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"An Air Force Reserve 403rd Wing "Hurricane Hunters" WC-130J is scheduled to depart May 19 as the military's first-ever media flight compromised solely of bloggers. This flight gives bloggers from across the country an opportunity only available to traditional media outlets until now. Members from the international blogging community will be able to share with their audiences what it is like to ride with the Hurricane Hunters while learning what goes into training for one of the most challenging missions in the Air Force. Immediately after their flight, bloggers will be able to update their sites in an adjacent computer room. The two-hour flight over the Gulf of Mexico will give a new audience a better understanding of how the Hurricane Hunters collect life-saving data inside storms and highlighting the coming hurricane season which starts June 1. According to a Pentagon survey, 94% of people born after 1990 actively either blog or use social networking, such as Facebook, and new media ranks number two behind television on how people receive information. The Air Force Reserve and the 403rd are pioneers when it comes to embracing new media and are proud to offer this opportunity to the blogging community. "Social Networking and blogging is not the communication of the future, but of today. This is the way current generations communicate and the Air Force and Air Force Reserve needs to keep up with how technology is evolving and making communication faster and easier," said Brigadier General James J. Muscatell, Jr., commander of the 403rd Wing. This flight is another example of how the 403rd is communicating through new media, the Wing mission that includes the maintainers, the Hurricane Hunters and the Flying Jennies. The public can keep up with news about the 403rd Wing via Facebook Groups listed under '403rd Wing', 'AF Reserve Hurricane Hunters', '815th Flying Jennies' and '41st APS'. In addition, full-resolution photos can be found u

"Historians will likely remember Operation Iraqi Freedom as iWar v1.0. The Web has done more than quicken reporting from the battlefield; it has made war interactive. Al-Qaeda militants, conservative bloggers, peace activists, Iraqi civilians and the U.S. military all use the Internet to distribute their versions of the truth. They often engage in e-mail debates, but more often sink to slurs and threats when challenging an opposing point of view. U.S. soldiers return from battle to their rooms or tents, boot up their laptops and log on to let their friends and family know they've made it through another day. If their base is large enough, the Internet service provider offers broadband, and they can make a video call home, watch news reports on the war or post their own versions of life in Iraq to their blogs. "I blog for the same reasons soldiers wrote letters and diaries during previous wars: to communicate with family and friends, (and) to maintain an honest record of our daily existence," wrote 1st Lt. Matt Gallagher, in response to an e-mail about his blog http://kaboomwarjournal.blogspot.com. "Blogging is simply a 21st century tool for a new generation of soldiers to utilize.""

Mort Reichek - New Jersey - Age:83 ***would be great to interview*** What I do: Retired (former senior editor of Business Week) Me at home: Married, grandchildren My blog's beginnings: Began publishing when I achieved octogenarian status in 2005 Why I blog: As a retired, physically aching 83-year-old man, who once relished playing tennis, blogging has provided a stimulating alternative. Focus: Current events and memoirs as a one-time journalist, World War II army veteran, and first-generation American raised in an immigrant family in the Bronx. On the blog's impact: I published a piece about a fellow journalist who had been a Soviet air force colonel before defecting to this U.S. This produced responses from two of his children who were very young when he died. They were naturally eager to learn more about their deceased father. Above details from http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/who-are-the-bloggers/

What is the Naval Institute Blog? An independent online forum where you can express thoughtful, productive ideas, insights and opinions on issues affecting our Nation's defense. We're not the Navy nor any government agency.

If you like The Colbert Report but always thought Stephen would be funnier if the craft services table had more authentic hummus, you're in luck! Stephen will soon be taping the show over there, so we don't have to tape it over here. From the Stripes Central military blog:\n\n "I'm not supposed to tell anyone where I'm going, but just say it's sandy and they'd like us to leave," Colbert told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday. The host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" said he was invited by Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, to entertain U.S. troops downrange. "I'm hoping they're just going to blindfold me, fly the plane around in the air for 12 hours and drop me in New Mexico and tell me it's the Persian Gulf, because I wouldn't know the difference," he said.

"Despite strict US Army rules on communications, modern soldiers are relatively free to express their opinions about the validity of their operations and their leaders - provided they have the anonymity of a blog, as American Soldier acknowledges. In contrast, infantry in the Roman army may have been less likely to criticise their leaders or their mission. The practice of decimation, in which every tenth soldier would be beaten to death by the other soldiers was used during republican times up until the Augustan era. It was chosen as a method of punishing a cohort or group of soldiers for cowardice and, while it was a brutal punishment, it was chosen by commanders as an alternative to killing the whole group. "

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- whose previous job, I might add, was Chief of Naval Operations -- tweets near-daily. The Pentagon has a new principal deputy assistant secretary of defense who has focused a lot on social media. The U.S. Naval Institute, one of the most respected pillars of military thinking, has a blog, and even more surprisingly, it has a good blog, written by some of the best navy-bloggers around.

"Winning the War Within is a blog written by author Ilona Meagher about developments, issues and resources related to PTSD. It features a comprehensive blogroll of other PTSD related blogs as well."

"I've written about this before on other blogs. Ilona Meagher's PTSD Combat blog and her subsequent book, 'Moving a Nation to Care', were among the notable earlier bloggers to take on PTSD and the suicide rate in our military. "

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that the Pentagon would pay for families to travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware if they want to be present when the body or remains of a loved one is returned from war.\n\nMr. Gates announced last month that the Pentagon was reversing its longstanding policy of barring media coverage during the repatriation of fallen soldiers at Dover. He said then, and reiterated today at a news conference, which the Pentagon's Web site streamed live, that the decision about media coverage would be up to each family.

"If you're curious about how crisis workers, journalists, and soldiers overcome the specific stress of working in war and disaster zones, there is a rapidly growing family of resources. Here's a story for you. On combat PTSD, you may have seen Ilona Meagher's PTSD Combat Blog"

The blogs that soldiers are writing from Iraq and Afghanistan may not be as valuable to historians as the letters and journals that troops, as warriors have done for centuries, are writing by hand.

Over the past five years, blogs have gone from an obscure and, frankly, somewhat nerdy fad to a genuine alternative to mainstream news outlets, a shadow media empire that is rivaling networks and newspapers in power and influence.

Duckworth told senators yesterday that: "To become a 21st-century organization, the DVA (Department of Veterans Affairs) will have to change some past methods. It's no longer enough to hand out brochures at demobilization ceremonies. We must develop social networking strategies, use nontraditional outlets such as blogs, and employ the wide variety of new media available to get the message of available benefits to our veterans."

War-related trauma doesn't just plague our veterans - it also haunts our military children, too. Is there a technique for weakening traumatic memories? The fact is, our troops are also dying at home. Add Nevada to the list of states considering special courts for our veterans suffering PTSD - as war has injured them, not that criminality has overcome them. Add Texas to the list of states looking to boost the mental health of military families. Because the most pervasive combat injury is invisible.

Scientific American has a knock-out article that questions whether the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is a coherent psychological concept or whether it is actually making the situation worse for soldiers with post-combat mental health problems.

A disabled Gulf War veteran who left Norman earlier this month on a hand-propelled bicycle headed for Washington D.C. to honor fallen soldiers has died. Kevin Baker suffered a seizure Friday morning in his sleep at the home of some friends in Lake Charles, La., said Norman resident Diane Zellner. He died in an ambulance en route to a local hospital, Zellner said she was told. Baker, a 39-year-old Navy veteran, had a history of seizures, stemming from a traumatic brain injury, she said. He also had been diagnosed with lymphoma.

Miles Bingham

"Sgt. Gilberto Mota who killed himself and his wife or Staff Sgt. Justin Lee Garza who committed suicide"