Free Republic

FORT WORTH -Bobby Tamplin was 26 years old in 1977, when he went to work as a parts fabricator on the F-16 fighter jet. At the time, he was told his job would last “maybe five years.” Forty years later, the 66-year-old recently stood on a windy, cold flight line at Lockheed Martin — just a few weeks before his retirement — to bid goodbye to the last F-16 to be built in Fort Worth. It is a bittersweet moment for Tamplin, who grew up working on the assembly line, to remember a time when the plant built almost one...

On Thursday, Virgin Orbit won a contract from the Air Force to carry "technology demonstration satellites" on its LauncherOne rocket by early 2019. The LauncherOne rocket will be "air launched" from a modified Boeing 747 called "Cosmic Girl." The contract follows Branson's quiet launch earlier this month of Vox Space, a subsidiary of Virgin Orbit, that will focus on military contracts. While there is plenty of room in space, the launchpad is becoming more crowded. That's good news for the Pentagon as it looks toward increased competition and embracing new technology like reusable rockets to lower launch costs. United Launch...

It’s not exactly “Man Bites Dog,” but “Congress Gets Defense Spending Right” is almost as surprising a headline. For too long now, we’ve been cutting corners when it comes to the military. Years of underfunding have given us a weakened force that, despite the hard work of our brave troops, is ill-equipped to handle the missions we keep throwing at it. Think the recent spate of ship collisions is a coincidence? Hardly. They’re a red flag -- a warning sign we ignore at our peril. That’s what happens when you shortchange our armed forces and fail to ensure that they...

A once-empty parking lot at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s top secret aircraft plant in Palmdale, Calif., is now jammed with cars that pour in during the predawn hours. More than a thousand new employees are working for the time being in rows of temporary trailers, a dozen tan tents and a huge assembly hangar at the desert site near the edge of urban Los Angeles County. It is here that Northrop is building the Air Force’s new B-21 bomber, a stealthy bat-winged jet that is being designed to slip behind any adversary’s air defense system and deliver devastating airstrikes for decades...

If confirmed by the Senate, Griffin could become a key voice in advancing U.S. technology in areas where the United States has long dominated — such as aviation and space — and is now being challenged. WASHINGTON — President Trump tapped former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin for a top Pentagon job, giving him a key role in shaping investments in defense and aerospace technologies at a time when other nations are gaining ground on the United States. Griffin’s nomination to be principal deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics had been anticipated for weeks, and the White House...

If you were asked to rate the readiness levels of the U.S. military, what would you say? For this exercise, assume you have a scale with five choices: very weak, weak, marginal, strong and very strong. Think about each branch of the military. Where would it fall? Perhaps you're thinking, "I'm not an expert, so I can't say for sure." So let me refer you to the latest report from The Heritage Foundation's Center for National Defense. The authors are, in fact, experts -- and their conclusions are sobering. I'm referring to the 2018 Index of U.S. Military Strength. The...

The US government has stopped paying Kurdish peshmerga fighters’ salaries after a yearlong agreement expired over the summer, and there are no current plans to renew it. Under the deal negotiated by the Barack Obama administration in July 2016, the United States agreed to pay stipends to some 36,000 Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. The agreement was expected to be renewed over the summer for another year, but US and Kurdish officials tell Al-Monitor that talks stalled as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) pursued a divisive referendum on independence and the IS presence in the region...

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin's (NYSE: LMT) Legion Pod® has been selected as the Infrared Search and Track (IRST) system for the U.S. Air Force's F-15C fleet. Lockheed Martin will produce more than 130 systems, which will be delivered for aircraft integration. Lockheed Martin’s Legion Pod® has been selected as the Infrared Search and Track system for the U.S. Air Force’s F-15C fleet. Equipped with the company's IRST21® infrared sensor and advanced data processing capabilities, Legion Pod provides long-range detection and tracking of airborne threats in radar-denied environments. The Boeing Company, serving as the U.S. Air...

Rank-and-file senators are eyeing the annual defense bill the Senate will take up this week as a chance to challenge President Trump’s recent controversial moves on national security — but thus far, Republican leaders have resisted their efforts. Senators of both parties are drafting amendments that would step up sanctions against North Korea, roll back Trump’s order to ban transgender troops from the military and force Congress to vote within six months on a replacement authorization for use of military force, or AUMF, against extremist groups. Each of those initiatives grapples with an international crisis that Trump has tackled —...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday officially stopped funding for sex-reassignment treatment for transgender people currently in the military and barred the Pentagon from accepting any more transgender people into the services. The president signed a memo giving new guidance to his previously-tweeted ban on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military, according to a senior White House official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. Trump signed the memo, the details of which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, on Friday and directed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to stop funding of sex-reassignment procedures...

For the better part of a dozen years, a group of employees and managers at the Navy’s largest public shipyard operated what amounted to an unsanctioned, off-the-books police force, equipping it with illegally or improperly obtained weapons, vehicles and fuel, wasting an estimated $21 million in public funds in the process. Those are the findings of an internal command-directed investigation performed by the Naval Sea Systems Command’s inspector general, which undertook an in-depth review of the case after military criminal investigators and federal prosecutors declined to do so. The investigation, which was conducted in 2014, has not been previously disclosed....

Middletown, Iowa — Starting next year, the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant will begin producing new high velocity training rounds. U.S. Army Contracting Command in Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, awarded a $63.9 million contract for multi-year production of the M918E1 40mm high velocity training rounds. The contract was awarded to American Ordinance, which produces ammunition through the IAAP. American Ordinance is a subsidiary of Day & Zimmerman, which provides construction, engineering, staffing and defense for corporations and governments around the world. American Ordinance faced competition from several domestic and international companies that were also engineering the round. The round, known as...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday initiating a government-wide review of the U.S. defense industry and suggest changes to strengthen it. The review is intended to identify and address potential weak points in the defense manufacturing base including companies that could go out of business and leave gaps in the supply chain for U.S. weapons systems, said Peter Navarro, the White House National Trade Council director. The executive order asked for recommendations on possible legislative, regulatory and policy changes that would improve and support the defense industry, calling it a "significant national priority." "America's defense industrial base...

© Greg Nash The House voted Thursday against banning the Pentagon from providing transition-related medical care to transgender troops. The body rejected the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on a 209-214 largely party line vote. The amendment outraged Democrats, who called it ignorant, mean-spirited and denigrating, while Republicans argued the Pentagon should not be spending its money on such medical care. Transgender troops currently in the military have been able to serve openly since last year. The policy also allows them to receive any treatment deemed medically necessary, including surgery and hormone therapy. Rep. Vicky Hartzler’s...

Pres. Donald Trump used the Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, as a backdrop to unveil his vision for the next defense budget in March 2017. The moment was meant to symbolize his commitment to rebuilding the military, but it also positioned the president in front of a monument to the Navy’s and defense industry’s ability to justify spending billions in taxypayer dollars on unproven technologies that often deliver worse performance at a higher cost. The Ford program also provides yet another example of the dangers of the Navy’s and industry’s end-running the rigorous combat testing that is...

The White House insisted Tuesday that the $1 trillion spending bill includes money for 40 miles of border fencing, as President Trump sought to shore up Republican voters by saying the deal also lays the groundwork for rebuilding the military. The president said there is “enough money to make a down payment on the border wall,” and said a $15 billion boost in defense spending — without having a dollar-for-dollar match in domestic spending — has set a new standard that will benefit Republicans and the Pentagon. “This is what winning looks like,” Mr. Trump said. Republicans bristled after Democrats...

President Trump's push for a big military buildup in legislation funding the government is likely to go unfulfilled next week, when Congress returns and quickly tries to agree on how to keep the government open after April 28. A $578 billion bill that funds the Pentagon through September and provides some modest increases has already been hammered out by lawmakers in both chambers and passed by the House. While there is talk of a week-long extension before the big bill is passed, the main bill is likely to be the basis of all defense spending for the rest of the...

The United States could reduce Pentagon spending by over a trillion dollars in the next decade-spending $5.2 trillion rather than the currently planned $6.3 trillion- by adopting strategy of military restraint. That’s the bottom line of a study I produced along with several colleagues as part of “Developing Alternative Defense Strategies 2016,” an exercise organized by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, where groups from five think tanks used CSBA’s “Strategic Choices” software to reimagine the U.S. military budget.The others all increased military spending. The teams from the Center for New American Security and the Center for Strategic and...

The giant bomb U.S. forces dropped Thursday on an ISIS training camp in Afghanistan did not cost $314 million to develop, or $16 million per unit as reported by multiple news outlets.Every news report about cost of the “Mother of All Bombs” relied on a misreading of a 2011 article or a dubious internet website that InfoWars once linked to with a “healthy bit of skepticism.”The actual cost of the bomb is unknown. The actual cost of the program isn’t publicly available because the Mother of All Bombs, officially known as GBU-43 or the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), is manufactured by...

The US's Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb does not cost $314 million, or $16 million, but $170,000 a unit, the US Air Force told Business Insider on Friday. The weapon, whose acronym inspired the nickname "Mother of All Bombs," was produced by the Air Force, not by a third party like Lockheed or Boeing, "so we don't have a standard procurement cost associated with them," an Air Force official said. The $170,000 figure makes sense considering a general-purpose 1,000-pound MK-83 costs about $12,000. The MOAB simply features more high explosives and larger fins to direct the GPS-guided munition. Many outlets,...