[caption id="attachment_10706" align="alignleft" width="116" caption="Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit Photo: The Hudson Institute)"][/caption] By Dr. Richard Weitz A major attraction-getter at the recent Farnborough International Air Show, the biennial aviation event in southern England at which representatives from SLD attended, was a video displaying a laser weapon downing four unmanned…
During our visit to Transcom in March 2010, General McNabb provided a detailed overview on the challenges in supporting the deployed warfighter in Afghanistan, including supporting the surge ordered by the President. Although the General did not put it this way, it was apparent that the con-ops approach of Transcom…
Air Force Association White Paper Excerpts As the support functions ramp up, the USAF has relied more on the KC-10s to provide for the tanker gap. And as the Administration moves forward to make a tanker decision, it is important to re-visit why tankers are so important to the US…
When Second Line of Defense visited Spain in May 2010 for the Trade Media briefings given by Military Airbus, there was an opportunity to visit the A400M final assembly line and to see the 4th A400M under construction which can be seen in the slide show below. In addition Peter…
On April 21st, 2010, SLD sat down with Gunnery Sergeant Larone Thomas and discussed F-35 maintenance. Gunnery Sergeant Thomas is in charge of maintenance for the F-35Bs undergoing tests at Pax River and has recently received major recognition from the service for his capabilities in an annual logistics award. he…
By Lieutenant General George J. Trautman, III, Deputy Commandant for USMC Aviation Affordability is the balance of cost and capabilities required to accomplish assigned missions. For over a decade the Marine Corps has avoided the cost of new procurement during a time when the service life of our legacy aircraft…
By Richard Weitz One of the challenges General David Petraeus, U.S. Army, faces as the newly appointed commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is the failure of past efforts to induce many of the Taliban guerrillas to defect and some of the Taliban leaders to negotiate a peace…
SLD talked with Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems’ Mark Rossi about the Distributed Aperture System (DAS) on the F-35, which together with the helmet provides 360-degree situational awareness for the F-35 pilot. Mark has served as the Director of the AN/AAQ-37 Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System (EO DAS) for the F-35 platform,…
