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GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's emphasis that the guiding principle for foreign policy under his administration will be "America first" has made some of our European allies nervous. Germany's foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier characterized Trump's stance as "arrogant and selfish. To put America first is offensive to my ears. He is denying our equality and our right to participate in determining what America must do to protect all of our mutual interests. If this kind of self-centered viewpoint had prevailed in an earlier era my country and perhaps all of western Europe would today be run by fascists or communists."...

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has been hailed as the 'most expensive weapon in history.'But despite a price tag of $400 billion for 2,457 planes, the fifth-generation fighter has been plagued with issues. Now, a new report says problems with its logistics software system could ground the entire fleet. The issue is with what the Department of Defense officials call the 'brains' of plane, also known as the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS). A Government Accountability Office report says a failure 'could take the entire fleet offline' because there is no backup system.

Some of the nation’s leading defense companies are declaring war on a powerful enemy — an obscure Pentagon official named Shay Assad who has helped cut more than $500 million from military contracts with his aggressive scrutiny of their costs. The industry’s tactics include blanketing congressional committees with proposals that would make it harder for Assad and his contracting officers to get detailed breakdowns of the companies' expenses, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. But Assad, the Pentagon's pricing director for the past five years, refuses to back down, saying: "We are going to be relentless in pursuing getting the...

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The F-35 program that emerged proposed to build a dual-role tactical aircraft capable of both air-to-ground (strike) and air-to-air (fighter) combat operations. It is a fifth-generation aircraft designed to incorporate the most modern technology such as thrust vectoring, composite materials, stealth technology, advanced radar and sensors, and integrated avionics to greatly improve pilot situational awareness. The operational requirements of the F-35 program required 70% to 90% commonality between three versions of the aircraft—one for each of the air force (F-35A), marine corps (F-35B), and navy (F-35C). As a result, many of the high-cost parts—including the basic engine design, avionics, and...

Attorney Ilan Katz, who is heading the defense team for the soldier who last Thursday shot a wounded terrorist in Hevron, said on Wednesday that the soldier's lawyers will not agree to him being stood on trial for homicide. In the incident, the soldier was filmed by an Arab activist for the radical leftist NGO B'Tselem shooting a terrorist, who minutes earlier together with an accomplice stabbed and wounded a soldier. The soldier has argued he shot the terrorist over concerns he was moving to detonate a bomb belt that was thought to be hidden under his unseasonable coat. That...

Chicago Brown: Navy makes something positive out of Chicago violence Mark Brown This is a good news story, but underlying it is a bleak reality. The volume of gunshot wounds and other trauma cases treated at Stroger Hospital is so high that the U.S. Navy has teamed up the past two years with the hospital’s prestigious trauma unit to keep its medical personnel better prepared for their next deployment. The Navy guys might see as much action in a typical night at Stroger as they would if they were in a combat setting. Let that sink in for a minute....

Closing the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay and releasing most of its detainees, Barack Obama argues, will make Americans safer. Just how has that worked out so far? Even the man in charge of Obama’s project at the Department of Defense admitted today that released Gitmo detainees have murdered Americans.And yet, Paul Lewis argues, the project continues: Testifying before the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, Paul Lewis, the Defense Department’s special envoy for the closure of the detention center, declined to provide details and did not say whether the incidents occurred before or after President Barack Obama took office...

Obama’s Legacy – The Threat of More Terrorism Here Free Fire | March 8, 2016 | Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism, Defense Budget & Programs, Understanding the Shariah Threat Doctrine The President’s Homeland Security Advisor says international terrorist groups are “planning for sophisticated and coordinated terror attacks” in this country. In fact, Lisa Monaco warned that the threats are becoming ‘broader, more diffuse, and less predicable than at any time” since the 9/11 attacks. Call it Obama’s legacy. Unfortunately, as former clandestine CIA officer Clare Lopez and I point out in a new book, See No Sharia, our first lines of defense against...

The plotting -- and abject fear -- continues... (CNN) Prominent conservatives led by Erick Erickson on Thursday called for a unity ticket and a convention fight to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump, a sign of the growing desperation in the party establishment to find an alternative to the billionaire businessman. .... "We intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump," the statement said. "Our multiple decades of work in the conservative movement for free markets, limited government, national defense, religious liberty, life, and marriage are about ideas, not necessarily parties." Uh huh. So let...

Against the advice of its own panel of outside experts, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency is forgoing tests meant to ensure that a critical component of the nation’s homeland missile defense system will work as intended. The tests that are being skipped would evaluate the reliability of small motors designed to help keep rocket interceptors on course as they fly toward incoming warheads. (Snip) But in order to stay on schedule for a planned expansion of the GMD system, none of the 40 thrusters that are being installed on 10 new interceptors will undergo hot-fire testing, government officials told the...

Key members of the national security community warn a Trump presidency would be dangerous for America and the world. More than 75 members of the Republican national security community banded together to pen an open letter to Donald Trump, the Republican front runner in the 2016 presidential race.

New Russian tanks sent to Syria have been able to survive hits from US-made TOW missiles, although their anti-missile counter-measures have yet to be seen in combat. In a report on new weapons in the Syrian conflict, Robert Fisk noted tank-based anti-missile systems, as well as night vision and reconnaissance systems. Although new the tanks supplied to the Syrian army have the ability to deflect TOW-like missiles, their full implementation has yet to be seen. A video released by rebels showed the T-90 surviving a hit by a TOW missile, but an open hatch prevented the deployment of an aerosol...

A Minuteman 3 missile was test-launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base northwest of Los Angeles Saturday at 11.34pm PST The unarmed missile's destination was 4,200 miles into the Pacific OceanIt was carrying a test re-entry vehicle to the Marshall IslandsTest-launches are a common sight at the base

Donald Trump said Sunday he actually opposes Obamacare's individual mandate, following up his reversal last week of his apparent support for the law. The GOP presidential frontrunner told CNN's Anderson Cooper Thursday that he "likes" the healthcare law's requirement to have health coverage. He tweeted the following day that he would actually repeal it, along with the rest of President Obama's healthcare law. On CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday Trump said he doesn't like the mandate at all.

Microsoft keeps shouting about the millions of users that have switched to Windows 10, and soon the company will have another 4 million to bray about. The US Department of Defense is the latest big name to give Windows 10 the seal of approval apparently unconcerned with the privacy and telemetry issues that have put off others. 4 million enterprise upgrades for Windows 10 is a real feather in the cap for Microsoft, and the aim is to get each system running the latest version of the operating system inside a year. The DoD has also announced that it is...

North Korea's new satellite cruised over Levi's Stadium after Super Bowl 50 BY Nicole Hensley / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS / Monday, February 8, 2016, 5:29 AM Kim Kwang Hyon/AP North Korea's satellite, which was launched on Feb. 7, passed over the Super Bowl 50 game. Pictured is the country's Unha 3 at the Sci-Tech Complex in Pyongyang in 2012. A "Shining Star" was watching over Levi's Stadium after the Broncos 24-10 win. As football fans poured out of the Bay Area stadium, North Korea's observational satellite zipped by the field at an orbit 300 miles above the Earth at...

There was an unusual shooting in Garland, Texas on 15 January, 2016 .  It involved an old girl friend, a home security system, and a warning phone call.  It seems the homeowner and the person he shot knew each other.  The person had been told to leave the property an hour earlier.  Then the homeowner received a phone call from the person's ex girlfriend, that he was returning, and was a threat. From cbslocal.com: Tampered home surveillance equipment is the first sign that this was not an ordinary crime. Police say that and a warning phone call is what...

What could go wrong? The Obama administration pushed its project to empty the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to a new level today. CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that the Department of Defense announced the release of a full-fledged member of al-Qaeda to Bosnia — one of the men who presented a threat to commercial airliners before getting captured in 2002 by purportedly inventing the shoe bomb: DOD announces transfer of Gitmo detainee Tariq Mahmoud Ahmed Al Sawah to Bosnia. Member of AQ who developed IEDs to use v commercial planes— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 21, 2016 The Miami Herald...

Clearly human driven climate change and anthropogenic global warming can not be defeated through political action alone. A challenge this monumental will call for more strident measures. With that in mind, the Obama administration has apparently decided to bring in the big guns… literally. The Pentagon has been ordered to “address climate change.” (Free Beacon) A new directive issued by Pentagon leaders mandates that the agency work to "assess and manage risks associated with the impacts of climate change," according to a copy of the Jan. 14 directive issued by Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work.As the Obama administration...