In space warfare one man’s refueling or repair capability can look an awful lot like another man’s ability to destroy or cripple your satellite. Now one Chinese satellite has approached another and, apparently, bumped its target and changed the orbit. U.S. analysts of Chinese space efforts seem to agree, so far, that this was not an anti-satellite test.

Raytheon and Boeing took a step closer last week to qualifying their prototype Joint Air to Ground Missile for the next acquisition milestone in the $5 billion program with what company officials say was a visually spectacular test. The missile, which had no explosive warhead, struck a working T-72 tank after a 4-kilometer flight and destroyed the tank, driving it half a foot across the ground, sending a several hundred pound road wheel flying through the air and leaving White Sands Missile Range with nothing much left to shoot at, said Mike Riley, Raytheon business development manager for JAGM.

In an exclusive interview with DoD Buzz, Lockheed Martin CEO Bob Stevens says he hopes Congress looks favorably on the Obama administration’s proposed arms export control reforms because it will make U.S. companies more competitive, help generate U.S. jobs and better protect crucial U.S. technology.

Britain’s Conservative government, faced with enormous deficits, may launch its Queen Elizabeth class carriers without airplanes to put on them as it considers early retirement for its Harrier jump jets. The two 65,000 ton carriers are built into the UK’s defense budget, but new airplanes are not. Scrapping the Harriers early, combined with delays to the Joint Strike Fighter short takeoff version, could leave the UK temporarily dependent on the U.S. for F/A-18s and V-22s. That raises the prospect of one country deploying carriers and then relying on another country to supply the airplanes to fly from them.

The United States has spent $2 trillion since 1998 on wars and regular defense spending and has been left “with a smaller Navy and Air Force and a tiny increase in the size of the Army,” argues Winslow Wheeler, defense analyst at the Center for Defense Information. If Defense Secretary Robert Gates is serious about restructuring the military and what it buys, then he better get going or he’ll be a “wasted asset,” Wheeler says.

Stand on the edge of the Everglades with the August sun beating down on your head, the summer humidity wrapping your skin and the thunderous beat of 43,000 pounds of power causing your chest and the very ground beneath you to thrum. I waggled my jaw a couple of times so the seal on the hearing protection broke and my ears absorbed the awesome roar of the test engine firing about 100 feet away, hung high in the air. That’s what it’s like to experience testing of Pratt & Whitney’s F135 STOVL engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. And there was lots of politics discussed as well.

With the stroke of a pen Air Force Secretary Mike Donley engaged one of the most complex bureaucratic challenges faced by the service: how to buy, build and manage satellites and the rockets that move them into space. In perhaps the biggest change, Donley vested the service’s undersecretary, Erin Conaton, with the responsiblity for guiding all space policy activities overseen by the Air Force. The assistant secretary for acqusiution will now lead all space acquisition, combining traditional fighter, bomber and other service acquisition with space.

The People’s Republic of China has joined an elect group of four countries that have taken men as deep as 3,500 meters below the surface of the ocean. And in keeping with Chinese claims to huge amounts of the ocean surface and its depths, the crew planted a flag on the bottom in the South China Sea, much as Russia recently did in Arctic waters. This should mark substantial improvements in China’s gathering of data for submarine warfare.

Sources tell DoD Buzz that the Army has canceled the Ground Combat Vehicle competition because the current Requests for Proposal (RFPs) do not accurately reflect Army requirements and a changing acquisition strategy. A contract for the new vehicle was close to being awarded, we’re told. A restart of the GCV competition is expected fairly soon, a new RFP may be out within 60 days, and the Army intends to stay within the original seven year timeline to field the vehicle.

When Gen. David Petraeus accepted his nation’s request that he step down in responsibility and take personal leadership of the fight in Afghanistan, many analysts hoped for an Iraq redux. America’s most dynamic and creative commander in many years would take the hard lessons he learned in Iraq, do his school work in Afghanistan and come up with another impressive showing. But there won’t be, according to the head of Marine operations, anything like the Iraqi “Awakening” that brought the Sunnis onto the side of what we think of as the righteous and fundamentally reordered the country’s security situation and politics.

Even if the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle made by General Dynamics is killed, departing Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway says the country will need the same sort of capability and will end up buying it. “It’s my believe if that program was canceled outright we would still go with another weapon systemn like EFV,” he said this morning at what may well be his final Pentagon press conference.

Those of us who hoped for an LCS contract announcement during the dolrdrums of late August must sigh and twiddle our thumbs for a bit. The two bids are apparently so close that the Navy has come back to the two companies and asked for more information. Although the Navy has repeatedly told the world an award would be made this summer it now looks as if it will be made sometime before the beginning of 2011, according to a service statement,” Cmdr. Victor Chen said in a statement.

Next to counter-terror operations, perhaps no mission is more crucial to Afghanistan than is building its national police force. NATO brought in Lt. Gen. Bill Caldwell to lead the crucial mission of training the police and the army and this week he’s doing his first round of interviews since taking command. One of his “biggest challenges” can be described simply: recruiting enough people and getting them to stay. Right now, Caldwell said some units have an attrition rate of about 47 percent. That sounds horrific, but for perspective that is down from about 70 percent. Overall, the police’s annual attrition rate is about 14 percent, he said.

The U.S. aid effort to Pakistan, which has been relatively small so far, may well last more than four months and, if indications from the Pentagon are correct, will also grow in scale.

The man managing the Marine’s response, Brig. Gen. David Berger, said he and his team had been operating on the presumption that the operation would last 30 to 60 days. Now, the head of Marine operations told reporters, the planning window looked more likely to be 90 to 120 days. And the Marines may bring the Osprey in to help, he said.

Washington’s most respected election analyst, Charlie Cook, is now calling the House for the Republicans. And he’s predicting not just a close race, which had been the call of most analysts until now, but is predicting a so-called “wave” election, one where the party in power is swept away.

The U.S. military’s annual report on the Chinese military “ignored objective facts,” exagerated the threat China poses to Taiwan and should be abolished. If ever there was need for proof that China will become increasingly assertive as its economy grows and its military capabilities improve, this is it.

One answer to this came yesterday from Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly when he told reporters that his approach to finding them at the Missile Defense Agency would involve competing $37 billion in contracts that have been sole source. Now that doesn’t sound like an “efficiency” to me, but it certainly is a savings. The Aerospace Industries Association has also offered its initial vision of how to save money — less paperwork, more multiyears and more efficient oversight.

When you buy a car, usually one of a family’s most expensive purchases, you get a warranty if it’s new or “certified.”

When the Pentagon buys weapons it rarely gets any kind of warranty. After all, these are complex systems, using advanced technology and they are, well, going to be used in war zones. So when the head of the Missile Defense Agency told reporters that Lockheed will offer a warranty on the THAAD anti-missile system we could barely swallow our applewood bacon.

UPDATED: Congressional Aide Says JLTV Fate Looks Uncertain; Less Biz for Industry
The Army has come out with its tactical vehicle strategy and it commits the force to field 244,000 trucks with scalable armor that can support network connections, including MRAPs. That will leave the service with smaller total fleet, down to 244,000 by 2025 from the current level of 260,000. But there appears to be one big hole in the Army plan. It does not project how many Joint Light Tactical Wheeled Vehicles it will be. The strategy’s answer: TBD.

The Pentagon’s head of acquisition signed an Acquisition Decision Memorandum last week telling the Air Force to plow ahead and develop plans for a new weather satellite, one replacing the ill-fated NPOESS program. Ironically, the requirements for the new satellite — to be known as the Defense Weather Satellite — are the same as they were for NPOESS, according to a congressional aide