In an extraordinary international response, a dozen nations have poured assets into the stormy South Atlantic to help find and save 44 Argentine submariners from the missing sub San Juan. It’s a stark contrast to the last great submarine disaster, when Russia was slow to accept international help for the stricken Kursk in 2000 and lost all… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The White House has dropped plans for a 14 percent cut to the Coast Guard, instead promising a budget that “sustains current funding levels.” The bad news is that “current funding levels” are already too low. The Coast Guard has to give almost 600 drug shipments a pass each year because they don’t have the ships or planes to catch… Keep reading →

With the election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States and with Trump’s nomination of Gen. John Kelly for Secretary of Homeland Security, life is going to change for the US Coast Guard. Trump’s campaign focused intently on border security, asking a fundamental question: Why do we send thousands of troops… Keep reading →

Who are Trump’s generals? This week, James Kitfield has already told us about James Mattis and Michael Flynn, both men shaped by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we come to John Kelly, whose time in Latin America, ironically, led him to similar conclusions about America’s enemies. As chief of US Southern Command, General… Keep reading →

SASC sent full Senate nomination of Gen. Mark Welsh for CSAF http://aol.it/OcwsYw; also LTG John Kelly for SOUTHCOM, LTG Frank Grass for NGB Sydney%20Freedberg

The Air Force’s MC-12 Liberty surveillance plane, in heavy use in Afghanistan, is one of the scarce assets Southern Command chief Gen. Doug Fraser hopes to see freed up for drug interdiction as the war winds down. The U.S. military command covering South America intercepts only about a third of the drug shipments and other… Keep reading →