Free Republic

U.S. troops occasionally have to land their aircraft unexpectedly, giving rise to awkward situations. Consider the case of a transport plane that landed on an African highway in July while carrying U.S. troops, prompting a sheepish Marine colonel to apologize for the commotion. Even that appears to pale in comparison to the unexpected landing of numerous Army helicopters in Poland on Tuesday, however. Bloomberg News reports that six of them landed in a rapeseed field in the village of Gruta, some 140 miles north of Warsaw, and asked villagers where they were. The surprise landing spooked some people at first,...

"Washington (CNN) -- A CIA assessment puts the number of ISIS fighters at possibly more than three times the previous estimates."

The Stephen Losey (Air Force Times) reports (see also the American Humanist Association’s letter to the Air Force Inspector General): An atheist airman at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada was denied reenlistment last month for refusing to take an oath containing “so help me God,” the American Humanist Association said Thursday…. Air Force Instruction 36-2606 spells out the active-duty oath of enlistment, which all airmen must take when they enlist or reenlist and ends with “so help me God.” The old version of that AFI included an exception: “Note: Airmen may omit the words ‘so help me God,’ if...

One of the fundamental problems in our society is that we argue with one another from positions of moral parochialism: we assume that the other party shares our frames of reference. That may have been true in the earlier years of our nation, but I propose that this is no longer the case. Today, we argue from different and fundamentally incompatible moral codes and value systems. It is the dichotomy between the two that confuses our discourse and creates great dangers for our country.

Only the most techno-fanatic would argue that a certain type of tank has changed history. There are so many other causes -- military, political, economic, social -- that explain victory and defeat far better than size of gun or thickness of armor.

This Steampunkish Nazi Belt Buckle Pistol Packs A Deadly Surprise The Nazis had some pretty wild engineering ideas, and some of them, like the jet engine, ended up being a vision of things to come. Yet others were just over-engineered, strange, and in some cases, downright creepy. This steampunkish Nazi belt buckle four-shooter is one of those things. The whole idea was to give high-ranking Nazis a way to kill their captors should they be captured on the battlefield. The concept was said to have originated from known German inventor, Louis Marquis, who designed the contraption while he was held...

Everybody knows action movies are fake, but that doesn't change the fact that they're responsible for approximately 100 percent of our education on the subject of guns and combat. That's why the average person's knowledge of those things is hilariously, sometimes fatally, wrong.To sort out fact from fiction, we interviewed two decorated combat veterans who also have experience working in Hollywood. Matt Wagner is a former Army Ranger who saw combat all over the world, including Africa, South America, and Afghanistan, then was a technical consultant for a number of Hollywood productions, including Stargate SG-1 and The Colt. Jerry McFakename...

More than 70 aging women live in a squalid neighborhood between the rear gate of the U.S. Army garrison here and half a dozen seedy nightclubs.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (Carlos Bledsoe): A Case Study in Lone Wolf Terrorism By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross June 1, 2009 was a Monday. Shortly after 10:00 a.m., Private William Long, 24, and Private Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, stood outside the joint Army-Navy recruiting center in northwestern Little Rock, Arkansas, taking a smoke break. The two young men, who were working at their hometown recruiting center before moving on to their first duty station, spoke of where that first assignment would take them. Long said that he would be leaving for Korea the following Monday; Ezeagwula was bound for Hawaii a day earlier, on...

If you live in New York State or the Tri-State Area,maybe you can fill us in on moods of residences in New York,Jersey,Philly and maybe Connecticut.Even if ten to fifteen per-cent of all who drive in the metropolitan area rush to fill their tanks on the 9th/10th next week,will we be seeing long lines at gas stations?,and how about grocers?.Will this resemble the day before Sandy pounded New York&Jersey?We will likely see reporters all over Manhattan on the eve of September 11,maybe in parking lots of home depot and any retail outlet that sells emergency supplies.

Yesterday at the DFW airport. It was strikingly difficult to talk to the Pakistani women selling food, with their head coverings, OBVIOUSLY pious Muslims. And turning around were Muslim Women with head coverings removing trash. I just WISH someone had the testicular power to tell these women if they want to work at an AIRPORT where travelers are sensitive about Muslim people that blow up things, they need to REMOVE their coverings, or go work at the local dry cleaning shop, or sell used tires. But to put them in the AIRPORTS knowing that all of the things that get...

unresponsive aircraft over atlantic, USAF in pursuit

The jet fighter can’t maneuver, the critics say. It’s based on a wrongheaded concept. It relies on unproved technologies. It’s a one-size-fits-all jet for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, and yet it doesn't really meet any of their needs. Is this Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter I’m describing? No, it’s actually the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the ubiquitous fighter-bomber, reconnaissance and radar-hunting aircraft that formed the backbone of U.S., NATO and Israeli air power in the 1960s and 1970s. More than 50 years later, the Phantom still flies, as evident when Syrian gunners downed a Turkish RF-4...

The subject here is naval history and the naval history to come. This is particularly relevant, given the subjects I've been immersed in over the last year—the so-called war on terrorism and the attacks of 9/11, what went wrong, and what we should do to fix it. I have learned that what these two institutions—the U.S. Naval Institute and the U.S. Naval Academy—stand for are at the center of what we face as a nation going forward. The Naval Institute is one of the great intellectual institutions in this country. I first joined when I was an undergraduate in college,...

A photo depicting an American nuclear-powered submarine poking its periscope above the waves—within shooting distance of a British aircraft carrier during a war game—is a useful reminder of one of the most important truths of naval warfare. For every sailor who’s not in a submarine, submarines are real scary. Stealthy and heavily-armed, subs are by far the most powerful naval vessels in the world for full-scale warfare—and arguably the best way to sink those more obvious icons of naval power, aircraft carriers.

So today my 24 years of active duty service comes to an end. My retirement ceremony was the 25th of July. I've been on terminal leave since then. I went to the local barber shop on the 29th of July for a straight razor shave. Been growing a beard since then. So far, so good. I'm past the itchy stage, and my beard is a bit wirey, with, for some reason, the few gray hairs growing much more rapidly than my others. I shampoo and condition it every morning, and lotion it up and comb it down with a brush...

To all my fellow naval aviation alums out there -- and to the rest who find naval aviation distinct: I have been trying to recreate the famous Fernknocker cocktail, late of Trader Jon's in Pensacola, and later of Bville. I know it contains bourbon, sweet vermouth, Galliano, two cherries, and perhaps other ingredients as well. Can anyone remember the recipe? Thanks.

‘WHAT ON EARTH is that,” was a question muttered in TheJournal.ie offices, and, if Twitter is anything to go by — plenty of other places in Dublin this lunchtime. Why? Well, well, these two planes carried out a fly-past of Croke Park (and, by extension, the city) as part of this afternoon’s American Football event — and scared the bejaysus out of everyone. There were reports of car and house alarms being set off in the area. While one reader contacted us to say it sounded “like an earthquake” from Meath Street and was a “very frightening experience”. “The glass...

Under cover of darkness, 40 Filipino peacekeepers made a daring escape after being surrounded and under fire for seven hours by Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights, Philippine officials said Sunday, leaving 44 Fijian troops still in the hands of the al-Qaida-linked insurgents. "We may call it the greatest escape," Philippine military chief Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang said. The peacekeepers became trapped after Syrian rebels entered the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between Syria and Israel this week, seizing 44 Fijian soldiers and demanding that their Filipino colleagues surrender with their weapons. The Filipinos in two U.N. encampments refused and clashed with...