The Times – They can wipe out entire nations, and the British government plans to build even more. Are the Trident nuclear submarines essential for peacekeeping, or are they just expensive relics of the cold war? We meet the men with their fingers on the trigger.
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Dutch Navy – Dutch Plan for Their Largest Naval Ship Ever
Defense Technology International – The backbone of a modern, 21st-century navy isn’t its surface combatants or submarines. It is the large amphibious and/or logistic support ships it can deploy to trouble spots around the world, carrying helicopters, hospital facilities, an embarked landing force, supplies, fuel and a suite of C4I facilities. The Netherlands is planning to build its largest ship ever to be able to do just that.
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Geopolitics / Russia – The Myth of the Authoritarian Model: How Putin's Crackdown Holds Russia Back
Foreign Affairs – A growing conventional wisdom holds that Vladimir Putin’s attack on democracy has brought Russia stability and prosperity — providing a new model of successful market authoritarianism. But the correlation between autocracy and economic growth is spurious. Autocracy’s effects in Russia have in fact been negative. Whatever the gains under Putin, they would have been greater under a democratic regime.
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Military Space – How China Loses the Coming Space War
Wired – A year ago, China knocked a weather satellite out of orbit, and threw the international community into panic. Some figured the satellite-killer test was the harbinger of a future war in space — the kind of conflict that could cripple a tech-dependent United States military. Geoffrey Forden, PhD — an MIT research associate and a former UN weapons inspector and strategic weapons analyst at the Congressional Budget Office — examines the possibilities of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites.
Military Space – Space and the 2000 ship Navy
Space Review – A new maritime strategy document calls for the creation of a multinational network of sensors and communications to enable better cooperation among the worldís navies. Taylor Dinerman examines the role space would play in such a strategy, and the institutional obstacles it faces within the Pentagon.
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US Navy – Two years later, 40,000 strong
Virginian Pilot – Since its inception two years ago this month, the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command has established several new units, sending sailors into ground and coastal missions around the world. Rear Adm. Donald K. Bullard, who retires today, and his staff have taken the command from a handful of planners to a force of 40,000 sailors.
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Fourth Generation Warfare – High-Profile Officer Nagl to Leave Army, Join Think Tank
Washington Post – One of the Army’s most prominent younger officers, Lt. Col. John Nagl, whose writings have influenced the conduct of the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, said he has decided to leave the service to study strategic issues full time at a new Washington think tank.
US Navy – White House Fights Ruling Limiting Navy's Use of Sonar
Washington Post – The White House yesterday sought to overrule a federal court’s decision limiting the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises, exempting the service from complying with two major environmental laws.
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French Navy – French make serious move into Gulf
BBC – President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone beyond France’s traditional policy of selling arms to Gulf states by signing a deal with Abu Dhabi for a permanent French naval base.
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US Navy – Storied Fourth Fleet may sail again
Miami Herald – The Navy is considering restoring the Fourth Fleet in the Atlantic Ocean, a bureaucratic change that would raise the prominence of Pentagon maritime activities in Latin America and Caribbean.
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US Marines – 3,200 Marines to Deploy To Afghanistan in Spring
Washington Post – President Bush has approved an “extraordinary, one-time” deployment of about 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan for seven months starting this spring, the Pentagon announced yesterday, while defense officials continued to urge NATO allies to supply more forces to fill a long-standing shortfall of 7,500 troops that commanders say are needed to improve security.
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Iran – Showdown with Iran
PBS Frontline – As Iraq descends into chaos and civil war; its neighbor — Iran — is on the rise as one of America’s greatest threats and most puzzling foreign policy challenges.
Read the transcript.
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Dutch Navy – Radical Departure
Defense Technology International – The Royal Netherlands Navy is pursuing an Integrated Mast concept for a “radically new” naval sensor and communications suite for anti-air and surface warfare.
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Wargaming – Iran Encounter Grimly Echoes '02 War Game
New York Times – There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships???yet another look at Millennium Challenge 2002.
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Geopolitics / Iran – The Costs of Containing Iran
Foreign Affair – The Bush administration wants to contain Iran by rallying the support of Sunni Arab states and now sees Iran’s containment as the heart of its Middle East policy: a way to stabilize Iraq, declaw Hezbollah, and restart the Arab-Israeli peace process. But the strategy is unsound and impractical, and it will probably further destabilize an already volatile region.
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Iranian Navy – US reveals new Iran 'incidents'
BBC – Iranian speedboats approached US warships in two previously undisclosed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz in December, a US Navy official has said.
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Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force – Japan revives naval support mission
Associated Press – Japan’s defense minister ordered the navy Friday to ready ships for dispatch to the Indian Ocean to join the fight on terror, ending a three-month hiatus but deepening a political battle at home with the opposition.
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Royal Navy – MoD looks at delays to carrier contract
Financial Times – The Ministry of Defence is examining possible delays to its £4bn contract for two new aircraft carriers as it struggles to meet Treasury demands for swingeing cuts to its budget.
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US Marines – U.S. to Bolster Forces in Afghanistan
Washington Post – The U.S. military is planning to deploy about 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan this spring to counter an expected offensive by Taliban insurgents, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday, citing NATO allies’ failure to provide additional combat troops.
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Geopolitics / Pakistan – Next-Gen Taliban
New York Times Magazine – Pakistanís younger Islamic militants are bringing the jihad waged in Afghanistan back home: breaking with senior mullahs, renouncing elections and killing police officers, soldiers and, perhaps, Benazir Bhutto.
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Iranian Navy – US releases Iran stand-off video
BBC – The US military has released video and audio recordings of Iranian boats that it says threatened to blow up US Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
Daily Telegraph – Video shows Iranian ‘provocation’ of US forces.
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Iranian Navy – Iran boats 'threatened US ships'
BBC – Five Iranian speedboats harassed three US navy ships at the weekend, approaching them and radioing a threat to blow them up, US officials say.
CNN – Iranian boats ‘harass’ U.S. Navy, officials say.
Washington Post – U.S. Expresses Alarm After Iranian Boats Threaten Three American Vessels.
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US Marines – Osprey is put to the test in Iraq
Virginian Pilot – A look at how the MV-22 Osprey is doing on its first operational deployment.
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Geopolitics / China – Long Time Coming: The Prospects for Democracy in China
Foreign Affairs – Is China democratizing? The country’s leaders do not think of democracy as people in the West generally do, but they are increasingly backing local elections, judicial independence, and oversight of Chinese Communist Party officials. How far China’s liberalization will ultimately go and what Chinese politics will look like when it stops are open questions.
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US Navy – Navy's Use of Sonar Is Severely Limited
Washington Post – A federal judge yesterday severely limited the Navy’s ability to use mid-frequency sonar on a training range off the Southern California coast, ruling that the loud sounds would harm whales and other marine mammals if not tightly controlled.
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