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 head of the Air Force’s Quadrennial Defense Review office made very clear today that the service will do all it can to protect the F-35 for a pretty compelling reason: “We must be able to project power in contested environments (A2/AD) and the Joint Strike Fighter is that machine.” Kwast told reporters after his public…
Dear Reader, with Congress close to irrelevant (and out of town anyway), the Defense Department bracing for the coming end of the world (slight exaggeration) and so many of DC’s denizens out of town and recharging for the September onslaught, this August probably will be particularly quiet. So we are experimenting with that terribly au…
WASHINGTON: Turmoil, fear and a certain resolute grimness marked this week at the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. The military scrambled to cope with a range of new threats as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Pentagon leadership begin to grapple with the grim future posed by the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. Put it all…
PENTAGON: In a grim presentation before the press corps, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel outlined deep cuts to the Army, Air Force and Navy he may have to make to cope with the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. Reaction was swift on Capitol HIll and the think tanks that inform so much of what senior…
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon and F-35 maker Lockheed Martin have agreed on the terms of a deal for the Defense Department to buy two lots of F-35s for $7 billion. The big question now is the average price per plane for each tranche (LRIP 6 and 7). While we’ve confirmed with two sources that the deal…
WASHINGTON: The American who leads the leading edge of our sword in the Pacific — the Air Force — worries that China‘s sometimes “aggressive approach” in using its fighters, bombers and ships to signal its territorial claims across the Pacific creates “the potential” for a serious incident in the region. But Air Force Gen. Herb…
WASHINGTON: The January grounding of the minesweeper USS Guardian in a Philippine coral reef was caused in large part by a National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) map that was, quite simply, wrong by eight nautical miles, Breaking Defense has learned. “It really was just a terrible fluke that caused the error,” NGA spokeswoman Christine Phillips said…
We don’t do this very often, mostly because it’s just so declasse to note the difficulty one’s competitors may have in matching one’s content, but today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on the grim and crucial conflict between the two contracts America has with its troops leaves us almost too satisfied to speak. The op-ed, by…
WASHINGTON: The recently retired senior admiral of the Navy, Adm. Gary Roughead, says the Obama administration must do much more across the government to ensure the Pacific pivot works and is well directed, joining his voice to four prominent House lawmakers. I asked Roughead after today’s hearing on the Pacific “rebalance” if he knew about…
UPDATED: With Great Rep. Turner Quote On Snowden WASHINGTON: “The damage assessment is still underway,” about the effects of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s monitoring of web and email traffic, a typically cool and careful commander of US Strategic Command told me this morning. But it’s definitely bad. “It’s going to take…
WASHINGTON: After years of grudging refusal to do much more than discuss the possibility of talks on a space code of conduct, China has begun discussions on a multilateral code as part of a larger UN effort, as well as committed to specific goals known in the trade as “transparency and confidence-building measures” (TCBMs). “It is…
Tomorrow is the forty-fourth anniversary of the day a human first walked on another celestial body, our Moon. So it’s only fitting and proper that we do this — offer our readers a spectacular shot of a heavy rocket, the Atlas V, carrying an enormous military communications satellite into orbit. The Navy satellite built by Lockheed…
CAPITOL HILL: The next Pentagon budget will almost certainly include increased spending for the Navy, Marines, and Air Force to boost their presence and operations in the Asia-Pacific region. That’s because the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon’s strategic review found we…
DoD uses FAR Part 12 acquisitions to save hundreds of millions of dollars in “of a type” systems like civil landing systems with applicability to military aircraft.
DoD uses FAR Part 12 acquisitions to save hundreds of millions of dollars in “of a type” systems like civil landing systems with applicability to military aircraft.
Dear Reader, with Congress close to irrelevant (and out of town anyway), the Defense Department bracing for the coming end of the world (slight exaggeration) and so many of DC’s denizens out of town and recharging for the September onslaught, this August probably will be particularly quiet. So we are experimenting with that terribly au…
By Colin Clark