Weapons
Sequestration or Not, Defense Budget to Continue Its Decline
While many in Washington assume that Congress will solve sequestration by the end of the year–the problem Congress created when the Super Committee failed–recent comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) indicate …
White House Says al-Qaeda’s No. 2 Killed
A drone strike in Pakistan has netted a big fish: al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Abu Yahya al-Libi, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney.
Asked about al-Libi’s reported death at Tuesday’s White House briefing, Carney initially was equivocal: “I can tell you that our intelligence community has intelligence that leads them to …
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Drone Worrier
On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War – as hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops streamed toward Iraq-occupied Kuwait – a U.S. Army officer remarked how much easier all this would be if someone – a Saddam Hussein turncoat, …
Size Matters
Now that the Air Force has decided to keep its manned U-2 Dragon Lady aircraft flying well into the future – after earlier talk that the half-century old spy plane might be grounded for keeps – Air Force officials were busy …
1960s-Era Choppers Guarding 1970s-Era Missiles
There’s a Ford in Your Future
Real Lessons From an Unreal Helicopter
The Army’s RAH-66 Comanche helicopter was going to be totally awesome, dude. This super-stealthy light attack helicopter, bristling with advanced sensors and communication gear, was going to perform loads of armed …
“We have extraordinary access now. Access is something that we have, and what the Chinese and others are trying to do is to drive us out of places that we already are. They're not putting up a barrier other than the most close-in kind of barrier, because we're already inside the wire, from their perspective.”
Disarming Allies…
Seems kind of strange that the U.S. government is turning over warships to the Philippine navy, but only after the vessels have been stripped of their weapons despite Manila’s request that they remain (better not tell the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Moro National Liberation Front, Abu Sayyaf, the Rajah Sulaiman Movement, Jemaah …
Vest-Bomb Slaughter
You can hear the suicide bomb that killed more than 100 Yemeni paramilitary troops detonate two seconds into this video. That’s a staggering death toll for an explosive-packed vest. The troops were either tightly packed around the bomber, or it was an especially nasty device.
That’s in keeping with the work of Yemeni-based Ibrahim …
“We Pause for This Commercial…Sale”
Legislators are fighting over every single dollar in this year’s defense budget, although saving billions could be as simple as changing a few words in a contracting statute. And believe it — or not — the Pentagon is the good …