Robert Farley

In an earlier discussion of the defense budget, I mentioned that the Marine Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle had been exempted from the cuts. This was curious, because the EFV is over-budget and effectiveness-challenged. The motivating concept of the EFV is that the Marine Corps needs an armored vehicle that can move fast on land and in […]

The Good: Dutch commandos operating under NATO authority raid a pirate ship and rescue 20 Yemeni fishermen. The Bad: The Dutch then release seven captured pirates because NATO has no authority to arrest pirates. This, my friends, is not change we can believe in. Especially since the same thing happened again yesterday; a Canadian frigate […]

I’ll admit to suffering a John Bolton moment at the news that North Korea had, once again, threatened to drop out of the Six Party talks and restart its nuclear program. This nonsense will never end; it’s pretty clear that the North Korean leadership hasn’t the faintest interest in good faith negotiation. Is the answer, […]

Dan Drezner and I talk some piracy at Bloggingheads: The gist of the clip is that we can conceive of some military options that might reduce piracy, but that those options are likely to be more costly than simply paying ransoms to pirates. By costly, I mean the literal cost of the ammunition, fuel, work […]

There’s an avalanche of piracy related material today. Noah Shachtman has a fabulous rundown of what’s wrong with several of the major proposed solutions for fighting piracy. Dave Schuler does pretty much the same bit, and comes to the same conclusions. Long story short, the super-simple proposal you’ve developed for ending piracy has probably already […]

According to the New York Times, the kidnapping of Captain Richard Phillips was resolved thusly: Just after dark on Sunday, snipers on the U.S.S. Bainbridge saw that one of the pirates was pointing an automatic rifle at Captain Phillips, and that the captors’ heads and shoulders were exposed from the capsule-like lifeboat. President Obama had […]

There was some hope, over the past few months, that the presence of an international armada off Somalia was having a serious positive impact on pirate attacks. It turns out, however, that this may have been optimistic. Pirates have seized several ships in the past few days, and yesterday captured the US-flagged Maersk Alabama, taking […]

Some posts to read on the Gates announcement: Jason Sigger sees this as a compromise proposal, but one that supports Gates’ vision of warfighting. Republicans are going nuts about the missile defense cuts — the ghost of St. Reagan endures, apparently. Noah writes about the cuts to Future Combat Systems, and Spencer has a good […]

Much analysis remains, but Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has struck a staggering blow to a number of defense programs. The exciting details: 1. No more F-22s.2. Replacement Air Force bomber delayed indefinitely.3. Ballistic missile defense funding leans toward the Navy.4. Aircraft carrier acquisition slowed, with the fleet eventually dropping to 10 carriers.5. Next generation […]

North Korea tested a Taepodong-2 ballistic missile over the weekend, and the results were not positive. In addition to incurring further world condemnation, the North Koreans managed to deploy the payload (a small satellite) into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The failed test gave John Bolton the opportunity to spew nonsense (“So far, therefore, […]