WASHINGTON: We aren’t quite finished developing and producing our fifth generation aircraft, the F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, but their time is already running out, the head of Air Combat Command said today. And work has not really begun on a sixth generation aircraft. Gen. Mike Hostage, the ACC commander, told an audience of more… Keep reading →

ARMY AND NAVY CLUB, WASHINGTON: “The biggest concern of my great Afghan security force partners is abandonment,” said Maj. Gen. James Huggins. “We have invested a great deal [in Afghanistan] for a long time,” he said, “[but] the Afghans have done it three times longer than us.” Speaking at an event this morning organized by… Keep reading →

S. Amer Latif is a visiting fellow with the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The views in this piece are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government. India has a long way to go before… 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 →

WASHINGTON: After a decade of war in which they played a key role and were rewarded with a doubling of their forces and budget, Special Operations leaders want still more — more people, more money and more authority to decide where their troops go and what they do. Those goals are likely to clash with… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “I am fully expecting to see sequestration in some form beginning in January,” Rep. Randy Forbes told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview. And those automatic cuts — or even the more targeted cuts likely in any deal to avoid a sequester — would undermine the nation’s new Pacific-focused strategy and the military’s AirSea… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: As the military plans to cut thousands of troops and the military experiments with opening combat training to women, the American Civil Liberties Union has joined four female servicemembers — two in the reserves (one Army, one Marine Corps), one in the Air National Guard, and one on active duty in the Marines —… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Old combat pilots warn young ones about “target fixation,” when you get so focused on what you want to bomb that you lose track of everything else and fly into the ground. That’s the danger facing US strategy in Asia as the heavily hyped Pacific pivot gets boiled down to “contain China,” warned a… Keep reading →

[After meeting this morning with Amb. Susan Rice, Senator Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, spoke to reporters today at a 12noon roundtable at the Foreign Policy Institute’s annual conference, where she promised there “absolutely” would be a hold if Amb. Rice is nominated for Secretary of State — and potentially, a hold on any administration nominee for… Keep reading →

Iran. Gaza. Syria. Political opposition in the Emirates and adjoining states. The Persian Gulf region simmers and America may have only one carrier group deployed there at the end of this year. Should we worry? Let’s examine the puzzle. The USS Nimitz’s planned deployment to the Persian Gulf may be delayed. That is raising concern,… Keep reading →