Australia looking to protect its home waters, while sending a signal to Washington that it is one of the allies that is trying to pull its weight in defending itself.
By Paul McLearyWhat’s new in naval radars and missiles: Defending the Pacific
Defending U.S. naval forces in the Pacific, Red Sea, and elsewhere require a range of systems from close-in weapons to anti-ballistic missiles.
The deployment comes as Beijing and Washington race to keep tabs on one another in the South China Sea.
By Paul McLeary
There will be organizational alterations, changes to “the way we are doing business” and, perhaps most importantly, Wilson said there will be “cultural change.” They will also try to prioritize what “our go-fast projects are.”
By Colin Clark
As the surface Navy intensively strives to achieve the cross domain capabilities so essential to warfighting success against a near-peer competitor, Raytheon is using its wide spectrum of defense technologies to support those efforts. Modern warfare increasingly requires operations across all of the five domains of land air, surface, subsurface, space and cyberspace. A key…
By Otto Kreisher [Sponsored by Raytheon]
AFA HQ: We finally learned why the Air Force has been backing away from a new JSTARS: it probably wouldn’t be much use in a real shooting war. That’s the verdict, stated in less unforgiving terms by the head of Air Combat Command, Gen. Mike Holmes, here in a speech. “The question is, how will…
By Colin Clark
In an extraordinary international response, a dozen nations have poured assets into the stormy South Atlantic to help find and save 44 Argentine submariners from the missing sub San Juan. It’s a stark contrast to the last great submarine disaster, when Russia was slow to accept international help for the stricken Kursk in 2000 and lost all…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Gray 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.
The shift from slo mo — counterinsurgency operations — to high intensity combat is a major challenge for the US military and its allies. It is a culture shift, a procurement shift and an investment shift. But mobilization is even more important than modernization. To get ready for this shift, our weapons inventory needs to…
By Robbin Laird
The UK, Norway and the US have signed an agreement to work together on anti-submarine warfare (ASW) in the North Atlantic which will leverage the joint acquisition of the P-8 aircraft, another example of the US and its allies an evolving defense capability in which allies are clearly key partners. The P-8s is part of…
By Robbin Laird
WASHINGTON: “To counter our near-peer adversaries” — read Russia and China — US Pacific Command wants $530 million of unfunded priorities that didn’t fit in the 2018 budget request, from better bases to more torpedoes. The top item: $49 million more for “multi-domain battle exercises,” wargames testing a new Army-led concept for future warfare against…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: New aircraft make up half the Navy’s $5.3 billion unfunded requirements list of items that didn’t fit in the 2018 budget request. But while the wishlist includes several upgrades to existing vessels, as well as new landing craft and barges, it doesn’t ask for any new warships. Instead of ships, the unfunded requirements list prioritizes…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Australian Air Marshal Leo Davies highlighted the “institutional interoperability which the Royal Australian Air Force was shaping with its closest allies, and notably with the US Air Force and the US Navy during his recent visit to the US. The Aussies are not simply camp followers – they are shaping a way ahead an integrated…
By Robbin Laird
A key dynamic in the shift from COIN-centric land wars to a twenty-first century combat force is what the US and its closest allies will learn from each other thanks to the core weapons systems they are buying at the same time. Hidden in plain view is the emergence of a significant driver of change –- flying the same…
By Robbin Laird
WASHINGTON: The F-35 Joint Strike fighter will drive deeper and more useful military connections between Australia, the United States and regional partners such as Japan and Malaysia, the head of Australia’s air force said today. “This aircraft has redefined joint” for Australia, Air Marshal Leo Davies said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies this morning, accelerating policy…
By Colin Clark
Denmark is a small country, but an important player in the NATO Alliance and the resurgent Nordic defense group of Norway, Sweden and Finland to deal with the rumbling Russia. And it will grow more important as it implements an impressive 20 percent increase in defense spending over the next six years. The increase was…
By Robbin Laird