Catching our collective breath before heading out the door for a week of TDY, we pause to review some of the more noteworthy items making the rounds this past week beginning with one reaction to the 2008 DoD report to Congress on China’s Military Power… Inside The Ring – China Missiles (WASHINGTON TIMES 07 MAR…
Announced and made available this afternoon. You can read/download it from the Virtual Library here. Some highlights: The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning shortduration, high intensity conflicts along its periphery against high-tech…
"At a minimum, Washington should delay the planned 2010 retirement of the Space Shuttle until a new space plane can replace it, as a way to retain a deterring potential military capability. China’s unwillingness to comment on its military space plans, coupled with the Shenlong space plane, confirms its larger aversion to military transparency. The…
About this time last year (11 Jan), China conducted the now infamous direct-ascent ASAT (Anti-Satellite) hit-to-kill test. We have written to some degree about it already – notably here and here. Both articles describe the notorious aspect of the test – the addition of significant amounts of debris to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). How much? …
WASHINGTON (CNN) — China has refused nine U.S. Navy ships and one Air Force jet entry to Hong Kong in the past month, U.S. military officials said Friday. Senior Navy officials said that Beijing denied permission for the USS Reuben James, a Navy frigate, to make a holiday port call for sailors at the end…
A bit more about China and the Kitty Hawk deal, plus some more below the fold about another failure of Russia’s Bulava SLBM and some other aspects of the Russian defense industry. Panda Bashing? On the heels of the story of the Chinese turning away the Kitty Hawk comes that of the two minesweepers…
(Ed. Note Flightdeck Friday will be up later today – SJS) Skippy-san broke the news first here and PACOM himself (ADM Keating) expresses his concern and perplexity here. He notes, somewhat ironically, that it would be hard to "put a positive spin" on this latest incident (coming on the heels of China’s equally curious refusal…
Given our predilection to trying new things around here (as opposed to say, oh, the local pro-football team) we’re trying out a new PDF embed and share process from Adobe called, surprisingly enough, SHARE. Of course it is in beta, so it may or may not work. If it does, what you will see below…
Interesting development noted below in light of discussions about calling out China (or not) in context of new Maritime Strategy Iran buys (sic) Israeli fighter jets Iran has signed a contract with China for the delivery of two squadrons of J-10 fighter planes. The design was developed by Israel for its Air Force…
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.” Dateline: 19 September 2007 – The CBERS (China/Brazil Earth Resources Spacecraft) -2B is placed in…
