by Craig Hooper on July 16, 2010
File on 4, an award-winning news show on the BBC , sat down with me last week to discuss illegal arms traffic. Part of the conversation turned to Iran’s appetite for high-performance boats, and that’s the piece that made it into this week’s File on 4 documentary. Allan Urry and the rest of the BBC […]
by Craig Hooper on July 16, 2010
In America’s constellation of troubled maritime memorials, none are more threatened than the Protected Cruiser Olympia (C-6). This humble ship is, in itself, an American treasure of unmatched historical, technical and symbolic value (In response to Robert Farley’s twitter yesterday, I’d trade an Iowa Class Battleship for the Olympia–in a heartbeat!). Everybody is eager to […]
by Craig Hooper on July 14, 2010
Last week I had a great chat with Des Moines Register columnist Marc Hansen about the ex-USS Iowa (BB-61). In the resulting July 10 article in the Des Moines Register, I was somewhat blunt about the poor performance of the nonprofit Historic Ships Memorial at Pacific Square, the organization currently designated as the future recipient […]
by Craig Hooper on June 22, 2010
Andrew Tilghman, reporting in the June 28 Navy Times, talked to NextNavy.com about a story coming out (sorry no link available) on the Navy’s problems with rank inflation: Since 2003, the Navy’s active-duty end strength has dropped from about 380,000 to about 330,000, a reduction of about 15 percent. And yet, the size of the […]
by Craig Hooper on May 21, 2010
I got to talk with Navy Times scribe Andrew Tilghman the other day about the prospects of extending the reach of the Aegis system by using sensor nodes that are less expensive than, well, other exposed and forward-deployed Aegis ships. After a delightful conversation, Andrew generated a story for the old-school May 25 press issue […]
by Craig Hooper on May 18, 2010
So Navy Times scribe Phil Ewing sat down with me the other day to discuss blogging, the ex-USS Iowa, naval history and blogging. The result was a Scoop Deck interview, entitled “Hanging’ with Dr. Hooper“. If you want to know why I do this, go pay Scoop Deck a visit. In the interview, we discussed […]
by Craig Hooper on May 10, 2010
Over the weekend, I was invited to chat about SECDEF Gates on the May 9th Edition of Ian Master’s Background Briefing over KPFK–Los Angele’s Pacifica Radio. You can listen to the interview here. We’ll talk about this more later, but my line on Gates is this…he’s sketching out an agenda that is popular for viagra […]
by Craig Hooper on April 6, 2010
And coverage of Iran’s small-craft acquisition continues. Out of all the rehashing, the Globe and Mail’s Paul Koring generated a standout Bladerunner story, with some interesting info on the Bladerunner craft itself and some added background on the small boat threat: “…The Tamil Tigers attacked cargo vessels with explosives-laden launches with some success. Against Sri […]
by Craig Hooper on April 5, 2010
I recently had the pleasure of talking to a Financial Times reporter about Iran’s appetite for small boats. The story, dealing with the saga of the “Bradstone Challenger“, a Bladerunner 51 speedboat, just hit the press today (and it got some love from Drudge (bottom middle column), so…good times). (.pdf here) I noted Iran’s interest […]
by Craig Hooper on March 29, 2010
ConflictHealth.com‘s Chris Albon and I cooked up a little article on China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile threat. Read it here. zp8497586rq