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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 »

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 — the opening phase of the seven-week course — Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron 373, Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, conducted an expeditionary airfield practical application at… 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 dangerous. It was designed for a world of isolated, slow-moving systems with slack built into every layer. That world no longer exists. The term that anchors the framework is deliberately… 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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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 »

The End of the Polish-Ukrainian “Honeymoon”

06/04/2026 By Robert Czulda The period of sympathy and mutual understanding between Poland and Ukraine has effectively ended. The authorities in Kyiv have once again taken a provocative step, antagonizing their… Read more »

Learning Before the Hulls Arrive: Applying Transformation Lessons to Australia’s Hybrid Fleet

06/03/2026 By Robbin Laird The Royal Australian Navy is crossing a dangerous bridge. On one side sits the fleet it has today: three Hobart‑class air warfare destroyers, a diminishing number of… Read more »

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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 »

22nd MEU Flight Ops Aboard USS San Antonio

04/06/2026 U.S. Marines with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 (Reinforced), 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), and Sailors with San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS San Antonio (LPD 17), conduct… 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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