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April 2013
North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program has developed faster than Washington anticipated. To make matters worse, Pyongyang has threatened to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has labeled North Korea’s recent rhetoric as a real and clear danger
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Date:
4/30/2013
Lieutenant General Michael D. Barbero probably wasn't as shocked as the rest of us when bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on April 15. He has headed the Pentagon's joint agency for combating improvised explosive devices over the last two years, and during that time 17,000 such devices have
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Date:
4/29/2013
A dozen years ago, the U.S. Navy announced plans for three new classes of surface warships -- a land-attack destroyer, a missile-defense cruiser, and a fast coastal combatant that could replace frigates in shallow-water operations. The destroyer and cruiser ended up being terminated due to budget
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Date:
4/26/2013
Thirty years after Ronald Reagan first articulated a vision of space-based defense against ballistic-missile attack, Washington still can't seem to get serious about the mission. In the same month that the Stalinist government of North Korea threatened a nuclear strike against the American homeland,
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4/25/2013
After a dozen years of robust demand for their skills, companies providing technical services to the military are facing shrinking markets. One reason is the winding down of overseas wars, and another is deficit-reduction measures. Production of military hardware is expected to generate stronger
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4/24/2013
A generation ago, owning a daily newspaper was a license to print money. And being a reporter at a major daily was a big deal. You got paid top dollar to serve the public good, in the process generating what Washington Post President & CEO Philip L. Graham called "the first rough draft
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4/23/2013
Governments, like individuals, can suffer from the effects of too much of a good thing. This is the case when it comes to the degree and intensity of competition for Pentagon contracts. The current leadership of the Department of Defense sees increased competition as a way of reducing costs. Unfortunately,
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4/22/2013
The preservation of air dominance is crucial to strategic deterrence and to the successful prosecution of modern warfare. General Charles Horner developed and implemented the air campaign in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. He put it best when he said: “If you don’t control the air, you’d better
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Date:
4/22/2013
As issues delaying the Pentagon's F-35 fighter program are gradually resolved, it seems to be securing broad support in the political system. Perennial critic Sen. John McCain of Arizona recently commented that the tri-service tactical aircraft "may be the greatest combat aircraft in the history
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Date:
4/22/2013
It should come as no surprise to anyone that despite their nuclear power plants, the fleet of U.S. aircraft carriers (CVNs) require a lot of logistics support. Some of this comes from underway replenishment ships that provide items such as jet fuel and munitions. But a lot is provided by the Navy’s
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Date:
4/19/2013
The quick identification of likely perpetrators in the Boston Marathon bombing highlights how far federal, state and local authorities have come since 9-11 in preparing to cope with terrorist attacks. Less than a hundred hours after homemade bombs went off near the marathon's finish line, authorities
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Date:
4/19/2013
Despite being better positioned for a downturn in military demand than any of its defense-industry competitors, number-one rated Pentagon contractor Lockheed Martin is pursuing a wide range of commercial opportunities. Having increased dividends at a 22% annual rate over the past ten years, company
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Date:
4/18/2013
What is the value to the United States of the Army? This is a question which the Chief of Staff, General Odierno, and senior uniformed and civilian leaders of this venerable organization are having trouble answering. They have experimented with a number of different arguments. For example, they
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Date:
4/18/2013
Next month, the Army will lose one of its best officers. After a 32-year career Colonel Peter Newell is retiring. Beginning his career as an enlisted armor crewman, Colonel Newell also served in a number of divisional assignments as well as with the 75th Ranger regiment and the 82nd Airborne. Like
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Date:
4/17/2013
If ever there was an individual who seemed prepared to hold a senior government position it is Secretary of State John Kerry. The combination of war hero and long-serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would seem to be a good background for someone thrown into the current crisis
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4/16/2013
When Bill Clinton entered the White House 20 years ago, he and his fellow Democrats were primed to claim the "peace dividend" generated by the end of the Cold War. Pentagon spending on weapons and force structure was slashed, enabling Clinton to balance the budget in his second term. But before
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Date:
4/16/2013
The popular stereotype of the defense industry is big industrial companies making billion-dollar weapon systems. Over the last dozen years, though, it is the Pentagon's providers of technical services who have seen the greatest growth. The defense department spends over $100 billion annually on
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Date:
4/15/2013
For more than half a century there has been the modern military version of a gunfighters’ standoff on the Korean Peninsula. On the northern side of the border is an army of nearly one million with heavy mechanized formations and tens of thousands of artillery pieces and rocket launchers pointed
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Date:
4/15/2013
In the late 1990s, defense hawks and doves were involved in an intense debate over missile defense. The Clinton Administration had stomped on the brakes, reducing the Reagan-Bush program to a research effort. Official intelligence estimates saw the threat to the U.S. homeland from nations such
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Date:
4/12/2013
The Defense Intelligence Agency has probably jumped the gun in finding that North Korea can arm its ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons, but that day is coming. Eventually the U.S. may have to launch a preemptive strike against the North's nuclear complex, given how erratic its leaders are.
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4/12/2013
The fiscal 2014 proposed defense budget puts the Obama Administration’s money where its strategy is. The Air Force and the Navy are the clear beneficiaries in the new budget with virtually all their major programs emerging intact. The Navy will get funding for both the Gerald Ford (CVN-78) and the
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Date:
4/11/2013
Since the pivot to the Asia-Pacific region was first announced last year in the Obama Administration’s Defense Strategy, the defense community has struggled to figure out what was going to change in the way U.S. forces were postured, organized, equipped and deployed. The Navy offhandedly mentioned
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Date:
4/10/2013
The Pentagon today unveiled a $527 billion spending request for fiscal 2014 which sticks with the military priorities that President Obama enunciated last year. Surprisingly, it also sticks with the spending levels despite a deficit law that would require military expenditures to be about $50 billion
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Date:
4/10/2013
Many experts believe that the Pentagon has entered a prolonged period of declining budgets. If that proves true, it will only be the third major downturn in military demand since the modern defense industry emerged during the 1950s in response to the security challenge posed by the Soviet Union.
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Date:
4/9/2013
Last August, the board of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) voted to split the company into two separate businesses, spinning off much of its government-services work. Management argues that organizational conflict-of-interest rules in the Federal Acquisition Regulation have
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Date:
4/8/2013
As the crisis with North Korea has intensified, the focus almost exclusively has been on that country’s ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Recently, the regime in Pyongyang successfully tested a space launch vehicle, demonstrating progress on the path towards building an intercontinental ballistic
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Date:
4/8/2013
Recent North Korean threats to launch nuclear attacks against the United States will undoubtedly renew interest in U.S. missile-defense efforts. Washington has spent about $170 billion on such defenses since Ronald Reagan enunciated the need for a "strategic defense initiative" 30 years ago. Today,
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Date:
4/5/2013
It takes a crisis to concentrate the mind. Faced with unusually bellicose rhetoric from the regime in Pyongyang, the Obama Administration reversed course on National Missile Defense (NMD) and is rapidly bolstering its theater air and missile defenses in the region. The Department of Defense will
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Date:
4/5/2013
The Boeing Company is on the verge of completing all the tasks in an FAA-approved certification plan that will enable its 787 Dreamliner to resume normal flight operations. The plane was grounded in January following two overheating incidents with lithium-ion batteries used mainly to support ground
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Date:
4/4/2013
In his first major address as Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel identified the elephant in the room when it comes to the future of the Department of Defense (DoD): the Pentagon has become an inefficient, top-heavy, bureaucratized organization seemingly as devoted to social service programs as it
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Date:
4/4/2013
In the perfect defense acquisition world, requirements would be well-defined and reasonable, RFPs clearly written, program cost and schedule would be sensible and attainable, the necessary technologies would have a high readiness level and the end product would be affordable, effective and sustainable.
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4/3/2013
When was the last time the U.S. projected its military power overseas without air and sea superiority? It was 1942. Looking to stop Japan’s expansion across the Pacific and secure the sea lines of communication to Australia, the U.S. 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal Island in the Solomon’s
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Date:
4/2/2013
The new millennium isn't working out the way Republicans had hoped, in large part because of two wars that have distracted the political system from domestic concerns. So you'd think the GOP would be eager to avoid new conflicts. Well guess again. House Republicans are sending all the wrong messages
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Date:
4/2/2013
Even as the British Defense Staff and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff held an unusual meeting in Washington last week to develop a common strategic vision, back home the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) was moving forward with plans to outsource the management of its procurement and support functions.
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Date:
4/1/2013
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its 11th annual assessment of major defense acquisition programs last week, reporting that the long-term cost of the programs had declined $152 billion between 2011 and 2012. Most of the projected savings resulted from program cancellations and
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Date:
4/1/2013