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May 2013
The most interesting part of President Obama’s speech yesterday at the National Defense University wasn’t his articulate defense of the way his administration had conducted the war on terror or the measure he announced to dial down the intensity if not the scope of future efforts against terrorist
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5/24/2013
The Department of Defense has released its latest estimates of how much major weapons programs will cost to buy, and it says the price-tag for the biggest program of all is shrinking. The official estimate of the cost to buy 2,457 F-35 aircraft over three decades fell $4.94 billion (1.5 %) in the
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5/24/2013
It has been almost twenty years since the topics of U.S. national security strategy and defense policy were seriously discussed. For the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. defense establishment was preoccupied with managing the drawdown and – marginal – recasting of the
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5/23/2013
As U.S. defense budgets decline, possibly by as much as $1 trillion over the next decade, the Pentagon, Congress and defense experts are all on the hunt for ways of reducing the cost of defense without having to gut force structure and modernization. One commonly raised question is whether the Pentagon
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5/22/2013
The defense sector has become a tale of two cities -- or at least, two zip codes. If you live on Main Street where the defense plants and depots are located, things are looking rather bleak. Contracts are being delayed, capital investments are being slashed, and workers are being furloughed.
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5/22/2013
As part of its ongoing effort to address the twin challenges of declining defense budgets and increasing threats, the U.S. Air Force has begun a conceptual study to define the future force of 2023. It chose that point in time because that would mark the end of the period of budget sequestration
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5/21/2013
Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) is the biggest builder of warships in the Western Hemisphere, and maybe the world. It was cobbled together from three previously independent shipyards in 2001 by Northrop Grumman, which spun it off ten years later. The company's financial performance has improved
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5/21/2013
Under Secretary of Defense for AT&L, Mr. Frank Kendall released the long-awaited revision to the defense department’s signature acquisition reform memorandum, Better Buying Power (BBP): “Implementation Directive for Better Buying Power 2.0 – Achieving Greater Efficiency and Productivity in Defense
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5/20/2013
The U.S. Air Force thinks it is facing an identity crisis. Despite having, arguably, the best people, equipment and practices and having performed well through two wars and numerous crises, it doesn’t know who it is. It has demonstrated superb technical and tactical capabilities over the past decade,
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5/17/2013
Defense contractor Northrop Grumman announced a major expansion of its ongoing share repurchase program yesterday, signaling that the company's earnings per share (E.P.S.) are likely to increase for years to come despite softening demand from its federal customer. The company disclosed that its
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5/17/2013
Last week Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh committed the cardinal sin of telling Senators the truth about a politically charged subject in an open subcommittee session. Welsh suggested that one reason the military has trouble preventing sexual assault is the values of the society from which
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5/16/2013
The U.S Navy deploys platforms and weapons systems of unmatched capabilities. There are no ships to match the power of the Nimitz and (soon to be deployed) Ford nuclear powered aircraft carriers. The continuously-improving Virginia-class attack submarine force is the best in
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5/16/2013
The discussion surrounding the new defense strategy with its “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region has focused largely on prospective changes to the deployment and posturing of U.S. forces in the region. The U.S. Navy plans to shift ten percent of its fleet, between twenty-five and thirty ships, to
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5/15/2013
For nearly 20 years, the federal government has used a formula to determine how much executive compensation it is willing to cover at its leading contractors. The ceiling is adjusted each year, and currently stands at $763,000. But critics of the defense industry in Congress say that number is
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5/15/2013
Times are tough for the U.S. Army. After twelve years of fighting -- the longest stretch of continuous combat in the Army's history -- its plans to rebuild are being shredded by across-the-board funding cuts. Desperate to protect soldiers in Afghanistan, it is ransacking its budget for savings
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5/14/2013
International Mine Countermeasures Exercise (IMCMEX) 2013, sponsored by U.S. Central Command and the Fifth Fleet, got underway last week in the Persian Gulf. The largest exercise of its kind, IMCMEX involves representatives from 41 nations. Thirty-five ships, 18 Unmanned Underwater Vehicles and
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5/13/2013
Last month, Army Secretary John McHugh and Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno warned the armed services committees in the House and Senate that their service's readiness is rapidly approaching a crisis state. Budget cuts have resulted in cancellation of new depot maintenance work for the next two quarters
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5/13/2013
It is easy to feel a sense of cognitive dissonance visiting Tiananmen Square. I went there because it was the site of one of the great, albeit unsuccessful, popular protests of the modern era. While large, the square itself is rather plain, except for the gigantic flat screen displays that continually
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5/10/2013
In the aftermath of the December 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, it must have seemed obvious to Barack Obama that he needed to do something about gun control. He called it the worst day of his presidency, and became emotionally invested in leading reform of the nation's gun laws.
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5/10/2013
As the Bible teaches us, it is impossible to make bricks without straw. It also is impossible to have a modern, capable military without money. When Pharaoh ordered the Israelites to make bricks without straw, God saved the Chosen People by performing a miracle. Today, there is nothing that will
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5/9/2013
The problem with the news is that it is always about what's happening today. It's almost never about underlying trends or larger meanings. So if you peruse the archives of major newspapers over the last few decades, you'll find their front pages were full of stories that turned out not
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5/9/2013
There is no question that the pace of military modernization by the People’s Republic of China is increasing. Investments are being made in all the areas that would support military actions against its neighbors. These include a massive increase in theater ballistic missiles targeted against Taiwan,
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5/8/2013
My colleague Dan Goure posted a commentary yesterday that captured the core weakness of China's economy. Although Beijing can stimulate high levels of growth through subsidies and other market interventions, it can't create the kind of agile, innovative business culture that will be required to
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5/8/2013
Those who wish for a new “Chinese model of capitalism” fail to appreciate that Beijing already has an economic system that its leadership likes quite well. It is a mixture of the classic command system developed by the Soviet Union and the collaborative public-private approach employed by authoritarian
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5/7/2013
After years of skeptical media coverage, the turbulence surrounding the Pentagon's F-35 fighter program seems to be dissipating. That's happening partly because the Obama Administration restructured an overly-aggressive development plan and partly because prime contractor Lockheed Martin fixed
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5/7/2013
The U.S. Export-Import Bank, popularly known as Ex-Im, is a Washington success story. Established in the depths of the Great Depression to help manufacturers obtain financing for overseas sales, it manages to support $50 billion in exports annually that sustain 250,000 jobs without costing taxpayers
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5/6/2013
There are many observers who see China as the economic, military and even political juggernaut of the 21st Century. China’s economy has weathered the recent global economic downturn better than most and its GDP appears on course to grow by more than seven percent in 2013. Beijing continues to provide
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5/6/2013
Over the last dozen years, rotorcraft have been the most successful part of the Army's modernization program. Despite occasional mis-steps, the service has achieved major gains in performance at modest cost by upgrading proven airframes like the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the CH-47 Chinook cargo
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5/3/2013
Word from Capitol Hill is that some members of the House Republican Conference have been unsettled by the strong public reaction to air-traffic delays brought on by sequestration. Until recently, sequestration was an abstraction, a philosophical debating point that had no real-world consequences,
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Date:
5/2/2013