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April 2010
Was it really only two weeks ago that Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was complaining so bitterly about the supposed efforts of House defense appropriations chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA) to influence a weapons competition? How time flies! Now Sessions is doing the same thing he accused Dicks of doing,
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Date:
4/30/2010
The Obama Administration came into office determined to revolutionize the conduct of U.S. foreign and security policies. The essence of the Administration’s argument was that too much emphasis had been placed on the military instrument of national power and much less on other capabilities such as
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Date:
4/30/2010
Thomas Jefferson observed in a letter to Edward Carrington in 1787 that, "If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Apparently that preference is not shared
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Date:
4/29/2010
A problem that has plagued defense procurement for many years is the perception that contracts were not awarded based on a fair and open competition. As a result, critics argue, many programs experience schedule delays, technical problems or cost overruns. In addition, questions about improper relationships
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Date:
4/29/2010
General Electric's aviation unit yesterday offered taxpayers the kind of bargain they aren't likely to get at WalMart. The company proposed to charge its government customer a mere $2 billion for the first lot of an item that the customer insists it doesn't want at all. The item in question is GE's
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Date:
4/28/2010
As I predicted in January, Northrop Grumman has decided to move its corporate headquarters to Northern Virginia. The most likely location is the same office park where General Dynamics headquarters sits astride the Capitol Beltway near Tysons Corner, but at least one other site in that vicinity
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Date:
4/27/2010
Lest anyone be fooled by what seems to be slight progress in the Obama Administration’s effort to impose new sanctions on Iran, the situation is rapidly slipping beyond Washington’s ability to influence, much less control it. In the 15 months since assuming power, President Obama has stood by as
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Date:
4/27/2010
The Army Systems Acquisition Review Council decided on April 22 to kill the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS) at the urging of Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli, even though the service had spent a billion dollars on the program and development was 90% complete. Although the final
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Date:
4/26/2010
Less than a year ago, the Obama Administration cancelled plans for the so-called Third Site ground-based missile defense in Europe arguing that the near-term threat did not warrant deployment of a high-end defensive capability. Instead, the administration declared that it was pursuing a phased adaptive
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Date:
4/26/2010
Some militaries are defeated in battle; others lose the war before the firing even begins. For example, it is the general consensus among military historians that the French military lost in World War Two before the first German panzer had crossed the frontier. A combination of preparing to fight
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Date:
4/23/2010
Development of the Army's revolutionary Ground Mobile Radio (GMR) is 95% complete, and is entering government testing to verify its performance features. GMR is the leading edge of a family of "software-defined" radios that can easily switch among various modes and functions by using agile computer
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Date:
4/23/2010
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is continuing his crusade to transform the way in which the United States conducts national security affairs. The most revolutionary Secretary of Defense since Robert McNamara (and a much better one), Gates’ vision encompasses changing the way the Department of
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Date:
4/22/2010
Amy Butler of Aviation Week & Space Technology reported last week that the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office will be launching new spy satellites over the next two years at the highest rate since the Reagan era. Butler quotes NRO director Bruce Carlson as stating that several "very
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Date:
4/22/2010
The most important security initiative the Obama Administration can take in the remainder of its term is the development of a credible prompt conventional global strike capability. The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review made a point of the growing anti-access threat and the need for improved U.S. standoff
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Date:
4/21/2010
The recent accusation by Israeli President Shimon Perez that Syria has transferred Scud missiles to Hezbollah passed all but unnoticed by the mainstream press. Yet, if true, this could prove almost as destabilizing an event as Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Possessing a range of more than
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Date:
4/20/2010
The most important weapon system in the U.S. arsenal isn't an aircraft carrier or a long-range bomber. It is the Trident ballistic-missile submarine, designated SSBN in naval nomenclature ("SS" for submarine, "B" for ballistic missile, "N" for nuclear propulsion). The Trident, also called the
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Date:
4/19/2010
Last week’s summit in Washington focused on the threat of nuclear terrorism. In fact, we have little new evidence regarding Al Qaeda’s efforts to acquire a nuclear device than what was found in some caves in Afghanistan some nine years ago. Nevertheless, as the Christmas bombing attempt shows, terrorists
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Date:
4/19/2010
Government representatives negotiating terms for a fourth production lot of F-35 joint strike fighters are pressing prime contractor Lockheed Martin to deliver the most common variant of the plane at a price far below the level predicted in official cost estimates recently provided to Congress.
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Date:
4/16/2010
Two events this week underscore the Obama Administration’s schizophrenic thinking about the nuclear threat to the United States. The first was the signing of the new START treaty which re-established the centrality of the U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear relationship in global affairs. The second
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Date:
4/15/2010
Sometime this summer an anonymous panel of Navy weapons experts will decide the economic future of a struggling town in rural northeastern Wisconsin. Marinette, Wisconsin is the home of the shipyard building the Lockheed Martin version of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a multi-mission warship
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Date:
4/15/2010
A new report by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) is warning that the U.S. Navy is reaching a “tipping point” after which it will no longer be able to exercise global dominance. According to this analysis, “current strategies based on combat-credible
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Date:
4/14/2010
In the years since the Cold War ended, the U.S. military has become heavily dependent upon satellite communications to maintain its global connectivity. Without such links, it would be difficult for the military to operate in a coordinated fashion or exchange information critical to situational
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Date:
4/14/2010
Yesterday’s op-ed in the New York Times by former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Secretary of State George Schultz (“How to Build on the START Treaty”) is an example of how arms control thinking can run amok. The two former U.S. government officials start by proposing some
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Date:
4/13/2010
There has been a lot of loose talk recently about the possibility that Airbus parent EADS might bid in the latest round of tanker competition even without former partner Northrop Grumman in order to establish a bigger "footprint" in the U.S. military market or make a favorable impression on Pentagon
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Date:
4/12/2010
The turning point for the United States in the Pacific during World War Two was the battle of Midway. Aircraft from three American aircraft carriers, the Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet, successfully engaged a much larger Japanese fleet including six aircraft carriers, sinking four of them and forcing
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Date:
4/12/2010
InsideDefense.com has issued an update of the F-35 story referenced in my blog posting earlier today, dismissing my criticism as "flat wrong." In an April 9 posting on its web-site, it tells readers "Defense consultant and Lexington Institute head Loren Thompson has attacked a story we wrote this
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Date:
4/9/2010
On April 7, InsideDefense.com reporter Jason Sherman produced a sensational story on cost growth in the Pentagon's biggest weapons program titled, "Exclusive: DoD Warns Congress JSF Costs Could Skyrocket To $388 Billion By Summer." It was the latest in a series of reports Sherman has generated
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Date:
4/9/2010
It would be impossible to overstate how bad the recent round of published polls are for the Democratic Party with seven months to go before the mid-term election. Here are a few examples:
-- Senator Boxer's job approval is 40% in California. Her leading general election opponent, former Rep.
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Date:
4/9/2010
Today's Boston Globe contains a well-crafted story by defense correspondent Brian Bender about the decision of newly-elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown to abandon the principles on which he campaigned to buy a prime cut of Pentagon
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Date:
4/8/2010
Good news: the Obama Administration is seeking to ensure that the U.S. remains the world’s sole superpower. Contrary to the views expressed by critics on the right and left, the administration’s ostensible efforts to reduce nuclear weapons on the way to its announced vision of a world without them,
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Date:
4/8/2010
Yesterday, the Obama Administration released its much-anticipated Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The report is actually a remarkably restrained and sober document that makes only modest changes to U.S. nuclear policy and force structure. It could have been much worse. Even administration critics
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Date:
4/7/2010
Rumor has it that senior political appointees in the Department of the Navy want to make a point about acquisition reform by killing the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV). Apparently the fact that taking such action would also end up killing many Marines isn't part of their thought process.
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Date:
4/7/2010
Political theorist Irving Kristol argued that Americans would often vote for divided government so the federal government would gridlock and not cause any more economic or political trouble. From 1994 to 2000 America had a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, and the results were full
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Date:
4/6/2010
The anti-private sector ideology of the current administration is nowhere more in evidence than in the efforts to take away jobs performed by private contractors in support of the federal government and turn them into government positions, called insourcing. The idea is to ensure that those activities
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Date:
4/6/2010
A growing chorus of conservative, meaning Republican, commentators are complaining about the behavior of Afghan president Hamid Karzai. They object to widespread corruption in his government and a drift toward anti-Americanism in his rhetoric and actions. Some of these conservative critics have
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Date:
4/6/2010
Reports have surfaced that sometime this week President Obama will declare that the United States is changing the nuclear strategy that has maintained the security of the Free World for half a century. The essence of the U.S. strategy was the willingness of every administration since Eisenhower
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Date:
4/5/2010
While the Washington intelligentsia is all atwitter about Niall Ferguson’s article in Foreign Affairs warning of the end of the American “Empire,” Europe is leaving the world stage. The continent that created the modern world has decided that it no longer wants to be part of its creation.
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Date:
4/1/2010