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After weeks of pressure from President Trump, Lockheed Martin agreed on Friday to a somewhat larger price cut on its F-35 fighters than it had on the last few orders, and finally brought the cost of the main version below $100 million for each jet. The Pentagon will buy 90 of the radar-evading planes under the new contract for $8.2 billion. The F-35 is by far the Pentagon’s largest program; it has plans to eventually build more than 2,400 of them for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, and hundreds more for allies. Mr. Trump began to criticize the much-delayed...

Franklin D. Roosevelt's "arsenal of democracy" that helped win World War II has been gradually withering away for two generations. This isn't just a story about other countries stealing U.S. jobs, it also reflects a failure of federal leadership in protecting the industrial foundations of America's military might. Washington is the main customer for U.S. weapons output, so if it doesn't manage the defense industrial base wisely, the base decays. Consider tank production. Tanks have been the premier expression of land warfare since the first primitive armored vehicles appeared on the Western Front a hundred years ago. But even though...

Barack Obama was the first president of the United States to spend more on “means-tested entitlements”—AKA welfare—than on national defense, according to data published by his own Office of Management and Budget. Historical tables that the OMB posted on the Obama White House website, include annual totals for both “national defense” spending and “means-tested entitlement” spending going back to fiscal 1962—which is three years before President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating the Medicaid program, a means-tested entitlement that together with the Children’s Health Insurance Program enrolled 74,407,191 beneficiaries as of November 2016. In every year from fiscal 1962 through fiscal...

If nothing else, we may be seeing what can happen when a little more competition gets introduced into government contracting. A few weeks ago, Donald Trump publicly complained about the price of the F-35, being produced by Lockheed Martin, calling it “out of control,” and suggested that he’d check in with Boeing on whether they could do any better. This wasn’t too long after Trump slammed Boeing for the cost of the new Air Force One fleet, and suggested that he’d cancel the program and look for someone else to build it.How did all that work out? Boeing and...

If anyone has any GOOD recommendations for stock purchase of defense contractors, preferably small to mid cap, that would be awesome.

A trio of Connecticut Democratic lawmakers is calling President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for finding an alternative to the F-35 a “total nonstarter.” “Any suggestion that there is a substitute for the F-35 is a total nonstarter,” Reps. Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLauro and John Larson said in a statement Friday. “This is a program that has been vetted ad nauseum by the Pentagon, the Congress and independent experts. There is simply no aircraft in production today that can compare with the F-35’s advanced avionics, networked capabilities and integrated stealth.” On Thursday, Trump took aim at the F-35 fighter jet for the...

Following a one-on-one meeting with Boeing’s CEO, Dennis Mullenburg, on Wednesday over Trump’s concerns that the new Air Force One aircraft were costing too much, Mullenburg said: “We’re going to get it done for less than [the $4 billion price tag], and we’re committed to working together to make sure that happens.”The deal, hammered out at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, revealed much about the paradigm shift taking place even before Trump is inaugurated. First, Trump means business. Not inhibited by ties to the military-industrial complex, Trump is recognizing who his employer really is: the American people....

Check the video at this link. John McCain earning his pay at the hearings for phasing out the A-10. "The B1 Bomber will now be used for close air support? This is why we can't take you seriously..."

A leaked communication between the Trump transition team's Undersecretary of Defense for policy Brian McKeon, and the Pentagon, has revealed the four biggest defense priorities for the president-elect. Among the top four items listed in the memo from are: 1) developing a strategy to defeat/destroy ISIS; 2) build a strong defense by eliminating budget caps/the sequester, 3) develop a comprehensive cyber strategy, and 4) eliminate wasteful spending by finding greater efficiencies. The list was communicated to McKeon by Mira Ricardel, one of the leaders of Trump’s Pentagon transition team, according to the memo obtained by Foreign Policy magazine and published...

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump was scheduled to meet .....with the chief executives of two defense contractors he has criticized over project costs. Dennis Muilenburg, of Boeing Co, and Marillyn Hewson, from Lockheed Martin Corp, arrived at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort where he is spending Christmas. ... Trump has complained about the companies in Twitter broadsides and speeches for costs he said are too expensive, sending defense shares tumbling. Trump has said Boeing's costs to build replacements for aging Air Force One planes - one of the most visible symbols of the U.S. presidency - are too high and urged the federal...

Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) paid to a million service members living off base in the United States will climb an average of 2.4 percent Jan. 1, or about $41 a month. Actual increases for individual BAH recipients will vary by Military Housing Area, pay grade, and dependency status. For a third straight year, BAH adjustments will not quite keep pace with the average rise in rent and utility costs, as the Department of Defense sticks to a five-year plan to trim the cost of stateside housing allowances gradually. The dampening of rates will continue until 2019 when recipients will...

Summary - Ash Carter, Frank Kendall and Robert Work bury a Defense Business Board / McKinsey report that $125 B is wasted on bloated bureaucracy in particular supported by hordes of overpaid contractors. Frank Kendall was“very disappointed” by the board’s work, which he criticized as “shallow” and “very low on content.” He said the study had ignored efforts by his agencies to become more efficient." Kendall said he needs 1000 more people working directly under him. Peter Cook, a spokesman for Carter, said the Pentagon chief was busy dealing with “a long list of national security challenges.” He added that...

Boeing will shift more than 2,400 jobs out of its Huntington Beach facility over the next four years, the aerospace giant announced Tuesday, slicing in half the number of workers at the sprawling campus. A nationwide streamlining of operations at the company’s Defense, Space & Security division will result in the transfer of 300 Huntington Beach jobs to its Seal Beach facility and 1,600 positions to its plants in Long Beach and El Segundo. Another 500 jobs will move to St. Louis. And an additional 400 will move to Huntsville, Ala., from Huntington Beach and other facilities around the country.

Speaking at the annual Association of the US Army conference, the commander of the US Army Europe Ben Hodges revealed some of his concerns regarding the current state of NATO armies. Amid growing escalation of the US-Russia tensions over Syria, cyberattacks and whatnot, fears of all-out war can be heard more and more often. In this light, some of the issues Ben Hodges pointed out sound anecdotal. For example, one of the minor, but nevertheless troubling issues are… refueling nozzles. Who could have thought that armies of the US and Germany use incompatible refueling systems? Thus, if some German brigade...

The Glock 19 is now the only and official sidearm for Marine special operators as officials ditched the classic .45-caliber Colt 1911, the Marine Corps Times reported last week. “We put our money behind the 9mm round fired by an extremely well-trained marksman carrying a Glock 19,” said Maj. Nick Mannweiler, a spokesman for Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command. He added the 9mm Glock is the only pistol Marine special operators are allowed to take into battle. Since last year, MARSOC has purchased and fielded 1,654 Glock 19s because Raiders needed a reliable secondary weapon “that could be...

The U.S. government will, beginning this week, pay for soldiers to undergo treatment and surgery for gender reassignment. The policy, which was first announced in June, applies to active duty soldiers who have received approval for gender reassignment from a military physician and from their commanding officers, according to the Department of Defense. The military health program will cover therapy and hormone treatments along with surgery for approved service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The policy does not yet extend to military dependents.

<p>Air Force Unveils Name of Future Stealth Bomber as B-21 'Raider'.</p> <p>AFA 2016 B-21 Naming Ceremony Raider was selected as the name of the Long Range Strike-Bomber, or LRS-B, by leaders after the service launched a survey of service members.</p>

Donald Trump vowed to boost military spending by tens of billions of dollars, outlining plans Wednesday for major increases in the number of active troops, Navy ships and submarines, and fighter planes as he works to convince skeptics in both parties he is ready to lead the world's If elected, Trump said he would give military leaders 30 days to formulate a plan to defeat the group commonly known as ISIS. And he would ask the joint chiefs of staff to conduct a review of the nation's cyber defenses to determine all vulnerabilities. Trump's address came hours before his national...

After photos leaked of Northrop Grumman and BAE System’s new T-X trainer offering, Boeing and Saab revealed their own T-X sneak peak this week. A few shadowy glimpses of the trainer appeared over four videos posted on Boeing’s new T-X website over the weekend. The clean sheet design has two engine inlets, a high mounted wing and a conventional, vertical tail. That design marks a departure from Boeing’s original V-tail concept the company put forth before partnering with Saab. The new aircraft’s design is also unique from the Boeing T-45 Goshawk used by the US Navy. Boeing’s T-X bid not...

Despite a 1996 law requiring all federal agencies to conduct regular spending audits, the Pentagon has so far failed to conduct a single one. While US lawmakers have pressed the DoD to comply by September of 2017, a new inspector general’s report indicates that meeting this deadline is highly unlikely. Army and Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis personnel did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter adjustments and $6.5 trillion in year-end adjustments made to Army General Fund (AGF) data during FY 2015 financial statement compilation," the report reads. In common language, the Pentagon has no idea how...