By Loren Thompson, Forbes: “Hypersonic weapons typically move at over five times the speed of sound, meaning faster than a mile per second. But it isn't just sheer speed that makes them different from existing weapons. Unlike long-range ballistic missile warheads that can approach 25 times the speed of sound as they reenter the atmosphere, emerging hypersonic weapons can glide and maneuver."
Pentagon’s New Ballistic Missile Interceptor Doesn’t Work, Suffers Years-Long Delay
(Breaking Defense) China. Hypersonic weapons. Say those three words, add a little artificial intelligence, and you can almost sum up why the Pentagon sees the Peoples Republic of China as a rising military threat.
(Breaking Defense) The Army is effectively rebooting a key air and missile defense program, IFPC, to refocus it on higher-end threats like cruise missiles.
(Reuters) The United States will begin “fabrication activities” on parts for ground-launched cruise missile systems, the Pentagon said on Monday, after Washington announced it plans to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
(Breaking Defense) The US keeps losing, hard, in simulated wars with Russia and China. Bases burn. Warships sink. But we could fix the problem for about $24 billion a year, one well-connected expert said, less than four percent of the Pentagon budget.
By Hal Brands & Charles Edel, The National Interest: “As recently as 2010, Barack Obama could observe a strategic landscape where the “major powers are at peace.” Yet if great-power war has not returned, the era of deep great-power peace is over."
By Prof. Louis René Beres, March 7, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: While President Trump intends to bolster US power through enhanced weapons systems and a rededication to belligerent nationalist foreign policies, authentic national security will require new emphases on intellect, or “mind.” This means focusing on new ways of thinking about world politics, especially much-needed escape plans from lethal cycles of competitive geopolitics. Washington must slow its still-growing inclination toward renewed arms racing and to other kinds of military escalation and shift its policy emphases to the greater utilities of intellect.
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- The defense budget is expected to total about $750 billion.
- Almost one-quarter of that — about $174 billion — is expected to be in the Overseas Contingency Operations (née the "emergency supplemental"), a Trump administration effort to circumvent the $576 billion spending cap.
- The Pentagon will request 78 F-35s, six fewer than planned (Bloomberg).
- The U.S. Air Force will request eight new F-15X fighters (Bloomberg).
- The Air Force light attack plane project is now on hold (Defense News).
- The Navy wants to delay buying two LPDs and cancel the midlife refueling of the USS Harry Truman, basically retiring the aircraft carrier two-decades early (Breaking Defense).
- There is a policy proposal to create the U.S. Space Force (within the Air Force), as a sixth branch of the military (Defense One).
- The Pentagon is expected to request $104 billion for research-and-development, $9 billion more than appropriated in fiscal 2019 (Bloomberg).
Navy and Air Force force structure: The chief of naval operations created waves when he said last month that its 355-ship goal would be reevaluated (how many manned ships? How many unmanned?). The reshaping of that goal will change how the Navy spends vast amounts of its money. Also, we might finally get more details about the Air Force's goal to create 386 operational squadrons.
Offensive missiles are much cheaper than missile defenses. So is the best defense a good offense?