There are some brilliant blogs out there and whilst I may not always agree with absolutely everything they write the quality in undeniable, wouldn’t the place be boring if everyone agreed anyway.
I try and read these every day.
In no particular order
Daly History Blog Where the past meets the present (sorry to nick you tagline James) is a diverse series of superbly researched articles on various historic and contemporary military related subjects
Defence and Freedom Sven blogs on various military issues, a European slant on issues with a strong bias towards strategy, threats and doctrine
Thinking Strategically Found his one today, explores foreign policy in the wider strategic context
Danger Room US focussed but good for technology related stories, amongst others
Bruxelles2 Can’t tell a word they are saying without translation but they have nice pictures!
Defence Viewpoints The blog for the UK Defence Forum
Rogue Gunner Thoughts of a Falklands Veteran with a focus on welfare issues
Jedibeeftrix Not sure about the name but some of the sharpest strategy analysis around
Aquila Victrix UK military news and views blog
Mental Crumble Random thoughts from Middle England
Kings of War From the faculty and research students at the Department of War Studies, Kings College London
EU Referendum An often controversial political blog with a wide subject coverage including various military issues
The Camo Side of Dominic Hyde All you can ever possibly want to know about camouflage
Information Dissemination The Intersection of Maritime Strategy and Strategic Communications, not sure what that means but essential, thought provoking, reading
ELP Defence Blog Interesting and challenging thoughts on US and Australian defence issues
New Wars Mike is a tireless and unabashed reformer, go and buy his book
SNAFU Sweary, forthright and belligerent but very very good
Helmand Blog The official MoD blog from the Joint Media Operations Centre in Camp Bastion accompanied by the various Flickr, Twitter and other resources from the Online Engagement Team, good stuff
And some other non blog sites I would like to highlight
Holidays4Heroes A non mainstream service community group that does incredibly good work, drop a few quid in the tin
Sgt Slingsby A fundraising initiative for Holidays4Heroes
Tony Williams Quite outrageously detailed and comprehensive site on guns and ammunition
The Sapper Shop With the rank and pay of a sapper
I think Navy Matters should get an honourable mention, it’s not a blog and hasn’t been updated for a years or 2 (probably for the authors own sanity due to the horrifying state of affairs we’re currently in), but it’s one of the best websites anyway on Royal Navy procurement.
I feel flattered and I have a few remarks:
It’s a bit strange to title it “Blogs I like”, then choose the anonymous “Think Defence” account for writing and not sign it with a (nick)name.
The one blog is called ELP…, not ELC Defence Blog.
I read “New Wars” as well when I had a naval-dominated period on my blog for a few weeks. It’s awfully repetitive. Mike Burleson applies his “smaller, cheaper, more numerous” dogma mostly on ships, but also on aircraft and AFVs. He does so indiscriminately and quite obsessively.
Thanks for the typo spot Sven
Sven,
Burleson, who is a likeably energetic guy (quite a nice guy in virtual “person”) but keeps playing the same tune is (naval-history anorak alert) a “Jeune Ecole” man through and through. (You’re likely to know the term, Sven, for anyone else there’s a tidy Wiki article w/ reading list.) Now that we’re well past the Cold War’s fairly unique set of circumstances, everything new is old again
Grim,
Richard Beedall is like the favourite uncle I never met. Thanks for bringing up Navy Matters, it’s one of the formative resources for this sort of blogging, especially wrt British specifics.
Admin,
Good list, boss.
Grim – “I think Navy Matters should get an honourable mention”
Very much agreed, Richard Beedal’s site is a wealth of expert information. He did a chapter in the 2010 Seaforth Naval Review, i hope he will do the same for the 2011 edition due in Sept.
Admin, thanks for the post, for while I check Think Defence and Sven’s site daily, and also like think-strat and kings-of-war, there are many here i did not know of.
As to my name, I was drunk once and swore to a friend that i’d one day have a website by the name of jedibeeftrix, five years later I managed it.
JBT,
Agreed that Seaforth seems like Beedall’s way to keep a hand in, and hope he keeps it up.
Wrt the name, it’s a good thing too. Many a good idea has fermented first
i once created a level for Rainbow 6 – Ravenshield wherein there was a prominent banner with my handle (at that time) followed by the statement; “powered by beer”, and i swear there is more to it than i’d like to admit! :p
JBT,
There’s quite a lot to “powered by beer.” When I was teaching slothful still-adolescents before their coffee had kicked in, I often refered to beer and mead as “the Wheetabix of the Visigoths.” If the fall of Rome was powered by beer, anything’s possible. And let’s not forget the “mainbrace,” too
“the Wheetabix of the Visigoths.”
lol, i like it.
and thank you, i never knew splice the mainbrace had a reference to boozing, i just use it to taunt a sailing friend whenever I accuse him of being a pedalo-master.
you’ve brightened my night.
JBT,
Well, I said the Visigoths for shorthand, Sven’s ancestors like the Alamanni and Teutones deserve their fair share of credit too.
And the mainbrace was a crucial part of a four-masted naval vessel, bloody hard to fix if it went awry, so you got extra grog if you were part of the work crew that dealt with it. After the canvas went away, it still meant the extra tot for a good job done.
Glad to be of service. Now back to that last bottle of a nice Oktoberfest ….
I have just discovered your blog. Thanks for your top list, some have immediately joined my bookmarks.
Not a blog as such, but see an excellent article in the Economist magazine – the cost of weapons in a time of austerity
http://www.economist.com/node/16886851
Form an opinion and then cherry pick some facts to support it.
Defence spening as a proportion of GDP in the UK is half what it was in 1980.
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?year=1981_2011&state=UK&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=2010&chart=30-total&bar=1&stack=1&size=m&color=c&title=
Its the only government department to consume a smaller proportion of GDP today than it did in 1997.
Were it not for Afghanistan, the US would be in the much the same place, but its considerably lower than its been for the last 50 or 60 years.
Although US military spending was much below 2% 1900-1940 (except during the second world war).
The arguements raised in the article could be applied, much more accuratly, to spending on Welfare, or Healthcare, or Education, all of which have had much greater increases in spending, both in $£, inflation adjusted $£ and as a proportion of GDP, with results that have, at best, shown no improvement.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571444/Britain-nosedives-in-education-league-tables.html
You can make numbers prove anything
In 1936, an ounce of gold cost £4.25
Today, an ounce of gold costs £795
n 1936, the UK ordered 310 spitfires for £1,395,000, or £4,500 per plane, or 1058 ounces of gold, which is about £850,000 at todays price.
At £60+m for a Typhoon, something went wrong.
Uing a full gold standard, its esimted that the gold price would be 60x what it is now, in dollars, more in £.
Which actualy puts the Typhoon at about the same price as the spitfire, or less
I think the point is – Typhoons are currently being purchased at a cost of approximately £60M each. The next generation of broadly the same item, the JSF, will be available for purchase in four or five years at a probable price of circa £100M. No amount of GDP growth or inflation will bridge a 66 percent price increase.
“You can make numbers prove anything”
Especialy if you fiddle them
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100002059/is-6300-fair-value-for-gold/
6x, not 60x.
Interesting, I think I’m gonna do some work on this.