Free Republic

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), 2016 GOP presidential contender, said Monday that it is time for the U.S. to put ground forces in Syria to combat the Islamic State militant group. "I think we have to have a strategy and that entails American boots on the ground along with a coalition force," McCain said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." The well known defense hawks said that simply stopping Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. will not solve the national security threat imposed by IS. The U.S. "can't shut off Syria...

Former UK Chief of Staff Lord Dannatt has called for a ground invasion against Islamic State (ISIS) on Monday, claiming that the cultural and security impact of the group calls for an international armed effort to expand beyond the current airstrike campaign. "The capture and likely destruction of the 2,000-year-old Roman colonnades at Palmyra, Syria, by Islamic State constitutes a potential cultural crime on a gigantic scale," Dannatt wrote in the Daily Mail. "These majestic ruins represent thousands of years of human civilisation and there is now surely no doubting just how great a threat IS [ISIS - ed.] poses...

For the first time in war, coalition troops enter port city of Aden; more on their way Saudi Arabia led at least 20 ground troops into Aden, Yemen Sunday to support loyalist militia fighting rebels, an official said. “A limited coalition force entered Aden and another force is on its way” to the southern port city, said the government official and militia commander. The Saudi-led coalition has been conducting an air war against the Houthi rebels and their allies since March 26 but this is the first reported ground deployment inside the country.

Barack Obama’s strategy to have regional allies provide ground forces to fight ISIS has not gotten off to a good start. Despite having ISIS almost at its gates — literally — Turkey refused to put ground troops in Syria to fight the terrorist army. The Foreign Minister also rejected Obama’s strategy of air strikes alone, saying that ISIS could not be defeated that way: Turkey’s foreign minister insisted Thursday that it is not “realistic” for the world to expect it alone to launch a ground operation against ISIS, even as a monitoring group said the extremists had seized a...

In recent years, ground warfare has again gotten a bad name in the United States. This is understandable. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been very costly in lives, treasure, and enduring injury ...to American troopers and their families. The outcomes have been mediocre... ... A recent Chief of Naval Operations wrote a paper last year calling for an active-duty Army only half the size of its recent wartime peak. Ongoing budget pressures, with the pending return of sequestration in 2016, have many defense planners wondering if the Army can in effect become the bill payer for the modernization...

ISLAMABAD – Pakistani ground troops moved into Taliban-controlled areas Friday and engaged in the first gunbattle of a new offensive in the volatile northwest, as an aerial and artillery bombardment pounded other targets. Officials said Friday's action did not represent the start of a full-scale operation in the tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan, but that most troops were now in place for when the orders came. The coming operation in South Waziristan, along with one winding down in the Swat Valley further north, could be a turning point in Pakistan's yearslong and sometimes halfhearted fight against militancy.

Defense: Fred Thompson wants a million-man ground force and more modern equipment on the ground, in the air and on the water. The arsenal of democracy needs some retooling. After the Vietnam conflict, the U.S. military was depleted and exhausted. Then came Jimmy Carter and by the time Ronald Reagan came along we had planes that couldn't fly and ships that couldn't sail for lack of maintenance. The Gipper rolled up his sleeves and built his 600-ship navy, gave the Air Force the latest fighters and bombers and an Army capable of deploying half a million troops for Desert Storm...

Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation's main ground force. In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war "flat-footed" with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then the Army chief of staff, decried the "hollow Army," Schoomaker said it is critical...