04/25/2015: PATUXENT RIVER, Md. (NNS) The X-47B successfully conducted the first ever Autonomous Aerial Refueling (AAR) of an unmanned aircraft April 22, completing the final test objective under the Navy's Unmanned Combat Air System demonstration program. Credit: Navy Media Content Services:4/22/15 According to a NavAir story published on April 22,…
2015-04-26 In his introduction to the Copenhagen Airpower Symposium on April 17, 2015 as well in his briefing on his newly released report on the lessons learned from the F-16 experience, Gary Schaub, Jr., the co-host of the Symposium, provided a number of insights with regard to the Danish experience…
2015-04-25 By an historical anomaly more than strategic planning, the USMC and the RAAF find themselves in similar situations in one key regard: both are undergoing fundamental modernization of their air platforms, and are approaching the re-set not from a platform-centric mentality but a transformation approach. Prior to the airpower…
2015-04-22 By Murielle Delaporte *** This article is based in part on interviews conducted last November with French and U.S. military forces based in Djibouti. Djibouti is uniquely located "near a tectonic triple junction, where three tectonic plates meet: African, Arabian and Somali," reads its geological description referring to the Red…
2015-04-21 By Robbin Laird On April 8, 2015, I returned to Seville and visited both the Final Assembly Line and the training facility for the A400M. This was the first time I had visited the training facility but the third time I have seen the FAL. The program is ramping…
2015-04-22 By Robbin Laird The Littoral Combat Ship is being built and deployed. But it is neither a Frigate nor a Fast Patrol Boat, but really a hybrid that falls between the two. A concern raised by the Military Sealift Command has been the support concept as well, whereby distance…
2015-04-24 Dr. Peter Viggo Jakobsen, from the Royal Danish Defence College, provided an overview of the evolution of Danish defense policy to lead off the Symposium on Airpower co-hosted by the Williams Foundation and the Centre for Military Studies of the University of Copenhagen. http://sldinfo.wpstage.net/the-danish-airpower-symposium-laying-a-foundation-for-rethinking-coalition-airpower/ Jakobsen explained that Denmark was…
2015-04-21 By Robbin Laird There is nothing that focuses one’s thinking about defense more than having an immediate and direct threat that is not going away anytime soon. With the Russian Ambassador threatening to use nuclear weapons against Denmark if they join the NATO missile defense network, or Russians paratrooping…
