Free Republic

An American soldier, a British soldier and one US contractor were killed on Wednesday in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base hosting foreign troops, a US official told AFP. Hours later, air strikes believed to have been carried out by the US-led coalition targeted Iran-aligned Iraqi fighters in neighboring Syria. On Wednesday evening, a volley of rockets hit the Taji air base north of Baghdad, which hosts troops from the US-led coalition helping local forces battle jihadists. A coalition official first told AFP the force had sustained "several" injuries on Wednesday ranging from "light to critical," but a...

After the Ukrainian drone had apparently landed "safely" on the runway, officers from Russia's Air Force and its main intelligence service, the FSB, examined the device, RBC Ukraine reported on Monday. "When the delegation tried to examine the 'trophy' UAV, there was a detonation," a Ukrainian source told RBC, which said "air regiment leaders" were among the casualties. The outlet reported that among those killed or injured during the explosion were the commander of the 14th aviation regiment, one of his deputies, a group of aviation officers, an FSB officer, and other airfield personnel... The Russian military blogger Boris Rozhin...

Throughout the vast history of warfare, there have been certain conflicts which have served as key hinge points in the advancement of military science. The foreshortened lens of history beguiles us with the view of wars as static monoliths: two sides slugging it out to a certain conclusion. We see entire years, or even decades, compressed into short highlight reels—whether literal in video form, or the textual equivalent; history books whose chapters gloss over years in a few choice and pithy gestures. [Snip] But most major and lengthy wars, in fact, incur seminal advancements throughout their course, such that the...

...Anne, an Air Force staff sergeant, was—and still is—a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) sensor operator or “sensor.” At Creech, she is assigned to a reconnaissance squadron flying missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. Few weapons in the American arsenal are more relentless than the RPA fleet, often called drones. For more than a decade, the United States has flown RPAs over Afghanistan and Iraq, providing forces on the ground with an eye in the sky to spot terrorists and insurgents, and in most cases the firepower to destroy them. As she rode to work, Anne—or “Sparkle” as she’s known to her...

The Obama Administration is deliberately misleading Americans about the drone war it is waging in Pakistan. Can anyone read the McClatchy Newspapers summary of top-secret intelligence reports and continue to deny it? Set aside the morality and effectiveness of the CIA's targeted-killing program. Isn't it important for Congress and the people to know the truth about the War on Terrorism? Many Americans remain furious that the Bush Administration gave Iraq War speeches that elided inconvenient truths and implied facts that turned out to be fictions. Is the objection merely that the Iraq War turned out badly? Or is misleading Congress...