BBC – US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country’s military infrastructure.
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US Navy – U.S. ships move to protect Persian Gulf's oil shipments
Virginian Pilot – Despite their differences in size and weaponry, the USS Firebolt and the USS Stennis share a stated mission: Deter the Iranian Navy from hostile acts in an area vital to oil shipments by showing the Tehran regime that U.S. military strength remains formidable despite its entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan – On patrol with the Marines in Afghanistan
Daily Telegraph – British forces in Afghanistan have been fighting the Taliban at the strategic Kajaki dam this week. Film-maker Chris Terrill is spending a year with the Royal Marines and has just returned. Here, in a powerful dispatch, he tells how the soldiers, including one since killed in action, engaged the enemy
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Royal Navy – First Sea Lord in threat to quit over cuts
Daily Telegraph – The First Sea Lord yesterday made veiled threats that he would resign from his post if the Government failed to deliver a Fleet that would be “serious player” on the High Seas.
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Afghanistan – Conversations with the general
The Economist – The Economist’s defense correspondent visits British troops, including Royal Marines, in Afghanistan.
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US Marines – Marine Advisors
Marine Corps Gazette – Can more be done to prepare them?
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Royal Marines – It's dawn, and the shelling starts. Time to go into the Taleban maze
The Times – The Marines need to set up a secure zone for civilian workers. First they must defeat an elusive enemy that wages a hit-and-run campaign from its labyrinthine mud compounds. Anthony Loyd and Richard Mills of The Times joined 200 Royal Marines in an operation to secure a dam site in Afghanistan
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US Navy – US Navy to use dolphins for security
Daily Telegraph – The US Navy wants to bolster security by deploying dolphins and sea lions trained to detect and intercept waterborne attackers.
Associated Press – Navy plan would put dolphins on underwater patrol.
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Iraq – Monks of War
Esquire – If official Washington has trouble learning from its mistakes, the generals fighting the war in Iraq have no such luxury. And there are many lessons to learn. Thomas P.M. Barnett provides us with an interesting look at the generals???
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US Navy – Naval force a floating diplomat in Arabian Sea
Virginian Pilot – A look at the work of Combined Task Force 150, operating near the Horn of Africa.
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Royal Navy – MoD 'covered up sinking of French trawler'
Daily Telegraph – A new book claims that a French trawler was dragged down by a Royal Navy submarine during “war games” off the Cornish coast in 2004.
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US Marines – History of crashes, design flaws leaves doubt over Osprey
Virginian Pilot – What began more than 25 years ago as a wild idea is supposed to go to war with the Marine Corps this summer. But problems – including one that caused the entire fleet to be grounded Friday – continue the controversy.
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Transformation – The Real Meaning of Military Transformation: Rethinking the Revolution
Foreign Affairs – Rumsfeld’s mishandling of the Iraqi occupation has given the “revolution in military affairs” a bad name. But as Max Boot and Frederick Kagan point out in two new books, transformation is vital to any military’s success — and more important now than ever.
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US Coast Guard – Waxman Sees Potential Coverup in Ship Contract
Washington Post – Managers of the U.S. Coast Guard’s $24 billion fleet-overhaul program appeared to cover up a Navy engineering report that highlighted design flaws in a new flagship cutter under scrutiny by government investigators.
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Iraq – Make a Deal With Syria and Weaken the Iran-Hezbollah Axis
Defense and the National Interest – Martin van Creveld’s latest proposal for the Middle East.
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Russian Navy – Russia Plans New ICBMs, Nuclear Subs
Associated Press – Russia’s defense minister on Wednesday laid out an ambitious plan for building new intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines and possibly aircraft carriers, and set the goal of exceeding the Soviet army in combat readiness.
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US Marines – Problems Stall Pentagon's New Fighting Vehicle
Washington Post – After 10 years and $1.7 billion, this is what the Marines Corps got for its investment in a new amphibious vehicle: A craft that breaks down about an average of once every 4 1/2 hours, leaks and sometimes veers off course???And for that, the contractor, General Dynamics of Falls Church, received $80 million in bonuses.
Geopolitics / Russia – Kremlin, Inc.
New Yorker – Why are Vladimir Putinís opponents dying? An insightful look into the state of politics and government in Russia today.
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Iraq – Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort
Washington Post – Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals — including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders — in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.
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Iraq – US Army report got Iraq right
UPI – A month before the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a team of military and Middle East experts at the Army War College published a 60-page booklet that laid out in detail the problems the U.S. military would likely encounter and how to mitigate them.
Here is the report: Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario.
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US Marines – Tom Ricks' InBox
Washington Post – How Marines Feel About Their Gear.
US Navy – New riverine squadron is established at Little Creek
Virginian Pilot – The Navy established its second riverine warfare squadron at a ceremony Friday morning at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.
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Geopolitics / Health – The Challenge of Global Health
Foreign Affairs – Thanks to a recent extraordinary rise in public and private giving, today more money is being directed toward the world’s poor and sick than ever before. But unless these efforts start tackling public health in general instead of narrow, disease-specific problems — and unless the brain drain from the developing world can be stopped — poor countries could be pushed even further into trouble, in yet another tale of well-intended foreign meddling gone awry.
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US Navy – US Navy seeks new owner for retired research submarine
Associated Press – Free to a good home: vintage submarine, recently restored. One prior owner.
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US Navy – Carrier Eisenhower returns to Gulf after mission off Africa
Associated Press – The U.S. Navy has scaled back its presence off Somalia’s coast, withdrawing the Norfolk-based Eisenhower aircraft carrier after a three-week mission there.
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