Does China Have A Pacific Strategy Or Are They Bumbling Along?

Does China Have A Pacific Strategy Or Are They Bumbling Along?
Does China Have A Pacific Strategy Or Are They Bumbling Along?

WASHINGTON: Why has China, after a decade of “good neighbor” policies, engaged in high-profile high-seas standoffs with the Philippines and Japan? What is Beijing’s strategic purpose? The most dovish analysts say that China is simply trying, albeit clumsily, to reassert what it considers its rights — its historical rights to territories China once controlled before…

Gen. Welsh Dismisses Talk Of Scrapping Air Force; Pledges To Protect KC-46, F-35A, Long Range Bomber

Gen. Welsh Dismisses Talk Of Scrapping Air Force; Pledges To Protect KC-46, F-35A, Long Range Bomber
Gen. Welsh Dismisses Talk Of Scrapping Air Force; Pledges To Protect KC-46, F-35A, Long Range Bomber

National Harbor, MD: The Air Force will protect and defend the budgets of the KC-46 airborne tanker, the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and the nascent Long Range Strike Bomber, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told a standing room audience of more than 1,200 here. Oh, and Welsh made clear his view of…

Plugging AirSea Battle’s Hole: Lockheed Dishes $30M For Anti-Ship LRASM Test

Plugging AirSea Battle’s Hole: Lockheed Dishes $30M For Anti-Ship LRASM Test
Plugging AirSea Battle’s Hole: Lockheed Dishes $30M For Anti-Ship LRASM Test

NATIONAL HARBOR: We all know that, since the end of the Cold War, the US military has vastly expanded its ability to precisely strike targets on the land. The dirty secret is that we’ve unilaterally disarmed our capability to strike ships at sea. The military calls this a “capability gap,” but it’s more like a…

New Intel Bill Would Force More FISA Court Reporting

New Intel Bill Would Force More FISA Court Reporting
New Intel Bill Would Force More FISA Court Reporting

AFA Conference: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers have presented a new bill designed to increase congressional oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its main client, the National Security Agency. Obviously, the bill was sparked by the flood of classified information released by the international fugitive and former intelliegnce contractor Edward Snowden. The…

Snowden Uproar Demoralizes Cyber Warriors: Ex-NSA Chief Hayden

Snowden Uproar Demoralizes Cyber Warriors: Ex-NSA Chief Hayden
Snowden Uproar Demoralizes Cyber Warriors: Ex-NSA Chief Hayden

NATIONAL HARBOR: Media outcry and public uproar over the Edward Snowden revelations have created a deeply demoralizing backlash against the US intelligence community and paralyzed key cybersecurity initiatives, Gen. Michael Hayden — former director of both the CIA and the NSA — said today. “If you look at the psychic effect of Snowden on the…

EADS Urges Air Force’s Fanning To Buy Lakota Helos For Nuke Mission

EADS Urges Air Force’s Fanning To Buy Lakota Helos For Nuke Mission
EADS Urges Air Force’s Fanning To Buy Lakota Helos For Nuke Mission

  AFA Conference: The chairman and CEO of EADS North America is pressing the case of his company’s Lakota helicopters for the Air Force mission of protecting nuclear missile sites. In a letter hand-delivered today Fanning_Eric USAF UH72A 09.11.13 to Acting Air Force Secretary Eric Fanning, Sean O’Keefe argued that the Air Force’s plan to refit…

The Fiddler Crab Effect: State, AID, NSC Can’t Keep Up With DoD

The Fiddler Crab Effect: State, AID, NSC Can’t Keep Up With DoD
The Fiddler Crab Effect: State, AID, NSC Can’t Keep Up With DoD

[UPDATED with Gen. Hayden’s comments] Frantic diplomacy seems to have forestalled US military action in Syria – for now. But we stumbled into negotiations at the last minute, only after President Obama had threatened strikes and asked for a vote authorizing the use of force, when Secretary of State John Kerry made an off-the-cuff, off-message…