SMC Building ‘Catalog’ For Common Satellite C2 Ops
Instead of one mega-system to rule them all, the Enterprise Ground System (EGS) is building common components, from messaging standards to shared servers.
The Skinny On Trump’s Skinny Budget: Much Still Unclear
The Trump administration’s long awaited “skinny budget”, officially named “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again”, has arrived. It confirms the $54 billion increase in defense, and proposes to add $30 billion to this year’s (fiscal 2017) budget. It provides a description of what the Trump administration hopes to achieve in defense […]
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Congress Targets Littoral Combat Ship Survivability In NDAA
WASHINGTON: Buried amidst the hundreds of pages of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2014 is an unusually sharp rebuke to a high-profile program, the Navy’s controversial Littoral Combat Ship. The defense policy bill has yet to pass the Senate, but assuming the current language stands – and there’s tremendous political pressure not to mess […]
Strategy, Not Just Sequester, Drives A-10 Cut: Air Force Chief Gen. Welsh
Budget cuts won’t make the Air Force give up any of its current missions, the service’s Chief of Staff promised today. But, Gen. Mark Welsh acknowledged, the cuts will force it to do those missions with different and perhaps not optimal aircraft. Yes, the famous A-10 “Warthog” is “the best at close air support” – […]
Air Force Chief Says Cutting A-10 Fleet Would Save $3.7 Billion; NDAA Blocks A-10 Retirement
UPDATE: NDAA Bill Would Block Retirement of A-10s AND Global Hawks WASHINGTON: Some members of Congress won’t like this, no matter how compelling the numbers are. But Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said this morning that mothballing the beloved A-10 Warthog fleet could save the service a substantial $3.7 billion, a compelling […]
Defense Lawmakers Cautiously Optimistic On Budget Deal – But It’s Just A 1st Step
THE NEWSEUM: In a glass-walled conference center overlooking the snow-shrouded US Capitol, three legislators expressed guarded optimism that Congress could reach a modest budget deal. [UPDATED: The chairs of the House and Senate budget committees announced a plan late Tuesday night, but it has yet to pass into law]. That’s the good news. The bad news […]
Michigan: Arsenal of Democracy for dangerous times
Michigan’s defense ecosystem and expertise makes it a special asset for production.
‘Last Bill That Works:’ End Of An Era For National Defense Authorization Act?
Bill Greenwalt played a major role in crafting the defense policy bill — the National Defense Authorization Act — each year for almost a decade, helping to squire the bill through the personalities and politics of the ever-fractious Senate. Now the muzzle is off — he’s a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute — […]
Army Killed New Carbine Because It Wasn’t Twice As Reliable As Current M4
The Army has half a million M4 carbines, the lightweight version of the Vietnam-vintage M16. So if the service was going to invest in a replacement, it wanted a “leap ahead” that would, among other things, cut in half the number of times the weapon jammed – a criterion the Army has not made clear […]
Army Kills New Carbine, Preempting Congress; Industry Groans, ‘Not Again!’
“Everybody loses, go home”: That’s what the US Army told the six gunmakers competing to build a new Individual Carbine to replace the widely used M4, itself a derivative of the venerable M16. Of course, it would have helped if the Army had told the competitors the right kind of ammo to fire (more on […]
The Gump Guide to Sequestration: ‘Dumbest Fiscal Management Policy Ever’
The House of Representatives will vote on the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act later this week. Sequestration will be the giant hiding behind the door as the House Armed Services Committee has marked its bill to the Obama budget request, which means that the effects of sequestration are ignored by the bill (as they are […]
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Pioneering the future of airborne ISR: ASELSAN’s ASELFLIR 600
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Will Sequester Scuttle DoD’s Energy Efficiency Efforts?
WASHINGTON: The Defense Department is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States. It consumes 1 percent of America’s massive demand, burning billions of gallons of fuel a year. Indeed, as Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a recent speech, DoD is “the largest single consumer of fossil fuels on the face of the earth.” […]
HASC Struggles For Compromise On Evangelicals, Atheists: NDAA 2014
[updated with Democratic comment] CAPITOL HILL: Lobbyists and journalists focus on the big numbers in the defense budget when they look at the annual National Defense Authorization Act. But in the political theater that is the House Armed Services Committee’s markup of the NDAA, sometimes it’s the small dramas that are most telling. So it […]
HASC Rejects Base Closure, F-35 Restrictions During NDAA Markup
[updated with final results] CAPITOL HILL: Bipartisan majorities in the House Armed Services Committee have steamrollered proposals to slow down the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and to permit the Pentagon to plan for base closures, but reformers at least made a respectable run at the windmill during markup of fiscal year 2014 National Defense Authorization […]
Sexual Assault, LCS, Markups And Chinese Pork
WASHINGTON: The dominant issue of tomorrow’s markup and the later amendment votes will not be the size of the Navy fleet, the future of the F-35, Tricare for life, or America’s strategic relationship with China. Sexual assault in the military, the hot-button issue currently leading the headlines, will dominate floor time when the defense policy […]