This Holiday Season, a Break From War As America leaves Afghanistan, more soldiers celebrate Christmas at home Soldiers, airmen and their family members crowded together by a stage, as a local youth choir sang Christmas carols. They were there for the annual tree lighting ceremony on Dec. 4, marking the beginning... Read more
The NSA Listened as Chinese MiGs Shot Down American Warplanes
It was Sept. 20, 1965 when the navigation equipment aboard Capt. Philip Smith’s F-104 Starfighter failed. Smith’s mission was to escort an airborne early-warning plane patrolling above the Gulf of Tonkin. Instead, his supersonic jet strayed over Hainan Island—through airspace belonging to the People’s Republic of China. Chinese radars... Read more
This Holiday Season, a Break From War
Soldiers, airmen and their family members crowded together by a stage, as a local youth choir sang Christmas carols. They were there for the annual tree lighting ceremony on Dec. 4, marking the beginning of the holiday season on post. It was a typically damp Pacific Northwest evening at... Read more
The Pacific Rim’s Future Wars Belong to Marines
Across the Pacific Rim, regional powers are creating new marine infantry units. Fast, highly-trained and designed for military missions originating from the sea, marines are invaluable for the kinds of conflicts Asian and Pacific nations might fight in the future. Since 2009, India, Australia and Japan have all announced... Read more
Face It, We Loved Watching Torture
Our pop-culture heroes have tortured a lot of folks in the last decade. After 9/11, America’s leaders told us the war on terror would be different. A war that wouldn’t just take place on the battlefield, but in the back alleys, markets and bars of foreign lands. A war... Read more
Cops Linked to Mexican Student Massacre Had German Battle Rifles
The kidnapping and massacre of 43 students with police complicity has sparked a major political crisis in Mexico. And now the crisis has reached all the way to Germany. It’s because of the weapons the police may have used to kill several students. Police officers in Iguala, a municipality... Read more
Littoral Combat Ship gets upgrades to become a frigate Back in the 1990s, the U.S. Navy came up with a radical plan to replace its tried-and-true Perry-class frigates, at the time the sailing branch’s most numerous surface warship. The idea was to build lots of copies of a cheap, fast, lightweight... Read more
Beijing Banned Export of Its New Stealth Fighter
The Chinese government reportedly will not sell the new J-20—China’s first stealth fighter—to foreign countries. Not coincidentally, the United States adopted a similar policy regarding its own F-22 stealth fighter. The revelation of the apparent export ban comes as a surprise. Since the Chengdu-built J-20’s 2011 debut, Western analysts... Read more
The U.S. Is Worried About Nigeria’s Human Rights Abuses
In April, the Boko Haram militant group abducted hundreds of schoolgirls in northeastern Nigeria. In the atrocity’s aftermath, the United States boosted its support for the Nigerian military’s campaign against the terrorists. But now human rights concerns may be straining relations between Washington and Abuja. And if the two... Read more
Displaced, Jobless, Threatened—For Arabs in Kurdistan, Life Is Complicated Iraqi Kurdistan is teeming with Arab refugees—and Kurds can’t agree what to do with them by KEVIN KNODELL In February, fighting between Islamic State militants and the Iraqi army drove 41-year-old Salam, a Sunni Arab, from his home in Babil province. He... Read more