It should surprise no one, but the US Marine Corps, the US Air Force and the British will fly F-35s at both the Royal International Air Tattoo and the Farnborough Air Show this summer. “The U.S. Marine Corps is looking forward to demonstrating the capabilities of the F-35B Lightning II in the skies over the…
By Colin ClarkGray Eagle is the low-cost, low-risk answer to Army modernization
Gray Eagle STOL and Gray Eagle 25M are the best options for Army aviation as it assesses where to move from its current inflection point.
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s director of Operational Test and Evaluation has raised serious concerns about the F-35 program’s ability to safely and effectively build and test the enormous amount of software used by both the F-35 aircraft and the maintenance and logistics system known as ALIS to keep the planes flying. In a previously unreported Dec.…
By Colin Clark
The sea and the sky above it are becoming more dangerous for US forces. Even terrorist groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State have access to anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, let alone great powers like Russia and China. But the US Navy and Marines recognize this “anti-access/area denial” challenge and are reshaping their forces to…
By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake
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.
WASHINGTON: With Russian subs and bombers nosing around the British Isles while the Islamic State massacres Parisians just two hours by train from London, the British Defense Ministry is besieged from both sides. The new Strategic Defense Review aims not only to rebuild the UK military after 2010’s cuts but to make it capable of confronting…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: After years and years of busted schedules, cost overruns and technical challenges, the F-35 program is expected to end 2015 on a high note, with all production goals met and solid progress resolving the ejection seat issues that threaten lighter pilots. I understand from industry and program sources that, after getting stalled, there is a good…
By Colin Clark
Modernizing military simulation with open systems architecture
Best-of-breed common models and architecture enable virtual training and testing with the same data in a cyber-resilient posture.
WASHINGTON: The British have released their Strategic Defense Review, declaring they will plug the gaping hole in their anti-submarine warfare capabilities by buying nine P-8s from Boeing and showing considerable confidence in Lockheed Martin’s F-35 as they pledge to buy more earlier. The “National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review” also restated its commitment to…
By Colin Clark
The Navy’s Surface Warfare leaders announced a new warfighting concept, Distributed Lethality (DL) nine months ago at the January 2015 Surface Navy Association symposium in Arlington, Va., and outlined it in the U.S. Naval Institute magazine Proceedings. DL is an innovative concept for how surface, amphibious and combat logistics ships can enhance the Surface Navy’s offensive “punch” in support…
By Scott C. Truver
WASHINGTON: The United Kingdom is committed to a high-end battle fleet centered on two aircraft carriers, a senior Ministry of Defense official made clear yesterday. Just as important, the UK is committed to funding adequate crews to sail them — something that had been in doubt after much discussion about cutting costs by effectively mothballing the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PENTAGON: The head of Marine aviation is talking with Boeing about costs and ways to upgrade more than half of the service’s 239 V-22 Ospreys to improve readiness. The basic plan would be to improve all 131 of the A and B models of the V-22 to the C level, Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, told me in an interview…
By Colin Clark
This is one of those intriguing benchmarks that illustrates several things about both the F-35 program — it means a lot to allies — and to the Italian tanker program — it works. Irritatingly, I knew this was supposed to happen but it’s hard to write about something that may happen until it does. We have…
By Colin Clark
When Defense Secretary Bob Gates put the F-35B on “probation” and Sen. John McCain became his powerful echo chamber, we responded on the pages of Breaking Defense that these actions were misguided. We had spent many hours with the pilots, maintainers, builders, designers, and testers of the aircraft, and came to a very different conclusion: “The F-35B…
By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake
WASHINGTON: The first variant of the most expensive conventional weapons program ever is now officially ready for combat. In one of his last acts as Marine Corps Commandant, future Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford announced today that the Marine model of the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35B vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) version, has…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
When the British Parliament voted to strike Daesh (or ISIL as we used to call them) in Syria, the Royal Air Force was “unleashed,” to use the words of a senior British government official. British planes launched from Cyprus and struck against Daesh oil facilities in Syria. They struck against what the Defense Minister called the pocketbook…
By Robbin Laird