Celebrating 15 Years of Publication: Highlighting the Release of The Emergence of the Multi-Polar Authoritarian World

05/03/2025

By Robbin Laird

We have been publishing for several years. This is our 16th year of publication. We started as a single Franco-American website, and now we have three, two in the United States and one in France. A magazine which has been published for many years and is a leading specialized journal edited by our co-founder Murielle Delaporte.

We have branched out into book publishing and our latest book is in fact highlighting our 15 years of publication and honoring our contributors.

In recognition of my friends whose contributions to this venture have been critical over the past 15 years and without whom this venture would not have succeeded we have just released our latest book entitled: The Emergence of the Multi-Polar Authoritarian World: Looking Back from 2024.

In particular, I wish to thank the core group who helped generate the work launching the original website, the Honorable Ed Timperlake, Dr. Kenneth Maxwell, Dr. Richard Weitz, Dr. Harald Malmgren, Secretary Michael Wynne, Brian Morra,  Lt. General (Retired) David Deptula, and those who have become major contributors as the journey has continued, notably, Pierre Tran and James Durso, and, of course, the person whose vision created Second Line of Defense in the first place, Murielle Delaporte.

I would wish to thank the U.S. and allied militaries who have and continue to spend significant time with me discussing their approaches, their challenges and the importance of what they do.

It has really been a unique experience in a world of think tanks and large institutions which dominate strategic analysis, we have had our place as well.

We chose a motto when we started publishing which has guided us as we have gone through our first 15 years: As George Patton once said: “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

This has become more significant over time as the mainstream media has now given lemmings a bad name.

The English-language edition:

The Spanish language edition:

The French language edition:

The German language edition:

FARP Exercise for F-35

05/02/2025

U.S. Marines conduct a forward arming and refueling point exercise at Camp Davis South on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, April 10, 2025. Following its $28 million overhaul, Davis Airfield South can now accommodate every airframe in the Marine Corps arsenal while providing a multi-domain combined arms complex for operational forces to conduct Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations training. The extensive runway can even accommodate the landing of KC-130J aircraft to deliver heavy combat equipment in support of distributed operations.

04.10.2025

Video by Lance Cpl. Hunter Brock 

Marine Corps Installations East

5th Maintenance Group

04/30/2025

From C-17s soaring across the Pacific to F-22s dominating the skies, the 15th Maintenance Group (MXG) at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam ensures every aircraft is mission ready. Their expert maintenance, repairs, and logistics keep our AirPower sustained.

03.25.2025

Video by Petty Officer 1st Class Lorenzo Burleson 

Headquarters Air Force, Office of the Director of Logistics

What’s it Like to Fly an MQ-9?

04/28/2025

“Unlike Any Other Job in the World.” Air Force Capt. Joseph Taylor and Senior Airman Alex Kulaga, an MQ-9 pilot and MQ-9 sensor operator, respectively, assigned to the 482nd Attack Squadron, discuss their unique roles operating the MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft and what they love about their jobs.

01.06.2025

Video by Matthew Hilborn 

Defense.gov    

Pitch Black 2024

04/25/2025

Airmen participating in Exercise Pitch Black 2024 in Australia concluded operations Aug. 2, 2024, marking the end of the largest iteration of the Royal Australian Air Force’s biennial capstone exercise. With more than 140 aircraft and 4,000 members from multiple continents and geographic regions, Pitch Black 24 provided participants an ideal opportunity to share their expertise and learn from each other. The exercised aimed to enhance interoperability between the air forces of 19 nations – United States; Australia; Singapore; Italy; Indonesia; India; Japan; United Kingdom; France; Germany; Republic of Korea; Malaysia; Thailand; Philippines; Spain; Brunei; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Fiji; and Canada.

TINDAL, NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA

08.02.2024

Video by Staff Sgt. Spencer Tobler

Pacific Air Forces

The Paradigm Shift in Maritime Operations: What Potential Role for Future Tiltrotor Systems?

04/24/2025

By Robbin Laird

In my forthcoming book on the paradigm shift in maritime operations, I focus on the importance of pairing distributed capital ship operations with the capabilities that air vehicles and autonomous systems can provide to deliver maritime effects in a contested environment.

To achieve competitive overmatch in the air, performance characteristics like range, speed, and payload capacity is paramount. However, unlike land-based military services, the future platforms of Naval Aviation must also be sized to fit the restrictive confines of surface ship flight decks and hangar bays. Herein lies the delicate balance between the capability to support concepts like Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) while also developing a cost-effective solution that fits the physical footprint available onboard.

With the Navy clearly focused on DMO and working ways to more effectively operate a distributed fleet, the speed and range of tiltrotor technology is an obvious advantage. This is why the Navy is already procuring the CMV-22B, initially purchased for large deck carrier replenishment duties, but users of the aircraft and several Admirals I have spoken to have already embraced the idea that intra-ship support needs to be part of the CMV-22B future.

And as the DoD looks towards the future regarding vertical lift, it is clear that any new crewed air asset must be capable of working with air, sea and land-launched autonomous systems. This is a key consideration for the U.S. Army in acquiring its new tiltrotor aircraft, Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), which is being developed with a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) architecture to work with launched effects and other autonomous technologies.

I had a chance to talk with Tyler Harrell during the 2025 Navy League meetings held the first week of April 2025. Harrell is an experienced Naval aviator with the MH-60S “KnightHawk” helicopter with multiple carrier deployments in his time on active duty. He is now a manager of Naval Sales and Strategy at Bell.

We discussed the Navy and its way ahead regarding vertical lift and the role which tiltrotor technology might play in that future. He underscored that the Army approach of working a crewed tiltrotor platform with autonomous systems was a key enabler in Bell’s approach to working with the Navy regarding their future vertical lift technology. Leveraging the Army’s innovations with tiltrotor provides commonality among the services and a cost-effective path for the Navy to shape its own fleet of aircraft.

According to Harrell, Bell has been developing a comprehensive solution from the ground up with their focus on bringing future vertical lift to the Navy. Here he highlighted the V-247 Vigilant, which is a fully autonomous tiltrotor designed to team with manned assets while operating from the smaller disbursed surface ships. He noted that Bell has invested more than 300,000 engineering design hours to mature the technology.

He underscored: “it is a tiltrotor platform with a common open architecture that provides the range, speed, and dynamic payload capacity that ship commanders need to win the future fight.”

Harrell indicated that the Navy was reviewing how to meet the extensive mission requirements which the MH-60’s currently perform, and how to prioritize them across a crewed-uncrewed teaming operating concept. Which missions can an autonomous air vehicle be held solely responsible for? What tactics, techniques, and procedures can evolve to utilize both manned and unmanned teaming? And which missions should be reserved for a pilot in the cockpit?

According to Harrell, Bell remains committed to providing the right solutions to these answers and brings over 750,000 tiltrotor flight hours to back it up.

Another key enabler that he highlighted revolved around the Army’s MOSA architecture that is being developed in collaboration with Bell for FLRAA. This not only cuts down on overall lifecycle sustainment costs, as obsolescence of federated systems can be quickly replaced, but also enables rapid response to emerging threats and flight requirements through software updates. Updates that can be accomplished in hours vice years.

The way Harrell characterized the way ahead for the Navy regarding future vertical lift is the need to build three pillars of interactive and integrated capability. The first being the speed, range, and dynamic payload capacity necessary for distributed maritime operations. The second pillar is the capability to work manned-unmanned teaming as the payloads of the future are integrated into the fleet. The third is an open system architecture that allows for rapid payload innovation and integration.

And for Harrell, the challenge and the opportunity for Bell is to demonstrate that the tiltrotor enterprise could provide a comprehensive approach for building those three pillars of future vertical lift for the Navy.

Featured image: Artist’s rendering of V-247. Credit: Bell

I Marine Expeditionary Force

04/23/2025

U.S. Marines with I Marine Expeditionary Force have conducted a multitude of exercises and operations across the Indo-Pacific throughout 2024. I MEF provides the Marine Corps a globally responsive, expeditionary, and fully scalable Marine Air-Ground Task Force, capable of generating, deploying, and employing ready forces and formations across the Pacific.

CAMP HM SMITH, HAWAI

01.08.2025

Video by Lance Cpl. Blake Gonter 

U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific

The Textron Aviation Defense Offering for the U.S. Navy’s Undergraduate Jet Training System

04/22/2025

By Robbin Laird

At the recent Sea-Air-Space Conference held in National Harbor, Maryland, Textron Aviation Defense was featuring its offering for the Navy’s Undergraduate Jet Training System. The Navy seeks to replace the aging T-45 Goshawk — with the candidates being the multi-engine Textron Aviation Defense-Leonardo-M-346N, the single-engine Boeing-Saab T-7 and the single-engine Lockheed Martin-KAI T-50.

I am familiar with all three aircraft, but really the focus from my point of view is upon the end-to-end training system. In all three cases, a “foreign” aircraft is being offered but the inclusion of the aircraft will be in an end-to-end training system.

When I came to the Textron booth, I had an advantage over many other visitors given my experience in working with the Italian Air Force and my familiarity with their training facility in Sardina, which the Textron offering leverages. In this sense, the M-346N is already a globally proven training system and the speed to Initial Operational Capability (IOC) is unparalleled in this competition.

As Lt. General Goretti, the Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force, told me in his office in Rome in November 2924:

“The attitude of a modern air force is to look around, see the change in of the geopolitical situation, consider what you have in your inventory, and then try to think and reconsider the way of training to maximize your mission success. To follow this path, we saw the necessity of building a new kind of training facility.

“We decided upon working with our Italian company, Leonardo, to establish a new international flight training school. After only 16 months from concept to execution, we held our first class at the new training facility. We have more than 13 allied air forces already engaged in our program. This is a significant achievement which we have been able to do in only two years since the flight school opened in 2022.”

I want to underscore a key point, namely that 1 allied air forces are already engaged in the end-to-end training system. In total, 19 air forces are producing 4th and 5th generation fighter pilots in the M-346.

BGen Edi Turco, Chief of Staff of the Air Education Training Command / 3rd Air Region, and Head of the International Flight Training School (IFTS) Program Office, told me during the visit that the syllabus is modular so can be updated rapidly as threats change. He underscored that fifth-generation training was really about getting pilots of whatever aircraft being flown to understand the comprehensive and extended battlespace and to find their place within that battlespace. It is crucial to understand what platforms and payloads are available to deal with the threat envelope.

Textron Aviation Defense has partnered with Leonardo, which built and operates the facility. And Leonardo members were attending the Navy League event as well.

I spoke with Steve Helmer about the Textron Aviation Defense offering and approach. Helmer is an experienced Hornet and Super Hornet pilot in the U.S. Navy and is a 2014 graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School.

He noted that the U.S. Navy has decided not to take their initial student pilots to train off of the carrier deck. This has been aided by the advent of precision landing modes and standardization across the fleet of these modes. The focus is upon initial training in the simulator and leveraging advances in live virtual constructive training as well.

Helmer noted: “The Navy has signaled to us that they want to train junior aviators in the precision landing modes in the advanced jet trainer aircraft, as well as with carrier operational procedures using LVC training.”

He then highlighted the key point that Textron Aviation Defense, with its teaming with Leonardo and the existence of the Sardinia training facility, is able to leverage a proven end-to-end system — validated by more than 130,000 flight hours across the global fleet of 100 aircraft and more than 200,000 simulator hours across an installed base of 22 simulators —  and adapt it for the U.S. Navy training solution.

The Italian M-346N will be the airplane used in the flying part of LVC training, but after initial Italian deliveries of the aircraft, the plane would be built in the United States.

In particular, Helmer stressed that the M-346N is a low risk, multi-engine, advanced ITS and a robust, ready now option for U.S. Naval Aviation Pilot and Naval Flight Officer/Weapons Systems Officer production.

The result according to Helmer: “We are able to start training pilots on a complete training system from day one.”

In other words, the LVC ecosystem is not an aftermarket add on, but it is built in from the outset.

And added to this is Textron Aviation Defense’s own long-standing work with the U.S. Navy.

As Helmer put it: “We have more than 70 years of in-house trainer experience just as Leonardo has more than 70 years of in-house trainer experience.

“There’s not a single naval aviator alive who has not flown one of our products, in training, if not beyond training.

“All of that DNA in-house and the pre-existing relationship with the Navy and the Marine Corps are really what enable us to be the U.S. provider for this aircraft.

“We will build it here in the U.S. and deliver it to the customer to their specifications.”

Featured imag: A rendering showing the M-346N (Image credit: Dylan Lumpkins/Textron Aviation Defense)