Author Archives: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D
End Of Empire (V): The Dollar’s Demise?
The U.S. dollar fell on foreign exchange markets today following a report in The Independent, a British newspaper, that China, Japan, Russia and France were working with Arab oil states to eliminate the dollar as the main currency for conducting [Read More...]
SAIC Moves To Virginia: A Modest Proposal
In case you haven’t heard, SAIC recently disclosed it is moving its corporate headquarters to Northern Virginia. Responses to this announcement have generally fallen into one of two categories: (1) “What’s SAIC?” and (2) “I thought their headquarters was already [Read More...]
Why Stable Defense Spending Is A Fantasy
Defense secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly stated that his goal for the Pentagon’s future budgets is to maintain stable spending after inflation. That certainly seems necessary if the Pentagon is to achieve the prevail-prevent-preserve-prepare goals set forth on the Quadrennial [Read More...]
Boeing Defeat Points To Problems In Air Force Relationship
Northrop Grumman’s stunning defeat of Boeing yesterday in the competition to provide contractor logistics support for the KC-10 tanker suggests that Boeing’s relationship with its biggest customer — the Air Force — is in bad shape. Over the last two [Read More...]
Bloomberg Reports Delay In Missile Warning Satellite
Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg Business News reported yesterday that the first geosynchronous satellite in the nation’s next-generation missile warning constellation will be delayed yet again. This must set some sort of new land-speed record in the military space program — [Read More...]
Cut In SM-3 Missile Buy Contradicts Obama Policy
What’s wrong with this picture? The Obama Administration embraces the SM-3 missile as its main interceptor for both land- and sea-based missile defense, and then the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) cuts the number of SM-3s it intends to buy far [Read More...]
Lift: Retiring C-5s To Buy C-17s Is An Idea That Won’t Fly
The fate of the best jet airlifter ever built is hanging by a thread on Capitol Hill. If Congress goes along with Senate language to buy ten more Boeing C-17s in 2010, that number combined with eight planes funded in [Read More...]
“Single String” Satellites Raise Missile-Warning Worries
When the Air Force launched its 23rd (and last) Defense Support Program satellite on November 12, 2007, it thought it was deploying an asset that would provide global warning of missile launches well into the next decade. Instead, the satellite [Read More...]
Politics Will Decide The Outcome Of The Tanker Competition
Issue Brief
The first thing to understand about the Air Force plan to buy a new aerial-refueling tanker is that it is just a tanker. A flying gas station. Either of the planes being proposed for the mission — the [Read More...]
Biden May Be Right About Afghanistan
Word has it Vice President Joe Biden is leading the charge within the White House to find some alternative to Pentagon requests for more troops in Afghanistan. Before dismissing his bid to head off a broader counter-insurgency campaign there, consider [Read More...]