Free Republic

The top brass at the Pentagon is signaling in no uncertain terms that the defense industry needs to clean up its act and accept that the government can no longer throw away money on ill-conceived military projects. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz on Wednesday had some tough talk for defense contractors, saying firms must stop “blowing smoke” and over-promising about what they can deliver. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass” about what a military platform can do and when it will be ready, Schwartz told a tense and silent ballroom filled with defense industry executives. “There’s no...

Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots. In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and other terrorist targets. At the center of the story are two eager CIA paramilitary officers...

The U.S. Air Force said on Tuesday that it hopes to extend the life of its existing fighter planes as needed rather than to buy new older-model fighters that would siphon funding away from Lockheed Martin Corp's next-generation F-35 fighter.Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz told reporters that any move to buy new F-15 fighters built by Boeing Co or F-16s built by Lockheed would take money away from the F-35 fighter program. Instead, the service would prefer to do service life extensions for the older fighters, at about 10 to 15 percent of the cost of buying new...