WASHINGTON: The hearing season is roaring ahead at full tilt, with senior officials at five defense hearings on Wednesday. Here’s our preview of some of the likely topics and issues. The most interesting to Breaking Defense readers probably will be the unique pairing of the four Army and Air Force leaders before the full Senate…
By Colin ClarkBAE Systems’ LR-PGK: The Superior Anti-Jam Solution
Going the distance to defeat emerging jam threats.
UPDATED: Sen. McCain SASC Spox Rejects Air Force Rationale For Retiring A-10 ORLANDO: Sequestration. Base closures. Readiness. Modernization. ISIL. Russia. The list of challenges faced by Air Force leaders is long. But none may be more intractable or politically difficult than retiring the A-10 “Warthog” close air support fleet. The Air Force has never really wanted to…
By Colin Clark
ORLANDO: The Air Force, under heavy pressure from Congress to keep the A-10 Warthog in the air, will hold a mini-summit with the Army, Navy and Marines to figure out the best ways to do Close Air Support, the politically sensitive mission of aircraft protecting troops on the ground. Gen. Hawk Carlisle, head of Air Combat…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED: With Targeting Details; Clarification About Syria WASHINGTON: The armored and inimitable A-10 Warthog is being used to destroy ISIL targets in Iraq — but not Syria. “They’ve been flying for a few weeks and have conducted multiple strikes in central and northwestern Iraq,” an Air Force source says. “No missions in Syria.” Kristina Wong of…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED: Includes Link To NDAA Language Filed Late Tuesday; SASC Weapons Summary CAPITOL HILL: If you want to get some idea just how hard it will be to reduce the yearly increases in pay and benefits that have marked the last 13 years, look at the new defense policy bill out today. The senior leadership of the…
By Colin Clark
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, leader of the congressional push to keep the A-10 flying, is calling out the Air Force. The service claims it won’t have enough mechanics to keep both F-35A Joint Strike Fighters and A-10 Warthogs flying safely and thus may miss the F-35’s politically important Initial Operating Capability milestone for the F-35A because Congress won’t retire the A-10.…
By Colin Clark
“Our industrial base has eroded and we’re reducing our military down to a skeletal size at a time when the world is looking crazier by the day,” Gen. Mike Hostage told reporters Tuesday at the Air Force Association’s annual conference. “[But] there is nothing happening right now that is going to make sequestration go away, so…
By Richard Whittle
A new approach to speed, scale and efficiency for the industrial base
Radars, EW, EO/IR, space imagery, and microelectronics are brought under one roof for a streamlined approach to common people and factories.
PENTAGON: The grander the title, the blander the content. That’s normally a safe rule in Washington. But if analyzed closely, this afternoon’s “State of the Air Force” briefing by service Secretary Deborah Lee James and Chief of Staff Mark Welsh, plus the accompanying pamphlet A Call To the Future, actually do articulate a remarkably clear…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. FARNBOROUGH AIR SHOW: Deborah Lee James had been in office a very short time when she learned of a crisis in the Air Force’s nuclear force and had to hold her first press conference as the service’s top civilian to discuss cheating and drugs. A tough start to a new job. She still faces a myriad…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: Election fears ruled the day on Capitol Hill when the full House of Representatives voted to stop the Air Force from retiring the venerable and venerated A-10 aircraft in the chamber’s version of the defense appropriations bill. While we heard little of the backroom chatter and didn’t see the emails that doubtless flew as…
By Colin Clark CAPITOL HILL: The House Appropriations Committee bucked the trend today, voting 23 to 13 to retire the beloved A-10 Warthog ground attack plane. Both the House and Senate Armed Services committees have voted to save it. While HASC and SASC are the authorizers who set defense policy, it’s the appropriators who vote the money to…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
THE CAPITOL: “We do emphasize readiness,” Sen. Carl Levin told me. “I for one would rather have a smaller force that is ready than a bigger force that is less ready.” With those words — his parting shot as I hounded him through the Capitol’s marble halls after his official press conference yesterday on the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Congress usually does not like it when the military decides to retire a weapon system. A fleet of planes like the A-10 or the U-2, or ships like Ticonderoga cruisers or, for that matter, a military base are all centers of jobs. And Congress doesn’t like it when someone messes around with existing jobs. When…
By Jordan Thomas
In this article, one of the Air Force’s own, longtime Breaking Defense contributor Lt. Col. Dan Ward, runs the numbers on his service’s plan to scrap the beloved A-10 Warthog and – now that Congress has thoroughly rejected the idea – suggests an alternative: a modest trim to the massive F-35 program might just save…
By Dan Ward