12/12/2013: A Marine F-35B Lightning II breaks left out of a formation flight with United Kingdom F-35B aircraft over Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Dec. 4. The joint-program reached a new single-day record for F-35 sorties Dec. 4 with 45 training missions between all three models of the aircraft. The…
2013-12-12 One hundred and thirty-five Chinese peacekeepers arrived in Mali’s capital Bamako last week in China’s first deployment of forces for a peacekeeping mission. The personnel complement that arrived last Tuesday includes 35 engineers, 65 medical staff and 35 soldiers. They are the first of 395 personnel that China is sending…
2013-12-10 by Guy Martin France is deploying a sizeable number of aircraft, including transport and combat helicopters, to the Central African Republic (CAR) as part of its intervention force there, which aims to improve the fragile humanitarian situation in the country. Other nations, including the United States and United Kingdom,…
2013-12-09 By Robbin Laird Recently, Lt. General (Retired) Deptula chaired a key fighter conference in London. He underscored that a new innovative approach to thinking about the future of airpower was needed. According to Deptula “the future needs an agile operational framework for the integrated employment of allied military power.” And he…
2013-12-05 We first met with Captain Hall at the time of the christening of the latest large deck amphibious ship for the USN-USMC team. Recently, we were able to discuss the progress of the ship and the next phase of the ship’s preparation for deployment. The Captain is an experienced CRUDES…
2013-12-08 by Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake In our book on shaping a 21st century Pacific defense strategy, we have focused on the emergence of a template for distributed operations. Forward presence, indeed persistent presence, with an understanding that the allies are always forward deployed, with scalable forces with significant…
2013-12-05 The USAF and the USMC are clearly working more closely together in shaping scalable expeditionary forces in the Pacific and elsewhere. And the two services will be deploying F-35s in Japan in the next few years along with the Japanese, which will allow them to work through further innovations…
12/04/2013: According to a Japan Update story published on 12/4/13: Two of the Navy’s new P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft have arrived at Kadena Air Base. The P-8’s long-planned arrival in the western Pacific comes about a week after China unilaterally declared a broad swath of the East China Sea’s air…
