British Intervention In Syria?

Distractions are basically the bane of my life right now. Some distractions are good though and offer opportunities. One such distraction came today when I sat down to read the latest article on Syria over at Think Defence. Link here for anyone that hasn't read it yet. I think it's a worthwhile topic to stop and cover, even if it does mean my other draft article once again gets pushed to the back burner for now.

A few links to tide you over

Otherwise known as another excuse for me to buy time while I work on my next proper post.

Update: 26/03/13

Post coming soon. Promise. Scouts honour... even though I wasn't a scout. Bah, details.

Change of plan. Or Strategy

Something new has cropped up that's worth a quick look before I turn in for the night. I was checking in on the excellent "Thin Pinstriped Line" blog, where Sir Humphrey has posted a link to the Chief of Defence Staff's recommended reading list. I followed the link and noticed that the very first book on the list, the "Book of the Month", was Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt (Profile Books).

This caught my attention because I was lent this book last November by someone I know, a person who I would politely describe as a nonsensical bell end. I was informed that this book would be right up my street as it was all about strategy and told that it "really gives you a whole new horizon to scan about strategic thinking". I suspect that had the author been there and heard him use those terms to describe the book, he would have immediately grabbed the copy and bludgeoned my acquaintance to death with it.

Update: 20/03/13

Today I'm reading the Budget document that's just been released for 2013/14. That obviously puts a lot of things on hold. My next article is already started and should be done before the weekend if all goes according to plan.

Videos and links for 15/03/2013

It's that time again... for me to cop out of doing a proper article and fill space on the blog, push page views etc, by presenting this weeks videos and links. Let it begin!

Strength in numbers

So today I'm going to delve into that murky world that we often refer to as "strategy".

Strategy is a big word. Just having a conversation about what that word really means could occupy a group of interested persons for several hours. For that reason I don't really want to get into that discussion. For the sake of this article let's just assume that it means the broad goals of defence as it affects the UK.

This will not be a massively comprehensive look at UK strategy - current or potential - just one portion of it; our interaction with our allies.

Some links and videos 08/03/13

Today I'm going to try something a little bit different. I'm using a new font called "Georgia". I used this font at the end of my last post and noticed two things about it; 1) it shows up much darker on the finished page, so it should be easier to read and 2) it appears much bigger on my editing page, so I won't have to strain as much to see the screen. And on that note, let's dive into this weeks links and vids. It's a big 'un.

Just In Time... for an AMRAAM

As so often happens with this blog, I keep getting distracted from planned work by things that pop up on the fly. One of those - and the subject of today's article - is the revelation that a US Air Force cadet has figured out how to save the USAF $4.9 billion over the next five years by altering the way it purchases some of its air to air and air to surface missiles.