The $4.75 billion air defense deal gives NATO a significant new defense against growing Russian threats in the Baltic.

The American way of war — using overpowering industrial might, crushing firepower, and owning the sea and skies — may have come to an end, a top Pentagon official says. For the past two decades, “the Chinese and the Russians have been working to undermine that model,” said Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense… Keep reading →

A British defense official talks about an age of competition among great powers, putting the Ministry of Defense on the same page as its Pentagon colleagues

Faced with an improving Russian threat, the United States should deploy a serious space sensor layer to provide persistent birth-to-death tracking of missiles, including against the kind that rip through the air at low altitudes 20 times the speed of sound (hypersonics).

Rep. Mike Rogers chairs the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which has been remarkably vigorous in its oversight the last two years. (Just ask Air Force Chief of Staff David Goldfein or Secretary Heather Wilson.) His subcommittee keeps a close eye on America’s nuclear weapon delivery systems, as well as its warheads (which are… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: This city’s fixation on how much stuff the Pentagon should buy is distracting us from the “core ideological struggle” against corrupt dictatorships, said the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. Numerical targets like a 355-ship Navy — now enshrined in law — or a 500,000 active soldier Army are not only unaffordable… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon will ramp up research on hypersonic weapons with a stunning 136 percent increase in the 2019 budget request. Here’s the breakdown of the $257 million: $139.4 million, the lion’s share, goes to the Air Force-DARPA collaboration on rocket-propelled hypersonics, Tactical Boost Glide (TBG), which will produce an “operational prototype” by 2023; $14.3… Keep reading →

Last week, the Trump administration agreed to send lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine. The order, packaged by the State Department as an affirmation of Ukraine’s right to defend itself against Russian-backed aggression, was greeted on Capitol Hill as a logical step in confronting what many lawmakers view as Vladimir Putin’s expansionist foreign policy. Proponents of… Keep reading →

AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION SIMILAR TO BUT MAYBE NOT THE SAME AS NORAD HEADQUARTERS IN COLORADO: Ho. Ho. Ho. It may be hard to believe but the new F-35 sensors are so sensitive they can pick up Santa’s laughter from 1,300 miles away. It’s all part of NORAD’s new efforts to improve their ability to get… Keep reading →

History never repeats, but it often rhymes, and a wise man listens to the echoes. Today, the Army is exploring a new concept of future combat called Multi Domain Battle, which calls for small, agile units designed to overwhelm the enemy with coordinated actions not only on the land, but in the air, on the sea,… Keep reading →