Column Archive

U.S. Air Force Capt. Tyler Rennell and his Afghan student pilot had a communication problem. On a Nov. 2 training flight near Kandahar, Rennell was trying to teach Capt. Moeed, his Afghan air corps trainee, how to use a GPS device to navigate their Mi-17 helicopter. Moeed didn’t seem to understand the device’s terminology, and Rennell didn’t know how to explain it to him. Every word that Rennell and Moeed exchanged had to pass through a Pashto-speaking interpreter sitting in the back of the helicopter, listening in via the chopper’s intercom. “Tell him,” Rennell urged the interpreter, after describing the […]

On Jan. 29, a Russian pilot conducted a test flight of the first warplane entirely designed and built by Russian companies since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The plane, formally known as the Prospective Aircraft Complex of Frontline Aviation (PAK FA), is manufactured by the state-owned Sukhoi aircraft corporation. Russian sources describe the PAK FA as the first fifth-generation multi-role fighter/attack warplane built outside the United States, but some analysts doubt it meets that category’s criteria. “Fifth-generation” warplanes have stealth characteristics, making them almost invisible to conventional radars. These attributes include using composite materials, emitting reduced engine heat, and […]

If the 2008 Olympics were China’s big coming-out party, and 2009 the year that Beijing merely managed to save global capitalism with its rapid — and accurate — stimulus package, then one might assume 2010 holds even better things in store for the People’s Republic. After all, just about everybody now recognizes the “superiority” of China’s authoritarian capitalism over the West’s free market variety. And yet, already the backpressure is building, as evidenced by the “Google wars” over Internet freedom, Western resentment over Beijing’s perceived bullying at the Copenhagen climate change conference, the Obama administration’s determination to follow through on […]