The move could save more than $30 billion over 25 years to invest in high-tech weapons — but Congress is sure to explode in outrage.

Loaded with jet fuel, the drones will vastly extend the ranges of carrier-based aircraft operating in the expanses of the western Pacific. That lets the Navy strike deeper into China’s layered defenses while keeping the big decks out of range of most of China’s anti-ship missiles.

UPDATED from Hill staff briefing CAPITOL HILL: The House seapower subcommittee continued its crusade for more warships, adding vessels and relentlessly rejecting reductions in its draft portion of the annual defense policy bill. The full committee will mark up all draft language for the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act next week. As we’d predicted, the bill… Keep reading →

If you’re following the Navy’s new drone program, hold on to something. Keeping track of the various names of what used to be UCLASS and then became CBARS and is now the MQ-XX Stingray — or perhaps the MQ-25 — may make you as dizzy as keeping up with what the Navy plans to do with… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: More gas. Less stealth. Maybe weapons. New name. Same money. Tighter schedule. That, in a dozen words, is how the Navy is evolving its program for carrier-launched drones. Since the cancellation of the original UCLASS drone– Unmanned Carrier-Launched Aerial Surveillance & Strike — Navy leaders have insisted they would get the simplified successor in… Keep reading →

UPDATED with Lockheed response WASHINGTON: The Navy will scrap the troubled RMMV drone meant to hunt mines from its controversial Littoral Combat Ships, replacing it with a different type of robot boat, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said today. That’s a decision a more responsive acquisition system would have made long ago, added Chief of Naval… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy’s new flying robot fuel truck, CBARS, is being reviewed by senior officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Breaking Defense has learned. Details about the current review are hard to come by. But our regular readers may be getting déjà vu, because the predecessor program, the UCLASS recon/strike drone, was stuck in OSD… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Shipbuilding is under pressure in the 2017 budget, but that didn’t stop the Chief of Naval Operations from sketching out his service’s “next warship” this morning. He wants ships built from the keel up for cyber and electronic warfare. He wants modular designs that can be updated at the speed of Moore’s Law. And… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: As predicted, House Seapower subcommittee chairman Randy Forbes was swift to slam the Navy’s 2017 budget request. I asked him about the Navy’s proposals to deactivate a carrier air wing, sideline seven Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and replace the UCLASS drone program with a drone fuel tanker with “limited strike” capabilities, CBARS. Here’s what the fiery… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Of the four armed services’ budget plans for 2017, the one most likely to make Congress apoplectic is the Navy’s. On top of reintroducing a cruiser modernization plan repeatedly rejected by the Hill, the Navy proposes deactivating a carrier air wing — which tangles with the touchy issue of how many carriers the US… Keep reading →