04/26/2017: According to BG Paul W. Tibbets IV, 509th Bomb Wing, in his weekly commander’s message published April 21, 2017: This week our Total Force team has been fully engaged supporting Exercise Neptune Falcon. This multi-day exercise enhances the proficiency of our talented tacticians and planners, Combat Mission Ready aircrews, as…
2016-09-25 By Ed Timperlake and Robbin Laird Last May we published an article entitled: Boeing in Denmark: The New Alabama? Amazingly, having lost the fighter competition in Denmark, Boeing is back taking on a sovereign state and treating Denmark as if it were the state of Alabama in the tanker…
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,…
2016-01-30 Recently, our partner defenceWeb looked at the evolving challenges of maritime defense and security seen from South Africa. Thursday, 28 January 2016 Economic growth through development of the ocean economy as part of Operation Phakisa requires effective maritime surveillance and defence, with nearly 4 000 kilometres of South Africa’s…
2016-01-19 According to an article published by our partner RID, the second Italian built F-35 (AL-2) was flown for the first time at the Cameri air base on January 15, 2016. The Italian Air Force is training its pilots at Luke AFB where the first flights for training took place…
2015-11-08 By Richard Weitz The United States and European allies and partners can respond more effectively against the kinds of hybrid threats we gave been discussing on Second Line of Defense. NATO can take actions, primarily in the military and intelligence fields, to deter and counter direct Russian threats against…
2014-11-25 By Robbin Laird Both the UK and Italy will operate a mixed Eurofighter and F-35 fleet. Both have operated the Tornado, which is reaching the end of its service life. Both will sort through evolutions of the Eurofighter to encompass some of the mission sets for Tornado as the…
09/06/2014: The future amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6) sits at anchorage in the port of La Punta during a scheduled port visit to Callao, Peru. America is currently traveling through the U.S. Southern Command and U.S. 4th Fleet area of responsibility on her maiden transit, “America Visits the…