Free Republic

Top Illinois politicians say a multimillion-dollar institute bound for Chicago will be the nation’s flagship research site for digital manufacturing. Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Pat Quinn on Sunday publicly heralded Chicago’s selection by the Defense Department as the site of one of two manufacturing institutes. …

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Feb. 12, in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when they were struck by enemy small arms fire. Killed were: Spc. John A. Pelham, 22, of Portland, Ore., and Sgt. First Class Roberto C. Skelt, 41, of York, Fla. Pelham and Skelt were assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C.

What was expected to be a routine stopover at Bangor International Airport for a plane filled with returning U.S. troops and defense contractors Sunday night instead became a frustrating ordeal for many of those aboard. For the 102 U.S. troops returning from Afghanistan and Kuwait on Delta flight 8964, getting off the plane was fairly routine and featured a hero’s welcome from the Maine Troop Greeters in attendance. It was a different story for the 112 Department of Defense contractors — those hired to fly drones, do intelligence analysis, fix computers and other jobs — some of whom were kept...

WASHINGTON, Jan 27, 2014-The Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress today of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq for AH-64E APACHE LONGBOW Attack Helicopters and associated equipment, parts, training and logistical support for an estimated cost of $4.8 billion. [....] This proposed sale supports the strategic interests of the United States by providing Iraq with a critical capability to protect itself from terrorist and conventional threats, to enhance the protection of key oil infrastructure and platforms, and to reinforce Iraqi sovereignty. This proposed sale of AH-64E APACHE helicopters will support Iraq’s efforts to establish a fleet of multi-mission attack...

In response to a letter from a coalition of religious liberty advocates concerned about anti-Christian bias in Defense Department “equal opportunity” training materials, the Department of Defense says it is reviewing those materials and will decide this month whether to continue using “private organizations” as resources in developing them. The coalition specifically cited the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a group the military should stop relying upon as a source for equal opportunity training. […] The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, a member of the coalition, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the DOD seeking training...

Full title: DOD Will Review Training Materials That List Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as ‘Religious Extremism’ (CNSNews.com) – The Department of Defense will review its military training materials following a coalition of religious liberty advocates expressing outrage in a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Christianity is described in the materials as “religious extremism” based, in part, on categorization provided to the government by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The letter, signed by a large coalition that includes the Family Research Council, American Values, Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty (CARL), Judicial Watch and the Media Research Center – the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon repeatedly waived laws banning Chinese-built components on U.S. weapons in order to keep the $392 billion Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program on track in 2012 and 2013, even as U.S. officials were voicing concern about China's espionage and military buildup. According to Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters, chief U.S. arms buyer Frank Kendall allowed two F-35 suppliers, Northrop Grumman Corp and Honeywell International Inc, to use Chinese magnets for the new warplane's radar system, landing gears and other hardware. Without the waivers, both companies could have faced sanctions for violating federal law and the...

The Defense Department announced Friday that many areas will be removed from the list of places where U.S. servicemembers qualify for imminent danger pay. “Today we are announcing the recertification of some locations as Imminent Danger Pay areas while we are discontinuing that designation for others,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters.

Was trying to find out if there any USAF units solely dedicated to dropping nuclear test bombs in the Pacific and Nevada.

The Thomas More Law Center with the Family Research Council (FRC) and 14 other organizations announced yesterday the submission of a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel requesting that the Department of Defense (DOD) ensure that future training materials do not rely on information from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) or any other organization that engages in groundless and highly pejorative mischaracterizations of long-standing Christian organizations for their own political purposes. The request comes after several training incidents in which Army instructors may have relied on anti-Christian materials produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that was...

Big-ticket weapons like aircraft carriers and the F-35 fighter jet have to be part of any conversation about cutting Pentagon spending to satisfy the mandatory budget reductions known as the sequester. But compensation for military personnel has to be on the table, too — even though no other defense issue is more politically volatile or emotionally fraught. After a decade of war, the very idea of cutting benefits to soldiers, sailors and Marines who put their lives on the line seems ungrateful. But America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is over or winding down, and the Pentagon is obliged to...

There has been a wave of attacks against religious freedom inside the United States Military. There was the Air Force officer who was forced to remove a Bible from his desk because it might offend someone. There is the military chaplain who was instructed to resign his commission if he refused to “get on board” with the abolition of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. There’s the 20-year-old ethics course that was eliminated in July 2011 because it referenced scripture. And there is the painting containing a verse from scripture that was removed from the Mountain Home Air Force...

An investigative report from an Arizona television station reveals illegal aliens routinely are marching across a classified military base in order to enter the U.S., and the military’s perspective is that it’s not the Department of Defense’s responsibility to chase down invaders. The report comes from KVOA-TV in Tucson, which reported that the fort, which is the home to the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, is having hundreds, perhaps thousands, of illegal aliens come across its 73,000 acres. The site is located in the Huachuca Mountains only a few miles from the border...

The Obama administration on Friday carved out yet another category of illegal immigrants it says it will no longer deport — in this case saying that relatives of U.S. troops and veterans who previously served can apply to stay in the country. The administration said it was making the move because it was worried illegal immigration was hurting military readiness, and this would be a way to relieve some of the “stress and anxiety” faced by troops whose relatives are illegal immigrants.

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...