Defense contractors are gearing up to show off their latest at the Washington, DC’s biggest conference of the year, the Association of the US Army’s conference in town next week. Don’t expect many earthshaking announcements at AUSA from the Army itself, which is ramping down its presence and spending at the event significantly. The real […]
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA: The Pentagon should brace for another $250 billion or more in cuts even if sequestration does not occur and must revolutionize how and what it buys, warned Hoss Cartwright, former vice-chairman of the Joint Staff, in a speech that savaged sacred cows from the Joint Strike Fighter to cybersecurity to the AirSea […]
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
Robbin Laird, a member of the AOL Board of Contributors, is a well known supporter of the F-35. When he read Sen. McCain’s recent criticism of the program Laird immediately began to pen a rebuttal. We present his analysis and commentary. The whirling dervish of the Senate has struck again. Rather than rebuilding US and […]
UPDATED WITH PENTAGON RESPONSE Capitol Hill: Faced with a torrent of counterfeit parts that pose a serious risk to the lives of American servicemen and to the performance of sophisticated weapons, Sen. Carl Levin pledged today to push for new laws and policies to help curb the problem. Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services […]
Washington: They are big. They were bad. But their time is past so the U.S. government has very carefully pulled to pieces the biggest nuclear weapons we ever built. Taking apart the B-53 “is a major accomplishment that has made the world safer and for which everyone involved should be proud,” said Deputy Secretary of […]
Aboard the USS Wasp: The sleek, angular plane pulls up to the flight line. The jet’s single engine rumbles slowly while waiting for the high-sign to takeoff. Once the member of the deck crew threw his thumbs up, the jet’s center fan — which gives the F-35 the ability to take off from smaller carriers […]
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
Washington: If you want proof that budgets are getting tighter and the Pentagon gets the message, just look at the last two days. One system is dead and two are badly wounded, potentially totaling cuts of more than $22 billion. The Army made it sort of official yesterday that the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and […]
Washington: News reports appear to confirm weeks of worries by senior White House and congressional officials that large numbers of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles have gone missing in Libya. ABC News is reporting that a secret White House meeting discussed the disappearance of 20,000 “portable, heat-seeking” missiles. They quote Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security […]
President Obama’s new counterterrorism strategy reflects a profound misreading of the nature of the global transnational threat. If we follow this strategy for a few years we will be right back where we were on September 10, 2001. The new blueprint misses what should be the primary goal of U.S. counterterrorism strategy: to prevent the […]
Washington: After a 25-year career in the national security arena, much of it spent in Washington, defense analyst and Oklahoma native Dakota Wood is heading home. Wood, a former Marine Corps officer and now defense analyst at the prestigious Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has joined the growing pool of GOP candidates vying to […]
Do more with less: streamline workflows, reduce duplication, invest upfront to save long-term.
UPDATED Cherry Point, NC: The Marine Corps is pushing some of its fighter aircraft to the breaking point, as the service waits for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Marine Corps fighter squadrons in Afghanistan have racked up thousands of flight hours on their legacy F/A-18 Hornets, scraping the ceiling of the 9,000 to 10,000-hour cap […]
Washington: The Pentagon email traffic is burning up with whispers that the White House has told the Pentagon to plan for an additional $100 billion in cuts for 2013. The planning guidance was reportedly issued to insure that the Pentagon would be ready should the Super Congress fail to implement $1.2 trillion in cuts and […]
This piece first appeared in our sister publication, AOL Gov. The Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace has attracted its share of attention and criticism since it was released last month. For instance, critics from outside the Department believe the document is written at such a high level, it offers little of new […]
UPDATED Washington: A recent Navy decision to deactivate one of its aircraft carrier groups could be a sign of things to come for the service’s carrier fleet. For more news and information on the swiftly-changing defense industry, please sign up for the Breaking Defense newsletter. You can also catch us on Twitter @BreakingDefense. On Monday, […]