Like Jack Kirby reinterpreting the Norse Gods, I get cosmic. Check out this piece I did for Danger Room today about the Navy lending its super-powerful Free Electron Laser to hunt for dark energy, the power source accelerating the universe’s expansion. Dark energy remains theoretical for now, but finding it will count as an epochal [...]

Wondering what last night’s GOP counter-thumping means for oversight of defense policy? I bet you might be.

Read Noah Shachtman on the Air Force’s oops-butterfingers temporary inability to communicate with 50 long-range nuclear missiles. In the interest of fairness, the last time I heard warnings about nuclear-missile disasters of this magnitude, it was from retired Air Force officers who attributed it to extraterrestrial encounters.

I could really do this all day (pending WikiLeaks’ available server space), but a trip down the rabbit hole for information on drones led me to this chilling 2006 account of how Iraqi soldiers and border enforcement (“DBE”) appear to have turned on a U.S. platoon trying to scout out infiltration routs for Iranian elements [...]

And if that doesn’t get you to read my took-my-whole-day story for Danger Room about the Afghans who guard U.S. military bases for private security companies, I don’t know what will. Don’t miss my friend Paul McLeary’s write-up of the same thing — we’re all going off a Senate investigation here — for Ares. And [...]

Yeah, it was just a pander. The painful truth is that the State Department doesn’t have any alternatives to protect its diplomats in conflict areas like Iraq. Not only does the military not want to take on the mission, but it would be problematic for U.S. troops to use the protection of diplomats as a [...]

Courtesy of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, a series of declassified diplomatic communiques about U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation in the 2000s. Check out my write-up for Danger Room.

I love tattoos. And, to be corny, I love the people who serve in the military. These are two complementary tastes. Every generation of soldier, sailor, airman, marine & coast guardsman comes up with their own distinct style of body modification, staking a claim on their skin about who they are, what they stand for, [...]

On Friday, I broke the story of an officer at ISAF Joint Command who lost his job for a column he wrote questioning whether the command was much more than a bunch of PowerPoint-reliant bureaucrats. Now check out Colonel Lawrence Sellin’s guest post for Tom Ricks detailing some of the aftermath of his firing and [...]

Gasp! Look at Spiegel’s scoop! SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned from reliable sources that the four-star general and his staff informed diplomats and top military officials that in the past three months alone, at least 365 high-ranking and mid-level insurgent commanders have been killed — mostly through targeted operations by the special forces, comprised of heavily [...]