Want to know the next great ideas in acquisition? Ya gotta read Breaking Defense, baby. Between Bill Greenwalt’s seminal op-eds that led to Sen. John McCain’s groundbreaking acquisition laws, we’ve also hosted this author, Dan Ward, before. Dan is one of the most rara avis: a really smart acquisition expert who can also write in plain… Keep reading →

When the story broke about the Joint Strike Fighter’s shortcomings as a dogfighter, the reaction among JSF advocates was swift and predictable. Most objected that the F-35’s poor performance is perfectly acceptable and even expected because that jet was never supposed to do air-to-air combat anyway. That claim does not hold up well to scrutiny and… Keep reading →

As commanders and contractors gather for the Air Force Association’s massive annual conference, our favorite iconoclastic officer, the White House-endorsed Lt. Col. Dan Ward, offers this merciless dissection of the Pentagon’s biggest program and how to avoid its mistakes. — the Editors In February of 2014, Lt. Gen. Charles Davis, the Air Force’s top uniformed acquisition official,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The White House has made the day of one Air Force Force lieutenant colonel, one familiar to readers of Breaking Defense. That’s right! Dan Ward, who recently penned a piece for us about trimming the F-35 buy  to keep the A-10 fleet flying (I think it’s a bad idea, but who says I’m always right),… Keep reading →

In this article, one of the Air Force’s own, longtime Breaking Defense contributor Lt. Col. Dan Ward, runs the numbers on his service’s plan to scrap the beloved A-10 Warthog and – now that Congress has thoroughly rejected the idea – suggests an alternative: a modest trim to the massive F-35 program might just save… Keep reading →

  As Congress awaits word from the Pentagon as to just how it will manage sequestration (the plan is due to Sen. Carl Levin‘s Senate Armed Services’s Committee today), we’ve got this interesting piece from Rachel Kleinfeld, a member of our board of contributors and president of the progressive Truman National Security Project. Kleinfeld argues… Keep reading →