Right Man to be Secretary of Defense?
For several months, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been using extreme rhetoric to characterize cuts in the Pentagon budget beyond the $450 billion reduction over ten years he has already accepted. With the failure of the …
“By nature it is an all-consuming job and it does take a toll on the family.”
“With respect to the drone inside of Iran, I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters that are classified. As has already been indicated, we have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond.”
BattlelandWeapons
Newtonian Physics
Electro-magnetic pulse. EMP. A nuclear shock wave. The ultimate doomsday weapon. Whatever you call it, the notion of detonating a nuclear blast high in the atmosphere to fry the electronics of what is underneath has been a …
BattlelandAuthor Q&A
Capturing Saddam
Seems kind of funny that the same month we’re pulling out of Iraq, retired Army lieutenant colonel Steve Russell is releasing We Got Him! A memoir of the hunt and capture of Saddam Hussein. Russell, who served 21 years in the …