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Military Superiority: China's new Shenyang J-31 stealth fighter could be the equal of our F-22s and F-35s, U.S. pilots say, and is just one of the weapons that may thwart America's "pivot" to the Pacific. The J-31, a fifth-generation stealth fighter, will make its official debut at the Zhuhai International Air Show Nov. 11-16 in southern China's Guangdong province. As one U.S. pilot with F-35 experience told USNI News of the J-31 and other new Chinese fighters: "I think they'll eventually be on par with our fifth-gen jets — as they should be, because industrial espionage is alive and well."...

National Defense: The president launches attacks on the Islamic State with two weapons systems that were targeted for elimination by the administration years before their usefulness ended or any replacements were ready. With the decision to launch air and missile strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, in addition to ongoing strikes in Iraq in what is said to be the start of a long and sustained campaign to "degrade and destroy" the terrorist group, President Obama has stumbled upon a revelation: The military whose budgets he's slashed and weapons systems he opposed is suddenly quite useful. As the Washington...

The Obama Record: The president's defense strategy creates a hollow force and worsens our readiness crisis. Big cuts mean weakening the military's ability to fulfill its constitutional duty to provide for the common defense. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the president's victory lap in Afghanistan on the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of the Navy SEALs "an attempt to shore up his national security credentials, because he has spent the past three years gutting our military." Indeed he has. "He cut the F-22, future combat...

Defense: Pilots who arrived a year ago to train on the fighter of the future are still waiting as safety concerns, cost overruns and questions about the whole program's feasibility mount. The F-35 is meant to be America's next-generation fighter, the heir to the Air Force's F-15 Eagle and the Navy's and Marines' F/A-18 Hornet. Those two aircraft have fulfilled their air superiority and ground-attack roles well, yet many are well beyond their expected life expectancy. The F-35 would fill America's defense needs in an age of budget constraints, we were told. So far it has not been a smooth...

Defense: As Russia invests in new weapons and China increases military spending by double digits, the administration conducts a new review looking to cut our nuclear arsenal even beyond misguided treaty obligations. The F-15 Eagle that lay smoldering in the Libyan desert was downed not by hostile fire but by "mechanical failure." It's a perfect metaphor for the current administration's downgrading of national defense from a constitutional imperative to an optional budget item. The F-22 Raptor was designed to replace our aging F-15 fleet, which is older than the pilots who fly them and whose wings are almost literally falling...

Defense: While America has stopped production of its stealth fighter, China prepares to challenge U.S. air supremacy in the Western Pacific with its own. China is on another Long March, one it hopes will lead to military supremacy over the U.S. at least in the Western Pacific. It is deploying a carrier-killing mobile missile, the Dong Feng 21D, and is expected to launch its first aircraft carrier this year, the refurbished ex-Soviet carrier Varyag. China is also conducting preflight tests on a fifth-generation stealth fighter expected to challenge the best the U.S. has to offer. Photographs reportedly showing China's J-20...

Federal Spending: The secretary of defense announces that due to economic conditions, the military must be slashed by $100 billion. Since when did defending the United States become an optional budget item? As Chinese warships tour the Mediterranean and Iran adds four submarines to its navy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced this week the closing of the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) in Norfolk, Va., the first step toward finding $100 billion in savings over the next five years. The command was just formed in 1999 to improve the ability of the various services to work together and find efficiencies. It...

Fixing the Pentagon’s dysfunctional procurement system takes more than just killing off anachronistic projects like the now-terminated F-22 jet fighter. It also requires rescuing vitally needed programs from poor military management and private sector cost overruns. That is why we are pleased to see Defense Secretary Robert Gates taking strong steps to revitalize the struggling F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. A cost-effective F-35 is critical to the future combat needs of the Air Force, Navy and Marines. The project already is years behind schedule and nearly 50 percent above its originally estimated cost. That is clearly too much, especially with...

Defense: The administration decision to scrap a proven aircraft in favor of a supposedly cheaper, more flexible replacement is proving to be an expensive mistake. We may wind up defenseless and broke. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that was supposed to be America's frontline fighter for the foreseeable future is in big trouble. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the general in charge of the program this week amid concerns of spiraling costs and program delays. Gates also announced he is withholding $614 million in fees from the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin. Daniel J. Crowley, one of Lockheed Martin's project managers,...

Leadership: The speaker of the House wants to extend a proposed freeze on domestic programs to include defense spending. In a world of growing threats, perhaps she'd also like to cut her travel and bar bill. Last week the Russian air force celebrated the maiden flight of the Sukhoi T-50, Moscow's version of the American F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. We have shut down the F-22 production line, viewing it as an unaffordable and unnecessary extravagance. (snip) Everybody has to make a sacrifice," Pelosi was quoted as saying in an interview with Politico, shortly before Obama announced his proposed discretionary spending...

MOSCOW – Russia's first stealth fighter intended to match the latest U.S. design made its maiden flight Friday, boosting the country's efforts to modernize its rusting Soviet-built arsenals and retain its lucrative export market. The Sukhoi T-50's flight comes nearly two decades after the first prototype of the U.S. F-22 Raptor took to the air, and Russian officials said it will take another five years for the new jet to enter service. Still, the flight marked a major step in Russia's efforts to burnish the faded glory of its aviation industries and strengthen a beleaguered military. The sleek twin-engined jet...

This column is the third in this series on the best fighter ever put in service by any country at any time in history, the F-22 Raptor. To briefly summarize the first two columns: The F-22 Raptor is the most superior fighter in the world. Its key feature is its stealth quality, which allows it to run undetected by enemy radar. Its primary purpose is to gain control of the sky above a battlefield and hold it. It can opportunistically attack ground targets, although that mission is the main role of the currently planned multi-service, multi-purpose stealth F-35 Lightning II...

The Chinese Air Force has announced that it has a F-22 type aircraft ready to make its first flight within a year. The Chinese believe this aircraft will enter service within ten years. U.S. intelligence believes the Chinese are nowhere near this kind of capability. But given the quantity and quality of data Chinese hackers have been stealing in the past five years, it's possible that they have much of the American technology that makes the F-22 and F-35 possible. Some believe that the Chinese also have a F-35 type design in the works as well. American intel analysts believe...

Sarah Palin, outlying her "common sense conservative" foreign policy views in Hong Kong yesterday, denounced her former running mate's push to cut new F-22 Raptor fighter jets, an efficiency move in which Senator John McCain allied himself with the White House and against many other Republican hawks. "Though we are engaged in two wars and face a diverse array of threats, it is the defense budget that has seen significant program cuts and has actually been reduced from current levels!" Palin said, according to a portion of the private speech I obtained. Defense spending will, in fact, increase this year...

As one of our readers noted, DID’s articles from 2005-2007 seem to describe 2 different SU-35s. One is a mid-life modernized SU-27 Flanker, but there’s also much more re-engineered “SU-35” variant with canards, thrust vectoring, etc. has been confused with (and possibly redesignated between) the SU-37. So… what do we mean by “SU-35”? This article explains the sources of the widespread confusion regarding the SU-35’s layout and key characteristics, reviews what is now known about the platform, and tracks its development. Those developments are likely to have broad consequences. The aircraft has a home customer in the Russian Air Force,...

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama sent his Administration’s 2010 budget priorities to the Congress. What it revealed was shocking, even if it should not have been surprising, with trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, even before healthcare reform spending is counted. The only significant cuts were in future defense spending, even as American forces are fully engaged in fighting two wars and the world appears as dangerous as it ever was. The White House’s budget submission called for ending production of the Air Force F-22 Raptor, a replacement for the 40-year old F-15 Eagle air-superiority fighter....

After the Senate vote, General Peter Pawling, who moved to the staff of U.S. Pacific Command earlier this year after serving as commander of the Hawaii Air National Guard's 154th Wing, told Aviation Week's David Fulghum that he was "still planning on getting those airplanes." "There is nothing out there that can fly against it," Pawling said. "If we had a major conflict [against someone with advanced air defenses], I can't imagine going in there with anything but an F-22." Indeed, that same day Fulghum quoted another Air Force official, this one identified only as a "senior intelligence officer." "The...

Russia and China, two potential U.S. adversaries in a future war, are committed to big increases in defense spending and global military adventures in the coming years, just as President Obama is forcing the Pentagon to scale back. The imbalance has defense experts worried that re-emergent Russia and China will be able to defeat U.S. forces in an air, sea and ground conflict because they will field superior fighters, ships and tanks in the next decades. This week, China announced its most ambitious military exercise to date. The People's Liberation Army is sending 50,000 troops to far reaches of the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon may want to consider scaling back Lockheed Martin Corp's multinational F-35 fighter program, the costliest-ever U.S. arms-purchase plan, as part of stepped-up budget belt-tightening, an analysis by an influential research group said. The private Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, several of whose one-time experts are now serving in senior Obama administration jobs, cited the F-35 as just one example of programs ripe for review by the Department of Defense during its once-every-four-year, top-to-bottom re-assessment now under way.

It’s been more than half a century since American soldiers were killed by hostile aircraft. Let's keep it that way.The United States relies on the Air Force, and the Air Force has never been the decisive factor in the history of war. —Saddam Hussein, before Desert Storm High-end conventional war is characterized by the clash of industrial forces. It’s armored, mechanized and increasingly air-power centric. Few are equipped by training or temperament to understand the phenomenon, especially as it concerns air warfare, a relatively recent aspect of the human experience. (In this regard, Saddam Hussein had plenty of company.) But...