Presumptive Defense Secretary James Mattis sent a clear signal to America’s allies — and to his presumptive boss, President-Elect Trump — that the NATO alliance is “enormously” important and that America “must also take no ally for granted.” If approved by the Senate, Mattis said, in written answers to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee,… Keep reading →

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… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Air Force’s F-35A will probably make its first operational deployment abroad “in the not too distant future… perhaps next summer,” heading to Europe to help NATO allies deter Russian aggression, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said yesterday. In her endorsement of the F-35 and NATO, and her wariness of Vladimir Putin, Obama’s… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy’s new Force Structure Assessment calling for a 355-ship fleet puts an important intellectual arrow in Donald Trump‘s quiver as he campaigns for more ships. But it doesn’t put any more money in the budget to buy them, or any more machinery in shipyards to build them. The Navy analysis will shape the… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: With Russian jammers blasting Ukrainian radios off the air, the US Defense Department’s racing to regain its edge in electronic warfare. But there’s been no comprehensive strategy to guide all the armed services’ efforts — until now. The first Defense Department-wide electronic warfare strategy is “basically finished” and headed to Secretary Ashton Carter’s desk… Keep reading →

No one has done a better job of predicting the final outcomes of deals on the defense budget since sequestration was made law than Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute. So we asked her to predict what this election will mean to the 2018 defense budget. With the election tomorrow, we couldn’t think of a… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Can the Pentagon afford its Third Offset Strategy? From anti-ship missiles to artificial intelligence, the military is experimenting with a host of high-tech systems  to counter increasingly sophisticated Russian and Chinese forces. That effort is essential, said the Defense Department’s procurement chief, but there’s one problem: If we want to go beyond experiments and… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Whoever is elected the next president of the United States must stand ready for crisis to strike “at 12:01 on January 20th,” the Secretary of the Navy warned today, lest America’s adversaries see a window of opportunity. What Ray Mabus and his fellow service secretaries didn’t say, at least out loud, speaks volumes. With Russia meddling in… Keep reading →

Should war funds be used to help the military patch gaps in its regular budget? It sounds like a technical issue, but the ongoing debate has turned into a battle royale, with a new scuffle breaking out just last week. It’s a slugfest featuring bad ideas, even worse ideas and a healthy dose of hypocrisy,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Congress hasn’t passed a budget for 2017, but we’re already hearing rumblings of the 2018 budget war coming from inside the Pentagon. The Army needs to radically overhaul its equipment, training, and even its culture for chaotic future conflicts against high-end adversaries like Russia and China, the largest service’s top leaders said today. But… Keep reading →