WASHINGTON: The White House has dropped plans for a 14 percent cut to the Coast Guard, instead promising a budget that “sustains current funding levels.” The bad news is that “current funding levels” are already too low. The Coast Guard has to give almost 600 drug shipments a pass each year because they don’t have the ships or planes to catch… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: How much firepower can fit on the Navy’s smallest warship? With the Chinese and Russian navies on the rise, American admirals want more “distributed lethality” from everything in the fleet, especially the controversial Littoral Combat Ship. Here at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference, the manufacturers of the two very different versions of… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: The long-delayed supercarrier Gerald Ford should set sail for builders’ trials this week, the head of Naval Sea Systems Command said today. If those builders’ trials and subsequent Navy acceptance trials go well, Vice Adm. Thomas Moore told reporters at the Sea-Air-Space conference here, “I think we’ll get the ship delivered in the… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy League of the United States just issued a withering denunciation of President Trump‘s proposed $1.3 billion cut to the Coast Guard. Trump’s 2018 budget plan has already come under fire from both sides. Democrats reject it for cutting domestic spending too much. Pro-military Republicans reject it for raising defense too little. The Republican… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee thinks President Trump’s 2018 spending plan is dead on arrival and has already gone to the Budget Committee to get a much bigger defense budget. Mac Thornberry also doesn’t want defense increases offset by steep cuts to the Coast Guard or State Department, as Trump proposed. Thornberry… Keep reading →

Speaking today on the hangar deck of the almost-completed aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, President Donald Trump explicitly pledged to build “the 12-carrier Navy we need.” Ever since the USS Enterprise retired in 2012, the Navy has had only 10 aircraft carriers, with the Ford soon to be commissioned as the 11th. On current plans,… Keep reading →

UPDATED with Marine Corps data CAPITOL HILL: More than 60 percent of Navy and Marine Corps strike fighters are out of service, the Navy confirmed today. While 62 percent of fighters are effectively grounded, the overall figure for all naval aircraft is 53 percent. [UPDATE: With some of the oldest fighter jets in service, Marine Corps… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Building the Navy’s 355-ship fleet will be even harder than we thought, according to a new study from the Congressional Research Service. Veteran Navy expert Ronald O’Rourke estimates that, even if US shipyards work 50 percent faster than today, we wouldn’t have enough aircraft carriers until roughly 2030 — 14 years from now — and enough… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: As shipbuilder Bath Iron Works laid the keel for the third and final destroyer of the DDG-1000 class, the Navy and industry were struggling to understand embarrassing breakdowns on the first ship, the USS Zumwalt. Congress fears there could be worse to come. “The hard work hasn’t really begun yet in terms of delivering the… Keep reading →

CORRECTED: Bilden is least experienced, not 2nd to last WASHINGTON: Trump’s pick for Navy Secretary, Philip Bilden, has less relevant experience than any of his predecessors since 1980, Breaking Defense has found. To be precise, every Navy Secretary for 36 years has had significant prior experience in either government or the defense industry or both: Bilden… Keep reading →