CAPITOL HILL: Navy readiness is “heading in the wrong direction,” the Government Accountability Office told the Senate this morning, with only 15 percent of Navy F-35Cs rated “fully mission capable.” At the same hearing, a four-star admiral acknowledged three nuclear-powered attack submarines were still stuck awaiting overhaul, with the USS Boise expected to be out of action…
By Paul McLearyBAE Systems’ LR-PGK: The Superior Anti-Jam Solution
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“The waste would be absolutely stunning,” Secretary Spenser said. To cut the already-completed 2020 budget plan so steeply on such little notice, he said, “some of the scenarios will make your eyes water for what we will have to do” in his shipbuilding and maintenance accounts.
By Paul McLeary
UPDATED from hearing and House vote WASHINGTON: The Navy is doing a good job addressing the problems revealed by last summer’s fatal collisions at sea, for example by filing criminal charges this week against officers involved, the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat of the House seapower subcommittee say. Now Congress needs to do its part and pass…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The Navy and Marine Corps hit the wall in 2017 with an string of deadly accidents. The newly named Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, seems to be charting a collision course with joint commanders.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The Navy’s new Strategic Readiness Review lays out a bold program to fix the fleet after a summer of deadly collisions. Commissioned and championed by Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, the SSR (as it’s already initialized) will shape the debate in the Pentagon and in Congress for 2018. So we asked submariner-turned-thinktanker Bryan Clark to review…
By Bryan Clark
WASHINGTON: Navy Secretary Richard Spencer has asked legislators to repeal an obscure statute that he says hinders Navy readiness in the Pacific, where accidents this summer killed 17 sailors. Armed Services committee leaders seem receptive, but it’s the appropriators who’ll have to change the provision in question, which was written by their late, great chairman…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PENTAGON: How will the new Navy Secretary get people to understand the fleet is being worked too hard? “Because we’ll start every conversation with 17 dead sailors,” Richard Spencer told reporters this morning in his first media roundtable as SecNav. The 10 deaths aboard the USS McCain last month and the seven aboard the USS Fitzgerald…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
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ARLINGTON: The new Navy Secretary announced a civilian-led investigation of recent lethal accidents that will look outside the Navy for lessons, separate from the internal military investigation already underway. Richard Spencer announced his Strategic Readiness Review late Friday, but only at this morning’s speech did he divulge the key detail. His review will bring in private…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Chronic conflict between Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the Trump White House has hobbled the nomination process for top Pentagon posts, a source familiar with the Trump personnel team tells Breaking Defense. In several cases, the source said, the Trump team recommended nominees with extensive experience and bipartisan respect — Rep. Randy Forbes, Sen. Jim Talent…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL HARBOR: Boeing’s proposed Block III upgrade to the Super Hornet would be a “fairly high-end” complement to the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley believes. Instead of seeing Super Hornets as a potential replacement for the F-35 — as President Trump proposed — Stackley and other naval leaders at the Sea-Air-Space conference…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL HARBOR: In their desperation to convince Congress that budget gridlock hurts military readiness, Navy officials made public some information that they shouldn’t have, Acting Secretary Sean Stackley told reporters here today. It’s this oversharing of readiness data, along with too much detailed talk about future capabilities that prompted the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CORRECTED: Bilden is least experienced, not 2nd to last WASHINGTON: Trump’s pick for Navy Secretary, Philip Bilden, has less relevant experience than any of his predecessors since 1980, Breaking Defense has found. To be precise, every Navy Secretary for 36 years has had significant prior experience in either government or the defense industry or both: Bilden…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. WASHINGTON: After almost two decades in Hong Kong riding the Chinese economic buffalo, a man little known in Washington is apparently the frontrunner for Navy Secretary in the Trump administration. One source with deep knowledge of the Navy and GOP politics called the pick of Philip Bilden “f**ing ludicrous.” Another, with similar credentials, called it “crazy.”…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: Sure, the Navy needs more ships, but first and most urgently, it needs to fix the ships it already has. That’s what Navy leaders are telling Donald Trump. “When the transition team came around to all of us in the building and asked us what we could do with more money right now, the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
