The Marines appear to be leading the innovation and thought experimentation on adapting small units to battle hybrid enemies – state and non-state armed groups mixing guerrilla tactics with advanced weaponry. Down at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, they’re fleshing out an emerging warfighting concept called “distributed operations”: small units operating independently, at […]
From the monthly archives:
April 2010
I checked in with a source who is very familiar with the Osprey program to see if he had any insight into last week’s crash of the 1st Special Operations Wing CV-22 Osprey in southeastern Afghanistan. Lots of speculation, he said, and the Osprey community is, understandably, tight lipped on this one because it was […]
A revealing exchange at today’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Iran’s nuclear program that featured some of the Obama administration’s defense policy heavy hitters. Things got interesting when director of military intelligence, Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, said Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb in one year. This led […]
The other major topic up for discussion at yesterday’s hearing of the Senate Armed Services AirLand subcommittee was the Navy’s “strike fighter gap.” Senator Joe Lieberman noted that the projected gap, which really hits out at around the year 2017, has fluctuated wildly between as many as 267 aircraft and as low as 125. Marine […]
Senator Joe Lieberman assembled a panel of the leading Navy, Marine and Air Force aviation buyers and planners at yesterday’s hearing of the Senate Armed Services AirLand subcommittee to discuss the status of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. Vice. Adm. David Architzel, the Navy’s point man on research and procurement, said that with the […]
