The complexity of nuclear threats posed to the U.S. homeland by North Korea is expected to grow, requiring military planners to add a second layer to the nation’s missile defense architecture. If each line of defense in a two-layer architecture can intercept 80% of the missiles seeking to penetrate it, 96% of attacking warheads will not reach their targets in America. The most readily available systems suitable for providing that second layer, which would complement the existing Ground-based Midcourse Defense, [ Read More…]

According to the Bible, all humanity once spoke the same language. But when the people sought to build a tower that would reach to the Heavens, God responded by causing them to suddenly speak different languages so they could not communicate and work together to complete the Tower of Babel. The word derived from this story, babble, means a confusion of sounds. Over the decades, the U.S. military has created a “Tower of Babel” problem in the form of incompatible [ Read More…]

The COVID-19 pandemic is all but certain to have a severe, negative financial impact on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), significantly accelerating when it will face a liquidity crisis and be unable to provide basic services. Even if that liquidity crisis is after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, this must be avoided as it would grind the American economy to a halt and disrupt daily life. It is likely that the U.S. Treasury will soon increase a $15 billion line of [ Read More…]

U.S. companies participating in the production of jetliners are facing a liquidity crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. Aircraft deliveries have ceased, the supply chain is breaking down, and many companies face the near-term prospect of bankruptcy. Without federal assistance, they will need to lay off many thousands of employees. This is not just about Boeing and its 10,000+ domestic suppliers. Airbus too faces a severe cash crunch. If Washington does not act quickly with grants, loans, tax breaks and [ Read More…]

The electric grid is essential for every aspect of modern life. Blackouts during the COVID-19 pandemic would be especially disruptive and must be avoided. Many of the highly skilled professionals who keep the grid up and running cannot work from home and must work near one another. As such, policy makers and emergency planners should make sure that these workers receive regular COVID-19 tests, as even quarantines for healthy workers would challenge grid reliability. Lexington Institute’s Paul Steidler has written [ Read More…]

Washington recently issued new sanctions against the Venezuelan state airline, CONVIASA, and Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft, in the hope of severing some of Venezuela’s ties to Russia as one of the authoritarian Maduro government’s major financial supporters and political allies. Rosneft has had a major hand in sustaining Venezuela’s petroleum industry, which insulates the state from collapse, protecting it from the worst fallout of previous U.S. sanctions. However, the United States cannot expect this latest round of sanctions to [ Read More…]

The world’s biggest military contractor disclosed a change in leadership on Monday. Lockheed Martin Chairman & CEO Marillyn Hewson will relinquish her job to James Taiclet on June 15. Taiclet, currently Chairman & CEO of American Tower, is a former Air Force pilot who regularly is ranked as one of the nation’s top-performing corporate leaders. He has served on the Lockheed board since 2018, and Hewson urged his fellow directors to select Taiclet as her successor. Like Hewson, Taiclet is [ Read More…]

Until a few years ago, small unmanned aircraft had an effective operating radius of 50 miles or so because they were tethered to line-of-sight communications. Satellite links might have given them greater reach, but the necessary equipment exceeded their payload capacity. Boeing subsidiary Insitu has overcome that limitation by adapting lightweight SATCOM capability to its Blackjack unmanned aircraft–effectively turning Blackjack into a theater-range system. This has major operational implications, and it comes just as bigger, more expensive unmanned aircraft are [ Read More…]

The Navy just awarded a contract to manage, support and modernize its largest IT networks. In doing so, the Navy, in effect, made the decision to dismiss the two companies that have supported its IT efforts for decades, in favor of an entirely new entity. By removing nearly 30 combined years of institutional knowledge and experience in running these networks, the Navy is making a highly risky bet: that it can orchestrate the transformation of two networks within a mission-essential [ Read More…]

The United States is in a race against China to develop and deploy 5G networks. Potentially impacting the U.S.’s ability to compete is a recent federal district court decision that ordered Qualcomm, this country’s leading semi-conductor company to provide its customers, including rival Chinese telecommunications companies, with critical 5G intellectual property. The judge’s ruling against Qualcomm was based on faulty reasoning and was made despite a lack of concrete evidence of anti-competitive behavior. Fortunately, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals [ Read More…]