By Robbin Laird I had a chance to visit Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission Squadron (VRM) 40 the “Mighty Bison” on Oct. 29, 2024. Earlier, I visited West Coast squadrons at North Island, San Diego, but this was my first opportunity to visit the squadron at Naval Station Norfolk. This squadron will play…
By Robbin Laird I attended the Euronaval exposition held in Paris the week of November 3, 2024. I had a chance to visit the Finnish booth at the show and watch the launch of their report on Finnish technologies in the Baltic Sea presented to the show. And then I…
By Pierre Tran Paris - Companies around the world have noted the significance of the uncrewed surface vehicle (USV), or sea drone, as could be seen at Euronaval, an international trade show for every kind of military vessel and maritime kit, which ran Nov. 4-7. The market potential for the…
By Robbin Laird In writing our book on the maritime kill web, a key point we emphasized was that payload innovation was a key driver to enhanced and viable combat capability. Rather than focusing force design on next generation platforms, a key focus now was to focus on rapid insertion…
By John Blaxland There’s an understandable inclination at first blush to see the U.S. presidential election outcome as auguring difficult times ahead on the global stage. President elect Donald Trump’s iconoclastic rhetoric on Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, tariffs and more in the lead-up to the election, coupled with his transactional approach…
By Robbin Laird In 2015, I wrote an article asking the question of what era in American politics did the 2016 election remind me of? I answered in part that perhaps the 1890s and the collapse of the main stream parties and their re-alignment was the best analogy. The force…
2017-12-18 By Brian Morra The Department of Defense’s acquisition system is a major cause of the erosion of the defense capabilities of the United States. This erosion is visible in high profile, fatal accidents like those the US Navy has experienced in the Western Pacific over the past two years.…
2016-03-02 Our colleague Air Vice Marshal (Retired) John Blackburn has focused attention on the energy security shortfall for Australia for some time. As an island continent at the bottom of the Asia Pacific region, Australia is heavily dependent upon liquid energy imports and with a rapidly disappearing domestic refinery production capacity,…
