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MUMS-14 Stands Up at Cherry Point: Building the Maintenance Backbone for the Marine Corps’ MQ-9A Force

06/18/2026 By Robbin Laird A light rain fell over the parade field at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point on the morning of June 16, 2026, but it did nothing to slow the proceedings. Under a covered pavilion ringed with the stadium-style red seats that mark official functions on the station, Marines and their families bowed their heads for the invocation,… Read more »

From Fighter to Cloud: How Germany Rewrote the FCAS Project

06/17/2026 By Pierre Tran Paris - Germany pulled out of building a new generation fighter (NGF) with France, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz June 10 recasting cooperation around developing a combat cloud for command and control over air, land, sea, and space. "This presents a great opportunity for a central Franco-German defense industry project of the future, one that we intend to… Read more »

Fueling the Forward Edge: The FARP Practical Application at WTI 2-26

06/16/2026 Three days after Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron 373 laid AM-2 aluminum matting at Auxiliary Airfield II near Yuma, Arizona, a new team returned to the same site to build the next layer of the expeditionary airfield. On March 17, 2026, personnel conducting the Forward Arming and Refueling Point practical application as part of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course… Read more »

The Coast Guard’s Away Game: Authority, Reach, and the Persistence of Under-Resourcing

06/16/2026 By Robbin Laird I came to the Coast Guard through an unusual door. In the late 1990s I was working with a maritime security company focused on port vulnerabilities, and the observation that shaped everything that followed was straightforward: bad actors could reach into the commercial technology market far more quickly than the Coast Guard could navigate its own acquisition… Read more »

Revitalizing America’s Maritime Logistics: The Noncombat Fleet and the Foundations of Naval Power

06/15/2026 By Robbin Laird The Trump administration's fiscal year 2027 budget proposal has placed noncombat shipbuilding at the center of America's defense investment debate for the first time in a generation. A 46 percent increase in shipbuilding funding, reaching $65.8 billion, represents the most ambitious peacetime commitment to the logistics fleet in decades. That figure matters not simply as a budget… Read more »

From Noise to Knowledge: How Lysk’s AI-Powered Lore Turns Combat Radio into Actionable Data

06/14/2026 By Pierre Tran Paris - Lysk, a European start-up company, plans to bring Lore, its AI-backed software package, to the European military market this summer, offering officers a secure means to transcribe radio calls into written reports when working out in the field, two co-founders said June 2. The Lore program, supported by artificial intelligence, will be presented to armed… Read more »

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Fight Tonight: Exploiting Australia’s Strategic Advantage

05/13/2026 Australia’s “fight tonight” question has become urgent. Fight Tonight: Exploiting Australia’s Strategic Advantage distils the 23 April 2026 Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar, where practitioners, commanders, industry and allies examined what the ADF can actually deploy, sustain and adapt in the opening weeks of a major Indo‑Pacific conflict. The report argues that “fight tonight” is… Download PDF Now »

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Building the Airfield: MWSS-373 and the Expeditionary Enablers of WTI 2-26

06/13/2026 By Robbin Laird The first week of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-26 began not with aircraft, but with aluminum matting and a post driver. On March 14, 2026 —… Read more »

The Challenge of Chaos Management

06/12/2026 By Robbin Laird My 2026 framework Mastering Chaos begins from a premise that most leadership literature still refuses to accept: traditional crisis management is not merely inadequate. It is actively… Read more »

The Brexit Paradox: Dunkirk in Reverse

06/11/2026 By Robbin Laird and Kenneth Maxwell Brexit was sold, in significant part, as a restoration of sovereign control over Britain’s borders. By leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom would… Read more »

WTI Events: The Engine of Marine Aviation Transformation at MAWTS-1

06/10/2026 By Robbin Laird At the heart of Marine aviation’s drive for combat excellence lies a semi-annual event that most outsiders have never heard of, yet which one senior MAWTS-1 Commanding… Read more »

Training as a Weapon: How HMHT-302 Is Building the Kilo Generation

06/09/2026 By Robbin Laird In the fall of 2010, I was at Marine Corps Air Station New River talking to a group of Marines who had been flying the MV-22 Osprey… Read more »

Bitcoin, Power Projection, and the Indo Pacific: Reading Admiral Paparo’s Intervention

06/08/2026 By Robbin Laird When Admiral Samuel Paparo told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Bitcoin is “a reality” and “a valuable computer science tool, as a power projection,” he did… Read more »

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4th MAW Conducts TRAP Missions During Atlantic Alliance 25

06/17/2026 U.S. Marines with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 764 (VMM-764) prepare MV-22 Ospreys to depart as part of a Tactical Recovery of Aircraft and Personnel (TRAP) mission during Atlantic Alliance 25… Read more »

WTI 2-26: CH-53K Long Range Raid

06/15/2026 U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K King Stallions assigned to Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1), conduct an air-to-air refueling during a CH-53 long range raid exercise as part of… Read more »

MV-22 Osprey’s Support Personnel Recovery

06/12/2026 U.S. Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey’s and KC-130J’s work hand-in hand with U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen, or PJ’s, assigned to the Personnel Recovery Task Force at Combined Joint Task Force –… Read more »

Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 Conducts a Simulated Expeditionary Airstrike

06/10/2026 U.S. Marines assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, conduct a simulated expeditionary airstrike during Realistic Urban Training at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona,… Read more »

VMFA 211 Conducts an Expeditionary Airstrike

06/08/2026 U.S. Marines assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, conduct a simulated expeditionary airstrike during Realistic Urban Training at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona,… Read more »

Wild Weasel History

04/10/2026 This video discussed the history of the Wild Weasel mission and the aircraft that made history as the first in and last out. 03.09.2026 Video by Staff Sgt. Benjamin Bugenig… Read more »

XVIII Airborne Corps Works With Industry on Unmanned Aircraft Systems

04/08/2026 Soldiers assigned to XVIII Airborne Corps hosts a demonstration of unmanned aircraft systems at Fort Bragg, N.C., on 31 Mar. 2026. The drones displayed varied from systems designed as training… Read more »

SLD BOOKSHOP

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The Second Line of Defense team provides high quality publications with regard to key global strategic developments. You can purchase these on a number of booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

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Chaos Management

05/26/2026 Traditional crisis management, scenario prediction, linear cause‑and‑effect, and efficiency‑optimized structures, is presented as inadequate in such conditions. Instead, the book proposes a shift to chaos management, defined as building adaptive… Read more »

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