– Aviation Week – The German navy’s 1st Corvette Squadron received its fourth K 130 Braunschweig class corvette, the Erfurt, yesterday during a ceremony at Rostock-Warnemünde naval base on the Baltic Sea.
Monthly Archives: March 2013
US Navy – DARPA's New TERN, a Predator on a Frigate
– Aviation Week – Now DARPA wants to enable small ships such as the 2,800-ton Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship to launch and recover Predator-class medium-altitude, long-endurance UAVs. The Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node (TERN) program seeks to demonstrate a MALE UAV, and associated automated launch and recovery system, that can carry a 600lb payload 600-900nm from its host vessel.
Royal Australian Navy – Australia’s Biggest-Ever Warships Still On Track
– Aviation Week – Five years after contract signature, work on Australia’s largest-ever warships, the landing helicopter dockships HMAS Canberra and Adelaide, is going better than for previous large defense programs, according to the Australian government and prime contractor BAE Systems. “The project expects to successfully deliver the LHDs on time, on budget and to the contracted capability,” says an Australian defense department official.
Geopolitics / Syria – The Syria Question
– Air Force – An air war would likely be tougher there than what the US saw in Serbia or Libya.
US Navy – Pentagon Bloat Will Sink Ship Programs, Warn Former Navy Officials
– National Defense – John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, had more tough words for the Pentagon’s civilian and military bureaucracies during a Feb. 26 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower and projection forces subcommittee.
Nuclear Warfare – Bombing the Syrian Reactor: The Untold Story
– Commentary – As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regime’s chemical weapons and whether Syria’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after Assad’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on Syria’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not.
Geopolitics / Africa – Neo-Imperialism and the Arrogance of Ignorance
– Time – Very interesting essay by Chuck Spinney on the complexity of the terrorism situation in Africa, and how the US underestimates it…to our strategic disadvantage.
US Navy – US naval workers all at sea as sequester looms
– BBC – It is an overcast day, and the skies are brooding over the Virginia coast, where two great grey US Navy ships are in dock.
Chinese Navy – China navy launches new stealth frigate
– BBC – China’s navy has taken delivery of the first of a new kind of stealth frigate, as tension continues with neighbouring countries over maritime borders.
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