WASHINGTON: The US presence in the remote northern Australian port of Darwin will soar from its current 250 troops to 1,000 next year and ultimately to 2,200, granting a full Marine Expeditionary Unit an effective base of operations. Although the general agreement had been made in 2011, the renewed commitment is likely to elicit a…
By Colin ClarkROC-X – The solution to organic precision strike capabilities
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI will present integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
WASHINGTON: Fewer F-35B Joint Strike Fighters, MV-22 Ospreys, AH-1 Cobras, and UH-1 Hueys. No Marine Personnel Carrier. Maybe no Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to replace the Humvee. 8,000 fewer Marines on active duty. The Marine Commandant has put all that on the table as part of his proposal to the Defense Secretary’s Strategic Choices and…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
[updated with official dates] WASHINGTON: Just two days before the Pentagon is required by Congress to report when the different versions of F-35 will hit Initial Operating Capability, that mark when the services begin to deliver planes that are sort of ready for war missions and serious training, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos told me…
By Colin ClarkCAPITOL HILL: The commandant of the Marines told Congress today that his service could not handle even one major war if Congress doesn’t undo the $500 billion, 10-year cut to defense spending known as sequestration. The Navy, for its part, would have only one aircraft carrier ready to “surge” in a crisis instead of two…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.NATIONAL HARBOR: The top officers in the Navy and Marine Corps defended their most expensive program, Lockheed Martin‘s troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, while acknowledging the way the Pentagon buys such weapons is not merely broken but “constipated.” “There’s no alternative for the United States Marine Corps to the F-35B,” Commandant Gen. James Amos said…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.SAN DIEGO: Saturday saw the formal christening of the USNS Montford Point, the first of a new class of Navy vessel, the Mobile Landing Platform, meant to revolutionize the conduct of amphibious operations. By serving as a kind of floating pier, the MLP allows an amphibious force to offload heavy combat vehicles and bulk supplies…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
BAE Systems’ LR-PGK: The Superior Anti-Jam Solution
Going the distance to defeat emerging jam threats.
If the US fails to innovate in its re-shaping of its forces in the Pacific, it cannot effectively play the crucial role which is essential to a strategy focused on our allies. Without innovation, the US cannot protect its interests in the Pacific, ranging from the Arctic to Australia, and will lose the significant economic…
By Robbin LairdWASHINGTON: The military is in for another eight years of tight budgets, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos predicted today. The good news is that the relationship between the four Joint Chiefs who craft their budgets and their chairman is “better than it ever has been.” In his public remarks, the commandant hammered home the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.If If the Pentagon wants to buy weapons that are delivered on time and don’t cost too much, then it should take decades of regulations, totaling thousands of pages, and “put a match to it,” the chairman of a Defense Business Board study told Breaking Defense. The best part is that’s a reform the Pentagon…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.NATIONAL PRESS CLUB: As war funding goes away, Marines must learn to live with “good enough” in an era of austerity, Commandant James Amos declared today at the National Press Club, saying that even top-priority programs like the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter and the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor face the budget axe. Even without sequestration, the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.PENTAGON: Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos laid out today the Corps’ tricky balancing act, simultaneously cutting personnel, spreading out weapons programs, and shifting from counterinsurgency on land in Afghanistan to seaborne crisis response in the Pacific. The big Marine Corps news of the last 24 hours was the award of development contracts to three firms,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: A Marine Corps investigation confirms that, as Breaking Defense reported July 9, the pilot at the controls of an MV-22B Osprey that crashed April 11 in Morocco, killing two crew chiefs aboard, violated flight manual procedures and committed other errors that contributed to the accident. Breaking Defense has obtained a redacted summary of a…
By Richard WhittleWASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will lift the probationary status tomorrow that the F-35B has labored under since his predecessor imposed it one year ago. This lifts a dark veil from the program, which many have critics have targeted for elimination. The Pentagon has been rife with rumors about this for two weeks but a…
By Colin Clark
80,000 Tons Of Innovation: USNS Montford Point, The Navy’s New Mobile Landing Platform
We attended the christening last week of the newest US Navy ship, an 80,000 ton (fully laden) vessel that is not an aircraft carrier. Instead, the USNS Montford Point is the first of a new class of Navy ships, a Mobile Landing Platform, in essence a deployed port at sea. The ship, built at General…
By Robbin Laird