CNO Admiral Roughead: An unsung healer of the civil-military divide

January 12, 2011

We can point to the heartfelt speech CJCS Admiral Mullen just gave on military professionalism and the civil-military divide, and come away worried. Or, we can look at what CNO Admiral Roughead is doing over at Navy and feel a lot better about how things are going. As far as the civil-military divide goes, the […]

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French arms for sale: Reckless opportunism or glue for a future NATO?

January 10, 2011

Back in 2008, In NDIA’s National Defense Magazine, I called for the purchase of the Mistral-class “projection and command” ships, noting that the acquisition of the vessels would be an ideal mix of capability and geopolitical utility. In what was a sidebar discussion of next-generation hospital ships, Jim Dolbow and I snuck in some geopolitical […]

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A national security meme to end: China and territorial expansion

January 5, 2011

The Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University came out with a fantastic, information-packed study entitled “China’s out of area naval operations: Case studies, trajectories, obstacles and potential solutions” (ChinaStrategicPerspectives3). There is a lot of good, solid research here, and I commend the authors. It’s great, and my comments (those that follow […]

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Captain Owen P. Honors: Remember Navy, style has strategic value.

January 3, 2011

Admiral Nimitz may have loved his raunchy jokes, cussed a blue streak and been all manner of weird in his private life. I don’t care. Why? Because Nimitz, when dealing with the public and his subordinates, understood his rank and role in the Navy demanded professional comportment. Even as a low-ranking commander of the ROTC […]

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In Press: Talking Shipbuilding with the Seattle Times

January 2, 2011

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In Press: Talking Korea NEO Evacuation in Time Magazine’s Swampland

December 31, 2010

Had a chance to correspond with Time Magazine’s Mark Thompson yesterday, chatting about–you guessed it–Korea NEO evacuation.  Looks like General Sharp and I are at odds.  The article carries a great title: Betting the Family on Korea.  Here’s my bit: In light of the increasing banging of Korean war drums, is it time to halt […]

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In Press: Talking Korea NEO evacuation at The Atlantic

December 30, 2010

Chris Albon and I have an article up at The Atlantic to discuss the challenges of getting noncombatants out of Korea. Aside from my concern that our NEO evacuation plans (and our misguided effort to “normalize” Korean tours) are unready, under-resourced and poorly planned, I think the entire region needs to do some serious thinking […]

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In Press: the LCS Contracts are awarded…

December 29, 2010

…and Austal got the lowest per-unit award? Interesting. When all 10 ships of each block buy are awarded, the value of the ship construction portion of the two contracts would be $3,620,625,192 for Lockheed Martin Corp., and $3,518,156,851 for Austal USA. The average cost of both variants including government-furnished equipment and margin for potential cost […]

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Fighting with the Family in tow: End accompanied tours in Korea

December 16, 2010

The Pentagon’s wise (yet unpopular) policy of sending troops to Korea alone, without their families, was a direct casualty of the Iraq and Afghanistan war.  And now, as tension ramps up at the DMZ, the wisdom of that old-school wartime thinking is becoming apparent to everybody–even to the Pentagon’s cadre of warrior-accountants. The policy made […]

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A review of two years of USNI blogging:

December 14, 2010

Two years of USNI Blogging, for your reading pleasure. Personally, I got the most enjoyment out of my discussions of naval memorials and offering historical perspective on different programs/platforms. Asterisks are those posts that I found interesting/important/engaging. Enjoy: Dec 9, 2008: The Coming Resource Wars…At the Pentagon!! Dec 10, 2008: Probably wise to recall: Our […]

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