As the last few battles wind up to remove the last few pro-Gadaffi forces - for the Western & Arab nations who, literally, provided the top-cover for the advancing Libyan rebels - what are the lessons that need to be remembered?
Especially as economic and budgetary pressures add further pressure on defense budgets, are there important lessons that need to be brought to the front to influence plans & policy?
Listen in today, 16 OCT from 5-6pm EST with my co-host EagleOne and me as discuss the issue for the full hour with Dr. Robbin Laird, co-founder of Second Line of Defense.
Dr. Laird is a Washington and Paris based defense consultant and has worked with all of the US services on various strategic issues. His most recent books are the Re-Norming of Air Power and 21st Century Air Capabilities.
Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room where you can contribute your thoughts and observation - and suggest to us questions for our guests.
If you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - but the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
8 comments:
Hahaha! I know where Phib was! He was in a wormhole! Crossed the time/space continuum and came back! Psst... Sal... it's still 16 October here. Come back! Your past is calling you! :D
Mefixie.
No! I liked the time warp!
21st Century Airpower?
You can use Western airpower to help a 3rd world force win, but you effectively surrender your political objectives to theirs. So choose your allies carefully.
Give that man a cee-gar.
And whatever happens to the weapons magazines and ammo dumps of the evil dictator, happens. When you tip over the apple cart, you never know what kind of a mess will result, and you have no control over cleanup, if and any. The rats and the roaches will run where they run, too.
Laird has a point about the limits of UAV's, but he's waaaay too nonchalant about the costs of the F-35 and Osprey. It doesn't matter? Uh, yes, it does.
It seems that Dr. Laird is in favor of procuring just about every expensive peice of military hardware on the market, which kinda makes it seem that his organization might receive some funding from a defense contractor or two (probably not Boeing since he slams the F-18.) There was also some exaggeration wrt the capabilities of the F-35, while failing to acknowledge that the *obsolete* F-18, has (or in dev) equally advanced attack systems and data links. Dr. Laird also gave the impression that the V-22 was indispensable in the recent Lybian Ops. He failed to mention that -53's carried the Marines on the TRAP mission, and a -53 could have easily been the rescue aircraft. Somehow I think the Marines wanted the V-22 to be the hero.... As far as the V-22 as a COD aircraft ferrying parts for the Harriers from Sicily, again this was within the range of a -53, and the -53 has a much larger payload.
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