Free Republic

uring Donald Trump’s presidency, Democrats proved they’d impeach a Republican president over a ham sandwich. Sen. J.D. Vance noted this week that Democrats set up the same pretext to impeach Trump again should he win the presidency this fall.Now the same “intelligence community” that framed Trump as a Russian agent and claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian “disinformation” is claiming to have great big major secret information about something bad and Russian as the House considers yet more spending on war with Russia. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has violated his oath of office since his first day in office, yet he’s...

When House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy headlined a fundraiser in early June the room was packed with defense industry lobbyists, but reps from one megacontractor were missing — Boeing. Not only was Boeing absent at that fundraiser, the contractor has cut off all political contributions to the No. 2 House Republican over his support for killing the Export-Import Bank, which facilitates billions of dollars in low-interest loans to U.S. exporters like Boeing. General Electric, also a major supporter of renewing Ex-Im and a benefactor of the agency, has followed suit and has not contributed to the California Republican this year....

Kale Pratt & Whitney, a joint venture of American aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney and Turkish aviation company Kale, has inaugurated its new engine factory in the Aegean province of Izmir, where the most critical engine parts of F-35 fighter jets will be manufactured. The parts of the F-135 engine of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighters will manufactured, assembled and repaired at the plant, the opening of which has been marked with a ceremony attended by President Abdullah Gül, Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci, Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz and company managers. With the aim of producing fuselage parts for the new generation...

-- U.S. Senate and House negotiators are planning to provide as much as $90 million to keep the production line running at an Ohio tank manufacturing plant. The money for the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center is included in the defense bill, which could get congressional approval as early as this week. It means Abrams tanks will continue to roll off the line at the nation's only tank manufacturing plant, in Lima (LY'-mah), about 80 miles south of Toledo. The money for the tank plant will come against the wishes of the Obama administration, which for the past two years has...

Immobilized with fear, a 4-year-old British girl huddled for eight hours beneath the legs of her slain mother in the back of a car filled with corpses on a remote Alpine road — all while French investigators stood nearby, unaware the girl was there.

After more than 25 years of trying to replace the country’s fleet of Sea King maritime helicopters, the Canadian Forces have watched another deadline come and go. Sikorsky International Operations Inc. was supposed to deliver the first of 28 state-of-the-art CH-148 Cyclones in June, after the Harper government agreed in late 2008 to extend the deadline on the $5.7-billion contract by 43 months. In the latest in a string of missteps in military procurements, Sikorsky is pushing back on the delivery, with still no official date being offered for the completion of the contract. “Sikorsky has yet to start delivering...

Memorial Day is an occasion to remember the men and women who went off to war and never returned. But it is also fitting on this day to recall the soldiers, sailors and Marines who served in World War II and came back. Those men and women and their families set off a huge postwar boom that completely changed the Bay Area - and produced the region that today's residents have inherited. World War II had a huge impact on the Bay Area. It resulted in major changes in the area's racial makeup, its economy, even its physical appearance. The...

Dear Chairmen and Ranking Members: Your Committees have repeatedly questioned the utility and effectiveness of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program—which is expected to cost taxpayers more than $120 billion over the life of the program[1] and constitute as much as half of the Navy’s surface fleet.[2] Your Committees have repeatedly been assured by the Navy as well as by the ships’ manufacturers that the program is delivering quality ships. Unfortunately, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan independent watchdog that has championed responsible weapons procurement for more than three decades, has learned that these assurances about one of...

How dependent has the United States government under President Barack Obama become upon borrowing money from foreign sources to support its spending? Would you believe the answer is: "enough to exclude a long-time U.S. manufacturer from consideration for a defense contract in favor of a foreign-based manufacturer, despite the U.S. manufacturer having invested considerable time and profits earned from their other products to develop a product that specifically satisfies the government's needs?" AINonline's Chris Pocock reports: The U.S. Air Force has apparently chosen the Embraer Super Tucano to meet the Light Air Support (LAS) requirement. Hawker Beechcraft's AT-6 was the...

Wednesday’s brief by two of DC’s top defense analysts included another interesting element besides their endorsement of an “industrial strategy” to protect the defense sector: If the U.S. got into a desperate national pinch and needed to “surge” its stocks of weapons or equipment, it probably could not do it, they said. Barry Watts and Todd Harrison, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, explained that there are many reasons why the U.S. could not switch on a major industrial effort like the one that built the “arsenal of democracy” in World War II: • You can’t just simply...

Mitsubishi Heavy comes under cyberattack: Yomiuri Tokyo: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.'s computer network was hacked at factories that build submarines and missiles and make components for nuclear power plants in the first such attack targeting Japan's defence industry, the Yomiuri newspaper said on Monday. Information from the company's computer system was seen stolen in the cyber attack, the Yomiuri said without citing where it got the information. A Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman confirmed the cyber attack, but said the firm was still investigating the case including the possibility of information leaks. Yomiuri newspaper said about 80 virus-infected computers were found at...

The Hudson Institute’s Richard Weitz, posting over at Second Line of Defense, says Russian arms sales to China are drying up as Chinese industry increasingly builds its own high-tech weaponry and Beijing objects to Russian technology transfer restrictions. Since 2001, Russia has sold more than $16 billion worth of arms to China, with yearly sales peaking at $2.7 billion, he writes; accounting for nearly 40 % of all major Russian arms sales. In recent years, however, things have changed: “Since 2005, the PRC has stopped purchasing Russian warships or warplanes and has ceased signing new multi-billion arms sale contracts… The...

Storms and turbulence continue to buffet Lockheed Martin’s F-35 joint strike fighter program, as observers in the military, political and investment arenas keep a close watch for progress — or the lack of it. Close on the heels of reports that the Pentagon plans to cut F-35 orders over the next several years, an internal Navy study leaked last week drove a new wave of speculation in the defense and aerospace industries. The study, by the Navy’s aviation arm, says the cost to buy and operate that service’s version of the F-35 will be dramatically higher than predicted — 40...

A funny thing happened in the skies over Norway last month. On Dec. 10, as U.S. President Barack Obama geared up to deliver his acceptance speech before the Nobel Prize Committee in Oslo, spectators outdoors were treated to a spectacular display of spiraling light. The cause was not a UFO, as some contended, but a failed test of the Bulava, Russia's newest sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missile. The episode was a telling reminder of the shifting strategic balance between Washington and the rest of the world. To understand the significance, one need look no further than Russia's military modernization program. That...

Russia announced that arms exports for 2009 would be $8.5 billion. That's less than two percent more than last year's $8.35 billion. This is not good. Increasing these sales is very important for the government. The defense industry employs nearly three million people and accounts for about 20 percent of industrial jobs in Russia. At the end of the Cold War in 1991, defense work was more than three times as large as it is now. It was the large size of the defense industry that played a major role in bankrupting the Soviet Union. The Russians were never quite...

Russia’s Eternal Military-Industrial Kolkhoz 03 November 2009 By Alexander Golts It seems that professional observers of Russia’s endless political antics have something new to add to their list. People have long ceased to be amazed by the fact that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has a habit of meddling in Russia’s military affairs, national security and foreign policy — all of which belong to the constitutional domain of President Dmitry Medvedev. But the president has unexpectedly stuck his nose into an area that had previously belonged to Putin alone. Last week, Medvedev visited the NPO Mashinostroyenia missile design bureau in Reutov,...

It isn’t easy to put U.S. defenses back on track after they’ve endured a season of neglect. Gen. William Snow found that out firsthand. Snow’s job, when he arrived in Washington in the World War I era, was to direct the buildup of artillery for the Allied Expeditionary Force. He thought his office should have stationery reflecting the importance of the task. His request was rejected. Rather than fund this extravagance, it was suggested the general purchase a rubber stamp to mark his correspondence. Snow had joined a War Department completely unprepared to fight a war. The Army hadn’t been...

US President George W Bush's new man in Oslo applied some not-so-subtle pressure on Norway to buy US Joint Strike Fighter jets this week, saying a failure to do so would weaken military operations between the countries. Not true, responded a top Norwegian military official. "No matter what type of fighter jet we decide to buy, it will be NATO-compatible," Espen Barth Eide of the Defense Ministry told newspaper Aftenposten on Tuesday. Barth Eide was responding to remarks made by US Ambassador Benson K Whitney during a speech Monday before The Norwegian Atlantic Committee, an independent organization that aims to...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed Feb. 3 that the risk of war with China is diminishing. "I am optimistic about the future with regard to China. There is much more that the two countries have in common than we have not in common," said Pace, while in Seoul, South Korea. I am normally reluctant to dispute the opinions of top military officers, particularly one with such a distinguished record dating back to being a platoon leader in Vietnam. But the general's remarks seem at...

The odd shaped piece of the American geographic puzzle is Florida, the southern-most of North America's United States. An aerial view of the Central Florida Research Park, located in Orlando The service sector is the number one industry in Florida, fueled by 40 million annual tourists to the state. But what many of those visitors don't know is that central Florida is now a major technology center, among the fastest-growing anywhere. There is Disney, of course; besides the theme park, its film studios and animation center are among the most sophisticated in the world. Here too is defense contractor Lockheed...