The report released earlier Thursday at the Pentagon about the grim mental-health issues facing U.S. troops at war brings into focus the need for the spouse-support group at Walter Reed. It’s supported by the non-profit Walter Reed Society. Following up on Wednesday’s post, here is the latest from Gayla Romanowsky at the five-day …
Air Force
Area 51, Revisited
Why does people’s skepticism go out the window when it comes to military matters — especially any that are secret? Granted, the recent dispatch of Osama bin Laden does make the U.S. military look all-but-omnipotent. But it’s important to note that grand success was striking…because it was so rare.
Annie Jacobson’s new book — …
Afghan Air Strikes Up 5,800% Since 2004
The real surge in Afghanistan isn’t the 30,000 additional troops President Obama sent there last year, but the 400% hike in close-air support missions from 2004 to 2010. Over that same time span, the number of weapons deployed on those missions ballooned from 86 to 5,101 — a 5,800% increase. You can track the trend in the chart …
Joint Strike Fighter’s $100 Billion 30-Year Engine Contract Up For Grabs
The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is “the largest defense acquisition program in U.S. history” and it’s engine “represents over 10% of the overall program price, or about $100 billion,” according to the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA).
For the past five years, all four …
“Latest Actual Costs”
I’ve been reading the publicly-released Pentagon Selected Acquisition Reports for decades. They’re the one place you can get a bottom-line price on various U.S. military weapons systems. But they’re generally two-page summaries, not the detailed reports that generate those summaries.
So hats off to Steven Aftergood’s Secrecy …
Global Reach = Global Power
Panetta’s Challenge
When the President announced his new national security team last week most of the attention focused on David Petraeus at CIA and the problem of winding down the war in Afghanistan. Leon Panetta’s nomination as Secretary of Defense went almost unnoticed, by comparison.
But Panetta has the bigger challenge: how to manage a build down in …
End of the Line for the F-16?
There are reports from the subcontinent that India has eliminated the two U.S.-built planes from its $10 billion competition to buy about 126 fighters. Both the Lockheed F-16 and Boeing F-18 have reportedly been scratched from the list of candidates, in favor of a pair of European-built planes. The F-16 is built in Fort Worth. I was …
China: Behold the Flying Shark
The Chinese have released new photographs of their J-15 Flying Shark jet fighter, supposedly designed to fly off Beijing’s yet-to-sail aircraft carrier. This is part of a long-standing great-power game of fan-dancing a new capability, in hopes it will instill fear (and perhaps bankruptcy) in potential foes, while helping to keep …
Brass Creep: Too Many Generals at the Air Force?
Over at the POGO blog, I flagged a compelling Air Force Times investigation into the the explosion of the top ranks of flag officers at the Air Force, a pet peeve of the SECDEF. To whet your appetite, check out this nugget from the Air Force Times story: “In the last seven years alone, the service has shed nearly 43,000 airmen while …
A Constellation of Bronze Stars
Here’s something you don’t see every day: a U.S. bomb-disposal expert getting three Bronze Stars pinned on for a single tour. It happened April 18 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, where Master Sgt. Benjamin Horton collected the trio for his heroics as an explosive ordnance disposal team leader. The citations for the medals lauded Horton …
Post Pundit: Thumbs-Down on Drones for Libya
David Ignatius, the hard-core foreign-affairs columnist for the Washington Post, doesn’t think much of Thursday’s announcement that the Obama Administration has approved sending armed Predator drones to attack targets in Libya.
His bottom line:
My quick reaction, as a journalist who has chronicled the growing use of drones, is that
…
Armed Predators Now Over Libya
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that armed U.S. Predator drones have begun flying missions over Libya. It’s a small bump in U.S. military capability in hopes of blunting the expanding political problem caused by Muammar Gaddafi’s continued attacks on civilians despite a U.N. resolution calling for their protection. The …