March 28, 2024

What’s With Military’s ‘Star Wars’ Fascination?

Pax River Navy Museum

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May the farce be with you. The Patuxent River Naval Air Museum got in on the “Star Wars” parodies last week with this Throwback Thursday posting on Facebook. The doctored photo is above, the original here:

Brewster F2A-3 "Buffalo" fighter, of Marine Fighting Squadron 211 (VMF-211) Rests in the flight deck gallery netting after suffering landing gear failure while landing on board USS Long Island (AVG-1) off Palmyra Island, 25 July 1942. Note marking "MF-5" on the plane's fuselage and very weathered paint. The carrier's SC radar antenna is visible atop her stub mast at right (Photo: U.S. Navy)

Here is the original photograph. Brewster F2A-3 “Buffalo” fighter, of Marine Fighting Squadron 211 (VMF-211), rests in the flight deck gallery netting after suffering landing gear failure while landing on board USS Long Island (AVG-1) off Palmyra Island, 25 July 1942. Note marking “MF-5” on the plane’s fuselage and very weathered paint. The carrier’s SC radar antenna is visible atop her stub mast at right (U.S. Navy)

MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL, did the same last week, too, posting Wednesday a doctored photo of a refueling bya Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post takes a look at the military’s “long, weird ‘Star Wars’ fascination.”

Lockheed Martin and South Korea have developed its T-50A jet trainer for the US Air Force’s T-X Advanced Pilot Training program. A T-50A prototype made its first flight June 2 in Sacheon, South Korea, The National Interest reports. The aircraft originally was developed using technology from the F-16 Fighting Falcon fourth-generation fighter to replace Seoul’s fleet of Northrop T-38 Talons trainers and F-5 jet fighters.

Defense Systems reports that the Naval Research Laboratory is working on finding a nearly unlimited source of fuel — the sea — and now has a patent to show for it. NRL has received a patent for its Electrolytic Cation Exchange Module, or E-CEM, which separates carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater and then produces hydrocarbons to be used as fuel.

DefSec Ashton Carter and William Roper, Strategic Capabilities Office head, spoke Friday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Washington, DC. Their take-away message, Breaking Defense reports, is “Trust your robots. Trust your tech industry. Trust your troops.”

Controversy is brewing in the United Kingdom as the UK’s DefSec Michael Fallon agrees to buy nine US-made P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft for $3.2 billion, The Daily Mail reports. There is also another deal in the works to purchase 50 Apache helicopters. These deals put at risk 600 jobs in the UK. Mr. Fallon recently visited the US Navy base in Jacksonville, FL, where crew learn to fly the new aircraft.

Investor’s Business Daily reports that despite major delays with the new Boeing tanker for the US Air Force, the company expects more commercial jets to be converted for military use. A company official said Boeing wasn’t getting out of the fighter jet business all together, but instead focusing on maintenance and upgrades for current jets and selling more military versions of its passenger jets.

A San Diego, CA, woman was was convicted by a federal jury in Florida for conspiring to export jet engines and a drone to China, Popular Science reports. Wenxia Man was convicted of “conspiring to export and cause the export of defense articles without the required license,” and she could face at least 20 years in prison.

Michael Lumpkin, director of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, tells Defense One that he believes he’s got a model for future efforts to counter extremism online. He said he fears that once the Islamic State is “constrained on the battlespace, it will rebrand itself as something else. And then we have to be ready for that, but not two years after.” Mr. Lumpkin is referring to the State Department’s campaign to fight ISIS’s online messaging campaign.

Officials have said that the US military campaign, so far this year, has singled out and killed more than 120 Islamic State leaders, commanders, propagandists, recruiters, and other high-value individuals, Military.com reports. Much  credit is being given to the intelligence collected by special operations teams on night raids from captured militants and from intercepted email, cellphone, and other communications.

President Obama is being urged to rethink plans to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan. Reuters reports that a group of retired generals and senior diplomats urged the president last week to forgo those plans, warning they could undermine the fight against the Afghan Taliban, whose leader was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan last month. There are currently about 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan.

Seven years after the rate of suicides by soldiers more than doubled, the US Army has failed to reduce the pace, USA Today reports. Experts are now worried the problem is a “new normal.”

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