SURFACE NAVY ASSOCIATION: The Navy’s frigate program is pioneering new procurement processes to get ships faster and cheaper. For the frigate, that means the cost should come in below the current target of $800 million, the program executive officer for small ships said here. (The maximum allowable cost per ship is $950 million). For the… Keep reading →

UPDATED with CNO comment on importance of program CRYSTAL CITY: By the end of March, the Navy will award four to six contracts for “conceptual” designs of a future frigate. That ship that must cost under $950 million, have “Grade A shock hardening” on key systems to survive blasts, and carry at least 16 Vertical Launch… Keep reading →

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… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Merry Christmas, US Army. As you read this, the White House Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the service’s draft spending plan for 2019-2023, which reshuffles more than a billion dollars in science and technology funds, undersecretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy told me in an exclusive interview. The goal: to better resource… Keep reading →

As the Pentagon finishes its strategic review, the stage is set for another struggle over whether to ready for a high-end war with Russia or China or just manage the current, much lower intensity battles around the world. In military terms it’s a choice between capability and capacity. The outcome will shape the four services… Keep reading →

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… Keep reading →

Hate updating the software on your smart phone? Then have compassion for the Army, which is trying to standardize its computer systems across more than 400 units in the next 28 months. The objective is a “single software baseline,” where every unit has the same set of information technologies. Such standardization should simplify everything from… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: All hands, brace for disappointment. The president’s promised naval buildup won’t begin in the 2018 budget out next week — or maybe ever. Sure, before the election, candidate Donald Trump promised a 350-ship Navy. Sure, just this morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan repeated the 350 figure. Sure, this week the Chief of Naval Operations… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has laid out a measured and cautious spending plan that puts near-term readiness needs first in his first budget guidance memo. The memo, out this morning, largely defers major equipment modernization until 2019 and limits increases in the size of the force to “the maximum responsible rate” (emphasis ours). So,… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Despite tight budgets at the Pentagon, the Navy wants to speed-up several shipbuilding programs — amphibious warships, destroyers, and submarines — and Congress seems inclined to give them the money. That’s testimony both to the perennial political popularity of shipbuilding, which employs a lot of voters, and to the rising strategic anxiety over… Keep reading →