BattlelandNational Security
We introduced you to Maj. Gen. Margaret “Maggie” Woodward two weeks ago as she became the first woman in U.S. history to command a U.S. military operation — the no-fly zone over Libya. A 1983 graduate of Arizona State University, Woodward, 51, has commanded and flown in Afghanistan and Iraq, and spent close to 4,000 hours flying, …
BattlelandNational Security
Elliott Abrams, the polarizing Reagan Administration State Department official, now hangs his hat at the centrist Council on Foreign Relations. But there’s no moderation in his zinging of Defense Secretary Robert Gates for some of his comments Thursday before Congress. Abrams especially didn’t like Gates’ eyebrow raising remark that …
BattlelandNational Security
You couldn’t blame Defense Secretary Robert Gates for feeling just a little bit like those Libyan rebels retreating under pressure from Muammar Gaddafi’s forces — but those attacking Gates Thursday were members of the U.S. Congress. One thing was clear after Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spent most …
BattlelandNational Security
BattlelandNational Security
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=220hCk1Omw0&feature=player_embedded]
…that U.S. Army Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt, 31, of Minnesota was gay, his mother says. You should care that he was killed in Afghanistan on Feb. 27 by an improvised explosive device. And maybe watch this video of his proud parents.
BattlelandMilitary
Honor is a big deal in the military. Valor is even bigger. Recognition of such bravery is the high point of many soldiers’ careers. “A soldier will fight long and hard,” Napoleon aptly observed nearly two centuries ago, “for a bit of colored ribbon.”
But what if that bit of colored ribbon is fake? And the person wearing it a …
BattlelandNational Security
Admiral Jim Stavridis, one of America’s top military commanders (he’s running U.S. European Command — and NATO — now, and is a front-runner to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs by year’s end) offered a telling comment about Libya Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I think a stalemate,” he said, “is not in anybody’s …
BattlelandNational Security
Just ask John Groth, a former Air Force reserve chaplain. It was his job to counsel the mortuary-affairs personnel who have tended to the more than 4,000 U.S. troops who have come home in flagged-draped coffins via Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base since 9/11:
It was his role to pray during the arrival of a flag-draped transfer case and
…
BattlelandNational Security
The Government Accountability Office issued a report Tuesday revealing that government procurement snafus added $70 billion to weapons costs over just the past two years. Fewer than half the Pentagon’s programs are meeting cost targets. And because the lousiest-run programs tend to be the most expensive, that means 72 cents out of …
BattlelandNational Security
Two of the most vexing issues in today’s Army clash in the lead article of the latest issue of its senior professional journal: letting openly gay men and women serve in uniform, and the shooting, allegedly by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, at Fort Hood that left 13 dead in November 2009.
The link between the two? …
BattlelandNational Security
Once you’ve declared that no U.S. combat boots will be on Libyan soil, you do the next best thing: send in aerial ground-pounders. After more than a week of high-flying B-2s, F-15s and F-16s, the Pentagon has begun flying a very different kind of warplane over Libya in recent days.
The A-10 Warthog (not its official name, which is the …
BattlelandNational Security
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Zi6J7GbHA&feature=player_embedded#at=24]
No, not the booms of bullets and bombs, but the far more disquieting and insidious sound of calm-but-stern voices instructing Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan loyalists, through their radios, to give up. The multilingual messages are broadcast from EC-130 …
BattlelandNational Security
Asia Times has reported that spy agencies are “stunned” by Osama bin Laden’s recent forays back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan:
Asia Times Online has learned that decision-makers have put a lot of weight on the information on Bin Laden’s movements as it has come from multiple intelligence agencies, in Pakistan, Afghanistan
…
