2013-02-20 by Col Bradley E. Weisz (USMC) Humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) operations are a core element, which the US military is tasked to do. It is also a key part of exercising forward presence and for shaping the kind of domain knowledge essential to global operations. In the last 5 years,…
2013-02-19 When the brutal Tsunami hit Japan in 2011, the devastation was significant. The threat from leakage of the nuclear plants was ever-present. The challenge of restoring Japan in the face of significant damage was a daunting one. Earlier we have looked at the challenge of shaping resilient organizations and the…
2013-02-18 Colombia has battled the FARC for a considerable period of time. The FARC operate in the jungles of Columbia and operate in the East and Southeast of the country. The armed forces' participation in counternarcotics operations associated with the FARC is aimed at penetrating one of the areas of…
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…
With the North Korean nuclear weapons test a keen reminder of the challenges of the 2nd nuclear age, the need to get missile defense right is increasingly pressing. https://sldinfo.com/the-challenge-of-deterrence-in-the-second-nuclear-age-a-discussion-with-paul-bracken/ [caption id="attachment_50869" align="alignnone" width="200"] PACIFIC OCEAN (Feb. 13, 2013) A Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1A interceptor is launched from the guided-missile…
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…
2013-02-08 The UAE has ordered three A330MRTT tankers. It has now received its first one. According to a comment made to Second Line of Defense by a senior USAF officer (retired) who has worked closely with the UAE: “They should consider buying a larger fleet of tankers, in order to…
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…
