[UPDATED with details from the subcommittee mark] WASHINGTON: Just hours before the House Armed Services Committee rolls out its mark-up of the 2015 defense policy bill, the chairman of HASC’s seapower subcommittee is vowing to save the USS George Washington from early retirement and to preserve the nation’s fleet of 11 aircraft carriers. [Updated: The seapower subcommittee’s… Keep reading →

The US Navy needs more ships. The United States cannot protect the world’s sealanes, let alone “pivot to the Pacific,” if we further downsize our military. Especially given other nations’ growing anxiety about whether the US will still shoulder the leadership role of protecting them, the Navy must grow, not become smaller. Yes, individual ships… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: “I think this is a papering-over of their dismantling of the Navy,” House Armed Services seapower subcommittee chairman Randy Forbes told me this afternoon. “They aren’t having the courage or the straightforwardness or transparency to call it what it is.” Between the Pentagon’s proposed reduction in warships currently in the water and its… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: “Sydney, I don’t know how to squeeze it much thinner than we have,” the Chief of Naval Operations said. Adm. Jonathan Greenert was talking about the aircraft carrier fleet, but he could have meant almost any aspect of the Navy’s 2015 budget . “It’s a confusing budget,” the admiral admitted within minutes of sitting… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Sen. Carl Levin made very clear to his colleagues just what is at stake in the inevitable  shout-fest over benefits and compensation. It is the $31 billion saved in the proposed budget in reductions to the rate of pay growth, boosted Tricare payments, and consolidations in the healthcare program, the 5 percent reduction… Keep reading →

Even if Congress somehow rolls back sequestration, the Navy’s fiscal situation will be uncomfortably tight, like trying to steer a battleship through the Panama Canal. Under the president’s five-year budget plan — which assumes sequester away — the “real buying power” for the Navy and the Marine Corps declines after fiscal year 2016, the Navy… Keep reading →

THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, CA. 2025: “Where are the carriers?” “In the scrapyard, Mr. President. How about some submarines?” That’s a parody, not a projection. But this hypothetical future isn’t that far off from what experts from four top thinktanks — AEI, CNAS, CSBA, and CSIS — presented this morning as the “least unacceptable”… Keep reading →

The F-35C, the Navy version of the Joint Strike Fighter and the plane most in danger of being cut or reduced by its service, has passed the first round of critical tests of its tail hook, the part of the plane that makes traditional carrier landings possible. “All flight test objectives were met,” Joe DellaVedova,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: It looks like the scum of scandals that’s afflicted the Air Force nuclear program has spread to the Navy — although top admirals took pains today to emphasize how different the two problems are. In both cases, military personnel cheated on exams to requalify so they could continue to work with nuclear materials. The… Keep reading →

You’d expect the nation’s top weapons tester to be a stickler about testing. But there’s “rigorous testing” and then there’s “let’s shoot cruise missiles at you and see what happens.” It’s not that the Navy is wimpy about testing. The service conducts “full-ship shock trials” like the USS Roosevelt test pictured above, where it sets off a… Keep reading →