Author Archives: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D
Abrams Is The Best Main Battle Tank In The World. But Improving It Should Still Be A Priority. (From Forbes) After much hemming and hawing, the Army’s M1A2 tank is headed for Ukraine. Much of the information that appeared in public media explaining why the Pentagon was not eager to send it exaggerated the logistical and training challenges associated with [Read More...]
Army Rotorcraft Plans Signal Pain Ahead For Industrial Base (From Forbes) The U.S. rotorcraft industry is heavily dependent on military funding, and at the moment two of the top three manufacturers aren’t so sure how reliable that funding will be in the future. First, the Army has awarded the contract to [Read More...]
Raytheon Technologies Realigns Business Units To Reduce Customer Costs, Drive Innovation (From Forbes) Raytheon Technologies reported its fourth-quarter and full-year results for 2022 on January 24, matching or exceeding company forecasts. However, the big news in the earnings call was disclosure of a plan to realign business units, combining both legacy Raytheon units [Read More...]
How The Defense Industry Became A Defining Feature Of The U.S. Economy (From Forbes) A hundred years ago, the United States did not have a defense industry. Today it does, thanks to a series of Russian military developments in the early postwar era that made the threat to U.S. survival permanent. In response, Washington [Read More...]
Five Reasons An L3Harris Merger With Aerojet Will Not Face The Obstacles Lockheed Martin’s Bid Did (From Forbes) L3Harris Chairman & CEO Chris Kubasik announced in December that his company would seek to merge with Aerojet Rocketdyne. The last time a company–Lockheed Martin–sought to acquire rocket-engine maker Aerojet, it was rebuffed by federal regulators. This time is likely [Read More...]
Lockheed Martin Protest Of Army Rotorcraft Award Alleges Unequal Treatment, Rampant Subjectivity (From Forbes) Lockheed Martin, in consultation with team member Boeing, has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office alleging that the Army made multiple mistakes in awarding the development contract for its future assault aircraft to Bell Helicopter/Textron. Among other things, [Read More...]
The Navy’s Plan To Modernize Military Sealift Makes Sense. Congress Needs To Keep It Funded. (From Forbes) Sealift is essential to sustaining an overseas war effort. The U.S. Navy is responsible for supplying that sealift when and where it is needed. The service is working to modernize a fleet of sealift vessels that average over 40 years [Read More...]
If Russia Is This Bad At Conventional Warfare, What Does That Tell Us About Its Nuclear Posture? (From Forbes) Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine is a fiasco. Virtually every facet of its military performance has exhibited deficiencies, presumably reflecting the decay in Russian society after 20 years of Putin rule. It is not realistic to assume that Moscow’s strategic [Read More...]
Ten Ways Hypersonic Weapons Can Strengthen Strategic Deterrence (From Forbes) When strategists discuss strategic deterrence, they are almost always talking about nuclear weapons. However, the Pentagon is planning to introduce non-nuclear hypersonic missiles into the joint force later in this decade, and the novel features of those systems could contribute [Read More...]
HII’s Tech Transformation Is Making It Much More Than America’s Biggest Shipbuilder (From Forbes) The name of Huntington Ingalls is synonymous with shipbuilding. That, ironically, is why the company has begun referring to itself a simply HII. Although it plans to remain the nation’s biggest builder of warships, its Mission Technologies unit is growing [Read More...]