By Robbin Laird The International Fighter Conference 2020 provided insights with regard to the evolution of combat airpower, notably with regard to enablers and effectors, and pathways to shaping greater force integration and multi-domain warfighting capabilities. But to do what exactly? And how best to do it? The clear assumption…
By Robbin Laird The second strand of the International Fighter Conference 2020 was the question of the effectors which could be delivered by the evolution of air combat power, notably leveraging multi-domain capabilities. This strand was woven throughout the day and could be seen in a variety of ways, in…
By Robbin Laird The last two International Fighter Conferences, 2018 and 2019, where very different from this one. And I am not just referring to the virtual nature of the conference. This fighter conference was less about fighters than about the changing context of airpower in terms of what enables…
By Pierre Tran Paris - Five options for the architecture of a planned Future Combat Air System were handed over in September to the authorities, marking a major step toward definition and development of an ambitious European project, Bruno Fichefeux, head of FCAS at Airbus Defence & Space, said Dec.…
By Robbin Laird With the strategic shift from the land wars to full spectrum crisis management, the sea services face the challenge of prioritizing maneuver warfare at sea. But it is impossible to execute maneuver warfare at sea if you have no fuel, or go Winchester with regard to weapons.…
By Robbin Laird To the casual observer, the Super Stallion and the King Stallion look like the same aircraft. One of the challenges in understanding how different the CH-53K is from the CH-53E is the numbering part. If it were called CH-55 perhaps one would get the point that these…
By Robbin Laird On November 17, 2020, a small number of journalists, most from the local Norfolk based media, flew from Norfolk Air Station to the USS Gerald R. Ford at sea, less than 100 miles off of the Virginia cost. We flew on the venerable C-2 Greyhound, but this…
By MC1 Jeff Troutman Off the Coast of Virginia, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) and its embarked Carrier Air Wing 8 are conducting the first-ever fully integrated carrier strike group operations for a Ford-class carrier, under the leadership and operational control of Carrier Strike Group 12. The operation also…
