Author Archives: Rebecca L. Grant, Ph.D.
Navy Speeds Up F-35 It’s official. Commander Sara “Clutch” Joyner told the big crowd at Tailhook 09 in Reno over the weekend that the Navy air warfare staff is indeed moving F-35C initial operating capability to 2014. That’s a year earlier than the planned [Read More...]
New Global Hawk Undercuts Insurgent Advantages Issue Brief
If you are a paid Taliban operative or an Iraqi insurgent you may think you know how to slip through the mountains or skulk in the desert without U.S. forces noticing. Guess again. There’s a little thing invented [Read More...]
STRATCOM A Lonely Advocate Of Nuclear Modernization STRATCOM is emerging as the only consistent proponent of modernizing the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is strongly in favor, too, but nuclear warhead money is spent at the Department of Energy, not the Department of Defense. [Read More...]
Military Planners Rethink Deterrence “China’s okay with holding Los Angeles hostage. The U.S. is not okay with counter-value targeting.” So stated a senior STRATCOM official who was in town last week, talking about how to maneuver to lower nuclear force levels and still deter [Read More...]
Future Bomber Plans Up In The Air Will the Pentagon give USAF the green light to develop a new bomber? It seems like a no-brainer, since the Air Force has only 20 stealthy B-2s it can use to penetrate defended airspace. That’s probably less than 4 or [Read More...]
Make Way for USCYBERCOM He’s been pounding the table for two years about cyber issues. Now, a senior official explains some of the thinking behind the imminent stand-up of United States Cyber Command.
The prototype sub-unified command already has all the tactical execution they [Read More...]
Note to Forbes: Powerful Women in Defense Forbes just released its list of the world’s 100 Most Powerful Women. Chancellor Merkel is on top again, and rightly so. It’s impossible to quarrel with top ten CEOs like PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, DuPont’s Ellen Kullman or Anne Lauvergeon who [Read More...]
STRATCOM Wants Orbital Tracking of Midcourse Warheads There’s hope at STRATCOM for space sensors in mid-course tracking of enemy missiles. Missile tracking after the booster rockets shut off…it’s like the holy grail in the complex equation of missile defense. Right now, infrared cues space-based systems as a [Read More...]
Why Nuclear Power Is Part Of America’s Future Issue BriefIf you’re a Democrat or Independent, you may have one prejudice that doesn’t embarrass you a bit: you dislike nuclear power. Gallup polls consistently find that about 59% of Americans overall support the use of nuclear power, but [Read More...]
Energy Policy: Moving Forward on Smart Grid You can manage your mobile phone plan, but not your household electricity. That’s because the electricity grid that powers America hasn’t changed much since the early 20th Century.
But it won’t be that way for much longer.
Smart grid is [Read More...]