The Air Force’s fleet of 31 E-3 AWACS radar planes is rapidly descending into obsolescence. The service should have begun a replacement program decades ago, but we are where we are: a successor based on Australia’s Wedgetail was announced in April of last year. The first two prototypes of a planned 26-aircraft buy should be delivered by 2027, with the rest entering the fleet by 2032. The joint force cannot do without the new planes, because at this point no [ Read More…]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has been making serious efforts to take advantage of advances in private sector logistics to improve the way that defense goods are warehoused, organized, and distributed. A major part of this effort has centered on consolidating disparate transportation activities into large multi-year contracts that can reduce costs and improve efficiency. One of the most innovative of these is the Defense Freight Transportation Services (DFTS) contract. Awarded in 2016 by the U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) to [ Read More…]

This testimony was presented to the Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. House of Representatives, on May 16th, 2023. Chairwoman Hageman and Ranking Member Fernandez, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Subcommittee today to address an issue of the utmost importance to the sovereignty of the United States and the integrity of our Pacific territories and insular areas: countering the malign influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). As the first-ever [ Read More…]

The U.S. military owns the most capable weapons in the world. However, there is a downside to being so capable. Advanced weapons are costly, so it is very expensive to accumulate large stocks. That presents a dilemma for military planners, who know that in a major war with China, U.S. forces might need to attack 100,000 aimpoints. Current U.S. supplies of precision munitions would begin to run low after hitting only a fraction of that number of targets. BAE Systems [ Read More…]

There was a time, not so long ago, when the notion of a federal industrial policy was anathema in some circles. You know, “government picking winners and losers.” At least when it comes to America’s military, that attitude is now out the window. Congress and the Biden administration are making multiple moves to bolster the industrial base, especially with regard to munitions, by doing business more thoughtfully. This will greatly assist Washington in arming Ukraine and Taiwan. I have written [ Read More…]

Only months after the Pentagon disclosed it would not be buying a new engine for the tri-service F-35 fighter, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is signaling he wouldn’t mind if Congress were to keep funding the program. Any such move would be a waste of taxpayer money at a time when the level of federal spending has already led to a budget impasse in Washington. The F-35 does not need a new engine to meet future performance requirements, it simply [ Read More…]

During today’s public comment period before the U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors, the Lexington Institute’s Paul Steidler urged the Board to promote transparency and independent evaluations of the Postal Service. His remarks are below. The U.S. Postal Service has again experienced a significant loss in the first six months of Fiscal Year 2023. With Congress having provided $120 billion in taxpayer funds to you since December 2020 through COVID funding, the Postal Service Reform Act, and the Inflation Reduction [ Read More…]

When politicians overwhelmingly pass a massive federal bailout, taxpayers expect it will work. But Washington, D.C. is now so broken that even this can no longer be assumed. Exhibit A is the Postal Service Reform Act (PSRA), one of the few bipartisan measures enacted by Congress in 2022 and signed by President Biden on April 6, 2022. Three government reports since April 20, 2023 show that the financial assumptions Congress used to enact PSRA were way off. The new reports also [ Read More…]

U.S. military spending is not excessive relative to the size of the federal budget or the national economy. The Biden administration has requested $886 billion in national defense spending for the fiscal year beginning October 1, which represents about 13% of the budget and 3% of the economy. Within the defense budget, even the biggest weapons programs typically claim only a few hours of federal spending per year. In fact, Americans spent more on the holidays last year than they [ Read More…]

Army Chief of Staff General James McConville told an audience in April that the Army will need to continue upgrading its existing combat helicopters for decades to come, because they are likely to remain in service through mid-century. In the case of two of them–the Apache attack helicopter and the Chinook cargo helicopter–there is no formal plan for a replacement. In the case of the ubiquitous Black Hawk utility helicopter, there is a planned successor, but it will take decades [ Read More…]