As Israelis celebrated their independence day, sources here told Breaking Defense that at least one of the B-52s deployed to the region passed through our airspace, headed to “one of the Gulf states.”
By Arie EgoziSo reporters kept pressing Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Chief of Staff David Goldfein for answers to the reasonable question: How will the Air Force afford 74 more squadrons with all the people, planes, satellites, and infrastructure needed to make them useful?
By Colin ClarkIn a somewhat surreal scenario, President Trump yesterday riffed on the idea of a “Space Force,” something he’d clearly been briefed on at some point. And the Air Force expects new engines for the B-52 fleet to cost up to $8 billion.
By Colin ClarkTodd Harrison is one of the best defense budget folks around. Like many budget weenies (that’s the technical term) he really cares about how people come up with cost estimates because the underlying assumptions for them can lead in radically different directions. One example is the recent estimate on how much the next generation of…
By Todd HarrisonThe United States Air Force should consider shifting its balance of its strike forces from fighters to long-range bombers. At the end of the Cold War, the Air Force’s combat aircraft inventory included 411 bombers. Today, it has a total of 158 B-1, B-52, and B-2 bombers, of which only 96 are designated as Primary…
By Mark GunzingerUPDATED: We Run Op-Ed; Pentagon Announces LRSO Contract The Pentagon just awarded the third major contract in the modernization of the nuclear triad. First came the B-21 bomber. Then the Columbia-class submarine, to replace the Ohio class boomers. Two days ago they awarded Boeing and Northrop Grumman contracts to begin work on the new version…
By Mark GunzingerAfter threatening to rain four missiles around Guam, North Korea’s pudgy leader, Kim Jong-un appeared to back off today. The (spoof) official North Korean News Agency issued a fabulous tweet describing it, declaring: “Esteemed General Kim Jong-Un reprieves US colony of Guam, citing concern for ocelots and sea turtles. Fate of Los Angeles remains unclear.”…
By Mark CancianAir Force Secretary Deborah Lee James traveled through Asia, visiting Indonesia, India, Singapore, and the Philippines at the end of the summer. We didn’t hear a great deal about the trip in the US at the time but her meetings with her defense counterparts clearly impressed. In this op-ed, James shares the lessons she learned. China…
By Deborah Lee JamesPENTAGON: I thought I could hear Air Force and allied F-35 pilots around the world smiling when the new Air Force Chief of Staff said today that comparing the F-35 to the Chinese J-20 “is almost an irrelevant comparison.” The F-35, said Gen. David Goldfein, is “about a family of systems and it’s about a network — that’s what…
By Colin ClarkCAPITOL HILL: Gen. Robin Rand, head of Air Force Global Strike Command, made it pretty clear he’d like more than the 100 B-21 bombers to which the service is currently committed. He would probably like close to half again that many. Rand told a Mitchell Institute breakfast that the US currently has 156 bombers “in our…
By Colin ClarkOur coverage of deterrence and the roles of using weapons for signaling continues to elicit strong and pertinent reactions from readers and practitioners in these days when North Korea, China and Russia so robustly challenge the United States and its allies. As you read on, you’ll see the author of this latest piece is a…
By Mike BenitezIn a recent article in Breaking Defense, Adam Lowther and Chris Winklepleck argue that the strategic aircraft leg of the triad provides unique “nuclear signaling” capabilities essential to demonstrating the seriousness of U.S. nuclear threats. But the benefit of using nuclear weapons in this manner is a dubious one, both for America and its allies.…
By Jim Doyle
For years, the Pentagon has dreamed and worked to build what it has called Prompt Global Strike, The idea is simple: to build a hypersonic weapon that can destroy targets anywhere on earth within an hour of getting targeting data and permission to launch. The technology and the physics are not simple; nor are they cheap.…
By Rep. Rob Wittman