Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
In my first post on Japan’s grand strategy, I examined its “free and open” Indo-Pacific policy and briefly reviewed its armed forces—nominally “self-defense forces (SDF)”—as well as the legal reasons for this euphemism, and the Japanese government’s plans to clarify…
This is the first in a series of Orders of Battle (OOB) posts, which will cover Japan, the neighboring and regional powers in East Asia, as well as the major global players, with a specific viewpoint on their military forces…
This blog reported in July that the end of stealth might be near. Further evidence comes with Aviation Week’s interview with Fred Kennedy, the lead of the Tactical Technology Office (TTO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) reveals…
This blogger has now relocated to the land of the rising sun, for professional and personal reasons. Note the location of the Ministry of Defense in the focused circle in the image above. As a student of Japanese language, politics,…
Any model of air combat needs to address the effect of weapons on the opposing forces. In the Dupuy Air Combat Model (DACM), this was rifled bullets fired from machine guns, as well as small caliber cannon in the 20-30…
“All models are wrong, some models are useful.” – George Box Models, no matter what their subjects, must always be an imperfect copy of the original. The term “model” inherently has this connotation. If the subject is exact and precise,…
“If we maintain our faith in God, love of freedom, and superior global airpower, the future [of the US] looks good.” — U.S. Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay (Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, 1948-1957) Curtis LeMay was involved in the…
Humans are a competitive lot. With machines making so much rapid progress (see Moore’s Law), the singularity approaches—see the discussion between Michio Kaku and Ray Kurzweil, two prominent futurologists. This is the “hypothesis that the invention of artificial super intelligence (ASI)…
Preamble & Warning (P&W): Please forgive me, this is an acronym heavy post. In May 2013, the U.S. Navy (USN) reached milestones by having a “drone,” or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) land and take-off from an aircraft carrier. This was…
In a previous post, I quoted Jules Hurst’s comparison between the medieval knights of old and modern day fighter pilots. His point was that the future of aerial combat will feature more combined arms. This I agree with; the degree…