Four warships left Sydney today to begin the sea phase of the Royal Australian Navy’s first major exercise for the year, Fleet Certification Period 2020 (FCP20). From 17 February to 6 March, HMA Ships Hobart, Stuart, Arunta and Sirius will war game in the vicinity of Bass Strait with five other Australian ships and submarines. The…
By Robbin Laird At the heart of the Franco-German launched Future Combat System is the combat cloud. As Pierre Tran highlighted in his recent article on Thales: Thales welcomed the French and German launch of a technology demonstrator for a Future Combat Air System, with the electronics company winning a…
By Robbin Laird The strategic shift from the land wars of the past two decades to preparing for the high-end fight is having a significant effect on the dynamics of change affecting the very nature of the C2 and ISR needed for operations in the contested battlespace. An ability to…
By Robbin Laird The US Navy over the next decade will reshape its carrier air wing (CVW) with the introduction of a number of new platforms. If one simply lists the initial operating capabilities of each of these new platforms, and looked at their introduction sequentially, the "air wing of…
By Robbin Laird Last Friday, the US Navy and the Bell-Boeing team hosted an event in which the CMV-22B was rolled out. The ceremonial delivery was held on February 7, 2020, but the week before the first aircraft had landed at Pax River for its final round of testing before…
By India Strategic New Delhi. After completing extensive trials on the Shore Based Test Facility (SBTF), Naval version of Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) did asuccessful arrested landing onboard INS Vikramaditya at 1002 hrs on January 11, 2020. Commodore Jaideep Maolankar conducted the maiden landing. Captain Dahiya was the Landing Safety…
By Robbin Laird A recent news story highlighted progress in the preparation of the new heavy lift helicopter, the CH-53 K, for the USMC. According to Megan Eckstein of USNI News in a story published on December 17, 2019: “The Marine Corps and Sikorsky have resolved the engine integration issues…
By Robbin Laird During my visit to Australia last October, I had a chance to talk to a number of people about the evolving approach in Australia to maritime remotes and their evolving role within the “fifth generation” warfare approach or what I refer to as building a distributed integratable…
