Washington: For the first time, the Navy’s MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter is heading to a foreign military. The two helos delivered to the Thai navy today will give those forces the same combat search and rescue to troop transport capabilities as their U.S. Navy counterparts, said Michael Sears, the Navy’s international deputy program manager for the… Keep reading →

Editor’s note: Two years ago this August I wrote a piece called “The End of Acquisition,” positing that then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates may well have gone too far in cutting key major programs and reducing research funding. The key quote went thusly: “With science and technology spending going flat and the national fatigue for wars… Keep reading →

Washington: A bipartisan band of six senators — five of them members of the Senate Armed Services Committee — are questioning the Pentagon’s politically explosive $1 trillion cost estimate in an Aug. 1 letter to Ash Carter, the presumptive deputy secretary of defense. The was made on the last page of the Pentagon latest Selected… Keep reading →

Washington: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made a safe choice and elevated the head of Pentagon acquisition to serve as his deputy. Ash Carter will lead the Pentagon’s enormously difficult efforts to cut the budget without gutting America’s military capabilities. The nomination of Carter, who has won consistent praise from defense lawmakers for his oversight of… Keep reading →

Patuxent River NAS: Breaking Defense interviewed Bob Stevens, chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, after the first flight of the Marines’ F-35B open to the press. The aircraft is on probation — having been put there by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The F-35 program, largely because of unexpected problems discovered during testing, recently wracked… Keep reading →

Washington: Sometimes events are, in and of themselves, news. So it was today when the Joint Strike Fighter program working with the Marines, flew the F-35B for the first time in front of a carefully selected portion of the defense press corps. For more news and information on the swiftly-changing defense industry, please sign up… Keep reading →

To defend the nation we must cut defense spending. We can no longer afford to waste money subsidizing the defense of Western Europe, overpaying contractors, and buying overpriced and under-performing weapons with exquisite requirements. As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says: “Our national debt is our biggest national security threat.”… Keep reading →

While it didn’t take off from a pitching and rolling carrier deck, the F-35C flown today by Navy test pilot Lt. Christopher Tabert did undergo most of the stresses and strains associated with a carrier launch when a steam catapult launched it into the sky today for the first time. For more news and information… Keep reading →

Washington: Anyone who has tracked the defense budget battles inside the beltway knows the rhetoric can get repetitive if you listen long enough. The services versus the Pentagon, the services versus each other or the department versus other government agencies — the details differ, but the sentiment basically the same. Each program, be it a… Keep reading →

Washington: Two respected taxpayer groups are calling for more than half-a-trillion in defense cuts. The Project for Government Oversight (POGO) and Taxpayers for Common Sense released a plan today targeting some $586 billion in what they call “wasteful defense and contractor spending over the next 10 years.” The two groups say the weapons systems they’ve… Keep reading →