Interesting proposal in the most recent Joint Forces Quarterly centers on abolishing the position of Secretary of Defense and OSD. The full article is here. Salient points include: The office has too broad a span of control; JCS advice is too often limited or distorted; It has proved to be a source of unending conflict within…
Full story here: Flight-Test Program Accelerates For U.S. Navy’s E-2D Couple of items worth noting: Within three years, the U.S. Navy’s fleet will have fielded the technology for precisely locating small, flying targets. The target set embraces some of the Navy’s latest nightmares, including the next-generation of stealthy – sometimes supersonic – cruise missiles.Moreover, with…
Green deck – post your trackbacks here, and enjoy the flick! Parts 2 & 3 below the fold
Perusing the usual pull from a variety of sources, happened across this item: Two Russian Tu-95MS Bear-H strategic bombers have carried out a record-breaking 40-hour patrol over three oceans, an Air Force spokesman said on Thursday, RIA Novosti reported. “The Tu-95MS bombers carried out patrols over the Arctic, the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans and…
Sixty-seven years ago… Day 1 – “Scratch One Flattop!”: The first day of the carrier battle of Coral Sea, 7 May 1942, saw the Americans searching for carriers they knew were present and the Japanese looking for ones they feared might be in the area. (more at NHHC) Day 2: We lose USS Lexington: ….
“After its firing from the submarine Dmitry Donskoy, the Bulava missile self-liquidated and exploded into the air” – Russian MoD spokesman to Interfax 23 Dec 08 And thus was written the postscript on the latest test of the star-crossed Bulava SLBM. Five failures in eight attempts would seem to call into question the fast-track to…
Comments are closed.
I am so ready for the Navy to bail on the F-35B/C, and develop a long range multirole strike aircraft. The air wing needs to get back some serious legs. The Navy can replace its legacy Hornets with the Rhino, and he Marines can make do with them as well – the whole V/STOL thing is just not really worth the money for the capability it brings.
I’m really not qualified to make a well informed
statement here, but here goes-
What allowed things to get this far?
Not just the F-35, but all these whiz bang
programs. The system that produced
these things is at fault. The government
and contractors share in the responsibility
(or lack thereof as the case may be….).
In the case of the F-35, SOMEONE should have
seen this coming long ago, after the F-111 deal.
Very frustrating. What to do if you scrap
the F-35? Again, no easy answers and the clock
keeps ticking….
I saw that there is a topic about “Future of Air War”. Maybe I agree with all the theories, but do we even have to talk about war? Because with the technology of today and with all the secrets that we don’t know, since “we are not prepared yet for the truth”, a war may endure only fraction of seconds, the world can be destroyed in no time…
“with the technology of today and with all the secrets that we don’t know”
“a war may endure only fraction of seconds, the world can be destroyed in no time…”
Which is exactly what was said by atomic bomb (then hydrogen bomb) advocates – right up until the Soviets, then the Chinese, then the Indians, etc. got the bomb. In the meantime there have been any number of wars of and by proxy and such. Prudence, and history, demand preparedness across a range of conflict and capability/capacity. It need not necessarily be a 1:1 match versus (a) potential foe(s) – there is merit in asymetric response.
Sitting on one’s hands, however much it might be a choice, is nonetheless a historically proven poor one.
w/r, SJS