By David Smith 09/28/2011 - For a week last month, US Marines of the 2nd Combat Engineering Battalion and Georgian soldiers of the 33rd Infantry Battalion joined forces in Operation Black Sand in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Deployed to Combat Outpost (COP) Shukvani, they cleared the Ladar Bazaar of improvised explosive…
By Dr. Richard Weitz 09/28/2011 - The current flap over the planned U.S. armed sales to Taiwan was entirely predictable. As long as Beijing insists on exercising control over Taiwan, the Taiwanese people insist on their right to exercise their political autonomy, and Washington insists on providing Taiwan with weapons…
09/27/2011 - The Second Line of Defense team sat down with Rear Admiral Lee to discuss his district, which runs from New Jersey through North Carolina. We met with him shortly before Hurricane Irene hammered the East Coast and many of the areas affected were in his district. [caption id="attachment_24295"…
09/26/2011 We have written elsewhere about the impact of the Osprey on Libyan operations. And Lt. Col. Boniface, the ACE commander for 26th MEU, underscored one element of that impact. The Ospreys from Afghanistan flew directly to Souda Bay, Crete and then onto Naval Air Station Signalla, Italy. This trip…
09/25/2011 - In early August 2011, Second Line of Defense sat down with Col. Sampsel and Secretary Wynne to discuss the transition in maintenance culture and its challenges for the F-35. Col. Sampsel is living through the transition and Secretary Wynne was one of the architects of the F-35 and…
An Interview with Major Debardeleben 09/27/2011 - During the annual Second Line of Defense visit to New River to discuss Osprey operations and experiences with the Osprey Nation, we had a chance to discuss the TRAP mission over Libya with the ACE commander and with one of the Osprey operators…
09/23/2011 by Richard Weitz The comments this week by Admiral Mike Mullen, the soon to retire Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, at perhaps his final congressional testimony, about the continuing links between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Haqqani terrorist network were a welcome act of shock…
By Karsten Von Hoesslin, Senior Analyst, Risk Intelligence Strategic Insights, No. 32, May 2011 09/22/2011 - On 29 September 2010, the Panama flagged asphalt tanker ASPHALT VENTURE was hijacked by Somali pirates off the Tanzanian coast. On 15 April 2011, after 200 days of detention and an estimated US$3.2 to…
