Fourth of five parts (see one, two or three)
Predator purchases ended in 2009, with a total of 248 being bought by the Air Force.[1] Reaper purchases started in 2002, rose from four per year in 2004 to 48 per year in 2011, …
Defense Contractors
Budget Gap
Amazing first item (click on it to enlarge) atop the Pentagon’s Monday contract list. First of all, you can’t figure out just what it is we’re buying, but nothing new there:
…an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price, multiple award contract for engineering and prototyping integration, …
2. The MQ-9’s Cost and Performance
Second of five parts (part one here)
Because of Reaper’s nature, unit-cost estimates can be tricky. Various media reports cite a per-unit cost from $4 million to $5 million. They are quite incorrect.
Because they are …
1. Revisiting the Reaper Revolution
First of five parts
In a surprise move this year, the Pentagon has reduced spending for two aerial drones. A version of the RQ-4 Global Hawk will be relegated to storage to be superseded by more capable versions, and future …
Post-War Profiteering
Hard to figure out what is worse: this week’s 6th Annual Iraq Aviation & Defense summit – you can seek contracts by cozying up to purported top Iraq military officials for $2,895 for the two-day event at a swank hotel (lodging not included) – or that the Pentagon is letting it happen just down the street.
The lucre being tossed …
Back to the Future: Laser-Guided Rockets on a Prop Airplane
F-16s, A-to…V?
The F-16A first flew in 1975, followed by the F-16B (Battleland once sat in a B-model backseat for a stomach-tickling ride), F-16C. F-16D, F-16E, F-16F, F-16I, F-16IN, F-16N, F-16Q, and now: the F-16V. Manufacturer Lockheed …
COIN, Inc.
Building Weapons: Where 70% Trumps 100%
There’s a lot of talk these days about reducing the cost of military technology projects. The most intelligent conversations on this topic inevitably converge on the idea of building the proverbial “70% solution.” These …
The Pentagon’s Top Weapons Buyer Wrote This Headline: `Acquisition Malpractice’
Frank Kendall shined a spotlight Monday into the F-35 program – the biggest weapons buy in the history of the world — and didn’t like what he saw. The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer said:
This will make a headline if I say it, but I’m going to say it anyway: putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was
…
The Army’s $86,000 Machine Gun
So there was this Army contract award (click on it to enlarge) last week:
Seems pretty simple: 900 240 machine guns for $77.4 million. Math was never Battleland’s strong suit, but a quick trip to the calculator says that indicates each gun costs $86,000. Must be those gold-plated barrels (actually, there’s no gold in those …
Stake This (Defense) Job and Love It
Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, as Samuel Johnson famously declared in 1775, but it beats banging the drums for defense spending because of the jobs it creates. Yes, jobs are critical in these tough economic …
Throwbots
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIS-MOcSCZw]
We’ve seen flying robots – drones – spying on the enemy, and beefy tracked robots disabling IEDs. So why not the ultimate traveling ‘bot – one that’s thrown by soldiers? Don’t laugh – the Pentagon’s anti-IED shop is planning to send 400 tossbots to Afghanistan …