Future inevitability of quantum computers is a security problem today
‘Store Now, Decrypt Later’ attacks must be thwarted now with Zero Trust cybersecurity.
WASHINGTON: The Navy has discovered problems with the welds on 12 nuclear missile launch tubes, some for America’s $122.3 billion Columbia-class submarine program and others for the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought submarines. The issue is serious enough that Rep. Joe Courtney, top Democrat on the House seapower subcommittee, told me “the warning flags are up.” There is…
By Colin Clark
Campaign promises of a larger, more ready and fully modernized military have slammed into budget realities as the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget for the Pentagon shows only modest growth above what the Obama administration had projected. Funding at those levels will support a 305-ship Navy, not the 350 ships that candidate Trump proposed back in…
By Mark Cancian
WASHINGTON: Replacing aging Ohio-class nuclear missile submarines could cost so much it busts the Navy budget. But how much? That gets complicated. The media’s been saying $128 billion. The Navy would prefer we say $100 billion. Both figures are right. The difference is inflation. Last Wednesday, when Pentagon procurement chief Frank Kendall gave the go-ahead…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CRYSTAL CITY: If Congress doesn’t pass the annual defense spending bill — already 26 days overdue — by January 1st, the Navy’s top priority program may miss its sailing date 14 years from now. The Ohio Replacement SSBN submarine, which will carry 70 percent of American nuclear warheads, “will come to almost a screeching halt” without…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Got subs? The Navy sounds increasingly confident it can squeeze an extra submarine into its construction plans. The additional Virginia-class attack sub, to be funded in the 2021 budget, would enter service just as the attack submarine force shrinks to historic lows while Chinese and Russian fleets grow in both numbers and sophistication. The…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Lost in much of the initial coverage of the $80 billion Long Range Strike Bomber about specs and jobs is that the contract award is the latest step forward in an unnecessary and unsustainable projected spending binge to rebuild the U.S. nuclear arsenal in its current image. According to a January 2015 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, the direct costs of the…
By Kingston Reif
GA-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.
In his 1940 book, The New World Order, H.G. Wells wrote, “I think that in the decades before 1914 not only I but most of my generation – in the British Empire, America, France, and indeed throughout most of the civilized world – thought that war was dying out.” That assertion now seems naïve, even childish.…
By Doug Macgregor
CAPITOL HILL: As the Air Force train pulls out of the station, the Navy’s running alongside asking to be pulled aboard. Both services will need to replace aging nuclear missiles sometime ca. 2030. They could save money by coordinating their modernization programs — but the Air Force is on a tighter schedule and the window…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATE: Forbes’s amendment passed the House Wednesday night, by 321 votes to 111. WASHINGTON: Two powerful committees are headed for a rare House floor fight over a controversial fund to build new nuclear missile submarines. Rep. Randy Forbes and Rep. Joe Courtney, the chairman and top Democrat of the House Armed Services subcommittee on seapower,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: There is zero room for error in the Navy’s $80 billion plan for nuclear missile submarines, a senior sub admiral said this morning. “We have effectively skipped an entire SSBN generation,” said Rear Adm. Joseph Tofalo, “but in doing so we have consumed the entire margin for error.” America’s first nuclear missile submarine,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Even before it’s announced, the Pentagon’s pick for Chief of Naval Operations – the current head of Naval Reactors — is already being questioned, not because of his performance but because of his current job. When Adm. Hyman Rickover created the unique post of director of Naval Reactors (NR) with its eight-year term, he did it…
By Colin Clark
CAPITOL HILL: It’s a problem the US Navy wants to have, but it’s still a problem. If the service gets enough money both to build its top priority, the Ohio Replacement Program nuclear missile submarine, and to keep producing its vaunted Virginia-class attack subs, then so much new work will be hitting the shipyards so rapidly that they’ll be…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. The Ploughshares Fund shares the Obama’s Administration’s goal of eventually eliminating all nuclear weapons. Whether you agree with that goal or not, Tom Collina of the fund offers here a choice that those on the outer reaches of both political parties may agree on: forcing the Navy to live within its regular budget. The service, and…
By Tom Collina and Jacob Marx
The Heritage Foundation is pretty much the only Washington thinktank President Trump ever mentions and he’s been known to refer to their analyses when he speaks about defense. So, when one of Heritage’s experts wants to rebut the arguments of one of the top defense Democrats on Capitol Hill, we’re inclined to give them a…
By Thomas Callender