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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday blasted the Navy’s Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier program, saying its $4.7 billion cost overrun threatens to undermine the Navy’s aircraft carrier legacy. “We simply cannot afford to pay $12.9 billion for a single ship,” McCain wrote in an 18-page report. “The combined $4.7 billion in cost growth on these first two ships has already not only eroded the buying power for remaining ships in the Ford-class, as it leaves less available for well as other critical military capabilities.” The criticism comes in the form of McCain’s latest “America’s Most Wasted” report, a series...

Raytheon, the company that makes the Tomahawk missiles used in the air strikes on Syria by the United States, is rising in early stock trading Friday. Investors seem to be betting President Trump's decision to retaliate against Syria after the chemical attack on Syrian citizens earlier this week may mean the Pentagon will need more Tomahawks. The Department of Defense asked for $2 billion over five years to buy 4,000 Tomahawks for the U.S. Navy in its fiscal 2017 budget last February. Nearly five dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched at military bases in Syria from U.S. warships in the...

Only three of 58 Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) would be available to respond to an enemy attack if one hypothetically happened tonight, according to the vice chief of staff of the Army. “Of the BCTs that are ready, only three could be called upon to fight tonight in the event of a crisis,” Gen. Daniel Allyn told the House Committee on Armed Services during a hearing Wednesday. A BCT usually numbers anywhere between 4,400 to 4,700 soldiers, meaning only approximately 13,500 troops would be ready to fight an enemy in the event of an emergency. To make matters worse,...

Merkel said Germany is committed to spending more, but will do so at its own pace. Berlin is set to increase expenditures by 8 percent this year and aims to reach the NATO benchmark of 2 percent of gross domestic product in about eight years. “We will do everything we can in order to fulfill this commitment,” Merkel said, adding that a strong Europe is also in America’s interest.

Years of budget cuts have taken a toll on the Navy's fleet of strike fighters. Nearly two-thirds of the Navy's strike fighters are sitting unused because there is not enough money to repair them, according to DefenseNews.com. The Navy has had to deal with declining budgets in recent years even though the demand for military aircrafts carriers remains the same. Congress was unable to produce a budget before the October 1 start of the 2017 fiscal year. Political leaders say Congress' inability to pass the military budget on time is hurting the fleet. In addition to the grounded planes, there...

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...