Featured Article

03/23/2024
By Robbin Laird The U.S. faces a vastly different world than when it primarily focused on land wars post-9/11. Today it faces a multi-polar authoritarian world, with adversaries and competitors with both shared and competing interests, capabilities, and approaches to the use of military force to achieve objectives. With that in mind, how does the U.S. train a naval force to operate in such a world? And how do you draw on relevant U.S. joint…
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F-35 Demo Team at Defenders of Liberty Air And Space Show, May 2019

06/04/2019Captain Andrew “Dojo” Olsen, an F-35 Demonstration Team pilot and commander, performs aerial maneuvers in an F-35A Lightning II before the Defenders of Liberty Air & Space Show.… Read more »

Strategy, Concepts of Operations and Technology: The Challenge and Opportunity of Shaping a Distributed C2 Enabled Force

05/20/2019By Robbin Laird I would argue that the US and its allies are not so much facing a great power competition. I would refer to it as a… Read more »

Competitive Cross-Learning: The 21st Century Authoritarian Powers and the Liberal Democracies

05/12/2019By Robbin Laird The Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy underscored the return of great power competition. By so doing, they did focus much more on the world as… Read more »

The F-35 and the Warlords: A Look Back and a Look Ahead

05/10/2019We recently visited the Warlords at Beaufort MCAS. We had a chance to meet with the CO of the squadron and to watch flight demos at this year’s… Read more »

Software Upgradeability and the F-35 Global Enterprise: The Australian Case

05/08/2019In article published by Australian Defence and Business Review on their January-February 2019 issue, Andrew McLaughlin provided a look at how to think about the F-35 and its… Read more »

Opening the F-35 Flight Envelope: The Perspective of a VMFAT-501 Pilot

04/30/2019U.S. Marine Capt. Frank Zastoupil, F-35B Lighting II pilot with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501, speaks about the capabilities of the F-35B Lighting II and its participation… Read more »

Visiting the Warlords: An April 2019 Update from the CO of VMFAT-501

04/29/2019By Robbin Laird During my most recent visit to 2ndMarine Air Wing, I had a chance to visit MCAS Beaufort and meet with Lt. Col. Adam Levine, the… Read more »

Warlords Fly at MCAS Beaufort Air Show

04/29/2019We had a chance to attend the 2019 Beaufort MCAS Airshow on Friday, April 26, 2019. A visit the day before with the CO of the Warlords provided… Read more »

The 2019 Beaufort MCAS Airshow: The Warlords and the Latest F-35 on Display

04/28/2019We had a chance to attend the 2019 Beaufort MCAS Airshow on Friday, April 26, 2019. The airshow goes through today, April 28, 2019. A visit the day… Read more »