By Anthony Capaccio, Bloomberg: “The Pentagon's chief weapons tester said the next-generation F-35 jet continues to fall short of full combat readiness targets and, despite some progress on reliability issues, all three versions of the fighter are breaking down “more often than planned.””
By Joseph Trevithick, The WarZone: “The Pentagon's top watchdog has released a report that offers new details and insights into the U.S. Navy's struggle to resolve long-standing issues with the Engine Air Particle Separators, or EAPSs, on U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force V-22 Osprey tilt-rotors."
By Dan Gouré, RealClearDefense: “The threat to the U.S. Navy from cyber intrusion has become a crisis. Hackers, particularly those from Russia and China, are not limiting themselves to attacks on computers and networks. Now they are engaged in a massive assault on the entire Navy enterprise, including ships, weapons systems, research and development establishments, the supply chain, and shore facilities.”
Exploring the Foundation of Multi-Domain Ops
By Brandon C. Kasubaski, Small Wars Journal: “While TP 525-3-1 establishes what MDO achieves and how it supports the Army’s strategic roles, the underlying foundational strategies and how they contribute to MDO are absent. Understanding and interpreting these foundational strategies is critical for planners and leaders to gain insight into MDO.”
Assessment of the Current State of U.S. Cyber Civil Defense
By Lee Clark, Divergent Options: “Local civic organizations in the U.S. are experiencing a wave of costly and disruptive low-sophistication cyberattacks on a large scale, indicating widespread vulnerabilities in networks. In light of past and ongoing threats to U.S. cyber systems, especially election systems, this weak cybersecurity posture represents a serious national security concern.”
By Bob Scales, Breaking Defense: “Our elite close combat forces are outnumbered. As a national priority we must increase the numbers of those capable of doing these hazardous jobs by transferring the skills of JSOC warriors to Army and Marine conventional infantrymen."
For Lack of a Strategy: The Free and Open Indo-Pacific
By Gregory Poling, War on the Rocks: “Since early 2018, the Trump administration has been assuring experts and officials at home and abroad that a public report explaining its Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy was forthcoming. But the State Department's newly released report, A Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision, is not that. Instead it leaves the strategy, at best, implied but never described."