The White House and Pentagon have been talking up the return of Great Power Competition with the rise of China and Russia, but the Senate Armed Services Committee is frustrated that the 2019 defense budget doesn’t put money where the rhetoric is.

Wait for it — the costs of Lockheed Martin’s Presidential Helicopter Replacement program, known as the VH-92, have come down 2.4 percent, about $123 million to $5.06 billion, and it appears on schedule. But — you knew there’d be a but.

The new rules, which are still a work in progress, will allow for easier export of laser-designating drones, while shipping more and more weapons overseas to cut into Chinese and Russian sales.

WASHINGTON: President Trump’s sweeping review of the national security industrial base — from shipbuilding to microchips, strategic minerals to vaccines — is almost halfway done. A score of working groups across the government, not just the Pentagon, will submit their draft recommendations this month and next, an administration official briefed on the review tells me. Then… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Is the arsenal of democracy out of business? Probably not, but America’s “increasingly brittle industrial base” may not be able to sustain our forces in a protracted war, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford, warned the Senate in a written statement this morning. It’s a problem a lot of people… Keep reading →

Mike Flynn: You’re fired! H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, John Kelly: You’re hired!

WASHINGTON: Soon after President Donald Trump took the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” the White House posted two documents declaring they would boost the size of the Navy and Air Force, increase our offensive and defensive cyber capabilities and end sequestration. In the first document, Making Our Military Strong Again, the Trump Administration… Keep reading →

Who are Trump’s generals? Earlier this week, James Kitfield showed us the common crucible that shaped as a group and then profiled James Mattis, the prospective Secretary of Defense. Today, Kitfield tackles Trump’s most controversial general, intelligence officer turned political firebrand Michael Flynn. “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will not be defeated in… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump wants “a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS.” But Kimberly Kagan, a leading advocate of the troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, warns that, this time round, “we need to recognize there are limits on how fast we can accelerate.” Part of the reason is tactical, Kagan told the DefenseOne Summit… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The short view: Congressman slams Air Force for weather satellite fiasco. Long view: Congress, White House, Air Force, NASA, Commerce Department have all screwed up US weather satellite programs. “We could have saved the Air Force and the Congress a lot of aggravation if we put a half of a billion dollars in… Keep reading →