On October 7, Polish border troops reported being fired upon by their counterparts from Belarus. Tensions have also been rising on the border between the two countries as a surge of migrants has created a building humanitarian crisis simultaneously with the sensitive security situation. But these may be just the foreshocks of a much larger earthquake, a symptom of the extent to which Belarus has been more or less reabsorbed into the orbit of Russia. Without backing from Moscow, it is likely that [ Read More…]

Is the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) going to get away with it? On October 1, 2021, USPS reduced first-class mail delivery standards ensuring mail service will be slower than it has been since the 1970s. Senior citizens, rural Americans, and the poor are hardest hit. The USPS action has been widely criticized by business, labor, consumer, and other groups. The bipartisan Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), USPS’s regulator, was also highly critical of the proposal but unable to stop it since [ Read More…]

On October 4, three days after the U.S. Postal Service implemented degraded standards for first-class mail, ensuring delivery will be slower than in the 1970s, it announced it was getting into a new business: check cashing. The experimental service is taking place in four cities. Meanwhile, America’s leading progressives – Sens. Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – are pushing quite hard for full-fledged postal banking. The proposal will not benefit the poor and will detract [ Read More…]

Lockheed Martin Chairman & CEO James Taiclet has revealed a major change that is unfolding in his company’s corporate culture. The nation’s biggest defense contractor is moving to emulate the speed of innovation in the commercial digital world by embracing open architectures, agile software development, and 5G networking technology. It is no coincidence that Taiclet came to Lockheed from American Tower, where he was a leader in revolutionizing the telecom industry. Taiclet saw there the possibilities for accelerating change, and [ Read More…]

The on-again/off-again debate regarding the future of the aircraft carrier has been reanimated. The approximate causal factor is the proliferation of long-range precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles. In response to the threat, the Department of Defense (DoD) has sought to develop new operating concepts and capabilities to improve both the lethality and survivability of its forces. A key element of the new approach is the deployment of so-called stand-in forces. There is no better stand-in capability than a Carrier Strike [ Read More…]

America’s military has become obsessed with China–so much so that important challenges elsewhere are being neglected. Foremost among these is the gradual encroachment of Russia on its former satellites in Eastern Europe, a process that began with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and now is progressing to the absorption of Belarus back into Moscow’s orbit. Poland is the main bulwark against Russia’s westward advance, but it is increasingly surrounded by Russian military assets and official Washington seems barely to [ Read More…]

It has become almost an article of faith in the Department of Defense that China is rapidly becoming the threat of greatest concern to the U.S. Some defense officials have even offered the opinion that the balance of military power in the Western Pacific has already shifted to such a degree that the United States could lose to China in a future conflict. The U.S. Army is trying to recast itself as a critical part of the Joint Force in [ Read More…]

Pentagon plans for sealift in a future war assume the availability of commercial cargo vessels and mariners. The government’s organic fleet of five dozen dedicated transports is too small to sustain a protracted campaign, and would require private-sector mariners to operate at full capacity from the initial days of conflict. So it should be a source of concern to military logistics planners that the U.S.-flag fleet of oceangoing commercial vessels has dwindled to a mere 182 hulls. That’s 182 hulls [ Read More…]

Last month the United States entered into a tripartite defense agreement with the United Kingdom and Australia that would result in the latter country acquiring its first nuclear-powered attack submarines—at least eight, and probably of U.S. design. The new relationship has been widely referred to as AUKUS. AUKUS looks to be a turning point in security relations between Canberra and Washington. By agreeing to share sensitive undersea technology with a nation that is already buying advanced military aircraft from America, [ Read More…]

Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley has found himself on the hot seat lately over a January 8 telephone conversation with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which he sought to clarify U.S. nuclear launch procedures. On the one hand, Milley said there are numerous safeguards surrounding the employment of nuclear weapons, which is not true at the presidential level–the president’s launch authority is unilateral and absolute. On the other hand, Milley said he is not competent to judge the mental health [ Read More…]