- BOOK REVIEW: Maps, tables, notes, index
- BOOK REVIEW: Maps, tables, notes, index
- LEADERSHIP: A Chinese Middle East
- MYANMAR: Myanmar October 2025 Update
- MALI: Mali October 2025 Update
- PARAMILITARY: Pay For Slay Forever
- PHOTO: Javelin Launch at Resolute Dragon
- FORCES: North Koreans Still in Ukraine
- MORALE: Americans Killed by Israelis
- PHOTO: SGT STOUT Air Defense
- YEMEN: Yemen October 2025 Update
- PHOTO: Coming Home to the Nest
- BOOK REVIEW: "No One Wants to be the Last to Die": The Battles of Appomattox, April 8-9, 1865
- SUPPORT: Late 20th Century US Military Education
- PHOTO: Old School, New School
- ON POINT: Trump To Generals: America Confronts Invasion From Within
- SPECIAL OPERATIONS: New Israeli Special Operations Forces
- PHOTO: Marine Training in the Carribean
- FORCES: NATO Versus Russia Showdown
- PHOTO: Bombing Run
- ATTRITION: Ukrainian Drone Shortage
- NBC WEAPONS: Russia Resorts to Chemical Warfare
- PARAMILITARY: Criminals Control Russia Ukraine Border
- SUBMARINES: Russia Gets Another SSBN
- BOOK REVIEW: The Roman Provinces, 300 BCE–300 CE: Using Coins as Sources
- PHOTO: Ghost-X
- ARMOR: Poland Has The Largest Tank Force in Europe
- AIR WEAPONS: American Drone Debacle
- INFANTRY: U.S. Army Moves To Mobile Brigade Combat Teams
- PHOTO: Stalker
When Turkey decided not to allow America to use their bases for operations in Iraq, one of the victims was U.S. naval aviation. The tankers that naval aircraft flying off carriers in the eastern Mediterranean would use would have been based in Turkey. So those tankers were forced to operate from Bulgaria and Egypt. This meant that the tankers had to fly farther and burn more of the fuel that would otherwise be transferred to warplanes. Actually, it was worse, because the navy planned to fly it's own KC-130 tankers from Turkey. These had to be moved to a Persian Gulf base, where they also had to fly farther than previously.
Another unanticipated problem was that many of the younger navy pilots had little experience with aerial refueling (which is used far more frequently in the air force). So for the first few days of the war, refueling went a little slower with these inexperienced naval pilots. Finally, the navy got burned once more by the relatively short range of the F-18 (their most numerous warplane). This shortcoming has been long noted, and the air force feels put upon when they are call upon to provide more aerial refueling capacity for the "short legged" F-18s. The air force is also trying to do more with its aging force of 1950s era KC-135 tankers. All of the overseas assignments are keeping a lot of KC-135 crews overseas six months or more a year. On the bright side, a major source of these overseas deployments, the Iraqi "no-fly" zones, is no more.