WASHINGTON: While the House has voted to extend the debt limit to May, the automatic federal spending cuts called sequestration still loom $90 billion large, half that bill for the Pentagon alone. Yet, as fourth quarter earnings calls begin, the defense industry and its stock values remain remarkably resilient. What gives? Or rather, what isn’t… Keep reading →

[UPDATED 3:30 pm on 1/8/2013 with revised CSBA estimates] WASHINGTON: The battle of the fiscal cliff is over, but the war to stop sequestration rages on – and President Obama’s decision that his new Secretary of Defense should be former Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Republican other Republicans love to hate, makes it even harder to… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: While anxiety over sequestration dominated yesterday’s annual meeting dominated of the Aerospace Industries Association, its member companies actually did pretty well in 2012. Civil aircraft sales, up 14 percent since 2011, and arms exports, up 12 percent, grew faster than Pentagon spending declined, which was just 3.4 percent. Overall, aerospace and defense profits are… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Added Grim Assessment By Todd Harrison of CSBA WASHINGTON: Hope springs eternal, even here in the nation’s capital. After the election, both President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner made nice noises. And many pundits hailed this, believing either that sequestration would get kicked down the road a fur piece or a Simpson-Bowles’ grand… Keep reading →

Paris and Berlin are in a bind as British-based BAE and Franco-German giant EADs, the parent company of Airbus, seek approval to merge into the world’s largest aerospace company. If the French and German governments accept the companies’ current merger terms, their ability to influence the new tri-national behemoth will be sharply diminished and they… Keep reading →

[UPDATED 12:45 pm] Truck maker Navistar is withdrawing the protest it filed Friday with the Government Accountability Office over the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program, company spokeswoman Elissa Koc told Breaking Defense this morning. Had Navistar persisted, its protest probably would have delayed JLTV development for months while the GAO investigated whether the military ran… Keep reading →

Three very different teams are contending to build the Humvee’s replacement, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Breaking Defense weighs their strengths and weaknesses. Last week, the Army and Marines slashed a crowded field of competitors in half, awarding contracts for “engineering and manufacturing development” of JLTV prototypes to aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, truck maker Oshkosh,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter is the biggest conventional weapons program in history and Vice Adm. David Venlet has run it to much acclaim and quite a bit of backbiting, depending on who you talk with. This afternoon the Pentagon very quietly sent out notice that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had nominated Venlet’s… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The Navy’s F/A-XX initiative has been depicted as an ultra-advanced “sixth generation” aircraft that the Navy would prefer to buy instead of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But Breaking Defense interviews with Navy and industry sources strongly suggest that the service has little appetite for another expensive development program and that the most… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: How much will it really cost to shut down the Army’s ill-fated Future Combat Systems program? Up to $1.5 billion, potentially three times the “special termination cost” reported by Inside Defense on Friday. Three years after then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cancelled the sprawling FCS program — the Army’s ambitious attempt to build a… Keep reading →