[Updated Thursday with details on third, aborted landing attempt] Two out of three ain’t bad, if you’re trying something no one’s ever done before. Landing on the narrow, pitching deck of a Navy aircraft carrier is one of the hardest things a human being can do. Today, for the first time in history, a robot…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. and Colin ClarkGA-ASI’s MQ-9B: The right UAV for persistence, power, and performance
When assessing the state of the art of unmanned aerial systems, it’s critical to be very clear about what various aircraft can and can’t do – and could never do.
WASHINGTON: The second comprehensive report to Congress on the Pentagon’s aviation fleet paints a pretty robust picture of the fleet in most respects all the way out to 2043. But there’s a rub: like the Obama Administration’s budget request, the report doesn’t take sequestration into effect. (You can read the report below.) DoD Aircraft Report…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: The Defense Department is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States. It consumes 1 percent of America’s massive demand, burning billions of gallons of fuel a year. Indeed, as Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a recent speech, DoD is “the largest single consumer of fossil fuels on the face of the earth.” …
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
[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.
WASHINGTON: The dominant issue of tomorrow’s markup and the later amendment votes will not be the size of the Navy fleet, the future of the F-35, Tricare for life, or America’s strategic relationship with China. Sexual assault in the military, the hot-button issue currently leading the headlines, will dominate floor time when the defense policy…
By Colin Clark
Like the Holy Trinity or the designated hitter rule, the concept known as AirSea Battle has been much discussed but little understood. The Defense Department released an official and unclassified summary of the concept for the first time this evening on a Navy website . (BreakingDefense got the document before it was made public). AirSea Battle would break down longstanding barriers:…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
B-21, hypersonics and more: How digital development is driving industry innovation
Technological advancements are key to keeping pace with customer demands and evolving threat landscapes.
[updated with Adm. Greenert comment] House Armed Services seapower chairman Randy Forbes promised a “rebirth” of oversight in my interview with him last week, and he makes a down payment on that in his subcommittee’s markup of the defense bill. It includes a host of new reporting and certification requirements. Top of the deck comes the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: Yes, the defense budget is a mess. Continued uncertainty about whether sequestration will go away or is the new norm has thrown the annual budget process into even greater disarray than usual. But, Rep. Randy Forbes believes there’s a silver lining. Precisely because the president’s budget request is largely overtaken by events, Congress…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
It’s hard enough for a human pilot to take off from the cramped and pitching deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier. Today, for the first time in history, a Remotely Piloted Aircraft did it. You can bet that military leaders in Beijing and Tehran sat up and took note as the batwinged X-47B drone…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: What homemade roadside bombs could do to Army and Marine ground vehicles was the ugly surprise of the last decade. What sophisticated long-range missiles could do to Navy aircraft carriers could be the ugly surprise of the next. “I think it would almost follow like the night to the day,” Rep. Randy Forbes told…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.by Rep. Randy Forbes and Rep. Joe Courtney For a host of security and economic reasons, American foreign and defense policy will increasingly focus on the Asia-Pacific region in the decades ahead. With over 60% of all U.S. exports going to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries and 40% of total global trade emanating from Asia-Pacific,…
WASHINGTON: In a remarkably non-partisan moment amidst the current strife over budget cuts and Chuck Hagel, Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary and George W. Bush’s Chief of Naval Operations told a Republican-helmed committee that the Navy’s real problem was not the Obama administration’s budget but decades of creeping bureaucracy that have eaten every budget’s buying power.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
It’s not often that a bipartisan anything comes out of the House of Representatives these days. So read on for what may become a seminal commentary from two of the most respected thinkers on the House Armed Services Committee. Reps. Randy Forbes (R), chairman of the seapower and power projection forces subcommittee, and Rick Larsen…
By Rep. J. Randy Forbes and Rep. Rick Larsen