The popular notion that the United States military is monolithically Republican is mistaken.

As they did four years, ago the New York Giants will get a parade in New York City today. Some are wondering when Iraq War vets will get theirs.

Not surprisingly, the Commander of the Military District of Washington has chosen to accept the findings of a preliminary hearing held last year, and ordered that Pfc. Bradley Manning face a General Court Martial for the charges that he stole hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents which eventually ended up in the hands [...]

A change in the law will radically increase retirement pay for generals and admirals.

Andrew Exum notes that most analysts who call for military intervention fail to specify the particulars.

Not surprisingly, Republicans are trying to reverse the automatic cuts to defense spending agreed to in August.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced this afternoon that the timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is being accelerated: BRUSSELS — In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as [...]

My latest for The Atlantic explains, “Why We Should Be Glad the Haditha Massacre Marine Got No Jail Time.”

Last night’s State Of The Union Address contained another unfortunate example of the prevalence of militaristic rhetoric in domestic politics.

Last night as he walked into the House Chamber to deliver the State of the Union, President Obama singled out Secretary of Defense Panetta, now we know why: KHARTOUM, Sudan — American commandos raced into Somalia on Wednesday morning and rescued two aid workers, including an American woman, after a shootout with Somali pirates who [...]

Mitt Romney is making claims about Naval readiness that are, at best, misleading.

The US Army is returning to a peacetime mindset, which means promotions will cease to be automatic for anyone willing to endure service.

Once again, Ron Paul showed last night why he could never win the Republican nomination.

Allen West, the Florida Congressman whose military career came to an ignominious end when he was relieved from command and investigated for attempted murder over an incident involving the questioning of an Iraqi police officer, has decided to weigh in on the controversy that has erupted over the Marines who were recorded on video urinating [...]

Not surprisingly, it looks like Pfc. Bradley Manning is headed for a court martial related to the allegations that he improperly accessed, copied and transferred classified information that later ended up in the hands of Wikileaks: WASHINGTON — The military officer who presided over an evidentiary hearing on charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of [...]

Understanding the outrageous.

A new story out of Afghanistan is causing embarressment for the United States, and the Marine Corps:  The U.S. Marine Corps is investigating a video that surfaced online today in which several Marines appear to urinate on the corpses of suspected Taliban fighters. The video, which is less than a minute long, appears to show [...]

A Washington Post fact check calls this “true but false.”

Michael Hastings has yet another credulous story attempting to smear the United States military.

Given the increasing tensions between the United States and Iran in the Straits of Hormuz, this is good to see: (CNN) — U.S. sailors from a carrier strike group whose recent presence in the Persian Gulf drew the ire of Iranian military officials have rescued 13 of the Middle Eastern country’s sailors from a hijacked [...]

Sarah Kiff makes an important point about one of the primary motivations behind the force restructuring that President Obama announced earlier this week at the Pentagon, basically we are nearing the point where the largest item in the military budget will be health care costs: About 9.6 million Americans are eligible for military health care [...]

President Obama’s Pentagon is planning for an unlikely war with China rather than the small wars America will inevitably fight.

If you watched Ron Paul’s victory speech last night, you likely caught the sight of Corporal Jesse Thorsen speaking on behalf of Paul, at Paul’s invitation. That invitation came about, apparently, because Thorsen’s interview on CNN earlier in the night, also in uniform, had been cut short for some reason. Here’s the video of Thorsen’s [...]

Despite the opposition of the SECDEF and Joint Chiefs, the latter expanded yesterday.

Many people seem to have a rather inappropriate view of their relationship to the President of the United States.

The first in the Navy’s new class of supercarriers is likely to end up costing a lot more than anticipated: The U.S. Navy has estimated a worst-case cost overrun of as much as $1.1 billion for the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the service’s most expensive warship. The carrier is being built by Huntington [...]

A smoking gun?

82nd Airborne solider David Hickman was the 4474th American serviceman killed in Iraq. He should be the last.

Sometime around 5:00am Eastern time this morning, the final convoy of American troops crossed the border from Iraq to Kuwait: BAGHDAD — The last convoy of American troops to leave Iraq drove into Kuwait on Sunday morning, marking the end of the nearly nine-year war. The convoy’s departure, which included about 110 vehicles and 500 [...]

The Christian Science Monitor is out with a story that Iranian engineers are claiming that they were actually able to electronically take control of the RQ-170 drone captured last week: Iran guided the CIA’s “lost” stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according [...]

After 3,193 days and more than 4,000 lives, the American war in Iraq is officially at an end.

Air Force personnel charged with transporting the bodies of American soldiers killed in action apparently finds dead American warriors funny.

While unfortunate, the loss of an RQ-170 drone over Iran may not be the intelligence disaster some make it out to be.

The scandal involving remains of American soldiers that were sent to landfills, which James Joyner wrote about last month, looks like it’s even worse on second glance: The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill, far more than the military had acknowledged, before halting the [...]

The memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor is, inevitably, fading into history.

The costs of keeping the American war machine in Afghanistan rolling are pretty steep: Parachuting a barrel of fuel to a remote Afghan base takes sharp flying skills, steady nerves and flawless timing. It also costs a lot of money—up to $400 a gallon, by military estimates. But the Pentagon is stuck with the expense [...]

As part of the blowback from the accidental deaths of two dozen Pakistani soldiers in a NATO helicopter raid, the U.S. is leaving a base in Pakistan used in drone operations: In another sign of deteriorating relations with Pakistan, the United States is vacating an air base used to launch American drones in response to [...]

The Iranian military claims a U.S. drone was shot-down in western Iran, but all the United States is admitting is that plane is missing: A secret U.S. surveillance drone that went missing last week in western Afghanistan appears to have crashed in Iran, in what may be the first case of such an aircraft ending [...]

It was just over two months ago that Sgt. Dakota Meyer stood in the East Room of the White House and received the Congressional Medal Of Honor from President Obama for his actions in Afghanistan. Now, he’s at the center of a very interesting legal dispute: Two months ago, Dakota Meyer was awarded the Medal [...]

Jon Huntsman has an editorial at CNN today on the subject of foreign and military policy that’s well worth your attention: America alone cannot police the world. We should increase burden-sharing for the protection of the global commons among countries that share our values and security objectives. Unfortunately, we are not the only democracy stuck [...]

Rick Perry wants a no-fly zone in Syria to prevent ground forces from harming civilians.

With the Super Committee dead, 2012 is likely to see a fight over the defense cuts set to take place starting in 2013.

Thomas Ricks posts several recommendations for fixing the Army. Most of them are really, really stupid.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the green beret as the official headgear of US Army Special Forces.

Karim Sadjapour writes about a wargaming scenario he recently participated in with a group of former U.S. officials and experts on Israel and Iran to try to play out how an Israeli strike on Iran might go. Sadjapour was on the Iranian team and, as he relates, it didn’t turn out well for anyone: Iran’s [...]

The Secretary of Defense has some words of warning for those advocating military action against Iran.

The remains of US servicemen killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were thrown out with the trash.

An attack against Iran’s nuclear weapons research facility won’t be an easy thing.

On Thursday, Politico published a little-noticed story in which the deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan unloaded on the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai: Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, deputy commander of the American-led NATO effort to train and equip Afghan security forces, told POLITICO in an interview that top leaders in the Afghan government [...]

The CIA’s drone war in Pakistan has gotten so out of hand that the Pentagon and State Department are reigning it in.