Friday, May 27, 2011

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?

6 comments:

Mongo said...

Maybe you could do case studies of how air defense systems performed in actual combat? The wars in the Middle East and the first Gulf War are obvious examples.

And for a specific topic maybe you could mention this software here: http://sites.google.com/site/samsimulator1972/home, which simulates old Soviet-era SAM systems.

Anonymous said...

How about something like Operational Analysis? Describe how air defense, SAMs in particular if you're keeping them at the core focus, were deployed at some conflict or a noteworthy battle of a bigger conflict, how they were used to engage the opposing forces and what they contributed to the outcome, and (as the case may be) how they were neutralized. Such analysis should provide plenty of insight to the actual abilities of the various systems beyond the theoretical maximum numbers often tossed about.

Ika said...

It will be nice if you make a s300v piece, as it is not a well known system and is often forgoten.

ika said...

if you can read russian i can give some data (from open sources ofcourse) that isnt well known, on the s300v.
source is credible

Anonymous said...

Probably you can take the subject the other way round. Analyse the capability of an Airforce to suppress or defeat an air defence system.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to see something regarding the security situation in Mexico.
One thought was a listing of light aircraft/covert landing strips used by drug cartels. Or perhaps an analysis of mass grave locations.