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Airbus/Northrop Threat Revealing by George Landrith Human Events, 12/04/2009 The Air Force has issued a preliminary Request for Proposal (RFP) specifying how companies can bid on the $35 billion contract to build the next fleet of air refueling tankers. A final RFP is due out soon. The two bidders reviewing the preliminary RFP are Chicago-based Boeing, and a team made up of Airbus, based in Toulouse France, and Northrop Grumman, based in Los Angeles. Boeing has proposed building a tanker on its medium-sized B-767 commercial jetliner platform, while Airbus and Northrop have proposed building a tanker on Airbus’s larger A-330...

Tanker Wars: Round 3 Starts by Jed Babbin, Human Events, 11/19/2009 Last year, the Government Accountability Office overturned the Air Force’s decision to buy the replacement for its aged KC-135 airborne tanker from the European Air Defense Systems (EADS)-Northrop Grumman consortium that offered the French Airbus-330. The GAO’s decision, as I wrote extensively then, was based in large part on the Airbus’s physical limitations. The aircraft simply cannot fly the tanker mission in accordance with longstanding Air Force requirements (read why). The Air Force’s decision to buy the Airbus despite those failures was such an incident of intellectual whoredom that...

Factory data show wider economy sufferingBy Chris Giles in London Financial Times, October 2 2008 Manufacturers across the world's advanced economies suffered a torrid September, surveys suggested yesterday, providing clear evidence that the real economy had been unable to escape the woes of the financial sector. From Japan, across Europe and in the US, surveys of manufacturers were bleak with readings suggesting output was falling. Snip.

Russia to help Cuba build space center Author: Conor Sweeney, Reuters News 09/17/2008 MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow is ready to help Cuba develop its own space center, Russia's space agency chief said on Wednesday after talks in Caracas with Venezuelan and Cuban officials, Itar-Tass news agency reported. Russia has stepped up efforts to develop closer links with both countries, which are ideological enemies of Washington, including sending Russian strategic bombers on a mission to Venezuela this month. "We have held preliminary discussions about the possibility of creating a space center in Cuba with our help," the chief of Russia's Federal...

Opinion: Maintaining air superiority Congress must fund more F-22s By Phil Gingrey, Washington Times 09/09/2008 The F-22A Raptor is the key to America's air superiority, and we need more of them. Recently, however, some have argued otherwise. Many of the dissenters suggest that Congress is considering continuing F-22 production for simple, political reasons. I respectfully disagree. Continuing the F-22 production is not a political nicety for the Air Force or for the defense of our nation. It is a necessity and the current program of record - 183 Raptors - is woefully inadequate to fulfill the National Military Strategy. This...

Why Block the Boeing Tanker? by Jed Babbin Posted 08/22/2008 For all the Pentagon’s protestations -- and harsh words from the Government Accountability Office and Congress -- the promise of a real competition between Boeing and Northrop-Grumman/EADS for a new generation air refueling tanker is apparently being broken. The Pentagon, based on its public announcements and all other reports, is apparently in the process of rewriting the terms of the competition to eliminate any chance of buying the tanker the warfighters need. On June 18, the Government Accountability Office shot down the Air Force decision to award the contract to...

Too Big, Too Heavy by Jed Babbin, Human Events Posted: 03/24/2008 The mission of the US Air Force is to fly and to fight. Everyone in the Air Force’s job falls into one of three categories: to do the flying and fighting, to command those who do, or to support them. Part of supporting the warriors is to buy the best aircraft to accomplish the mission at lowest risk. Which is why the Air Force’s decision to buy urgently-needed tanker aircraft from the Northrop Grumman – EADS consortium must be reversed. That decision -- announced on February 29 -- could...

GAO review of tanker deal unlikely to produce truce Both sides have ways to fight on By JOELLE TESSLER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON -- Northrop Grumman Corp. and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. beat out The Boeing Co. to win a $35 billion order from the Air Force three months ago. Yet the contract to build 179 aerial refueling tankers is hardly a done deal. The surprise selection of a team that includes EADS -- the parent company of The Boeing Co.'s rival Airbus -- has ignited a backlash among unions representing Boeing workers, lawmakers from Washington, Kansas...

Navy sees future with drones for spying but not fighting Associated Press Newswires 06/02/2008 Author: Sebastian Abbot ABOARD THE USS HARRY S TRUMAN (AP) - The Navy lags well behind the Air Force in the development of armed drones -- the unmanned aircraft now used increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan -- insisting that its "Top Gun" fighter pilots are still smarter, better and more flexible in combat. But the contrasting visions for the next generation of America's air arsenal point to wider debates within the military about the pace of incorporating remote-control technology into future battle strategies. It also touches...

"EVERYONE does it, so let's be gentlemen and settle our dispute out of court." That's the gist of the arguments Airbus makes regarding the European Union-U.S. dispute over aerospace subsidies. Trouble is, everyone does not do it, if by "it" we mean the use of government "launch aid" to subsidize a private company in a manner that's inconsistent with the rules of the World Trade Organization. [snip]

Top Republican Rips CIA Spy Chief By: Kenneth R. Timmerman, NewsMax.com, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, had harsh words for the new head of the National Clandestine Service, the CIA’s top spy, in an exclusive interview with NewsMax. Michael J. Sulick, whose appointment was quietly announced 10 days ago, was called back to the agency after three years in the private sector, where he had gone following a bitter dispute with then-CIA Director Porter Goss and his top aides. Both Sulick and his immediate boss, Stephen Kappes, resigned in...

Rubber Stamp?By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. FrontPageMagazine.com | 9/25/2007 Come Thursday, the future of the United States Senate will begin to take shape. On that day, the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee will begin the first of two days of hearings on the ratification of one of the most momentous international agreements in memory: the United Nation’s Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). If all goes according to the proponents’ plan, few Senators will have any idea what LOST entails before they are asked to vote for it. The working assumption is that many legislators will be inclined to do...

Nobel-winning boffin slams ISS, manned spaceflight 'Infantile fixation on putting people into space' By Lewis Page, The Register, Wednesday 19th September 2007 A Nobel laureate physicist has poured scorn on human space exploration, saying "the whole manned spaceflight programme, which is so enormously expensive, has produced nothing of scientific value". Professor Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin, co-recipient of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physics, was speaking at a workshop in Baltimore. His remarks were reported by Space.com. Weinberg had especially harsh words for the International Space Station (ISS), saying that it was "an orbital turkey... No...

The U.S. Housing Bust Is a Big DealAmerican Enterprise Institute By Desmond Lachman Friday, August 10, 2007 As U.S. home prices at the national level begin to decline for the first time since the Great Depression, most Wall Street analysts maintain their rosy outlook for the U.S. economy by allowing hope to triumph over experience. For while they concede that any bottom to the housing market bust is slipping ever further into the distant future, they hew to the view that the U.S. housing sector is far too small to derail the overall U.S. economy. They arrive at this happy...

Rebuilding Military Requires Sacrifices But Can Be Done, Experts Say By Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Staff Writer June 27, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Asserting that the U.S. military is "stretched thin," policy experts debated Tuesday whether the country can afford to rebuild the military to necessary levels and how it should be done. "We should spend whatever it takes to make sure we're secure, but by doing it in a very candid way," Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, said at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. "Funding the military in the next decade is going to be very...

NK Deal-BreakingNRO: The Corner, May 21, 2007By Stanley Kurtz For a bizarre exercise, try comparing John Bolton’s recent column on the North Korean nuclear deal with this column on the same topic by Graham Allison, foreign policy advisor to the Kerry-Edwards campaign. The North Koreans are way past deadline on their commitment (in the Feb. 13 nuclear agreement) to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor. Allison says NK’s got a "plausible excuse" for this: the Bush administration has failed to uphold its part of the bargain by releasing $25 million in frozen North Korean funds from a Macau bank. But...

Japanese Police Raid Naval Centre Over Aegis Data Leak by Staff Writers Tokyo (AFP) May 19, 2007 Japanese police and naval officials raided a training centre for seamen Saturday in connection with the leaking of secret information on the US-developed high-tech Aegis combat system. Investigators searched the facility in Hiroshima prefecture, where sailors are put through specialised training in gunnery and torpedo operations. Earlier this year it emerged that authorities had questioned a 33-year-old petty officer for allegedly obtaining the confidential data on the Aegis system without authorisation. The case has unfolded since the officer's Chinese wife was arrested in...

MISSILE DEFENSE Missile Defense Funding Reaches Compromise Point by Martin Sieff UPI Senior News Analyst Washington (UPI) May 14, 2007 Was last week's congressional compromise on U.S. ballistic missile defense funding a disastrous defeat for the program, or was it a resounding victory for ensuring the survival and continued funding of key programs? Was it a bitter, short-sighted bipartisan fight of the kind that gives Congress a bad name? Or was it a triumph for constructive bipartisanship that forged a new and likely lasting consensus for the visionary program between Republicans and Democrats? On one hand, the program slashed overall...

China pirates less softwareInTech News, 17 May 2007 The software piracy rate in China is down for the third consecutive year. That’s the good news. The bad news is about 82% of the software the Chinese use is illegal. The Wall Street Journal reported piracy has been declining for three years, according to new estimates from an industry group, creating hundreds of millions of dollars in new business in the world's second largest personal-computer market by unit sales. Software piracy is still high by international standards: The study, conducted by research firm International Data Corp. for the Business Software Alliance,...

Why trade deficit matters By Hans D. Baumann InTech News, May 1, 2007 The U.S. trade deficit could affect the future of your jobs, the location of our plants, and it might even cause the next recession. Our current trade deficit with China has reached $21 billion per month. It means we bought $21 billion more in one month from China than the value of goods we sold them. This makes the trade deficit with China alone about $250 billion on a yearly basis. Adding the trade deficits with Europe and Japan, among others, we had a record total...