By Robbin Laird At a winging ceremony held for the U.S. Navy’s newest naval aviators, Rear Admiral Max McCoy, the 39th Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA), delivered a speech that did more than mark a rite of passage. It laid down, in plain and forceful terms, what it means…
By Robbin Laird It is no accident that I am writing this essay early in the morning in Canberra, Australia. There is no government which uses the term “rules based order” more than the Australian one does. For most of the postwar period, the phrase “rules-based order” carried a single,…
Preview: Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar, 1 October 2026, National Gallery of Australia By Robbin Laird On 1 October, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation returns to the question that has quietly reshaped Australian airpower debate over the past two years: not whether the Royal Australian Air Force can support the…
The first installment in this series on General Pasquale Preziosa’s foreword to The Unfinished Pillar takes up the argument that gives the book its title and its sharpest edge. The unfinished character of the European pillar, Preziosa argues, was never primarily an institutional story. It is a story about the…
By Robbin Laird There are books whose relevance to the moment of publication is a matter of good timing, and there are books whose relevance was built in from the start because the argument they’re built on never stopped being tested. The Unfinished Pillar belongs to the second category. The…
By Robbin Laird I published an overview piece, “Street to Fleet: How CNATRA Is Working Naval Aviation Training,“ ahead of this interview deliberately. That article was built entirely from public sources: CNATRA’s own releases, Proceedings essays going back to 2002, the “Warrior Ethos” letter to incoming students, DVIDS features on…
Remarks to the Nevada National Guard Pre-Command Course, September 15, 2026 By Robbin F. Laird On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting in the waiting area outside the Secretary of Defense’s office at the Pentagon, watching a small television, when the first plane hit the World Trade…
By George Galdorisi In September 1776 an enormous British armada lay anchored in New York Harbor. A month earlier, British forces under General William Howe had defeated the Continental Army and gained control of New York City and Long Island. Now this fleet of 400 ships, including 10 ships-of-the-line, 20…
