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May 2012
The U.S. Army is beginning a major modernization program of its vehicle fleets. The new programs come on top of tens of billions of dollars spent over the past decade on MRAPs, uparmored Humvees, improved medium and heavy trucks and improvements to the Abrams tank and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
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Date:
5/31/2012
Under the terms of the Budget Control Act passed into law last year, federal programs are due for automatic, across-the-board spending cuts beginning on January 2. The law calls for $1.2 trillion in new savings over the nine years between 2013 and 2021, with cuts split equally between defense and
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Date:
5/30/2012
No doubt one of the pleasures of being Secretary of Defense is to be a commencement speaker at one of this nation’s military academies. Whether at West Point, Annapolis or Colorado Springs, it is a chance to speak to and perhaps make a lasting impression on a generation of military officers. Making
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Date:
5/30/2012
Airpower isn’t just for fighting wars. It is also a vital means of combating wildfires. Fleets of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft provide the heavy water power that can turn the tide against major fire. Many wildfires occur in difficult to reach terrain; aerial tankers provide one of the few
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Date:
5/29/2012
Elon Musk and his SpaceX team earned a place in the history books last week with the first docking of a private spacecraft at the International Space Station. After ten years of continuous effort and frequent setbacks, Musk's vision of a low-cost, entrepreneurial space company is beginning to bear
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Date:
5/29/2012
The Pentagon's recently enunciated Asia-Pacific posture has focused attention on the military needs of U.S. friends and allies in the Western Pacific. Because the U.S. has relatively few bases there and is operating thousands of miles from home, it must rely on local partners to carry much of the
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Date:
5/25/2012
Air dominance is essential to virtually every operation the U.S. military conducts. It is an essential component of the U.S. military’s “DNA.” Budget cuts, shrinking force structure, poor investments in modernization, technological innovation and a growing anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) threat
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Date:
5/24/2012
As defense companies search for segments of the military market that may be insulated from a downturn in defense spending, one area that has been heavily favored is intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance -- widely referred to in the business as ISR. The thinking of corporate planners and
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Date:
5/24/2012
After lengthy delays, the Air Force has begun orbiting a new generation of heat-detecting satellites designed to provide early warning of hostile missile launches anywhere on the Earth's surface. The program, called the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS), pairs scanning and staring sensors on
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Date:
5/23/2012
As the clock ticks down to the January 2 deadline when automatic spending cuts are due to be triggered by last year's Budget Control Act, people in the defense sector are getting edgy. With little progress in Congress to avert sequestration likely before November elections, there will only be a
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Date:
5/22/2012
Global media coverage has heightened awareness of Greece’s probable exit from the euro-zone and produced a nickname for the Hellenic exodus: ‘Grexit.’ It is important to understand the potential consequences of a development that is provoking fear in world financial capitals even before its occurrence
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Date:
5/22/2012
In purely quantitative terms, NATO constitutes a powerful military machine. NATO at 27 members (not including the United States) has around 3 million men and women in uniform, possesses over 2,000 combat aircraft, 500 naval vessels (including six aircraft carriers) and more than 5,000 tanks and
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Date:
5/22/2012
Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Frank Kendall issued a memorandum to service acquisition executives on May 14 reiterating the Department of Defense's support for performance-based logistics strategies. Performance-based logistics strategies, or PBLs, are
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Date:
5/21/2012
U.S. military power can be an overwhelming instrument of national policy. Just ask -- if you could -- Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. However, it can be challenging for political leaders and combatant commanders to deploy that power rapidly and without extensive logistical and basing
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Date:
5/21/2012
Although I have been in Washington for more than 35 years I cannot think of a law more stupid than the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA). Not only did the Act first cut $489 billion from the defense budget over ten years but it mandated an additional $500 billion reduction starting in January 2013 if
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Date:
5/18/2012
Sometimes it seems like the U.S. Army's acquisition community has a split personality. The part that is supporting soldiers in the line of fire today has learned to respond to urgent requests quickly and effectively. The part that is trying to modernize for the soldiers of tomorrow can't seem
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Date:
5/18/2012
There's a story in the May 14 issue of Defense News that helps explain why Air Force modernization since the end of the Cold War has been largely a chronicle of missed opportunities. The story by reporter Jeff Schogol quotes Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz as saying that he doesn't think
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Date:
5/18/2012
Senior Navy officials have mounted a vigorous campaign to rebut recent criticism of the Littoral Combat Ship program. The program is funding parallel development of two classes of high-speed warships equipped with interchangeable mission packages for shallow-water missions such as minesweeping
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Date:
5/17/2012
Pentagon officials have decided to expand a program that brings the government and Internet service providers together in an effort to secure information resources used by the defense industry. In the past, it was often difficult to notify contractors of online threats in time to avert theft or
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Date:
5/16/2012
With key authorizing and appropriating panels in the House of Representatives having now marked up their versions of the fiscal 2013 defense budget, it appears the Army's plan to shut down most of the armored-vehicle production in the United States is not going to be approved. Media coverage of
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Date:
5/16/2012
Global Zero -- an organization whose sole reason for existence, as its name clearly indicates, is to promote the elimination of all nuclear weapons -- has published a new report calling for deep reductions in the U.S. arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons. Despite the prestigious credentials of the
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Date:
5/16/2012
2012 has already demonstrated signs that it will be a year of significant progress in the development and deployment of missile defenses. Just last week, the Missile Defense Agency conducted a successful test of its next in a series of improved ballistic missile interceptors, the Standard Missile-3
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Date:
5/14/2012
The lead vessel in the Littoral Combat Ship program has reached the point in its development when self-appointed watchdogs begin to question its price and performance. The Project on Government Oversight has branded it a "busted, leaky boat" and called for cancellation of the whole class. Investigative
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Date:
5/14/2012
As a result of repeated restructurings, the F-35 fighter program is now expected to deliver only about a quarter of the production aircraft originally planned by 2017 -- roughly 400 planes rather than 1,600. This presents a problem for the U.S. Air Force, which is destined to receive most of the
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Date:
5/11/2012
Greece must reduce government spending by $15 billion next month or it will be suspended from receiving international loans that keep the country afloat. This will be especially challenging since the May 6th elections there resulted in pro-bailout parties no longer having the power needed to govern
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Date:
5/11/2012
Recently, the Lexington Institute published an analysis by a senior aerospace official of ways to reduce excess spending in defense.
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Date:
5/11/2012
The crash of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 with 47 people on board during bad weather in Indonesia is a tragedy that will deal a heavy blow to the Russian plane-maker's hopes of becoming a major player in the commercial transport market. Russian airliners do not have a good track record for safety or creature
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Date:
5/10/2012
At this month’s NATO Summit in Chicago, the alliance’s leaders will roll out a specific set of proposals under the banner of “Smart Defense” for how to improve their deployable military strength. Smart Defense, simply defined, is a way of doing more without having more. NATO leaders, including the
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Date:
5/10/2012
Yesterday, Jim McNerney, the CEO of Boeing, fired a devastating broadside at the Obama Administration. In a public forum, he observed that ". . . . very few people in the Administration share life experiences with those of us who are in the private sector." In fairness to the White House, McNerney
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Date:
5/9/2012
Despite raising tactical connectivity to its top modernization priority, the Army is proposing to cut fiscal 2012 funding for the backbone of its future warfighting network by half. Service leaders are proposing to the Office of the Secretary of Defense that $400 million of the $815 million appropriated
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Date:
5/9/2012
One of the most amazing features of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan was the explosive growth in the role of private contractors on the battlefield. There is some public awareness of this phenomenon due largely to press reports about a few private security contractors acting like Baghdad was
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Date:
5/8/2012
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England has written an unusually blunt critique of how the Obama Pentagon is managing the military's biggest weapons program. The full-page essay appearing in this week's Defense News essentially accuses the Obama defense team of incompetence, contrasting
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Date:
5/8/2012
The Army is making a series of penny-wise and pound-foolish decisions to save money by gutting its industrial base. One such move is the ill-conceived proposal to shut its only tank plant for three years, and then reopen it when upgrades of the Abrams tank resume in 2017. But like other plans
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Date:
5/7/2012
If there was any doubt that the Democratic Party views government workers as a core constituency it should be dispelled by a recent letter by 24 Democrat senators to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Even as the military is set to cut more than 100,000 uniform personnel and private sector defense
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Date:
5/7/2012
The Department of Defense has proposed a change in the way it buys goods and services that could have far-reaching and destructive consequences, not only for the nation's warfighters but also for the global competitiveness of the U.S. economy. As reported in Defense News this week, policymakers
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Date:
5/4/2012
Modern weapons platforms are among the most complex systems man has ever designed. Building a warship, combat aircraft or armored fighting vehicle requires bringing together components, assemblies and systems from hundreds, even thousands of suppliers. In many instances the prime contractor for
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Date:
5/3/2012
Today, it is no exaggeration to say that the fate of two of Europe's -- really the world's -- greatest collective organizations of nations hang by a proverbial thread. Having successfully ended the Gaddafi regime in Libya, but at the price of revealing to the world its fundamental weaknesses in
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Date:
5/2/2012
As the U.S. military prepares to turn over security responsibilities in Afghanistan to indigenous forces, a key issue for planners is assuring those forces have adequate air power. Once U.S. pilots are gone, the Afghans must be able to provide air cover for their troops on the ground, delivering
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Date:
5/2/2012
In Washington, many of the really important fights over laws, budgets, government policies and regulations take place out of public view. The joke around town is this is because, as in the case of the prohibition on seeing how sausage is made, no one who uses the end product should see how it is
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Date:
5/1/2012
April was an unusually active month for foreign missile tests, with India, Pakistan and North Korea all launching their latest, longest-range ballistic missiles. The Indian and Pakistani missiles worked fine, the North Korean one did not. North Korea has now failed three times in a row to demonstrate
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Date:
5/1/2012