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The Bunker

A cheat sheet for what you need to know about the Department of Defense, how we’re waging our wars, and how the Pentagon spends our taxpayer dollars. The Bunker is both pro-troop and pro-taxpayer. 

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The Bunker logo, done in military stencil, in front of the Pentagon building

The Bunker: Crash Course

This week in The Bunker: a spike in U.S. military accidents sets off a hunt for their elusive cause; defense contractors fight to maintain their maintenance monopoly; Army humans launch Army robots to feed Army humans; and more. 

The Bunker: An outsider’s déjà view

This week in The Bunker: like a rookie defense secretary a long time ago, a new Army civilian chief without previous Pentagon baggage finds defense procurement wanting; military choppers face turbulence; more gold needed for Golden Dome; and more.

The Bunker: If at First You Don’t Succeed…

This week in The Bunker: the Defense Department launches yet another scheme to change the way it buys weapons; an early holiday wish list for the Air Force; the Senate disgracefully wimps out when it comes to curbing presidential war-making; and more.

The Bunker: Nuclear Daze

This week in The Bunker: President Trump muddies the waters when it comes to resuming U.S. nuclear-weapons tests; the Pentagon’s biggest contractor hypes readiness that’s MIA; contractors are still waiting on Golden Dome’s design; and more. Oh, and a heartfelt helmet tip to vets ahead of their special day next Tuesday, November 11.

The Bunker: Hiding-and-Seeking Beneath the Waves

This week in The Bunker: More U.S. national security Trumpfoolery; just how stealthy are submarines; drone-killing boom times; misplaced U.S. defense spending priorities; and more.

The Bunker: Pentagon Press Persists

This week in The Bunker: Getting kicked out of the Pentagon hasn’t dulled reporters’ appetite for news; the Defense Department’s ever-changing flow charts; scrutiny of new weapons dives as spending soars; and more.

The Bunker: Profiles in poltroonery

This week in The Bunker: the world’s “greatest deliberative body” is little more than pusillanimity on parade when it comes to checking President Trump’s Caribbean combat; the F-35 paperweight; the Pentagon wages war on the press; and more.

The Bunker: A Petulantly Performative Pentagon

This week in The Bunker: The Defense Department’s civilian leader and his boss muster hundreds of top U.S. military officers so the pair could decant their favorite old whines into new bottles; rising costs of silo-based ICBMs resurrect a still-madcap scheme to put them on trucks; and more.

The Bunker: Unitary Unilateral War

This week in The Bunker: A one-man war, a pox on independent Pentagon reporting, a close shave; and more. No Bunker next week!

The Bunker: Air Sickness

This week in The Bunker: As flashing red lights increasingly make clear that the future of war involves drones without pilots, the Pentagon continues to spend trillions on crewed aircraft; one way to save money on the next ICBM; the Air Force’s rose-colored glasses; and more.

The Bunker: Department of Rhetoric

This week in The Bunker: Trump unilaterally tries to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War because it sounds cooler to him; nonetheless, war contractors push for more spending on defense; the F-35’s bogus bonuses; and more. 

The Bunker: Anything Happen While we Were Away?

This week in The Bunker: The changes now underway at the Pentagon and in the broader national-security arena risk politicizing what for 250 years has been an ironclad commitment to a military impervious to partisan machinations; what happens when shiny hardware distracts the military from doing simple things right, and more.

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