BattlelandNational Security
Poignant story from the Killeen Daily Herald:
SALADO, Texas – A soldier who was severely wounded in the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting at Fort Hood and his fiancee are getting the house of their dreams, courtesy of the ABC television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and an army of volunteers working this week. Staff Sgt. Patrick
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BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon has just issued a mental-health summary for the nation’s entire military and it isn’t pretty. “In 2009, mental disorders accounted for more hospitalizations of U.S. service members than any other diagnostic category,” the report says. “…in the last year of the decade, approximately one of every 12 service members received …
BattlelandNational Security
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks hit pay dirt when Army Private First Class Bradley Manning reached out to them with CDs full of classified U.S. diplomatic cables and other data that WikiLeaks has shared with the world. While the U.S. government hasn’t fingered Manning as the source of all this material, it’s plain he’s the prime suspect in …
BattlelandNational Security
From an article in the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes:
Critical in saving the lives of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, quick battlefield care and air evacuation have also allowed servicemembers whose brains have irreversibly stopped functioning but whose hearts and lungs are sustained artificially to be flown to Landstuhl
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BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon’s No. 2 official awarded the Navy’s first batch of “information dominance warfare” pins to seven officers at the Naval Academy on Friday. “You’re at the cutting edge of what we’re trying to do,” Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn told the newly-pinned officers. “You’re at the forefront of a real trend in warfare and in …
BattlelandNational Security
Last week’s news that a panel of admirals has recommended that Navy Capt. Holly Graf be booted from the Navy for “cruelty” to her crew aboard the cruiser USS Cowpens led some to wonder if such attention would be focused on a man accused of similar behavior.
You betcha. From a strange story in Saturday’s Norfolk Virginia-Pilot about …
BattlelandNational Security
Sen. John McCain knows about delivering ordnance on target: after all, the Arizona Republican piloted a Navy A-4 over North Vietnam (and was shot down and imprisoned for his efforts). That’s what has got Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid upset about McCain’s ever-changing coordinates when it comes what he wants to happen before he’ll …
BattlelandNational Security
A trio of admirals has recommended that Capt. Holly Graf should be booted from the Navy with a general — not honorable — discharge because of the way she treated her crew aboard the cruiser USS Cowpens.
BattlelandNational Security
While the Pentagon’s exhaustive study on integrating openly gay men and women into the military convinced President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, of the wisdom of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — a position each already held — it didn’t move the guys who actually have to …
BattlelandNational Security
Too often, stories out of Afghanistan are about young people dying. Here’s one from outside Kabul about saving a life — in Florida.
BattlelandNational Security
The Navy’s Pacific Fleet reports:
U.S. Navy Commander Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz has visited dozens of ports over the course of his career, but none has ever evoked the emotions that will come when his ship USS Mustin visits Cambodia in December, marking the first time in 37 years that he has returned to the land of his birth.
As a
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BattlelandNational Security
The first of two days of hearings before a Senate panel on the future of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” unfolded like a high-school drama production, with each side speaking its memorized lines. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, played his role as the key opponent of allowing openly gay men and women to serve to the hilt, calling it “a …
BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon has just launched a supercomputer assembled from 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3 processors. But military scientists who brought the computer online yesterday probably won’t be playing PS3 games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, God of War, or Killzone 3. The Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate at Rome, N.Y., bolted …
