BattlelandAfghanistan
This video is ricocheting around the Internet. Early indications are that it is an AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship from Forward Operating Base Sharana in eastern Afghanistan. No one was reported hurt. Just one more thing the Army is going to have to explain.
BattlelandMilitary Women
I have been thinking about Women’s History Month since March began. Then, I saw that March 8 was International Women’s Day, an event that has taken place worldwide since the early 1900s. According to its website, it began amid the turbulence of the industrial age when women started realizing their oppressed and subordinate …
BattlelandVeterans
Sometimes you get the impression Berlitz or Rosetta Stone should offer U.S. civilians classes on how to speak to folks who have served in the military. Just another sign of the growing gap between U.S. society and those defending it that Battleland wrote about last Veterans Day.
BattlelandAir Force
When Battleland thinks of an Air Force-related rock group, Jefferson Airplane for some reason springs to mind. But today’s Air Force isn’t relying on some psychedelic 1960s’-era band for its cred. Instead, it’s counting on Max Impact, made up of Air Force non-commissioned officers.
Granted, it’s not the Air Force Strings …
BattlelandIsrael
This is a new documentary about how President Obama hasn’t been allied sufficiently with Israel, going so far, it notes, to discourage Israel from attacking Iran. It’s from an outfit calling itself the Emergency Committee for Israel, which Battleland hadn’t heard of before Monday morning.
We learned of it on the …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Air Force Lieut. Colonel John Darin Loftis, who was killed Saturday inside the Afghanistan interior ministry, was a father of two. He spoke to his mother three days before he died, on his 44th birthday. A proficient speaker of Pashto, one of the common local languages in Afghanistan, he’d been given a Pashto name during an earlier …
BattlelandAir Force
Surely you’ve been driving down the street when, though no fault of your own, your windshield fogs up and you suddenly find yourself driving blind. Now imagine you’re flying an F-16 on the verge of landing amid an air show crowd – not to mention lots of vintage airplanes – when your canopy cockpit fogs up.
That’s precisely …
BattlelandAfghanistan
It’s hard to believe that the U.S. troops involved in the reported near-torching of Korans at Bagram air base in Afghanistan didn’t know what they were doing.
After all, for close to a decade, the U.S. military has been issuing guidance like this to U.S. troops on how to treat the Muslim holy book:
BattlelandArmy
Army combat vets – remember, they’re limited to men — are donning fake breasts and bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training. It’s part of the service’s Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course.
“This whole thing is pretty uncomfortable,” Sergeant Michael …
BattlelandMilitary Women
Following last week’s decision by the Pentagon to change some of the conditions under which servicewomen can serve in a limited number of combat roles, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta attacked the Department of Defense for increasing spending on support programs for victims of sexual assault. Trotta proffers that “servicewomen want …
BattlelandProcurement
Frank Kendall shined a spotlight Monday into the F-35 program – the biggest weapons buy in the history of the world — and didn’t like what he saw. The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer said:
This will make a headline if I say it, but I’m going to say it anyway: putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was
…
BattlelandProcurement
The F-35 Lightning II fighter program has struggled recently: then-defense secretary Robert Gates put the Marine version on “probation” for two years, before new defense chief Leon Panetta let it off a year early – apparently something to do with good flying behavior. Such positive news has led to this video, complete with the …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
The Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee have posted a new video timed to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. They’re calling on him to join with them in cutting the federal workforce so that a second $500 billion batch of Pentagon budget cuts required under existing law can be …
