The growing association of international terrorist organizations and transnational criminals, initially and primarily as a funding source, is well documented. Some terrorist organizations, including the FARC in Columbia and the KLA in southeastern Europe have wholly subsumed the illegal enterprises upon which they once relied, and no run them directly. It is past time that [...]
The clarion call for more troops in Iraq inevitably appears with the fashionable lament that an excessive fascination with the unfulfilled promise of airpower is a primary cause of America’s problems there. Had it not gutted its ground forces to pay for the Air Force’s favorite technological toys, so the argument goes, hundreds of thousands [...]
[The following editorial appeared in The Wright Stuff, 8 Feb 07]
Just over a year ago the US Air Force expanded its mission statement, declaring its commitment “to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace.” [Mitch Gettle, “Air Force Releases New Mission Statement,” Air Force Print News, December 8, 2005. Emphasis added] Highlighting its newly raised [...]
[It’s been a while since this first appeared in Space News, thought it might be worth dredging up]
No nation relies on space for its security more than the United States — none is even close. Both economically and militarily, loss of space capabilities would prove disastrous. America’s economy, and along with it the world’s, would [...]
Saturday’s Science Section of the New York Times had a colorful piece by William Broad on the problem of space debris complicated by the reckless destruction of one of its weather satellites by the Chinese. The gist is that a terrible problem in space navigation is getting catastrophically worse. There is no doubt the Chinese ASAT [...]
Extolling the virtues of strategy – its understanding and practice – is much easier said than done. Strategy is difficult, as generations of statesmen, generals and policymakers can attest, and those who are able to truly master it are few and far between. But because strategy is difficult does not mean that those charged with [...]
Change is an arduous thing. In scientific theory and military strategy the process is similar, and exceptionally brutal. Established beliefs and practices are threatened by new ideas. Innovators champion the new paradigm while traditionalists circle the wagons. Thinkers are labeled heretics, and persecuted. Traditionalists stop thinking, and rely instead on dogma, rote learning, and a [...]
Major General Scales’ lament in “The Military Budget Pie” (Washington Times, January 10, 2007) is eccentric, if not discouragingly familiar.
Scales begins with a melancholic elegy; his beloved Army breaks whenever it is sent to war. I disagree, but were this true I would be hard-pressed to advocate, as does Scales, “a huge infusion of [...]
[A version of this editorial appeared in Space News]
No nation relies on space more than the United States, both for its economic well-being and its military security. For this reason, obliteration of a decrepit weather satellite in a successful Chinese weapon system test on January 11 is especially troubling.