SAN DIEGO: It’s completely possible to plug Army missile defenses into the Navy fire control network, a panel of Navy experts said Wednesday. That could make an obscure system called NIFC-CA (Naval Integrated Fire Control – Counter-Air) the electronic backbone of a seamless defense against Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or North Korean airstrikes and missile salvos.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.SAN DIEGO: The Army and Navy must link their missile defense systems into a single network so Navy weapons can hit targets spotted by Army radars and vice versa, the chief of Pacific Command said today. That’s a daunting technical task but, if surmounted, it could dramatically improve defense against North Korean, Chinese, or Russian…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: Light carriers. Robot PT boats. Unmanned subs. A congressionally chartered study, the Alternative Future Fleet Platform Architecture Study, “does not represent any official Navy position,” but offers a surprisingly bold vision for the future of the US Navy. The study, by a “Navy Project Team” of officers, civil servants, and contractors free to brainstorm without…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: The Navy needs a vastly larger fleet — 414 warships — to win a great-power war, well above today’s 274 ships or even the Navy’s unfunded plan for 355, the think-tank MITRE calculates in a congressionally-chartered study. That ideal fleet would include: 14 aircraft carriers instead of today’s 11; 160 cruisers and destroyers instead…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.UPDATED with McCain praise WASHINGTON: The Navy needs a bigger fleet of smaller ships than envisioned in its official Force Structure Assessment, says a congressionally-chartered study from the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. CSBA emphatically agrees with the Navy that the focus needs to shift from day-to-day counter-terrorism and presence operations to deterring (and if need be,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: As shipbuilder Bath Iron Works laid the keel for the third and final destroyer of the DDG-1000 class, the Navy and industry were struggling to understand embarrassing breakdowns on the first ship, the USS Zumwalt. Congress fears there could be worse to come. “The hard work hasn’t really begun yet in terms of delivering the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.CLARIFIED w/ CNO response WASHINGTON: The Navy wants a 355-ship fleet. Can US shipyards build it? Yes, they can, the Navy leaders are insisting. But, the Chief of Naval Operations warned this morning, to keep production swift and steady, we should be careful about replacing existing designs — including the Littoral Combat Ship — with all-new warships…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: Mr. Trump, we’ll see your campaign pledge of a 350-ship fleet and raise you five vessels, the US Navy effectively said this morning. The long-anticipated Force Structure Assessment calls for a fleet of 355 ships to counter “a growing China and a resurgent Russia,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced today. [Click here for Congressional…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.One of the oddest military drones aborning reinvents a stillborn technology from 1951. That’s because the unmanned aircraft revolution is resurrecting configurations that were tried more than a half century ago but proved impractical with a human pilot inside. The case in point: Northrop Grumman’s new Tern, a drone designed to do everything armed MQ-1 Predators…
By Richard Whittle[UPDATED with Bryan Clark comment] The Navy and Northrop Grumman just took a major step forward on defending ships from enemy missiles. Northrop announced this afternoon it had passed a Critical Design Review (CDR) for a new jamming and spoofing system for Navy warships, Block III of the Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP, rhymes with Cool-Whip).…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: With the House Armed Services Committee marking up its annual defense bill next week, the outspoken chairman of HASC’s seapower subcommittee told Breaking Defense he wants to undo last year’s budget deal — which he opposed and which drops Pentagon spending in 2017 — to get more dollars for defense. That’s political heavy lifting, I told Forbes. House speaker…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.CAPITOL HILL: Despite tight budgets at the Pentagon, the Navy wants to speed-up several shipbuilding programs — amphibious warships, destroyers, and submarines — and Congress seems inclined to give them the money. That’s testimony both to the perennial political popularity of shipbuilding, which employs a lot of voters, and to the rising strategic anxiety over…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.We write a lot on this site about high-tech, high-cost weapons. But it’s worth remembering that most of the killing around the world, an estimated 200,000 deaths a year, takes place with low-tech tools, like these AK-47 assault rifles the Navy seized Friday in the Arabian Sea. All told, the small cargo ship carried 21…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Sen. John McCain issued a provocative and comprehensive alternative budget for the Pentagon on Monday, Restoring American Power: Recommendations for the FY 2018-FY 2022 Defense Budget. Jerry Hendrix, a strategy and naval expert at the Center for New American Security, crunched the numbers from McCain’s White Paper and authored this analysis for our readers. Read…
By Jerry Hendrix