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October 2009
The defense department and other federal agencies engaged in technology work routinely hire outside consultants to assist government employees in monitoring contractor performance on programs. The work is called "systems engineering and technical assistance" (SETA), and it is an integral part of
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Date:
10/30/2009
Want to see a scary, scary chart on America’s fighters? Well, get ready for a dizzy drop that will remind you of a black diamond ski run or one of those rogue waves on the Alaska fishing shows.
Here are the Pentagon’s purchases of fighters from 1975 to today and projected out to 2025. Note
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Date:
10/30/2009
It is over in Afghanistan. Tom Friedman has weighed in on the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan. In today’s New York Times America’s minister without portfolio to the world declares “We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the
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Date:
10/29/2009
America's military is just about the best trained, best equipped fighting force the world has ever seen. Everybody in Washington seems to think that's a good thing. Maybe it isn't. Secretary Gates cited an estimate this summer that the U.S. generates nearly half of all global military outlays.
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Date:
10/29/2009
As the delay in making a decision on troop levels in Afghanistan drags on, it seems increasingly apparent that the problem is not one of strategy but of personalities. The current situation seems like an odd turn of events for an administration that started out so well in its relations with the
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Date:
10/28/2009
BAE Systems did something on Monday that no major defense contractor has ever done before. It picked a woman to be its Chief Operating Officer. It also named that woman, Linda Hudson, Chief Executive Officer of its $20 billion U.S. unit, which generates about 57% of the parent company's revenues.
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10/27/2009
There is a growing sense among observers that the Obama Administration does not understand or even, perhaps, care about the defense industrial base. In the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s, the administration has allowed the Department of Defense (DoD) to cancel programs such as the
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Date:
10/27/2009
Rumors are rife within the Pentagon that defense secretary Robert Gates will depart public service sometime in the next few months, perhaps as early as December. Reporters who travel with Gates say that an early exit has always seemed implicit in his comments about future plans. But when we first
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Date:
10/27/2009
There is general agreement among economists that the financial relationship between the United States and China is unsustainable over the long-term. At present, this country relies on foreigners, specifically China, to finance our trade deficits -- thereby allowing us to maintain our standard of
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Date:
10/26/2009
On October 23, a newsletter called Inside the Air Force reported that a Pentagon Joint Estimating Team (JET) is predicting big cost increases and schedule delays in the F-35 fighter program over the next five years. The F-35 is a multi-role aircraft being developed to meet the needs of three
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Date:
10/26/2009
The Jack Kemp Foundation turned on its lights this week, and held a successful fundraiser in downtown Washington. It will be interesting to see if the foundation can live up to its namesake. If I was management over there, I wouldn't even try.
When Kemp died in May all sorts of luvey-duvey
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Date:
10/24/2009
Last month, the U.S. Navy test-fired two of its Trident II (D-5) Fleet Ballistic Missiles in the Atlantic Ocean. The Navy launches the missiles periodically to make sure they are working correctly. The two missiles fired in September performed flawlessly -- which means that all 129 flight tests
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Date:
10/23/2009
Proof of the Navy’s commitment to achieving decision superiority will show through on whether they continue full support for the suite of programs to guarantee it. These range from battle manager platforms like E-2D, the Advanced Hawkeye to other cyber and electronic warfare programs.
Roughead
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Date:
10/23/2009
For more than a decade, the national security community has spilt an amazing amount of ink discussing the so-called anti-access, area denial (AA/AD) threat. For the few of you who have been spared the barrage of reports and discussions of this particular problem, it involves our adversaries’ use
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Date:
10/23/2009
We promised you the Lexington blog would keep a close eye on the defense department insourcing and outsourcing fight, as well as emerging technology issues and program pressures. I hope you have been finding our past coverage useful. Is there anyone else out there that comes even remotely close
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10/22/2009
The greatest challenge to U.S. national security today is not any specific foreign weapons system, terrorist leader or hostile military organization. Rather, what is new and challenging for U.S. national security is the extent to which our adversaries and competitors are collaborating, learning
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Date:
10/22/2009
Don’t wait on the QDR – the visionary thinking in the Pentagon right now is coming from the Chief of Naval Operations. Admiral Gary Roughead is looking hard at what it takes to “achieve decision superiority.” He’s pinpointed that tactical information flow is the centerpiece of future warfare and
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Date:
10/22/2009
Now that defense secretary Robert Gates has delayed selection of a new combat search-and-rescue-helicopter, the joint force has to figure out how it wants to handle the mission in the future. Something needs to be done soon, because the Air Force's existing fleet of HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters
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Date:
10/22/2009
In April, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared his intention to reform how the defense department uses contractors. In order to improve the way the Pentagon manages major acquisition programs, he declared an intent to replace 11,000 contractors with 9,000 government acquisition professionals.
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Date:
10/21/2009
The North American arm of European aerospace company EADS disclosed yesterday that chief executive officer Ralph Crosby would be succeeded by former NASA head Sean O'Keefe. Crosby will become non-executive chairman of the unit when O'Keefe takes over the CEO's job on November 1. On paper, O'Keefe
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Date:
10/21/2009
President Obama just signaled he’s willing to look at more nuclear power for electricity generation. “There’s no reason why technologically we can’t employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way,” he said in a recent public meeting in New Orleans. “Japan does it and France does it and it doesn’t
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10/20/2009
The biggest setback that Boeing's defense business has encountered in this decade came when the government decided to scale back the company's role in the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA). FIA was supposed to provide the next generation of imaging spy satellites, so when Boeing beat 40-year incumbent
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Date:
10/20/2009
The military's biggest overseas supplier of construction and warfighter support services has a new head. KBR, formerly the Kellogg, Brown & Root units of Halliburton, announced yesterday that it had appointed William C. Bodie as president of its North American and Defense business. Bodie, former
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Date:
10/20/2009
This week's conference of House and Senate appropriators to iron out differences on the fiscal 2010 defense budget provides a setting for the latest cliffhanger in a long-running story -- whether the scrappy C-17 airlifter will survive, or finally cease production. If appropriators side with the
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Date:
10/19/2009
There has been a spate of reports that the U.S. intelligence community is considering rewriting its famous 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which concluded that Iran did not have an active program to develop nuclear weapons. These reports raise two serious questions. The first and obvious
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Date:
10/19/2009
On September 30, Pentagon technology chief Ashton Carter directed the Air Force to fund new jet engines for the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) fleet. The planes carry a unique radar that can track and image moving ground targets -- some as small as individual terrorists
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Date:
10/19/2009
Multiple sources engaged in developing vital Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellites say that recent reports of setbacks are wrong. The first geosynchronous satellite in the planned constellation is on track for launch next year, they state, and two sensors from the same architecture already
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Date:
10/16/2009
Readers of the Lexington Institute’s blog are familiar with our concern about the deindustrialization of the United States. The loss of manufacturing capability and hundreds of thousands of generally well-paying jobs means lower national economic performance, a deepening trade deficit, reduced government
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Date:
10/16/2009
I am a life-long Republican. I worked on numerous political campaigns (most lost), was a senior aide to two Republican Congressmen, a Republican Governor from a big state, and volunteered on Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign for president. (I'm sorry to report I was for Gerald Ford in 1976, but that
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Date:
10/16/2009
One of the pillars of the Obama Administration’s approach to national security is called building partnership capacity. The idea is to help partner countries do more for themselves so that the United States is able to do less. This concept is doubly important when it comes to Iraq since the plan
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Date:
10/15/2009
When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited the Texas plant where Lockheed Martin plans to assemble the F-35 joint strike fighter on August 31, he gave a big boost to the company's most important program. Gates said the aircraft was essential to the nation's future security, and that the development
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Date:
10/15/2009
Anyone worried about more defense program cancellations or expanded bureaucratic control of the U.S. economy should note the improvement in President Obama's job approval rating. After falling to the low 50s in late August, and stabilizing right around his 2008 vote of 52.9% through early October,
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Date:
10/14/2009
If you thought signs of economic recovery would bring a relaxation of trade tensions, guess again. In China's case, the friction with U.S. producers looks likely to grow even as recovery unfolds. Following imposition of tariffs on Chinese tire exports due to dumping (selling below home-market
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Date:
10/13/2009
Remember when the Stryker armored fighting vehicle was the Army’s red-headed stepchild? The brainchild of then Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, Stryker was criticized for being wheeled instead of tracked, too light or too heavy, unable to sustain itself in combat absent heavy forces and requiring
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Date:
10/13/2009
Defense secretary Robert Gates has taken a lot of grief for killing programs. But the worst idea for killing a military program this year did not come from Secretary Gates. It came from the Air Force and Navy. They want to cancel their versions of the Joint Tactical Radio System for airborne, maritime
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Date:
10/12/2009
According to reports over the past few days, the Obama Administration is thinking about rolling out a new strategy for Afghanistan, one that will require only a relatively modest increase in U.S. troops. The White House has discovered that our fight is not with the Taliban or the other insurgent groups
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Date:
10/12/2009
The future survivability of U.S. Navy carrier strike groups operating in the Western Pacific has been called into question by the discovery that the People's Liberation Army is conducting tests of technology for a maneuvering ballistic-missile warhead. Maneuvering in the terminal stage of a ballistic
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Date:
10/12/2009
There have not been a lot of good news stories this decade, but one you cannot discount is the courage and fortitude of our democratic allies in Iraq. They have held up under a terrible, violent onslaught against their people, and made real progress building an open society and new democracy in Arabia.
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Date:
10/12/2009
The threat of White House retribution doesn't seem to be stopping legislators from adding money for programs that the Pentagon opposes. House appropriators added $485 million to the fiscal 2010 defense budget for presidential helicopters that President Obama wanted to kill -- an add that will probably
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Date:
10/9/2009
When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates canceled the Air Force's planned re-competition of a next-generation combat search-and-rescue (CSAR) helicopter earlier this year, it wasn't so clear where that mission was headed. While each military service possesses helicopters that can be used to recover
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Date:
10/9/2009
My last three postings have discussed some of the factors in a military option to strike a tough target set -- Iranian nuclear facilities. Wait a few years, and the conditions for success in such a strike could get even tougher. First, if they want to, Iran could disperse more and more of its
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Date:
10/9/2009
In their effort to define the metrics for sizing the U.S. military, Pentagon officials leading the 2009 QDR are trying to differentiate their work from previous quadrennial reviews. In the past the dominant metric was the number of major theater wars the military could fight. Since the end of the
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Date:
10/9/2009
Since this is the cyberspace age Washington will have the ability to call off a strike against Iran’s nuclear targets almost at the last minute. It’s a real possibility due to the high stakes and it’s happened before. In 1998, the Clinton White House turned back a multi-nation aircraft and TLAM
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Date:
10/9/2009
Assume conditions deteriorate and the international community bands together in favor of a pre-emptive, punitive strike on some or all of Iran’s nuclear sites. The heavy lifting would fall to the only two stealth aircraft in the world today – the B-2 bomber and the F-22 fighter.
Most likely
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Date:
10/8/2009
If you want to understand why voters quickly lose faith in politicians elected to reform the political process, check out what Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has discovered about plans to develop a new presidential helicopter. Hinchey's district was hit hard when the Obama Administration decided
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Date:
10/8/2009
Attacking Iran’s nuclear sites is a big topic of discussion. A new Pew poll from October 6 found a whopping 61% of Americans agree its “more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action” than to stand aside and let Iran acquire weapons.
Leaving
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Date:
10/8/2009
Anybody who has tried to lift a seventh-grade history textbook knows that Amazon's Kindle 2 e-reader is the wave of the future. Books will always have a place in our culture, but e-readers are just a lot easier (and cheaper) to use for many types of reading. So it's comforting to know that the
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Date:
10/8/2009
According to press reports, President Obama told Congressional leaders on Tuesday that he would not substantially reduce American forces in Afghanistan or shift the mission to just hunting terrorists there. At the same time he appears to be leaning against a major expansion of American forces, the
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Date:
10/7/2009
The recent finding by the World Trade Organization that European countries illegally subsidized the development of Airbus planes has created a problem for parent company EADS. It wants to prove it isn't hurting American workers, but it also wants to keep the subsidies flowing. What to do? One
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Date:
10/7/2009
The U.S. dollar fell on foreign exchange markets today following a report in The Independent, a British newspaper, that China, Japan, Russia and France were working with Arab oil states to eliminate the dollar as the main currency for conducting international petroleum transactions. The
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Date:
10/6/2009
Program managers and acquisition executives in the Department of Defense are experiencing increasing pressure to find cost savings in their programs. It is generally a good thing for those with the responsibility of spending the public’s money to be careful to get the best price for the goods and
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Date:
10/6/2009
For the last several years, General Dynamics chairman Nicholas Chabraja has faced a peculiar problem. It's the kind of problem only successful people have. After a decade of continuously increasing earnings at GD, Chabraja's name had become synonymous with shareholder value in the defense business.
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Date:
10/6/2009
Defense secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly stated that his goal for the Pentagon's future budgets is to maintain stable spending after inflation. That certainly seems necessary if the Pentagon is to achieve the prevail-prevent-preserve-prepare goals set forth on the Quadrennial Defense Review.
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Date:
10/5/2009
In case you haven't heard, SAIC recently disclosed it is moving its corporate headquarters to Northern Virginia. Responses to this announcement have generally fallen into one of two categories: (1) "What's SAIC?" and (2) "I thought their headquarters was already here!" SAIC is Science Applications
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Date:
10/5/2009
Northrop Grumman's stunning defeat of Boeing yesterday in the competition to provide contractor logistics support for the KC-10 tanker suggests that Boeing's relationship with its biggest customer -- the Air Force -- is in bad shape. Over the last two years, the Air Force has selected Northrop
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Date:
10/2/2009
The Obama defense department has been fortunate to inherit several civil servants who are best of breed in the logistics sector, including Gary Motsek, Randy Fowler, and Alan Estevez. President Obama has also put a highly regarded political appointee, Dr. Ashton Carter, in charge of Acquisition,
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Date:
10/1/2009
Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg Business News reported yesterday that the first geosynchronous satellite in the nation's next-generation missile warning constellation will be delayed yet again. This must set some sort of new land-speed record in the military space program -- for slowness -- since it
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Date:
10/1/2009
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries the story that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates may be losing his affinity for counterinsurgency, the dominant theme of the national defense strategy and the in-process Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The newspaper reports a senior defense official as
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Date:
10/1/2009