BattlelandNational Security
The ultimate arbiter of the fairness of U.S. government contracts — that would be the Government Accountability Office — has ruled against Sikorsky Helicopter of Connecticut in favor of the Navy’s decision to limit the purchase of new choppers for the Afghan air force to a Russian model. Its decision, dated November 5, has just been …
BattlelandNational Security
North Korea dealt the world’s crumbling efforts to contain the nuclear genie yet another body blow when the one-time Hermit Kingdom invited a U.S. scientist to take an inside peek at Pyongyang’s nuclear complex on November 12 – and floored him with a “stunning” new uranium enrichment plant sporting at least 1,000 centrifuges. Not only …
BattlelandNational Security
Eyebrow-raising piece in the Washington Post this morning reporting that the U.S. Marines are dispatching 16 M-1 tanks to southwestern Afghanistan. The 68-ton behemoths can hurl a 120mm shell a mile downrange to blow up pretty much anything. It’s the first time such heavy armor is being sent to Afghanistan.
This raises a couple of …
BattlelandNational Security
I know there are some soldiers fighting for us today who are glad Bryan Fischer isn’t serving alongside them. The alleged pro-family blogger complained the other day that the Medal of Honor is becoming “feminized” because it’s being awarded to soldiers who have saved comrades instead of killing the enemy (be sure to check out the …
BattlelandNational Security
The “boom” you just heard coming from the Pentagon isn’t a test of the newest nuclear cannon, but the starting pistol in the race to figure out where — and how deeply — to cut the U.S. military budget. It’s a strange fight to be having as the U.S. military wraps up one war and remains engaged in a second. But with defense spending …
BattlelandNational Security
Close to 200 lawmakers have written to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking questions about the pending $60 billion sale of F-15 jet fighters and other weapons to Saudi Arabia. They want to know the “rationale for a sale of such magnitude” and what might happen to the arms “in the event of …
BattlelandNational Security
When police work doesn’t work, offer money. That’s what the FBI is doing after weeks of investigation have failed to find the person responsible for firing on the Marine museum, a Marine recruiting station (a Coast Guard recruiting station, too) and the Pentagon itself. The feds are offering “up to” $20,000 for information leading to the …
BattlelandNational Security
President Obama’s start date for pulling some of the 100,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan — next July — now has an end date, as well: 2014, according to this morning’s New York Times. But if the 2011 date is squishy — and it is — so is the withdrawal date. Neither specifies how many will be coming out, or how fast: numbers and pace …
BattlelandNational Security
The Air Force sure knows where to plot its future. Later this week, the Air Force Association, the service’s independent lobbying arm, is conducting a so-called Global Warfare Symposium to delve into the challenges of “the nuclear enterprise, cyberspace, expeditionary forces and space.”
(Military types have begun referring to the …
BattlelandNational Security
If it’s Friday, it’s time for another dispatch from the high court on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Last Friday, a pro-gay Republican group seeking to overturn the ban on gay men and women serving openly in the U.S. military asked the Supreme Court to bar enforcement of the 17-year old law while the Justice Department appeals a federal …
BattlelandNational Security
At 0420 local time, two long bursts of RPD machine gun fire echoed through the valley at Wanat. Immediately after this signal, insurgents opened up with intense and continuous volleys of machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fire from hidden locations on all sides of the American/ANA position. This initial volley started an
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BattlelandNational Security
Tough story in the Clarksville, Tenn., Leaf-Chronicle this morning about a soldier with PTSD who says he went AWOL, instead of returning to Afghanistan, because of the lack of mental-health services at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. “All I wanted was to be treated,” Specialist Jeff Hanks, who also served in Iraq in 2008, said outside the …
BattlelandNational Security
Here’s a Washington item from the dead-tree issue of Time just out where I survey the rockier road ahead for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and a couple of other national-security matters, in the mid-term’s wake…
