One in five females in military have faced unwanted sexual contact, new survey reveals

Some 22% of women in the U.S. military said they have been victims of unwanted sexual contact by someone in the service, and the issues seems to be most significant in the Marine Corps, where 30% — nearly 1 in 3 — women reported unwanted advances.  Among men, by comparison, 3.3% said they were victims. 

The data is from a final version of a major global, anonymous survey of military personnel done every three years by the Department of Defense, TRICARE and others. About 40,000 participated in the survey, which was done in 2011 but was not made public until a few days ago.

The survey is exhaustive and covers many issues, including substance abuse, stress and mental health, including post-traumatic stress, depression, gender issues, suicide and traumatic brain injury.

Tables below are from the report, which is available in full as a PDF on in our DocumentCloud folder.  (The previous report from 2008 is available here.)

WOMEN

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MEN

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COMBINED

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‘Pentagon of Love’ — a look at Petraeus resignation explainer graphics

Poynter has a handy guide to some of the Peatraeus resignation explainer graphics floating around, from the serious (below) to the silly (‘Penta gon Wild!’ from Chicago’s RedEye) to the clever (‘The Petraeus Pentagon of Love’ from NY Mag). 

Source: poynter.org

Advisors to the Obama and Romney campaigns — both of them former undersecretaries of defense — debated defense-related issues on Thursday night in Washington. You can watch a replay of the debate, part of the annual Military Reporters and Editors Association conference, on C-SPAN (click on the image). The event was co-sponsored by the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, of which On The Beat is a part. 
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Advisors to the Obama and Romney campaigns — both of them former undersecretaries of defense — debated defense-related issues on Thursday night in Washington. You can watch a replay of the debate, part of the annual Military Reporters and Editors Association conference, on C-SPAN (click on the image). The event was co-sponsored by the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, of which On The Beat is a part. 

Source: c-span.org

Where the drones are: U.S. military drone locations mapped

The research project Public Intelligence has assembled a map and list of dozens of current and planned areas with Department of Defense drone activity, including the type of craft.  ”What exact missions are performed at those locations, however, is not clear,” Danger Room reports. “Some bases might be used as remote cockpits to control the robotic aircraft overseas, some for drone pilot training. Others may also serve as imagery analysis depots.”

Wired notes that 12 of the locations are for “Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed.”

Secrecy News, meantime, cites another report that lists 110 potential drone bases, vs. the 88 in the Public Intelligence report. Here’s that DOD report to Congress. (PDF)

In April, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a similar map of public and private sector drone operations. 

Source: publicintelligence.net

GAO: Pentagon misreports or ignores long-term weapons costs

“The true costs of some of the biggest pieces of the U.S. arsenal are mostly hidden, the audit concluded, because the Defense Department’s public documents typically list only how much has been spent or will be spent to acquire its fighters, ships, and vehicles.

“The long-term costs of owning such armaments, including all the operations, maintenance, and repair expenses, are often misstated or ignored in the Pentagon’s reports to Congress, or compiled only in an aggregate number that defeats careful analysis of rising costs in individual programs or prudent planning for future military spending, according to the auditors.”

Full Center for Public Integrity story

The GAO audit

GAO summary

Defense cuts would cost 1 million+ jobs, economist says

              

IMAGE SOURCE: SecondToNone.org.

(WashPost) As the bipartisan debt “supercommittee” was meeting publicly for the fourth time Wednesday morning in the Hart Senate Office Building, the House Armed Services Committee was gathered across the Capitol campus in the Rayburn Building to examine the possible effects of the Pentagon cuts that would be enacted if the 12-member panel fails to complete its task.

The outlook: Not pretty, at least to hear one of the panel’s witnesses tell it.

George Mason University professor Stephen Fuller told the Armed Services Committee members that if the supercommittee pulls the “trigger” on hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Pentagon spending, the result will be the loss of more than 1 million jobs.

Download Fuller’s Report (PDF)

Source: Washington Post