Gates Launches Cyberwar Military Command

Females will still not be able to serve as infantry, however: sources

(NEWSER) - Defense Department rules are entering the 21st century. The Pentagon will recommend to Congress today that women in the military should be allowed to serve in a greater number of positions close to front lines. The AP notes that the rule shift would formalize a practice that has already been happening: Though women are technically prohibited from serving in combat battalions, over the past decade many have served at the front lines in roles including medic, military police officer, intelligence officer, and helicopter pilot. The military has previously dodged the rule by "attaching" such women to battalions, rather than formally assigning them, meaning the women would not receive credit for serving in combat arms. More»

They go untreated in program plagued with problems: ProPublica, NPR

(NEWSER) - A military brain-injury testing program has cost $42 million thus far—but hardly any soldiers have benefited from the plan, according to a joint investigation by NPR and ProPublica . Their reports suggest the program has a been a huge waste of money that has fallen way short of its primary mission—diagnosing brain injuries among the troops. “We have failed soldiers,” says a retired colonel who used to run the program. “I can see firsthand the soldiers that we've missed, the soldiers that have not been treated, not been identified, misdiagnosed. And then they struggle.” More»

We're relying more on search engines now

(NEWSER) - Why remember something if you can Google it? Researchers exploring that question have concluded that computers and search engines are changing the way human memory works, reports the San Jose Mercury News . Essentially, people in the experiments were less likely to remember a piece of trivia if they knew they could look it up later. "Human memory is adapting to new communications technology," Columbia University's Betsy Sparrow tells the New York Times . She calls it the Google Effect. More»

A look back at the retiring defense secretary's career

(NEWSER) - With Robert Gates, who has served eight presidents over four decades, about to retire, the Washington Post looks back at how Gates operated in the Pentagon. He’s been “careful, conservative, and consensus-oriented,” writes Greg Jaffe, and he’s “earned a reputation as the most ruthlessly efficient defense secretary in decades.” So what can we learn from his tenure?

• Buy time. Defense Department reviews following troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan gave Presidents Bush and Obama a sense of the military’s trajectory—and they bought time against critics calling for quick drawdowns.

Military pushes for slow withdrawal as Obama weighs next move

(NEWSER) - The military has called on President Obama to keep the Afghanistan troop surge in place until the fall of next year, ensuring that many of the 33,000 extra troops remain in the country for the next two fighting seasons, when the weather is warm. The military wants to avoid a 2012 scenario in which it loses large numbers of troops just as militants are becoming most active, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move would come with a political perk for Obama: Many troops would be coming home just before the 2012 election. More»