Author Archives: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D
GE Rejects Blog Assessment, Cites Engine Progress
General Electric responded to my November 2 posting concerning the alternate engine it is developing for the F-35 fighter. Here is the text of the message from media manager Rick Kennedy, offering a more positive assessment of where the program [Read More...]
Tanker Wars: Why Northrop Grumman Thinks It Can’t Win
Issue Brief
Last week, one of the two teams competing to provide the Air Force’s future aerial-refueling tanker launched an unusual campaign to overturn the service’s strategy for buying the plane. Northrop Grumman and its European partner Airbus signaled that [Read More...]
F-35 Alternate Engine Encounters Development Problems
The alternate engine that General Electric is developing for use on the F-35 joint strike fighter has run into problems. After nine months of “system development and demonstration” testing, it has only managed to run for 52 hours and had [Read More...]
Conflict-Of-Interest Rules Reshaping Defense Sector
The defense department and other federal agencies engaged in technology work routinely hire outside consultants to assist government employees in monitoring contractor performance on programs. The work is called “systems engineering and technical assistance” (SETA), and it is an integral [Read More...]
Has The Pentagon Made Victory Unaffordable?
America’s military is just about the best trained, best equipped fighting force the world has ever seen. Everybody in Washington seems to think that’s a good thing. Maybe it isn’t. Secretary Gates cited an estimate this summer that the U.S. [Read More...]
Rumors Spread Of Early Gates Departure
Rumors are rife within the Pentagon that defense secretary Robert Gates will depart public service sometime in the next few months, perhaps as early as December. Reporters who travel with Gates say that an early exit has always seemed implicit [Read More...]
Smart Move: BAE Systems Picks Hudson For Top U.S. Job
BAE Systems did something on Monday that no major defense contractor has ever done before. It picked a woman to be its Chief Operating Officer. It also named that woman, Linda Hudson, Chief Executive Officer of its $20 billion U.S. [Read More...]
Army WIN-T Must Keep Evolving To Meet Warfighter Needs
Issue Brief
When the U.S. Army marched off to war earlier in this decade, it took with it communications gear that was woefully inadequate for the demands of irregular warfare. Battlefield communications systems inherited from the Cold War lacked the [Read More...]
Inflated F-35 Cost Estimates Ignore Reality
On October 23, a newsletter called Inside the Air Force reported that a Pentagon Joint Estimating Team (JET) is predicting big cost increases and schedule delays in the F-35 fighter program over the next five years. The F-35 is a [Read More...]
Lockheed Ballistic Missiles Set World Record
Last month, the U.S. Navy test-fired two of its Trident II (D-5) Fleet Ballistic Missiles in the Atlantic Ocean. The Navy launches the missiles periodically to make sure they are working correctly. The two missiles fired in September performed flawlessly [Read More...]