CAPITOL HILL: House Armed Services chairman Mac Thornberry is hurtling cautiously ahead on the annual defense policy bill. He’s hurtling, because this week’s subcommittee mark-ups of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act are the earliest HASC has starting marking the bill in living memory. But he’s also characteristically cautious, promising little in public and consulting… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Threats are back in Pentagon acquisition. During the Cold War, the calculus was pretty simple. Russians do X. America responds with Y. Add Offset Strategy to boost US advantage overall. Frank Kendall, defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, has publicly worried about America losing its technological edge for several years. Deputy Defense Secretary Bob… Keep reading →

UPDATED: AFCoS Gen. Welsh On Stealth Industrial Base; A PIlot Comments WASHINGTON: When the Pentagon picks the winner of the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) contest in the next few months, it faces an interesting choice. It could give Lockheed Martin — which is doing the design work for the Boeing-Lockheed team — almost all of… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Here Is Bill That Thornberry Introduced On March 25 CAPITOL HILL: After over a year of preparation, House Armed Services chairman Mac Thornberry will announce Monday a plan to fix Pentagon procurement. In intentional contrast to past efforts at sweeping acquisition reforms, Monday’s child will be a relatively modest “increment one,” a committee aide… Keep reading →

  UPDATED: JSF JPO Details Each Variant Costs; Provides Other Details PENTAGON: The simple lead for this story would be: F-35 costs dropped almost 2 percent over the last year. But the real lead should be: after decades of botched programs, bloated budgets, technical screwups and long delays we may be seeing what Winston Churchill might… Keep reading →

NEWSEUM: After more than a year of saying that the United States is losing its relative edge in military technology to China and Russia, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer upped the ante today and said that the top American advantage — space — “is particularly bad” because both Russia and China are fielding a suite of anti-satellite capabilities.… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Kendall & Kaminski Comments On EW Spending, New EW Council WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is creating a new high-level council to direct all Pentagon electronic warfare programs, Deputy Secretary Robert Work said this morning. The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer and the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will lead the group, which will make permanent a top-level focus… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The overall cost for Pentagon’s weapons buying is at the lowest it’s been a decade, says the Government Accountability Office in its respected annual assessment of the military’s major programs. But that overall result, which might seem to cheer exponents of acquisition reform and of smaller Pentagon budgets, contains two smaller points well worth… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The Navy’s already acknowledged that building the next nuclear missile submarine will bust its shipbuilding budget. Now, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer has admitted that the Ohio Replacement Program could be a bill too far for the entire nuclear weapons enterprise across the Departments of Defense and Energy — even if Congress repeals… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Congressional reaction to the first tranche of proposed new acquisition laws from the Pentagon’s acquisition czar, Frank Kendall, is unenthusiastic. Kendall and Rep. Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, have separately worked on a range of legislative and policy acquisition fixes for much of the last year. We haven’t heard much from… Keep reading →