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 →

WASHINGTON: If you were hoping, after a bitterly contentious presidential campaign, that at least we’d have consensus on national defense spending…tough luck. Instead, teams from five leading thinktanks — spanning the political spectrum but all using the same budget simulator — came up with a more than $2 trillion spread of options. They debated their plans… Keep reading →

A UN tribunal ruling could trigger the next round of brinksmanship in the South China Sea as early as next week. But don’t expect the ruling to end the dispute, especially since the Chinese have already vowed to ignore an adverse ruling. “It’s…not likely to be resolved this year or by one international ruling, no matter how brilliant… Keep reading →

SILICON VALLEY: Defense Secretary Ash Carter changed the leadership today of his flagship office trying to improve relations with entrepreneurs and major companies here. At the same time, Carter reorganized the Defense Innovation Unit (Experimental) — DIU(X) — to link it directly to his office, largely bypassing the traditional Pentagon acquisition system. In a prepared statement… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: One word from Defense Secretary Ash Carter yesterday opened the door to US arms sales to Vietnam, a former enemy turned potential ally against a rising China. The administration has tiptoed towards easing the ban on lethal weapons sales ever since Vietnamese president Truong Tan Sang met with Obama in 2013, but Carter’s statement… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: NATO would be dangerously slow to respond to a crisis scenario in the Baltics, warns a new report on a closed-doors wargame. That raises the unsettling possibility that in a Crimean-style land grab, Russia could simply seize what it wants before the US and its allies react. Compared to Vladimir Putin’s nimble mix of… 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: Think of international conflicts as earthquakes. Many little ones are better than one “Big One” — a global war. Social science suggests that the more often two rival powers interact, the more likely they are to resolve their differences through many small, manageable conflicts rather than one violent conflagration. That makes naval presence worldwide a very… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The new Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center (JICSPOC) has completed two of its nine scenarios and is helping the US military and its Intelligence Community learn how to monitor and fight using space, the head of Strategic Command, Adm Cecil Haney, said today. “While we still have a ways to go — I repeat, a… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: I haven’t seen the new Star Wars movie yet — no spoilers in the comments section, please — but its vision of high-tech warfare is already looking quaint. Always at heart a fairy tale in space, the series puts humans in the cockpit and on the front lines, with droids as adorable sidekicks. Meanwhile,… Keep reading →