By Greg Grant
Joint Forces Command will soon begin shipping its Valiant Angel technology package to Afghanistan to help troops collect and sort through the massive terabytes of digital imagery collected daily by aerial drones. Bundling off the shelf technology used by the commercial video industry, the hardware and software package promises to allow troops at remote combat outposts with slow dial up to access crucial imagery.
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UPDATED: Hill Aide Says LockMar Has “long way to go to demonstrate max load bring back vertical landing.“
In a move that couldn’t be much better timed, the F-35B successfully executed a short take off and a landing, as well as a hover. Lockheed Martin said the tests “confirmed predictions of the jet’s vertical thrust, stability and control in hovering flight.”
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Last week, Taiwan stepped up pressure on the Obama administration to sell it new, upgraded F-16s, something this administration, like the Bush administration before it, refuses to do. The latest Taiwanese move came from its defense ministry, which released a report saying that China’s continued modernization of its fighter fleet has shifted the cross-strait military balance decidedly in China’s favor. But a RAND report finds the addition of a few dozen upgraded F-16s would have little to no impact on the cross-strait balance. In fact, RAND found that in the event of a Chinese attack, “the air war for Taiwan could essentially be over before much of the Blue air force has even fired a shot.”
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Congressional pressure on the Pentagon to buy more F/A-18 E/Fs and use multi-year authority continues to build, with Sen. Kit Bond being the latest to leap on the bandwagon at today’s Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing.
Bond sent a St. Patrick’s Day letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging use of the multi-year authority. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the Navy believes Boeing’s February proposal for a multi-year deal meets the “threshold” for a minimum 10 percent savings. A decision should be forthcoming in a few weeks, “sometime in April,” he said.
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Arms control elicits strong emotions and sparks great debates. In that tradition, Kingston Reif and Travis Sharp offer a rebuttal to the recent commentary we ran from the folks at the Heritage Foundation. Here’s the take of two dedicated arms control advocates. In their recent commentary on DoD Buzz (“Will START Talks Go MAD,”), the Heritage Foundation’s Baker Spring and Helle Dale recycle a snake oil sales pitch that first emerged at the dawn of the Atomic Age. The illusion is that the awesome destructiveness of nuclear weapons can somehow be neutralized by a panacea—in this case impenetrable missile defenses.
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CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus shot down reports that he had recommended to the Obama administration that the Palestinian territories be included in his command’s area of operations. Although, he did say that the Arab-Israeli conflict sets the “strategic context” in which American soldiers operate in the larger Arab world and he has done what he can to move the peace process forward.
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