The budget battles have begun, with Republicans and Democrats already sparring over Rep. Mac Thornberry’s call to slash DoD civilians by 20 percent.

Pentagon planners aren’t only worried about North Korean ICBMs, but Chinese hypersonics and medium-range missiles. That means, according to analysts, that an array of distributed systems are needed to meet a wide range of potential threats.

The push from Capitol Hill follows a year of the Pentagon promising to do more, and do it quickly, when it comes to developing and buying next-generation technologies.

The House Armed Services Committee rejected the Air Force’s strategy to replace the E-8 JSTARS and questioned its plan for the EC-130H Compass Call, even as it accelerated Navy shipbuilding.

The Pentagon is moving out quickly amid worries that China has outpaced U.S. capabilities in hypersonic weapons development.

“We had the dominant electronic warfare capability in the world and we let it atrophy. Now we’re behind,” general turned congressman Don Bacon told me. “I want us to be dominant again. I don’t want us to be second or third best after Russia and China.”

The Navy is going wobbly on its 355 ship fleet, but Capitol Hill doesn’t want to hear it.

There will be organizational alterations, changes to “the way we are doing business” and, perhaps most importantly, Wilson said there will be “cultural change.” They will also try to prioritize what “our go-fast projects are.”

Wait — doesn’t this omnibus fund 14 new ships for the Navy, compared to 13 in the National Defense Authorization Act and just eight in President Trump’s request? Yes, but not all ships are created equal, Wittman said.

The American way of war — using overpowering industrial might, crushing firepower, and owning the sea and skies — may have come to an end, a top Pentagon official says. For the past two decades, “the Chinese and the Russians have been working to undermine that model,” said Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense… Keep reading →