Free Republic

The U.S. Army has no interest in taking over the Air Force’s fleet of A-10 attack planes, even if it would save the venerable Cold War-era aircraft from the bone yard. The service’s top civilian, Army Secretary John McHugh, rejected the idea of accepting hand-me-down A-10 Warthogs from the Air Force. “No chance,” he said during a breakfast meeting with reporters on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. “That’s not even been a topic of casual conversation.” “With our own aircraft fleet we’re taking some pretty dramatic steps to reconfigure and become more affordable, and the A-10 mission is not something we...

Recently, a friend sent me an article he was furious about. The title was: Hormone treatment approved for Chelsea Manning. The innocent question that popped into my head was: “Who the hell is Chelsea Manning?” Chelsea, it turns out, is none other than Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst who turned over classified information to WikiLeaks in 2010. Well – at least I think that Chelsea is just Bradley in a stupid-looking wig; others apparently hold some different views. The article’s title pretty well summarized the rest of the pathetic story. A more apt title would have been: US Army...

link only

The boy who played the young Forrest Gump in the multi-Oscar award winning movie is all grown up. But he didn’t stay in the acting game after his most famous role. He joined the Army.

FORT HUACHUCA — A time-honored Army tradition officially marked the return of the 40th Expeditionary Signal Battalion to its home post in Arizona Friday morning. Signifying its return, the battalion stood on Brown Parade Field as the unit’s flag, held by Spc. Jessica Mortimer, was uncased and unfurled by the battalion’s commander, Lt. Col. David Thomas, and Command Sgt. Maj. John Reinburg.

A new study by Army War College professors found that not only is lying common in the military, the armed forces themselves may be inadvertently encouraging it. The study, released Tuesday, was conducted by retired Army officers and current War College professors Leonard Wong and Stephen J. Gerras. They found that untruthfulness is “surprisingly common in the U.S. military even though members of the profession are loath to admit it.” The paper’s release follows a series of high-profile incidents involving bad behavior across the services, including a still-widening corruption case involving senior Navy officers and at least two incidents in...

The German army has faced a shortage of equipment for years, but the situation has recently become so precarious that some soldiers took matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, German broadcaster ARD revealed that German soldiers tried to hide the lack of arms by replacing heavy machine guns with broomsticks during a NATO exercise last year. After painting the wooden sticks black, the German soldiers swiftly attached them to the top of armored vehicles, according to a confidential army report which was leaked to ARD.

<p>FORT STEWART, Georgia — The U.S. Army is sending more than 3,000 Fort Stewart soldiers to Europe to help assure American allies in the region and deter Russian aggression in Ukraine.</p> <p>Officials at the southeast Georgia Army post said Tuesday that soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division will deploy next month.</p>

The Pentagon appeared to go against its own policy in allowing transgender treatments for Chelsea Manning. The decision points to changes at the Pentagon on the issue, activists say, but none that are seismic.Chelsea Manning, a United States Army soldier serving a 35-year sentence for her role in providing classified documents to WikiLeaks, will now be able to receive hormone therapy at Fort Leavenworth. It represents a considerable shift for the US military to provide this treatment for Ms. Manning, who identifies as transgender and sued the government to be able to have access to the hormone therapy in order...

A top U.S. military commander in Europe says the U.S military is to train Ukrainian soldiers who are battling Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. U.S. Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said Wednesday that in March a battalion of U.S. soldiers would train three battalions of Ukrainians from the Ministry of Interior. The training is to take place at the Yavariv training center in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking a trove of secret documents to WikiLeaks, has joined The Guardian newspaper as a contributing opinion writer. Ms. Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, will write on war, gender and freedom of information ...

A Green Beret officer who was stripped of a prestigious valor award and dropped from the Special Forces fell out of favor with Army officials after the CIA shared information it gathered about him while he was going through screening for a potential job, according to officials familiar with the case. Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn was investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Command for an undisclosed violation of the U.S. military’s rules of engagement in 2010 that resulted in the death of a known enemy fighter and bombmaker in Helmand province, Afghanistan, according to the officials. The Army closed a...

The U.S. Army has decided to award the Purple Heart to victims of the Fort Hood massacre, sources tell Fox News. Three sources confirmed that the Army will announce the decision by next week.

US Center of Military History Bookshelves: The US Army in Vietnam -- All of the volumes currently published, except the photo book, by the US Army Center of Military History are available online at: http://www.history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/usavn.html Research materials and two chapters from the next Combat Operations volume on Tet are available online at: http://www.history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/resmat/vw.html

Washington (AFP) - The US military will no longer divulge facts and figures about its costly effort to assist Afghan security forces, declaring the information top secret, officials said Thursday. The move marks an about-face for the Pentagon, which for the past six years has reported a range of data about the $65 billion program to build up the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). The information included how US taxpayers' money has been spent and the state of the troubled country's police and army. John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), voiced disappointment with the change and said...

No decision has been made about Bowe Bergdahl's future, military officials said today, as an Army general continues to review the circumstances surrounding his 2009 disappearance that led to five years in Taliban captivity. The Army issued a statement today denying media reports that said Bergdahl would be charged with desertion, possibly as early as next week. Major General Ronald Lewis, the head of Army public affairs, labeled the reports as "patently false." "To be clear, there have been no actions or decisions on the Sergeant Bergdahl investigation," Lewis said. The investigation remains with Milley, "who will determine appropriate action...

Whatever happened to the investigation of Bowe Bergdahl and his capture by the Taliban? Last year, the Obama administration traded five high-ranking Taliban commanders to get Bergdahl back, but men in his former unit immediately objected to the trade, accusing Bergdahl of having deserted before his capture. Months later, there still has been no final determination of Bergdahl’s status — at least none made public. Last night, retired Lt. Col. Tony Schaffer told Bill O’Reilly that the Army has charged Bergdahl with desertion, but that the White House — and specifically Ben Rhodes, the national-security adviser/speechwriter to Barack Obama —...

Vid at link

Ben Rhodes looking to suppress information per analyst.

In May 1881 US explorers approached Jeannette Island, Wrangell Island and Henrietta Island in the Arctic Ocean and claimed them for the United States. But according to the Obama Department of State no claim exists today over these US islands. In fact the State Department is conspiring with Russian President Putin to give away Wrangell Island to Russians. Wrangell and its 200 mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) has billions of barrels of oil/gas reserves and hundreds of millions of pounds of fisheries. It also has a strategic military location for tracking Russian moves in Arctic. The Coast Guard is a...