2015-04-04 By Richard Weitz The Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted the security dilemmas of Eurasian countries that find themselves outside of any regional military alliance. Although recent attention has focused on Ukraine, the Caspian littoral countries have, for several years, considered themselves vulnerable to renewed Russian assertiveness and have complained about…
2015-04-06 By Kenneth Maxwell It remains a very odd phenomenon. Brazil seems wedded to a very bad habit of navel gazing. It is as if the rest of the world did not matter much. It is as if all of Brazil's problems were self-created or at the very least that they are the exclusive concern…
2015-03-25 By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake Late March 2015, we interviewed Secretary Wynne with regard to the evolution of coalition airpower over the period ahead. Earlier, Wynne laid out a wide-ranging perspective on the evolution of airpower in his article entitled: “Airpower in the Next Two Decades of the…
2015-03-22 By Robbin Laird UID and RFID technologies have been important enablers of change in the world of logistics. But one can be forgiven for confusing the technology with the outcome. The new technologies can provide sensor data on things in motion; the challenge is to turn that data into…
2015-04-04 Recently, the second Future Force Conference was held in the Netherlands. From March 23-25 2015, the Future Force Conference was held to look at the challenge and opportunities offered by technologies to allied or enemy forces. http://www.ffc2015.com/ [caption id="attachment_76277" align="alignnone" width="240"] Dutch Chief of Staff General Middendorp. Credit: Dutch…
2015-04-04 By Gulshan Luthra According to Admiral Harry Harris Jr., Commander of the US Pacific Fleet (PACFLT), the US Navy has a Congressional mandate to keep 11 aircraft carriers, and six of these should be in the two oceans along with some 200 ships by 2020. The first of the…
2015-03-19 By Robbin Laird The RAF is undergoing two fighter aircraft transitions at the same time. On the one hand, the Tornado is being retired and the Typhoon is subsuming its missions. On the other hand, the F-35B is coming to the fleet and will be working with Typhoon for…
03/30/2015: U.S. and Kuwaiti forces rehearse an amphibious landing on Failaka Island, east of Kuwait City in the Arabian Gulf. Highlights include: Kuwaiti Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boats, Kuwaiti AH-64D Apache “Longbow” and AS 332B “Super Puma” helicopters, U.S. Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion vehicles from the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready…