By Pierre Tran Paris - The French navy sailed a helicopter carrier to the Mediterranean island of Corsica to pick up patients hit by the coronavirus infection, the armed forces ministry said March 22. Florence Parly tweeted the arrival today of Thunder, a Mistral class helicopter carrier, at the port…
By Pierre Tran Paris - On March 18, 2020, the French air force flew six civilian patients severely hit by the deadly coronavirus in an A330 MRTT military transport jet fitted out with an onboard medical evacuation unit, the armed forces ministry said. That was the first time the service…
By Eamon Hamilton For the first time since 1989, an Air Force Hercules transport aircraft has flown to Antarctica. On February 29, a No. 37 Squadron C-130J took off from Hobart Airport for the 3400km sojourn across the Southern Ocean to the ice runway at Wilkins Aerodrome. The flight required…
By Japanese Ministry of Defense For Japan and the international community, the waters off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden are extremely important sea lanes. In response to the piracy incidents in the area, Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) takes measures for counter-piracy…
by Dean Wingrin The US Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Carney (DDG64) arrived in Cape Town for a planned port visit on Sunday 15 March, but all activities have been curtailed to minimize the spread of COVID-19 (novel coronavirus). Planned as the US Naval Forces Africa’s effort to build…
By Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn AO (Retd) & Anne Borzycki, IIER-A In February 2020, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported that Australia is dangerously dependent on imported medicine. The report referenced by the AFR was published last month by the Institute for Integrated Economic Research – Australia(IIER-A). The report highlighted that…
By Robbin Laird For the past few years, I have been visiting Australia to participate in and to write the reports for the bi-annual seminars held by the Williams Foundation which focus on defense transformation by the ADF in a changing strategic environment. In the course of this work, it…
In response to the bushfire in the Commonwealth of Australia, the MOD/JSDF dispatched a Japan Disaster Relief (JDR) Team (Japan Self-Defense Forces Units) including two JASDF C-130H Transport Aircraft and approx. 70 personnel to transport firefighters and goods on January 15th, 2020. The bushfire in Australia has been raging since…
