By Robbin Laird When the history of the Navy’s transition from kill chain to kill web is written, the creation of the Maritime ISR Weapons and Tactics Instructor — the MISR WTI — will be recognized as one of the foundational moves. The program did not emerge from a requirements…
By Robbin Laird James (Jim) Rebesco is the co-founder and chief executive of Striveworks, an Austin, Texas-based company now seven years old that works with the U.S. Army, Navy, and defense intelligence community to deploy and sustain artificial intelligence in operational environments. His background is as a PhD in computational…
By Robbin Laird Nine photographs from April 4, 2026, at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, document the UAS tactics exercise conducted as part of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-26. The subject is the MQ-9A Reaper, operated in Marine Corps service by MAWTS-1, and the Ground Control Station from which its…
By Robbin Laird A light rain fell over the parade field at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point on the morning of June 16, 2026, but it did nothing to slow the proceedings. Under a covered pavilion ringed with the stadium-style red seats that mark official functions on the station,…
Three days after Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron 373 laid AM-2 aluminum matting at Auxiliary Airfield II near Yuma, Arizona, a new team returned to the same site to build the next layer of the expeditionary airfield. On March 17, 2026, personnel conducting the Forward Arming and Refueling Point…
By Robbin Laird The first week of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-26 began not with aircraft, but with aluminum matting and a post driver. On March 14, 2026 — the opening phase of the seven-week course — Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron 373, Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd…
By Robbin Laird At the heart of Marine aviation’s drive for combat excellence lies a semi-annual event that most outsiders have never heard of, yet which one senior MAWTS-1 Commanding Officer described in unambiguous terms: WTI is where the United States Marine Corps comes together every year to train for…
By Robbin Laird The history of warfare is inseparable from the history of weather. At Normandy in June 1944, Dwight Eisenhower held four stars and command of the largest amphibious operation in history and deferred to a meteorologist. The 24-hour delay that enabled D-Day was not the product of a…
