The Congressional race is on to throw taxpayer money at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), and bidding could soon surpass $100 billion without any sensible and overdue reforms. The American people and USPS would be best served by a “time-out” on additional taxpayer funds to USPS, including through President Biden’s $3 trillion infrastructure plan. Congress should first evaluate USPS’s strategic plan, announced March 23, and review USPS’s problems holistically. Lexington Institute’s Paul Steidler discusses these and other reasons for a [ Read More…]

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) announced a much anticipated and comprehensive 10-year strategic plan on March 23. It is a serious and important document that merits study and discussion among policy makers and postal stakeholders. Like any thorough report about a troubled organization that needs major changes, there are elements that various stakeholders will not like. The more important way to judge the plan, though, is whether it establishes a framework by which holistic, beneficial change can occur. It clearly [ Read More…]

Lockheed Martin is seeking to acquire propulsion innovator Aerojet Rocketdyne, in a deal similar to Northrop Grumman’s 2018 acquisition of Orbital ATK. The Federal Trade Commission is assessing whether the transaction might potentially reduce competition in the rocket and missile propulsion market. That isn’t likely, given the FTC’s previous approval of the Northrop-Orbital combination. As long as Lockheed commits to being a merchant provider of propulsion systems to the marketplace rather than seeking to leverage its acquisition in missile competitions, [ Read More…]

The U.S. Army’s only heavy-lift helicopter, CH-47F Chinook, is expected to stay in service through 2060. Nonetheless, Army leaders have been trying to cancel an upgrade of the helicopter without which it will not be able to transport the service’s next-generation jeep or its light howitzer. If they succeed in their plan, the Chinook production line will fall below its minimum sustaining rate in 2023, endangering 18,000 jobs spread across an industrial base that includes 280 suppliers. The biggest hit [ Read More…]

On March 18 NASA successfully completed the final of eight tests assessing the performance of the core stage for the space agency’s super-heavy lifter. Called the Space Launch System (SLS), it will return humans to the Moon and then evolve to a rocket that can support exploration of Mars. The core stage, built by Boeing using Aerojet Rocketdyne engines, will be a critical component of all variants. It isn’t often that an administration presides over an effort that might be [ Read More…]

The proliferation of armed unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), also known as drones, presents a growing threat to maneuver ground forces, headquarters, logistics and critical infrastructure. This is particularly true for the explosion in the availability of small, increasingly sophisticated UASs. While the Pentagon has invested significant resources to address the challenge posed by medium and large drones as part of its air and missile defense program, it is only beginning to deal with the growing danger of small drones, particularly [ Read More…]

The national media have recently rediscovered that the F-35 fighter is the Pentagon’s costliest weapons program, and with herd-like predictability indulged in a feeding frenzy of misinformation. One account of the program’s cost to date from a usually respected outlet exaggerated the amount by 1000%. Beyond cost, a series of other canards are being aired, beginning with the complaint that after 20 years, the fighter is still not in full-rate production. Actually, over 600 have been delivered and the fighter [ Read More…]

One of the most important, yet often underappreciated, missions in the U.S. Air Force is combat search and rescue (CSAR). For more than half a century, aircrews have flown in harm’s way sustained by the knowledge that should they be forced down, other Air Force personnel would be coming to rescue them. Maintaining this commitment requires modern platforms with the best equipment. The Air Force is buying a new CSAR helicopter, the HH-60W combat rescue helicopter (CRH) built by Sikorsky. [ Read More…]

Two future warfighting scenarios dominate Pentagon planning. One is a Russian invasion of Eastern Europe. The other is a Chinese occupation of Taiwan. The F-35 fighter would likely provide a margin of victory for the U.S. in repulsing either move, because the plane cannot be tracked by enemy air defenses and is sufficiently versatile to detect and destroy all targets of interest. With over a thousand F-35s likely to be delivered to U.S. military forces and allies by mid-century, Washington [ Read More…]

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is about to start making one of the world’s largest and most polluting fleets a whole lot cleaner. That is, unless environmental zealots, including some Members of Congress, derail things. USPS has 140,000 high-polluting vehicles that are at least 20 years old. On February 23, USPS announced a contract for up to 165,000 cleaner vehicles over the next decade. It has sufficient cash to do so and the option of purchasing “all electric” vehicles it [ Read More…]