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March 2011
The world's preeminent trade body ruled on March 31 that a European complaint against the United States alleging massive commercial-transport subsidies was largely unfounded. The 2005 complaint had claimed U.S. company Boeing received about $24 billion in prohibited or actionable subsidies from
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3/31/2011
The current Libyan air operation may be the last of its kind. What I mean by this is an operation involving fourth-generation aircraft against Soviet-era defenses or single-digit surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). To date, the campaign has been as much an air show as combat operation with an array
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3/31/2011
This morning, the naval shipbuilding operations that Northrop Grumman owned for the last ten years began life as an independent company called Huntington Ingalls Industries. Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush decided shortly after assuming the helm of the parent company last year that shipbuilding was
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3/31/2011
It’s the “little things” that count when it comes to supporting our Soldiers and Marines in war zones. The little things include adequate clothing and equipment to support them in dismounted operations. It may not sound like a big deal but moisture wicking t-shirts matter a lot to warfighters who
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3/30/2011
Deficit reduction doesn't always mean hard choices. Sometimes it's easy, if politicians are willing to rethink how the government goes about pursuing its goals. Perhaps that's what Pentagon policymakers had in mind when they decided to name a new approach to purchasing satellites EASE. The official
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3/30/2011
The current U.S. air campaign in Libya is being described as a low-cost operation. It isn't. The federal government has spent many trillions of dollars building and sustaining a global military posture capable of dealing expeditiously with the likes of Col. Gadhafi. Our allies have not made similar
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3/29/2011
Events in Libya over the past month prove what I have been saying for more than twenty years: American leaders want and need a military establishment that is large, highly capable and, ultimately very expensive. As the President noted in his speech last night it only took a month for his administration
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3/29/2011
All great powers have had their military auxiliaries, myrmidons or sidekicks. Throughout history, nation has fought nation with the winner turning around and making the loser, assuming they fought well, a part of their military. No one did this as well as Great Britain. Sometimes British governments
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3/28/2011
Flight tests of the tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are running well ahead of the plan for 2011, with 181 flights completed as of March 25 against a plan of 133. In addition, the productivity of each flight test is increasing, with an average of 7.7 unique test points achieved per flight. The
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3/28/2011
Remember the good old days in American defense policy a decade ago, when President Bush could decide to invade a far-away country that few Americans had ever heard of, and get a 90 percent approval rating -- not to mention nearly unanimous support from the global community? All it took was a devastating
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3/25/2011
The predominant issue at all levels of government is controlling costs. In Wisconsin, this has translated into reducing labor’s collective bargaining rights as a means of improving productivity. For Costa Mesa, California the solution was to fire nearly half the city's workforce. The Obama Administration
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3/25/2011
The Wall Street Journal reported on March 24 that domestic auto production is being disrupted by a shortage of electronic parts from quake-ravaged Japan. It turns out that Hitachi has 60 percent of the global market for automobile airflow sensors, and another company operating in Japan called
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3/24/2011
Critics and supporters of U.S. actions regarding Libya agree on one thing: the Obama Administration's rhetoric does not match its actions. There is a general concern that the current approach will be sufficient only to get the U.S. bogged down in a protracted civil war. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt's
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3/24/2011
Over the last two decades, no military technology program has been the target of more fashionable criticism from pundits and politicians than the V-22 Osprey developed by the U.S. Marine Corps. The revolutionary "tilt-rotor" aircraft has the speed and range of a fixed-wing aircraft, and yet can
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3/23/2011
A central principle of the emergent Obama Doctrine appears to be limiting the role of the United States. In the current Libyan campaign the President sought to downplay his personal role, letting French President Nicolas Sarkozy take center stage. French and British jets conducted the coalition's
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3/23/2011
The coalition air operation against Muammar Ghadaffi has demonstrated the enormous capacity of the U.S. military. Precision weapons took out Ghadaffi's surface-to-air missile sites and aircraft shelters. E/A-18G Growlers jammed Libyan electronics. F-15s and F-16s conducted both counter-air and surface-attack
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3/22/2011
When the guided missile cruiser USS Monterey entered the Mediterranean Sea this month, it began a new era for sea-based missile defense. After decades of only modest involvement in the nation's efforts to defend against ballistic missiles, the Navy is beginning to take a leading role in that mission
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3/22/2011
As I understand it, the thrust of the White House plan for the Libyan intervention is to provide an initial intense "blast" of U.S. military power and then fade into the background while our allies take on the remaining effort. However, this presumes that the allies are capable of performing even
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3/21/2011
A deficit-conscious House of Representatives has refused to fund the "alternate engine" General Electric wants to build for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and the Senate is likely to follow suit. GE's campaign to secure federal subsidies for its unneeded engine is in jeopardy -- which isn't surprising,
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3/21/2011
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is the keystone to the future U.S. tactical aircraft fleet. For this reason and because the program has had some challenges, any time an institution as influential as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns of problems with the program people -- particularly
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3/18/2011
Consider the challenge faced by ITT Defense as it prepares to become independent from the conglomerate that currently owns it. Anywhere else in the world, ITT would be a national gem -- the most accomplished player in military electronics and related fields within several time zones. But in the
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3/18/2011
The administration’s current plan to deal with the growing threat from ballistic missiles is to develop missile defenses in four phases between now and 2020; each phase will have greater capability than its predecessor and will be deployed, it is hoped, in time to meet an evolving threat. Phase
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3/17/2011
The Air Force is looking to buy a new fleet of utility helicopters to support its domestic operations. The Common Vertical Lift Support Platform (CVLSP) will replace the aging UH-1 Huey helicopters which are employed to inspect and protect ballistic missile fields and transport senior Air Force
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3/16/2011
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently stated that North Korea may have nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching U.S. territory within five years. You'd think the prospect of Pyongyang's utterly unpredictable regime possessing such capabilities would be enough to create a sense of urgency
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3/15/2011
The much maligned F-35 program recently received a vote of confidence from two of its three major constituencies, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. A revised interservice agreement between the two envisions the procurement of 680 F-35s. The Navy will buy 260 F-35Cs, specifically designed for carrier
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3/15/2011
General Dynamics is the oldest continuously operating military contractor in America, tracing its origins to the Electric Boat Company that supplied the Navy's first submarine in 1900. Lately, though, the company has been living up to its name as an innovator that sets the standard for performance
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3/15/2011
The U.S. Army has striven valiantly to respond to the needs of individual soldiers in the middle of two wars. The Army acquired tens of thousands of Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected (MRAP) and MRAP-All Terrain vehicles. It is adding a double V underbody to the Stryker wheeled vehicles to provide
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3/14/2011
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3/14/2011
The Government Accountability Office issued a scathing report on March 11 criticizing Navy plans for the $50 billion Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN). The project is supposed to replace the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the largest intranet in the world and by most accounts a system that
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3/14/2011
Today’s earthquake in Japan and the resultant tsunami that swept across the Pacific stand as an immediate reminder of how swiftly unexpected events can change the circumstances for individuals, nations and entire regions of the globe. Although earthquakes cannot be predicted, Japan had planned for
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3/11/2011
In the world of federal contracting, success seldom goes unpunished. Take the Virginia-class attack submarine, currently the U.S. Navy's only undersea-warship construction program. Since the program began in the 1990s, prime contractors General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman have gradually cut
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3/11/2011
The U.S. aerospace and defense sector is on pins and needles. No one can exactly pin-point it, but there is a whiff of big change in the air, the expectations of a pivotal shift in the sector's fortunes. With all eyes on the revolt in the Middle East, and budget battles in the Midwest, everyone
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3/11/2011
The debate over the rationale and wisdom of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya has been intensifying in recent days with former senior DoD and State Department officials from the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations weighing in. Proponents have argued for imposing a no-fly zone in terms of humanitarian
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3/10/2011
As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates prepares to depart the government, his public pronouncements on national security seem increasingly philosophical. However, even the random musings of a U.S. defense secretary have practical implications for overseas friends and enemies, so he might want to
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3/9/2011
In his effort to squeeze savings from the military budget that can be reinvested in modernization, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has taken on such sacred cows as the low co-payments retirees make for healthcare and the bloated number of general officers. The result of this effort has been some
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3/8/2011
When Democrats took control of the White House in early 2009, they immediately set about reversing the Bush Administration's efforts to outsource federal work. The Democrats believed that Bush had been too willing to contract out functions that were "inherently governmental" in nature, regardless
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3/7/2011
The debate over the imposition of a no-fly zone is paralyzed by the specter of the U.S. having to attack Libyan surface to air missile (SAM) sites as a precursor to such an operation. Secretary of Defense Gates effectively shut down discussion of the no-fly option when he asserted in testimony that
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3/7/2011
The United States currently generates nearly half of all global military spending. If the U.S. were producing a similar amount of global economic output, it might be feasible to sustain the Pentagon's budget at today's levels indefinitely. But it isn't. Over the last decade, U.S. economic output
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3/7/2011
European aerospace giant EADS did American taxpayers and warfighters a big favor today by deciding not to protest its recent loss of the Air Force's tanker competition. As EADS North America Chairman Ralph D. Crosby put it in a press release, "We will not take any action that could further delay
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3/4/2011
If you work in Washington and rely on the major news outlets for your information you might be forgiven for having formed the opinion that the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program was fouled up. From the perspective of Fort Worth, where I recently went with a group of defense analysts to tour the
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3/4/2011
As long as people are dying from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan the war against this horrible weapon will not be won. Nevertheless, under the direction of the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) the Coalition has achieved an unprecedented level of success. Over the
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3/3/2011
Aerospace experts scrutinizing images of the Chinese J-20 fighter that first began appearing on the internet in late December have developed a more nuanced view of the plane's features than what was available in early reports. Although the J-20 resembles the outline of the stealthy F-22 Raptor
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3/2/2011
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has begun to exhibit rapid progress in flight tests as pilots gradually expand the operational "envelope" for all three service variants. Development of the stealthy, single-engine fighter has been dogged by delays and rising costs, but the plane now seems to be moving
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3/1/2011
Industry insiders say that Boeing clinched the hard-fought battle for the Air Force's next-generation tanker last week by offering a rock-bottom price while rival EADS failed to bid as aggressively. Boeing had an intrinsic pricing advantage because it offered a smaller plane that cost much less
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3/1/2011