Author: Michael

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy deployed the aircraft carrier Liaoning to sail through the Taiwan Strait on April 20, marking the first transit of the waterway by a carrier warship since the beginning of the year. The deployment has been assessed to be a response to the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force’s deployment of the Murasame class destroyer JS Ikazuchi to itself transit the strait on April 17, which Beijing referred to as “a deliberate provocation.

Read More

Think of a violin made by a master craftsman: beautiful, precise, capable of extraordinary performance, but impossible to produce quickly or cheaply. It takes time, rare expertise, and materials that cannot be sourced at scale. You would not equip an entire orchestra with instruments like that. Yet that is essentially what the United States has attempted with its tactical air fleet.The F-35 program’s total lifetime cost is projected to exceed two trillion dollars, the most expensive Major Defense Acquisition Program in history. The United States plans to purchase thousands of them.

Read More

The Franco-German-Spanish Future Combat Air System (FCAS) next generation fighter program is facing an imminent collapse, according to recent reports by Reuters. As China and United States, followed several years behind by Russia, are currently the only countries have their own fifth generation fighters into serial production, European states have been left increasingly heavily reliant on the U.S. F-35 as the only NATO-compatible option for a fully up to date fighter type.

Read More