Army Helo Cuts Save $176M A Year Over Guard Plan: CAPE

Army Helo Cuts Save $176M A Year Over Guard Plan: CAPE
Army Helo Cuts Save $176M A Year Over Guard Plan: CAPE

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s hardest-nosed accountants have endorsed the Army’s Aviation Restructure Initiative. ARI is a controversial cost-cutting plan which would retire the Vietnam-vintage OH-58 Kiowa scout helicopters and replace them with AH-64 Apache gunships taken from the National Guard. The Army said ARI, once fully implemented, would save $1.09 billion a year. In a document…

Gen. Carlisle ‘Extremely Concerned’ About Drone Force

Gen. Carlisle ‘Extremely Concerned’ About Drone Force
Gen. Carlisle ‘Extremely Concerned’ About Drone Force

WASHINGTON: The Air Force has worried for almost a decade about the strains on its workforce as it fields more and more Predators, because drones need more people to fly them than do manned aircraft. Now, the head of Air Combat Command has told his boss, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, that he is “extremely concerned” about…

Navy 2015: Congressional Clashes Over LCS, UCLASS & Carriers

Navy 2015: Congressional Clashes Over LCS, UCLASS & Carriers
Navy 2015: Congressional Clashes Over LCS, UCLASS & Carriers

Smooth sailing is not in the Navy’s forecast for the next year.The service faces big decisions on major programs, and we can expect clashes between Navy plans, congressional politics and budgetary realities on three of the biggest: the upgunned Littoral Combat Ship, the UCLASS armed drone, and the jewel in the Navy’s crown, the nuclear aircraft carrier. The…

Army, Guard Set On Collision Course For 2015

WASHINGTON: A major battle is brewing between the regular Army and National Guard. While Congress has frozen the planned transfer of the Guard’s Apache gunships to active-duty units, the Army is already taking steps that may make it much harder to keep the helicopters in the Guard. The Aviation Restructure Initiative calls for all Apaches to be moved from the Guard…

Engine Maker ‘At Risk;’ Wants Navy Help

Engine Maker ‘At Risk;’ Wants Navy Help
Engine Maker ‘At Risk;’ Wants Navy Help

WASHINGTON: An obscure change in an arcane statute could open a major Navy contract to lower priced components from South Korea. But America’s last domestic manufacturer of ship-sized diesel engines, Fairbanks Morse, is fighting back. While a Navy spokesman told me the service has a plan to protect the industrial base — a major worry for the…

Deficit Or Defense Hawks? GOP Signals Sequester Deal Possible

Deficit Or Defense Hawks? GOP Signals Sequester Deal Possible
Deficit Or Defense Hawks? GOP Signals Sequester Deal Possible

SAN DIEGO: How much Kentucky bourbon will it take for President Barack Obama and presumptive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to come to an agreement of some kind on how to alleviate sequestration? A few drinks in the Oval Office? A bottle between them up in McConnell’s Capitol eyrie? And what about those new Republicans…

Run Silent, Run Scared: ‘A Crucial Year’ For Navy’s New Nuke Sub

Run Silent, Run Scared: ‘A Crucial Year’ For Navy’s New Nuke Sub
Run Silent, Run Scared: ‘A Crucial Year’ For Navy’s New Nuke Sub

FAIRFAX, VA: “No one should be sleeping comfortably at night,” Rear Adm. Dave Johnson warned Navy submariners and contractors today. For the fleet’s top priority program, the replacement for the aging Ohio-class nuclear missile submarine, fiscal 2015 “is a crucial year,” the Program Executive Officer for all submarine programs said this morning. “If we in this…

EW Needs $2B More A Year; ‘Major Deficiencies’ Found By Defense Science Board

EW Needs $2B More A Year; ‘Major Deficiencies’ Found By Defense Science Board
EW Needs $2B More A Year; ‘Major Deficiencies’ Found By Defense Science Board

WASHINGTON: A classified Defense Science Board study, now on the desk of Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, recommends that the Pentagon invest an additional $2 billion a year in electronic warfare and create a high-level executive committee to oversee the four services’ EW spending. “We need to dig ourselves out of a big hole, because we…

DoD Steps Forward To Credible Audits

DoD Steps Forward To Credible Audits
DoD Steps Forward To Credible Audits

WASHINGTON: For decades, critics have rightly nailed the Pentagon for the fact it doesn’t know how much money it’s spending or where that money really goes. Pressure has grown and grown for the Pentagon to prove it is worthy of the money taxpayers grant it by producing books an accountant can comb through and produce a…

Dueling ISIL Ops Costs Estimates: $3B Or $15B A Year?

Dueling ISIL Ops Costs Estimates: $3B Or $15B A Year?
Dueling ISIL Ops Costs Estimates: $3B Or $15B A Year?

UPDATED: Former Defense OMB Head Begs To Differ On Estimates CORRECTED Adams’ Estimate Is For A Year, Not A Month WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has been pegging the operations against the terror group known as ISIL at $7 million to $10 million a day. If you extrapolate that across a year it comes very close to…

GOP, Dems Must Rebuild Military Readiness

GOP, Dems Must Rebuild Military Readiness
GOP, Dems Must Rebuild Military Readiness

After years of Republican Party retreat on the need for a strong defense the tide is shifting again. From senior party leaders like Mitt Romney to prospective presidential candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio to grass roots influencers like radio host Hugh Hewitt, conservative columnist Robert Samuelson and the editors at National Review, a consensus is reemerging. This…

HASC GOP Leaders Cross Fingers For Senate Elections

HASC GOP Leaders Cross Fingers For Senate Elections
HASC GOP Leaders Cross Fingers For Senate Elections

Despite concurrent crises in Ukraine and Iraq, defense issues will hardly decide the November elections — but the outcome of those elections will prove decisive for defense. The top candidates for the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee both told me that they have their fingers crossed for a GOP takeover of the Senate…

US Ops Against ISIL Cost About $100M: CSBA’s Harrison

US Ops Against ISIL Cost About $100M: CSBA’s Harrison
US Ops Against ISIL Cost About $100M: CSBA’s Harrison

WASHINGTON:  US operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (or whatever we’re calling it these days) have probably cost the country about $100 million so far, according to one of the top defense budget experts. “t’s difficult to come up with a precise estimate for what current operations in Iraq are costing…

Doing The Math: Saving A-10s By Cutting F-35s

Doing The Math: Saving A-10s By Cutting F-35s
Doing The Math: Saving A-10s By Cutting F-35s

In this article, one of the Air Force’s own, longtime Breaking Defense contributor Lt. Col. Dan Ward, runs the numbers on his service’s plan to scrap the beloved A-10 Warthog and – now that Congress has thoroughly rejected the idea – suggests an alternative: a modest trim to the massive F-35 program might just save…