Tag Archives: Military

Fighter Pilots: “Joy-Riding Flyboys”

In editorial discussions in Arizona about the future of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, locals parried over the possibility of the F-35 being stationed in the area.  The “discussion” demonstrated the continuing public stereotype of fighter pilots.  Said one letter writer to the Arizona Daily Star:

Basing the F-35 Air Force jet in Tucson is a very bad idea. Tucson is an asset to all of Arizona because it attracts quality, high-tech, tax-positive industry…Tucson is the jewel of Arizona. A deafening noise from joy-riding flyboys will do more economic harm than whatever modest benefit these flyboys will bring to the local bars. (emphasis added)

Interestingly, subsequent writers responded in defense of military fighter pilots, decrying the “generalization” of fighter pilots:  Read more

UAVs by Any Other Name

Reuters notes the tensions between common phrases and those who want to control the semantics.

The US Air Force has made a concerted effort to change the lexicon of Predators, Reapers, and other air vehicles that do not have humans onboard.  While traditionally called “UAVs,” or “Unmanned Air Vehicles,” the Air Force is now attempting to popularize the term “RPV,” or “Remotely Piloted Vehicle.”  (See, for example, this official Air Force article which exclusively uses the term “RPV.”)  The intent is to accurately convey the make up of the weapon system:

The change is significant to the Air Force as it recruits a new generation of pilots who may spend little time inside a jet plane. It wants the world to know that humans have “positive control over these vehicles,” [Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley] said.

Unfortunately, the Air Force might become a victim of its own insistence on correct characterization.  For example, it is true that the Predator Read more

Happy New Year, 2010: Top Stories for 2009

A variety of websites that track issues of religion in the public sphere have listed their “top ten” stories for 2009.  Though each uses their own criteria, the resulting lists generally matched the recent trend (as noted last year) in which issues of religion and the military have largely disappeared from the “big stories” over the years.

US News mentioned nothing about the military in their list, nor did the Religion Clause.  BJC Online included a mention about Sikhs and the military at #8 and accusations of military evangelism in “US Foreign Affairs” at #4.  Of these, the Religion News Writers were the only ones to mention US Army Maj Hasan’s Fort Hood massacre (#3).

While ongoing events in the world will likely keep religion near the forefront of current affairs discussions, “controversies” over the interaction between religion and the military do not appear to be the “headlines” that some might think they are.  The year 2009 may have borne that out.  Some of the “biggest” stories on the military and religion were actually non-events, including accusations of Bible distribution in Afghanistan or the plethora of complaints that Chaplains acted illegally or unConstitutionally.

There will always be controversies and media attention.  Still, the belief that some accusations of impropriety are “tempests in a teapot” may be correct.  Perhaps, too, claims of surreptitious military takeovers by religions seeking world domination really are the fringe conspiracy theories they often seem to be.

“Conservative Christians Dominate the US Military”

Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and co-author of Is Christianity Good for the World with Pastor Douglas Wilson, takes on religion in the US military in his latest article in Vanity Fair, for which is he a contributing writer.

The lead-in to the article demonstrates a set of false assumptions which are never substantiated within the article:

It’s no secret that conservative Christians dominate the US military, but when higher-ups start talking about conversion missions, it’s time to worry.

Hitchens never provides evidence that any ideological belief, never mind conservative Christianity, “dominates” the US military.  He also misrepresents Read more

Fighter Pilots Play the Villain

An interesting article at the Air Force Times goes into more detail about a previously discussed “dream job” in the US Air Force: playing the bad guy.  Air Force pilots fly American fighters but train to replicate the threat of potential adversaries.  They then use those skills to “defend their homeland” during major exercises.

(Fighter units frequently use their own assets to simulate an air threat, a technique known as flying “red air.”  However, aggressor units specifically train to precisely replicate foreign tactics for large force scenarios.)

The article indicates, perhaps a little too matter-of-factly, that the US Air Force once had multiple squadrons of Russian-built fighters:

In the days that the U.S. considered the Soviet Union its biggest threat, four squadrons of airmen flew Russian-made MiG-21s or Su-27 fighters to lend authenticity to their job. Read more

Military Religion Question Answered: Beliefs

The recent Military Religion Question of the Day involved accusations that an Air National Guard Chaplain, LtCol Dan Hornok, was “blatantly proselytizing” in a commentary he published on an Air Force website.  The article and initial commentary can be seen here.

The basic questions were:

  • Was the Chaplain “blatantly proselytizing?”
  • What if the writer had not been a Chaplain?
  • What do the Chaplain’s words—and the critic’s—say about the spiritual environment in the military?

Was the Chaplain “blatantly proselytizing?”

The shortest, most accurate answer: Read more

Pagan Veterans Seek Recognition

While some seem to imply that only Christians associate their religious ideology with their military service, public examples on all sides demonstrate that is not the case.

A Pennsylvania paper recently covered a local story in which a group of pagan veterans are encouraging those with similar beliefs to, in their words, “come out of the broom closet.”  Charles Arnold is the “‘national commander’ of the Pagan Veterans of the United States,” which he formed earlier this year.  He says pagan veterans “number Read more

1 … 483 484 485 486 487 … 552