Author Archives: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D
Austerity Week Ends At The Pentagon Issue Brief
The only people celebrating at the Pentagon last week were the Mexicans working on renovating the building. Wednesday was Cinco de Mayo, a holiday for honoring Mexican history and culture. But our notoriously dour defense secretary, Robert Gates, [Read More...]
What Happens When Gates Finally Goes? Robert Gates has now been serving as Secretary of Defense for well over three years, and to say the job has been stressful is something of an understatement. Gates and his staff need a rest. Having accomplished the most important [Read More...]
Gates Anti-Ship Barrage Likely To Land First On Marine Corps Robert Gates knows how to manage bureaucracies. He began his career as a Sovietologist in the intelligence community during the Nixon-Kissinger era, at a time when America’s national-security apparatus was an arena of byzantine intrigue. So you can’t always take [Read More...]
Gates Signals Tough Budget Season For Sea Services Issue Brief
It says a lot about the parlous state of federal finances that defense secretary Robert Gates thinks the Navy can’t afford to keep buying the kinds of warships that currently populate its fleet. The Navy’s entire budget for [Read More...]
Joint Handheld/Manpack Radio Allows Soldiers To Pierce The Fog Of War The greatest technological achievement on the modern battlefield has been the introduction of wireless communications devices that can pierce the fog of war. The confusion once thought to be an inevitable companion of combat is gradually dissipating as new ways [Read More...]
Marine Corps Dismisses Worries About F-35, Sticks With 2012 Date For Operational Debut Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos told defense trade publication Inside the Navy last month that his service has no plans to delay fielding of the F-35 fighter despite the fact that the development plan is 13 [Read More...]
Sen. Sessions Objects To Congressional Interference In Weapons Competitions — Unless It Helps His Home State Was it really only two weeks ago that Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was complaining so bitterly about the supposed efforts of House defense appropriations chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA) to influence a weapons competition? How time flies! Now Sessions is doing [Read More...]
Newspapers Record Big Circulation Declines As News Business Fragments Thomas Jefferson observed in a letter to Edward Carrington in 1787 that, “If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment [Read More...]
GE Defies Obama & Gates, Offers Bogus “Bargain” On Jet Engines The Military Says It Doesn’t Want General Electric’s aviation unit yesterday offered taxpayers the kind of bargain they aren’t likely to get at WalMart. The company proposed to charge its government customer a mere $2 billion for the first lot of an item that the customer [Read More...]
Cyber Remedies Likely To Limit Liberties Issue Brief
We certainly have come a long way since the first computer virus was created in Lahore, Pakistan in 1986. Today, some experts believe that a majority of all new software releases around the world involve malicious code — [Read More...]