Navy Can’t Calculate Littoral Combat Ship’s Operating Costs, Says GAO Draft
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CAPITOL HILL: The Navy is 90 percent sure its current estimated cost to operate and maintain the controversial Littoral Combat Ship is off target, according to a draft Government Accountability Office report obtained by BreakingDefense. According to the anonymous authors – whose diagnosis, we should emphasize, is not yet the official and fully vetted conclusion… Keep reading →
Robot Top Gun: Navy X-47B Drone Rehearses Carrier Landings
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90 years ago, in the fall of 1922, US Navy pilots made the first landings on America’s first-ever aircraft carrier. (Okay, the British did it first). Just a few weeks from now, a Navy aircraft will make history again — except this time there won’t be a pilot. Meet the Navy’s new robotic Top Gun,… Keep reading →
Beyond F-35: Rep. Forbes & Adm. Greenert on Cyber, Drones & Carriers
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WASHINGTON: What homemade roadside bombs could do to Army and Marine ground vehicles was the ugly surprise of the last decade. What sophisticated long-range missiles could do to Navy aircraft carriers could be the ugly surprise of the next. “I think it would almost follow like the night to the day,” Rep. Randy Forbes told… Keep reading →
Navy’s Ray Mabus: ‘Sequestration Looms Over Everything’ On Shipbuilding
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CAPITOL HILL: Sequestration is not the Navy’s only shipbuilding problem. In the near term, the automatic cuts to the 2013 budget are bedeviling efforts to save money by buying ships in bulk. Negotiators are racing the clock to salvage a multi-year procurement contract to buy 10 DDG-51 Aegis destroyers for the price of nine; Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told reporters today he was “optimistic.”
In the longer term, however, after the 10-year, $500 billion cut in defense spending required by sequestration, the Navy has dug a different hole for itself. The service has crafted a 30-year shipbuilding plan that requires massive increases in funding to levels that the Navy’s acquisition chief Sean Stackley admitted to Congress had not been seen since the Reagan build-up.
“Can you present… a scintilla of evidence” that the 30-year plan can be funded, an exasperated Rep. Randy Forbes, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s panel on seapower, asked during a hearing this morning.
Gen. Amos: Marines Can’t Fight Major War If Sequestered; Navy Short Carriers Too
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CAPITOL HILL: The commandant of the Marines told Congress today that his service could not handle even one major war if Congress doesn’t undo the $500 billion, 10-year cut to defense spending known as sequestration. The Navy, for its part, would have only one aircraft carrier ready to “surge” in a crisis instead of two… Keep reading →
Navy Will Send Prototype Laser Weapon To Persian Gulf: Adm. Greenert
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NATIONAL HARBOR: The Navy will send a prototype laser weapon to the troubled Persian Gulf for a roughly year-long test deployment starting “less than a year from now,” the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, announced today at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference. The bad news is this isn’t some superweapon out of… Keep reading →
Gen. Amos, Adm. Greenert: F-35 Essential But Procurement ‘Constipated’
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NATIONAL HARBOR: The top officers in the Navy and Marine Corps defended their most expensive program, Lockheed Martin‘s troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, while acknowledging the way the Pentagon buys such weapons is not merely broken but “constipated.” “There’s no alternative for the United States Marine Corps to the F-35B,” Commandant Gen. James Amos said… Keep reading →
Navy Battles Cyber Threats: Thumb Drives, Wireless Hacking, & China
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PENTAGON: Technology is a two-edged sword, and it can cut the hand that wields it in unexpected ways. For a generation, ever since the first Gulf War, the information age has been America’s big advantage, arming the US military with everything from smart bombs to remotely piloted drones to supply databases. But even low-tech Iraqi… Keep reading →
Adm. Greenert: Wireless Cyberwar, The EM Spectrum, And The Changing Navy
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Adm. Jonathan Greenert is Chief of Naval Operations, the Navy’s most senior officer. Greenert has emphasized the convergence between traditional electronic warfare — long a strong suit of the Navy — and the new arena of cyberspace. In this op-ed written for Breaking Defense, the admiral argues that “cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum” must be… Keep reading →
CNO Adm. Greenert Emphasizes Navy’s Bright Future, Not Budget Crisis
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WASHINGTON: The Navy’s top admiral talked up cheap ships and high tech this morning, from laser weapons to a new double-decker version of the Mobile Landing Platform vessel (pictured above). Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said precious little about the rolling budget cuts called sequestration. He clearly preferred to emphasize a bold vision… Keep reading →