Free Republic

Ironically, the blizzard of YJ-82X cruise missiles launched from the Chinese subs lying off the coast of Baja California crossed the beach directly over the SEAL training complex on Coronado. America had decided that its special forces were a cheap substitute for the less glamorous hardware and formations that had traditionally been the foundation of American military power. Now, those elite warriors watched helplessly as the missiles roared overhead north toward the two carriers berthed at North Island. The casualties would have been much higher if the Navy had been able to fully man the U.S.S. Carl Vinson and the...

The Office of the Secretary of Defense has instructed the Navy to reduce its planned buy of the new Littoral Combat Ship from 52 to 32 ships, substantially limiting the size and scope of the emerging multi-mission, shallow-water ship program, according to reports. Defense News cites a Jan. 6 memo from Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Fox account announcing the decision pointing to budget guidance from the White House on some large acquisition decisions. Pentagon and Navy officials would not comment on the memo or the acquisition decision regarding LCS fleet size, citing budget deliberations as pre-decisional. “We continue to...

Battle stations! Navy scrambles destroyer to challenge Russian warship off British coast (but it takes 24 hours to make 600-mile journey from Portsmouth base - was Putin testing our response time?)

Over the next several weeks, there will be a raft of news stories disclosing cuts to Pentagon weapons programs. The stories will begin with briefings by the military services to the defense secretary’s management team next week about their planned budget requests for fiscal 2015, and then continue into the fitful beginning of the 2014 fiscal year two weeks later. In both cases, the focus of stories will be on how the Pentagon proposes to cope with deficit-reduction provisions in the Budget Control Act. Those provisions are likely to significantly reduce the military capabilities of the U.S. because they mandate...

Modest spending cuts that were put into place March 1 due to sequestration have mostly failed to result in the economic doom predicted by Keynesians. Now the defense industry is working to undo those cuts. Jeremy Herb of The Hill has reported on lobbying industries going up to Capitol Hill, redoubling their efforts to restore budget cuts: Cord Sterling, vice president of legislative affairs for the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), said his group is working to articulate the damage from the cuts that are now beginning to take hold. They remain hopeful that a fix is on the horizon. ......

Forcing more spending cuts on the military would be dangerous and disruptive and would damage the country’s ability to win wars, the head of the Army warns. Gen. Sir Peter Wall warned that further savings would place the Army’s future plans in jeopardy and seriously damage its “professional competence” in some areas. … George Osborne, the Chancellor, has said he wants to find £11.5 billion ($18.1 billion) of savings from Whitehall departments, and the Ministry of Defense is expected to be hit hard. The Army is already being reduced from 102,000 to 82,000 personnel after the defense budget was cut in...

Demoralizing Hagel tells military to prepare for cuts, ‘appreciate’ its ‘limits’ Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel tried to mollify worried military leaders Wednesday, speaking publicly for the first time about the Defense Department’s pressing budgetary woes. Widespread cuts to the defense budget have led DoD to impose furloughs on civilian employees, defer critical maintenance projects, and consider cutting benefits to military families. Military employees who attended Hagel’s speech at the National Defense University did not hesitate to express their fears, pressing Hagel to explain why benefits and salaries have been placed on DoD’s chopping block. “Why are we still furloughing?”...

Second World War Desert Rats describe their disgust and sadness after it emerges that the celebrated tank unit would be left without any tanks as a result of the latest round of defense cuts. Major Sam Bradshaw, who fought with the 7th Armoured Brigade throughout the conflict, including its famous campaign in north Africa, said he would like to wring David Cameron’s neck. … He added: “They are just cutting back, cutting back, cutting back. You can’t put a price on defense. I won’t live to regret it, but my thoughts are with the people of the future. I hope...

Obama's administration gave Egypt $450 million in emergency aid in 2012 and the country averages about two billion in U.S. foreign aid money each year. ... Earlier this year the Obama administration rattled the nerves of Israeli leaders when he agreed to supply Egypt with dozens of F-16 cutting-edge fighter jets at a cost of approximately $213 million to U.S. taxpayers.

Secretary of State John Kerry announced Sunday that the United States would provide $250 million in assistance to Egypt after Egypt’s president promised to move ahead with negotiations with the International Monetary Fund over economic reforms. In a statement issued after his two-hour meeting with President Mohamed Morsi, Mr. Kerry said the aid decision reflected Egypt’s “extreme needs” and Mr. Morsi’s assurance that Egypt would reach an agreement with the I.M.F. after more than a year of talks over a $4.8 billion loan package. The statement issued by Mr. Kerry noted that he and Mr. Morsi had discussed the need...

... Over the past two years, Republicans have ... viewed every potential crisis -- a possible government shutdown, the threat of a debt ceiling breach and the prospect of the nation sailing over the "fiscal cliff" -- as an opportunity to corner Obama into agreeing to tackle the nation's mounting debt problem. This strategy has created a dynamic in which Obama has successfully portrayed Republicans as reckless, incapable of governance and willing to put the economy at risk to make a political statement. He's been able to deflect questions about his own lack of action on deficits by blaming Republican...

Republicans, and many Democrats, are upset by the prospect of so-called sequestration cuts to the nation's defense budget. Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is so alarmed that the day before the Senate took up what became the "fiscal cliff" agreement, he called a key Republican lawmaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham, to express deep concern that the cuts might go into effect. As it turned out, Congress put them off for two months. Sequestration would force the government to reduce discretionary spending by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Roughly half of that, or $600 billion, would come from defense --...

The Congressional Budget Office released their analysis of the group of deficit-fighting policies known as the "fiscal cliff." The big takeaway: completely averting the contraction that would occur in 2013 and 2014 would cost $1.16 trillion - entirely deficit-financed. There would certainly be some economic benefits to all of this, however. The CBO has a wide range of estimates for the positives - between 0.8% and 5% growth in real GDP, and between 1.1 million and 5.8 million new jobs. There are a lot of caveats here, as it's an incredibly wide range of estimates, but there would certainly be...

Defense: The fruit of unilateral disarmament, appeasement and promised "flexibility" patrols our East Coast near one of our largest ballistic missile submarine bases. Defense cuts and Russian subs — a double whammy. 'On June 1 or a bit later, we will resume constant patrolling of the world's oceans by strategic nuclear submarines," Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said in February. Keeping that promise, a Russian Sierra-2 class nuclear attack submarine cruised within 200 miles of our East Coast on the eve of a U.S. presidential election in which defense spending and priorities were a key issue. This is the...

In an effort to make the economy look a little rosier than it is, the Obama administration is basically coercing defense contractors so as to prevent news of layoffs hitting voters before the election. With sequestration about to result in some major cuts to the defense budget, contractors will lose government business -- and that means, employees will lose jobs. But to prevent poor numbers ahead of the November election, the Obama administration has made it very, well, fiscally unwise for companies to issue layoff notices too early. The Labor Department issued guidance in July saying it would be “inappropriate”...

In 1989, the year President Ronald Reagan left office and the Berlin Wall came down, total spending by the Department of Defense equaled $468.7 billion in constant 2005 dollars, according to the Office of Management and Budget. In 2005, when President George W. Bush started his second term, and the U.S. was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq, DOD spent $473.4 billion in constant 2005 dollars. This year, under President Barack Obama, DOD will spend $582.5 billion in constant 2005 dollars. In inflation-adjusted dollars, Obama is spending 23 percent more on defense than Bush did when the United States...

He’s been busy with more important stuff. He’ll get to it when he gets to it, even though (a) he signed a bill just last month setting today as the deadline, and (b) the whole idea of a defense sequester came from Democrats as a poison pill for the GOP in last year’s debt-ceiling deal. "One month ago, the PRESIDENT SIGNED the “Sequestration Transparency Act,” a law that IMPOSED UPON HIM a 30 day deadline to outline what Pentagon spending will be cut. That deadline was last night." "White House press secretary Jay Carney today said White House officials would...

Horrible. In January of this year President Obama announced a new military strategy that will cut the Pentagon budget by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The new strategy included $487 billion in cuts over the next decade. But yesterday Barack Obama flew all the way to Ft. Bliss Texas to tell US troops that the defense cuts were not his fault. Obama also took a shot at congressional Republicans who have taken to blaming him for military cuts embedded in last year’s deal to raise the debt ceiling. It is Congress, not he, Obama said, that...

Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan was supposed to be a problem for the Republicans. So said a chorus of chortling Democrats. So said a gaggle of anonymous seasoned Republican operatives. All of which was echoed gleefully by mainstream media. The problem, these purveyors of the conventional wisdom all said, was Medicare -- to be more specific, the future changes in Medicare set out in the budget resolutions Ryan fashioned as House Budget Committee chairman and persuaded almost all House and Senate Republicans to vote for. But while Democrats licked their chops at the prospect of scaring old ladies that...

Despite administration warnings that notices related to sequestration were unnecessary, Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney are continuing their preparations. Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney are going forward with plans to issue layoff notices to thousands of employees due to looming defense cuts under sequestration, despite administration claims that such warnings are unnecessary. U.S. defense companies planned to start handing out pink slips in November under federal mandates outlined in the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, due to the anticipated $500 billion automatic cut to defense coffers are set to go in place in January. But administration...