March 13, 2010
Spencer Ackerman ranks 'em here. He ends up praising the man who is currently in the job....
February 25, 2010
This is the greatest comedy in the history of comedy. I can no longer attempt teh funny anymore; everything else pales in the face of this: US Missile Defense Agency Changes Logo to Obama~Islamic Crescent Hybrid! Not even the Onion...
January 11, 2010
The NYT notes that intel analysts are awash in data from the drones flying over Afghanistan and Iraq. Really? Whoda thunk it; more sensors equal more data; more data and the same number of analysts equals less analysis. Of significantly...
October 25, 2009
Having to work with Gen. Patton must have been frustrating at times. Having to do it in a political context must have been extra-frustrating. The upshot was that he got 25 prisoners back and lost a full company of medium...
October 13, 2009
The Chinese are moving forward in refurbishing the Varyag (bought from the Ukraine a few years back) and have started construction of what looks to be training facilities for carrier operations inland. This won't give the Chinese full carrier potential...
August 18, 2009
Secretary Clinton's comments in this meeting were interesting too....
July 15, 2009
I'm away at a full-on Geek-Fest Summer Camp for a few weeks. It's an academic retreat that teaches security studies, with a specific focus on military strategy and operations. We spent a couple hours today arguing about Lee at Gettysburg,...
June 02, 2009
The current Secretary of the Army, President Bush's last, was a Democratic congressman. The new Secretary of the Army will be John McHugh, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. He represents the northernmost district in New York...
May 22, 2009
One of the things I find most peculiar of late about those on the right who are obsessed (and I don't use the word lightly, you know the type) with all things gay is their contention that if DADT is...
March 02, 2009
It keeps getting smaller. Will it even be able to protect Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales once they are completed? Under current plans, the Royal Navy circa 2020 will be a very strange force. There will be just six...
February 09, 2009
An interesting AP story. As it fights two wars, the Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls "the human terrain" of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of...
November 30, 2008
David Bartsow has an excellent piece in today's New York Times on Gen. McCaffrey, a well-known retired general, tv talking head, and former Drug Czar, detailing McCaffrey's tendency to advocate policies - to both the media and the military -...
November 16, 2008
October 04, 2008
The US is a key audience for the hundreds of millions they are throwing into propoganda operations? I think Marc Lynch's response is on target. Presenting American audiences as a key target for manipulation through the covert dissemination of propaganda...
September 15, 2008
I didn't realize he had died. It's a pity. He was always thoughtful and worth reading, and regardless of who wins 50 days from now he'd have been worth hearing as US military and foreign operations move to a different...
September 13, 2008
Ummm, what? This seems wrong....
September 04, 2008
Dick Cheney, being kept as far away from the Republican National Convention as is humanly possibly, has stated (publicly) that Georgia should join NATO: TBILISI, Georgia - Vice President Dick Cheney flew here on Thursday to deliver a forceful American...
August 01, 2008
The Armchair Generalist has a couple good links here, one to a letter Gen. Shinseki wrote Secretary Rumsfeld, and one to a piece by Secretary Gates (I might throw the latter on a syllabus). And as to McIntyre's comments about...
June 19, 2008
Don't know if anyone else noticed this: the US Air Force is having a great deal of difficultly buying airplanes. The Air Force needs some new air-to-air tankers. These are the boring, unglamorous planes that are necessary. They are big...
June 17, 2008
The American right's favorite Frenchie is slashing the size of his country's military, closing 50 bases, increasing spending on intelligence, and rejoining NATO's military command....
Shocking. Just shocking. Who'd have thought? Well, pretty much everyone with a pulse, but it's maddening nonetheless: The Army official who managed the Pentagon's largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve...
June 10, 2008
I'd just like to go on record as saying that whoever wins in November should keep Bob Gates around as SecDef. He's trying bring the Air Force in line, he's supported attempts to expand the Army, and he's making the...
June 09, 2008
There's a post on the nominees at Danger Room. The next Chief of Staff will not be a fighter pilot. I hear people interested in bureaucratic politics and role theory rushing to plan studies of how this affects the form...
May 28, 2008
Wow. Given the penchant of a lot of contractors to rip off the government/taxpayer, and fact that that sum is more than the combined budgets of a host of federal departments, that's pretty amazing....
May 13, 2008
The governor of Washington state took time out of her busy schedule today to write a diary on Daily Kos in which she attacks Sen. McCain for leading the fight that allowed for a major air tanker contract to be...
April 23, 2008
Josh Marshall asks a good question in light of the big New York Times story this weekend....
April 17, 2008
These are horrifying, and heartbreaking, numbers. Roughly one in five U.S. troops is suffering from major depression or post-traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an equal number have suffered brain injuries, a new study...
April 01, 2008
Weapons programs exceeding their budget is nothing new - but the scale of this is pretty amazing nonetheless.Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of...
March 25, 2008
Yesterday Galrahn posted on the big increase in naval activity in the Middle East - "we find it noteworthy we are in the midst of the largest European naval surge to the Middle East in the 21st century and nobody...
March 22, 2008
Once again we see that European navies know how to choose properly fearsome names for their warships - while our great naval weapons of influence and destruction get terrifying names like Gerald Ford, Nebraska, and Chancellorsville. Well I suppose there...
March 17, 2008
Yep. That's what you call it: The account that emerges from those interviews, and from access to previously unpublished documents, makes clear that Mr. Bremer’s decree reversed an earlier plan - one that would have relied on the Iraqi military...
March 11, 2008
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the head of CENTCOM has announced his resignation in the wake of this profile. Right?...
February 20, 2008
Navy has 10 seconds, $60 million to kill satellite...
February 15, 2008
This is the greatest thing ever. That is all. You may now go about your business. (* - with the possible exception of alcohol. I'll have to think about that.)...
February 12, 2008
Some of you want to cancel the F-22. Some of you want to fund it to infinity and beyond. You can both play this game David Axe's come up with, where you can build the Air Force of your choice....
February 08, 2008
This will be somewhat obscure, 'cause I don't want this to be public (this will make sense; just read on).I've been invited to have dinner with a gentleman being inducted to this august University's Alumni Hall of Fame (or whatever...
February 07, 2008
Somebody gets very pissed off here. (It doesn't say anything new, but it does say it very angrily.)...
February 05, 2008
And the budget maker spoke and said, I give unto each service one third, now and forever ...It really is amazing that the Pentagon's budget has been divied up so precisely in every budget for 40 years. Definitely a point...
February 01, 2008
This is indeed really silly, and terribly inefficient way to run an organization - particularly one as important and powerful as the Department of Defense. Bush wanted "the Surge", his generals didn't, so he got himself some new generals. Now...
January 29, 2008
As just about everyone who blogs on military issues has discovered, there is a fascinating Tom Ricks nugget in the Washington Post yesterday. The Air Force (our Air Force) notes that "the budget battle is zero sum - others gain...
January 23, 2008
The Army is having trouble again. They want to have 90% of their recruits with a high school diploma, but they also need to make the recruiting numbers in order to prevent a shortfall in people to do jobs. Well,...
January 10, 2008
For a man who's running for president on his national security credentials you'd think John McCain would have a much better understanding of the chain of command. But sadly, he doesn't....
October 26, 2007
Sure we've been annoying them no end of late - but maybe giving them two Perry-class frigates and two minesweepers (3 for free, one at a greatly reduced price) will take the edge off that a tiny bit. Looks like...
October 05, 2007
Saw this on Balloon Juice, and I then wondered if I was dreaming. But sadly no, this is actually going on in real life. Eduardo Gonzalez, a petty officer second class with the U.S. Navy, is about to be deployed...
September 24, 2007
Larry Johnson has post (basically crying "bullshit) about the DoD's latest explanation for this supposed mishap. But what's probably even more interesting is the comment he's posted at the end of his piece. Who leaked that this happened - and...
September 14, 2007
A post for Baltar (and others who may be interested), or rather two posts from Information Dissemination, in case you might be interested in them. First Congress has canceled the fourth Littoral Combat Ship, and more and more it's looking...
August 29, 2007
Is it really such a good idea to sell these to Saudi Arabia?...
August 26, 2007
The New York Times Magazine article on the potential division between Captains/Majors and Generals in the US Army is well worth reading. There have been multiple arguments about "breaking" the Army by forcing it to recycle troops through Iraq multiple...
August 24, 2007
They have launched a ship larger than any other their navy has operated since World War II....
August 19, 2007
You know this was one of those things I knew (heck, I even teach it), but seeing a visual representation of how the Eisenhower administration built up US nuclear forces provides for quite the eye-popping visual. We changed the US...
August 14, 2007
Here Mr. Farley quite reasonably questions the utility of the B-2 and Robert Kaplan's style of ... journalism? Jingoism? Homo-eroticism? You can choose the word you think fits....
July 20, 2007
Well this is interesting. Who's getting the most contributions from military personnel and veterans? Ron Paul and Barack Obama. More generally, anti-war candidates are getting much more in funding from military personnel and veterans in these numbers....
July 02, 2007
George Packer (who wrote a great book on Iraq last year) also has a blog over at the New Yorker. He muses about Phil Carter (who runs Intel-Dump, a great military blog), who has served in Iraq and now feels...
June 21, 2007
I can see a big upside in the proposal for a Name Every Victim law - politically, ethically, and in our ability to make better-informed choices as a nation. Still, I can't imagine that our "pro-life" administration would support it...
June 19, 2007
We have a different "enemy," but just about everything else is the same. Via DefenseTech, we find that the US and China are installing a "hot line" to facilitate communications during crises. Just like the Cold War (where we had...
June 17, 2007
Andrew Bacevich makes an interesting proposal....
The New Yorker has a depressing profile of the man behind the Taguba report. It's worth a look.By the way, the article also mentions Gen. Bantz Craddock a few times. As he is a WVU graduate it seems entirely possible...
June 16, 2007
I think Josh Marshall is right on target here. What exactly is wrong with questioning the competence of military leaders? And if merely questioning their competence is wrong - shouldn't not listening to their recommedations, or especially firing them, be...
With rape an ongoing threat to women serving the United States in uniform, the Bush administration has shown its indifference to truly supporting the troops, demanding that EC be taken off the list of medicines required at military facilities. Apparently...
June 15, 2007
The conversion of the oldest Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines into platforms for cruise missiles and special operations forces continues....
June 12, 2007
Keep in mind that this guy is running for president. Danger Room features a post on an investigation into one of Duncan Hunter's pet projects. In military-industrial circles, former House Armed Services Committee chairman (and long-shot Presidential candidate) Duncan Hunter...
June 03, 2007
Basic counterinsurgency strategy (best discussed about forty years ago in Galula's counterinsurgency bible, written after Galula served in Algeria, and observing France's failing attempts to win in Vietnam) argues that counterinsurgency is fundamentally political. On one side is the government,...
April 25, 2007
Great story in the Washington Post about the absurdities, tragedies, comedies, triumphs and defeats of being the US Army trying to "win" in Iraq....
April 17, 2007
Coming on the heels of the Navy's decision to cancel their contract with Lockheed for another Littoral Combat Ship is news that the Coast Guard is wresting control of the troubled "Deepwater" program from a consortium headed by Lockhead Martin...
April 08, 2007
For those of us who have come to oppose the US adventures in Iraq (either recently or since 2002; either strenuously or moderately), this WaPo article presents the crux of the problem: An official in Iraq warned that executing the...
April 02, 2007
This might not be the most revelatory piece in the world, but it does lay out another reason to question the incredible sums that we are spending to enlarge our fighter fleet....
March 02, 2007
So you have probably heard that the Army has relieved Major General George Weightman of his at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And it apparently is now also asking him not to be a witness at Monday's subcommittee hearing on...
February 22, 2007
That's not a new thing of course - but besting Hugh Hewitt on Iraq is pretty great....
February 13, 2007
As any news source will tell you, there is a general agreement among the six parties to the appropriately named "Six Party Talks" with regard to the North Korean nuclear program. The general outlines of the argeement are interesting: North...
January 19, 2007
Some general points, based on the very (very) long view of history: 1. No state (or, for those of a historical bent, pre-state - empire, city-state, etc.) achieves permenant supremacy. They all (ALL) fall at some point (when they fall,...
January 10, 2007
I argued a couple of days ago that Negroponte was an asshole for leaving ONI. The office is too new, and too fragile and important, to play with. I continue to feel that.However, armand brought this to my attention: Contrary...
January 04, 2007
So the decision has been made and the lead ship of the "CVN-21" class has been named (yeah, it's not going to enter service until 2015, but how can politicians resist naming mutil-billion dollar projects years in advance?). This mighty...
January 02, 2007
The former chief of the JCS has had a change of heart, and thinks it's time to let gays serve openly in the US military. He still thinks his support for "don't ask, don't tell" was appropriate in the early...
December 12, 2006
Faith, family, then country. That's the way to approach national defense. Jesus fucking christ....
October 11, 2006
Of freedom, country, and military service. Navy lawyer denied promotion: The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have...
October 07, 2006
Ah the things you learn on Wikipedia. For example, did you know that two Brazilian frigates (the Greenhalgh and the Dodsworth) were once British warships (the Broadsword and the Brilliant)and fought in the Falklands War (against, of course, Brazil's regional...
Can we please call it the "H W"? I'd really hate to think that the navy is going to be saddled for decades with a six billion dollar warship that's regularly called the George Bush. Plus, doesn't that name basically...
October 05, 2006
State of Denial, by Woodward, page 179. This is really a facinating book. It's very different from "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack" (previous books by Woodward; the first about Afghanistan, the second about Iraq up to the day...
October 01, 2006
One of Binky's least favorite bloggers has this post which shows us the multitude of religious symbols that the VA will allow placed on headstones. There is, of course, as of yet no Wiccan symbol allowed. But hey, they've got...
September 19, 2006
The Thai military has launched a coup to remove the Prime Minister, who has been accused of corruption and abuse of power. The Prime Minister was in New York, for the UN General Assembly. There has been no reported blood...
September 13, 2006
I had started a post about this before I left for work this morning, and come back to find Pandagon did the work so I don't have to (just like scrubbing bubbles). A brief quote: "If we're not willing to...
September 07, 2006
I've just started Fiasco by Tom Ricks, a book I've assigned as extra credit for my "Global Political Issues" class. I'm only a few pages in, but I did find this aside somewhat entertaining: [Wolfowitz's] soft voice and mild manner...
August 16, 2006
The World is Flat is a book by Thomas Friedman. As I refuse to recognize Thomas Friedman's right to exist, I decided to read Cobra II by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor instead. Found at Lawyers, Guns, and Money....
August 07, 2006
I'm disturbed by the continued arguments (most, though not exclusively, right wing) that the use of force solves problems for states. I'm not going to bother with a laundry list of sites who argue this, but it's inherent in the...
July 30, 2006
Does anyone remember the debates about the numbers of "Level 1" versus "Level 2" Iraqi battalions? You remember, a "Level 1" battalion can stand and fight without US assistance, while a "Level 2" could fight with US support (logistics, air,...
July 24, 2006
This strikes me as a gigantic threat to global stability, the kind of thing that in times of a competent presidency you'd think we'd prioritize stopping. But given the presidency that we have, and the president's current plan to legitimize...
July 23, 2006
I read the Sunday papers so you don't have to: Most Interesting Story: The US is reducing our military spending in Africa. Why is this interesting? Al Qaeda (short term) and raw materials (long term). Follow me here. The Republican...
July 21, 2006
Duck of Minerva has a retrospective on the buildup and execution of the Iraq War (2003 - 200?): The overall assumption evident throughout the political appointees of the Administration (and among Neo-con talking heads) was that inside each little Iraqi...
July 11, 2006
It's all over the news, and I'm sure we're not the first blog to put it up, but the US government (specifically, the White House via a DoD memo) announced that all detainees worldwide will be treated according to the...
July 10, 2006
Our knickers would be even more twisty if we had half a clue what was going on over there. Including blacklisting reporters who don't toe the government's line on what's happening in Iraq: But the military has started censoring many...
July 07, 2006
The headline from the NYT story says it all: Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military. The article reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center (granted, a left-of-center group, but one that has a good track record for research in this...
July 03, 2006
New Seymore Hersh article from the New Yorker is online (here). While it's long, the most interesting stuff is in the first half: the military is really pushing back against Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and their idea of bombing the Iranian nuclear program....
May 13, 2006
I may have missed a previous occurance of this, but as far as I know this is the first recorded instance of Iraqi Army units fighting each other. This is bad news. It is, in fact, very bad news. It...
May 08, 2006
I think this is a truly terrible idea, particularly at this point in time. I mean really, do we want Donald Rumsfeld in charge of more national security activities? Especially these activities? Who is going to feel safer and more...
May 06, 2006
Via Digby, comes this story in today's WaPo (that I missed): The Air Force is investigating whether a two-star general violated military regulations by urging fellow Air Force Academy graduates to make campaign contributions to a Republican candidate for Congress...
April 10, 2006
This post was originally titled "Packer and McMaster", but "Awesome" is much better. No one will understand either title of this post, but it just follow me here. George Packer writes for the New Yorker. He is a journalist who...
March 20, 2006
Is there a civil war in Iraq? Yes, though it does not immediately threaten the Iraqi Government. Interesting post, and lots of good information....
March 19, 2006
Long New York Times story today about the "secret" US prison/interrogation facility in Baghdad. Suffice it to say, the abuse their was on par with (or exceeded) the abuse at Abu Ghraib. It gets harder and harder to argue that...
February 13, 2006
Not that this is new news, but winning the (smaller) war in Iraq and the (larger) war against fundamentalist Islam will be harder than we thought, and take longer than we want: ...the number of books translated by the whole...
January 26, 2006
Discovered on the web: Blue Force, a "blue" state national security blog. Interesting stuff (from whatever direction you come from). For those interested in the subject, Arms and Influence is also good, as well as Armchair Generalist. Also, Crooked Timber...
January 24, 2006