Archives
Recent
February 2013
Airpower is central to any counterinsurgency campaign. This is nowhere more evident than in Afghanistan with its combination of difficult geography, a lack of infrastructure, dispersed population and uncontrolled borders. Carrier-based F/A-18s as well as B-1, B-2 and B-52 strategic bombers played
. . . Read more
Date:
2/28/2013
The Pentagon’s program manager for the F-35, Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan (USAF), has a well-deserved reputation for speaking his mind. This is a good thing, assuming you know what you are talking about. However, his latest criticisms of the two companies leading the program, suggest that
. . . Read more
Date:
2/27/2013
Proliferation of ballistic missiles has posed a danger to NATO’s security for years. Over 30 countries have or are in the process of acquiring ballistic missile technology. As a result, Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) is on top of the transatlantic agenda and the United States is implementing a
. . . Read more
Date:
2/27/2013
Air dominance is crucial to U.S. military strategy. However, dominance means more than mere command of the air. It means being able to leverage that command to provide awareness, mobility and precision strike to the entire joint force. Over the last eight months, the Lexington Institute has
. . . Read more
Date:
2/27/2013
The nice thing about self-inflicted wounds is they can be ameliorated relatively easily. Just stop doing what is causing the injury. It is even easier if the action is preventative, meaning that it takes place before an injury is inflicted.
It is clear that sequestration will be a self-inflicted
. . . Read more
Date:
2/26/2013
Last week, former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson warned his fellow conservatives in the Washington Post that, "At the national level, Republicans have a winning message for a nation that no longer exists." He's right. Republicans are doing reasonably well at the state level, but
. . . Read more
Date:
2/26/2013
Republicans certainly have a point when they say it's hard to see how a two-percent sequestration of the federal budget will cause major damage. In the case of the military, though, the cuts really will be devastating. Half of the cuts will come from the fifth of the budget that is defense spending
. . . Read more
Date:
2/25/2013
There are good reasons to oppose the confirmation of Senator Chuck Hagel. His views on nuclear disarmament are out of the mainstream. His characterization of Jewish influence over Congress and the presence of a malevolent “Jewish lobby” in Washington are, at best, bizarre or, at worst, anti-Semitic.
. . . Read more
Date:
2/22/2013
The market for military goods and services appears to have entered a prolonged downturn. Although the earnings of defense contractors remain strong, revenues have begun to weaken. If demand continues on its current vector, then eventually the softness at the top line will begin impacting the bottom
. . . Read more
Date:
2/22/2013
For an institution that professes to be apolitical, the Pentagon has in recent weeks conducted a political campaign to protect its budget worthy of any special interest. In fact, in some ways it is worse. The way the Department of Defense (DoD) in general, but particularly the uniformed services
. . . Read more
Date:
2/21/2013
In a political system more polarized than at any time in recent memory, there is agreement across virtually the entire political spectrum on one thing: sequestration will do serious, possibly irreparable, damage to U.S. national security. This is a view shared by President Obama, House Speaker John
. . . Read more
Date:
2/20/2013
A report by the cyber security firm Mandiant reprised in the New York Times appears to confirm what everyone with even a passing familiarity with cyber issues knows: we are at war with China. This report is but the latest in a series that makes it clear that China is engaged in a massive,
. . . Read more
Date:
2/19/2013
Amphibious warfare has become the defining competency of the U.S. Marine Corps. Although Marines pride themselves on being able to do anything on short notice, it is being able to force their way ashore from sea bases that makes them genuinely unique. With most of the world's population and commerce
. . . Read more
Date:
2/19/2013
Last week, Time magazine published a lengthy diatribe against the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, the F-35 fighter. The plane is being built in three versions to meet the diverse warfighting needs of the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy. If it is successful, America can look forward
. . . Read more
Date:
2/18/2013
This week’s test of a nuclear weapon by North Korea, its third, is only one piece of bad news. 38 North, a well-respected web site that follows events on the Korean peninsula, is reporting that the North is building a very large missile facility and associated structures that will allow it to launch
. . . Read more
Date:
2/15/2013
America's addiction to the Internet is proving to be a mixed blessing. Although every facet of commerce and culture has been energized by the coming of digital connectivity, the early adopters of emerging information tools include criminals and foreign spies. Trillions of dollars in intellectual
. . . Read more
Date:
2/15/2013
On March 1 the sixty-five year consensus in American politics on national security will be dead. On that day, sequestration goes into effect imposing what every senior military leader describes as catastrophic cuts on our military. While it is true that U.S. defense spending has gone through repetitive
. . . Read more
Date:
2/14/2013
There is a clear and growing negative tilt in the strategic military balance between the United States and its allies on the one side of the scales and rogue states and prospective adversaries on the other side. A combination of factors -- war weariness, financial crises, unfavorable demographics,
. . . Read more
Date:
2/13/2013
When the Soviet Union went out of business in 1991, many defense-industry executives feared their companies might suffer the same fate. What followed was the biggest fire sale in the history of the defense sector, as some companies sought to exit the business before valuations collapsed while others
. . . Read more
Date:
2/13/2013
Last week the world was introduced to a radically new idea: an ink-jet printer that can produce living tissue. Have I got your attention? Here's the basic idea. Researchers in Scotland have figured out a way of adapting so-called additive manufacturing technology to the manipulation of embryonic
. . . Read more
Date:
2/11/2013
Defense officials know that their acquisition system isn’t a free market but they often like to pretend otherwise. This has been the case most notably over the past four years. Confronted with declining defense budgets and rising costs for defense goods and services, Pentagon leaders have become
. . . Read more
Date:
2/11/2013
As the swinging axe of budget sequestration grows closer here in Washington, a lot of finger-pointing is being directed at the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. They do indeed have a lot of say in how this all unfolds, but it is worth remembering that there are two other power
. . . Read more
Date:
2/11/2013
Remember military transformation, the briefly fashionable movement to rethink warfare by leveraging the dot.com revolution into the battlespace? It wasn't a totally crazy idea, but it began to go away the first time U.S. forces encountered an improvised explosive device in Iraq. Turns out nobody
. . . Read more
Date:
2/8/2013
With the sequestration doomsday clock clicking ever closer to midnight, the Pentagon has weighed in with its apocalyptic predictions. As described in text and multi-colored charts, the services will respond to sequestration by, in part, furloughing hundreds of thousands of civilian employees, eliminating
. . . Read more
Date:
2/8/2013
Most of the criticism of the lack of progress on undoing the blunt instrument that is sequestration has focused on the role of Congress and particularly the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. Left almost entirely out of this discussion is President Obama, the Commander in Chief. It was
. . . Read more
Date:
2/7/2013
U.S. Air Force leaders today released information indicating that America's global edge in air power will begin rapidly ebbing away in March if Congress fails to avert planned spending cuts. Documents prepared by the service predicted it will be "substantially less able to respond on short notice"
. . . Read more
Date:
2/7/2013
Joseph Stalin is alleged to have remarked with respect to military power that “quantity has a quality all its own.” At another time, the Soviet tyrant is recorded as having interrupted a speech by Winston Churchill on the need to treat Poland well because of the relationship between it and the Vatican
. . . Read more
Date:
2/6/2013
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Michelle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense and once rumored to be a candidate for the top slot at the Department of Defense, makes a strong case for fundamentally changing the way the government extracts savings from the defense budget. Flournoy points
. . . Read more
Date:
2/5/2013
A friend of mine who is, shall we say, not of the progressive persuasion fears Obamacare will eventually cost so much that the U.S. will no longer be able to afford a world-class military force. He points out that the United Kingdom nationalized its healthcare system right after World War Two,
. . . Read more
Date:
2/5/2013
Competition has become the mantra of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) acquisition corps. The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics, Mr. Frank Kendall has gone on record saying “I think that nothing, nothing, works better than competition to drive cost down.” DoD has
. . . Read more
Date:
2/4/2013
In the run-up to last November's elections, Republicans repeatedly warned that sequestration of defense funds would hurt America's military. But that was then. Here's where House Republicans are now, quoting Congressman John Fleming of Louisiana's Fourth District: "We would rather take some cuts
. . . Read more
Date:
2/4/2013
When you build complex, cutting-edge products that transform global commerce and culture, you expect to occasionally encounter setbacks. So the Boeing Company has a formula for dealing with problems like the controversy surrounding batteries on its latest jetliner. Basically, you cooperate with
. . . Read more
Date:
2/1/2013