WASHINGTON: The Navy really needs more fighters. Buying 14 more Super Hornets isn’t just the No. 1 item on the Navy’s unfunded requirements list of items that didn’t fit the 2017 budget: The $1.5 billion purchase of F/A-18E/Fs makes up almost a third — 29 percent — of the total $5.4 billion wishlist. Add to…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.A major overhaul is coming in software for missile warning
Space Systems Command’s FORGE program is the first, major missile-warning software modernization effort in 20 years.
WASHINGTON: Shipbuilding is under pressure in the 2017 budget, but that didn’t stop the Chief of Naval Operations from sketching out his service’s “next warship” this morning. He wants ships built from the keel up for cyber and electronic warfare. He wants modular designs that can be updated at the speed of Moore’s Law. And…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATED: Adds DepSecDef Explanation For Additional LCS PENTAGON: “We don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do,” Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told me in an exclusive 85-minute interview in his E-Ring Pentagon office. “So what we’re doing this year, Sydney, is we are trying to prepare as many demonstrations on advanced…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATE: USS Wilbur sails through Paracel Islands Friday WASHINGTON: The United States will keep challenging Chinese claims in the South China Sea, the head of Pacific Command said this afternoon. Such Freedom of Navigation operations will grow in frequency, complexity, and scope, said Adm. Harry Harris. And Harris defended the first such FON operation” since 2012, last October’s cruise of the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: In the brutal naval battles of the future, the first clash of arms will be a clash of electrons. If you don’t win the invisible battle of the airwaves, you can’t win the visible battle of missiles. Before warships can concentrate their fire on the enemy, they first must communicate with each other. Before they…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Is the Littoral Combat Ship a real warship? That question has bedeviled the small, sleek, lightly armed ships for years. Now it’s taken on new urgency as the Defense Department and the Navy both refocus on high-intensity, high-tech warfighting against “great powers” — i.e. China and Russia. Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to cut…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: “I guess I’m going to have to attack your question on almost every aspect,” Adm. John Richardson told me. As an analyst, it’s unnerving to have the Navy’s top admiral tell you to your face, albeit politely, that you’re just plain wrong. (I’d politely disagree, though I did miss some important nuances in an earlier story). I had asked…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
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.
SURFACE NAVY ASSOCIATION: Paul Daniels of Raytheon is a bit miffed. Yesterday, prominent defense commentator Loren Thompson wrote an article in Forbes extolling the technology Daniels works on, precision-guided cannon shells — particularly the products of BAE Systems. But Daniels doesn’t work for BAE. He works on Raytheon’s Excalibur smart round, fired 800 times in anger in…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Ashton Carter wants to cut the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program to buy more missiles, aircraft, and upgrades to ships. That’s good as far as it goes, eminent naval historian and analyst Norman Polmar told me this morning — “in my opinion the decision should have been five years ago” — but it’s…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The DDG-1000, aka Zumwalt, is the snazziest ship in the Navy. It’s also something of a dead end. After years of research, development, construction, cancellations, and cuts, the first ship of a new class of high-tech destroyers is now “conducting at-sea tests and trials,” the US Navy announced today. (The video and photos were taken…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: NATO‘s supreme commander is on a pilgrimage to the Pentagon to ask for three things. Gen. Philip Breedlove wants more intelligence support, more naval power, and continued focus on the Russian threat to Europe. That’s tricky at a time when the Russian intervention in Syria — where the US will now send special operations…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. WASHINGTON: Under intense budget pressure, a Pentagon cost-cutting team is pushing the Navy to cancel its third and last Zumwalt-class destroyer, the Lyndon Johnson (DDG-1002). But two sources familiar with the program say this cost-cutting measure just doesn’t add up. The DDG-1000 Zumwalts are expensive; three ships will cost almost $13 billion. About $9 billion of that…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
From the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, the US military is getting more and more worried about the threat from various missiles. But all incoming missiles are not the same, which makes missile defense much harder. That’s the problem Raytheon’s SM-6 interceptor tackled in a recent test that has important tactical implications. If you…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: Take my mission — please. The armed services are notorious for overselling their capabilities and grabbing turf to justify budgets. But when it comes to ballistic missile defense, the Navy feels so overburdened that it is talking up land-based alternatives as superior to its vaunted Aegis ships. [Click here for Part I of this…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
