America is nearing a decisive moment. Unless Congress acts to change current law, automatic sequestration cuts will slash future spending on national defense across the board by more than $500 billion beginning early next year. Combined with the $487 billion in cuts already put forward by the President in …
Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of the B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber’s first flight. The last B-52 came off the production line 10 years later. Such milestones are often celebrated nostalgically for their achievements in times past. However, we can’t call them the “good old days” quite yet for the B-52, …
The future is not bright for the U.S. military. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave America a glimpse of the half-trillion dollars in defense spending cuts requested by the Obama Administration and detailed how the U.S. military’s capabilities would be affected in practical terms. The result is a slashed and …
President Obama visited the Pentagon on Thursday to outline his plan for gutting our nation’s military. Obama’s vision makes America more vulnerable to foreign threats and leaves our armed forces less able to provide for the common defense. As we’ve previously illustrated, Obama has proposed significant reductions to the Pentagon’s …
The U.S. Minuteman III intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM) force faces an uncertain future, writes Mark Schneider in his recent post on DefenseNews.com. A set of Minuteman failures in the recent years is as concerning as the exponential loss of design and engineering expertise within the Air Force itself. As Schneider …
While American defense budgets are in a rapidly escalating free-fall, Chinese defense budgets have seen annual double-digit increases. China’s rapid military modernization is focusing on anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) technologies, which are designed to deny American naval and air forces access to the skies and waters off the Chinese …
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just returned from a visit to China after the recent restoration of military ties between the two countries. While he was there, China’s military leaders unveiled a new stealth fighter jet. The Chengdu J-20 prototype of a future stealth fifth-generation multirole aircraft clearly caught the …
