Airmen participating in Exercise Pitch Black 2024 in Australia concluded operations Aug. 2, 2024, marking the end of the largest iteration of the Royal Australian Air Force’s biennial capstone exercise. With more than 140 aircraft and 4,000 members from multiple continents and geographic regions, Pitch Black 24 provided participants an…
By Robbin Laird In my forthcoming book on the paradigm shift in maritime operations, I focus on the importance of pairing distributed capital ship operations with the capabilities that air vehicles and autonomous systems can provide to deliver maritime effects in a contested environment. To achieve competitive overmatch in the…
U.S. Marines with I Marine Expeditionary Force have conducted a multitude of exercises and operations across the Indo-Pacific throughout 2024. I MEF provides the Marine Corps a globally responsive, expeditionary, and fully scalable Marine Air-Ground Task Force, capable of generating, deploying, and employing ready forces and formations across the Pacific.…
By Robbin Laird At the recent Sea-Air-Space Conference held in National Harbor, Maryland, Textron Aviation Defense was featuring its offering for the Navy’s Undergraduate Jet Training System. The Navy seeks to replace the aging T-45 Goshawk — with the candidates being the multi-engine Textron Aviation Defense-Leonardo-M-346N, the single-engine Boeing-Saab T-7…
I met with Asaf Punis, VP of Marketing and Business Development of Orbit at during the 2025 Navy League meetings held the first week of April 2025. I was especially interested in talking with him because of my interest in C2 enabling a distributed kill web force. With the coming…
A time-lapse of the sunrise with the U.S. Air Force C-5M Super Galaxies parked on the flight line at Travis Air Force Base in California Dec. 30, 2024. The C-5M is a strategic transport aircraft and is the largest aircraft in the Air Force inventory. TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA…
U.S. Marine Corps UH-1Y Venom and AH-1Z Viper pilots assigned to Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1), are seen in the photo slide show below at the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course 2-25 at Mesquite, California, April 14, 2025. WTI is a seven-week training event hosted by MAWTS-1…
The world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), sails in formation with the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) Kashima-class training ship, JS Kashima (TV-3508), front and Hatakaze-class guided missile destroyer JS Shimakaze (TV-3521) while conducting routine operations in the Atlantic Ocean, September 23, 2024. ATLANTIC OCEAN…
