From the desk of PMA-231:
The phrase "assassin’s mace" is the English translation of "shashou jiang," a term of ancient Chinese strategy. "Shashou jiang" was a club with which the "assassin" incapacitated his enemy, suddenly and totally, instead of fighting him according to "the rules." To summarize from Part I – a Chinese strike using Theater BM’s has been conducted…
One of the threads arising out of the F-22 “Raptor-ski” post was the practice of using foreign designs to advance indigenous efforts. All nations, at one time or another, have used this process. The US manned space program though Apollo, for example, is but an outgrowth of Werner von Braun’s concepts and designs which in…
One of the reasons we went with the ‘Postcards from deployment…’ feature a couple of years ago was to bring an unvarnished look at deployments from a sailor’s POV that doesn’t always make it to the light of day, except in rare fora like the “Carrier” series late last year. Charles touches on something everyone…
Earlier this week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbital flight, marking our full entry into the space race with the Soviets. Signatory of the mission was our first use of an ICBM to launch Glenn into orbit — the previous missions had been suborbital and used the Redstone missile, itself an SRBM…
Through the years (!) I’ve been writing this blog, a number of first person POVs have crossed the (virtual) desk – either sent directly to me or serendipitously. As a historian by avocation I find I much prefer the first person narrative because all the after action reports and analyses, while no doubt offering…
Certain pairings, on the surface, seem to be made for each other – Bogie & Bacall, rum & Coke ®, etc. But balsa wood and afterburners? Almost seems counter-intuitive. This weeks feature is the Vought F6U Pirate, the Navy’s first composite-built and afterburner fighter. By 1944 it was apparent from the reports being returned from…
