CAPITOL HILL: The Marine Corps’ top pilot sketched a vision of fast-paced and networked air operations, spearheaded by F-35 fighters, V-22 tiltrotors, and the future MUX drones, all linked to each other and the rest of the force by Link-16 and MADL. Marine F-35s have already practiced spotting targets for Marine artillery rockets and Navy… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Despite his campaign pledge of a 350-ship fleet, President Trump’s first budget cuts Navy shipbuilding and aircraft procurement below what was enacted in 2017, documents released today reveal. Despite Trump’s criticism of President Obama’s defense plans, this budget sticks with Obama’s shipbuilding plan for 2018: eight ships. And it actually buys eight fewer aircraft… Keep reading →

A key dynamic in the shift from COIN-centric land wars to a twenty-first century combat force is what the US and its closest allies will learn from each other thanks to the core weapons systems they are buying at the same time. Hidden in plain view is the emergence of a significant driver of change  –- flying the same… Keep reading →

Shifting from a primary focus on counterinsurgency land wars to building a high intensity combat force able to prevail against peer competitors is a significant challenge for the United States and its closest allies after 15 years of COIN. A key dynamic within this effort is the crucial opportunity the US and its closest allies have to… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: I vividly remember Chris Bogdan’s first public appearance as the effective head of the F-35 program. It was at the Air Force Association’s annual September conference in 2012 and he said, very simply and quite passionately that the relationship between contractor Lockheed Martin and the Joint Program Office was “the worst I’ve ever seen.”… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Despite a turbulent Trump administration and a plummeting pound, the Anglo-American defense relationship remains strong, said the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence. “Under any circumstances, we’re going to continue to work very, very closely with the States,” Stephen Lovegrove, Permanent Secretary of the UK Ministry of Defence, told reporters this morning.… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The Navy-Marine fighter fleet is in a “death spiral” and the only long-term fix is to buy new jets faster, both F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a former Pentagon analyst told Breaking Defense. Two veteran Hill staffers agreed the situation is dire and new planes are needed, although they put equal… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Of the three variants of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, only the carrier-launched F-35C is at risk of being replaced by Boeing’s F-18 Super Hornet, the Marine Corps’s top pilot said today. It’s not on the table to substitute Hornets for either the land-based F-35A variant or the vertical-takeoff-and-landing F-35B, Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, deputy Commandant for… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump, repeating a trick he’s used with the automobile makers, claimed credit today for something he didn’t have much to do with, but that became final during his administration. Trump told White House reporters, who can’t be expected to know much about the F-35 program, that he had saved taxpayers $600 million in the… Keep reading →

Donald Trump has bemoaned the “over budget, behind schedule” F-35 program. He opened his first press conference as president-elect with a vow to do “big things” to bring down the aircraft’s cost and improve performance. That will take more than jaw-boning. Applying heat to Lockheed will reduce costs to a degree, but it would take another… Keep reading →