2013-02-16 by Col. Bradley Weisz In December of 2009, President Barack Obama ordered the build-up of an additional 30,000 U.S. forces to Afghanistan in support of the 8-year-old war officially known as Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. The primary objectives for this large troop surge were to reverse the Taliban momentum that…
2013-02-13 Major challenges are provided to the modern state by trans-national forces, among the most powerful of which is trans-national crime. http://sldinfo.wpstage.net/emerging-alliances-for-the-21st-century-part-vii/ The bad guys can innovate more rapidly with the use of modern technology, can the states which acquire technology more slowly, and tend to be more hierarchical than a…
2013-02-11 Unfortunately, the debate about the littoral combat ship, and the confusion of building a fairly limited ship with disruptive change, has obscured the real transformation at sea. The dynamics of change affecting the seabase are truly significant. The ARG-MEU is being transformed into an expeditionary strike group. With the addition…
2013-02-10 by Richard Weitz This 40th anniversary of the Vietnam War provides an opportunity to assess the progress the Obama administration has achieved during its first term in seeking to deepen U.S. security ties with Vietnam. Of the “six key lines of action” that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton…
2013-02-08 by Michael W. Wynne, 21st Secretary of the USAF The start of a new year and of a new Administration is good time to think about the future. A key challenge facing the new Administration and Congress is to ensure that US military capabilities continue to innovate and evolve in…
The F-35 is built to become a global plane. The defense industrial agreement underlying the program have both that intent and if realized that impact. In a recent Japanese piece on the F-35 this was underscored. The fighter jet is being developed by an international consortium led by U.S.…
2013-02-06 Recently, the USCG has ordered an additional aircraft to its Maritime Patrol aircraft fleet. This order will bring the fleet size to 18. The role of the Ocean Sentry (the USCG's version of the CN-235) is central to the USCG's missions. [caption id="attachment_50622" align="alignnone" width="300"] A USCG CN-235 in…
2013-02-06 By Lt. General (Retired) Gaviard With the advent of "network centric operations," it is becoming more and more difficult, to conceive the use of drones in an isolated fashion. On the contrary, the use of drone must be envisioned as fully transverse within an independent 'system of systems". Following this…
