This marks the first of our monthly op-eds by Rep. J. Randy Forbes, chairman of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee. We will send a Tweet before posting each one so you’ve got some notice. Read on! The Editor At the start of my first column, I would like to thank the editors of Breaking… Keep reading →

  PENTAGON: The Navy 2016 budget yields to Congress’s strong opposition to the service’s previous efforts to cut the active fleet to save money. It funds nuclear refueling and overhaul of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington –that it had tried to retire — and modifies its plan to put 11 cruisers and an amphibious ship… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Tracking the winners and losers of this year’s House authorization markup — the draft bill produced by the House Armed Services Committee — is one of Washington’s most exhausitng pastimes. The final bill often does not appear until 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or even later in the morning the day… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Singapore is expected to announce sometime in the next 10 days that it plans to buy its first squadron –12 planes — of some 75 of Lockheed Martin’s F-35Bs, further bolstering what had been the flagging fortunes of the world’s most expensive conventional weapon system. The fact that American allies in the Pacific are… Keep reading →

Sitting in the cockpit of her A-10 Warthog somewhere over Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base on Jan. 10, Maj. Olivia Elliott flipped a switch. In an instant her blunt, twin-engine warplane with the 30-millimeter cannon in the nose was transformed. No longer just the Air Force’s most heavily-armed attack jet, now the A-10 was also… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The US plays a “dominant role” in keeping the peace in the Pacific, and that’s a good thing, said Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen — but the US still needs to cooperate with China, not confront or contain it. That’s the word to the wise from one of America’s closest military partners in… Keep reading →

CORRECTED JSF OVERRUN TO $1.5B. WE ADDED A ZERO… CAPITOL HILL: The budget cuts known as sequestration would “break” the KC-46 and Littoral Combat Ship contracts, forcing the Pentagon to renegotiate those deals, the presumptive head of DoD acquisition told the Senate Armed Services Committee today. The statement, by Frank Kendall, currently acting undersecretary of… Keep reading →

The Air Force’s MC-12 Liberty surveillance plane, in heavy use in Afghanistan, is one of the scarce assets Southern Command chief Gen. Doug Fraser hopes to see freed up for drug interdiction as the war winds down. The U.S. military command covering South America intercepts only about a third of the drug shipments and other… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: In what may come to be called the dawn of the 21st century drawdown of the American military, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today unveiled a budget he hopes balances smaller forces with sustained and far reaching threats. Panetta said the force that will result from the $525 billion budget request for fiscal 2013 will… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Budget Cuts 8 JHSVs; Two LCS; Two LSDs Retire Early; 1 Virginia Sub Slips Past FYDP; Analyst Says Retirements AND Cuts Mean Service Won’t ‘Ever’ Hit 313 Goal WASHINGTON: The Navy plans to cut a total of 16 ships from its five-year budget, reducing the number of ships funded in fiscal 2013 by three,… Keep reading →