Eurozone Faltering – Again

03/15/2013
2013-03-15 By Harald Malmgren ECB President Mario Draghi dramatically declared last year “the ECB would do whatever it takes” to stabilize Eurozone bond markets. It would purchase sovereign debt of troubled Euro member governments on condition that such governments would permit a European Union or Eurozone body to oversee and…

F-35 Detection of Hostile Ground Artillery Fire

03/11/2013
Northrop Grumman reports that detection of hostile ground fire has been added to the capabilities of its Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System. The AN/AAQ-37 was designed for use by F-35 Lightning IIs for simultaneously detecting and tracking aircraft and missiles in every direction and for providing visual imagery for day or…

The ARG/MEU in Transition

03/10/2013
2013-03-10 By Col Bradley Weisz, Deputy Commander ESG 2,  Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, VA The ARG-MEU is a very flexible instrument. But as the demand side remains high, and the strategic environment evolves in the 21st century, some changes in operational art are both possible and necessary. The purpose…

Hatchet Job on the Potomac: The Washington Post Fails Its Readers

03/10/2013
2013-03-10 by Robbin Laird I was spending my Sunday working on the last chapter of our book on shaping a 21st century Pacific strategy.  The F-35 among other systems figures prominently in how to build a 21st strategy, not simply funding a 20th century residue. We have interviewed many of…

Another F-35B Takes Flight: This Time With a New Provider of the Center Wing

03/09/2013
2013-03-09 According to a Lockheed Martin press release, a new F-35B has flown but this time with a new Center Wing Assembly produced in Georgia. The first Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] F-35 Lightning II with a Center Wing Assembly (CWA) built at the Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta, Ga., was…

The Seabase in Evolution: The Navy’s New Mobile Landing Platform

03/08/2013
2013-03-05 by Robbin Laird and Murielle Delaporte This past Saturday, we attended the christening of the latest US Navy ship at General Dynamics’s NASSCO shipyard in San Diego. Fully loaded, the new ship will displace more than 80,000 tons – yet it isn’t an aircraft carrier. Instead, the USNS Montford…