News From Al Bunting, Col., USAF, Ret in NJ. Thanks Al!
Turkey To Consult NATO Over Downing Of Jet By Syria
(New York Times) Turkey's foreign minister said Sunday that his country would hold emergency talks with NATO in the next few days over the downing of one of its jet fighters by Syria, asserting that the plane was shot down in international airspace.
Egypt Results Leave White House Relieved But Watchful
(New York Times) The Obama administration, expressing relief on Sunday that the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate will be Egypt's next president, voiced cautious optimism that the choice could keep the country's rocky transition to democracy on track.
Bombing Iran
(Aviation Week & Space Technology) Evidence is mounting that the U.S. defense community and the Obama administration view 2013 as the likely window for a bombing attack on Iran's nuclear and missile facilities.
The War Within The War Cabinet
(Washington Post) How infighting in the Obama White House squandered a chance for peace in Afghanistan.
What The Troops Did In Afghanistan
(Wall Street Journal) This ambivalence on the part of the commander in chief helps explain the uncertain outlook for the American war effort in Afghanistan in spite of the success achieved by troops in southern Afghanistan. Even so, it is possible to imagine an acceptable outcome if the U.S. remains substantially committed post-2014. It is premature to conclude, as Mr. Chandrasekaran does, that Afghanistan is "the good war . . . turned bad."
No Order From Top Brass For Gay Pride
(Washington Times) Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is not requiring commands and agencies to hold gay pride events this month, even as the Pentagon prepares for its first celebration on Tuesday of gays serving openly in the ranks.
Pentagon Celebrates LGBT Pride Month
(CNN) A year ago today gays in the military would never, could never serve openly. But come this Tuesday, this place, yes, the Pentagon, will salute them. The headquarters of the Department of Defense is holding a first of its kind event to mark LGBT Pride month.
The Navy Attacks Character Failures
(Norfolk Virginian-Pilot) A doubling of the number of commanding officers dismissed for personal misconduct ranging from alcohol abuse to fraternization indicates a new need for the Navy to pinpoint how and why those leaders strayed.
Digital Wars
(Chicago Tribune) Today a new theater of war -- this one in cyberspace, the digital realm of computer networks -- has dawned quietly
North Korea Tests The Patience Of Its Closest Ally
(New York Times) As Kim Jong-un, the young leader of North Korea, consolidates his grip on power, China is showing signs of increasing frustration at the bellicose behavior of its longtime ally.
China, N. Korea Wary Of US Naval Exercises
(Stars and Stripes) U.S. officials say the USS George Washington is in the Yellow Sea for exercises they describe as routine, but China and North Korea have expressed concern at the proximity to their territorial waters and analysts say the aircraft carrier's presence symbolizes the shift in U.S. military focus toward the Asia-Pacific.
Combat Pay Fairness
(Army Times) The military's current framework for compensating troops in combat is broken and needs to be radically overhauled, according to the newly released 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation.
Regional Alignment
(Army Times) Regionally aligning forces with the combatant commands will allow the Army to support the needs of the combatant commanders -- who often took a back seat to the demand for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and train soldiers who are better trained for specific regions of the world.
New Ribbon For Heroism
(Marine Corps Times) About 28,000 U.S. and coalition forces who fought a thriving insurgency in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010 under the command of a Marine expeditionary brigade will receive the prestigious Presidential Unit Citation, Marine officials said.
Gender-Neutral Ford Layout Nixes Urinals
(Navy Times) For the first time, the Navy has designed an aircraft carrier with women in mind.
Woman Qualifies For Submarines
(Washington Times) A naval supply officer from Wisconsin has become the first woman to serve on a Navy submarine and earn her "dolphins pin," which denotes her qualifications to work aboard subs.
First Female Submariners Find Few Obstacles
(Kitsap (WA) Sun) Female submariners are fitting right in. Since reporting to their boats in November, 25 women who broke one of the Navy's final gender barriers have gone on patrol and been accepted among their crews.
Congress Zooms In On Drone Killings
(Los Angeles Times) Once a month, a group of staff members from the House and Senate intelligence committees drives across the Potomac River to CIA headquarters in Virginia, assembles in a secure room and begins the grim task of watching videos of the latest drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.
91,000 Jobs In Texas At Risk If Deals Not Reached
(San Antonio Express-News) The alarm is sounded. More than 1 million defense-related jobs including 91,000 in Texas could be lost if Congress fails to act on budget deals to forestall across-the-board cuts, Obama administration officials and lawmakers have warned.
A Cruel And Unusual Record
(New York Times) THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights. Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nations violation of human rights has extended.
We Must Attend To Vets' Mental-Health Needs
(Arizona Republic (Phoenix)) During June, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the nation recognize national PTSD Awareness Month. We are taking time to focus on post-traumatic stress disorder and the other mental-health needs of our veterans.
Accused Soldier Is A Prisoner To PTSD
(Los Angeles Times) Now Eisenhauer is inmate No. 1304704 in Raleigh's Central Prison. He faces 17 counts of attempted murder of firefighters and police officers, nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and other charges. No firefighters or police were hit. In an unusual legal move, the soldier's lawyer, Mark L. Waple, and mother have asked the military to take over prosecution of his case. They say Central Prison cannot provide the treatment the Pentagon mandates for soldiers diagnosed with PTSD only the military can.
Machinists At Lockheed To Vote On Agreement To End A Strike
(New York Times) Lockheed Martin said it had reached a tentative agreement Saturday night with the machinists union to end a nine-week strike at its fighter jet plant in Fort Worth and two other sites.
Shipyard Executive: Defense Cuts Will Hurt, Just Not Right Away
(Newport News Daily Press) Newport News Shipbuilding has several years worth of work under contract, a buffer against the deep defense cuts that some defense contractors are bracing for in January, according to a company executive.
Defense Department Generates Most Advertising Contracts
(Federal Times) Federal agencies awarded more than $750 million in advertising contracts in fiscal 2011, according to USAspending.gov. Defense Department contracts, worth nearly $474 million, accounted for nearly two-thirds of that spending.
A Weapon We Can't Control
(New York Times) It is one thing to write viruses and lock them away safely for future use should circumstances dictate it. It is quite another to deploy them in peacetime. Stuxnet has effectively fired the starting gun in a new arms race that is very likely to lead to the spread of similar and still more powerful offensive cyberweaponry across the Internet.
Nine Dragons Stir Up S. China Sea
(Singapore Straits Times) CHINA could easily grab control of the disputed Scarborough Shoal fishing grounds in the South China Sea using its increasingly modern and powerful armed forces.
China Starts To Claim The Seas
(Wall Street Journal) The U.S. sends a signal of weakness over the Scarborough Shoal.
Obama's Arab Spring Mess
(Washington Post) In short, Obama has made a difference during the Arab Spring mostly by not making a difference. By failing to decisively use U.S. aid, diplomatic influence and military power to support the removal of dictators and the beginning of democratic transformation, he has helped tip the balance toward the old regimes or chaos.
The Mendacious Movement To Free A Convicted Spy
(Wall Street Journal) There is no cloud about Pollard's guilt, no illusion of his innocence. And he did not spy for Zion out of idealistic motives. This is a retrospective improvisation. In fact, before he decided to deliver reams of sensitive intelligence and defense documents to Israel's security apparatus, he was negotiating with Pakistanyes, Islamic and Judeophobic Pakistanto do similar chores for it.
Lift The Veil On The Spending Cuts
(New York Times) The critics are right that taking an across-the-board cleaver to the Pentagon is bad policy, but that is because across-the-board cuts in general are bad policy. They never seem to mention that the cuts are matched by an equally devastating slash at domestic spending $500 billion from education, law enforcement, environmental protection, and health and safety programs, among hundreds of others.
Pentagon's Combat Pay Fixes Fall Short
(Army Times) The Pentagon's Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation seeks to bring a new element of fairness to combat pay and makes great strides. But the plan falls short of being a total solution.
Cyber Heritage: Jason Healey,
director of the Atlantic Council's cyber statecraft initiative, said the Air Force must be both air- and cyber-minded. "We learn heritage to understand the future, but we ignore this when it comes to cyber," said Healey during a June 22 address in Arlington, Va., sponsored by AFA's Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies. He added: "I'm not sure why." Healey recounted what he said was the first US case of cyber espionage and the Air Force's critical role in halting the theft. It was in 1986, when an astrophysicist-turned-system-administrator discovered an unauthorized user on a laboratory computer system. Air Force special agent Jim Christie traced the hacker to Germany. The hacker was selling secrets to the KGB. Still, most airmen haven't heard the tale, said Healey. He also called on the Air Force to stop referring to cyberspace as a new domain. Myths that cyber attacks are lightning-fast and strategically cataclysmic still abound in the force, making the attacks hard to systematically address, he noted. Back in March, Healey spoke at AFA's CyberFutures Conference. For that coverage, see: Cyber History Ignored and Beyond Government Defending Itself.
undefinedSeth Miller
Cannon's New Aircraft Fleet Grows: Cannon AFB, N.M., last week received its seventh new-built MC-130J Commando II aircraft, announced manufacturer Lockheed Martin. The special-mission airplane arrived on June 20 direct from the company's production facility at Marietta, Ga., states the company's June 21 release. Assigned to Cannon's 522nd Special Operations Squadron, aircraft no. 5695 will support covert infiltration and recovery, aerial refueling, and clandestine resupply, like Cannon's other new MC-130Js. This airframe is the seventh of 11 aircraft slated for delivery to Cannon, according to Lockheed Martin. Air Force Special Operations Command is procuring the MC-130Js to replace legacy MC-130s in the fleet.
New Math and the F-35: It's not yet clear precisely how the possible budget sequester would affect the F-35 strike fighter program, said Larry Lawson, executive vice president of the company's Aeronautics business area. But it would certainly cause Lockheed Martin to cut workforce and the unit cost of the airplane would go up, said Lawson in an interview. He expressed frustration with the situation. "We're trying to do the math on this and it's very challenging," he said, given a lack of guidance on how to comply with the Budget Control Act. However, the impact "could be very, very significant against the current contracts," said Lawson. "You're not taking 10 percent off the total" program cost, but "10 percent off what's left." Since the aircraft build rate is "relatively flat" for a few years, the sequester would force a reduction in rate, and "that would have an adverse impact on cost," since volume drives efficiency, noted Lawson during the June 19 interview. It's a sure bet that "we'll reduce employees" if the sequester happens, but how they'd be drawn from across Aeronautics is still hard to figure, he said.
undefinedJohn A. Tirpak
Don't Mess With Lightning: The armed services have been remarkably disciplined about not fiddling with the requirements of the F-35 strike fighter, said Larry Lawson, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, in an interview. "They've been pretty solid on holding requirements steady," said Lawson. "Together" with the services, he said, "we've had to flex around some of the demands that have manifested themselves in the actual fielding, for example, of the [information technology] systems," and that has driven some requirements changes. But, "the government's done a very good job, I think, of sticking with the fundamentals," said Lawson. Lockheed Martin has added a new facility and 100 new software engineers to stay on top of the millions of lines of code that the F-35 uses, he told the Daily Report June 19.
undefinedJohn A. Tirpak
Not an Issue This Time: One of the reasons Congress barred Japanundefinedor any other ally, for that matterundefinedfrom buying the F-22 Raptor was concern over attempts to back-engineer the aircraft and develop competitive products. Apparently, that's not an issue with the F-35 strike fighter. Larry Lawson, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, told the Daily Report that the US government has worked agreements with Japan on the F-35. "
When Red and Blue Meet Black and White: Pitting defense expenditures against entitlement spending doesn't add up, said Todd Harrison, senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. There's an "underlying structural deficit" that the United States has to address to resolve the current budget quandary, said Harrison during a June 21 press briefing in Washington, D.C. In 2000, the Congressional Budget Office expected a surplus of $5.6 trillion in government revenues by 2011, he said. Instead, by 2011, the United States was indebted $11 trillion, he said. Defense spending was only 16 percent higher than the CBO projected when CBO expected a surplus. Entitlement spending was only higher by 4 percent. The largest discrepancy between the CBO's projections and the reality was a revenue decrease of 52%, a combination of the Bush-era tax cuts and the Great Recession, said Harrison. He said there's no easy solution; austerity calls for concessions from the political left and right. The US government has to have revenues to protect and provide for its population; the revenues have to come from somewhere, he said. "The political parties change," said Harrison, "but the math stays the same." (For more Harrison coverage, read Learn from the Past.)
undefinedSeth Miller
A Third Track with Iran: Sanctions and cyber espionage, such as the Flame and Stuxnet computer viruses, don't seem to be deterring Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, several outside policy experts told the House Armed Services Committee last week.
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Godspeed all.................Wayne
A welcoming home for our Troops.
