An Iraq-style 'surge' €” or another Vietnam?

AFGHANISTAN is not another Vietnam, President Barack Obama declared just a few minutes after announcing that America would send another 30,000 troops in time for the summer fighting season of next year.

Keeping women in uniform

THE statistics cited by the Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Houston, on the employment of women in the services show that military careers remain overwhelmingly a male preserve. Speaking at the launch of the action plan for the recruitment and retention of women, Air Marshal Houston noted that women were a little more than one-eighth of service personnel, compared with more than a third of the Australian workforce. Women are more common in the navy (18 per cent) and air force (17 per cent) than in the army (10 per cent). A quarter of a century after the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act, and the elimination of explicit barriers to women's employment in other parts of the economy, that is not a particularly good record.

The battle beyond the war zone

'WHO do you think joins the Taliban?" the Afghan engineer wants to know. Our interview, in a meeting house in Tarin Kowt, is almost done. The flasks of chai are empty, the low table is littered with the debris of home-grown almonds consumed over long discussion of development works in the impoverished nearby villages, some of them using money provided by Australian taxpayers.

This wretched place needs so much, but are we prepared to deliver?

Coalition allies are in an uncomfortable state of limbo, awaiting direction from Barack Obama on where he will take the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan.

The curious case that sank a court system

ROYAL Australian Navy Leading Seaman Brian Lane was on a recruitment drive in the Queensland town of Roma in August 2005 when he and three other military personnel enjoyed a round of golf and a few beers.

Combat fatigued mums

In 2009, I defy any mother to go out and find a pair of pyjamas for an 11-year-old boy that doesn't use the army fatigue or camouflage motif. I don't know about you but when I tuck my little boy in bed at night, I want to send him off to the land of dreams, not the killing fields.

Uncle Kevin Needs You: Defence Spends Up On Recruitment

THE Defence Force has named the jobs it most needs to fill as it battles a serious skills shortage and recruitment crisis.

Recruitment Firm Set To Get 'smarter'

THE staff at David Morgan Williams Recruitment are beginning to get itchy feet as the date when they finally move into their new premises in iC Central draws closer.

Pyrrhic Victory As Police Kill Recruits

In a tragic end to India's victorious war in Kashmir, at least 21 young men died when police opened fire to restore order at three army recruitment centres. Excited by the prospect of a career in the army, youths mobbed recruitment centres at Darbhanga, Chapra and Bharatpur to volunteer their ser

The Army Goes Grey

The Melbourne-based Grey Advertising, best-known for its graphic Transport Accident Commission television commercials, has ended the week with a hat-trick. Grey has picked up the $5 million army recruitment advertising account after earlier this week winning the Melbourne Central and Midas Muffler