CAPITOL HILL: As F-35 program officials prepared to testify to the Senate Armed Services Committee, they announced they were keeping back some $25.7 million, or 5 percent, of payments for the F135 engine used in the Joint Strike Fighter. “Due to decertification of their Earned Value Management Process by the Defense Contract Management Agency, Pratt &… Keep reading →

UPDATED 1:35 pm Wednesday with more details from Lt. Gen. Glueck WASHINGTON: The Marines are about to move out sharply with their once-stalled Amphibious Combat Vehicle, the smallest service’s biggest program. After years of uncertainty and a last-minute change of course that came too late to make it into the administration’s budget request for 2015,… Keep reading →

  If President Obama ever had a rationale for moving away from his personal belief in nuclear disarmament, Vladimir Putin has provided one in Crimea. Russia’s annexation is a game-changer that will likely change the strategic dynamic in Europe in ways that neither Putin nor Obama fully understands. If deterrence equals capability plus will, then… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Prompt Global Strike is a program to build a weapon that can destroy targets anywhere on earth within an hour of getting targeting data and permission to launch. Sandia Lab and the Army may have found the answer: the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon. So far, some aspects of PGS have attracted controversy. When the Pentagon wanted… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: “I think this is a papering-over of their dismantling of the Navy,” House Armed Services seapower subcommittee chairman Randy Forbes told me this afternoon. “They aren’t having the courage or the straightforwardness or transparency to call it what it is.” Between the Pentagon’s proposed reduction in warships currently in the water and its… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: On the day that China’s president took personal charge of his country’s new cyber body, pledging to make the People’s Republic of China a “cyber power,” the outgoing head of America’s Cyber Command laid out a clear red line that, if crossed, could lead to war. “If it destroys government or other networks,… Keep reading →

Bill Greenwalt played a major role in crafting the defense policy bill — the National Defense Authorization Act — each year for almost a decade, helping to squire the bill through the personalities and politics of the ever-fractious Senate. Now the muzzle is off — he’s a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute —… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Do we still need a big Army that can wage big wars? Hell yes, the Army generals say. Will the Army get a new Ground Combat Vehicle to replace the 1981-vintage Bradley Fighting Vehicle that currently carries foot troops into battle? Probably not for a long, long time. That’s my assessment based on an exclusive… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: We’ve had nearly two years of hearings about how hard the automatic budget cuts called sequestration would hit the Department of Defense. Yesterday, we saw something new. For the first time, the uniformed chiefs of all four services publicly told Congress that they have big problems with their civilian bosses’ plan to cope… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: In a broad exercise of the senatorial privilege of temporarily stopping a nomination, known as a “hold,” Sen. Lindsey Graham announced this morning that he will not allow any Obama administration nominations to proceed.until he is told the names of those he calls the “Benghazi survivors.” RT @GrahamBlog: Where are the #Benghazi survivors? I’m… Keep reading →