The threat of a $500 billion defense sequestration looms as a result of the Super Committee failure – a prospect that Secretary Panetta has called “potentially ruinous.” Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon and some of his Senate colleagues have promised to introduce legislation to reverse the cuts. Meanwhile, the […]
Washington’s handling of the national debt crisis is sounding a lot like a script for a Hollywood action movie with all this talk of sequestration “triggers” and “doomsday.” The thrills will start in a few weeks when the congressional Super Committee will unveil its recommendations to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal budget […]
As threats rapidly evolve, digital engineering, manufacturing capacity and robust supply chains are critical to meeting challenges.
It may surprise many, but today’s Air Force cannot hold every contested target at risk, a fundamental strategic goal. Last week, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and other senior leaders at the Air Force Association’s annual air and space conference made a clear and compelling case for long-range strike. The Air Force plans to fund […]
We all know the White House has issued guidance to the federal agencies, including the Defense Department, to start planning for the “doomsday” budget scenario where Congress stalls on debt reduction requirements and triggers a set of automatic spending cuts. The challenge facing senior military officials is whether planning for those cuts is the right […]
The U.S. military faces a readiness crisis. A recent Congressional hearing generated headlines about the Navy’s surface fleet falling into disrepair. But that was news four years ago. Across all the services, long-standing readiness problems are worsening; breakdowns are happening more frequently. Several years ago, an Air Force F-15C literally broke in half during flight. […]
Politicians will say it’s easy to cut the defense budget. Just wring out the waste, fraud and abuse and… voila! Unfortunately for them, there’s no line in the Pentagon’s budget labeled “waste, fraud and abuse.” And so, when cuts are made, they often wind up reducing investment in specific capabilities sorely needed by those in […]
The Sixth Domain is not defined by geography. It’s a new kind of conflict in which autonomy and networked systems allow thousand-dollar consumer electronics to destroy multi-million-dollar conventional weapons systems.