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November 18, 2013  

How unready an Army? | A dangerous inconsistency | Fudging the numbers

When Gen. Odierno said he’d never seen the Army so unready in his 37 years of service, was he painting the picture too bleakly? Defense News’ Paul McLeary takes a look back, and forward, and offers some ways to judge.

If you want to fix complex things, you need a consistent way to describe them. But in the Pentagon’s lexicon, the only consistent thing is inconsistency. Michael Cadenazzi and Chris Daehnick argue that DoD needs to start by defining its terms. (Defense News)

Here’s a news flash: sometimes, just sometimes, the military makes up budget and logistics numbers. But this Reuters report says it’s more than just sometimes, and describes what that costs.

Warlord’s Quote

“…you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life — but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men in the mud.” — T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War

Contributed by Col. (ret.) Keith Nightingale, a former Ranger brigade commander who is Primary Historian of Normandy Systems, which provides annual battlefield tours. From a list compiled by the Warlord Loop, a private email forum for national security experts.

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