The document also highlights issues with illegal fishing and seabed mapping, and calls environmental damage a “maritime security concern.”
By Justin KatzThe one thing Boris Johnson and his DUDE — Deliver, Unite, Defeat, Energize — partisans have in common with their opponents is that they all want to see a quick end to a process that has paralyzed the debate about Europe’s future and created a climate of instability which only NATO’s foes can find suitable.
By Murielle DelaporteA British defense official talked up the good news about British defense spending in DC this week — including on many US-built weapons — but some dark clouds hang over the ambitious plan.
By Paul McLearyA year ago, it would have been tempting to write off President Trump’s “bull in a china shop” diplomacy as the product of inexperience and impulsiveness. However, after eighteen months in the White House tenure, Trump is looking like a man with a method, a leader acting according to a consistent ideology — if not…
By James KitfieldWASHINGTON: While reports that he may have violated the law swirl around disgraced former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn today, the White House moved to fill a few more of the very large number of empty offices of senior Pentagon officials. For our readers, the key appointment is of Kari Bingen, who apparently was nominated to…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: Despite a turbulent Trump administration and a plummeting pound, the Anglo-American defense relationship remains strong, said the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence. “Under any circumstances, we’re going to continue to work very, very closely with the States,” Stephen Lovegrove, Permanent Secretary of the UK Ministry of Defence, told reporters this morning.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: A disruptive leader disrupts. Large and fast disruptions of the global order rarely portend happier times and that would seem to be the case as the first week of the Trump Administration comes to an end. “For the first time in the 70-year history of the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science…
By Colin ClarkPresident-elect Trump has promised to destroy Daesh. If Trump wants to avoid being the third Administration in succession to sink into the morass of the Middle East, it is essential to first ask what declaring victory would look like. Part of the West’s challenge is rooted in that Daesh is a brand inside a religion and…
By Ed Timperlake and Robbin LairdWASHINGTON: With just 10 days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, our European allies appear to have gotten over the initial shock of his election and moved to a wait-and-see mode. They’ll judge him by his actions in office, not by his mixed messages on the campaign trail. “What I detect from my colleagues within NATO is…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.LONDON: Sen. John McCain would be howling if 49 percent of Pentagon contracts were not competed — especially if that had been true for more than nine years. How would McCain and his colleagues react if a company awarded a sole source deal charged the government $34,000 for a charitable donation or for “staff welfare?” One can only…
By Colin ClarkLONDON: Gen. Hawk Carlisle, head of Air Combat Command, pulled no punches when I asked him at the Royal International Air Tattoo if the F-35’s flying displays in Britain should be read as a signal to Russia. “Yes. You bet.” Several generals at the Royal International Air Tattoo agreed with Carlisle’s view that the plane’s appearance at RIAT and…
By Colin ClarkThe Lockheed Martin F-35B advanced short take-off and vertical landing aircraft will make its debut at this year’s Farnborough International Air Show. The last combat aircraft in this class to premiere at Farnborough was the Yakovlev Yak-41 (Yak-141) Freestyle more than 20 years ago. How times have changed. The Freestyle was unarguably a star of what…
By Douglas Barrie
Barring the collapse of the British government, London plans to unveil its Combat Air Strategy during the Farnborough Air Show. Unlike its Brexit strategy to leave the European Union, there is general consensus here around the broad thrust of the document: position the UK to remain a key player in the design, development and manufacture…
By Douglas Barrie