The U.S. Army faces a monumental modernization challenge. It is looking to acquire new aircraft, armored fighting vehicles, long-range fires systems, communications networks, electronic warfare capabilities, soldier systems and air and missile defenses. Fortunately, the Army does not need to develop a new main battle tank. Its current platform, the M1A2 Abrams, is the tank of the future. Planned upgrades will ensure that the Abrams maintains its dominant position for decades to come. The Army is beginning to receive the [ Read More…]

The Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio is the last tank plant in America.  In fact, it’s the last such facility in the Western Hemisphere.  Nonetheless, the Army proposed shuttering the plant during the Obama administration, and the White House evinced little concern.  That all changed after Russia invaded Ukraine and Donald Trump was elected president.  Trump saw that Lima was a place where his national security and economic agendas converged, and therefore greatly increased funding for tanks.  Encouraged [ Read More…]

Major improvements to the electric grid should include addressing the potentially serious risks faced from long-term shutdowns from electromagnetic pulse events. These improvements are affordable, especially when done in conjunction with other grid upgrades. Lexington Institute’s Paul Steidler has written a commentary for RealClearEnergy about this topic here.

The prime contractor for the F-35 fighter’s airframe, Lockheed Martin, is implementing a range of measures aimed at reducing the life-cycle cost of the program. One such measure is to recompete key subsystems, with an eye to finding subcontractors that offer lower costs for sustainment and upgrades. It’s a good idea in principle, but when it comes to the electronic-warfare system it might backfire badly. Incumbent provider BAE Systems has been on the program from its inception, and is the [ Read More…]

The Air Force is not moving fast enough to buy its version of the tri-service F-35 fighter.  It only requested 48 of the planes in 2019, even though it needs to take delivery of at least 66 each year to keep the fighter fleet from shrinking as Cold War planes retire.  The faster the Cold War planes go the better, because they won’t be able to survive in future wars against countries like Russia and China.  At the rate the [ Read More…]

U.S. military planners are ready for just about anything. Anything, that is, except a fiscal crisis driven by rising interest rates. The federal government has accumulated so much debt that even a moderate rise in rates could drive the annual cost of servicing the debt over a trillion dollars. If that were to happen, defense would likely become a bill-payer for the government’s past profligacy, and equipment purchases would be hit especially hard. The Trump defense buildup might come to [ Read More…]

Bloomberg News reported this week that there will be yet another delay in delivery of the first Boeing KC-46 Pegasus tankers to the Air Force.  After so many delays on the program, you’d think Boeing execs would be upset.  But they aren’t, because this time the delay is being caused by a serpentine certification process within the government.  There are no new problems with the tanker.  In fact, tests have shown the system works well, and is ready to join [ Read More…]

Today’s national security leadership is confronting a dilemma not unlike that which confronted the Western allies in the 1930s. Faced with growing great power threats in both Europe and Asia, they knew it was essential to build up their militaries. However, the ongoing effects of the Great Depression and bad economic policies caused them to hesitate when it came to increasing defense spending. As a result, France and Great Britain were ill-prepared when war came. Current U.S. defense leaders are [ Read More…]

The U.S. Army is planning to replace all of its Cold War helicopters with new rotorcraft through a program called Future Vertical Lift.  The first step in that multi-decade effort is to find an airframe that can take the place of Black Hawk utility helicopters and Apache attack helicopters.  One possibility is that the Army will opt to buy a third-generation tiltrotor from Bell/Textron similar to the Marine Corps’ MV-22B Osprey.  A second possibility is that it will buy an [ Read More…]

The Army’s current modernization strategy has one significant characteristic that will impact not only how that service will fight but also the conduct of joint and combined operations. That characteristic is weight. For program after program, whether they are to upgrade existing platforms or to replace systems that have reached the end of their useful lives, the new capability is almost universally heavier than its predecessor. The demands of modern warfare and the opportunities provided by technological advances have caused [ Read More…]