By Pierre Tran Le Bourget, France – A long-simmering dispute between Airbus and Dassault Aviation on the share of high-value work on a planned European fighter jet boiled over at the 2025 Paris air show, which opened June 16 with a summer heatwave warming the tarmac. The June 21 U.S.…

By Robbin Laird At the recent Sea-Air-Space Conference held in National Harbor, Maryland, Textron Aviation Defense was featuring its offering for the Navy’s Undergraduate Jet Training System. The Navy seeks to replace the aging T-45 Goshawk — with the candidates being the multi-engine Textron Aviation Defense-Leonardo-M-346N, the single-engine Boeing-Saab T-7…

I met with Asaf Punis, VP of Marketing and Business Development of Orbit at during the 2025 Navy League meetings held the first week of April 2025. I was especially interested in talking with him because of my interest in C2 enabling a distributed kill web force. With the coming…

By Pierre Tran Paris – Two European arms companies, KNDS France and MBDA, recently pointed up their hefty investment to boost production of cannon shells, artillery, and missiles, indicating a willingness to anticipate orders, and their access to extensive funds. The willingness of those two privately held companies to invest…

By Pierre Tran Paris – MBDA was beating its own targets in building missiles in larger numbers and greater speed, at a time when the ties between Western allies were shifting, the chief executive of the European missile company said March 17. Eric Béranger said last year he had forecast…

By Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retd) New Delhi. Conscious of serious capability gaps, India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) had announced formation of a high-level committee to address shortages in the Indian Air Force (IAF). For some time, the IAF has been grappling with the reduced fighter aircraft with the squadron…

By Robbin Laird Technologies and actions by our strategic competitors are dramatically reshaping maritime security and defense strategy, particularly in the Black, Red, & South China Seas. Littoral operations are being significantly recalibrated by multiple technological advancements while simultaneously being compounded by the actions of strategic competitors. These battlefield advances…

By Robbin Laird I attended the Euronaval exposition held in Paris the week of November 3, 2024. I had a chance to visit the Finnish booth at the show and watch the launch of their report on Finnish technologies in the Baltic Sea presented to the show. And then I…