Free Republic

Senior Navy civilians investigated in alleged scheme to defraud military for $1.6 million Federal authorities are investigating three senior Navy intelligence officials as part of a probe into an alleged contracting scheme that charged the military $1.6 million for homemade firearm silencers that cost only $8,000 to manufacture, court records show. The three civilian officials, who oversee highly classified programs, arranged for a hot-rod auto mechanic in California to build a specially ordered batch of unmarked and untraceable rifle silencers and sell them to the Navy at more than 200 times what they cost to manufacture, according to court...

"A lingering mystery in the August 2011 helicopter crash that killed 30 U.S. servicemen in Afghanistan is why some bodies were cremated and some were not. ***snip*** "Charles Strange of Philadelphia, Michael’s father, said two Navy casualty representatives informed him that his son was “burnt up.” Based on that information, he said, he and Michael’s mother authorized the petty officer’s cremation. ***snip*** “I looked at the picture. And my son did not have to be cremated. He was laying there. His one ankle was messed up. But he was laying there like he had a gun in his hand. He...

Questions haunt the families of Extortion 17, the 2011 helicopter mission in Afghanistan that suffered the most U.S. military deaths in a single day in the war on terrorism. ...snip... More than two years later, more answers may be forthcoming. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, is making inquiries after meeting with some families.

The U.S. Army has appeared to do an about-face on some derogatory information recently released about the Christian conservative American Family Association (AFA). Fox News reported that in early October dozens of active duty and reserve Army troops were informed during a briefing at Camp Shelby in Mississippi that the respected pro-family organization should be classified as a hate group. According to Fox, during a slide presentation at the briefing the AFA was listed “alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers, and the Nation of Islam.” But after the story about the misinformation gained...

The Department of Defense unit charged with recovering servicemembers’ remains abroad has been holding phony “arrival ceremonies” for seven years, with an honor guard carrying flag-draped coffins off of a cargo plane as though they held the remains returning that day from old battlefields. The Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday that no honored dead were in fact arriving, and that the planes used in the ceremonies often couldn’t even fly, and were towed into position. The story was first reported on nbcnews.com.

(CNSNews.com) - Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman in the Office of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, is refusing to say whether the Department of Defense would attempt to stop a civilian Catholic priest, who had been a contract chaplain for the military, from administering the last rites to a serviceman on a U.S. military base. “I feel no particular compulsion to answer outlandish, hypothetical questions in a yes/no fashion nor does the Department, generally, answer hypotheticals at all,” Breasseale said in an email. “Further, it is a matter of long standing Department policy to not address matters that are...

In 2004, the Army decided to scrap the two traditional camouflage uniforms that had long been used by the military—one meant for woodland environments, another for the desert—and claimed to have come up with a universal pattern that could be worn anywhere and blend in with any environment. The $5 billion dollar experiment with the universal pattern is over as the Army is phasing out the uniform after less than a decade of use. But many soldiers and observers are wondering why it took this long and cost this much to replace an item that performed poorly from the start...

The Pentagon acknowledges that patriotic "arrival ceremonies" for US war dead recovered from Vietnam, Korea and Second World War battlefields do not involve newly returned remains of the missing By Philip Sherwell, New York4:38PM BST 12 Oct 2013 The Pentagon has for years staged emotional but phony "arrivals ceremonies" for missing American war dead when tearful families and veterans were led to believe flag-draped cases on cargo planes contained the remains of service personnel returned home that day. The defence department has now acknowledged that the ceremonies did not involve newly-repatriated victims from foreign battlefields and that the planes involved...

The International Security Assistance Force did not identify the nationalities but the four were Americans killed by a bomb in the early hours of Sunday, U.S. defense officials said. Also in southern Afghanistan, a security guard shot a soldier dead in a separate incident, Reuters reported. It wasn't clear what nationalities of the guard and the soldier were.

<p>SEOUL, South Korea - Pentagon and administration lawyers are looking for ways to expand the number of Defense Department civilians who are exempt from furloughs, amid worries that the government shutdown is damaging U.S. credibility among its international allies, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday.</p>

AUDIO Interview at link. (CNSNews.com) – Many commanders in the Department of Defense are violating the religious rights of service members, forcing them to be quiet about their moral opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage, for instance, and, in effect, imposing a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on Christians, said Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William “Jerry” Boykin, the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command. In an interview, CNSNews.com asked Gen. Boykin, now the executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), “Given the violation of religious liberties that have been going on, do you think that, ironically, Christians...

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough asserted that a "common-sense test" rather than "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence" makes the Syrian government responsible for a chemical weapons attack that Obama says demands a U.S. military response. McDonough acknowledged the risks that military action could drag the U.S. into the middle of a brutal civil war and endanger allies such as Israel with a retaliatory attack.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded US$7 billion of contracts to 22 companies for the right to develop and sell solar energy to the US Army. The winning companies include Gehrlicher US, Siemens and Sunpower. Once projects are developed it is understood winning companies will bid against eachother to supply solar power with the remainder of the ring-fenced US$7 billion available for purchasing. The “multiple-vendor, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price, non-option, non-multi-year contracts” are specifically to be used for solar power. The projects will be developed on land owned or under the jurisdiction of the DoD.

George Washington would not be welcome in the modern U.S. military. Neither would Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, according to Department of Defense training documents that depict the Founding Fathers as extremists and conservative organizations as “hate groups.” The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute training guide was obtained by Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act Request. It was acquired from the Air Force but originated from the Pentagon. “This document deserves a careful examination by military leadership,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News. “Congress needs to conduct better oversight and figure out what the heck is...

U.S. Department of Defense education materials obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, warn of “extremists” that will “talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.” Judicial Watch and other conservative media outlets claim the disclosure indicates the department is teaching that conservative views are “extremist” in nature. The guide is reportedly authored by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a Defense Department-funded diversity training center. Further, the documents cite the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) when identifying “hate groups.”

A Department of Defense teaching guide meant to fight extremism advises students that rather than “dressing in sheets” modern-day radicals “will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place,” and describes 18th-century American patriots seeking freedom from the British as belonging to “extremist ideologies.” The guide comes from documents obtained by Judicial Watch and is authored by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a DoD-funded diversity training center. Under a section titled “extremist ideologies,” the document states, “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought...

Judicial Watch obtained Defense Department training materials on Friday that described conservative and civil liberties organizations as “hate groups.” The training materials used by the Air Force were created to help students “recognize extremists ideologies.” The materials identified conservative values, such as individual liberties and states’ rights, as recruiting rhetoric used by “extremists.” According to Judicial Watch: Under a section labeled “Extremist Ideologies” the document states, “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states...

Russian officials this week carried out a secret inspection of the U.S. strategic missile defense base in California as part of the New START arms treaty, according to Obama administration officials. The inspection of five missile defense interceptors is the only one allowed under the 2010 arms accord. The treaty requires cuts of U.S. and Russian deployed strategic warheads to 1,550. A defense official said the visit was a treaty verification visit hosted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. A State Department official declined to comment on the inspection but confirmed it was related to New START. “Implementation activities under...

Conservative critics are blasting the Defense Department for giving gay troops an early wedding gift: up to 10 days uncharged leave time for same-sex marriages.

PDF link at source for Hagel memorandum.Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is pressing military juries and others involved in military criminal proceedings to exercise their own judgment based on facts, a message that comes as claims of unlawful command influence by senior officials are being made in some sexual assault trials. Comments by President Barack Obama, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos and others have been cited for the appearance of improperly influencing military jurors and command authorities, who some argue may interpret “get-tough” comments on sexual assault as directives. “Central to military justice is the...