Space Force, IC’s battle over commercial ISR reignites as appropriators add fuel
More than a dozen sources tell Breaking Defense that tensions between the NGA and Space Force are rising on commercial ISR, with White House officials watching closely.
Senate appropriators back funds for Taiwan, unfunded requirements, industrial base in $831B bill
A draft version of the bill provides funds for an amphibious ship, but not for a new F-35 engine, both contentious debates in the military and on the Hill.
Feinstein Presses Mattis On LRSO; Mattis Still Thinking
WASHINGTON: One of the most controversial new weapons in the US arsenal, the Long Range Standoff cruise missile (LRSO), meant to replace the Air Launched Cruise Missile, came under direct fire by a top Senate defense and intelligence lawmaker, Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The senior California senator holds seats both on the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee […]
Army Reviews ALL Networks — Way Beyond WIN-T: Milley & Speer
CAPITOL HILL: The Army is conducting a wide-ranging review of “a whole series of vulnerabilities” in its communications systems that extends far beyond the troubled WIN-T program, the Chief of Staff and acting secretary told reporters today. The review will make recommendations on streamlining IT acquisition in general, not just on specific technologies, Gen. Mark […]
Key SAC-D, SASC Senators Push More LCS
WASHINGTON: Eight senators sent a letter Friday to Defense Secretary James Mattis, urging him to request all three Littoral Combat Ships originally planned for the 2018 budget. While eight percent of the Senate may seem small, the bipartisan co-signers — four Republicans, four Democrats — include five members of the appropriating and authorizing and committees for […]
Pilots Can’t Fly, Ships Can’t Sail & Trump’s Budget Is DOA, Say McCain & Thornberry
WASHINGTON: As Defense Secretary Jim Mattis prepared to appear before the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee to defend President Trump’s first defense budget, GOP stalwarts Sen. John McCain and Rep. Mac Thornberry were telling reporters it was dead on arrival. “We’ve got planes that can’t fly, ships that can’t sail and Army units that can’t train,” McCain, […]
Congress, Don’t Wait On Trump To Boost Defense Budget
Congress is setting the defense budget on autopilot and high-tailing it out of town, leaving a lot of unfinished business behind. While President Obama is set to sign the defense policy bill for 2017 into law, this Congress left the funding bills in shambles for the next session to fix. As a stopgap, an extended […]
Raytheon’s OCX, As Expected, Gets OSD Nod
WASHINGTON: There was little doubt that the hack- and jam-proof GPS ground stations known as OCX would be resurrected after incurring a Nunn-McCurdy breach. Even though it was the most screwed up program in the Air Force, was behind schedule and had gone grossly over budget, OCX is a crucial program at an important time. America needs […]
BCA Will Hamstring Trump Or Clinton: Only Congress Can Fix It
WASHINGTON: Whoever wins the White House in November will still be hobbled by the spending limits in the Budget Control Act, warned fiscal expert Todd Harrison. Whether BCA goes away, he said, depends much less on whether Trump or Clinton wins, and much more on who controls Congress — above all on whether Reagan defense […]
OCX Gets Good News, Right After Nunn-McCurdy
LONDON: The most troubled program in the Air Force, the highly-secure set of GPS satellite ground stations known as OCX, underwent yet another quarterly review last Thursday and was found to have “made progress.” The Air Force statement says that Acquisition Undersecretary Frank Kendall and Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, “with support of Lt. Gen. […]
Don’t Retire U-2, Again! Sen. Feinstein, Rep. Schiff Urge Air Force To Postpone
WASHINGTON: Either Lockheed Martin’s legendary U-2 spy plane does things that Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk drone can’t, or it doesn’t. If the U-2 doesn’t, then, the Air Force argues, it should be retired by 2019. After several flip flops in recent years, that is the service’s current position: We need to retire the U-2 because we’re upgrading the […]
11 GOP Vote Against McCain’s $18B NDAA Add; AIA Briefs Trump
WASHINGTON: If you want to know just how fractured the Republican Party is, even in the relatively staid Senate, just look at today’s bipartisan vote knocking down Sen. John McCain’s amendment to add $18 billion in defense spending to the National Defense Authorization Act. The vote, technically a cloture motion, saw 11 Republicans voting nay, four […]
Dems Counterattack On McCain’s $18B For ‘Readiness’
WASHINGTON: The battle lines were drawn today between Republicans and Democrats over the $18 billion Sen. John McCain wants to add to the defense budget in an amendment to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. You want it? Then add a matching $18 billion to domestic spending, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the powerhouse appropriator countered today […]
White House Threatens Veto For Senate NDAA; McCain $18B Add Vote Soon
WASHINGTON: Worried by Sen. John McCain’s efforts to slash the general officer corps, abolish Frank Kendall’s job and restrict the size of the National Security Council, the White House today threatened to veto the Senate defense policy bill. Accusing the Senate Armed Services Committee of trying “to micromanage DOD” by taking those and other measures, the […]
HASC Hammers Navy Readiness In Push For $18B Defense Boost
CAPITOL HILL: House Republicans keep hammering on military shortfalls, part of their push for a controversial $18 billion budget boost that the Senate has so far rejected and the White House has threatened to veto. “The message that we’re hearing is across the services we have a significant problem with readiness,” Rep. Randy Forbes told me. […]