Department of Defense (DoD)

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Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, Patrick M. Shanahan, Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of the Air Force Heather A. Wilson listen during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on April 11, 2019 in Washington, DC.

The Pentagon’s 2018 Civilian Casualties Report: What’s In It and What’s Next

The Pentagon’s latest annual report, released this morning, lists shockingly low numbers of "credible" civilian casualties. It also illustrated the need for better processes…
Smoke billowing out following a coalition air strike in the western al-Daraiya neighbourhood of the embattled northern Syrian city of Raqa on September 5, 2017.

New Pentagon Report Significantly Undercounts Civilian Casualties

The latest annual report was on time and included more details than it had in the past, thanks to additional congressional requirements. But it still significantly undercounts…
Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford and Patrick M. Shanahan, Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense, are seen before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on April 11, 2019 in Washington, DC.

New DoD Policy on Amends Needs to Address Transparency Gap

New information from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) reveals a previously unrecognized transparency gap in the U.S. military’s efforts to acknowledge and address civilian…
Activists rally against the transgender military service ban at the Reflecting Pool of the U.S. Capitol April 10, 2019 in Washington, DC. Their signs read, “Stand with transgender service members, recruits and their families.”

How the Pentagon Made Transgender Rights Disappear

The Pentagon's new limits on transgender military service amount to a ban that is anything but "gender-blind."
An overhead view of the Pentagon building in Washington, DC.

The Pentagon Wants to Streamline Security Clearances by Using AI. That’s a Dangerous Idea.

If DoD's new autonomous system goes awry, it could embed bias and a resistance to oversight. Is existence alone might jeopardize civil liberties, modify subjects’ behavior in…

The Pentagon’s Latest Report on Civilian Casualties Policy

Late on Friday night, the Pentagon submitted to Congress and publicly released a 17-page report required under the 2019 John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)…
Supreme Court Building

What Now for the Mattis Transgender Policy?

As I predicted here a couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court today unanimously denied the government’s petitions for certiorari before judgment in the “transgender…
A Yemeni soldier loyal to the Saudi and UAE-backed government walking past UAE military armored vehicles at a position north of the southeastern city of Mukalla, the capital Hadramawt province.

Annotation of the Pentagon Report to Congress on Detainee Abuse by U.S. Partners in Yemen

In a mere two pages of carefully parsed prose, DoD has provided what can only be described as a deliberately misleading and deceptively evasive account of U.S. and Emirati actions…
Silhouettes of soldiers on a transgender flag

Untangling the Issues in the “Transgender in the Military” Litigation

A few weeks ago, the Department of Justice made something of a splash by filing petitions for certiorari “before judgment” in three of the pending cases challenging then-Secretary…

The Pentagon Put Someone in Charge of Its Civilian Casualty Policy. Now What?

For all the time and attention that the Defense Department has rightly spent addressing civilian casualties, no single official at the Pentagon has ever been formally charged with…

Update: The Military, the Mexican Border and Posse Comitatus

Unlike the earlier deployment of National Guard personnel, the use of federal forces raises new issues concerning what they are permitted to do.

Letter to the Editor: Why Larger Defense Budgets Don’t Need to Come at the Expense of “Soft Power”

In his recent post (“The National Security Threat of Trump’s Defense Budget”) Bishop Garrison argues that the Trump administration’s proposed increases to the defense budget…
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