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June 2011
How could the Commander in Chief respond today offensively to a long-range threat from a ballistic missile to the U.S. homeland, overseas forces or the territory of a key ally? National missile defense and the planned deployments of theater missile defenses would provide some protection from such
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Date:
6/30/2011
Sometime in the next few months, the U.S. Air Force will make a critical acquisition decision directly tied to the changed nature of the threat and the service’s relevance in this changed environment. It certainly will not be the largest or most expensive decision. But it will be extremely significant
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6/29/2011
The relationship between the private defense industrial base and the Department of Defense can be as close as a long-standing marriage and as difficult as a war zone. Senior defense officials like to say over and over again that the department produces nothing and is dependent on the private sector
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Date:
6/29/2011
It appears that the coming consolidation of the defense sector will be accompanied by a steady diet of shareholder activism. Shareholder dissatisfaction played a key role in the ouster of Northrop Grumman CEO Ron Sugar in 2009, and successor Wes Bush has made a series of moves aimed at improving
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Date:
6/29/2011
Even as the U.S. begins to reduce its involvement in Afghanistan, the potential source of future conflicts in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is moving aggressively to expand its political and military power. Teheran is reported to be reaching out to its neighbors, Iraq, Afghanistan and
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6/28/2011
Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg Business News reported last week that Boeing may end up spending $300 million more than is budgeted under its contract to develop a new Air Force tanker. Bad news for taxpayers, right? Wrong -- because the company will have to eat every cent of expenses above the ceiling
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Date:
6/28/2011
The Pentagon's recent estimate that it will cost a trillion dollars to operate and sustain the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter through 2065 is very misleading. First, the estimate exaggerates an already big bill by using imaginary inflation rates that are unknowable. Second, the estimate fails to note that
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Date:
6/27/2011
It has been more than twenty years since the U.S. Navy had a major naval vessel as a target in the event of war. In the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet Navy produced a series of major surface combatants to tempt the U.S. Navy. There were large destroyers, a number of cruiser classes and even the Kirov
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Date:
6/27/2011
With President Obama’s announcement of the beginning of a phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, attention naturally turned to the troops coming out, those remaining and how they will fare in the difficult months and years ahead. What continues to pass almost unnoticed about our presence in Afghanistan
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Date:
6/24/2011
President Obama's June 22 announcement that a third of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be removed in little more than a year signals the beginning of the end for America's military campaign in that country. The President says we are scaling back because the war against the Taliban is going
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6/23/2011
The ongoing NATO air campaign in Libya is providing two interrelated lessons for the future of the Alliance as a military instrument. The first is you play with what you pay for. Or in the case of NATO it might be stated if you don’t pay you cannot play. The lack of investment by this country’s
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Date:
6/23/2011
In 1968, the sun truly sank on the British Empire. Then Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced the beginning of a phased withdrawal of British forces from bases and outposts east of the Suez Canal. Planned to extend over a number of years, the withdrawal was hastened by a run on the British pound
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6/22/2011
Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter has approved two high-tech military radios for production that will thoroughly revolutionize the way in which U.S. soldiers and other warfighters operate on future battlefields. The radios are compact, "software-reconfigurable" communications devices developed
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Date:
6/22/2011
Nuclear war will remain the most important military threat that America faces for the foreseeable future. The United States must maintain a secure retaliatory capability to deter attack, because there is no guarantee that leaders of other nuclear powers will always be as reasonable as they seem
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6/21/2011
With little fanfare or public comment, the Department of Defense (DoD) last month published its Operational Energy Strategy. This is not your traditional green document with broad generalizations about the problems of profligate energy use and the need for conservation. Instead, the strategy
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6/21/2011
Gen. Lloyd James Austin III has been selected as the next Army Vice Chief of Staff, assuming Senate confirmation. The Thomasville, Georgia native currently serves as Commanding General, United States Forces - Iraq, having replaced Gen. Ray Odierno in that position on June 30, 2010. Odierno will
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Date:
6/21/2011
Last month the U.S. Air Force successfully orbited the first geosynchronous satellite in the nation's future missile-warning system. This is a very big deal for two reasons. First, nuclear deterrence won't work if you don't know when you're under attack. Second, the last time the U.S. successfully
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6/20/2011
The House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee is raising doubts about a costly new information system the Navy is proposing to purchase called the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN, or "En-Gen"). NGEN would replace an existing Navy-Marine Corps network that is the largest intranet
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Date:
6/20/2011
Media reporting tends to give the impression that the Department of Defense (DoD) is a high tech operation. When people think about Pentagon spending it’s usually in the context of such technologies as stealth fighters, nuclear ships and submarines, unmanned vehicles or precision weapons. Then there
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Date:
6/20/2011
The pattern of postwar military spending has led many in the defense industry to believe that demand follows a wave-like pattern similar to the commercial business cycle. That is an illusion. Military demand is driven mainly by threats, which appear with little warning and cannot be modeled in advance.
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6/17/2011
The question of how to squeeze $400 billion out of national-security spending has taken on greater intensity in recent weeks. Senior defense officials, both outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the incoming Leon Panetta have spoken out against “salami-slicing” defense programs (that is, taking
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6/16/2011
The Pakistani military has been detaining locals who may have helped the CIA monitor activities around Osama bin Laden's compound. The move isn't likely to improve relations with Washington, but it's understandable in light of how the raid that killed bin Laden unfolded. Pakistan's military leaders
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6/16/2011
For years, critics of defense spending have used the V-22 as almost a poster child for wrongheaded defense programs. Proponents of reduced defense spending, including the President’s deficit commission, included the V-22 as an example of a program they would eliminate. Some analysts still refer to the
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Date:
6/15/2011
What was the point to Secretary Gates’ speech in Brussels on Friday? If it was simply to tell our European allies that they are not spending enough to maintain their own defense, that they are free riding and that they risk having the United States walk away from the Alliance, well we have been here
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6/14/2011
Last month I wrote two commentaries for Forbes.com questioning whether Space Exploration Technologies Corporation -- SpaceX -- was ready to be a reliable launch provider for resupply of NASA's International Space Station. I pointed out that the company has only launched its signature Falcon 9 rocket
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Date:
6/14/2011
When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he wasn't planning to spend huge amounts of money on upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In fact, fostering a "nuclear-free world" was one of the cornerstones of his proposed defense posture. But as the new administration rewrote U.S. nuclear strategy and
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Date:
6/13/2011
Every so often a story appears in the foreign media that reminds you of how differently some countries approach business than America does. One such story appeared in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro on June 7, reporting that 50 right-wing deputies from the French National Assembly had drafted a petition
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Date:
6/13/2011
The Army Systems Acquisition Review Council held a meeting about combat vehicle modernization this week, and the one message that came out of deliberations loud and clear is that the service can't afford all of the initiatives it is planning. The general consensus among members of the service's
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Date:
6/10/2011
As reported here and by other sources, many of the military’s vehicle programs are in deep difficulty. There are serious questions being raised regarding the viability of new starts for the Ground Combat Vehicle and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Stories coming out of Afghanistan suggest that the
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Date:
6/10/2011
The American people and their elected representatives appear to be suffering from “wars fatigue,” which I define as the inevitable exhaustion that occurs when the nation suffers through multiple, protracted and not too successful conflicts. Not since World War Two have U.S. military forces been
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6/9/2011
Imagine you were a Chinese leader in Beijing trying to gauge U.S. resolve, and this is what you saw. Despite decades of currency manipulation by China that has destroyed millions of U.S. jobs, Washington declines to label Beijing a currency manipulator. Despite Chinese theft of intellectual property
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Date:
6/9/2011
Many observers expect the incoming Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, to be focused on reining in spending and cutting expenses at the Pentagon. However, it is possible that the focus of Secretary Panetta’s time in office may be devoted to an entirely different agenda. In his written responses
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6/8/2011
The Obama Administration apparently has decided to name Dr. Heidi Shyu as the next Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. That isn't so surprising since she was already the principal deputy to departing Army acquisition chief Malcolm O'Neill, but what is noteworthy
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6/8/2011
The U.S. Army can’t seem to catch a break. Its new Chief of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, was barely in the job a month before President Obama nominated him to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Retired Army General, Malcolm O’Neil, currently that service’s reform-minded Assistant Secretary
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Date:
6/7/2011
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen have been making a series of remarks during their final months in office stressing the importance of providing robust funding for new military technology. They say that the savings needed to fund modernization in a flat
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Date:
6/7/2011
If the outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates can be said to have a major vice it has been his tendency to telegraph and even undermine the results of major strategic reviews performed by his department -- even before the analyses have been completed. For example, in early 2009 Foreign Affairs
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6/6/2011
Oshkosh Corporation's aggressive drive to become the biggest supplier of wheeled vehicles to the U.S. Army appears to have hit a rough patch. R. Andrew Hove, the president of Oshkosh's defense unit, left the company "to seek other business opportunities" last week, and now the company appears to
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Date:
6/6/2011
Today's Wall Street Journal contains a story by reporter Nathan Hodge illuminating the challenge faced by defense contractors seeking to sell digital-communications technology to the military. The Army has been conducting field tests of Apple iPhones and iPads as potential additions to the
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Date:
6/3/2011
The ink was barely dry on the New START Treaty before some in the Obama Administration were talking about the need for a follow-on agreement. The current agreement reduces the number of deployed Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear warheads (but not stockpiled weapons) by some 25 percent to 1,550
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Date:
6/3/2011
There is so much behind-the-scenes speculation about who the next Deputy Secretary of Defense will be that I suppose we need to take seriously the possibility current incumbent Bill Lynn is departing. I haven't been a Lynn booster in the past, but it's a bit odd to be letting go of a seasoned deputy
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Date:
6/2/2011
The Pentagon is about to publish its long awaited strategy for cyber warfare, the unclassified portions of which are likely to be made public sometime next month. In so doing, the Department of Defense (DoD) is acknowledging what all observers of the IT revolution have known for years: cyberwar
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Date:
6/1/2011
A rumor was making the rounds last week that General Electric Chairman Jeffrey Immelt might be departing his corporate job for a position in the federal government. The rumor may have been started by GE shareholders, who can't be pleased with how Immelt's tenure has unfolded since he assumed the
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Date:
6/1/2011