Weapons
How the F-35 Nearly Doubled In Price (And Why You Didn’t Know)
On June 14 — Flag Day, of all days — the Government Accountability Office released a new oversight report on the F-35: Joint Strike Fighter: DOD Actions Needed to Further Enhance Restructuring and Address Affordability Risks. …
Parting Gift?
Having flown on the C-17 many times, Battleland knows it’s a good airplane. Production of the cargo aircraft for the U.S. Air Force is all but done; the Pentagon stopped listing it in its regular cost reports back in 2009. That …
Texas Is Sinking!
No, not the state – the battleship: the USS Texas (BB-35), a 32,000-ton vessel that fired 255 14-inch shells toward Nazi positions during D-Day’s opening 34 minutes in 1944. The 100-year old vessel has been on display in the …
Mongers
Sequestration continues to loom. That’s the law Congress passed last year, duly signed by the President, that requires $1.2 trillion in automatic deficit-reduction cuts over the coming decade. They’d come from discretionary spending if lawmakers and the President can’t come up with a better idea by Jan. 2.
Half of those cuts …
Cyber Warfare Treaty: DOA, Thanks to President and Pentagon
Misha Glenny making a smart case in the New York Times for a cyber arms control treaty, but it won’t happen.
Why?
For the same reason why the U.S. has refused – for many years now – to engage other great powers on a treaty …
BUFF at 60!
Designation Resignation
Battleland was at a party this weekend where someone got the X-37B confused with the X-47B. You’d think the Air Force and the Navy would have a Joint Operating Coordination Committee on Aircraft Designation and Nomenclature to avoid fielding two new aircraft with such similar designations (but you’d be wrong: back in the early 1980s …
No Love For The Marines’ V-22 In Japan
TOKYO – Pity the poor V-22. The Marines’ beleaguered tilt-rotor aircraft can’t get any love even overseas. Even before the crash this week of an Air Force V-22 in Florida, local leaders in Japan were lining up against plans …
Air Force Capt. Tony McPeak, Over Vietnam
Merrill “Tony” McPeak served as the U.S. Air Force’s 14th chief of staff – its top officer – from 1990 to 1994. A fighter pilot — who flew over Vietnam, in war, and as a member of the Air Force’s Thunderbirds aerial acrobatic team, in peace – McPeak ran the service during 1991’s Gulf War. He has always been an outspoken …
The Double-Edged Blades of Russian Helicopters
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s in for a strafing on Capitol Hill today. He’s appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, but he’s likely to face tough questions on the Defense Department’s …
Think-Tanked: Old Wine in Dark Bottles
Two of Washington D.C.’s most prestigious and well-funded think tanks recently published reports advising Congress and the Defense Department on how — and how much — to cut from the Pentagon’s coffers after November’s …
The War Machines
Ready or not, robot wars are coming.
That was made clear in the skies over Pakistan a week ago, when an unmanned drone killed al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader with a missile strike. And it’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan, …