Shanahan spent much of his first formal (albeit off-camera) Pentagon pressroom briefing as SecDef emphasizing continuity with his ousted predecessor, Gen. Jim Mattis. He made a point of praising Mattis’s National Defense Strategy, America’s allies, and even the press – not exactly favorites of President Donald Trump.

Three weeks ago, US Army experts traveled to the Negev Desert to watch a test of the latest, longest-range version of Rafael’s Spike missile. Fired from an Israeli AH-64 Apache, the same gunship used by US attack helicopter squadrons, the Spike NLOS struck a target 20 miles away — four times the range of the… Keep reading →

Who are Trump’s generals? This week, James Kitfield has already told us about James Mattis and Michael Flynn, both men shaped by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we come to John Kelly, whose time in Latin America, ironically, led him to similar conclusions about America’s enemies. As chief of US Southern Command, General… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Sequestration, Continuing Resolution, and snow be damned; the House Armed Services Committee met this morning to wrestle with long-term strategy. In a hearing not only overshadowed but outright interrupted by the House’s desperate effort to band-aid the budget crisis, top HASC leaders from both parties argued for expanding the military’s authorities to work… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: As terrorist groups increasingly work with drug gangs and other international criminals, they pose new threats to the United States – but they also create new vulnerabilities that savvy Americans can use to attack them, said the Pentagon’s top drug war expert, William Wechsler. The US needs to go beyond thinking of terrorist groups… Keep reading →