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March 2013
The new Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, gave his first formal press conference today. Sitting alongside Joint Chiefs Chairman, General Martin Dempsey, the Secretary covered a wide range of issues from the impacts of sequestration to growing threats from North Korea and the prospects for U.S
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Date:
3/28/2013
I am a fan of military science fiction. It is entertaining and sometimes thought provoking to see how others think about the future of warfare. Most military science fiction focuses on the impact of advanced technologies – set phasers on stun – on the eternal features of combat whether by a squad
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Date:
3/27/2013
The history of the U.S. Army is one of long periods of relative quiet punctuated by short episodes of massive engagement. When it was not engaged in major conflict the Army was doing all the so-called “Phase Zero” activities, partnering, capacity building, security assistance, etc. Most of this
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Date:
3/26/2013
As defense budgets trend downward, retired Marine Major General Arnold Punaro has emerged as a key player in the military reform debate. The former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Georgetown University professor has launched a one-man campaign to change how the Pentagon
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3/26/2013
The British Defense Staff, led by General Sir David Richards, is in Washington, DC for strategic discussions with their counterpart, the Joint Chiefs of Staff including its chairman, General Martin Dempsey. The U.S. and the UK consult on defense issues all the time. This is a reflection of the so-called
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3/25/2013
The tenth anniversary of the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) has produced an expected flood of articles and blogs discussing the events and decisions that led up to the invasion of Iraq as well as lessons learned from this war. Not surprisingly, most of them have focused on questions of politics,
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Date:
3/22/2013
China and North Korea’s seemingly unwavering friendship goes back many years. In the Korean War it is estimated that China lost 110,000 soldiers on the battlefield and another 35,000 died from wounds and disease. The friendship did not stop there. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, China has
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Date:
3/22/2013
Whether by sequestration or some other mechanism, defense spending is headed down. If we make cuts wisely, we will still have the best trained and best equipped force in the world. If we don't, we will squander a decade of investment and become more vulnerable. Having cancelled and delayed weapons
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Date:
3/22/2013
1941 was the last time the Army really was at home. After World War II, most soldiers came home but only to be demobilized. The remainder of the Army was doing occupation duty and patrolling the borders of the Free World. In the post-Cold War era the Army shifted its posture from one based on forward
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Date:
3/21/2013
This hasn't been a good week for the junior Senator from New Hampshire, Republican Kelly Ayotte. She went to the floor four times in two days urging the chamber to consider an amendment that would have stripped funding for an Army air defense system from the pending appropriations bill, and in
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Date:
3/21/2013
I don’t believe that reducing defense spending will necessarily make the Department of Defense (DoD) more innovative, as some have claimed. DoD’s problem is not strategic or operational and the answer cannot be found in clever organizational designs or new technologies. The Pentagon’s challenge
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3/20/2013
Everyone knew it was coming once sequestration began and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has now made it official: the Department of Defense will conduct a strategic review. The purpose of the exercise is to examine the choices that underlie our current defense strategy and define major decisions
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3/19/2013
Leading defense contractor Lockheed Martin announced on March 18 that Larry Lawson, the head of its aeronautics unit, would be replaced by F-35 general manager Orlando Carvalho. Carvalho in turn will be replaced at the top of the tri-service F-35 program by Lorraine Martin, a 25-year company veteran
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Date:
3/19/2013
Finally, mercifully, the U.S. Air Force has put an end to the farce that Beechcraft Corporation (formerly Hawker Beechcraft) was making of the effort to build a Light Air Support (LAS) aircraft. Having twice lost full and open competitions against Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) teamed with aircraft
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Date:
3/18/2013
Of all the big contractors in the U.S. defense industry, Lockheed Martin seemingly has the least need to diversify into commercial businesses. It is the Pentagon's dominant supplier of tactical aircraft, space systems, missile defenses, naval electronics and information services. Having leveraged
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3/17/2013
The Obama Administration came into office in 2009 determined to upend what it viewed as a too-cozy relationship between the private sector and the Department of Defense (DoD), and to inject more competition into the process of awarding contracts. There was a presumption on the part of incoming officials
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3/15/2013
After dedicating 300,000 hours of engineering and lab time to analyzing potential problems with lithium-ion batteries carried on its 787 Dreamliners, Boeing is confident it has a comprehensive solution that will enable an early return to routine flight operations. The solution does not require identification
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Date:
3/15/2013
Army planners are rethinking how their service will acquire 700 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters over the next 14 years in light of declining procurement budgets. InsideDefense.com reported on March 6 that the Army's fiscal 2014 budget request will defer any new production of the service's airborne
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Date:
3/14/2013
An important subtext running through the sequestration narrative is the issue of America's security interests and roles in a post-Iraq/Afghanistan world. Even after sequestration, the United States will spend more than any other nation on defense. Most of the other "big spenders" are America's
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Date:
3/13/2013
There has long been a school of thought among defense experts and military historians that tight defense budgets produce improved strategic thought and better military-technical innovation. Advocates of this view point to the interval between the two world wars, the so-called “Inter War period,”
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3/12/2013
For the first time since the Government Accountability Office began conducting annual assessments of the Pentagon's tri-service F-35 fighter program, the agency is offering no new recommendations on how management of the effort can be improved. In the fourth of six annual assessments mandated by
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Date:
3/12/2013
The rolling farmland of south-central Pennsylvania is shaping up to be the last resting place of America's once mighty combat-vehicle industry. A BAE Systems plant outside the town of York is the sole remaining site where most of the Army's tracked vehicles can be made, and now the service wants
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Date:
3/11/2013
Even when it does everything right, the U.S. Air Force cannot seem to catch a break. All it was trying to do was acquire a handful of cheap, simple, reliable and capable light attack/support airplanes (LAS) for the Afghan Air Force. Because of time pressures -- the United States is leaving Afghanistan
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Date:
3/11/2013
It is generally agreed that the additional cuts to the defense budget required by sequestration will do more than just hurt the military; they will require significant force posture changes and, according to senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials, a new defense strategy. This should come as
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3/8/2013
There has been a fair amount of misinformation coming out of the F-35 Joint Program Office lately. This week, program chief Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan told an Aviation Week conference that the estimated $1.1 trillion in life-cycle sustainment costs for the F-35 is expressed in 2056 dollars,
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Date:
3/8/2013
The U.S. experience in Vietnam from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s was more than a tragedy; to many Americans it was a waste of lives and treasure. The failure to defeat North Vietnam and its principle backer, the Soviet Union, coupled to the defense draw down that began even before all U.S. forces
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Date:
3/7/2013
The United States is not alone in being confronted by a “perfect storm” in defense caused by the combination of tightening budgets, the transition out of a wartime posture, a changing threat environment, a broadening spectrum of missions and the desire to access new and potentially revolutionary
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Date:
3/6/2013
The Department of Defense is facing the budgetary equivalent of double jeopardy this year because in addition to suffering across-the-board cuts due to sequestration, it is also functioning under a Continuing Resolution (CR) that further constrains how money may be allocated. Like previous CRs,
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Date:
3/5/2013
Beggars can't be choosers. When a government accumulates trillion-dollar deficits year after year, eventually there is a day of reckoning. For the U.S. military, that day is now.
Although the Pentagon continues to see a global landscape brimming with security challenges, it appears the political
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Date:
3/4/2013
What do the Battle of Savo Island, Kasserine Pass, Task Force Smith and Operation Eagle Claw have in common? They were all U.S. military disasters that were the result, broadly speaking, of inadequate readiness. In the first example, an allied naval force of some 22 surface warships was trounced
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Date:
3/4/2013
Sequestration kicks in later today, triggering automatic federal government spending cuts amounting to $85 billion over one fiscal year. It is quite the political and economic "crisis" that could only be invented in Washington.
Also invented in Washington is our central bank, the Federal
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Date:
3/1/2013
Sequestration is now in effect although for how long we do not know. If it lasts for the rest of Fiscal Year 2013 it will cut approximately $85 billion from federal spending. Over the next ten years the total reduction will be about $850 billion plus another $150 billion in savings on interest payments.
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Date:
3/1/2013
Some of the media coverage concerning battery problems on Boeing's 787 Dreamliners makes it sound like months may pass before the planes can fly again. Not so. It may be a long time (if ever) before regulators identify root causes for battery-pack overheating on two Japanese Dreamliners, but the
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Date:
3/1/2013
America is in the midst of an energy revolution that can power our economy to new found levels of growth and prosperity. To get there, we need to expand the harvesting of America’s vast energy resources. As President Obama mulls who will be Secretary of Energy, it is imperative he nominate someone
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Date:
3/1/2013