WASHINGTON: The House Armed Services Committee is giving the US Air Force both marching orders and money to operate its eighteen “Block 30” Global Hawk UAVs instead of warehousing them as the service proposed. The Administration’s fiscal 2013 budget request cancelled the Block 30 program and provided no funds to operate the 18 drones already… Keep reading →

Everyone’s scared of sequestration. But the US Navy and its shipbuilders are particularly upset by the prospect, because both the large-scale nature of naval construction and a historic quirk of the appropriations process leave warships particularly vulnerable. That’s why the Navy League of the United States, one of the nation’s oldest and most influential advocacy… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: After a two-year delay, the Pentagon and State department finally released a report on how they would change satellite exports, which have been crippled by legislation and strict State Department controls, and recommended that Congress generally cede control of satellite exports to the White House. As numerous studies have documented over the last… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD [updated 7:30 am Thursday 19 April with Congressional comment and Raymond Pritchett’s retraction] : The smartest man in the Department of the Navy, Under Secretary Robert O. Work, erupted today in a passionate defense of the service’s integrity in how it counts its ships and of the controversial Littoral Combat Ship‘s place… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD: The Coast Guard is shrinking and may have to cut back on traditional missions like fisheries protection and drug interdiction to free up resources for new issues like cybersecurity and the thawing of the Arctic, warned the service’s commandant, Admiral Robert J. Papp, this morning at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space convention.… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The V-22 Osprey that crashed during a military exercise in southern Morocco, killing two Marine crew chiefs, had just dropped troops off in a landing zone on a clear day and was flying away when the accident occurred, military sources tell Breaking Defense. Those circumstances might seem to suggest that the tiltrotor troop transport… Keep reading →

A study by a Washington think tank that closely follows the Iranian nuclear program, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), concludes that Iran could have tested a nuclear trigger in a device at the disputed Iranian site of Parchin. Breaking Defense obtained a copy of the draft report. The Iranian military testing ground… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: “These findings should outrage every American.” Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a tough former prosecutor but he rarely offers such sweeping condemnations as he did today when releasing the findings of a congressional sting operation designed to test whether China had changed its ways and had started… Keep reading →

“Safe passage”: That, in two words, is what Air Force Space Command chief Gen. William Shelton says the U.S. military will gain from an international “code of conduct” on space activities that the State Department is now negotiating – in the face of intense skepticism from some key members of Congress. Shelton and other Pentagon… Keep reading →

The odds against base closures got a little longer today as a key Senate subcommitee raked Pentagon officials with skeptical questions about the Administration’s request for two more Base Reduction And Closure rounds in 2013 and 2015. Chaired by Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, who has publicly vowed to kill any new BRAC proposal, the Senate… Keep reading →