BattlelandR&D
The Army has finally got its football-field-sized Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) airborne over the Jersey coast. The huge unmanned spy platform is designed to give the U.S. military “more than 21 days of unblinking stare,” contractor Northrop Grumman says.
Not all of its numbers are so stupendous: it boasts a …
BattlelandAfghanistan
These days, when troops get bored in the war zone – and there’s plenty of time for that to happen – they make music videos. Here’s the latest from the Marines (and some soldiers) at Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan, lip-syncing to what Battleland is told is Carly Rae Jepson’s summer hit “Call Me Maybe.”
Dan Lamothe …
BattlelandSuicide
The House approved an amendment to next year’s defense spending bill Wednesday night that shifts $10 million from training Afghan security forces to fighting suicide in the ranks of the U.S. military.
BattlelandIEDs
War is action v. reaction. The insurgents got the upper hand in Iraq with their improvised explosive devices. We countered with $40 billion worth of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. That worked for a while.
But the advantage is shrinking. Six U.S. troops, all inside a single MRAP, died Sunday in Afghanistan in the blast of a …
BattlelandSnafus
In sociology, the “broken-windows theory” holds that if a neighborhood or city doesn’t fix its broken windows and graffiti, the environment will continue to descend into crime, chaos and violence.
In Brazil, apparently, it means something quite different. Check out this pair of Brazilian air force Mirage 2000 fighters flying too …
BattlelandR&D
No doubt the Pentagon is behind this: a human-powered quad-rotor helicopter. If this thing, ahem, really takes off, unmanned drones are doomed…
All kidding aside, congratulations to the team at the University of Maryland, and pilot Kyle Gluesenkamp, for getting this muscle-fueled whirlybird airborne for 50 seconds last Thursday …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Battleland contributor Bingham Jamison, a Marine who saw action in Iraq and came home the worse for wear, is the subject of a new video by Veterans Healing Initiative. That’s a nonprofit group dedicated to getting veterans treatment for substance abuse and PTSD. “VHI offers support to veterans from all conflicts, of all ages, men and …
BattlelandMilitary Personnel
A new documentary called The Invisible War, from award-winning filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, exposes a brutal reality that affects far too many within our military community. It also provides an important framework to understand the impact of military sexual assault on those who serve and their families.
It sets the stage for …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, the California Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, is out with his latest video on the perils of impending sequestration. It’s increasingly looking like mutual Russian roulette: the GOP doesn’t want the military’s future spending plans cut by $600 billion over the coming decade …
BattlelandVeterans
Follow Marine veteran Matthew Litton as he hunts for work at a RecruitMilitary job fair in Philadelphia.
Picture a young man who joined the military shortly after high school. As an infantryman, he shipped out several times …
BattlelandMilitary Women
Over the past couple of months, the military has upped the ante in its fight to reduce sexual harassment and assault through education and prevention programs. This is all good, but it will take time to see whether or not these initiatives actually work.
In the short run, women are still being assaulted, and some of those assaults …
BattlelandIEDs
Battleland recalls when Government Accountability Office reports were issued with light-blue covers, not the dark-blue ones they’ve been sporting for a couple of decades. And when G.A.O. stood for General Accounting Office, until Congress decided that sounded too meek (GAO works only for Congress; for years reporters called it the …
BattlelandArms Control
Rep. Mike Turner, the Ohio Republican who chairs the armed services committee’s strategic subcommittee, remains alarmed by President Obama’s hot-mic chit-chat with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. In March, Obama told Medvedev that Obama would have “more flexibility” if he’s re-elected to hammer out a new arms-control …
