Author Archives: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D
Air Show Ennui: There’s More Going On In Space
Issue Brief
This is the week of the Paris Air Show, a glitzy excuse for aerospace executives and their government customers to network far from the prying eyes of politicians. Such contrived venues seldom produce any real news unless an [Read More...]
Pentagon Purge: Lessons From The Succession
Issue Brief
You don’t need to be a defense expert to see the biggest lesson of Friday’s leadership purge at the Pentagon. When you’re in the military, losing wars is a bad career move. That’s what America is doing in [Read More...]
Future Navy: Open Architecture May Matter More Than Iraq
Issue Brief
The Iraq war so dominates the current defense debate that other military topics get short shrift from politicians and journalists. Their reasoning seems to be that until we figure out how to defeat a ragtag band of religious [Read More...]
Global Warming: A Last Chance for the Skeptics
Issue Brief
Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham described journalism as the “first rough draft of history.” Perhaps rough draft of hysteria would be a better phrase to use in describing some of the overheated reporting about global warming that [Read More...]
The Defense Industry in a Changing Media Landscape
Presentation to the AIA Communications Council
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
I’ve been looking forward to this meeting since Alexis Allen first invited me a month ago, because I used to teach media-military relations at Georgetown [Read More...]
Helicopter Flap: How About Some Common Sense?
Issue Brief
This week the Air Force is issuing a revised solicitation for its future search-and-rescue helicopter that service leaders hope will put the embattled program back on track. The Air Force is the only service operating a dedicated fleet [Read More...]
Military Priorities: The New Majority Speaks
Issue Brief
If you thought the Democratic Party was still mired in the anti-war, anti-military funk that followed America’s defeat in Vietnam, then you haven’t been paying attention to this week’s mark-up of the fiscal 2008 defense budget by the [Read More...]
T-SAT: A True Revolution In Military Communications
Issue Brief
Imagine how far the American Revolution would have gotten if the Declaration of Independence had been written in Latin. Many of the Founders would have understood it because they were schooled in the classics, but the meaning of [Read More...]
Littoral Combat Ship and the Birth of A New Navy
Presentation to the LCS Mission Systems Supplier Conference
I’m real pleased to be here today, discussing the most innovative and exciting vessel in the Navy’s entire shipbuilding program.
The schedule for today’s event describes me as the luncheon keynote speaker, [Read More...]
Naval Networking: Real Progress, Real Problems
Issue Brief
Although sometimes depicted as a bastion of tradition, the U.S. Navy has a better track record than other military services at generating innovative ideas about future warfare. It was the Navy that first grasped the significance of the [Read More...]