The U.S. Army is leading what may prove to be the biggest rotorcraft program in history. Called Future Vertical Lift (FVL), it will replace over a dozen different helicopters in the joint fleet with thousands of new aircraft that have greater speed, range, reliability, survivability and lethality. All of these enhancements are needed to fight successfully in the future operational environment.  But there is another facet to FVL: revitalizing the domestic rotorcraft industry. Since the Cold War ended, few genuinely [ Read More…]

Its stealth, long-range sensors and ability to internally carry Raytheon’s AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile make it the world’s most effective air supremacy fighter, after the F-22. The Joint Strike Missile (JSM), and Lockheed’s Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) provide the F-35B with advanced long-range sea and land strike capabilities. There will soon likely be a JSM variant that will fit into the F-35B’s internal bomb bays, thus preserving its stealth. I have written more about this topic here.

The Pentagon writes lots of large, long-term contracts, particularly for major weapons platforms. Over the past several decades, the size and duration of contractors for services, particularly in the areas of information technology (IT) and networking, have increased significantly. The problem with massive, long-duration IT contracts is that the pace of technological change often makes them out-of-date almost from the start. An example of one such big contract is the Navy’s new contract to manage multiple IT networks, called the [ Read More…]

The Air Force has a vision of future fighter development that involves buying many different aircraft with limited service lives in small lots. Called the Digital Century Series, it is an attempt to leverage developments like digital engineering to stay ahead of the Chinese. It’s an exciting vision of what recent innovations can enable, but its operational implications are not so enticing. The tactical air fleet that results would be hard to synchronize in wartime, hard to sustain, hard to [ Read More…]

There is great news for the chorus of leading House Democrats and special interests who have been saying that the U.S. Postal Service will be broke and chaos will ensue just before the election: It’s not going to happen! The unimpeachable source for this information is the U.S. Postal Service itself which said in a May 8 legal filing it “expects that it will have sufficient liquidity to continue operating through at least May 2021.” Yet Democrats and special interests [ Read More…]

The future of airpower is not either manned or unmanned, but both. The balance between these two will be based on a deep appreciation for how best to use an expanding array of manned aerial systems, unmanned vehicles and air-delivered/air-breathing weapons in a future high-end air campaign. This new balance could reassert the dominance of airpower in high-end warfare, which has been challenged by advances in anti-access/area-denial capabilities. While it is tempting to pursue a future based on highly sophisticated [ Read More…]

There’s a lot of speculation about where defense spending is headed in the aftermath of the worst pandemic in a century, most of it negative. But the truth of the matter is that we have no idea where military outlays will stand a few years from today. Strategic surprises like Sputnik or 9-11 happen every 5-6 years, often shifting the vector of defense. Election outcomes change political priorities. Fluctuations in interest rates can have a big impact on what the [ Read More…]

The Postal Service — for which leading House Democrats and postal unions are using the COVID-19 crisis to raise fears of an imminent postal collapse – demanded $89 billion in unrestricted federal grants and loans, and is using its supposed looming downfall to beat up the Trump administration. The situation underscores what is wrong in Washington with the issuance of blank checks rather than solving problems through practical means and compromise. Lexington Institute’s Paul Steidler has written a commentary for [ Read More…]

Raytheon Technologies, the merged aerospace and defense operations of Raytheon and United Technologies, is a very big enterprise. So big, in fact, that it will take analysts a while to sort out all of the company’s diverse competencies. When they do, it will become apparent that supporting offensive and defensive cyber operations for the national security establishment is a major business line. No company surpasses RTX (its stock symbol) in the depth and breadth of cyber expertise provided to the [ Read More…]

With the appointment last night of a new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, the reset button has been pushed on potential additional Congressional assistance to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) in the “Stimulus 4” package and on postal reform generally. This provides an opportunity for major and overdue reforms, rather than just putting tens of billions of dollars into a broken business model. Congressional Assistance. Over the past few weeks, House Democrats, postal unions and online retailers have been clamoring for [ Read More…]