North Koreans are showmen: large 16-wheeled off-road trucks carrying missiles through the streets of Pyongyang are all about showing the ‘American Bastards’ that North Korea has credible road-mobile ICBMs. The ‘Young General,’ as Kim Jong-Un likes to style himself, has even claimed those ICBMs can threaten San Diego, Texas and Washington DC. American leaders have… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: If the United States is serious about “rebalancing” to Asia, it needs to invest some serious cash. Strategic small change won’t deter China or reassure our increasingly anxious allies, says a new report from the influential Center for Strategic & International Studies. And that means the CSIS study’s sponsor — Congress — must get its… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: While I hear there are still difficult details to be ironed out, the United States and Australia appear close to agreeing to regularly fly strategic bombers and airborne tankers from Darwin and Tindal air base in Australia. Gen. Lori Robinson, the commander of Pacific Air Forces, told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast this morning that… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: When the the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, was delayed by a day-and-a-half on his mission to secure the release of the two American hostages in North Korea because his plane wasn’t ready to fly, it sounded like a pretty good story. Combine it with recent problems with Secretary of State John Kerry’s aircraft and… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Hawk Carlisle, who has come to serve as a key Pentagon spokesman on Chinese issues, told several hundred insiders that China may be considering creation of two new Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ) and warned the rising power against any such move. “You also have potential for either a… Keep reading →

Guam is America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the South Pacific, the fulcrum of the fabled Pacific “pivot.” It’s also kind of a mess. With a GDP per capita less than a third the US average, an earthquake-damaged harbor, geriatric generators that black out the entire island roughly twice a year, drinking water periodically contaminated with… Keep reading →

The pivot to the Pacific started more than a century ago. The United States first became a Pacific power in 1898, the year the US first annexed Hawaii and then gained Guam and the Philippines (as well as Puerto Rico) from Spain after a “short, victorious war.” The United States is at a turning point… Keep reading →

[Updated Friday 12/21] CAPITOL HILL: It looks like the country’s getting a defense bill for Christmas, with provisions on everything from boosting cybersecurity to sanctioning Iran to loosening export controls on satellites. In what passes for high efficiency in Congress these days, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees completed their conference on the National… Keep reading →

On Thursday, we published a story about potential problems with the long-delayed move of Marine forces from Okinawa to Guam and elsewhere in the Pacific outlined in a draft GAO report obtained exclusively by Breaking Defense. As you’ll see below, the Pentagon had not seen it. After the article came out, a Defense Department spokesperson,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Sloppy number-crunching at the Department of Defense means that the official price tag to move 9,000 Marines off Okinawa to Guam, Hawaii, and Australia – already estimated at a whopping $10.6 billion – is probably short of the real cost, according to a draft Government Accountability Office (GAO) report obtained by Breaking Defense. [Update:… Keep reading →