Bill Greenwalt worked for almost a decade as the professional aide in charge of arms export policies at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Under the Bush administration he took the lead on industrial base issues as deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy. Now Bill has moved to a gig where he can speak a bit […]
The best term to describe arms export reforms, much touted by the Obama administration and some hopeful membersof Congress, is slow. Irrelevant to this century might be better. The nature of the arms business has changed so much from the late 20th century because of the growth in global manufacturing that debating which widgets […]
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
PARIS: Our first video from the 2013 Paris Air Show. To loyal readers, we hope you celebrated our second anniversary yesterday. Our web site went live on June 15, 2011 at the last Paris Air Show. Since arriving in Paris on Friday, I’ve interviewed or taken part in media roundtables with more than a dozen […]
GILLIAM COUNTY, OREGON: This isolated test site in rural Oregon is where Boeing subsidiary Insitu takes its drones “to torture them,” said site manager Jerry McWithey. Temperates soar to 110 degrees in summer and plummet to 10 degrees — with 50-knot winds — in winter. The hot-and-cold ordeal the drones go through is a microcosm […]
NATIONAL PRESS CLUB: The ambitious arms export reforms proposed and largely prepared by the Obama administration may founder if the White House changes hands. The State, Commerce and Defense departments have completed “for all intents and purposes” the drafts of the major reforms after a week of all-day meetings. The administration has built a new […]
WASHINGTON: Just when United Technologies’s Pratt & Whitney subsidiary seemed to have put the troubles with its F135 engine for the Joint Strike fighter behind it, there comes news that the company violated the so-called Tianamen sanctions and illegally sold engine control software to China for use in an attack helicopter. Perhaps worse than the […]
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
As America’s Space Shuttle program comes to an end, commentators often link that event to the view that the United States is abrogating leadership in space to the Chinese. The Shuttle, however, is one part of a much larger US space program, and replacing it will be part of a new US approach to space, […]
Paris: Any time one American defense company buys another it can trigger government review for a host of reasons, from antitrust to security concerns. When an American company financed by a foreign entity tries to buy another American company it triggers review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). It is […]