2015-08-19 By Robbin Laird During a visit to Hawaii at the end of July 2015, I had a chance to sit down with two senior Navy personnel who work the MSC aspect for PACFLEET. CDR Corey Turner and Bruce Stewart are senior personnel with the MSC Detachment PACFLEET and discussed…
2015-08-13 By Robbin Laird Last year I visited MARFORPAC, and interviewed the staff and the then head of MARFORPAC, Lt. General Robling During my last visit, I focused on the broad strategic restructuring which the Marines were undergoing which they refer to as the distributed laydown. The U.S. Marine Corps…
2015-08-09 By Robbin Laird Pac Fleet operates in the largest area of operations for US forces. The immensity of the theater of operations, as well as the dynamics of change in the region, pose ongoing challenges of matching resources against tasks in protecting US interests and working closely with allies…
08/16/2015: The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), U.S. Pacific Command, and U.S. Navy sailors aboard the USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) successfully conducted a series of four flight test events exercising the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) element of the nation's Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). The flight test, designated…
2015-08-11 By Robbin Laird During my visit to PACFLEET at the end of July 2015, I had a chance to discuss the perspective of Colonel Jeffrey “Face” Hagan who is on the staff of Admiral Swift, the PACFLEET Commander. His role is to operate as link between PACFLEET and the…
2015-08-11 When visiting the Royal Australian Air Force Base at Richmond earlier this week, there was an opportunity to talk with the C-130 squadron, including the training team, about the RAAF reworking the role of the C-130 with the operations of the C-17 and the KC-30A largely in place. The focus is…
2015-08-06 By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake When Secretary Gates decided to put the F-35B on probation and Senator McCain became his powerful echo chamber we responded at the time on the pages of Breaking Defense that these actions were misguided. We have spent many hours with the pilots, maintainers,…
08/04/2015: During a visit to Australia in August 2015, Second Line of Defense had a chance to talk with senior RAFF personnel about the operations in Iraq and Syria. There will be more to come as these interviews are completed, but a key point was that two new combat systems were…
