By David Smith 09/28/2011 - For a week last month, US Marines of the 2nd Combat Engineering Battalion and Georgian soldiers of the 33rd Infantry Battalion joined forces in Operation Black Sand in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Deployed to Combat Outpost (COP) Shukvani, they cleared the Ladar Bazaar of improvised explosive…
09/26/2011 We have written elsewhere about the impact of the Osprey on Libyan operations. And Lt. Col. Boniface, the ACE commander for 26th MEU, underscored one element of that impact. The Ospreys from Afghanistan flew directly to Souda Bay, Crete and then onto Naval Air Station Signalla, Italy. This trip…
09/25/2011 - In early August 2011, Second Line of Defense sat down with Col. Sampsel and Secretary Wynne to discuss the transition in maintenance culture and its challenges for the F-35. Col. Sampsel is living through the transition and Secretary Wynne was one of the architects of the F-35 and…
An Interview with Major Debardeleben 09/27/2011 - During the annual Second Line of Defense visit to New River to discuss Osprey operations and experiences with the Osprey Nation, we had a chance to discuss the TRAP mission over Libya with the ACE commander and with one of the Osprey operators…
09/22/2011 - During our annual visit to New River to get caught up on Osprey developments, Second Line of Defense sat down with Lt. Col. Boniface who was the XO for the Aviation Combat Element (ACE) for the 26th MEU. We have published recently an interview with Col. Desens, the…
9/15/2011 by Robbin Laird The Second Line of Defense team is starting a series, which we will call the strategic whiteboard. By leveraging the new systems being designed and built today, and building upon the capabilities of these new systems, America can have a better defense at less cost. This…
09/15/2011 by Col Robert "Juice" Newton USAF (ret) The coming weeks will see Congress debate various recommendations from the so-called deficit reduction super committee and the stakes could hardly be higher. This committee has until Thanksgiving to find $1.5 trillion in budget cuts and failure to do so will lead…
09/14/2011 - Captain Robinson Harris US Navy (Retired), now with Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Sensors (MS2), provides an assessment of how the new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) might be used in an irregular warfare scenario. The case described was that of a notional crisis in Nigeria with the need to assist the…
