Stay Tooned: Do you even beard bro?

Beards are alright; you’ll notice I have one in almost every picture or at the very least a little scruff. Lord knows I hate shaving (which is, mostly, why I have one) and my wife says I look like a scary man-child with a shaved face. Beards are really cool when you’re in the military, mostly […]

Reading (and writing) about war in the information age

The way the details of war have been communicated has changed quite a bit in the last few hundred years, then again in the last hundred years, and finally again since the dawn of the internet. What was once a void of information has been filled, and sometimes oversaturated with reports, books and firsthand accounts […]

Employer Support Freedom Award recipients named by Secretary of Defense Mattis

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has named this year’s recipients of the “Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award.” Out of over 2,350 nominees, the award will go to 15 employers who support National Guard and Reservist employees. The recipients are as follows: Texas Department of Insurance from Austin, TX Duke Energy from Charlotte, NC […]

The most useful skill of all

When you’re learning how to hold your own in combat, there are all sorts of things you need to know. The practical skills come to mind first — how to shoot, how to change magazines and reload, how to react to contact, how to operate various military vehicles, how to conduct effective first aid — […]

VA employee is strong-armed into silence after voicing concerns

Dan Martin — veteran of the United States Navy from 1985 to 1991, is an employee of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. After his service in the Navy, he attended Purdue and graduated with his degree in electrical engineering. From there, he went to Indiana Wesleyan for his MBA, where he also worked for […]

VA releases updates on veteran suicide report

There have been disturbing increases in the suicide rates across America. Since 1999, suicides have increased over 30% in half of states, some of them all the way up to 58%. On top of that, the CDC found that 54% of those cases had no known mental health conditions. Read about the CDC report here. […]

Quality of care at the VA: See how your local VA hospital measures up

The VA has a system of ranking its hospitals, and it’s called the Strategic Analytics for Improving and Learning (SAIL). The system essentially has a number of criteria that they use to determine the overall quality of a VA hospital, and then rank it accordingly. The idea is that empirical numbers can sometimes be easier […]