BattlelandNational Security
Earlier this year, the Navy set off fireworks when it released a report detailing Captain Holly Graf’s “cruel and unusual” treatment of her crew aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens.
It generated lots of online commentary, but ended with her fate undecided. This week she has been called before a formal board of inquiry, which …
BattlelandNational Security
That Hollywood advice to young reporters brought down a President, and now it’s going to keep China out of a second Korean war. In the just-published winter issue of the Air Force’s Strategic Studies Quarterly, a U.S. intelligence analyst specializing in northeast Asia and nuclear matters predicts that China’s reliance on world trade …
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BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon has concluded, based on a nearly year-long study and a survey of troops, that jettisoning the policy that bars openly gay men and women from serving in uniform isn’t a big deal. Seventy percent of those polled said junking the 17-year old ban would be positive, neutral or of no consequence. We’ll have a broader look at …
BattlelandNational Security
The White House’s proposal to freeze federal pay announced Monday exempted the military. It would be DOA on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have been giving the troops an extra half-percentage-point pay hike above and beyond whatever the Pentagon requests for several years. The troops and their families have been doing great work for a …
BattlelandNational Security
The once-Great British navy has put the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible up for sale on an eBay-like website. It’s a sad end for a proud 690-foot warship that sailed Her Majesty’s seas from 1980 to 2005, and took part in the Falklands, Balkans and Iraq campaigns. Its crew of more than 1,000 piloted the ship’s two-dozen aircraft up to …
BattlelandNational Security
President Obama’s fight to let openly gay men and women serve in the U.S. military enters its political endgame this week. The Pentagon will release its report on Tuesday saying most troops don’t care, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, will tell the Senate Armed Services Committee on …
BattlelandNational Security
In honor of Black Friday — when all good Americans demonstrate their profound sense of materialism and economic entitlement — it’s worth noting that the U.S. Marines have been doing their bit to boost the economy, too.
Prior to 9/11, it cost about $1,200 to outfit a Marine for war, and this is what he looked like.
These days, it …
BattlelandNational Security
Defense Secretary Robert Gates may be a crafty bureaucratic infighter and seasoned national-security pro, but he also knows the limits of his own considerable knowledge: “To any question beginning with ‘Why?’ with regards to North Korea, my answer is the same: `I don’t know.'”
While Gates made that remark shortly before North Korea …
BattlelandNational Security
It’s important to keep in mind that North Korea isn’t a country in the western sense of the word. It’s a murderous cult. It is the bastard child of the Soviet Union, born in the days following World War II, and succored by China following the Soviets’ collapse. In 2007, a congressional researcher assembled a list of some of Pyongyang’s …
BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon’s latest report on progress in Afghanistan, released late Wednesday afternoon, is mixed, but it starts out upbeat:
Progress across the country remains uneven, with modest gains in security, governance, and development in operational priority areas. The deliberate application of our strategy is beginning to have cumulative
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BattlelandNational Security
Former Pentagon strategist Thomas P. M. Barnett urges the U.S. to avoid brinkmanship, act responsibly, curb the South Korean military, welcome Beijing into the next war game — and change the topic of conversation.
BattlelandNational Security
It’s important to remember that the long-ago Korean war has never ended. Hostilities were terminated between the U.N.-backed South and the Chinese-backed North with an armistice on July 27, 1953. Nearly 30,000 U.S. troops remain in South Korea, sworn to defend the South from an attack from the North. The North alleges its latest …
