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“We're replacing a $50,000 jeep with $250,000 vehicles. We're replacing $1 million vehicles with $15 million vehicles. We're replacing $20 million helicopters with $120 million helicopters…we're on the wrong side of the cost-imposing strategy.”
— Frank Hoffman of National Defense University on the future of ground warfare at a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference May 1.
Australia Chooses Sides — And It’s Not With China
Mom’s Away…
Call us old-fashioned, but there’s something especially bitter about losing a young mother in a military tragedy like last Friday’s KC-135 Stratotanker crash in Kyrgyzstan.
Air Force Captain Victoria “Tori” …
11,000
— The share of the 66,000 members of U.S. Special Forces Command overseas on any given day, scattered across 78 nations.
Vroom Service
The future of aviation just flashed by at an eye-watering 3,000 miles an hour.
That’s Mach 5.1, for you space travelers. It was the longest air-breathing hypersonic – five times faster than sound, or Mach 5 — flight …
Leavin’ Home…
Two F-18 Super Hornets over the carrier USS John C. Stennis, somewhere in the Pacific, April 24.
Storming the Beach: Semper Fi, Dude
The last time the Marines fought over a beach was in 1950, at Inchon, Korea. Their victory there turned the tide in the Korean war. Now they’re battling surfers for a piece of the southern California coast. This time, they fear …
Unhealthy Hospitals
The future of Afghanistan begins at the end of next year, after U.S. combat troops depart and Afghan forces take over for keeps.
After spending more than a half-trillion dollars, it’s difficult keeping track of the state of …
“For VA’s four largest medical-facility construction projects, when comparing November 2012 construction project data with the cost and schedule estimates first submitted to Congress, cost increases ranged from 59 percent to 144%, representing a total cost increase of nearly $1.5 billion and an average increase of approximately $366 million per project. The schedule delays ranged from 14 to 74 months with an average delay of 35 months per project.”
— From a Government Accountability Office report, here, released Friday into Department of Veterans Affairs' hospitals under construction.
1,000
— The number of flights flown by the Air Force’s oldest F-22 fighter, Tail Number 4007 (making it the James Bond jet among airmen). The $350 million plane has been flying since a month after 9/11. During its 1000th sortie at Edwards Air Force Base April 19, the Air Force said the plane tested software upgrade 3.2A, designed to “enhance its lethality and self-defense capability.” Too bad, for taxpayers at least, that it hasn’t needed either. No F-22 has flown a single combat mission since becoming operational in 2005. It sat out the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. At this rate, it’s going to take a long time for any F-22 pilot to become an “ace” by downing five enemy aircraft.
The Navy’s Hull Game
The U.S. Navy routinely says it needs more ships. One way it makes that need more dire is by retiring existing vessels well before their planned lifespan is over.
Think of it as fleethanasia.
But it’s kind of like …
Real Sand, Real Bullets. Fake Casualty.
Marines carry a simulated casualty during a live-fire exercise in Qatar, April 26.