WASHINGTON: In a letter obtained by Breaking Defense, senators John McCain and Jack Reed slam a key component of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship as unreliable and urge the Pentagon to explore alternatives to the Remote Mine-Hunting System. In their Aug. 31 letter to the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, Frank Kendall, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and outgoing Chief…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Enterprise-wide training: the Army’s $3.5B program for multi-service combat readiness
The competition for Warfighter Training and Readiness Solutions will bring together training networks, combat training centers and live ranges across the DoD enterprise.
WASHINGTON: The Senate Armed Services Committee has joined the push to give the Army a much larger role in the Pacific. The hard part, ironically, may be getting the Army to go along. Why should soldiers do more in the Pacific, a theater traditionally dominated by pilots, Marines, and, above all, sailors? The Pacific, obviously, is…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
[UPDATED with Congressional reaction] ROSLYN, VA: Ray Mabus likes robots. The Navy Secretary has declared the F-35 will be “the last manned strike fighter” the service ever buys and invested heavily in unmanned aircraft, boats, and submersibles. But Mabus has frustrated drone advocates on one major program: the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft. This morning, Mabus defended…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL HARBOR: Navy Secretary Ray Mabus may want to move drones to the top of his priorities, but what kind of unmanned systems do the Navy and Marine Corps want to buy? Don’t think Predator or even the Navy’s new 131-foot-wingspan Triton. Imagine a swarm of buzzing, scuttling or swimming robots that are smaller but smarter. While a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
This is the third in our exclusive series on the crucial but neglected question of sea mines and how well — or not — the United States manages this global and very real threat. Here we’re looking at the most promising technologies, ships and aircraft that can give the United States the edge in this crucial and complex battle.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
This is the second in our exclusive series on the crucial but neglected question of sea mines and how well — or not — the United States manages this very real global threat. Only 4.7 percent of the US Navy’s 275 warships are dedicated to mine warfare. Those small numbers face Iran’s several thousand naval mines, North Korea’s 50,000, China 100,000 or…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
This is the first of three stories on the crucial but neglected question of sea mines and how well — or not — the United States manages this very real global threat. Since World War II, mines have sunk or crippled 15 US Navy ships, more than all other weapons put together. Like roadside bombs on land,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Modernizing our supply chain is a national security imperative
Closing supply chain gaps in innovating technology will reposition the industrial base to be a strategic source of value.
PENTAGON: The controversial Littoral Combat Ship dodged a big torpedo today, when outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel approved the Navy’s plan for a larger, better armed and better protected version of the ship. Critics had called for a radical redesign or an entirely new ship. The “modified LCS” simply adds new weapons, electronics, and armor to…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Just nine months after hosting the biggest multinational mine-warfare exercises “ever” to be held in and around the Persian Gulf, the Navy’s 5th Fleet and its foreign partners outdid themselves with a second, even larger wargame. More than 20 nations participated in September’s International Mine Counter-Measures Exercise 2012, collaborating against fictional ecoterrorists whose capabilities were suspiciously…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.And then there were 13: Navy salvaging wreck of minesweeper GUARDIAN http://1.usa.gov/WXgcnk Only 13 left in fleet: http://aol.it/YIlOw4 SydneyFreedberg
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: Full speed ahead and damn the drawdown — that’s the confident note that the Navy’s top admiral struck today. “We’re not downsizing, we’re growing,” declared Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, at the National Press Club. “The ship count is going up and the number of people is going up.” Adding up…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA: Minesweeping and “fast” are two words you’d normally be nervous about hearing in the same sentence. But as the Navy looks to new technologies to remedy its decades-long neglect of mine warfare — a favorite weapon of both Iran and China — it sees real potential to speed up a painfully slow…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.CORRECTED: Fixes Number of Minesweepers in US Ports 9:35 am 10/1/2012 Officially, despite rising tensions with Tehran, the enemy in in the international naval wargames that kicked off in the Gulf this week is not, repeat not, Iran: It’s radical environmentalists. Very, very well-armed environmentalists. Against this fictional Greenpeace gone rogue are set the ships,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The Littoral Combat Ship has come under light fire from Congress because they worry especially about findings by operational testers that the ships cannot survive a firefight. Norman Friedman, a consultant at Gryphon Technologies with more than 30 military books to his name, argues in the following piece that critics need to consider that “change…
By Norman Friedman