The “separate but equal” sixth service (don’t forget the Coast Guard) will be created in stages, because, as Pence finally admitted publicly, it “requires Congressional action.” And, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, admitted today, if Congress passed the relevant laws in a year that would “unprecedented.”

Most coverage of the annual defense policy bill has focused on program changes: more ships (including six icebreakers!), no change to F-35’s, more RDT&E, no JSTARS recap, a growl (but no more) on ZTE, and many more (the bill and report run 2,500 pages). Less discussed, but of more import in the long run, are the… Keep reading →

The Air Force wants more AI, cloud computing, autonomous drone swarms and thousands of tiny satellites. But most of these projects are only now getting off the ground at the Pentagon, making the service’s new “Flight Path” a little cloudy.

Of DoD’s proposed reforms, the biggest thing not included in the NDAA is the Space Development Agency, which would appear to strike a blow at the heart of DoD space acquisition: the Air Force-run Space and Missile Systems Center. SMC has long been criticized for its slow pace, bureaucratic stovepipes, and opacity, but praised for its technical brilliance.

CAPITOL HILL: The Senate and House have come together on a $716 billion defense spending report that would prohibit the transfer of F-35 jets to Turkey, expand American aid to Asian allies to counter China and add ships and other technology funding lines above the White House request. The National Defense Authorization Act Report was… Keep reading →

The stakes are high for President Trump’s nascent Space Force because a poorly integrated service is a price America cannot afford to pay. This means a careful, thoughtful, conditions-based approach must be followed to assess if and when an autonomous military space organization will provide the best path forward. All four services will contribute to… Keep reading →

We’ve already got soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines and Coasties. If President Trump gets what he wants, we may now have spacemen — but the Senate may say no.

A battle has been underway for several years now over who will become the FAA of space and how they will do the job. Some wanted the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Tranportation, which boasts the great acronym, FAST. Some wanted NOAA or NASA. Most did not want the Air Force, which has had a… Keep reading →

House Armed Services Committee pushes through most of the Trump administration’s budget requests, absent some of the usual fights. But the return of sequester looms large in 2020.

In a somewhat surreal scenario, President Trump yesterday riffed on the idea of a “Space Force,” something he’d clearly been briefed on at some point. And the Air Force expects new engines for the B-52 fleet to cost up to $8 billion.