WASHINGTON: President Trump will nominate Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan for Deputy Defense Secretary, one of six key Pentagon appointments announced today. All six have extensive service in government or, in Shanahan’s case, the defense industry. That’s a stark departure from the two billionaires with no prior government service Trump initially picked as secretaries of the Army and Navy, Vincent Viola and Philip…
By Colin ClarkModernizing 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.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: Less than six months after its official rollout, the Army’s new concept of future warfare has gotten traction with all four armed services. In brief, Multi-Domain Battle envisions the military — everything from submarines to satellites, tanks to jets, destroyers to drones, grunts to hackers — working together to overwhelm the enemy with…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
An upstart odd couple has challenged armored vehicle giant BAE for the right to build the Marine Corps’ swimming tank. One is Singapore’s ST Kinetics, maker of the Singapore Armed Forces‘ amphibious Terrex vehicle. The other is McLean, Va.-based SAIC, best known as a service contractor, which is working with the Singaporeans to build a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
SAN DIEGO: Adm. Mike Rogers, who heads both NSA and Cyber Command, is looking past CYBERCOM’s elevation to an independent Unified Command towards a much wider reorganization of military cyber. Some reorganization is implicit in a Feb. 17 memo in which Defense Secretary Jim Mattis charges Deputy Secretary Bob Work to “develop an initial plan……
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Mike Flynn: You’re fired! H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, John Kelly: You’re hired!
UPDATED: Adds Who Recommended McMaster (Bannon’s daughter); Stavridis Comments WASHINGTON: H.R. as President Trump’s new National Security Advisor is known, is best known for a book in which he criticized the top ranks of America’s military for not standing up to the country’s political leadership and speaking truth to power during the Vietnam War. McMaster…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED: Mulvaney Wins Confirmation Thursday By 2 Votes; McCain Only GOP to Vote No WASHINGTON: In a move that took some by surprise, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain, declared his opposition to President Trump’s pick to run the crucial Office of Management and Budget. McCain is the only…
By Colin Clark
New Army mounted system won’t play favorites when it comes to C5ISR, EW and A-PNT
The CMOSS Mounted Form Factor will facilitate tech insertion for new capabilities while co-existing with the Mounted Family of Computer Systems.
CAPITOL HILL: The Navy-Marine fighter fleet is in a “death spiral” and the only long-term fix is to buy new jets faster, both F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a former Pentagon analyst told Breaking Defense. Two veteran Hill staffers agreed the situation is dire and new planes are needed, although they put equal…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATED with Marine Corps data CAPITOL HILL: More than 60 percent of Navy and Marine Corps strike fighters are out of service, the Navy confirmed today. While 62 percent of fighters are effectively grounded, the overall figure for all naval aircraft is 53 percent. [UPDATE: With some of the oldest fighter jets in service, Marine Corps…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CORRECTED: Role of U.S. Space Command CAPITOL HILL: It’s a refrain space warriors have heard before: the Air Force should head space training and operations, and we need to fix space acquisition. “In this light, we are eager to be named the lead service for space,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told the…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: Of the three variants of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, only the carrier-launched F-35C is at risk of being replaced by Boeing’s F-18 Super Hornet, the Marine Corps’s top pilot said today. It’s not on the table to substitute Hornets for either the land-based F-35A variant or the vertical-takeoff-and-landing F-35B, Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, deputy Commandant for…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
We haven’t done this much here at Breaking Defense, but when I ran DoDBuzz we used to sometimes take cogent and insightful readers comments and build them into a story. Here’s your chance to tell the new administration the smart things it could do with America’s military over the next four years. You can either…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED: Mattis Says: Trump “Has In No Way Shown A Lack Of Support For The F-35 Program” WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump said more than 144 characters about the F-35 program today at his first press conference since being elected president, and Lockheed Martin appeared to have had little reason to be happy. But there are other…
By Colin Clark
This week, the Navy finally announced a delivery date for the long-delayed and $2.4 billion over-budget aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford (CVN-78). “In hindsight,” said Adm. Thomas Moore, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, the Navy should have tested the Ford’s ambitious new systems more extensively on shore before installing them aboard ship. But building a…
By Bryan Clark