02/15/2013: Approximately 1,000 Marines and Sailors of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit offloaded from three ships of the Navy's Amphibious Squadron 11 to begin the multinational exercise Cobra Gold 2013 in the Kingdom of Thailand. The unit was brought ashore using the Navy's landing craft utility, landing craft air cushions,…
With the North Korean nuclear weapons test a keen reminder of the challenges of the 2nd nuclear age, the need to get missile defense right is increasingly pressing. https://sldinfo.com/the-challenge-of-deterrence-in-the-second-nuclear-age-a-discussion-with-paul-bracken/ [caption id="attachment_50869" align="alignnone" width="200"] PACIFIC OCEAN (Feb. 13, 2013) A Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1A interceptor is launched from the guided-missile…
02/13/2013: The USS Blue Ridge is one of two special USN flagships. As Col. Weisz noted about the Blue Ridge and Mount Whitney: Both the BLUE RIDGE and MOUNT WHITNEY offer a great capability for enabling and supporting distributed operations. In fact, I don’t know of any other ship in…
2013-02-13 Major challenges are provided to the modern state by trans-national forces, among the most powerful of which is trans-national crime. http://sldinfo.wpstage.net/emerging-alliances-for-the-21st-century-part-vii/ The bad guys can innovate more rapidly with the use of modern technology, can the states which acquire technology more slowly, and tend to be more hierarchical than a…
02/12/2013: The aircrew of an Air Station Houston MH-65 Dolphin helicopter return after locating and rescuing a boater that had run aground Dec. 14, 2012, near Port Arthur, Texas. A 33-year-old man was rescued by a Coast Guard aircrew when his boat ran aground, Friday, approximately 7 miles southeast of…
2013-02-11 Maj. Gen. Christopher S. Owens visited with service members on Wing One Royal Thai Air Force Base, Nakhon Ratchasima, Kingdom of Thailand Feb. 10 before the start of exercise Cobra Gold 2013. CG 13, in its 32nd iteration, is designed to advance regional security and ensure effective response to…
2013-02-11 According to a Lockheed Martin Press Release: EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., Feb 11, 2013 [caption id="attachment_50815" align="alignnone" width="300"]Maj Ryan 'Gunner' Reinhardt flight testing the F-35A at Edwards AFB. Credit Photo: Lockheed Martin [/caption] An F-35A Lightning II conventional takeoff and landing aircraft, known as AF-1, completed its final…
2013-02-11 Unfortunately, the debate about the littoral combat ship, and the confusion of building a fairly limited ship with disruptive change, has obscured the real transformation at sea. The dynamics of change affecting the seabase are truly significant. The ARG-MEU is being transformed into an expeditionary strike group. With the addition…
