“We haven’t deployed anyone, just to be clear,” Edwin Wilson said. “We’ll have a traditional prepare-to-deploy order, (and) the members and teams are on recall ready to go within hours.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“One of the things that we did early in my tenure was we changed (it to) Polar Security Cutter as we were trying to get the funds from the Congress, from our own department, the administration,” Coast Guard Commandant Karl Schultz told Breaking Defense.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: After a small group of forlorn men huddled in the middle of Afghanistan succeeded in their plan to strike the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, America declared a global war against them. That war has sucked almost $3 trillion dollars from the US, according to a study by the respected Stimson Center…
By Colin ClarkThe Pentagon’s willingness to pay freelance hackers to report cyber vulnerabilities has opened the floodgates for similar programs from other agencies, report the organizers of the original Hack The Pentagon. San Francisco-based HackerOne now counts clients ranging from the US Air Force, Army, and Defense Travel System to the Singaporean Ministry of Defense and the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Adm. Zukunft says he doesn’t want to return to the old culture of “martyrdom” when the service prided itself on doing more with less even as it ran its equipment and people into the ground.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: A Lockheed Martin engineer risked much claiming his company knew the radio system it was building for the Coast Guard didn’t work as advertised. The company settled the suit, agreeing to pay $2.2 million in fines and to fix the radios on the National Security Cutters, which should cost another $2.2 million. The whistleblower,…
By Colin ClarkSURFACE NAVY ASSOCIATION: The Coast Guard’s new heavy icebreaker will have space, weight, and electrical power set aside to carry offensive weapons, Commandant Paul Zukunft said here today. While Adm. Zukunft has publicly advocated making the icebreaker capable of carrying cruise missiles, this is the first confirmation we’ve seen that design work is indeed underway.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: President Trump’s sweeping review of the national security industrial base — from shipbuilding to microchips, strategic minerals to vaccines — is almost halfway done. A score of working groups across the government, not just the Pentagon, will submit their draft recommendations this month and next, an administration official briefed on the review tells me. Then…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: The Navy League of the United States just issued a withering denunciation of President Trump‘s proposed $1.3 billion cut to the Coast Guard. Trump’s 2018 budget plan has already come under fire from both sides. Democrats reject it for cutting domestic spending too much. Pro-military Republicans reject it for raising defense too little. The Republican…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Mike Flynn: You’re fired! H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, John Kelly: You’re hired!
With the election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States and with Trump’s nomination of Gen. John Kelly for Secretary of Homeland Security, life is going to change for the US Coast Guard. Trump’s campaign focused intently on border security, asking a fundamental question: Why do we send thousands of troops…
By Robbin LairdAmong the many anxieties inspired by the rise of Trump, one of the most profound is his fondness for generals. Does naming so many retired military men to top positions undermine the principal of civilian control? How might their shared experiences in our post-9/11 conflicts shape the way they govern? This week, award-winning defense reporter…
By James Kitfield