Free Republic

(Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) "The Russians tried repeatedly to settle...major thing they wanted was for us to keep NATO out of Ukraine. The Big Military Contractors want to add new countries to NATO...Why? Because that country has to conform its military purchases... Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Lockheed get a trapped market... We committed 113 billion dollars...we then committed another 24 billion since then... Biden's asking for another 60 billion. But the big, big expenses are going to come after the war when we have to rebuild.... Mitch McConnell was asked "Can we really afford to spend 113...

How the Pentagon’s top-brass generals burned the careers of subordinates but then pivoted to lucrative careers all while losing the wars they were supposed to be winning. My new book, A Few Bad Men, details the mendacity and mad dishonesty of retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis. The fact that it was written by a Marine once under his command, whom he betrayed for the sake of politics and getting to slap on another star, says volumes about this once-lionized figure. It all goes back to an incident in Afghanistan in 2007, and the Court of Inquiry trial of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is starting to boost defense contractors’ revenues, as customers such as the U.S. government restock supplies shipped to Ukraine and countries around Europe arm themselves with an eye on Moscow’s aggressions. U.S. defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), General Dynamics (GD.N) and others expect that existing orders for hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, hundreds of Patriot missile interceptors and a surge in orders for armored vehicles expected in the months ahead will underpin their results in coming quarters. New contracts to supply Ukraine directly – or backfill U.S....

EXCERPTS:If you want to believe America is still the "arsenal of democracy" that Franklin Roosevelt described in 1940, you might want to avoid looking too closely at the U.S. manufacturing sector. China has become the world's premier industrial power, greatly out-producing the United States in everything from steel to smartphones. Germany's machine-tool industry outshines our own. No U.S. shipyard has built a commercial ship destined for international commerce in decades. I toured the last remaining tank plant in America, located in Lima, Ohio. General Dynamics, a donor to my think tank and consulting client, flew me there to see where...

2010 DHS Contract to General Dynamics Information Systems for Domestic “Media Monitoring and Social Media Networking”December 30, 2022 | Sundance | 110 CommentsDuring my trip to DC in the summer of 2020 there were a myriad of disconcerting datapoints assembled; revelations that made sense of the madness and disappointments found everywhere. However, one of the key notations for future reference was to watch the political evolution of Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) and spot the jump where the ideological outlook turns into specific government action.With that in mind, this recent discovery of a 2010 to 2015 DHS contract to a...

GROTON, Conn. - General Dynamics Electric Boat announced today the U.S. Navy has awarded a $5.1-billion modification of the previously awarded Columbia Integrated Product and Process Development Contract for the Columbia class of submarines, the nation’s next-generation sea-based strategic deterrent. Electric Boat is the prime contractor on the Columbia program, which will replace the aging Ohio class ballistic missile submarines. The District of Columbia (SSBN 826) and Wisconsin (SSBN 827) are presently under construction. The contract modification has a value of $5,134,324,189. Work will be performed in Groton, Connecticut; Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and Newport News, Virginia; and is expected...

Raytheon Technologies will move its headquarters from Boston's suburbs to Washington, D.C.'s this fall, putting all of the five largest defense companies in National Capital Region. The offices will be in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington and within sight of the Pentagon. “The location increases agility in supporting U.S. government and commercial customers and serves to reinforce partnerships that will progress innovative technologies to advance the industry,” the company said in a statement. “Washington, D.C., serves as a convenient travel hub for the company’s global customers and employees.” Last month, Boeing last...

House Republicans are calling for President Joe Biden to provide military aircraft to Ukraine, so they can establish a no-fly zone on their own. In a press conference after hearing from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said their is bipartisan support for sending fighter jets to Ukraine.McCarthy and Republicans also praised Zelensky and the Ukrainian people while highlighting their resistance to Russian aggression. GOP lawmakers called for Biden to impose more sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime.House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) also spoke, calling on Biden to step up and take away...

General Dynamics Corp. has canceled their vaccine mandate after roughly 40% of their employees declined the jab & threatened to quit. https://twitter.com/alwebbj/status/1439025291054264323

The U.S. Army’s newest tank in the summer of 2019 should enter service with the first large unit to use the type. The Army in late 2017 accepted the very first M-1A2C Abrams tanks. Nearly two years later the service has enough of the new vehicles to equip an entire brigade. “We’re in the throes of getting that together,” Hank Kennedy, a manager at General Dynamics’ tank plant in Lima Ohio, told Lima News.

The Army’s long search for a small tank that packs a big punch seems to never end. Now, General Dynamics is looking to do something about that with their new Griffin tank technology demonstrator. Unveiled at this year’s Association of the United States Army (AUSA) convention in Washington DC, this little tank is meant to be a jumping off point for finally fulfilling the Army’s mobile protected firepower requirement. The 27 ton Griffin is a franken-tank of sorts, which is not a bad thing. It uses pieces of existing technology to lower costs and development time–and also return some investment...

A New York Times newspaper article describes a beleaguered American fighter program enduring delays, escalating costs, and technical problems. Another article about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter no doubt, right? Nope. It's an article from 1977 about the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The F-16 was the original multinational fighter. Developed by the United States with Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway as partners, the fighter was designed to be an agile, lightweight, daytime fighter to replace aging fighters such as the F-5 Freedom Fighter and the F-104 Starfighter. At $6,091,000 per unit—$27.1 million when adjusted for inflation—it was also supposed to...

Barry Matsumori, formerly the senior vice president of sales and business development at SpaceX, has joined Virgin Galactic's satellite launch team. With Virgin Galactic, Matsumori holds the title of senior vice president of business development and advanced concepts for LauncherOne, the company's small satellite launch vehicle. Prior to SpaceX, Matsumori held a leadership role at Qualcomm as vice president of wireless connectivity where he was responsible for the development of mobile telecom module products as well as satellite communication infrastructure and terminals. He has held positions at Space Systems Loral (SSL) and General Dynamics, and has experience with early-stage technology...

Between fear of Russia, urgency from the Army, and lobbying from General Dynamics, funding to upgun the Army’s GD-built Stryker armored vehicle has grown 350 percent in three weeks. In mid-May, the House approved a $79.5 million addition to the administration’s budget request. Yesterday, the Senate, not to be outdone, voted $371 million — four and a half times more. The House Appropriations Committee has actually approved $411 million on Tuesday, but that hasn’t passed the full chamber yet. Why does Stryker have such momentum? Some of our sources cynically pointed to General Dynamics’ lobbying operation, which is one of...

Health Overhaul: Jonathan Gruber isn't the only one who got rich off ObamaCare. Several big government contractors are raking in megabucks to help the government take over the nation's health care system. Gruber made news when it came to light that the Obama administration had paid the stupid-American-calling MIT economist roughly $400,000 to help build ObamaCare, and several states paid him big bucks as well to build their exchanges. But this is just the tip of the ObamaCare bonanza. In the last fiscal year, Health and Human Services spent $21 billion on contracts with private firms. That's more than it...

A defense contractor and top campaign contributor to House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) is in the running to get a contract to print millions of IDs and other government documents associated with the president’s planned executive amnesty, Breitbart News has learned exclusively. The contractor, General Dynamics, is on the list of “interested vendors” for a draft solicitation that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sent out to vendors in October. If the president goes through with an executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and General Dynamics gets...

UCK! A smokin’ hot F-16CM from the Air Force’s Viper East demonstration team has you in its sights. The jet performed at a 2011 Florida airshow. (SURESH A. ATAPATTU) The Viper was small, fast, and in your face. his is the story of two brothers, who happen to be airplanes. The older brother, the F-15 Eagle, entered the world fully formed, and his doting parents—the U.S. Air Force—nurtured him and quickly forgave minor transgressions. The younger brother, the F-16, was born prematurely, with no name, and scrambled to catch up. At a rollout ceremony on December 13, 1973, in Fort...

On the list of Pentagon weapons programs gone awry, the Navy's A-12 Avenger attack jet stands out. The radar-evading, carrier-based McDonnell Douglas plane was 18 months behind schedule and about $1.4 billion over cost when then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney canceled the $57 billion program back in 1991. The case over the triangular-shaped A-12 Avenger, which was dubbed the "Flying Dorito," has been in legal limbo ever since, going all the way to the Supreme Court in 2011 before being referred back to a lower court. Now, after 22 years, a settlement is on the horizon. Senator Susan Collins told the...

General Dynamics to beat out Germany for Saudi tank deal-report (Reuters) - U.S. defence firm General Dynamics is in talks to deliver battle tanks to Saudi Arabia, beating out German rival Krauss-Maffei Wegmann for the lucrative deal, a German newspaper reported. Handelsblatt daily cited industry sources as saying on Friday that a deal for Saudi Arabia to buy M1 Abrams tanks from General Dynamics was already in sight. General Dynamics and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann were not immediately available for comment. There has been speculation for months that Saudi Arabia could order more than 200 Leopard 2 tanks from Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, though...

General Dynamics Information Technology has received a federal contract to provide customer support services for the federal Affordable Care Act that will add about 120 jobs at the company’s Coralville call center. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, joined company representatives Monday to announce the contract from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The contract also will add “several thousand” jobs at General Dynamics Information Technology call centers in other states, according to an aide to Loebsack. Mark Meudt, vice president of General Dynamics Information Technology, said the Coralville call center at 2450 Oakdale Blvd. employs about 600. He said...