WASHINGTON: The cheerfully controversial James “Hoss” Cartwright, retired vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke Friday in an intimate and academic setting that allowed the retired Marine Corps fighter pilot to muse aloud about subjects from the Civil War to quantum computing, from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (he’s a skeptic) to aircraft carriers… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Today, somewhere inside the Pentagon, senior Army officers will likely recommend development of new radio-jamming equipment for the post-Afghan War world. After a decade desperately playing defense against radio-detonated IEDs — and, before that, a decade of neglect in the 1990s — Army electronic warfare is taking the offensive again. With their eyes on… Keep reading →

America still needs us. That’s the fundamental message of the first top-level Army document to address the post-Afghanistan era. It’s a shot that will be heard round the Beltway in the coming budget wars. “From Yorktown to Sadr City, the men and women of the Army demonstrated the ability to force terms upon our enemies… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: While the Air Force and the Marines stake their future on a great leap forward to the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Navy is taking what one officer called “baby steps” into the future: a careful, incremental upgrade of electronic warfare systems to jam enemy radar instead of just hiding from it. The… Keep reading →

[Corrected 9:35 pm with a note about the EC-130 Compass Call] Is stealth still America’s silver bullet? Or are potential adversaries’ radars getting too smart for US aircraft to keep hiding from them? That’s literally the trillion-dollar question, because the US military is investing massively in new stealth aircraft. At stake in this debate are… Keep reading →

WHIDBEY ISLAND, WASHINGTON: “Every two weeks, we get another Growler,” Cmdr. Christopher Middleton said at the Navy’s electronic warfare hub here. The Navy target is to buy 114 EA-18G Growler aircraft. And it’s those Growler aircraft that will be the cutting edge of future Naval strikes against future “anti-access area denial” defenses like those being… Keep reading →

RADM Joe Horn (bio@ http://1.usa.gov/Y1l7Rq) to be Navy’s PEO Integrated Warfare Systems (http://bit.ly/Q6UUjx). Release @ http://1.usa.gov/VDUOwC SydneyFreedberg

The missile launched from the wing pylon of a B-52 heavy bomber and streaked over the desert of western Utah. At pre-set coordinates, a microwave emitter installed in the winged, jet-propelled cruise missile blasted a target building. But there was no big bang, no billowing clouds of dust and debris. Instead, the building was struck… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: As the US shifts its focus from low-tech Taliban “cavemen” to an aggressively modernizing China, the Air Force has launched an urgent effort to find near-term countermeasures against a foe that can jam sensors, hack networks, disrupt communications, and shut down GPS. “Mostly we’re looking at the next three to five years,” said… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos laid out today the Corps’ tricky balancing act, simultaneously cutting personnel, spreading out weapons programs, and shifting from counterinsurgency on land in Afghanistan to seaborne crisis response in the Pacific. The big Marine Corps news of the last 24 hours was the award of development contracts to three firms,… Keep reading →