Colin Clark, the founding editor of Breaking Defense, is now our Indo-Pacific Bureau Chief, based in Sydney, Australia. In addition to his foundational efforts at Breaking Defense, Colin also started DoDBuzz.com, the world’s first all-online defense news website. He’s covered Congress, intelligence and regulatory affairs for Space News; founded and edited the Washington Aerospace Briefing, a newsletter for the space industry; covered national security issues for Congressional Quarterly; and was editor of Defense News. Colin is an avid fisherman, grill genius and wine drinker, all of which are only part of the reason he relishes the opportunity to live in Australia.
cclark@breakingmedia.com
WASHINGTON: The parlor game of where ‘will the top staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee go’ can be declared over. Peter Levine will be heading over to the Pentagon, where almost all long-time Democratic staff have headed since the Obama administration took power. He may be taking the newly created post of chief management…
PENTAGON: Ellen Pawlikowski helps decide what weapons the Air Force buys and manages the buying process, so when the lieutenant general says she likes autonomy and 3-D printing as the most promising capabilities for her service to develop as part of the new offset strategy, it’s worth listening. “This is Ellen Pawlikowski speaking,” she says in…
WASHINGTON: The blogosphere was filled yesterday with bilious smoke sparked by an Air Force story written at Luke Air Force Base about how the fuel trucks there were being painted a new color to keep fuel cooler for the F-35 fleet. Here’s the quote from the official Air Education and Training Command story that started it all: “We…
UPDATED: Heritage’s Dean Cheng Says US May Gain Insight Into PRC Space Organizations WASHINGTON: China has taken the unprecedented step of asking Air Force Space Command to share information about possible satellite and satellite debris collisions. The United States had been sharing so-called conjunction warnings with China through the State Department, but no one knew…
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s Transportation Command — the folks who move most everything for the military from Point A to Point B — are testing a new isolation unit to fit in a C-17 or C-130 aircraft, just 60 days after issuing the requirement. The head of TransCom, Gen. Paul Selva, told reporters this morning at a…
PENTAGON: For decades the tech gurus of Silicon Valley have pretty much left Pentagon business alone, letting the military stumble along and try to buy their wares within five years of their coming out. Take the story of former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, hungry for an iPad that could handle classified information. Couldn’t be…
UPDATED: Includes Link To NDAA Language Filed Late Tuesday; SASC Weapons Summary CAPITOL HILL: If you want to get some idea just how hard it will be to reduce the yearly increases in pay and benefits that have marked the last 13 years, look at the new defense policy bill out today. The senior leadership of the…
WASHINGTON: The Obama administration is reaping what it sowed. Toss out someone without good cause and few people will want to work for you once word gets around. Former defense policy undersecretary Michele Flournoy ducked out last week. Now Jeh Johnson, head of the Department of Homeland Security and former top lawyer at the Pentagon,…
There’s not much to say from the comfort of Washington about troops celebrating on the front lines around the world. They’re in Afghanistan battling the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Haqqani network, like the young man pictured in our top photo. They’re on the ground in Iraq (and probably Syria) battling the wily criminals who’ve joined ISIL. They’re…
UPDATED: Flournoy Pulls Herself Out Of SecDef Running WASHINGTON: Beset by a drubbing at the polls, a wildly troubled world, doubts about his strategic abilities, and after one of the weakest and most troubling nomination hearings in post-World War II history, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is now on his way out the door. The White House…
WASHINGTON: Lockheed and the government made it official today, signing the $4.7 billion eighth Low Rate Initial Production contract for the F-35. Here’s the full price and the official language: “Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $4,123,746,486 modification to a previously awarded fixed-price-incentive firm-target contract (N00019-13-C-0008) for…
WASHINGTON: Raytheon’s Next Generation Jammer underwent its first test flights at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake as the electronic warfare association’s annual conference got underway in October. The tests were performed to judge whether the system could successfully jam and disrupt enemy threat radars. This marks the first tests of the pod itself, the AESA…
WASHINGTON: Hard as it may be to believe in light of the F-35’s history, the carrier version of the plane completed its first shipboard developmental tests three days early. Now the program did build several days into the F-35C’s test schedule to embrace delays caused by weather or other unexpected problems, but the fact is…
WASHINGTON: The House Armed Services Committee will be led through the shoals of sequestration, military pay, weapons costs and a volatile world by a reform-minded and dynamic legislator. I’ve covered Rep. Mac Thornberry since before the turn of the century (that hurt) and have always found compelling his willingness to delve beneath the surface of what the…
