How the F-22 was axed

July 27, 2009 · Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized · Comment 

images Politics as usual. A rather self-patting recount by the very newspaper that contributed to the result with its reporting of alleged RAM problems:

It was a dogfight almost to the end over $1.75 billion and the need to remake military readiness. Threats and promises, blunt talk and grand gestures — all were deployed to support an appeal to common sense and for urgent change, according to principals involved. The White House coordinated the ultimately successful vote-wrangling, and its specific tactics may show up again in another epic battle now unfolding: getting Congress to draft and pass health-care reform.

Tags: <, >

US to abandon two-war strategy

July 18, 2009 · Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized · Comment 

headgrape Galrahn points out to a little-advertised but extremely influential piece of news: the US DoD is going to abandon the concept of fighting two major wars concurrently, a linchpin of US defense procurement and strategic planning since WW2:

“The military requirement right now is associated with the strategy that we are laying out in the QDR, and it is a departure from the two major theater war construct that we have adhered to in the past and in which this aircraft grew up. I mean it grew up in that construct of two major theater wars, and both of them being of a peer competitor quality,” Cartwright said.

“The strategy that we are moving towards is one that is acknowledging of the fact that we are not in that type of conflict, that the more likely conflicts are going to be the ones that we—similar to the ones that we are in in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that we do need to have a capability against a major peer competitor and that we believe that the sizing construct, one, demands that we have fifth generation fighters across all three services rather than just one [ed note: *cough*JSF*cough*] and that the number of those fighters probably does not need to be sufficient to take on two simultaneous peer competitors [ed note: no more F-22s], that we don’t see that as the likely. We see that as the extreme,” he told Chambliss.

Tags: <, >

STRATFOR commentary on US-Russian summit

July 2, 2009 · Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized · Comment 

Some nice insight from G. Friedman on the important issues of the upcoming summit in Russia. Watch it in HD if possible (much better map clarity etc.).

Tags: <, , , >