September 23rd, 2013 By Lexington institute - defencetalk.com

It’s official. The leadership of this country including the major media outlets have lost their collective minds. Yesterday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before the House Armed Services Committee that if sequestration continues, they could not say with confidence that the U.S. military could successfully handle even one serious conflict!

Not a war on the Korean Peninsula, a conflict over the Strait of Hormuz, the defense of Japan or Taiwan from attack or even meet our obligations under the NATO Treaty to defend Europe.

According to BreakingDefense, “each of the Joint Chiefs was asked by Rep. Randy Forbes, chairman of the HASC seapower and power projection forces subcommittee, if they could execute the military’s basic Strategic Planning Guidance, which requires that U.S. forces be able to handle one enemy and to deter another. Down the line he went. Odierno: no; Greenert: no; Welsh: no. Amos, yes, but.”

So the Army, Navy and Air Force leaders all said they will not be able to meet the basic requirement for the U.S. military. The Marine Corps Commandant, General Amos said “yes, but”; however his service’s mission is so different from the rest. Moreover, without adequate support from his brothers in arms, the yes is irrelevant.

Was this story on the front page of the nation’s major newspapers? No.

Was it a lead story by the morning television news programs? It was not.

Did talk radio bring it up? Not as far as I could tell, channel surfing today.

America is disarming and no one, including the Commander in Chief, seems to care. Remember, sequestration was a White House idea. When his military commanders tell Congress they will not be able to defend this country if sequestration continues, you would think it would be worth at least a mention by President Obama. Nope.

Actually, this is not quite true. Our current and future enemies care. They are waiting for us to sink into the depths of budget insanity. Then they will have clear paths to achieving their goals, be it reunification of the Korean Peninsula on Pyongyang’s terms, dominance by Beijing of Asia, control of the strategic Persian Gulf by Iran or the recreation of the Russian empire.

Our current allies care. Don’t think for minute that Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Taiwan and half a dozen other countries won’t see the collapse of the U.S. military and the de facto termination of U.S. security guarantees as reason enough to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Northeast Asia alone could have five or six nuclear powers before the decade is over. That should give everyone in Washington a warm feeling, right?

By the way, if the U.S. military cannot say with confidence that they could win even one major conventional conflict that would leave this country with only two options: surrender or nuclear deterrence. We would have to go back to the bad old days of Massive Retaliation. It means modernizing aging and obsolescing strategic and theater nuclear forces, abandoning current arms control agreements in order to increase both the size and sophistication of our new nuclear force structure and living again under the sword of Damocles.

Anyone want to talk about what the Joint Chiefs just said? Anyone care about the impending implosion of the U.S. Military? Anyone want to end the madness and find a solution to sequestration? Apparently not.

June 5, 2013 by Brendan McGarry - defensetech.org

A Republican-led defense panel in Congress easily rejected a proposal to withhold most funding for the F-35 fighter jet next year.

The House Armed Services Committee on June 5 voted 51–10 against the amendment sponsored by Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., while debating its version of the 2014 defense authorization bill. The legislation sets policy goals and spending targets for fiscal 2014, which begins Oct. 1.

Calling it a “good government issue,” Duckworth proposed freezing procurement funding for the Joint Strike Fighter program until Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel certified that the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin Corp., fixed problems with the aircraft’s software and several pieces of hardware, including the helmet-mounted display, fuel dump system and arresting hook.

“I want contractors to be held accountable and I want to fix the technical problems before we give them another $6 billion of taxpayer money,” she said during the hearing. “There’s nothing wrong with flying before we buy. In fact, most of us test drive cars before we [buy].”

The Defense Department next year plans to spend $8.4 billion to buy 29 F-35 Lightning II aircraft, including 19 for the Air Force, six for the Marine Corps and four for the Navy. The funding includes $6.4 billion in procurement, $1.9 billion in research and development and $187 million in spares.

Duckworth said she has “serious concerns” that buying production models of the planes while they’re still being tested — a practice known in acquisition parlance as concurrency — has led to developmental problems and a 68-percent surge in the projected cost of the program.

The Joint Strike Fighter is the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program, with an estimated cost of $391 billion to develop and build 2,457 aircraft.

Duckworth cited comments made last year by Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, in which he criticized his own department’s decision to begin production of the single-engine jet years before its first test flight as “acquisition malpractice.”

Many of the aircraft’s most vaunted technologies “remain untested and unready,” Duckworth said. Flight testing of the software package designed for initial aircraft operations, known as Block 2B, was only 5 percent complete as of last month, she said.

Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the panel’s Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee, said the amendment would effectively halt funding for the F-35 program, triggering delays and additional cost increases.

“We believe that we address the issues with the F-35 in the mark,” he said.

Turner was referring to language his subcommittee drafted in the legislation that would order the Pentagon to establish an independent team of subject matter experts to review software development for the program and submit a report to lawmakers by March 3, 2014.

Turner also cited as evidence of progress in the program a March report from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of congress, subtitled, “Outlook Is Improved, but Long-Term Affordability Is a Major Concern.”

The Pentagon last week announced that the Marine Corps will begin operational flights of the F-35 fighter jet in 2015, followed by the Air Force in 2016 and the Navy in 2019.