Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will announce Friday afternoon that the Marines’ F-35B fighter is being taken off “probation” and production will continue. It has been under intense scrutiny due to problems with its STOVL – short takeoff, vertical landing – capability that apparently are being fixed. Seeing as he’s heading …
Weapons
Army Suicide: The Struggle Continues
The rash of suicides among Army troops, including reservists, abated for the first time in four years in 2011, the service reported Thursday. The total of 278 was a 9% drop from the year before. But the toll continued to climb in the active-duty force, rising from 159 in 2010 to 164 last year.
A pair of leading indicators of …
About That Trillion-Dollar Cut
Seems all the bluster about cutting military spending by $1 trillion over the next decade – about 15% — isn’t the hair-on-fire moment that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his congressional allies have been …
Tailhook Woes (cont.)
It’s progress, of a sort, when the Navy’s tailhook woes are linked to an actual tailhook – the hook that grabs the arresting cable on an aircraft carrier and lets the plane land safely – and not the debauchery that was common at the Tailhook Assocation’s annual gatherings. That kind of Tailhook trouble exploded into a …
Great Moments in Military Aviation: Death of a Blimp
How can the Air Force lose a blimp two-thirds the size of a football field? When the winds are wrong, alas, anything can happen.
Battleland readers of a certain vintage may recall, with wonder and delight, the goofy …
The Heritage Foundation, Then and Now
By Thomas Christie, Pierre Sprey, Chuck Spinney and Winslow Wheeler
Almost 30 years ago, in 1983, the Heritage Foundation stepped forward as a thoughtful, independent thinking participant in the then-raging debate over Ronald …
Vertically Challenged: Marine F-35 Engines’ Long Lead, Much Higher Cost
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7psXvZp9xI]
You may recall a couple of weeks ago when we reported, based on our own crude analysis of a Pentagon contract announcement, that the latest batch of engines for the Marine’s F-35 fighter would cost $129 million apiece, five times the $25 million sticker on the Air Force F-35 …
How America Painted Itself Into A Corner on North Korean Succession
Great Washington Post piece on China’s intense desire for stability on Korean peninsula, thus the clear backing of the “Great Successor” Kim Jong Eun. Wrap-up paragraph says it all:
The notion of a democratized Korean Peninsula
…
New Defense Strategy: The Information Vacuum
On Thursday, President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta released what they called their Defense Strategic Guidance – think of it as the guardrails that guide the U.S. military down the interstate highway of war. …
Tomorrow’s Pentagon: Doing Less, With More
President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta unveiled a new military strategy Thursday: the Pentagon of the future, they made clear, will be doing less with more.
“Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense …
The Two-MRC Strategy: Major Regional Contingencies, or Mythical Routine Canards?
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is coming to the Pentagon podium Thursday the explain how he’s going to trim $450 billion of the U.S. military’s nearly $6 trillion spending plan over the coming decade.
Because the …
War of 1812: A Naval Turning Point
There’s going to be a raft of books on the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, and one of the first is a fascinating look at a pivot point in naval warfare. In Knights of the Sea, author David Hanna breathes life into the …
The $450 Billion Question: Remains Unanswered
So this is the week where Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is going to give us a peek into where he wants to cut $450 billion in military spending over the coming decade. It’s the lead story in the New York Times Tuesday morning, …