The Navy and Marine Corps are trying to buy new autonomous and unmanned systems more quickly for expeditionary ops, but as one general warned, “if I can’t sustain it, I’m hosed.”

Virginia class subs are suffering delivery delays of up to seven months, potentially placing the Columbia — slated to be the backbone of the nation’s nuclear triad — at risk.

While the Air Force bet the farm on F-35, the Navy put its airpower eggs in multiple baskets, from legacy fighters to new drones.

The Navy’s most expensive shipbuilding program and the key to the country’s nuclear triad is under increasing pressure to keep to its tight schedule, and hit its budget.

The Navy is losing submarines just when commanders say they need more, more, more.

SAN DIEGO: Newport News Shipbuilding is reaping “huge savings” on the next Ford-class carrier, the Kennedy, through “creative” use of digital models instead of paper plans, the new head of Navy acquisition told reporters today. It’s an approach that can increase efficiency and reduce costs on all big Navy programs, said assistant secretary James “Hondo”… Keep reading →

HERITAGE FOUNDATION: The Navy’s has been forced to resort to awkward, inefficient, even dysfunctional expedients to cope with Congress’s chronic inability to pass a proper spending bill on time, the Chief of Naval Operations said here this morning. “We do need stable funding, right, but the system has adapted….I wouldn’t say in completely healthy ways,… Keep reading →

SURFACE NAVY ASSOCIATION: The Navy’s frigate program is pioneering new procurement processes to get ships faster and cheaper. For the frigate, that means the cost should come in below the current target of $800 million, the program executive officer for small ships said here. (The maximum allowable cost per ship is $950 million). For the… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The Pentagon, clearly looking ahead to bolster the defense industrial base, is taking steps to ease and speed Foreign Military Sales, and it has a pilot program underway to reduce the time it takes to execute program acquisition. But let’s be clear: this is not an acquisition reform story; it’s an acquisition improvement… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “My fear is we are a T-Rex….at the top of the food chain, right up until the day we’re extinct,” James “Hondo” Geurts once said of the US military. As acquisitions chief at Special Operations Command, Geurts has won acclaim and awards for rapid, affordable innovation, from modified Hellfire missiles to high-tech body armor… Keep reading →