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WASHINGTON: Two years ago, the Obama administration announced its “Pacific Pivot” (hastily renamed a “rebalance”), but crises keep yanking US attention back from a rising China to the unstable cradle of civilization (as we predicted at the time): Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic, Syria disintegrated into an increasingly sectarian…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: Sean O’Keefe, who led the bold but ultimately unsuccessful campaign by EADS North America to win the contract to build a new airborne tanker for the United States, is stepping down from his post as CEO and chairman of the American portion of the company now known as Airbus Group Inc. But O’Keefe is…
By Colin ClarkEnterprise-wide training: the Army’s $3.5B program for multi-service combat readiness
The competition for Warfighter Training and Readiness Solutions will bring together training networks, combat training centers and live ranges across the DoD enterprise.
“Cyber” is the buzzword of the decade in the defense world, so overhyped and overused it has lost almost all meaning. Intelligent discussion of cyber threats is a rare gem indeed. But even experts who shed real light on the dark corners of cyberspace consistently miss a crucial dimension of both the threats and the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The Navy, is, hands down, the service in the best shape for 2014. Every act of belligerent idiocy from Beijing – and there’ve been a lot of them lately – makes the Navy budget an easier sell. In stark contrast to the Army, the Navy has the central role in the new Pacific-focused strategy, a high-tech threat…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Millennium Space Systems is delivering on critical missile tracking constellation
With programs like MTC, Millennium Space Systems is redefining what it means to be an operational prime – rapidly delivering operational small sat constellations on rapid timelines.
Multi-Domain Operations: Global C2 and Joint Operations
PENTAGON: OK, I’m lying. I’m at home typing this because it’s Christmas Eve here in Washington, but my heart is at the Pentagon… One of the enduring holiday treats for military folks is NORAD’s Santa tracking website. When I checked this evening Old Saint Nick was somewhere over far northwestern Chad and was estimated to…
By Colin Clark
Yesterday’s Senate passage of the budget deal took $20 billion worth of pressure off the Pentagon. But for the Army the deal just dials the pain back down from “agonizing” to “acute.” The largest service has more to lose in the post-war drawdown (which happens to have begun before the war is actually over). In…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Everyone now knows Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon placed far too much faith in the benefits of concurrency — that is, building production model aircraft while finishing ground and flight testing. But we’ve had relatively few data points to illustrate the issue. Thanks to a Request for Proposals issued Dec. 16, however, we now know…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: The A-10 Warthog is ugly, tough, lethal, and fairly flexible. Its famous 30mm gun can destroy tanks or other armored vehicles with remarkable efficiency, not to mention enemy troops. Its titanium tub of a cockpit protects the plane’s pilot from most ground fire. Its pilots are trained to fly low and slow and to…
By Colin Clark and Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Breaking Defense daily newsletter
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Just hours before the Senate is set to vote on the last-ditch budget deal, the head of the powerful Aerospace Industries Association complimented Congress for coming to its senses – but, said Marion Blakey, this had better be just the beginning. “I personally do not believe the American public likes to have the wool pulled…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
AIR FORCE PLANT 4, FORT WORTH: No one should believe that the battle between Boeing and Lockheed for the right to build Navy fighters is over. Boeing keeps pushing the low cost, readiness and availability of the F-18. It’s here, it’s proven, and, they say, a new F/A-18E/F Super Hornet will cost just over $50…
By Colin Clark
Occasionally journalists find a gem, buried in the Potomac muck. They’re hard to find and often even harder to convince they should be seen by the public. Harald Malmgren spends most of his time buried deep in the darkest muck of Washington — that almost impenetrable stuff surrounding economics. But he sometimes rises forth and…
By Harald Malmgren
Guam is America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the South Pacific, the fulcrum of the fabled Pacific “pivot.” It’s also kind of a mess. With a GDP per capita less than a third the US average, an earthquake-damaged harbor, geriatric generators that black out the entire island roughly twice a year, drinking water periodically contaminated with…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: China is hurtling headlong towards a major conflict in the Pacific – but that course can change, one of America’s most creative strategists says. Just four years ago, Beijing welcomed a delegation of 600 Japanese lawmakers and other influentials led by political kingmaker Ichiro Ozawa, and China-Japan relations were warming up so fast that some…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Why cloud modernization is critical to multi-domain operations
JADC2 is a forcing function, driving digital transformation of network infrastructure.
The Littoral Combat Ship has come under light fire from Congress because they worry especially about findings by operational testers that the ships cannot survive a firefight. Norman Friedman, a consultant at Gryphon Technologies with more than 30 military books to his name, argues in the following piece that critics need to consider that “change…
By Norman Friedman