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April 2011
The Obama Administration has begun to interfere with my credibility at home as the Man of the House. Every weekday evening, I have to suffer through an hour of my wife viewing Glenn Beck, and the hour is typically punctuated by my derisive comments about Beck's various conspiracy theories. But
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Date:
4/29/2011
The announcement by New Delhi the other day that both U.S. contenders for the Indian Multirole Combat Aircraft (MRCA) program, Boeing’s F/A-18 and Lockheed Martin’s F-16, had been eliminated is a major disappointment not only for those companies but for the U.S. government. The Obama Administration
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Date:
4/29/2011
In a recent speech, Army Under Secretary Joseph Westphal made public one of Washington’s worst kept secrets: the Army's acquisition system is broken. Over the past two decades, the Army has experienced a continuous record of failure in major acquisition programs. This has been particularly true
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Date:
4/28/2011
Since the United States first became heavily engaged in fighting insurgents around the globe, it was clear there would be a requirement to supplement existing conventional weapons such as tanks and fighters with military systems suited to the unique demands of irregular warfare. That is how the
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Date:
4/27/2011
After months of debate, the U.S. Air Force has decided to conduct a competition that will determine what rotorcraft replaces the decrepit helicopters protecting its strategic missile installations. The service operates three sprawling bases in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming where 450 Minuteman
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Date:
4/27/2011
Earlier this month, the U.S. Navy successfully tested its Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) consisting of an upgraded radar coupled with the advanced Standard Missile (SM) 3 Block IA against a simulated ballistic missile threat. The new SM-3 Block IA is the first in a series of improved
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4/26/2011
Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter warned an audience at the Heritage Foundation last week that more cancellations of big weapons programs are likely to occur in the years ahead. The Obama Administration has already killed over $330 billion in planned weapons expenditures, from the Air Force's
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Date:
4/26/2011
As part of his plan to cut $4 trillion from the federal deficit, President Obama announced his intention of seeking $400 billion in reductions from the defense budget over 12 years. But rather than just blindly cutting, the President announced that the defense cuts would be based on a comprehensive
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Date:
4/25/2011
The greatest adventure in human history is ending in its infancy. NASA's human spaceflight program, a signature achievement of American civilization, is dying. The program was conceived during the bleak days following Russia's launch of Sputnik in 1957, and then was energized by President John
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Date:
4/25/2011
Does anyone think that the administration’s strategy for Libya is working? Respected defense expert Anthony Cordesman characterized the U.S.-backed NATO-led campaign as a farce -- one that repeats virtually all the errors made by the Bush Administration in Iraq. The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs
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Date:
4/22/2011
Facing increased budget pressures, the U.S. Army is looking for ways of reducing costs. One step it has come up with is to shut its sole plant for manufacturing M-1 tanks for three years. Beginning in 2013, the Army wants to close the doors at the Lima Army Tank Plant (LATP) in Ohio until 2016 when
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Date:
4/21/2011
Loren Thompson is on spring break with his kids, but before he left town he wrote this analysis for forbes.com explaining why the Obama Administration’s $400 billion in proposed
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4/20/2011
How many countries have sought to reassure their publics that they were not getting involved in someone else’s civil war by promising that they were just sending advisors? President Kennedy was just sending advisors to South Vietnam. Five years later there were half a million U.S. troops in country.
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Date:
4/20/2011
In the war in Afghanistan it is the little things that count. Things like armored underwear. According to a recent article in USA Today, the Pentagon is providing troops on the ground with a variety of personal clothing and gear intended to provide greater protection against improvised explosive
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Date:
4/19/2011
It is like Banquo’s ghost is haunting the Department of Defense. Actually, it is two other ghosts: that of former senator and defense expert Sam Nunn and former representative Dave McCurdy. What haunts the Pentagon and stands as the lasting legacy of these two former defense experts and leading
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4/18/2011
It looks like the U.S. Navy may not need to wait until the end of the decade to have a defensive system capable of coping with longer-range ballistic missiles launched by countries like North Korea. Earlier this week, the USS O'Kane guided-missile destroyer equipped with the Lockheed Martin Aegis
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Date:
4/15/2011
As the Pentagon moves towards negotiating for the next lot of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, it is doing so with a sense that things are moving in the right direction. Pentagon acquisition chief, Under Secretary Ashton Carter, publicly stated that he was more confident in the program. There is also
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Date:
4/15/2011
One of the most important lessons to come out of the last eight years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the inevitability of troops in combat needing equipment which had not been available to them in peacetime. Operating primarily in dismounted mode and facing new kinds of threats from weapons
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Date:
4/14/2011
What can one say about a nation, a superpower, that starts a war ostensibly in order to save innocent lives and then walks away from the conflict taking its unique military capabilities with it and thereby ensuring that it is prolonged and those same civilians suffer? This goes way beyond the bystander
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Date:
4/13/2011
One of the favorite sayings in the news business is “if it bleeds it leads.” That is why car wrecks, natural disasters and government crises are always front page news. Good news stories are relegated to the inside pages or the second half of the news programs.
The same phenomenon is true regarding
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Date:
4/12/2011
In the years since the Cold War ended, the number of system integrators in many segments of the defense industry has declined significantly. A dozen missile producers became four, six naval shipbuilders became two, and the ranks of military aircraft manufacturers were reduced by half. However,
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Date:
4/12/2011
The “war” in Libya is two months old. The fortunes of both sides have ebbed and flowed with government forces recently driving the rebels back almost to the gates of Benghazi, their capitol. NATO airstrikes continue with some 25 of Ghadaffi’s tanks destroyed over the weekend. At the same time, the
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Date:
4/11/2011
The popular investor website 24-7 Wall Street has named Lockheed Martin to its list of the ten corporations most crucial to America's economic future. Editors cited Lockheed's innovations in advanced military hardware and software, including
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Date:
4/8/2011
What do the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Libyan operation have in common? The answer is the presence of the U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft. Without fanfare and with little acknowledgement the U-2 has been conducting critical intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance missions for more
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Date:
4/8/2011
Recent Congressional hearings on the administration’s plan for deploying advanced missile defenses have raised concerns regarding the ability of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to successfully achieve planned goals. The current plan for the so-called Phased Adaptive Architecture (PAA) is to produce
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Date:
4/7/2011
In the latest indication that the U.S. defense electronics sector is overcrowded with players, five different teams are submitting proposals to the U.S. Army for a new system that can jam hostile missiles aimed at its helicopters. The system, called Common Infrared Countermeasures (CIRCM or "kirk-em"),
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Date:
4/5/2011
When a five-foot hole opens up in the fuselage of a commercial airliner, it gets the media’s and public’s attention. In general, the possibility that metal fatigue in older aircraft can result in such hull failures comes as no surprise to airline personnel and aviation experts. The stresses imposed
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Date:
4/5/2011
The most maligned weapons system in modern times is turning out to also be the most versatile, and maybe the safest. The V-22 Osprey was used last month to rescue a downed fighter pilot in Libya, opening a new chapter in the fast-growing chronicle of tilt-rotor successes. Many critics lost track
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Date:
4/5/2011
A key aspect of U.S. foreign and security policy is to build the capacity of partner nations to undertake their own defense. The importance of pursuing this goal is clearly demonstrated by the air campaign in Libya. Of the 15 nations other than the United States participating in the Libyan operation,
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Date:
4/4/2011
President Obama’s recent speech on energy policy continued his administration’s policy of setting a very high bar when it comes to energy. He wants to reduce by one third the importation of foreign oil within a decade. There are two parallel paths to this goal. First, find more oil at home. Second,
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Date:
4/1/2011