Free Republic

WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. — For several years, a problem has been brewing for Lockheed Martin’s F-35: future upgrades will make the jet run even hotter than it does now, more than its current cooling system is believed to be able to handle. In the near term, Pentagon officials expect that a high-profile upgrade to the plane’s F135 engine will avoid most of these cooling issues. But in the longer term, the military fears future aircraft upgrades needed to keep pace with threats decades down the line will push the heat factor even higher, and officials have recently suggested they’re casting...

Long before equipment reaches the front, it must first be ordered, designed, produced and fielded. This is a process that nations have been going through for centuries. That doesn't mean they're always good at it. With every year that passes it seems that military equipment becomes more expensive, delivery schedules blow out more, and failures mount. Sometimes the answer may be corruption - but sometimes it's just a case of mistakes being made and things going wrong. In this video I want to have a look at some reasons why...

Back when Gov. Cuomo was expecting to need something like 30,000 ventilators, New York got a tip from FEMA about an Silicon Valley engineer who claimed he could procure thousands of ventilators from China. The person in question, Yaron Oren-Pines, had no history of procuring medical equipment from anywhere but the state was desperate so it agreed to this terms and signed an $86 million contract: Interested buyers had to sign a contract within four hours of receiving a quote and pay the entirety of the order upfront. “Nonnegotiable,” the catalog said. And the engineer, Yaron Oren-Pines, had no...

A recent report from the U.S. House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee claims that dozens of colleges and universities have procured aborted fetal tissue. The University of Wisconsin, Madison and the University of Michigan both defended the practice, saying they abide by legal requirements and use the tissue for life-saving research. A recent report from the U.S. House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee claims that dozens of colleges and universities have procured aborted fetal tissue. The report was compiled by a Select Investigative Panel established in October of 2015 after House members called for an investigation in response...

The latest sting video from the “Human Capital” documentary web series produced by the Center for Medical Progress is the most disturbing one yet. The horrific footage includes technicians picking over aborted baby parts, and is being described by horrified viewers on Twitter as “Godless,” “evil,” and “demonic.” The video also includes new admissions from Planned Parenthood leadership about the illicit pricing structure.One technician featured in the video fainted on the job on her first day — a reaction apparently not uncommon for people in the industry. <-- PJM_300_by_250_middle --> Holly O’Donnell, a licensed phlebotomist, didn’t realize what she was...

Procurement Riddle: 10 Things to Reverse the Trend This slide was prepared as a support slide for “Hondo” Geurts’s presentation on SOF acquisition (.pdf) at last week’s SOFIC. We don’t believe he actually used it, but it essentially illustrates the multifaceted procurement riddle: The essential riddle is this: even as the rest of the world iterates faster, military procurement takes longer and longer to field technology, and costs more and more — with the usual Congressional or Pentagon response to soaring unit costs being to cut procurement quantities or stretch out procurement costs, which really blows out unit costs. (See:...

Europe, led by France, wants a seat at Canada's defence procurement table. It's a not-unreasonable request, given that the prize being sought, as French President Françoi s Hollande pre pare s for his first state visit to Canada on Sunday, is merely a level playing field, as opposed to the stacked deck that has so often characterized this country's military purchases. In an exclusive interview, Herve Guillou, who heads France's majority stateowned military shipbuilder, DCNS, said the company is "keen and eager" to begin discussions with Halifaxbased Irving Shipbuilding, with a view to offering both a design and combat systems...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.fbi.gov/houston/press-releases/2012/russian-agent-and-10-other-members-of-procurement-network-for-russian-military-and-intelligence-operating-in-the-u.s.-and-russia-indicted-in-new-york Russian Agent and 10 Other Members of Procurement Network for Russian Military and Intelligence Operating in the U.S. and Russia Indicted in New York Defendants Also Include Texas- and Russia-Based Corporations; 165 Persons and Companies ‘Designated’ by Commerce Department U.S. Attorney’s Office October 03, 2012 BROOKLYN, NY—An indictment was unsealed today in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York charging 11 members of a Russian military procurement network operating in the United States and Russia, as well as a Texas-based export company and a Russia-based procurement firm, with illegally...

Since experienced military officers have been removed from the procurement system, the only people who now judge whether or not a weapon or a piece of equipment is ready to go into service are the Pentagon's lawyers, accountants and political appointees. The power of lobbyists also grows directly out of the system's lack of direct military involvement. It is time to scrap the whole procurement system and return control of the purchase of weapons to the uniformed military. The US military is facing potentially catastrophic funding cuts due to last year's so-called "sequestration" deal between the President and the Republicans...

Azerbaijan angered its neighbor, Iran, when it recently purchased $1.6 billion in military equipment from Israel. Details of this purchase were never mentioned, but now the veil of secrecy is being lifted. Among the items ordered were Gabriel anti-ship missiles. These are 522 kg (1,150 pound) weapons with a range of 36 kilometers. Azerbaijan will use these to protect its Caspian Sea coast from the growing number of Iranian warships being introduced in the area. Also obtained were five Heron and five Searcher UAVs. The Israeli Heron TP is a 4.6 ton aircraft can operate at 14.g kilometers (45,000 feet)....

The X-35 Joint Strike Fighter demonstrator performs flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base, California (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The tortured path of the Pentagon’s biggest weapon program is beginning to look like a case study in poor management. The problem isn’t the F-35 fighter, which is making steady progress towards becoming the best tactical aircraft ever built. The problem is a federal acquisition culture that has grown so risk-averse it no longer cares about long-term consequences. That bureaucratic myopia will be in abundant display next month, when the Department of Defense releases updated cost estimates for the fighter program. The...

Canada's auditor general has both National Defence and Public Works in his sights when it comes to the troubled F-35 stealth fighter program, say senior government sources. A draft copy of the scathing review, circulating in Ottawa for weeks, suggests the air force didn't do its pricing homework and government officials failed to follow procurement rules, say those who've read it. It's not clear whether the language will be toned down in the final report, Michael Ferguson's first as auditor general, when it's released April 3. But federal officials familiar with the document note no final decision on purchasing the...

We made two stops for this Cool Schools report: Leesburg, Va. and the White House. A team of fifth graders came up with an invention so impressive, the President of the United States even noticed! Learning about the war in Afghanistan could be pretty daunting and the graphic scenes can be scary, but for these 11 year olds, it was a motivation to do something positive. Jack Dudley, a student at Stone Hill Middle School in Ashburn, Va. told us, "Our inspiration for the project...Specialist Robert Warren lost part of his skull in an IED blast in Afghanistan." Virginia 5th...

The Army is looking at an improved combat helmet that surpasses the capabilities of what Soldiers are currently wearing in the field, and it may be available in the fall. The new Enhanced Combat Helmet doesn't look much different than the Advanced Combat Helmet it's designed to replace, but the performance difference is huge, said Col. William Cole, project manager, Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment. "If you hold them in your hand, you'd have a tough time telling the difference, other than the relative thickness," Cole said during a media roundtable Feb. 2 in the Pentagon. "The ECH is a...

: Less than three years after establishing an Air Wing in a combat zone (Afghanistan), Canada is seeking buyers for the Wing's major asset, five recently purchased CH-47 medium transport helicopters. Canadian troops are leaving Afghanistan later this year, and the government feels there is too little use for the CH-47s in Canada, nor any likely use for them in future peacekeeping operations. Canada spent over $250 million to buy six CH-47s for use in Afghanistan, and one was later lost to ground fire. The Canadian Air Wing has six leased Russian made Mi-8 transport helicopters, five U.S. made CH-47...

After months of contentious of disagreement, the U.S. Air Force is coming around to agreeing with U.S. Navy claims that the F-35 will cost much more to maintain, rather than (as the F-35 promoters assert) less. It was a year ago that the U.S. Navy, after nervously watching as the manufacturing costs of the new F-35C and F-35B carrier aircraft increase, concluded that these aircraft would also be a lot more expensive to maintain. It comes down to this. Currently, it costs the navy, on average, $19,000 an hour to operate its AV-8 vertical takeoff or F-18C fighter aircraft. The...

The U.S. F-35 will be delayed yet again, and one of the three versions may be cancelled. The new service date for the F-35 appears to be a year later now, in 2015, although the U.S. Air Force is being a bit vague on this point. Not so vague is the Department of Defense, which has put the vertical takeoff (F-35B VTOL) version on two years probation. If a growing list of problems with the F-35B are not fixed by then, the VTOL version will be cancelled. Meanwhile, it looks like the F-35A (air force) and F-35C (navy carrier) versions...

The Pentagon’s most recent per-unit target price for the conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is $111.6 million, according to program officials. The target price for the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) version, which has encountered the most challenging technical and testing problems, is $109.4 million, the F-35 Joint Program Office says. And the target cost for the most expensive variant — the carrier version (CV) — is $142.9 million, officials say. The price data traditionally has not been publicly released, but the program office released these figures to Aviation Week in response to questions. Neither price includes the cost...

Two years ago the Obama Administration made significant changes to the U.S. defense budget as they came into office. One area that formed a major part of these changes was tactical aircraft. Production of the F-22 advanced fighter was capped and efforts were focused on the new Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The three variants of the JSF were to equip the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. Boeing (BA) who made the F-22 along with Lockheed Martin (LMT) could see a future where they were not making any aircraft for the U.S. military. The F-22 and the C-17 transport...

As expected, Saudi Arabia finally made it official that it is buying 84 U.S. F-15Es. These are special versions of the two-seater F-15E. But what was really interesting was the list of accessories ordered along with the aircraft. These included; 100 M61 Vulcan multi-barrel 20mm cannons, 193 LANTIRN 3rd Generation Navigation Pods, 338 Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing Systems (JHMCS), 462 AN/AVS-9 Night Vision Goggles (NVGS), 300 AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air Missiles, 500 AIM-120C/7 AMRAAM radar guided air-to-air missiles, 5,400 smart bombs (GPS and laser guided, 227-909 kg), 400 AGM-84 Block II Harpoon anti-ship missiles, 600 AGM-88B HARM anti-radar missiles, 158 AN/AAQ-33...