Outside the Beltway

A Pentagon Equal Opportunity training manual points out the obvious.

NSA Director General Keith Alexander really doesn’t like the idea of a free press.

My latest for The National Interest, “The Military and the Shutdown: Assessing the Damage,” is out.

90 percent of DoD civilians will go back to work soon. What message does that send?

The Pentagon is recalling up to 300,000 furloughed civilian employees on the same day that Congress voted to pay all furloughed employees when the government reopens.

The Defense Department might open for business while the rest of government remains shut down.

The NFL donates its game broadcasts to troops deployed in harm’s way but they still won’t get to see them during the shutdown.

Air Force lieutenant colonel (designate) Erik Brine is so unessential that it hurts.

Tom Clancy, author of dozens of bestselling military thriller novels, has died aged 66.

A shooting interrupts Washington D.C.’s Monday morning.

“No More Baby Steps,” my first piece for Defense News, has posted.

f Assad is eating Cheerios, we’re going to take away his spoon and give him a fork.

Is U.S. planning against Syria moving beyond just chemical weapons?

We’re almost certainly going to launch punitive strikes against Syria. They’ll almost certainly be ineffective.

Western military action in the Syrian civil war now appears likely.

As President Obama’s red line has been crossed more brazenly, he continues to sound reluctant to intervene in Syria while positioning forces to do just that.

Bradley Manning’s announcement that she wishes to begin living life as a woman poses some interesting legal questions.

The Army and Navy are finally doing something about brass bloat.

There’s a hearing at Gitmo so secret that even the people having the hearing aren’t allowed to know what it’s about.

Andrew Bacevich argues, persuasively, that “absence of leverage does not preclude options” with respect to Egypt.

Sailors will now be required to wait until 9 am to buy booze.

Until this year, being gay could get you kicked out of the military. Now, it comes with perks.

The Pentagon is considering doing away with two combatant commands—and no longer calling them combatant commands.

One of the nation’s papers of record is changing owners for the first time in 80 years.

The Pentagon is considering making military retirees ineligible for civil service pensions.

The Defense Department would like to get a handle on how it spends its money by 2017 but the Navy won’t go along.

The government contractor that conducted Edward Snowden’s background investigation faces criminal indictment.

Keeping 166 detainees in Gitmo costs taxpayers $454 million.

The military has declared that Playboy and Penthouse don’t violate its standards but banned them from its exchanges, anyway.

Congress really, really wants to give soldiers a 1.8 percent pay raise. Generals are begging them to hold it to 1 percent.

The Defense Department may have found the money to furlough its civilian workers fewer than 11 days.

Sequestration is even dumber than we thought.

In response to North Korean saber rattling and the rise of China, Japan is reassessing it’s military posture

Not surprisingly, the United States is not going to place aid to Egypt’s military in legal jeopardy by calling this month’s events a coup.

Conservatives are doing what they criticized JournoList for doing—even though JournoList didn’t.

The two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are clashing on defense appropriations.

Last month, a retired Navy SEAL came out as transgender. Those still in uniform, however, must serve in silence.

A late-night announcement that Gitmo detainees will get hearings raises more questions than it answers.

As Congress eyes the Defense budget for cuts, some are drawing attention to the lavish housing of our top brass.

The United States has far and away the most capable navy on the planet. But it’s not very capable at the moment.

Once again, a Federal Court rules that the First Amendment rules does not protect a reporter from being compelled to reveal sources or the results of an investigation.

My first piece for RealClearDefense, “Enough with the QDR Hype,” has published.

The Pentagon has canceled a popular air show even though it operates at a profit and takes place next fiscal year.

The Defense Department will freeze promotions, cut workers, and suspend training in the face of across-the-board funding cuts.

The US military’s lavish new headquarters in Afghanistan has been completed just in time for our exit.