NDAA 2018

Networks & Digital Warfare

White House, DoT Promote More Dough For GPS Alternatives

WASHINGTON: No currently available commercial alternative can provide a stand-alone backup to GPS, concludes a long-awaited study led by the Transportation Department. While some systems can stand in for GPS’s timing function, none provide robust enough positioning and navigation capabilities, the study concludes. The study, Complementary PNT and GPS Backup Technologies Demonstration Report, was released Friday […]

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Air Warfare

The Rest Of The Story: Trump, DoD & Hill Readied INF Pullout For Years

WASHINGTON: Unreleased Pentagon documents and Congressional demands for information reveal that Washington has long planned for the day when the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia would be ripped up. The report by the Joint Staff and Strategic Command, exclusively obtained by Breaking Defense, make clear that as far back as 2013 — a […]

Air Warfare

SASC Seeks Sweeping ‘Roles & Missions’ Report: Wither The Marines?

WASHINGTON: The Senate Armed Services Committee has proposed the most sweeping reevaluation of the military in 30 years, with tough questions for all four armed services but especially the Marine Corps. While its provisions cover topics ranging from swarming robots to “construction and maintenance of public works in Cis-Lunar Space,” its overwhelming focus is reorienting […]

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Air Warfare

CSAF Predicts War In Space ‘In A Matter Of Years’

AFA ORLANDO: It is only “a matter of years” before the US fights “from space,” the Air Force’s top uniformed leader said here. With that stark prediction, Chief of Staff David Goldfein went on to press the famously plane-focused service “to embrace space superiority with the same passion and sense of ownership as we apply […]

Air Warfare

CSAF Goldfein Speaks: JSTARS, Tankers, MDC2, Strategy, Money

Air Force Chief of Staff David Goldfein leads perhaps the most ground-down service in the Pentagon. The service grapples with how to modernize its planes, grant its crews some reprieve from the stresses of flying or maintaining and supporting planes and satellites and still keep the United States the one true global power. Read what Goldfein says he's doing to keep the Air Force in fighting trim.

Air Warfare

2018 Forecast: Air Force, Space Force Or Multi-Domain Force?

WASHINGTON: In 2018, Congress is likely to override the Air Force’s objections and carve out some kind of Space Corps. What kind of Space Corps is the question. Both sides of this debate agree that space will be a battlefield in future war. Instead of leaving US satellites unmolested to support operations on earth, future […]

budget

US Forces Won’t Grow Much Despite Hill & Trump Rhetoric

The defense community is abuzz with talk of strategy and force expansion as the Pentagon develops the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy. Talk is nice but, as budgeteers like to say, “If it ain’t funded, it ain’t”. Building the forces the services say they need—with the readiness and modernization to support them— requires large budgets, […]

Congress

Congress: Drop Sec. 716 — FDA Exemption — From NDAA

The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act contains billions of dollars and much policy concerning medical research and, of course, matters relating to nuclear, biological and chemical warfare. We don’t cover most of those medical issues except when they relate to NBC issues or raise basic military policy considerations. This is one of those cases. In […]

Congress

Inhofe Shuts Down Talk Of SASC Succession

WASHINGTON: Jim Inhofe is probably the next chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee – but he definitely doesn’t want to talk about it. The Oklahoma conservative’s refusal to talk, even in private, about succeeding the ailing Sen. John McCain speaks both to Inhofe’s character and the rapidly vanishing senatorial decorum he tries to preserve. […]

Air Warfare

Air Force Pilot Shortage Worsens; 10% Of Billets Empty

PENTAGON: Despite a year of offering bonuses, trying to bring back former pilots and talking up the glories of being an Air Force pilot, the service’s most precious resource continues to dwindle. At the end of fiscal 2016, the service needed 1,500 pilots. On Oct. 31 of this year, that number had swollen to about […]