As budgets tighten, will the National Guard and the regular Army go to war? Not if Gen. Frank Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau, can help it. Peppered with questions about the conflict today at the National Press Club, Grass carefully redirected almost every one. In fact, he said, December’s last-ditch budget deal to delay […]
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 […]
Do more with less: streamline workflows, reduce duplication, invest upfront to save long-term.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
WASHINGTON: Buried amidst the hundreds of pages of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2014 is an unusually sharp rebuke to a high-profile program, the Navy’s controversial Littoral Combat Ship. The defense policy bill has yet to pass the Senate, but assuming the current language stands – and there’s tremendous political pressure not to mess […]
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
Budget cuts won’t make the Air Force give up any of its current missions, the service’s Chief of Staff promised today. But, Gen. Mark Welsh acknowledged, the cuts will force it to do those missions with different and perhaps not optimal aircraft. Yes, the famous A-10 “Warthog” is “the best at close air support” – […]
As bitter as the budget battle has become, there’s no topic more toxic than pay and benefits for military personnel. Pentagon budgeteers and the top brass warn that increasing compensation costs, especially for health care, are growing at an unsustainable pace that threatens every other priority from weapons procurement to combat training. But personnel advocates […]
WASHINGTON: Why don’t we make the bad guys bleed money for a change? That’s the strategic insight that helped us win the Cold War, and it seems especially timely today as the nation wobbles back – we hope – from the brink of yet another budget crisis. Delayed by vote calls and overshadowed by the […]
Much of official Washington likes the budget deal struck this week by Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan, chairs of the two chambers budget committees. No more stupid and debilitating showdowns. No more federal shutdowns. Perhaps Congress can actually do what it is expected to do and pass some spending bills. At least we […]
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
UPDATE: NDAA Bill Would Block Retirement of A-10s AND Global Hawks WASHINGTON: Some members of Congress won’t like this, no matter how compelling the numbers are. But Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said this morning that mothballing the beloved A-10 Warthog fleet could save the service a substantial $3.7 billion, a compelling […]
THE NEWSEUM: In a glass-walled conference center overlooking the snow-shrouded US Capitol, three legislators expressed guarded optimism that Congress could reach a modest budget deal. [UPDATED: The chairs of the House and Senate budget committees announced a plan late Tuesday night, but it has yet to pass into law]. That’s the good news. The bad news […]
http://youtu.be/IWJeqrvoF6M WASHINGTON: The Boeing Super Hornet might have a new best friend in Congress. A year after the Saint Louis-built fighter jet’s biggest backer in Congress, then-Rep. Todd Akin, went down in electoral flames because of controversial remarks about “legitimate rape,” the influential chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on Seapower, Rep. Randy Forbes, […]
Generals, admirals, members of Congress, captains of industry, and two Defense Secretaries in a row have been pounding the drums for nearly two years on the dangers of sequestration. So far, it appears hardly anyone is listening outside the Beltway — or even on Capitol Hill. What is appalling is “the lack of engagement by […]