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 →

CAPITOL HILL: As predicted, House Seapower subcommittee chairman Randy Forbes was swift to slam the Navy’s 2017 budget request. I asked him about the Navy’s proposals to deactivate a carrier air wing, sideline seven Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and replace the UCLASS drone program with a drone fuel tanker with “limited strike” capabilities, CBARS. Here’s what the fiery… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Of the four armed services’ budget plans for 2017, the one most likely to make Congress apoplectic is the Navy’s. On top of reintroducing a cruiser modernization plan repeatedly rejected by the Hill, the Navy proposes deactivating a carrier air wing — which tangles with the touchy issue of how many carriers the US… Keep reading →

UPDATED: ADDS J-8 Readiness Comments; Sen. Reed Urging GOP To Let OMB Director To Testify PENTAGON: On a grand strategic level, the Defense Department’s 2017 spending plan reorients the military to deter Russia and China. Down in the trenches, though, it’s a long, slow slog to rebuild the force for high-intensity conflict after 14 years… 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 →

CAPITOL HILL: It turns out Navy pilots like to breathe. That’s a potential problem in the Navy’s mainstay fighter, the F-18 Hornet, which is suffering failures of its On-Board Oxygen Generation System (OBOGS). While rare, a single case of in-flight oxygen deprivation could potentially kill the pilot, destroy a $30 million to $60 million aircraft, or… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Frank Kendall signaled in December that the F-35 was no longer immune from budget cuts and it looks as if he knew what he was talking about. The story out this afternoon is that five Air Force F-35As will be cut from the fiscal 2017 budget request. Mackenzie Eaglen said at a Brookings Institution… Keep reading →

CORRECTED: Navy says new drone will have “limited strike” capability PENTAGON: After more than a year of intense debate over whether the Navy’s future UCLASS drone should be a long-range stealth bomber or a lightly armed scout, the Defense Department has chosen — neither. Instead, the 2017 budget proposes a program that is less ambitious… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s director of Operational Test and Evaluation has raised serious concerns about the F-35 program’s ability to safely and effectively build and test the enormous amount of software used by both the F-35 aircraft and the maintenance and logistics system known as ALIS to keep the planes flying. In a previously unreported Dec.… Keep reading →

SURFACE NAVY ASSOCIATION: Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wants the arms export bureaucracy to get a move on and approve Boeing‘s “crucial” sale of Super Hornet fighters to Kuwait. The Kuwait deal is for 28 fighters, with an option for 12 more. That’s not a huge sale, but in and of itself, it’s enough to keep the… Keep reading →