09/21/2015: From 31 August – 4 September, 2015, Exercise Joint Strike, the inaugural Amphibious Task Group (ATG) joint fires exercise, was conducted at the Beecroft Weapons Range, in the Jervis Bay area, New South Wales. Royal Australian Navy, Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force personnel from within the ATG conducted…
09/21/2015: 3rd Air Force, 17th Expeditionary Air Force Commander, Lt. Gen. Timothy Ray, hosted a media event at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, September 3rd, 2015, to announce the F-22 Raptor's first ever European training deployment. The purpose of the event was to highlight the importance of forward based infrastructure and…
2015-09-18 By Robbin Laird Air Marshal Geoff Brown retired on July 3, 2015 when Leo Davies became the new Air Marshal for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Although retired, no one would consider Geoff Brown retiring in any sense of the word. After having interviewed the current Air Marshal…
2015-09-19 By Robbin Laird © 2015 FrontLine Defence (Vol 12, No 4) The British invented carrier warfare – and now, with their new Queen Elizabeth Class of carriers, they are working their own version of the 21st century strike carrier. Using global lessons learned, they are reinventing the large deck…
2015-09-19 In June, the French Air Force received its 7th A400M. The aircraft delivered to France was the 13th production aircraft of 174 currently on order Then this month, the Royal Air Force received its 7th A400M. [caption id="attachment_80698" align="alignnone" width="300"] MSN 24, the 7th RAF A400M. Credit: Airbus Defence…
2015-09-18 By Edward Timperlake and Robbin Laird Initially, we had talked with Joseph Kassab in July 2014 about the situation in Iraq for the Christian minorities. We followed that up with a follow-on interview on the evolving Iraq situation in early June 2015. Then at the end of August 2015,…
2015/09/18 By Chris MacLean In a thought-provoking commentary in this edition of Front Line Defence, retired Major-General Doug Dempster talks about the importance of “quality” as an equal, if not the most important, piece of the defence procurement puzzle. His comments bring to mind the challenges faced by media publishers. Defence…
2015-08-29 By Robbin Laird Prior to the Williams Foundation Workshop on Plan Jericho, I had a chance to sit down with the two co-directors of Plan Jericho in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in their offices in the Ministry of Defence. The co-directors led the afternoon session of the…