U.S. Military Shifts to Helping Kurds Fight Back -- Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON—The U.S. military is turning its focus toward helping Kurdish forces launch a counteroffensive against Sunni militants now that the refugee crisis in the northern Iraqi mountains has abated, American officials said Thursday.

American military planners are building a coalition of countries that have agreed to take part in the effort to fly in ammunition, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades the Kurdish fighters need to uproot extremist forces that call themselves the Islamic State, the officials said.

The focus on arming Kurdish fighters represents the next stage of U.S. military operations in Iraq. Earlier, the U.S. military essentially declared victory in preventing the Islamic State from attacking thousands of Iraqi refugees from the country's Yazidi religious minority hiding in the Sinjar mountains.

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Military And Intelligence News Briefs -- August 15, 2014

US to Arm Kurdish Peshmerga Amid ISIS Offensive -- RIA Novosti

UK 'prepared' to supply arms to Kurdish forces -- RT

Pentagon Defends Early Sinjar Threat Picture, Blames Initial Surveillance -- USNI

Did the Pentagon misjudge the danger on Iraq’s Mount Sinjar? -- Craig Whitlock, Washington Post

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China Is Developing Alarming High-Tech Weapons Systems -- Business Insider

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Nuclear Weapons for South Korea -- Philip Iglauer, The Diplomat

The British Army: A changing force -- The Economist

Britain's High-Tech New Plan to Rule the Waves -- Bill Sweetman, Daily Beast

Top US General Visits Wartime Foe Vietnam -- Defense News/AFP

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Army physical fitness uniform gets golden makeover -- USA Today

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How Congress Helped Create Ferguson’s Militarized Police -- National Journal

How America’s Police Became an Army: The 1033 Program -- Taylor Wofford, Newsweek

Surplus Military Gear Is Good for Police and Taxpayers (Commentaries) -- New York Times

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The Public Will Soon Be Able to Buy Military-Grade Satellite Images -- NextGov

Marine sniper involved in controversial video found dead -- Marine Times

Why America Doesn't Need All Its Nukes ... And It Can't Afford Them Either -- Kingston Reif, Real Clear Defense

Can America Maintain Its Military-Technology Edge? -- Ben FitzGerald, National Interest

Warship "Survivability" -- Information Dissemination

Air Force Has the Strategic Edge -- Alex ward, Real Clear Defense

Time to rein in the Pentagon's mysterious slush fund -- William D. Hartung, L.A. Times

Maj. Gen. Harold Greene receives full burial honors at Arlington -- Stars and Stripes