With a two-year budget deal the Pentagon is getting what it wanted: budget certainty. But that certainty comes at a cost.

Katie Wheelbarger, the acting assistant Defense secretary for international security affairs, said Thursday that “Russia’s great power status still remains largely aspirational.”

“No enemy says, ‘I’m ready to go to Phase 2. You guys ready?'” Allvin said to laughter from the audience. “We have to be more nuanced. We need to be less mechanistic in our execution of these.”

Sen. James Inhofe remains cool to the Space Force and most of his colleagues on a key Senate panel sound like they’re right there with him.

The relationship went through a messy ending. Will the president now try and give Mattis the Rex Tillerson treatment?

WASHINGTON: After two years of reassuring US allies that Donald Trump’s America would not abandon them, Jim Mattis finally had enough. Even before Trump was sworn in as president, the announcement that he would pick Mattis as his Secretary of Defense was met with delighted relief “from the right, from the left, and from overseas.”… Keep reading →

HALIFAX: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs expressed frustration Saturday over the refusal of some tech giants to work with the US military. “I have a hard time with companies that are working very hard to engage in the market inside China,” said Gen. Joe Dunford at the Halifax Security Forum, “then don’t want to work… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Stop refueling Saudi warplanes as they fly to and fro, bombing, strafing and generally laying waste to Yemen. Freeze the sale of offensive weapons to the Kingdom of Saud. But the sale of defensive weapons is another matter, Sen. Jack Reed told reporters this morning. The danger posed by Houthi missiles and other threats… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The days when America spoke of eliminating nuclear weapons are over, faced with Russian, Chinese and North Korean moves to build, boost or rebuild their nuclear forces. That’s the most essential message of the leaked Nuclear Posture Review. (Kudos to my colleague Ashley Feinberg at Huffington Post for getting this one.) The Pentagon immediately issued… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: It’s always difficult to tell when the military is covering its tuckus and when it’s just being careful. So when the outgoing head of the Air Force press desk, Col. Patrick Ryder, told reporters this afternoon that the service had not made any decision about whether to go ahead with a combat test of… Keep reading →