France and Germany solidified a future partnership in defense strategy focused on jointly building a fighter aircraft to replace Germany's Eurofighters and France's Rafale aircraft. On June 19, the two European nations signed an agreement to produce a superfighter that will be available to enter...
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Sometime in the not-so-distant future the most expensive weapons program in US history, the fifth-generation F-35 aircraft, will not require a human pilot, a US lawmaker said Tuesday. Speaking to Axios on Tuesday, Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.) quoted a military general as saying: "the F-35...
Read all of "F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to fly unmanned in near future" »
Defense sector analysts see a growing market for warplanes among Middle East nations over the next five years despite slumping oil prices in recent years. During the Dubai Airshow, which runs from November 12 to November 16, plenty of aircraft manufacturers will be angling to...
Read all of "Middle East Appetite For Fighter Jets Rages Despite Low Oil Prices" »
The competition to produce the US Navy's carrier-based aerial tanker drone, the MQ-25 Stingray, has been whittled down to four companies: General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing. On Tuesday, the United States Naval Institute News service learned that Naval Air Systems Command had...
The US Navy has turned to the defense industry in a request for information (RFI) that could signal the death knell for the LCS (littoral combat ship) program that never quite got legs. The service can't seem to make up its mind on whether to...
Read all of "US Navy Looks For Options To Support Carrier Strike Groups With Small Surface Warships" »
Richard B. Andres Karl S. Pabst As the energy industry rushes to become "smart," it has paid scant attention to the security implications of this move, particularly in the cyber realm. Touted as the next big thing by policymakers and industry executives alike, smart grid technology is...
Read all of "Smart Grid and the Threat of Malicious Cyber Actors" »
Well, not exactly. But if you were reading the news Monday, specifically the New York Times, you might have thought this was the case....
Read all of "Pentagon declares Chinese cyberespionage the cause of all woe" »
On his first trip abroad since winning reelection - and the first ever by a U.S. leader to Burma - President Obama will confront evident opportunities and risks in pushing ahead with his bold approach to expanding U.S. ties with Southeast Asia. Obama will presumably...
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The Congressional Research Service continues to produce reports laden with information on major issues, analysis unlikely to be popular with one entire side of the political spectrum. For this, it deserves a pat on the back. Sadly, it would seem facts do have a liberal...
The balance of trade in non-military domestic manufacturing may have gone to hell upon sale to China but there's one place were the US still rules supreme. We're the biggest sellers of arms, bar none, with special emphasis on sales to countries ruled by our...
By Charles Wolf, Jr., Brian Chow, Gregory Jones, and Scott Harold Last week (May 10), the Federal Reserve approved an application from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) to buy up to 80 percent of the U.S. subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Bank...
Read all of "Questions After the First U.S. Bank Takeover by a Chinese State-Controlled Company" »
The meat industry produces veritable mountains of manure. It contaminates cows, not only on the outside when they stand in it, but also on the inside, when they are fed from grains cultivated in fields fertilized or tainted by runoff from it. This has created...
Sometimes the boffins of bad ideas at our weapons labs are occasionally compelled to admit the atrocious quality of the things they come up with preclude them ever being implemented. And news of this was brought to us this week courtesy of Steve Aftergood at...
Ever since 9/11 the United States has been in a war with castor plants. It has done this by making people believe castor seeds are a deadly horror and putting in jail everyone stupid enough to pound them. The rest of the world has shrugged....
Secure Grid '11 Overview Secure Grid '11 is the third in an ongoing series of exercises that National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) has conducted in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Northern Command on the vulnerability of the...
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Here's my conclusion from ten years of war on terror, one drawn from expert perspective. It's simple: The bad guys won. I don't mean bin Laden or al Qaeda. My view deals with the US mechanism, the security and threat assessment machine that was part...
Given how markets are responding thus far, Osama Bin Laden's death is likely to have a modestly positive and buoyant effect on equity markets. Business abhors uncertainty. With Bin Laden gone, one major source of uncertainty is removed, along, one hopes, with his hallmark of...
Read all of "How Might Bin Laden's Demise Affect Business?" »
In one picture a simple proof that all news stories having to do with Chinese military spending and its alleged menace are laughable. In the last decade, our graph shows the ballooning trade deficit with China, mirroring national off-shoring of labor and the shipping out...
Read all of "Economic Treason: Evisceration of US economy, graphed" »
It will have occurred to many that the constant peddling of US-made weapons to the Middle East oil producers willing to be American toadies in the pursuit of the war on terror has been just like tossing bags of crap at many fans. In Egypt,...
"We're broke!" is the GOP blandishment used to justify imposing hardship on the middle class as Republicans go about the work of transferring more and more wealth to the already very well off. A few days ago, in the case of Wisconsin I highlighted Scott...
Read all of "Economic Treason: A look at Wisconsin and arms manufacturing" »
The western press always inflates stories of electromagnetic pulse rays and bombs. They are the fabulous weapons that are always coming -- almost twenty years now -- but never quite arriving. This is in accordance with the rule of law....
Read all of "Cult of EMP Crazy in the Koreas plus a few notes on weapons and China" »
The Great Recession caused by Wall Street whacked almost all of the middle class in the United States. Newspaper articles and the opinions of economists continue to discuss its impact in terms of mass unemployment and extreme hardship.However, there are a few large industries which...
Read all of "Economic Treason: Middle class whacked, arms manufacturing flourishes (a series)" »
What's to believe? That China has quantum teleportation and fields an aircraft-carrier-killing supermissile? Or that it makes shoddy consumer goods for American businesses which have de-instrustrialized? It's not a trick question....
Read all of "Made in China: Shoddy goods or superweapons?" »
The daily newspaper is now always loaded with Dickensian characters. You know, the class of people who hated the last two thirds of A Christmas Carol. Often they have truly negative security implications for the general welfare, a development many don't like to hear about....
Read all of "The Dickensian Character from US Business: A Biosecurity Threat" »
Richard B. Andres Micah J. Loudermilk Faced with the dual-obstacles of growing worldwide energy demand and a renewed push for clean energy, the stage is set for a vibrant revival of the nuclear power industry in the United States. During his 2008 campaign, President Barack...
Read all of "Small Reactors and the Military's Role in Securing America's Nuclear Industry" »
Last week, in a column for World Politics Review, I floated the idea of setting up a 21st century version of Lend-Lease, to cope with the growing cap between the capabilities that countries around the world can field, especially in securing the global commons, and...
The nation is falling apart and we are sending troops worldwide, draining resources from the two vital tasks facing the nation: avoiding global turmoil and revitalizing America. The jobs in the military and the industrial complex behind it are hollow, turning valuable resources into nonproductive,...
In traditional societies everyone works - they have to, just to provide essentials for survival. As society becomes more complex, fewer people are needed to produce essentials, so the society can support luxury items and services, including cultural services that enrich everyone's lives. But this...
The world faces major challenges in the XXI Century: food, water and population crises and ongoing conflicts, heightened by radical Islamic movements and the still uncertain impacts of global warming raise the potential of a world in turmoil. The United States is the only nation...
The core driver of US prosperity has disappeared and no one has noticed. Growth has been the central driver of the American economy ever since early settlers built up the East Coast and moved into the Appalachians; by the middle of the nineteenth century, the...
Many senior members of the U.S. military, defense officials, members of Congress, and analysts have long-warned of the growing fighter gap facing the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps and its implications for U.S. national security. A fighter gap is essentially a deficit between...
The U.S. Senate appropriations committee recently approved its version of the fiscal year (FY) 2010 defense spending bill, and the legislation now awaits floor time in the full Senate. Section 8056 of the bill includes authorization for the U.S. Air Force to use appropriated funds...
Read all of "The F-22 is Not Dead Yet: Congress Should Support the Development of an Allied Variant" »
Congress is back in session and completing work on the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization and appropriations bills. The Senate defense appropriations bill will be marked up this week. While few expect any tough votes if the defense appropriations bill arrives on the Senate floor...
Over the past decade it has become obvious that the world is warming - Arctic and Antarctic ice is shrinking steadily and glaciers are retreating worldwide. Climate models predict a significant increase in global temperature this century, raising concerns that global climate will reach "tipping...
Recently the Secretaries of the United States Air Force and Army introduced polices aimed at turning their services green. As these policies are implemented, not only will US military operations and bases develop smaller energy footprints and make better use of renewable energy, the military...
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