WASHINGTON: A number of House Republicans are lining up against the Obama administration’s effort to extend reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon and Mike Turner sent a letter to the White House today, opposing a new National Security Council study exploring plans to reducing the arsenal “up to […]
CAPITOL HILL: The new 285-ship fleet the Navy plans in its fiscal 2013 budget plan may change, pending the results of a new service-wide force structure review, the Navy’s top officer said today. The review, expected to wrap up within weeks, will outline how many hulls the Navy will need to meet the national security […]
AI, autonomous systems, cyber, and EW converge as industry targets faster battlefield effects.
CAPITOL HILL: Despite recent major developments in Iran’s nuclear program, the effort has yet to cross the ‘red lines’ requiring military intervention, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said today. Testifying before the House Appropriations defense subcommittee today, Panetta said intelligence shows that Tehran has yet to transition its nuclear program into a full-fledged weapons program. “That […]
WASHINGTON: The Air Force is holding off on filling the skies the next generation of the Reaper UAV. Instead of putting more aircraft into the air that gather more data, the service plans to focus on how to better manage the flood of raw intelligence already streaming in, says one top service officer. The Air […]
CORRECTED THE PENTAGON: The Pentagon wants production of the Air Force’s new bomber put on the fast track, despite the program’s $500 million per-plane price tag. DoD Comptroller Bob Hale wants the bomber, known as the Long-Range Strike aircraft, to move as quickly as possible through the development and production phases. His comments came during […]
THE PENTAGON: If there was one big takeaway from the Defense Department’s fiscal 2013 budget rollout yesterday, it was this: being forced to do more with less means having to take some risks. And the Navy has decided to is risk its future amphibious capabilities to cope with the fiscal realities inside the Pentagon. Navy […]
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
THE PENTAGON: DoD turned up the heat on lawmakers, restating that it has no plan for addressing another $500 billion-plus in additional defense cuts forced by the congressional Super Committee’s failure. Furthermore, DoD will not formulate a plan to deal with the defense cuts prompted by the Obama administration’s sequestration plan, Pentagon comptroller Bob Hale […]
THE PENTAGON: The Air Force is attempting to buy and build its way out of the hole it created by canceling the latest variant of the Global Hawk program, service officials said today. Service officials want to pour billions into new unmanned aircraft and revamp its current intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance fleet as part of […]
WASHINGTON: It looks like aerial drones are not the only unmanned systems the Pentagon is interested in arming. The special warfare branch of the Navy’s expeditionary warfare division is eying plans to arm its small fleet of unmanned boats with an long-range missile, branch chief Capt. Evin Thompson said. The missile — known as the […]
CORRECTED WASHINGTON: The Navy’s venerable Scan Eagle unmanned drone could go global if service leaders can lock in agreements with a number of key European and Mideast allies. Navy leaders are considering foreign military sales of the Scan Eagle to Kuwait, Pakistan and the Netherlands, according to a presentation by Marine Corps Col. James Rector, […]
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WASHINGTON: The Navy’s weapon of the future will take one step closer to reality this month, as service officials prepare to test fire the first industry-built prototype of its fabled Railgun. ONR testers will fire off a BAE Systems-built version of the weapon next week at the Navy’s surface warfare center in Dahlgren, VA., according […]
WASHINGTON: Despite the tremendous impact unmanned systems are having on the battlefield, military leaders still struggle to get intelligence gathered from these systems into the hands of those who need it. The systems designed to stream raw data collected by the diverse fleet of unmanned systems in the field continued to hamstring combatant commanders and […]
ABOARD THE USS WASP: Navy and Marine Corps leaders involved with the huge Bold Alligator amphibious warfare this week will tell you it’s all about the lessons learned. And there was no bigger lesson in amphib combat ops in recent years than Operation Unified Protector, also known as Libya. “Libya [operations] played a huge role” […]
ABOARD THE USS WASP: Ship to shore operations were not the only thing the Navy and Marine Corps looked to sharpen during the biggest amphibious exercise in over a decade. Bold Alligator 2012 featured a significant role for special operations, intelligence and civil affairs units, Col. Scott Aiken, chief of staff for the 2nd Marine […]