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 →

  Bob Hale knows budgets. He crafted them for the Air Force and he crafted them for the entire Defense Department. America faces a large spending spike by 2025 that grows even larger later. So, how can America manage this spending? Bob presents three approaches he thinks will work. Don’t get too depressed and read… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The B-21 bomber probably uses some common technologies and equipment to that used for the Joint Strike Fighter’s F135 engine. We can’t be certain because no one will confirm it. But Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, head of the F-35 program, did tell the annual McAleese/Credit Suisse conference this: “There are some things we learned from the… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy really needs more fighters. Buying 14 more Super Hornets isn’t just the No. 1 item on the Navy’s unfunded requirements list of items that didn’t fit the 2017 budget: The $1.5 billion purchase of F/A-18E/Fs makes up almost a third — 29 percent — of the total $5.4 billion wishlist. Add to… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: What the Defense Secretary and his office taketh away, Congress can restore. So the Air Force is asking Congress to restore $691 million for the five F-35As cut from this year’s budget, along with $724 million for eight C-130Js and, perhaps most interestingly, $1.2 billion for base improvements that include cyber networking. As Air… Keep reading →

  WASHINGTON: Of the Marine Corps’ $2.7 billion in unfunded requirements for 2017 — items that didn’t quite make the president’s budget request — over sixty percent, $1.7 billion, goes to aircraft purchases and upgrades. The next largest category is $371 million for operations and maintenance, the largest single piece of which is $121 million… Keep reading →

A new Government Accountability Office report scolds the Department of Defense for failing to figure out which rare earth elements are critical to national security — China controls the world market — and for not developing plans to make sure the United States has enough even though Congress passed a law telling them to five years… Keep reading →

ARLINGTON, VA: Three years ago, Lockheed Martin made the bold boast that F-35s would cost less than $85 million a copy by 2019, less than any existing fourth-generation fighter. Skeptics howled. Boeing scoffed (eager to sell their ostensibly cheaper F-18 and keep its production line open). Most of us were impressed at then-Lockheed Martin program manager… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Adds DepSecDef Explanation For Additional LCS PENTAGON: “We don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do,” Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told me in an exclusive 85-minute interview in his E-Ring Pentagon office. “So what we’re doing this year, Sydney, is we are trying to prepare as many demonstrations on advanced… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Adds Air Force POM Chart Of Most Major Programs WASHINGTON: It’s simple: the Air Force “simply cannot afford” to buy what it needs to buy over the next decade. The emphasis is the Air Force’s own, published on its budget website ahead of the official budget release. “The Air Force is facing a modernization… Keep reading →