WASHINGTON: Hey, defense contractors! Open source software is not your enemy. In fact, far from undercutting your profits, it may increase them – and increase the US military’s capabilities at the same time. That’s a central concept in the Center for a New American Security’s recently established Technology and Security program, which aims to shake… Keep reading →

GENEVA: The central riddle as we head to new talks here on Iran’s suspect nuclear program is that everything has changed, yet nothing has changed. Hopes have never been higher, but a deal is far from being done. September brought us a surprising “Iranian spring” in the crisis over fears Tehran seeks the bomb. The… Keep reading →

  WASHINGTON: Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Democratic Party stalwart, plans to leave the Defense Department after more than six years there, opening the way for his boss to pick his own deputy. There have long been rumors that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Carter did not mesh well and Carter’s visibility has slipped considerably since… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Friday’s Navy SEAL raid aimed at capturing the Somali terrorist known as Ikrimah is a glimpse at the future of American warfare, one where a small US combat presence is boosted by widescale support to local forces who bear the brunt of the fighting. The raid itself came like a blitzkrieg from the blue… Keep reading →

At 1:30 am this morning – 7:30 pm yesterday Hawaiian time — the Navy’s newest missile defense system marked its second successful shootdown in a month. Under what Lockheed Martin called an “operationally realistic scenario” – more on that in a moment – the USS Lake Erie picked up the target with its Aegis Ballistic Missile… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Lockheed Now Plans 2,400 Furloughs After DoD Decides To Bring Back Civilian Workers (10/7 at 12:45 p.m) WASHINGTON: OK. That headline is deliberately provocative. But here’s the evidence. The president of the United States cancels an important trip to Asia — including the first visit by a president to the increasingly powerful state of… Keep reading →

So how hard is the federal shutdown hitting the US military? “Walking around the building, I would say we’re probably at about a third of our staff right now,” said one military officer. (About half the Defense Department’s civil servants have been furloughed, but military personnel are still on duty). Of 26 people in her… Keep reading →

Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted. WASHINGTON: Because China believes it is much weaker than the United States, they are more likely to launch… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: You just met me, and this is crazy, but my address is Ashton.Carter@sd.mil, so email me maybe. That, in essence, was Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter‘s response this morning when asked how US defense firms could get Pentagon help exporting weapons and related products to the notoriously opaque and bureaucratic Indian government, which… Keep reading →

UNITED NATIONS: Iran’s charm offensive this week at the UN was spectacular. Iran went from being hardline and cantankerous to open and cooperative. The rogue state personified by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the good world citizen under new President Hassan Rouhani. The change in tone since Rouhani took office in August has been so… Keep reading →