AP
Ratcheting up the rhetoric, North Korea warned early Thursday that its military has been cleared to wage an attack on the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear” weapons.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, said in Washington that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack from North Korea. The defense secretary said the U.S. was seeking to defuse the situation.
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AP
Senior defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is removing the military’s ban on women serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war.
The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule prohibiting women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta’s decision gives the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.
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navigators.org
The Obama administration has been accused of telling Catholic military chaplains what they can and cannot say from their pulpits after the Army ordered Catholic chaplains not to read a letter to parishioners from their archbishop.
The Secretary of the Army feared the letter could be viewed as a call for civil disobedience. View full article »
AP
U.S. military forces sent helicopters into Somalia in a nighttime raid Tuesday and freed two hostages, an American and a Dane, while killing nine kidnappers, U.S. officials confirm.
American Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Dane Poul Hagan Thisted, 60, had been working with a de-mining unit of the Danish Refugee Council when they were kidnapped in October. View full article »
FNC
Ron Paul boasts that he gets more fundraising dollars from military members than any other Republican presidential candidate, but the enthusiastic support of one enlisted man could get the supporter in trouble.
Cpl. Jesse Thorsen spoke at Paul’s post-Iowa caucuses rally to give his support for the Texas congressman and his non-interventionist — critics say isolationist — policies calling for strict limits on the use of U.S. military power.
But Thorsen, 28, a reservist who preceded his appearance at the rally with an interview on CNN, was wearing his fatigues, and that is a violation of military code. View full article »
FNC
President Obama offered a new Pentagon strategy that cuts billions of dollars for defense over the next decade and will “turn the page on a decade of war,” but has critics arguing will gut U.S. ability to lead a dangerous world.
In a rare appearance in the Pentagon press briefing room Thursday, where he announced that the military will be reshaped over time, Obama said the reality of the U.S. economy is forcing the Defense Department to look at its strategy in an all-new way, even as he insisted that strategy will determine the force structure, “not the other way around.” View full article »
AP
As tensions grow over local maritime disputes and U.S. influence in the South China Sea, China’s president said Tuesday that its navy should “make extended preparations for military combat,” the AFP reported.
President Hu Jintao told the Central Military Commission its navy should modernize in the interest of national security.
The Chinese navy has grown in recent years from a coastal protection force to one spanning the globe, sending ships as far as the Caribbean on goodwill missions and into the Mediterranean to escort vessels evacuating Chinese citizens from the fighting in Libya. View full article »
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