Showing results by author "Robbin Laird" in All Categories

Remembering the Flying Fortress: When Heroes Fell from the Sky Noirmoutier Island, France, 2013. Seventy years after a B-17 Flying Fortress crashed into Nazi-occupied territory, French villagers gathered to honor the American airmen who never made it home. This is more than a story about an airplane. It's about courage measured in aluminum and blood, about young Americans who climbed into flying fortresses knowing the odds, and about French civilians who risked everything to help fallen airmen under the Nazi boot. The crash was just the beginning. When that B-17 went down over France in ...

Master the Art of Public Speaking to your professional audiences Public speaking need not be a daunting task. This skill is crucial for self-employed heads of new companies shaping their branding and identity to potential customers. You are the product and if you cannot engage your audience, your are reducing your chances of the success of your new business. Research from leading communication experts has shown that structured practices and mindful strategies can drastically enhance speaking abilities. Here's a sneak peek at what you'll uncover inside this transformative guide: 10 Effective...

The Malmgren Strategy: Chess Mastery Applied to Global Power In an era where economics, diplomacy, and military power collide at lightning speed, few minds can synthesize the chaos into coherent strategy. Dr. Malmgren is one of those rare thinkers—a strategic chess grandmaster operating on the global board where nations, corporations, and ideologies battle for advantage. The Presidential Whisperer Ambassador Malmgren didn't just advise presidents—he helped architect the modern global trading system that shapes how power flows between nations. His counsel reached into the highest levels ...

When Kenneth Maxwell—the world's foremost historian of Portuguese democracy—stood before audiences in São Paulo, Lisbon, and Harvard in 2024, he wasn't just delivering academic lectures. He was connecting the threads of a revolutionary story that spans centuries and continents, linking the 1974 Portuguese Revolution to the great urban reconstructions that reshaped Europe. This is history with global reach and contemporary urgency. From the ashes of Lisbon's devastating 1755 earthquake to the democratic revolution that toppled Europe's longest-lasting dictatorship in 1974, Maxwell ...

The publication provides an overview of the USMC will use the Joint Strike Fighter or F-35B and is using the Osprey as part of its operations. This is one of the first books which addresses how the USMC will use the Joint Strike Fighter and the Osprey to transform their operations. The publication provides an overview of how aviation for the United States Marine Corps (USMC) shapes their entire capabilities and directs how they operate. USMC Aviation allows the USMC to be “three dimensional warriors” in fighting the “three block war.” Not only does aviation provide for 360-degree ...

The Shadow Empire: How Authoritarians Built a Parallel World Order While America was fighting the war on terror, China and Russia were building something far more dangerous: an alternative to the entire Western system. The "rules-based international order" is crumbling. Not from external attack, but from internal rot and external alternatives. While Western leaders still speak as if American dominance is eternal, authoritarian powers have quietly constructed a shadow empire—complete with parallel financial systems, trade networks, and political alliances that make Western sanctions ...

Ukraine's devastating assault on Russia's Black Sea Fleet didn't come from submarines or destroyers—it came from swarms of autonomous maritime drones that cost a fraction of traditional warships yet delivered crippling blows to a nuclear superpower's navy. This isn't just another conflict headline. It's the opening chapter of a maritime revolution that's rewriting the rules of naval warfare. For centuries, naval supremacy meant building bigger, more powerful capital ships. The logic was simple: concentrate overwhelming firepower in fortress-like vessels that could dominate vast stretches ...

In this book, the noted historian, Dr. Kenneth Maxwell, provides an overview of Brazilian developments over the past decade. As the world has changed dramatically, Brazil’s role is changing as well. These essays have been written over the past decade and provide insights into Brazil’s domestic politics, the role of its military, its changing foreign policy role, and the significant conflicts of the past decade. These essays were written at the time of the events described, so it is a view of Brazil in “real time” so to speak. It is more like an intellectual photo album, than a movie...

This book highlights the September 26, 2024 seminar of The Sir Richard Williams Foundation which was entitled: “Enhancing and Accelerating the Integrated Force: An Operational Perspective.” This seminar focused on how the force in being or the ready force was focused on improving its capability, its survivability and lethality for the fight tonight. For such a focus, one needs a sense of urgency for how to improve the force in the short to mid-term, rather than over emphasizing the long-term future and future force structure planning. In addition to the seminar report, Dr. Robbin Laird ...

This is the fourth annual publication we have published at Second Line of Defense and Defense Information. Each of the four publications highlight themes from essays we have published during that year. We are living in a time of compressed history, and our essays in each volume captures the history emerging in that year. We focus on defense issues, so we have highlighted some of the key developments affecting the evolution of defense and security challenges facing the United States and its key allies in that year, as well as innovations and developments in selected military technologies and...

While critics obsessed over cost overruns and early setbacks, something extraordinary was happening on battlefields from Iraq to the Pacific. The Marines weren't just flying a new aircraft—they were pioneering an entirely new way of war. This is the story of that transformation. Since 2007, the Osprey has rewritten the rules of military aviation. It transformed the Marine Corps from a traditional amphibious force into a rapid-deployment global strike capability. It gave Air Force Special Operations unprecedented reach and flexibility. Now it's revolutionizing Navy logistics and promising ...

This is the untold story of the V-22 Osprey—the aircraft that revolutionized military aviation despite facing the most vicious political and media assault in Pentagon history. From boardrooms to battlefields, from Capitol Hill hearings to the dusty landing zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, this gripping account reveals how a radical flying machine survived attempts to kill it and became a backbone of American military operations worldwide. The critics were relentless. Politicians called it wasteful. Journalists declared it unsafe. Even some military leaders wanted it scrapped. But the ...

Training for military forces is in the throes of significant change. The threats are dynamic; there is always the reactive enemy; and technology fosters new ways to operate. Concepts of operations are evolving, most notably as U.S. and allied forces are focusing on force distribution to deal with the higher end threats authoritarian adversaries are fielding. Dr. Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake have visited the major training centers in the United States and several abroad as the state of the art of training is dynamically developing as well. In this book, they highlight their visits to a ...

Este libro explora el emergente mundo autoritario multipolar y los desafíos que presenta para Estados Unidos y sus aliados. Los ensayos del libro examinan una serie de cuestiones, entre ellas el creciente poder económico y militar de China, la asertiva política exterior de Rusia, el declive del liderazgo mundial de Estados Unidos y el auge del autoritarismo global. Los autores sostienen que el mundo se dirige hacia un futuro más inestable e incierto, y que las democracias occidentales deben replantearse sus estrategias para hacer frente al nuevo orden mundial. Entre las cuestiones clave...

This book addresses the coming of maritime autonomous systems to the U.S. Navy and allied fleets. They are obviously coming as well to adversarial forces as well. It is clear that maritime autonomous systems will become a key part of the modernization of the United States (U.S.) and allied security and combat forces. They will also become part of the adversarial forces and will need to be countered as well. Even though maritime autonomous systems are already here and ready to be deployed. there are the vested interests of maintaining a legacy approach to maritime operations and the thinking...

This book describes the coming of the CH-53K Kilo to the USMC and to its first international customer, the Israeli Defence Force. It is based on extensive interviews with the persons involved in the development, testing, build, and maintenance of the new combat air system. For air system it is -- built by the digital thread development and manufacturing approach, the aircraft is designed with maintainability and fleet support in operations as a key focus of the program, If it were called CH-55 instead of the CH-53K perhaps one would get the point that these are very different air platforms,...

The Wynne Doctrine: Innovation, Leadership, and the Fight for America's Military Future This book chronicles the visionary leadership of Michael W. Wynne, the 21st Secretary of the Air Force, whose prescient warnings and bold innovations were dismissed—only to become America's most urgent military priorities two decades later. At the heart of Wynne's philosophy lies a simple but powerful doctrine: "If you are ever involved in a fair fight, it is the result of poor planning." This principle drove his relentless pursuit of military superiority through breakthrough technologies and strategic...

Italy's Airpower Renaissance: From Mediterranean Partner to Global Force Multiplier Italy isn't just participating in the F-35 revolution—it's leading it. This book reveals how a nation once seen as a junior NATO partner has transformed itself into a cornerstone of 21st-century airpower, wielding influence far beyond its borders through strategic vision and technological mastery. The Cameri Miracle At the heart of Italy's transformation lies the Cameri facility—not just a production line, but a strategic nerve center that makes Italy indispensable to European and allied defense. While ...

"Defense XXIV" is a valuable resource for defense professionals, policymakers, and students of international security. Its strength lies in providing ground-level insights from military leaders and defense experts rather than purely theoretical analysis. The book makes a compelling case that Western democracies face a strategic inflection point requiring new thinking about force structure, alliance cooperation, and technological innovation. By capturing multiple perspectives on these challenges, it offers readers a nuanced understanding of how defense establishments are adapting to a more ...

This is a revised edition of the book originally published in July 2023. The original book was based on the Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar held in March 2023 which occurred between the announcement of the new submarine program and the release of the strategic defence review at the end of April 2023. This edition adds the work done at the second 2023 Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar held on 27 September 2023. The first dealt with the way ahead with regard to deterrence strategy; the second dealt with the expanded role of multi-domain strike as an enabler of that strategy. The...