Archives
Recent
October 2010
Reports have started to emerge that former Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security Advisor, Colin Powell is under consideration to replace Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. This would be in keeping with the Obama Administration’s tendency to look outside
. . . Read more
Date:
10/29/2010
Earlier this year, the White House decided to rethink the government's next-generation weather satellite, splitting the effort into two simpler programs that would be easier to execute. One program will serve the needs of civilian users, and the other will serve the needs of military users. Dividing
. . . Read more
Date:
10/28/2010
There have been a flurry of news reports of late to the effect that the Department of Homeland Security is taking steps to cancel its once-troubled Secure Border Initiative Network (SBINet) program. SBINet was an experiment to see if high-tech surveillance systems could be deployed at the U.S. borders
. . . Read more
Date:
10/27/2010
The key to the utility of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is its ability to deploy different mission modules in response to changing requirements. The original concept for the LCS envisioned three mission packages, one for anti-submarine warfare, one for anti-surface warfare and one for mine countermeasures
. . . Read more
Date:
10/26/2010
Every few months I visit the Massachusetts town my mother's immigrant family came to a hundred years ago in search of work at the textile mills which dotted the New England coast. Like many municipalities near Boston, Plymouth is a fairly cosmopolitan place where people listen to National Public
. . . Read more
Date:
10/25/2010
I was feeling pretty good about authoring the lead opinion piece in Space News this week concerning why a manned landing on Mars must become the goal of NASA's human spaceflight program. The title of the essay was "Mars is the Only Destination That Matters," because in my view a mission
. . . Read more
Date:
10/22/2010
Five years ago the Pentagon had a plan for how it was going to keep the cost of each F-35 Joint Strike Fighter low. The plan was all about economies of scale. Basically, the more planes you produce each year, the less each plane costs. Sort of like building cars. So back then, the plan was to
. . . Read more
Date:
10/21/2010
Yesterday, the British government announced a series of major defense cuts. They were every bit as severe as early reports had suggested. Among the major decisions are reductions in the number of Army brigades, withdrawal of all British forces (20,000 people) from Germany, mothballing much of
. . . Read more
Date:
10/20/2010
The Navy's close-lipped effort to pick a winning design for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program is generating more rumors than Lindsay Lohan's love-life. Maybe it's the approaching mid-term elections or maybe it's the lack of official information about how the selection process is progressing,
. . . Read more
Date:
10/20/2010
Israeli sources are reporting that the Hamas terrorist organization is deploying man-portable air defense missiles (MANPADs). Israeli air operations near the border with Gaza, the Hamas stronghold, have already been affected. The missiles in question are reported to be versions of the Russian Strela
. . . Read more
Date:
10/20/2010
David Wood, the respected military correspondent of Politics Daily, has written a shocking story of stress among soldiers in the U.S. Army. Based on the findings of an internal investigation commissioned by Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Wood concludes "more soldiers are
. . . Read more
Date:
10/19/2010
The original idea of NATO essentially as an alliance of equals standing shoulder to shoulder in the defense of one another is dead. It died with the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the threat of massive physical aggression or of the political intimidation of individual NATO members. NATO's
. . . Read more
Date:
10/19/2010
If you want to understand why China presents a threat to American power and prosperity, don't ask the Pentagon. The Pentagon is populated by people who think constantly about weapons and war, so it will point to indicators of China's growing military prowess, like investment in new submarines and
. . . Read more
Date:
10/18/2010
During the early days of the new millennium, "military transformation" was the driving force behind U.S. defense plans. Simply stated, military transformation was an attempt to organize the joint force around the new technologies emerging from the information revolution. Proponents of transformation
. . . Read more
Date:
10/15/2010
All leaks emerging out of the new British government's defense review indicate a budgetary bloodbath is in the offing. Reports indicate that the review was seeking cuts as deep as 15 percent in the UK’s defense budget. Later reports suggested reductions in the range of 10 percent. In addition,
. . . Read more
Date:
10/15/2010
A debate is heating up over how the U.S. should approach the security of regions of interest. One side of the debate, represented most recently by professor Robert Pape, argues for reduced U.S. presence on the ground overseas and reliance more on intervention by means of offshore air and naval power.
. . . Read more
Date:
10/14/2010
The Army's air defense portfolio is taking a beating as the service downsizes its modernization plans. We reported on September 30 that Army leaders want to kill a program called SLAMRAAM that was aimed at fielding an air defense system more capable than the short-range Stinger but more affordable
. . . Read more
Date:
10/14/2010
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program could be the single largest and most complex aircraft acquisition program of the 21st Century. The current plan is to produce some 2,440 planes to equip the US military and around 1,700 for as many as two dozen foreign customers. An international consortium
. . . Read more
Date:
10/13/2010
A surprising fight has broken out between the people who operate airliners and the people who manufacture them over the role the U.S. Export-Import Bank plays in financing foreign purchases of U.S. planes. The Ex-Im Bank, as it is widely known, is the principle export credit agency of the federal
. . . Read more
Date:
10/13/2010
Remember the early days of personal computing and the internet? College dropouts tinkering with new technology in their garages. Continuous debate about standards. Scruffy innovators leading startup enterprises. Disdain for the old way of doing business. And everywhere the conviction that whatever
. . . Read more
Date:
10/12/2010
Many recent commentaries on Bob Woodward’s new book about the strategic review the Obama Administration undertook before deciding on its current strategy for Afghanistan have remarked about the resistance from his military advisors to his efforts to find alternatives to an open-ended commitment
. . . Read more
Date:
10/8/2010
On October 6 the Heritage Foundation released an issue brief as part of its "Foundry" series that questioned the danger of U.S. dependence on China for so-called "rare earths." Rare earths are exotic materials used in a wide range of military and commercial applications. There are no ready substitutes
. . . Read more
Date:
10/8/2010
The great revolution to emerge from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts is airborne ISR. From having literally only a handful of manned and unmanned aerial ISR sensors at the start of these conflicts, the U.S. military now has almost ten thousand deployed. They range in size and capability from the
. . . Read more
Date:
10/7/2010
Over the last 40 years -- roughly since the first Earth Day was held in 1970 -- Americans have become more environmentally conscious than ever before. Environmentalism is arguably the most successful philosophical movement in modern times. But like other ideas that have seized the popular culture,
. . . Read more
Date:
10/6/2010
If you were a betting person, what chances would you give the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program of actually producing a new system? The GCV is the Army’s attempt to salvage something from the debacle of the Future Combat System program which was sought to create a futuristic system-of-systems
. . . Read more
Date:
10/5/2010
The Pentagon’s drive to improve acquisition efficiency is in full swing. Senior defense officials from the Secretary on down have adopted the mantra of efficiency as wholeheartedly as their predecessors did the slogan of transformation. Unfortunately, this attempt at reform is as likely to fail as all
. . . Read more
Date:
10/4/2010
The U.S. Air Force currently operates two types of jet-powered cargo planes capable of traveling intercontinental distances: the giant C-5 Galaxy and the smaller but more nimble C-17 Globemaster III. There are 111 Galaxies in the fleet, and the service plans to own a total of 222 Globemasters when
. . . Read more
Date:
10/4/2010
The rapid growth of China's state-influenced industrial complex is the big economic success story of the new century. The anemic performance of America's free-enterprise system is a different kind of story. Somehow, the neo-socialists who run China have managed to sustain double-digit growth during
. . . Read more
Date:
10/1/2010