Archive for September, 2008

Lt. Gen. Dennis McCarthy and Lt. Col. Erich Randall lead this month’s set of discussions with a focus on how best to organize, resource and equip the Guard and reserves to fulfill …

TO THE AIR FORCE, for its plan to spend $7.6 million on so-called “comfort capsules” to ferry senior officials aboard transport planes. Even if you buy the Air Force’s argument that the …

America’s all-volunteer force is a precious, and heavily worked, asset. The challenge lies in how to preserve it through long conflicts. Part of the answer lies in a blended active and reserve …

In one of the most daring rescues in recent history, in early July Colombian armed forces freed 15 hostages, including a former presidential candidate, from the grips of the narco-terrorist Revolutionary Armed …

We must determine whether the National Guard and reserve can be an operational reserve on a steady cycle of deployments for an indeterminate period. The nation must avoid the temptation to see …

TO SECRETARY ROBERT GATES, for his National Defense Strategy. It may be audaciously presumptuous for a SecDef to issue “a blueprint to succeed in the years to come” when his tenure is …

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Army National Guard has called more than 400,000 soldiers to active duty to support operational requirements relating to the war on terrorism. These demands have furthered the …

A clear global strategy will help define defense policy

If you ask a foreign policy question of a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ultimately he would say that the question …

DoD’s plan to use research universities is flawed

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently launched the Minerva Consortia, an initiative meant to involve American research universities in the global war on terrorism. The …

E-mail overload degrades military decision-making

If a technological or biological weapon were devised that could render tens of thousands of Defense Department knowledge workers incapable of focusing their attention on cognitive tasks …