SURFACE NAVY ASSOCIATION: As the overstressed surface fleet struggles to rebuild its readiness for great power war, it’s adding a whole new type of training exercise called SWATT. Modeled on the Top Gun program for naval aviators — itself created to rebuild dogfighting skills after heavy losses in Vietnam — Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training…
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.
WASHINGTON: The US surface fleet may not be adequately trained for high-intensity combat, four experienced former skippers and the former deputy secretary of defense warned a US Naval Institute conference here on Monday. “Navigation and seamanship, these are the fundamental capabilities which every surface warfare officer should have, but I suspect if called to war,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Is the Littoral Combat Ship a real warship? That question has bedeviled the small, sleek, lightly armed ships for years. Now it’s taken on new urgency as the Defense Department and the Navy both refocus on high-intensity, high-tech warfighting against “great powers” — i.e. China and Russia. Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to cut…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: “I guess I’m going to have to attack your question on almost every aspect,” Adm. John Richardson told me. As an analyst, it’s unnerving to have the Navy’s top admiral tell you to your face, albeit politely, that you’re just plain wrong. (I’d politely disagree, though I did miss some important nuances in an earlier story). I had asked…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATED: INCLUDES TEXT OF OBAMA SPEECH AS PREPARED Just hours before President Barack Obama goes on the air to explain his strategy to destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the US military released revealing figures on the airstrikes against them so far. The new data further demolishes the idea that this…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. and Colin Clark
[CORRECTED number of Mt. Sinjar airdrops] The Obama administration and the mainstream media can make the airstrikes in Iraq sound like a humanitarian war, a New Age operation driven not by realpolitik but by the high-minded and/or fuzzy-headed responsibility to protect. In fact, Obama is using deadly force for strategic goals, just like George Bush. The difference —…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
US aircraft are flying “50 to 60” sorties a day over Iraq, from food drops to airstrikes, but their impact is local and “very temporary,” the Pentagon’s director of operations told reporters this afternoon. While Lt. Gen. William Mayville didn’t say so outright, it’s clear the majority of missions are still “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance”…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
How to ensure readiness of next-generation defense technology: Solving the issue of massive heat.
High-performance systems generate tremendous amounts of heat that can compromise missions and make high-tech systems less effective in tactical environments. But there is a solution to this modern-age challenge.
[UPDATED with details on latest strikes] Yesterday, President Obama ordered humanitarian airdrops to Iraqi refugees and authorized — but did not actually launch — airstrikes on Islamic State forces threatening either the refugees or Erbil, the capital of quasi-independent Kurdistan. This morning, at 6:45 am Washington time, the other shoe dropped, in the form of 500-pound smart bombs…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: In a move with major implications for the defense budget, defense contractors, and inter-service politics, the Marine Corps is set to publish a new “capstone concept” — leaked to Breaking Defense — that will guide the entire service for the next decade. From the title on, Expeditionary Force 21 paints an emphatic, uncompromising picture of a future Marine…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. and Colin Clark
The battle between the regular Army and the National Guard, which we all knew would blow up one of these days, has blown up. At 3:30 this afternoon, the spokesman of the 54 state and territorial Guard commanders, Kentucky Adjutant General Ed Tonini, raised the standard of revolt against the active-duty leadership who had, he said, “slammed their…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATE: Odierno Clarifies. It May Be Three Brigades WASHINGTON: The Army has had to cancel so much training that only two of its 42 combat brigades are ready for combat, Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters at the Association of the US Army conference here today. It’ll take until June to get a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: With half a million soldiers on active duty, you’d think the Army would be hard to overlook. When the House Armed Services Committee organized a hearing on the hot interservice concept known as “Air-Sea Battle,” though, they kind of forgot to invite the Army. But the largest service elbowed its way onto the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CRYSTAL CITY: Don’t think Beijing. Think Abottabad. The evolving concept known as Air-Sea Battle isn’t all about a war with China, nor a budget war with the US Army, said the former Air Force chief of staff who is one of the concept’s founding fathers. Instead, said Gen. Norton Schwartz, who retired just last fall,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. http://youtu.be/anKApO6aM-0 Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands. (1 Samuel 18:7) The web is abuzz over Dillard Johnson, a retired Army sergeant first class whose newly released memoir, Carnivore, claims he killed 2,746 enemy combatants in Iraq with everything from a .25 mm chain gun to a sniper rifle to a hunting…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
