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Shaping the Kill Web: The Impact on Designing the USN Fleet

01/20/2019By Ed Timperlake There is a great US Navy quip about a surface combatant : “Captain we are underway with no way on.” This saying is essentially reporting that the ship is trying to go forward but it is stopped by currents or other forces and drifting. In a very insightful article recently published by USNI and written by Megan… Read more »

Russia, China and Collaborative Actions: An Alliance in the Making

01/19/2019By Stephen Blank A virtual flood of studies and articles continues to appear concerning Russo-Chinese relations.[i] Although the expert consensus remains that no alliance or no formal alliance between Russia and China exists despite their visibly growing intimacy; I would dispute that finding.[ii] Indeed, Moscow keeps inventing euphemisms to disguise what is going on. First it was called a comprehensive… Read more »

Brexit and Identity Politics: A Case Study of Globalization in Flux

01/18/2019By Kenneth Maxwell On January 15, 2019, the British prime minister, Mrs Theresa May, suffered the greatest parliamentary defeat in British history when members of the House of Commons voted 432 to 202 to kill her BREXIT deal which sets out the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU on March 29th. She had pulled a previously scheduled vote before… Read more »

Angel Flight: Volunteer Pilots Help Medical Patients in Need

01/14/2019By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake In his seminal book, Democracy in America, the Frenchmen Alexis de Tocqueville, highlighted a key American trait which fascinated him – the volunteer instinct in support of the community. Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but… Read more »

UK F-35s Ready for Operations

01/12/2019In a Royal Navy article published on January 11, 2019, the announcement by the Minister of Defence of the operational readiness of the UK's F-35s was highlighted and discussed. Naval aviators can now fly the world’s most advanced fighter on front-line missions after the F-35 Lightning was declared operational. In front of a new hangar built specially to house the… Read more »

“The Sky Is The Limit”: Renewing France’s Space Capabilities

01/08/2019By Murielle Delaporte When the French minister of the armed forces, Florence Parly, visited the heart of space technology in Toulouse last September, she stressed how much space has become over the past years a key domain for national security. She noted that the Russian satellite Luch-Olymp had recently been engaged in not such a friendly action against Italian satellite… Read more »

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Report from the International Fighter Conference 2018: Perspectives on the Way Ahead with Airpower Modernization

11/28/2018This year’s International Fighter Conference held in Berlin provided a chance for the participants and the attendees to focus on the role of fighters in what we have been calling the strategic shift, namely, the shift from the land wars to operating in higher intensity operations against peer competitors. It is clear that combat capabilities… Download PDF Now »