New I&A Features?

I&A subscribers: the April issue of I&A was pretty big. The May issue, not so much. The June issue is going to be bigger than the April issue, potentially by a significant margin, thanks to both the Soviet/Russian ABM feature and the Chinese Strategic SAM Network feature.

I'd be interested to hear any ideas for new feature types. Not specific topics (although those are also always welcome), but different feature types like Historical Perspective or Current Events.

My goal is to bring in a few new feature types to help flesh things out a bit and keep the issues "fuller". I don't want to type just for the sake of meeting a pagecount, or half-ass something to have something published. And yeah, some topics are just by nature going to be huge, like the two mentioned above, or the S-300P/S-400 feature from April. But some new features would be a nice set of additions to keep things a bit more interesting and help offset the times when the content just isn't going to be that huge.

One idea I will be debuting this month is basically similar to the old Image of the Week. My tentative title is Imagery Highlight. The idea is to focus on one specific image (maybe two if a comparison is in order), with a small bit of text describing the significance of what you see.

Any other ideas?

I&A May Update and June Topics

I&A's May PDF is being finalized and will begin to be distributed on Wednesday. The text is complete, right now I'm annotating and inserting imagery. There's been one change: the Soviet/Russian ABM piece has been pushed back to the June issue. I was basically faced with the choices of rushing it and not really doing anything substantial, or pushing it back to allow it to be fully developed. Fortunately one of I&A's contributors submitted an article on Armenian air defenses to replace the ABM piece, so the overall content of the May issue will not suffer.

The June issue is shaping up nicely (and will be released on time and on target around the 15th of June) and should feature the following topics:

Current Events: Chinese Naval Air Power developments
Air Defense: China's Strategic SAM Network
Strategic Warfare: Soviet/Russian ABM Systems
Historical Perspective: undecided for now
Software Review: Google Earth
Reading List: Resources for the IMINT Analyst
And the usual extra bits.

Some of you might ask why I'm doing a software review of Google Earth, a program that should at this point be well known to everyone. The reason for doing Google Earth first is to establish a baseline for comparison. In the future I'll start reviewing and examining some other programs and tools, and being able to compare them to Google Earth will make their usefulness and unique features far more apparent. Plus, evaluating a well-known program first will allow me to focus more on the format and content of the Software Analysis piece, making future entries that much easier to generate.

I&A May 2011

The May I&A PDF may be a week late due to the fact that it's the end of the semester here. I've been giving exams and am now due to work on submitting final grades and whatnot. Add to that the fact that I've had exams of my own, and it's been a bit busy! That being said, I'll do my best to get everything done on time, and this won't affect the release of the June PDF.

Here are the current topics for the May PDF:

-Current Events: seriously, do you need to ask?
-Air Defense: Russian ABM systems (prepare for this one to be large, it's covering current and historical systems, deployment, performance, etc)
-Strategic Warfare: Pakistani Nuclear Facilities (contributor feature)
-Historical Analysis: SAM Site Analysis
-Book Review: Biohazard
-May 2011 Links, Source List, and What Is It?
-May 2011 PDF