Military Headline News Week in Review
by Rick Rogers
Here’s a new word complements of the dark corners of cyber land.
Sextortion.
Sextortion happens when someone – often an attractive woman — cons you into doing something regretful in front a web cam. And then threatens to post it on the Internet if you don’t pay a bribe.
Troops in Japan, South Korea and Guam have been hit by the scam.
Winner, winner, winner chicken dinner.
Three Virginia soldiers recently just hit the lottery for a cool $1 million.
Pentagon workers are now facing 14 furlough days instead of the 22 — thanks to a bump in congressional funding.
Coming soon near you – at least some of you — a drone-port.
The Federal Aviation Administration is looking for sites
to test unmanned aircraft in U.S. air space.
So far the FAA has 50 applications from 37 states. Six sites will be picked by the end of the year.
The latest cost projections for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are much worse than the last.
A new Harvard University study predicts the final price tag to be $4 to $6 trillion. By comparison the entire federal budget this year is $3.8 trillion.
Health care and disability benefits will account for the bulk of that expense and won’t fully hit for decades.
Last month Brown University released a study pegging the wars’ costs about $2 trillion.
Veteran groups are circling the wagons to stop attempts to calculate future veterans’ benefits using a formula that now adjusts Social Security payments.
That measure would slow benefit increases.
One minute, 26-year-old Sgt. Michael Cable was playing with children in Afghanistan, the next he was bleeding to death.
A teenager stabbed Cable from Philpot, Ken., in the neck. The killer then fled.
The American death toll in Afghanistan rose to 14 in March.
Despite celebrated budget cuts, the Pentagon is spending big on cyber operations.
The U.S. Cyber Command is adding 5,000 staffers for offensive and defensive missions on the digital battlefield in the coming years.
War mongering by North Korea has filled the media for weeks. But is this more smoke than fire?
The White House says facts on the ground suggest it’s all bluster.
The U.S. has not detected any threatening military moves by North Korea, according to the president’s spokesman.
Red flags are flying over hundreds of Department of Veterans Affairs contracts.
A VA worker overseeing construction in New York and New Jersey processed some 1,500 transactions worth more than $42 million.
What caught investigators attention is the contracts were all for just under $25,000 – the amount that generally triggers their public disclosure.
This allegedly happened even when multiple awards went to the same company on the same day.
Too much junk in the trunk.
The Army is thinning the ranks of civilian helicopter instructors at Fort Rucker Alabama by imposing a 250-pound weight limit.
A move to block the plan was dismissed by a judge who refused to intervene in the weighty issue.
No, this isn’t a late April Fools joke.
The Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989 after a bloody 10-year occupation that cost it 15,000 lives.
Now the Russian Federation wants a military presence in the war-torn country after the United States pulls out in 2014.
The reputed Godfather of Camp Pendleton just went down.
G-men arrested Natividad Cervantes after he allegedly accepted a $10,000 bribe.
Cervantes oversaw construction contracts at Camp Pendleton. Prosecutors say he extorted businesses seeking work at the Southern California Marine base dating back to 2008.
Investigators claim Cervantes referred to himself as the “Godfather of Camp Pendleton.”
Dealing with North Korea is one thing. Dealing with its big brother might be another.
China is reportedly moving tanks and men to the North Korean border, including its first-string mechanized combat brigade.
North Korea isn’t the only Asian hot spot.
Tensions remain high in the South China Sea, where several nations are bickering over territorial disputes related to oil, gas and mineral deposits.
The White House just announced a $100 million brain research project that hopes to one day aid troops with Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress.
Sometimes all you can do is shake your head.
A government audit found nearly $900 million in replacement parts for an Army troop carrier sitting in a warehouse. The kicker is that many are obsolete.
Apparently the Army forgot what it bought and kept on buying and buying – even when the parts were no longer needed.
Rick Rogers is a defense reporter based in San Diego.
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