Wednesday’s top contract award:
Military Spending
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 …
Wars’ Lagging Costs
Here’s a bracing chart from a new report from the Congressional Research Service detailing the cost of veterans’ care:
In FY1940, the budget authority for veterans’ benefits and services was $561.1 million, and in FY2012 the budget authority was $125.3 billion, or more than 200 times the FY1940 budget authority. In constant 2011
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Name Game
game-changers, a new technology or tactic that will render war as we know it obsolete. Turns out they also embrace name-changers. Here’s a nifty little $17 million contract buried deep in the Pentagon’s Wednesday contract announcements. It’s to defend a U.S. forward operating base in Afghanistan.
The name of the company may not …
Golden Oldie: The Day the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty Died
OK, so it lacks Don McLean’s songcraft, but it was a decade ago Wednesday that the U.S. walked away from 1972’s ABM treaty with the Soviets. Despite predictions from arms controllers that the sky would fall, not much has happened.
Sure, the Treasury is lighter by $100 billion or so, but we did that to ourselves by building a …
Graphic Proof…That You’re Right!
Here at Battleland, we take pride in airing both sides of the issue, from Mackenzie “F-15 Strike” Eaglen on one side of the military-might debate to Winslow Wheeler-Dealer on the other.
Amid all the doom about looming sequestration, we’d like to arm you with an important chart – no matter what side of the debate you’re on.
Paying More for Vets Than Troops Starting in 2014
Thought-provoking chart from the Bipartisan Policy Center’s assessment of how sequestration, if it happens, is likely to affect the defense budget beginning Jan. 2. In fact, it warns, there’s trouble looming, regardless of the sequester:
Three main pathologies internal to the structure of the DoD budget are increasingly detracting
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“Look at the current level of air defense and anti-missile defense -- these aircraft will not get anywhere. Not ours, not theirs.”
$400 million
Tents Aren’t Us
If there is one thing you’d figure the U.S. Army didn’t lack, it would be tents. But you’d be wrong.
The folks at Fort Carson are seeking “high-quality tents and accessories needed to make them operational” for …
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Situation Normal: Afghanistan Fouled Up
A trifecta of trouble in three Pentagon inspector-general reports released Thursday concerning the U.S. military’s continuing struggle to build Afghan security forces so U.S. troops can come home.
Here is the first finding …
“Delicate Dance” for Panetta in China’s Backyard
TOKYO – When U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrives in Singapore this week to talk about containing China – and that’s really what this trip is all about — he’ll find plenty of support from friends in the region. …