Just as smartphones have become an icon of the civilian world, they may soon find their way into every soldier’s kit. Take a look at General Dynamics’ version of the battlefield smartphone. The GD300 features a highly-sensitive GPS, 3.5 inch touch screen and the ability to connect door-kickers to the tactical network.

GE and Rolls Royce supporters want us to believe that the independent QDR panel supports the F136 program as a fine example of competition. While the panel did voice strong support for competition to lower prices and nudge programs to field capabilities more quickly, its co-chairman staunchly refused to support the F136 program as an example of competition. Co-chair Bill Perry praised competition but would not be led to endorse a program Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Obama administration has condemned as wasted pork.

At Thursday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing, I asked former Defense Secretary Bill Perry, now a professor at Stanford University, what chance the Gates Pentagon has of finding $100 billion in efficiencies. He laughed hard, shook his head and said: “Good luck with that!” Now, he didn’t say it can’t happen, but you get the idea. In the following commentary, Winslow Wheeler argues that there are, in fact, enormous efficiencies to be found in the Pentagon. He points to “overhead” and a recent Defense Business Board report. Read on.

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week, newly nominated Central Command head Gen. James Mattis reaffirmed his support for a turboprop aircraft to provide ground pounders with long loitering time, on-call recon and strike. The project called “Imminent Fury” was run out of the Navy’s irregular warfare office. Mattis described it as a test program to see if inexpensive turboprops could replace much more costly jets currently used in counterinsurgency efforts

“The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition and force structure.” Those are the words of the independent panel mandated with reviewing the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review.

The chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee said this morning he will lean on the wary Democratic leadership to bring the defense spending bill to a full committee and then floor vote by the end of September. The chairman was speaking at an awards event held by the Association of the US Army. Dicks, chairman for a few months since the death of Rep. Jack Murtha, is likely to run head on into Rep. David Obey, outgoing chairman of the full committee and a resolute opponent of war and — sometimes — defense spending.

UPDATED: EXCLUSIVE First Picture of BAE’s GCV
It’s wide. It’s not light. It’s learned lessons from MRAPs and is survivable. It manages bandwidth so big fat transmission pipes like the doomed T-Sat satellites aren’t needed It’s BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman’s offering for the Ground Combat Vehicle. The base version is 53 tons. Bolt on modular armor and storage pods and you hit 75 tons.

The 74 test flights of the F-35B might look impressive, but it’s actually behind schedule, Lockheed CEO Bob Stevens said. It was supposed to have flown 95 times by now. “Higher than predicted” failure rates of component parts have grounded some F-35B test aircraft. Stevens described the failing parts as sub-components, not major parts such as the engine, which has been performing well.

UPDATED: HAC-D Votes 11–5 To Fund F136
The Obama Administration’s bluff has been called by the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, which voted 11–5 this afternoon in favor of funding the F136 engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. The congressional calculus on the F136 has grown so complex it would take a political physicist to figure out just how likely the second engine program is to survive. The chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, Rep. Norm Dicks, said he will not put funding for the second Joint Strike Fighter engine in his bill but the committee voted for it anyway. Now there’s the Senate.…

The Air Force has lifted the suspension on L-3 Communications’ Special Support Programs Division in an action that shows just how sensitive the government has become about email and how it is handled, especially by a company performing classified work. The Air Force has required that L-3’s CEO, Michael Strianese, sign a three-year agreement with the Air Force mandating that company officials and employees receive ethics training, apparently in reaction to the mishandling of emails during a company security review.

Saudi Arabia plans to buy 84 new F-15s along with some 72 UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, defense officials tell Bloomberg. Navy Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), said Congress will be notified of the sale in the next couple of months.

If Congress fails to pass a wartime supplemental spending bill by next week, before the congressional August recess, the Pentagon will begin to run out of money in its operations and maintenance accounts and to pay military and civilian personnel beginning next month, the service under-secretaries told lawmakers today. Military manpower accounts would begin to take the biggest hits beginning in September with the possibility that active-duty personnel would stop getting paid.

After years of covering the miasma of the airborne tanker’s progress, it’s refreshing to be granted a fresh angle on aerial refueling. Earlier this month, DARPA made a little-noticed announcement that it was awarding Northrop Grumman a $33 million contract to build something being called KQ-X, which “will demonstrate autonomous aerial refueling between two unmanned NASA Global Hawk aircraft.” The latest wrinkle is that Northrop has picked Cobham, one of the few companies with great expertise in building refueling equipment, a Cobham press release says, to provide a hose and drogue refueling system.

Farnborough Air Show – After some seven months of flying in Afghanistan the percentage of the Osprey fleet ready for flight each day has stalled out at roughly 70 percent, a figure the head of Marine aviation says must be improved. Lt. Gen. George Trautman told DoD Buzz in an exclusive interview that those rates are “not good enough for me.” While Afghanistan is uniquely challenging, it has also been the source of some good news for the Osprey, Trautman said. The plane has “proved its survivability,” sustaining a number of hits from 12.7 rounds, a more lethal load than the American .50 caliber.

Farnborough Air Show – Imagine a UAV with radar built into its wings, its nose and its tail. Now imagine a squadron of UAVs sharing that data among themselves and building a huge field of regard. Add a few Super Hornets or F-35s to enlarge the field even more and giving the squadron not just eyes but also weapons to destroy any targets identified during the run. Put all that together and you possess a likely view of the next five years.

A new RAND paper examines heavy armor performance from the past decade’s irregular and hybrid wars. The bottom line: from Iraq’s city streets to Gaza’s narrow alleyways to the mountains of Afghanistan, ground troops love the intimidating presence of the 60 to 70 ton main battle tanks, their thick armor, their precise firepower, mobility and their unmatched utility as mobile pillboxes.