11/23/2015: A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning, control and surveillance aircraft set a new record by flying a 17.1 hour operational mission over Iraq and Syria. Along with a RAAF KC-30A Multi-Role Tanker Transport and six F/A-18A Hornets, the Australian aircraft participate in close air…
2015-11-23 By Richard Weitz Second Line of Defense had the opportunity to attend this year’s 12th annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, where more than one hundred foreign and Russian participants heard President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials and various international experts discussed recent international developments.…
11/22/2015: Interviews of soldiers from partner nations training together during UNITAS Amphibious 2015 at Ilha do Governador, Brazil, Nov. 16, 2015. Marines from Marine Forces Reserve joined partner nations during the start of UNITAS Amphib to integrate seamlessly and train on various skills including Amphibious Assault Vehicle familiarization, breaching rooms as…
2015-11-21 By In Omnibus Caritas The horrific scenes from Paris, coupled with the European Union’s border policies, have led many of our elected officials (and hopefuls) to call for a cessation or “pause” in our national relief efforts to re-locate Syrian and Iraqi refugees. This call is predicated on the…
2015-11-20 By defenceWeb Boko Haram and Islamic State (IS) were jointly responsible for 51% of all claimed global terror fatalities in 2014, with Boko Haram taking over IS as the world’s deadliest terror group with 7 500 deaths last year. This is according to a new report indicating terrorism is at…
2015-11-12 By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake In late October 2015, we had a chance to sit down and talk with key members of the Air Combat Command (ACC) staff about the evolution of the air combat force and the way ahead under the influence of new technologies coming into…
2015-11-19 By Louis P. Bergeron In the coming decades, the Bering Strait will emerge as a key global maritime choke point due to its strategic location. The strait will link the dynamic Pacific Ocean economies with the economies in the North Atlantic Ocean using the increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean as…
2015-11-19 By Amatzia Baram “IS” cannot be defeated as long as it controls territory that can produce large revenue and serve as base for operations. “IS” has the Iraqi-Syrian desert that is providing them with some $1.5m per day worth of oil, in addition to ransom, an endless supply of…