From the monthly archives:

August 2014

Israel: A Future Sub Builder?

by admin on August 20, 2014

In the race to keep up with neighboring navies, Israel has taken a prudent middle course, developing indigenous solutions for low-end craft, and reaching out to other nations to provide more complex ships and submarines. Though Israel has done very, very well buying ships and subs overseas–Israel will, within the next few years, begin the […]

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A catastrophic shipyard fire that, by all accounts, destroyed Australia’s all-aluminum HMAS Bundaburg (ACPB-91), one of Australia’s 14 useful–yet oft-maligned–Armidale Class patrol boats, will reignite debate over the survivability of aluminum warships. When the public finally sees the melted, burned-out remains of HMAS Bundaburg (photos that will likely be dramatic, given that the fire was not […]

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Appreciate China’s Big New Seaplane

by admin on August 7, 2014

A good deal of polite Western snickering met the announcement that China was on the verge of building large seaplanes–an “old technology”, scoffed the haters, whose “heyday came and went with the demise of the Pan Am Trans-Oceanic Clipper”. But at least one Chinese aviation commentator dispensed a bit of wisdom for the doubters: “The […]

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In Press: Talking Mines in the Taipei Times

by admin on August 5, 2014

The Taipei Times, in a friendly gesture, used my story on China’s recent mine warfare exercises in the South China Sea to advance some wider discussion mine warfare in China’s near seas. Here’s my bit: Craig Hooper, a former teacher at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, has reported that the Chinese navy conducted […]

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Nonproliferation’s Big Week

by admin on August 2, 2014

A week after I worried that the American public had forgotten about nuclear threats and had allowed their fear of nuclear weapons to recede, nonproliferation had quite a week. John Oliver, in his HBO program Last Week Tonight, did his part to raise American awareness of nuclear warfare, devoting about half of his show to […]

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