PAX River and the F-35 Integrated Test Force Looks Back on 2015

03/13/2016
2016-03-07 Developmental testing is a fact of life for operational fleets. As one test engineer commented during our visit to Pax River, “we continue to do developmental testing on the Super Hornet here at Pax.” And with more than 50,000 flight hours on the F-35 fleet and an operational squadron with…

Building Wings for the F-35: Israel, Italy and Fort Worth Shape a 21st Century Capability

03/10/2016
2016-03-10 By Robbin Laird When the first F-35 crossed the Atlantic from Cameri, Italy, to NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, the plane had been assembled in Italy and had only 15 flight hours illustrating the confidence of Lockheed Martin and the Italian Government (and Italian pilot) in the maturity of the…

Australian Aid to Fiji After Cyclone Winston: The HMAS Canberra Joins the Effort

03/09/2016
2016-03-04 The HMAS Canberra is part of the Australian aid effort to Fiji to help in the wake of Cyclone Winston. According to the Australian Ministry of Defence: On Tuesday March 01, HMAS Canberra steamed towards cyclone devastated Koro Island to assist with the Fiji Government's disaster relief effort. Australian…

Welcome to the Brazilian Games: And We Are Not Talking About the Summer Olympics

03/09/2016
2016-03-09 By Kenneth Maxwell At 6am on Friday morning, March 4, 2016,, Brazilian armed federal police officers arrived at the home in the outskirts of São Paulo, of the former president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, better known to Brazilians and internationally simply as "Lula." On Tuesday of this week, the president of Oderbrecht, one of Brazil's largest…

Sang Yong 16: The US, South Koreans, Australians and New Zealanders Prepare for 21st Century Amphibious Operations

03/08/2016
2016-03-08 South Korea along with other Pacific allies are shaping new amphibious capabilities. As Brigadier General Mahoney, Deputy Marforpac, put it in an interview last year: “One of the larger points in the evolving narrative is the teaming of force projection capabilities where the amphibious element is a core capability.…