Defense Secretary, Indian Procurement, Logistics for Indian & Pacific Ocean & Threats to Sea Power8/31/2016
India's major private sector ammunition manufacturer wants to increase its footprint in the African ammunition market and is considering setting up bulk explosives factories in Australia and Indonesia, according to Nilesh Panpaliya, the chief financial officer of Nagpur-based Solar Industries. – Defense
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An F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would be able to use its sensors, weapons and computer technology to destroy Russian and Chinese 5th-Generation Stealth fighters in a high-end combat fight, service officials said. – Scout Warrior The Pentagon’s emerging “Arsenal Plane” or “flying bomb truck” is likely to be a modified, high-tech adaptation of the iconic B-52 bomber designed to fire air-to-air weapons, release swarms of mini-drones and provide additional fire-power to 5th generation stealth fighters such as the F-35 and F-22, Pentagon officials and analysts said. – Scout Warrior The military wants to replace a host of current helicopters with aircraft that not only fly much faster, but can fly without a human pilot. The Army-led Future Vertical Lift program will study whether FVL should be an “Optionally Piloted Vehicle,” capable of accommodating a pair of highly-trained human pilots for complex combat missions or of flying with an empty cockpit for routine supply runs. – Breaking Defense As the Army gets ready to begin accepting deliveries of its new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, a new fast-moving armored vehicle engineered to take bullets, drive over roadside bombs and withstand major enemy attacks, the service is solidifying plans to incorporate the vehicle into its preparations for massive great power conflict. – Scout Warrior The Army is looking to increase the amount of system demonstrations to be conducted before committing to major investments, with plans to use that approach in an upcoming air-and-missile defense sensor competition, according to the Army’s deputy for acquisition and systems management. – Defense News A week after the Air Force declared its version of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 jet ready for limited combat operations, the Pentagon’s top tester warned that the U.S. military’s costliest weapons program is still riddled with deficiencies. - Bloomberg
Raytheon Co. may have to pay millions of dollars to cover part of a 28 percent cost overrun on development of the most sophisticated smart bomb planned for the new F-35 jet and 11 other U.S. military aircraft. - Bloomberg The Marine Corps is modernizing one of its most reliable battle platforms: the M1A1 Abrams tank. – Military.com India will sign the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the US during the late August visit of Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar to the US, according to a senior official of the Indian Ministry of Defense. – Defense News Dept. Defense Office of Net Assessment: Bill Gertz reports: The Pentagon’s storied Office of Net Assessment (ONA) is coming under fire from critics inside the military and in Congress for failing to produce more of its signature product, namely, top-secret net assessments. – Washington Times’ Inside the Ring
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has handed out a vast but persistently uncountable quantity of military firearms to its many battlefield partners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today the Pentagon has only a partial idea of how many weapons it issued, much less where these weapons are. Meanwhile, the effectively bottomless abundance of black-market weapons from American sources is one reason Iraq will not recover from its post-invasion woes anytime soon. – New York Times Rep. Mac Thornberry and Andrew Krepinevich write: To be sure, there is room for greater efficiency in how the U.S. government allocates its defense dollars, but its financial woes have little to do with military expenditures; the main culprits are the government’s rapidly increasing debt and the expanding costs of entitlement programs. Simply put, the United States is fast approaching the time when its debt can no longer be deferred to future generations. – Foreign Affairs General David Petraeus, USA (Ret.) and Michael O’Hanlon write: There is no need to return to significantly higher levels, such as the four percent of GDP that some have proposed. But nor would it be prudent to drop below three percent. That translates into perhaps $625 billion to $650 billion a year in constant dollars over the next few years for the overall national defense budget, including war costs (assuming they remain at roughly current amounts). That level is sensible and affordable, and what the next president should work with Congress to provide. – Foreign Affairs Justin Johnson writes: Today’s men and women in uniform put their lives on the line for our country, but they are doing so with less training, worn out equipment, and fewer brothers and sisters in arms to back them up. With threats rising across the globe, all Americans should be concerned about the troubling state of the U.S. military. – Breaking Defense
Thomas Donnelly and Roger Zakheim write: In sum, the real readiness crisis is not measured in the fight against ISIS, or in Afghanistan, but in the capacity and capability needed in a more demanding contingency…Nor are they prepared to fight two advanced adversaries at once. Through the pose they strike, Petraeus and O’Hanlon not only mischaracterize the nature and extent of today’s problems. They also lead readers to underestimate the risks of a real crisis. – National Review Online General Carter Ham, USA (Ret.) writes: Gen. Petraeus and Mr. O’Hanlon’s op-ed notwithstanding, these issues of military preparedness are getting insufficient attention in the current political discourse. It is past time for serious discussion from those currently serving in policy-making positions as well as by those aspiring to such national-level positions in our government. – Defense One
The F-35, said Gen. David Goldfein, is “about a family of systems and it’s about a network — that’s what gives us an asymmetric advantage.” Instead of comparing the J-20 to the Joint Strike Fighter, Goldfein said, it made more sense to compare the J-20 to the F-117 he flew years ago. – Breaking Defense
Beijing unveiled its new J20 stealth fighter at a Chinese air show on Tuesday, CNNreports. the first time the long-range, radar-avoiding stealth combat aircraft had been shown off in public. (Pics here.) Generally viewed as China’s answer to the American F-22 and F-35 planes. Some at the Pentagon claim they’re not overly worried about the plane, however, since it uses some technologies that the United States has had for decades. Still, the plane should challenge for air dominance in the region, setting off an air power competition with U.S. Marine Corps F-35s which will deploy to Iwakuni, Japan, across the East China Sea from China's western coast, early next year.
Two Chinese J-20 fighter jets made their public debut at an airshow near Hong Kong on Tuesday, the latest sign of progress in Beijing’s quest to build a fleet of stealthy warplanes. But it takes more than a new airframe to play the 21st-century air-superiority game. – Defense One
China's J-20 stealth fighter made its public debut at an air show on Tuesday, in the latest sign of the growing sophistication of the country's military technology. – Associated Press Analysis: Mr. Xi appears politically indomitable, but officials suggest he and other leaders are alarmed by broader, long-term dangers and by the party’s ability to weather them. Both considerations underpinned the leadership’s decision to go along with raising his status. – New York Times
Mackenzie Eaglen and Rick Berger write: To avoid saddling the next administration with an inadequate number of available carriers, the secretary of the Navy and secretary of defense should request waiver authority to skip shock trials on the Ford and put the ball back in Congress’ court. This model of deferred shock trials has worked in the past, and the risks of overusing an undersized carrier fleet loom large over the next five years. – War on the Rocks The Adversary the Marine Corps Must Fight The Marine Corps must train for the environment it expects to face going forward, which means a near-peer adversary with a capable air force, a savvy web presence, the ability to leverage unmanned systems, and cyber and electronic warfare capabilities, the commandant said today. – USNI News How the Marine Corps Expeditionary Mindset Still Dominates in Deployment
It’s not unusual that the MEU and ARG, which together train before the deployment to operate as a single unit, split up once in theater to the point where the three ships might not even see each other for months. So does it make sense to continue that MEU/ARG construct? Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Corps, says yes. – Defense News Long-range R&D for missile defense is being squeezed by near-term needs, warns a new report from the Center for Strategic & International Studies. – Breaking Defense
At a time when war with China is talked about as a future possibility, the deputy director for air and cyberspace operations at Pacific Air Forces gave a rare look at how advanced fifth-generation aircraft — the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II among them — could lead the air campaign in a conflict in the region. – Stars and Stripes The Air Force is considering not one, but two replacements for the aging A-10 Warthog close air support plane. But analysts wonder why, given that the service is already building a new bomber (the B-21), a new tanker (the KC-46), a new fighter (the F-35A), they would want to build two Close Air Support aircraft in an era when trillion dollar deficits are once again on the horizon? – Breaking Defense First flown in the 1970s, the Air Force could potentially fly the aging F-15 Eagle into the 2040s, according to a top Air Force official in charge of fighters and bombers. – Dayton Daily News The Navy plans to have an operational ship-launched HELLFIRE missile on its Littoral Combat Ship by next year, giving the vessel an opportunity to better destroy approaching enemy attacks --such as swarms of attacking small boats -- at farther ranges than its existing deck-mounted guns are able to fire. – Scout Warrior Reform
John Noonan writes: With the defense bill nearly complete, Congress has a small window to correct the administration's reductions. If not, and we continue hacking away at our missile defense options, we will have left both our homeland and our allies more vulnerable to attack. A course correction is needed. – The Weekly Standard Blog Peter Huessy writes: Greater uncertainty over America’s deterrent modernization plans could have the effect of further unnerving our allies and emboldening our adversaries. Every year we delay refurbishing our nuclear forces, we significantly add to the cost of doing “nothing” which ironically will cost more than doing “something”. – Real Clear Defense As Israeli and US officials head into another, possibly final round of talks over a new 10-year military aid package, a general in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reserves told Defense News his country would be far better off – and the US-Israel partnership stronger over time – if Israel found a way to wean itself off of US largess. – Defense News
DARPA and Defense Department labs are developing breakthrough technology as part of the Pentagon’s Third Offset Strategy. A central theme is autonomous artificial intelligence — operating both in real-world robots and in cyberspace — but there is also promising work in hypersonic missiles, 3-D printing, and other areas. There’s just one problem: time. – Breaking Defense
The Air Force’s growing shortage of fighter pilots is a “quiet crisis that will almost certainly get worse before it gets better,” the service’s new chief and its top civilian leader said in an opinion piece published Thursday. But how bad is it? According to data obtained by The Washington Post, the number of fighter pilots in the service has fallen five years straight, and plummeted in the last two despite increasing need. – Washington Post’s Checkpoint
The Air Force’s newest multi-role fighter, the F-35 Lightning II, could deploy to Iraq and Syria very soon if called upon and will be sent around the world before too long, said Gen. Hawk Carlisle, the head of Air Combat Command. – Military Times The Air Force Reserve has been pulling out all the stops to retain the best and the brightest and to keep its end strength of 69,000 airmen. – Military Times The US Navy is stretching the lives of some of its submarines, if only by a year or two. In the latest version of the 30-year fleet shipbuilding plan, submitted to Congress July 9, the Navy juggled the schedule for ships it plans to dispose of in the next five years. The number of ships planned for inactivation in 2017 dropped from 10 to six, and four submarines gained a modest lease on life. – Defense News The Navy released its 30-year shipbuilding plan to supplement the Fiscal Year 2017 budget request, which continues the service’s request to put its remaining cruisers into a phased modernization plan and notes the requirement for 52 small surface combatants despite Defense Secretary Ash Carter curtailing the program at 40 Littoral Combat Ships and frigates. – USNI News
The Navy is aggressively seeking to increase the size of its F/A-18 fleet, extend the current service life of existing aircraft and integrate a series of new technologies to better enable the carrier-launched fighter to track and destroy enemy targets, service officials said. – Scout Warrior The U.S. Marine Corps is months away from conducting crucial at-sea tests with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that will zero in on the aircraft’s ability to operate from a ship and the logistics of maintenance underway. – DOD Buzz The USS Gerald R. Ford -- the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier and the costliest U.S. warship at $12.9 billion -- won’t be delivered until at least November, more than two years late. - Bloomberg The US Air Force is reportedly mulling the idea of using its new T-X jet trainer as an aggressor aircraft and even as a replacement for its A-10 Warthog aircraft, it emerged at the Farnborough air show Tuesday. – Defense News The Air Force's top secret stealth drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, may have just been spotted on social media. Defense Tech reports that a YouTube video shot in Nevada appears to show the batwing-shaped drone flying against a desert horizon. The aircraft, once dubbed "the Beast of Kandahar” for its surreptitious appearance in Afghanistan, has been used for highly classified missions, such as spying on Iran's nuclear program and surveilling Osama Bin Laden's residence in advance of the raid that killed the al Qaeda leader. Technology A company out of Ann Arbor, Michigan is using some spider-man technology to craft a stronger line of body armor and the Army is taking an interest, Defense One reports. Kraig Biocraft has been working on Dragon Silk, a fiber based on spider silk. Spider silk, it turns out, is incredibly strong but difficult to harvest in bulk. Kraig Biocraft managed to sidestep the problem by genetically engineering silkworms to produce spider silk, allowing them to weave it into a bullet-resistant fabric that holds the promise of being more flexible than the kevlar material currently used in body armor. China, Russia, and rogue states like Iran are investing in advanced missile technology that will threaten the United States. The Obama administration’s defense policy has lagged in the field of missile deterrence, according to a new study from the Hudson Institute prepared with input from former officials and military leaders. – Washington Free Beacon Israel
Israeli industry is bracing for lost funding and layoffs as a result of a proposed $38 billion, 10-year US military aid package that rescinds Israel’s ability to convert a significant portion of US grant dollars into shekels for local research, development and procurement. – Defense News An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from Syria managed Sunday to penetrate Israeli airspace and evade two Patriot anti-air interceptors and possibly an F-16-launched air-to-air missile, sources here said. – Defense News Last week, the Navy was experimenting with brain-hacked, bomb-sniffing locusts. This week, the Naval Research Lab is talking up its robotic squirrel project. The Navy is building on its research making robotic pack mules to design a smaller, quieter quadrupedal robo-vermin that can scout ahead of troops for reconnaissance and sniff out bombs.
The Israeli Navy’s “ultimate answer” to the Russian Yakhont anti-ship sea-skimming cruise missile has been validated in India for land-based air defenders, according to India’s Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the prime contractor for the joint program known here as Barak-8. – Defense News
The US Army is turning to foreign systems for an interim solution for advanced protection for its combat vehicles against rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank guided missiles and other threats. – Defense News An F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would be able to use its sensors, weapons and computer technology to destroy Russian and Chinese 5th-Generation Stealth fighters in a high-end combat fight, service officials said. – Scout Warrior Officials from the Bipartisan Policy Center are bringing together a cast of notable defense influencers for a new task force to tackle defense personnel reform, in an effort to prevent morale and benefits issues from cutting into retention. – Military Times Northrop Grumman Corp. is working to convince the Pentagon that it’s solved long-standing manufacturing flaws that resulted in defective wings for the Navy’s new Triton reconnaissance drone, as the service prepares to ask defense officials to approve the aircraft’s production. - Bloomberg July 07, 2016
A high operational tempo and uncertain budgets have damaged aviation readiness across all four services and have leaders concerned about pilot safety, top brass told Congress Wednesday. – Military Times The rate of non-fatal accidents has doubled in Marine Corps aviation since last year, and the Marines are turning to outside experts to figure out why. – Breaking Defense The Navy fleets have a $500-million ship maintenance budget shortfall leftover from last year that they cannot pay for on their own. Any existing budget slack is already stretched too tight – meaning that $500-million shortfall will likely be pushed into the next year, U.S. Fleet Forces Command officials told USNI News. – USNI News The Navy is hoping to fully resurrect Mine-Hunting technology for the Littoral Combat Ship such that it can find an eliminate threatening undersea mines with drones, helicopters and underwater sonar, service officials said. – Scout Warrior Less than two months after Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited the highly classified Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center (JICSPOC), the head of Strategic Command’s space command unit has taken over the war games at Schriever Air Force Base. – Breaking Defense The Senate Armed Services Committee got a boost Tuesday from retired Army Gen. Stan McChrystal, who testified in support of Pentagon reforms the committee backs. – The Hill
Mackenzie Eaglen writes: Over the past decade, the Air Force has fallen out of favor with policymakers in the executive and legislative branches for many reasons. As the Air Force’s credibility has declined, so too has its topline. The next chief must seek out and build up champions of the service’s unique capabilities and contributions to the American way of war and way of life at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. Doing so will require focus on these five priorities to begin the service’s long but essential need to rebuild smartly. – Breaking Defense New Missile Defense Technology - Hudson Institute Rebecah Heinrichs writes: The United States has the resources and the technology to deploy a robust missile defense system, including space-based interceptors, but it will require changes to current policy and leveraging the modern technologies that would qualitatively improve our missile defense system. Failure to make this decision is to choose to remain under-defended, and in some instances, undefended. – Hudson Institute The tethered aerostat designed to defend against cruise missiles is slated to be killed by Congress in fiscal 2017 legislation, leaving missile defense leaders within US Northern Command scrambling to find another way to address the cruise missile defense gap left open on the US East Coast. – Defense News
Navy engineers are working to bring new aircraft sensors and new weapons into the Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) architecture, with near-term goals of bringing in the F-35’s radio frequency (RF) sensor and the anti-surface variant of the Standard Missile-6. – USNI News The Navy is developing lighter-weight anti-submarine designed to better enable its Littoral Combat Ship to track, locate and destroy enemy submarines – all while recognizing potential rival such as Russia and China continue to rapidly develop new submarine weapons and technologies. – Scout Warrior While to date “gray zone” challenges have frustrated U.S. efforts to respond, DoD can take a number of practical steps in the areas of policy, strategy and plans, and capabilities and concepts to restore the United States’ competitive edge. While the gray zone is by definition a “whole-of-government” problem, DoD will need to “lead up.” Failure to act invites irreversible strategic consequences. – Breaking Defense The U.S. Army has identified a “critical gap” in its ability to face swarms of drones that could attack small units of soldiers on the battlefield by confusing radar systems, overwhelming larger aircraft or simply exploding when they reach an assigned target. – Washington Post’s Checkpoint The Marine Corps’ new training regime, meant to emphasize gender-neutral standards for combat jobs, has weeded out 40 male recruits and all but one female recruit since the standards were put in place at the beginning of the year, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. – Washington Post’s Checkpoint Lead staff for the Senate and House armed services committees are readying for what is likely a summer-long conference process to reconcile differing defense policy bills, where the toughest issues are said to be funding, military healthcare reform and acquisition reforms. – Defense News Staff directors for the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on Tuesday shed some insight on the upcoming conference between the two panels to hash out their different versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, before sending it back to both chambers for final passage. – The Hill Seven Democratic lawmakers are pushing to allow the military to close excess bases with a bill introduced in the House on Tuesday. – The Hill The classified costs of the B-21 bomber should remain secret because revealing the figure would be “too insightful for the adversaries to get a sense of what they can do (and) what the U.S. can do in building that next generation bomber,” the official in charge of the program said Tuesday. – Breaking Defense Software glitches have plagued the F-35 in recent months, but operators said they noticed a marked improvement during a June deployment where the aircraft did not experience any shutdowns. – Defense News The Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Allyn said the service plans to budget for an 11th Combat Aviation Brigade in South Korea and four Apache battalions for the Army National Guard in the next budget plan, but stressed that funding those formations would come at a price elsewhere. – Defense News A Pentagon policy allowing transgender troops to serve openly is in the final stages of approval and is expected to be released within weeks, according to Defense Department sources. – USA Today Marine Corps pilots are getting a chance to see how the ground-pounders live in a new immersive program designed to bring the air and ground elements of the Corps' fighting machine closer for better collaboration. – Military.com U.S. Fleet Forces Command will push its fleet experimentation and training towards a new distributed operations concept, in which deployed forces – surface ships, submarines, aircraft and more – are sufficiently linked together so that they can support theater-wide needs regardless of their physical location, the commander said – USNI News
George Nethercutt writes: Bureaucracy, unaccountability, and repetitiveness have plagued our out-of-control budget for the last two decades. It's time we draw the line and identify wasteful taxpayer-funded programs. The Pentagon's practice of blindly funding outdated programs that duplicate others or failing to respond to modern warfare realities must stop. – Defense News
The US Army has delayed its plans to move forward with a capability it was developing to launch a variety of missiles against rocket, artillery and mortar (RAM) threats, so Lockheed Martin is turning to the international market to sell its Miniature Hit-to-Kill (MHTK) missile designed to combat the worldwide threat. – Defense News
Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to open the door for more “lateral entry” into the military's upper ranks, clearing the way for lifelong civilians with vital skills and strong résumés to enter the officer corps as high as the O-6 paygrade. – Military Times After a decade and a half of war, one of the most stressed career fields in the Air Force is the battlefield airmen who make up the Air Force Special Operations Command. – DOD Buzz Next year, the Navy plans to use electromagnetic force to launch an F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet up into the sky off of the deck of its emerging next-generation aircraft carrier next year – the USS Gerald R. Ford. – Scout Warrior The new littoral combat ship (LCS) Jackson was showered by spray and shaken by a large explosion June 10 as she endured the first of a series of controlled tests intended to prove the design’s ability to withstand and survive combat and damage. – Defense News Defense officials will make changes to the commissary system, but any change must meet two criteria: it must sustain the commissary benefit, and it must save money, said the official leading efforts to find taxpayer savings in the department’s resale operations. – Military Times July 11, 2016
The Air Force’s current fleet of aircraft is the smallest and oldest it has ever been, and although a plethora of acquisition programs are slated to update it with new capabilities, service officials are concerned about its ability to control the skies and strike targets at will. – Defense News Two years after the Air Force tried to force its aging A-10 Warthog fleet into retirement, officials are exploring whether to procure a potential replacement for the aircraft famed for its powerful defense of troops on the ground. – Defense News The Joint Strike Fighter is picking up steam as countries like Denmark sign up to the program. But predictions of what one analyst described as "massive carnage" for alternative fighters appear far less likely, with politics as well as the hefty price tag among the key factors driving some potential customers elsewhere. – Defense News Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Friday that the retired Navy SEAL who oversaw the U.S. raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the executive chairman of LinkedIn, and a historian who leads a Washington think tank are joining a new board the Pentagon has created to press for innovation. – Washington Post’s Checkpoint
The Senate is scheduled to vote on the annual defense authorization bill [this] week amid parliamentary fights that stalled debate on most amendments. A vote to advance the bill passed Friday, 68-23. – Defense News As the Senate nears completion of its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, Defense Secretary Ash Carter continues to warn against “micromanagement” coming from the Hill. – Defense News Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Friday pledged to revive a fight over military spending when the Senate takes up its defense funding bill. – The Hill The upgraded frigate variant of the Littoral Combat Ship isn’t much of an improvement over the controversial original, the Government Accountability Office says, because the Navy was too focused on keeping costs down and production lines humming. – Breaking Defense The Navy is now finalizing the weapons, sensors and technologies it plans to engineer into a new, more survivable and lethal Littoral Combat Ship variant designed to perform anti-submarine and surface warfare functions at the same time, service officials said. – Scout Warrior Trust your robots. Trust your tech industry. Trust your troops. Let go of traditional mechanisms of control — be it a human pilot in the cockpit or a formal requirements document for a program — that increasingly serve to slow you down. That was the message between the lines when Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and his protégé, Strategic Capabilities Office chief William Roper, spoke Friday afternoon at the Defense One Tech Summit. – Breaking Defense Despite key votes in Congress, it remained unclear Friday whether the United States is closer to an historic move requiring women to register for the military draft. – Stars and Stripes Stephen Rodriguez and Dan Mathis write: In the private sector, companies that opt for incremental versus radical reform often end up being overtaken by a challenger. In the matter of national defense, such an outcome would have catastrophic consequences. – War on the Rocks For the first time in nearly four years, the US Navy has four aircraft carrier strike groups deployed at the same time. Two more carriers are carrying out local operations, making for six of the fleet’s ten active carriers underway — an unusually high percentage. And another is preparing to go. – Defense News The U.S. Air Force plans to announce the name of the new B-21 stealth bomber at the Air Force Association’s annual conference in September, the service announced. – Defense Tech The only way to entirely eliminate taxpayer funding for commissaries is to shut them all down, according to Pentagon officials who have explored a number of alternatives. – Military Times Eli Lake reports: The Pentagon’s reliance on Russian rocket engines will be at the center of a debate this week in the Senate when lawmakers take up a bill to authorize the 2017 U.S. defense budget. Senator John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is proposing to phase out America’s reliance on the Russian rocket engines. – Bloomberg View Mackenzie Eaglen writes: Special set-asides slipped into 2,000-page bills are a sleazy way for one company to use its elected officials to corner the market for up to $300 million in taxpayer money a year — with no tangible benefits for the troops forced to wear the shoes. – Real Clear Defense The Navy is sending out more aircraft carrier strike groups lately, with six of the service's ten carriers carrying out operations at sea, Defense News reports. Four of those carriers are deployed abroad. The USS Harry S Truman is carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic State from the Mediterranean and the USS Dwight Eisenhower is headed towards the Gulf. In Asia, the USS Ronald Reagan recently set sail from Japan and the USS John C Stennis is in the South China Sea. Two other carriers, the USS Carl Vinson and USS George Washington, are engaged in training operations off both U.S. coasts. The U.S. hasn't seen this high a level of carrier activity since 2012.
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DOD ACQUISITION REFORM![]()
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