WASHINGTON: The Pentagon and F-35 maker Lockheed Martin have agreed on the terms of a deal for the Defense Department to buy two lots of F-35s for $7 billion. The big question now is the average price per plane for each tranche (LRIP 6 and 7). While we’ve confirmed with two sources that the deal…
By Colin ClarkA major overhaul is coming in software for missile warning
Space Systems Command’s FORGE program is the first, major missile-warning software modernization effort in 20 years.
WASHINGTON: The American who leads the leading edge of our sword in the Pacific — the Air Force — worries that China‘s sometimes “aggressive approach” in using its fighters, bombers and ships to signal its territorial claims across the Pacific creates “the potential” for a serious incident in the region. But Air Force Gen. Herb…
By Colin Clark
CAPITOL HILL: The next Pentagon budget will almost certainly include increased spending for the Navy, Marines, and Air Force to boost their presence and operations in the Asia-Pacific region. That’s because the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon’s strategic review found we…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: Fewer F-35B Joint Strike Fighters, MV-22 Ospreys, AH-1 Cobras, and UH-1 Hueys. No Marine Personnel Carrier. Maybe no Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to replace the Humvee. 8,000 fewer Marines on active duty. The Marine Commandant has put all that on the table as part of his proposal to the Defense Secretary’s Strategic Choices and…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Yesterday, at a subcommittee hearing attended by just half a dozen Senators, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer made a blunt admission: The military’s most expensive program, the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has been hacked and the stolen data used by America’s adversaries. acquisition undersecretary Frank Kendall didn’t say by whom, but the answer is…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: The Pentagon’s most expensive conventional weapon program emerged largely unscathed from perhaps its most intensive review before the crucial congressional subcommittee that controls military funding. As over budget and behind schedule as the $391 billion, 2,443-plane F-35 program has fallen since initial promises of a low-cost, multi-service Joint Strike Fighter, two high-powered panels…
By Otto Kreisher
PARIS AIR SHOW: The top Marine aviator, Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, announced a “very aggressive program” at the world’s largest airshow to bring down the costs of operating and maintaining the Marines’ F-35B model of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. His choice of Paris as the venue for the announcement spoke volumes. The international partners in…
By Colin Clark
Future inevitability of quantum computers is a security problem today
‘Store Now, Decrypt Later’ attacks must be thwarted now with Zero Trust cybersecurity.
PARIS AIR SHOW: “The word commitment should mean something. When I give you my commitment you should be able to trust that I’m going to do what I said I’m going to do.” That’s the message Orlando Carvalho, new head of Lockheed Martin’s iconic aeronautics business wants to send the US Navy, the service most…
By Colin Clark
ARLINGTON: As if Syria and sequestration weren’t complicated enough on their own, the combat training cutbacks required by the sequester are cutting into the military’s readiness to intervene, the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, told reporters this morning. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno has expressed similar concerns about his service’s…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
This year’s Paris Air Show promises to be one of the most lackluster for the defense sector in at least a decade. America is sending virtually no military aircraft to fly the all-important afternoon displays: no F-22s, no F-35s, no C-17s, no C-130s. American companies have scaled back their executives’ participation, not because it saves any…
By Douglas Barrie
[UPDATED with video & Winslow Wheeler comment] WASHINGTON: It’s been a tough week for critics of the F-35. Concurrency costs dropped an impressive half billion dollars — note to Winslow Wheeler — and the Air Force version launched an air to air missile for the first time. The F-35A launched the AMRAAM missile on Wednesday (it…
By Colin Clark
[updated with final results] CAPITOL HILL: Bipartisan majorities in the House Armed Services Committee have steamrollered proposals to slow down the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and to permit the Pentagon to plan for base closures, but reformers at least made a respectable run at the windmill during markup of fiscal year 2014 National Defense Authorization…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: The best case for sequester is still a disaster – but we’re not going to get the best case. That’s the common denominator from a range of budget options rolled out today by an extraordinary alliance of four thinktanks. Their consensus recommendations to cut military readiness, Army brigades, Navy carriers, Air Force ICBMs,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
As the Department of Defense continues to wrestle with the high costs and often slow pace of military technology and acquisition programs, it would do well to take a closer look at that other bastion of high-tech government programs: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA’s low-cost missions from yesteryear just might hold the secret…
By Dan Ward