On September 16, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet with fellow EU leaders in Bratislava, Slovakia. The mood will certainly be tense as Europe faces the repercussions of Britain’s vote to depart the European Union.
Anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) is the term used by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a Washington-based security think tank, in a 2012 paper, “The Geostrategic Return of the Philippines,” which highlighted the paramount strategic value of the archipelago.
“During the Cold War, there was an old joke about the Nordic countries: ‘Norway has NATO (to shield it), Sweden has Finland, and Finland has a very, very long border with the Soviet Union,’” said Amb. Eric Edelman, counselor at the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments.
The difficult to detect and intercept MADL was designed for F-35s to talk to F-35s and not intended to share information beyond other JSFs, Bran Clark, a retired Navy officer, the former special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and now a senior fellow at CSBA, told USNI News on Tuesday.
Another possible theory: The noise Duterte is making over US special forces may distract from the growing US military presence elsewhere. In March, Washington signed a new agreement with Manila to station American troops at five different bases in the Philippines. The move is seen as a counter to Chinese growing presences on nearby islands.
“The Navy may want to…in the frigate design, for example…come up with ways to simplify the propulsion architecture,” said Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, a former top aide to the Chief of Naval Operations.
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