Free Republic

In 1995, he introduced a bill to terminate America’s nuclear weapons program. As late as 2002, he supported a 50 percent cut for the Pentagon. And he says corrupt defense contractors are to blame for “massive fraud” and a “bloated military budget.” Since he arrived in Congress, Bernie Sanders has been a fierce crusader against Pentagon spending, calling for defense cuts that few Democrats have been willing to support. Should he defeat Hillary Clinton, analysts say, he will likely be the biggest critic of the Pentagon to win a major party nomination since World War II. Story Continued Below “He...

The U.S. Navy has fallen into a troubling pattern of designing and acquiring new classes of ships that would arguably best be left as single ship or at most in limited numbers. It’s also building several types of new aircraft that fail to meet specifications. The Navy is developing a new class of supercarriers that cannot function properly, and has designed them to launch F-35 fighters that are not ready to fly their missions. This is all happening during an era of out-of-control budgets, which bodes poorly for American sea power and leadership ahead. That the Navy is concentrating larger...

WASHINGTON — The next base Christmas party might not feature any active-duty flutists or tuba players. The House on Thursday passed legislation sponsored by former A-10 pilot Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., that bars the military from using its many troop bands to entertain at dinners, dances and social events. The bill limits performances to formal military ceremonies and funeral honors. It is the latest attempt to cut back the roughly $500 million that the Defense Department spends annually on bands, which date back to the birth of the country’s armed forces but have recently run into criticism as Congress wrangles...

Since the end of World War II, only 10 U.S tank crew members have been killed in warfare. This is an amazing testament to fighting vehicle technology and the money spent to develop and sustain that tactical edge over our enemies. In that same period, the United States has lost some 60,000 soldiers in small arms engagements, an approximate one for one exchange. Few foes on the planet could hope to dominate America in a tank, air or naval battle. Yet every bad actor with an AK-47 takes on U.S. and NATO ground forces in a small arms fight. We...

US Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh made comments at an Air Force Association event on Thursday that were uncharacteristically bullish on the prospect of restarting the F-22 program. Lockheed Martin shuttered the F-22 program almost five years ago. Since then, the top Air Force brass has been focused on the troubled F-35 program as well as looking decades forward to the Next Generation Air Dominance program. In April, however, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said in Congress: "In light of growing threats from a resurgent Russia and an aggressive China, further exploration into restarting the F-22 line is deserved." Welsh's...

The defense budget, in constant dollars, has held steady for nearly 30 years. However, our armed forces are ill-equipped for conflict. Expenditures have remained stable for decades, yet America now has 35 percent fewer combat brigades, 53 percent fewer ships and 63 percent fewer combat air squadrons. How in the world does military preparedness worsen while spending goes virtually unchanged? The rise in spending in conjunction with a decline in capacity points to financial mismanagement and legislative abuse. Americans are witnessing a rapid acceleration in what I call defenseless debt, a paradox wherein military liabilities increase alongside a simultaneous deterioration in...

The US Navy will wrap up developmental free flight testing of the datalink-equipped Boeing Harpoon Block II+ sea-skimming, anti-ship missile next week, ahead of fielding on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet sometime between June and August of 2017. The latest variant of the 45-year-old Harpoon weapon type expands on the satellite-aided navigation system introduced in Block II by adding a datalink radio ported across from the C-1 variant of Raytheon's AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) for in-flight retargeting against enemy surface vessels in cluttered coastal regions. The Harpoon missile successfully struck its first ship target during a test in December 1971,...

The number of U.S. Army soldiers on active duty has been reduced to its lowest since 1940, according to a published report. The Army Times reported this weekend that the Army's endstrength for March was 479,172. That's 154 fewer soldiers than the service's previous post-World War II low, which was reached during the Army's post-Cold War drawdown in 1999. The current number is still well above the 269,023 soldiers on duty in 1940, the year before America entered World War II. However, the report says the active force has been reduced by more than 16,500 troops over the past year...

An arm of the House Armed Service Committee wants Reagan-era spending for the Navy, even as the service seeks to shed ships and aircraft amid potential defense budget cuts down the road. The Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee wants to hike shipbuilding to $20.6 billion — $2.3 billion more than the Obama administration’s budget request, according to a subcommittee markup of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act released Tuesday in Washington. The markup calls for more of everything — from ships to missiles — and faster production of carriers and submarines. The subcommittee’s recommendations remain far from enactment. The full...

Donald Trump recently ignited another controversy when he mused that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was obsolete. He hinted that it might no longer be worth the huge American investment. In typical Trump style, he hit a nerve, but he then offered few details about the consequences of either staying in or leaving NATO. NATO is certainly no longer aimed at keeping a huge Soviet land army out of democratic Western Europe, as was envisioned in 1949. The alliance has been unwisely expanded from its original 12-nation membership to include 28 countries, absorbing many of the old communist Warsaw Pact...

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he felt President Obama “double-crossed” him during his tenure over budget cuts to the Pentagon. In a Fox News report Friday that explored the president’s approach to the military, Gates said Obama had promised him that there wouldn’t be any “significant changes” in the defense budget for a while. ADVERTISEMENT When asked by Fox whether Obama kept to his word, Gates replied, “Well I think that began to fray. ‘Fray’ may be too gentle a word.” According to the report, Gates was told to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget...

A problem that has prevented Boeing Co 's KC-46A tanker aircraft from transferring fuel to a C-17 transport plane may delay a Pentagon decision approving low-rate production of the new tanker in May, the U.S. Air Force said on Thursday. "We don't yet know the schedule impact to the planned May Milestone C decision, but the problem is well understood and we don't expect an extended delay," said Air Force spokesman Daryl Mayer. Mayer said the issue arose during testing of the refueling boom that is used to transfer fuel from the 767-based tanker aircraft to a C-17 transport plane,...

Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has restarted its Tactical Missile System (TACMS) production line at the company's facility in Camden, Arkansas. For more than 20 years, TACMS (formerly ATACMS) was assembled on-budget and on- or ahead of schedule at the company's facility in Horizon City near El Paso, Texas. In order to consolidate all of Lockheed Martin's Precision Fires missile and rocket production at its Camden Operations, TACMS production was temporarily suspended in 2014 and relocated to Camden. "Restarting the TACMS production is excellent news for our customers seeking deep precision fire support," said Ken Musculus, vice president - Tactical Missiles...

America’s military is dangerously weak and unprepared today, and it’s not getting better. At least that’s what top military leaders told Congress recently. Unfortunately, the testimony of these top generals and admirals did not get the attention it deserved. For the last 15 years, the United States military has not prepared for conflict with a near peer competitor like Russia or China. General Mark Milley, chief of staff of the Army, shared his worries with Congress, explaining that the Army would be able to handle a serious conflict but “not at a level that is appropriate for what the American...

Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp said they will continue their protest against the Air Force's selection of Northrop Grumman Corp to build a new long-range strike bomber, calling that process "irreparably flawed".

Senate Democrats launched a third consecutive filibuster of the bipartisan defense appropriations bill yesterday, once again blocking consideration of legislation that would fund the United States military and pay members of our armed forces. Yes, it's okay to be thoroughly perplexed by this development. Remember, the ostensible reason that Democrats have engaged in this obstruction over recent months -- which also entailed filibustering the Veterans Affairs appropriations bill -- was to exploit the troops and veterans as leverage to force Republicans to agree to higher federal spending on unrelated matters. It was a cynical play, but thanks in part to President Obama's hyper-partisan veto, it...

Yesterday was slightly heavy on the breaking news front, so this (not unexpected) development went largely overlooked.  President Obama held a photo-op to highlight his decision to veto the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act, which appropriates $612 billion in defense spending -- a figure that matches Obama's military budget request.  Among other things, the legislation pays the troops and gives them a raise.  It sailed through the Senate with 70 votes, attracting dozens of Democratic votes at both ends of Capitol Hill.  But in an escalation of partisan politics, Obama has refused to sign the measure into law in an effort to coerce Republicans into...

The Pentagon is considering whether to cancel construction of one of the next-generation destroyers being built at Bath Iron Works, a move that would imperil jobs at Maine’s fifth-largest private employer. Several reports said the Defense Department is trying to decide whether to complete construction of the USS Lyndon B. Johnson, the last of three Zumwalt-class destroyers, even though the vessel already is more than 40 percent complete. It’s a topic “to be reviewed in the next few weeks” by teams formed by the Pentagon’s independent cost-assessment office, according to a report by Bloomberg News that cited an Aug. 25...

House Republicans and Democrats are headed for a showdown this week over the $612 defense authorization bill. Democratic leadership is lining up against a bill that has been historically passed with bipartisan support, hours before the House takes up the bill on the floor. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) will whip members of her party against the bill, according to an aide, and other Democratic leaders joined her in opposing it. "This bill is the wrong bill," House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (Calif.) said at a press briefing. "We heard a presentation directly from the Department of Defense saying...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) fired at Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), among others, calling their ideas “fiscally irresponsible and dangerous to the country” and “just as bad as the Democrats” after they voted to raise defense spending on Thursday without offsetting that with spending cuts to discretionary federal programs. Paul had introduced an amendment that would have raised defense spending, but offset that increase with cuts elsewhere, such as the Departments of Education, Energy and Commerce. That amendment competed with an amendment from Rubio that would have increased defense spending with no offsetting spending cuts—just a blanket...