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The Army has selected a new camouflage pattern to begin fielding next year, an unidentified senior Army spokesperson announced in a statement late Thursday. “The Army has confirmed through testing that the pattern would offer exceptional concealment, which directly enhances force protection and survivability for Soldiers,” according to the statement from the Army. The pattern will be used in all combatant commands, including Afghanistan, the Army said. Uniforms and equipment with the existing pattern won’t be discarded, but replaced only as they wear out. The pattern was developed by the Army under the name Scorpion W2 to replace the much-maligned...

A German Army General has been appointed to Chief of Staff of U.S. Army Europe. This is the first time a non-U.S. officer has held this position.

For weeks, the Army has been taking a verbal beating for sending “pink slips” to officers while they were deployed. It was no joke or Internet rumor, either: About 1,100 captains received notice last month that they would be required to leave active duty within a year as the service shrinks, and some of them were in Afghanistan and other volatile areas. Reaction was swift. It was a “stunning display of callousness,” one Army veteran wrote earlier this month in the New York Daily News. It was an “outrageous and and heartless way to ‘thank’ combat veterans,” responded one writer...

Of the more than 1,100 Army captains notified last month their military careers would soon end, 87 were deployed worldwide and 48 were serving in Afghanistan at the time, Army officials said Wednesday. The Army has been talking for months about the need to separate the captains as well as more than 500 majors this summer as part of the broad Army drawdown, but it’s the first time details have emerged about the sobering business of delivering pink slips to troops in harm’s way.

The U.S. Army is moving forward to replace the Cold War-era M9 9mm pistol with a more powerful handgun that also meets the needs of the other services. As the lead agent for small arms, the Army will hold an industry day July 29 to talk to gun makers about the joint, Modular Handgun System or MHS. The MHS would replace the Army's inventory of more than 200,000 outdated M9 pistols and several thousand M11 9mm pistols with one that has greater accuracy, lethality, reliability and durability, according to Daryl Easlick, a project officer with the Army's Maneuver Center of...

Sikorsky and Boeing Team Submit New Army Helicopter Design By: Dave Majumdar Published: June 17, 2014 2:00 PM Updated: June 17, 2014 2:00 PM A joint Sikorsky-Boeing team has submitted their initial design for a new high-speed compound helicopter called the SB-1 Defiant to the U.S. Army. “Last week we submitted our initial design and risk report to the customer,” said Doug Shidler, one of the two co-program directors for the industry team, during a Tuesday teleconference. “Next week we will be conducting our initial design and risk review with them.” The high-speed compound helicopter design is the team’s entry...

A U.S. Army investigation found that Bowe Bergdahl had walked away from his post at least once before his capture - and that other soldiers in his unit knew he was a flight risk. The 2010 report, called an AR15-6, is still classified, but it appears to confirm allegations that the former prisoner of war violated military regulations - and that the Pentagon knew it all along. The revelation, attributed to anonymous sources by the Military Times, comes as the nation's top general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, acknowledged the growing cloud of suspicion hanging over...

(CNN) - Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow was the team leader with Bowe Bergdahl the night Bergdahl disappeared. "Bergdahl is a deserter, and he's not a hero," says Buetow. "He needs to answer for what he did." Within days of his disappearance, says Buetow, teams monitoring radio chatter and cell phone communications intercepted an alarming message: The American is in Yahya Khel (a village two miles away). He's looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban. "I heard it straight from the interpreter's lips as he heard it over the radio," said Buetow. "There's a...

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last known American POW, was freed after five years in captivity — an ordeal that began and ended in Afghanistan under a shroud of mystery. (snip) The search for Bergdahl began soon after he went missing on June 30, 2009, in the same rugged wilds of southeastern Afghanistan where NFL player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman was killed. Bergdahl’s mysterious disappearance from the small military outpost there and the subsequent revelation that he was in enemy hands prompted questions that still linger.(snip) One night, after finishing a guard-duty shift, Bowe Bergdahl asked his team leader whether there would...

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A Missouri-based Army drill sergeant has been accused of sexually assaulting 12 female soldiers during the past three years, including several while he was deployed in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Angel M. Sanchez appeared at a pretrial hearing at Fort Leonard Wood on Wednesday and could face a court-martial later this year, defense attorney Ernesto Gasapin said Thursday. The Washington Post first reported on the charges against Sanchez. Military court records indicate that Sanchez is accused of using his supervisory position as a drill sergeant with the 14th Military Police Brigade to threaten some of the women...

CNN’s international correspondent Jim Clancy called the West Point response to President Obama’s meandering foreign policy address “pretty icy” Wednesday.Clancy said it was “not really a great speech to give at the U.S. Military Academy,” and the address has drawn bipartisan criticism.“It was a philosophical speech,” he said. “It was not a Commander-in-Chief speaking to his troops. And you heard the reception. I mean, it was pretty icy.”Obama said he believed strongly in American exceptionalism, but he continually used straw men in his address by implying that critics of his vision of foreign policy always advocated first and foremost for...

The chief of an Army medical center has been relieved of his command because of problems with patient care, and the Pentagon has ordered a review of its health care system, defense officials said. The commander was replaced Tuesday at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and three deputies were suspended, the Army said in a statement. The shake-up comes after two deaths this month of patients in their 20s and problems with infection control at the facility that were pointed out in March by a hospital accreditation group, according to two defense officials. They spoke on...

Just a howler. Introducing a segment on mental illness (and shootings,) the CNN host diagnosed the Fort Hood shooter (whose name he left out) as suffering from "Under-treated post traumatic stress."

Plzen - The five-day Liberation Festival that celebrated the end of World War Two and the arrival of the U.S. army in Plzen on May 6, 1945 ended with a commemorative event at the memorial to the American troops. The speakers at the event, who included Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and Senate chairman Milan Stech, also talked of Ukraine and warned against a military conflict. Sobotka said the former Czechoslovak communist regime tried to suppress the memories of the liberation of Plzen by U.S. soldiers. He noted that Czechoslovakia was also liberated by Russian, Polish and Romanian troops. Sobotka told...

It's one of the most famous military mysteries of the past decade, Pat Tillman, the former ASU and Cardinals player turned Army Ranger killed in 2004 after he left the NFL to fight in Afghanistan. The Army said it was friendly fire, but never said whose shots killed Tillman. Three soldiers acknowledged firing at his position, but none have spoken publicly until now. Steven Elliott told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that two convoys entered the mountains, but got separated. He said Tillman's group scaled a ridge line to help fellow rangers under attack, but a squad leader mistakenly thought an...

For the first time, one of the three Army Ranger platoon mates who fired at Pat Tillman speaks publicly about what happened that fateful day, ten years ago this week. OLYMPIA, Wash. -- In his first public statements about the death of Pat Tillman, the former NFL player turned Army Ranger, one of the fellow Rangers involved in the 2004 friendly-fire incident in Afghanistan told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" he has lived for 10 years with the thought that he might have fired the fatal shots. "It is possible, in my mind, that I hit him," said Steven Elliott, who...

In After America (available here, he pleads, and the profits of which go to support my free-speech pushback against Michael E Mann), I write inter alia about Fort Hood, and in particular the disgraceful statement by General Casey, and the Pentagon's absurd decision to classify what happened as "workplace violence": In the days after the slaughter, the news coverage read like a satirical novel that the author's not quite deft enough to pull off, with bizarre new Catch-22s multiplying like the windmills of your mind: If you muse openly on pouring boiling oil down the throats of infidels, then the...

FORT HUACHUCA — The Electronic Proving Ground “plays a key role,” in the Army, said Maj. Gen. Peter D. Utley. And it has done so for “60 years of test excellence” since its establishment, which led to the reopening of Fort Huachuca in 1954. Utley, who heads the Army Test and Evaluation Command, spoke at two ceremonies involving the anniversary, one in the morning, which included a cake cutting, and another during an afternoon ribbon cutting for the Small Arc Range. “We have come a long, long way from when I was a brand new second lieutenant in 1982,” he...

<p>The spree began in one building of the sprawling complex, where Lopez, who was 34, first pulled his .45-caliber Caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and killed one, injuring 10.</p> <p>"The deceased and one of wounded had been involved in the verbal altercation with subject," Grey said.</p>

The proposed move will take the Pentagon from the banks of the Potomac River to northwest Kansas. WASHINGTON (April 1, 2010) -- Top Army officials unveiled plans early today to relocate the massive Pentagon building to the western part of Kansas sometime this summer. "This move will be a huge undertaking, but we determined it was a necessary step as we realign our force structure," said one of the Army's top generals. "Once we started investigating the possibility of the move, we determined that it was not only critical to our efforts, but that it would be good for our...