China and South Korea are expanding their submarine fleets as the U.S. Navy shrinks its own. The conservative Heritage Foundation in a report last Tuesday said that by 2025 the number of U.S. submarines in the Pacific Ocean will fall from 30 to 27 while China will have 78 submarines and South Korea 26.
The [...]

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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates flies around the world to war zones and allies, to China and Russia and Suriname, on a Cold War relic called the Doomsday Plane. Forged in the 1970s by Boeing, it was designed to stay aloft even in the midst of nuclear war. It’s an airborne Pentagon. The plane is [...]

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The Defense Department today released the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review,…
In its language, the 2010 QDR has clearly been Obamacized. It reads more like a corporate annual report than a strategy to guide the world’s most powerful military, one that has been at war for most of the last decade. One is at pains, for example, [...]

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The joint Air Force-Navy plan would combine the strengths of each service to conduct long-range strikes that could utilize a new generation of bombers, a new cruise missile and drones launched from aircraft carriers. The Navy also is increasing funding to develop an unmanned underwater vehicle, according to the report.
China, Iran Prompt U.S. Air-Sea Battle [...]

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Regrettably, the tools required to sustain all of these efforts are in jeopardy. The collective decisions by Congress and both Democratic and Republican Presidents over the past 15 years have left the U.S. military using equipment that is extremely old and, in many cases, outdated.
While compensation for military personnel continues to rise necessarily and deservedly, [...]

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The approval process for boosting Russian naval power is moving forward in the French government. Paris and Moscow are negotiating the sale of one French-built Mistral-class warship to Russia, to be followed by construction of three or four such ships in Russia under French license.
These intentions, amount to a program of naval rearmament for Russia, [...]

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The Defense Department needs to get better at lying and fooling people about its intentions. That’s the conclusion from an influential Pentagon panel, the Defense Science Board (DSB), which recommends that the military and intelligence communities join in a new agency devoted to “strategic surprise/deception.”
Pentagon Report Calls for Office of ‘Strategic Deception’ | Danger Room [...]

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Adm. Willard said China’s military buildup is “aggressive,” and he disputed Chinese leaders’ claims that the modernization is defensive.
“While PRC leaders have consistently characterized such developments as defensive in nature, the scope of modernization, the extensive commitment to advanced training, the development of robust power projection capabilities and, most importantly, Beijing’s lack of transparency call [...]

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In military circles, the talk all week has been about how and why the top intelligence officer in Afghanistan wound up publishing a scathing critique through a small-but-influential think tank. Now, we’ve got the answers.
When Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn published his tough assessment of the military’s spy agencies in Afghanistan, it caught Pentagon officials by [...]

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Last summer and fall, the Yuri Dolgorukiy conducted sea trials, but its introduction into service may be delayed because of problems with the weapon it is designed to carry. Bulava (RSM-56, SS-NX-30) is a new submarine-launched ballistic missile. The Moscow Institute of Thermotechnics (MIT) has been working on the weapon since 1988. The three-stage missile [...]

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