Military.com
An advocacy group for part-time troops launched a new tool aiming to measure what it means to be a military-friendly employer as companies like to tout their support of service members with few metrics to back up those claims. Guard members and Reserve troops often have to balance full-time civilian jobs with having to take time off work to perform their military duties.
Defense News
As it expands its fleet of sensor-loaded Gulfstream jets, the Italian Air Force has set its sights on acquiring the Compass Call electronic-attack variant now being test-flown for the United States, the service’s chief has said. Italy already operates two Gulfstream G550 business jets converted for early warning missions and has ordered two more with signals-intelligence capabilities, as well as six other unconverted G550s, which are yet to be officially given a role.
Defense News
The White House released a 10-year Arctic strategy that emphasizes deterring increased Russian and Chinese activity in the region as global warming rapidly melts the Polar ice caps, drastically transforming the environment. The new strategy identifies four pillars including an enhanced U.S. military presence, increased exercises with partner countries to “deter aggression in the Arctic, especially from Russia,” NORAD air defense modernization, and additional Coast Guard icebreakers, as well as better mapping and charting of the region’s waters and weather.
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Foreign Affairs
In the post-Cold War era, the Western world has suffered no shortage of grand theories of history and international relations. The settings and actors may change, but the global geopolitical drama goes on: Variants of realism and liberalism compete to explain and predict state behavior; scholars debate whether the world is witnessing the end of history, a clash of civilizations, or something else entirely. And it is no surprise that the question that now attracts more analytical attention than any other is the rise of China under President Xi Jinping and the challenge it presents to American power. In the run-up to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, as Xi has maneuvered to consolidate his power and secure an unprecedented third term, Western analysts have sought to decode the worldview that drives him and his ambitions for China.
Breaking Defense
In 2019, the Pentagon announced the unit cost of the most common F-35 variant would fall below $80 million in production lots 13 and 14—a long-held cost target for prime contractor Lockheed Martin that is comparable to an advanced fourth-generation fighter. But with inflation, the impacts of COVID-19, and smaller annual production volume than what was originally forecast, it’s unclear whether the F-35 will fall below the $80 million unit cost ever again.
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Forbes
"[Twenty-one years ago], U.S. security leaders first employed a weapon off a remotely piloted aircraft/drone in combat—Predator MQ-1 tail number 3034, callsign Wildfire 34. Perhaps the Biden administration saw a certain poetic justice in choosing [the anniversary] to implement a new classified policy institutionalizing strict limits on counterterrorism drone strikes out of warzones. As an air commander in multiple wars, including that opening night of the war in Afghanistan, I can attest there is nothing poetic or just about this new policy. Guidance that requires President Biden to add terrorists to a list for 'direct action,' as well as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s new Department of Defense Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, appear to be aimed at driving military policy back toward a zero civilian casualty standard. Additionally, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in February of this year on drone strikes signaled the committee leadership’s intent to also limit their use. In doing so, these policies and screeds call for restrictions that far exceed the standards of international law. We know from experience that such policies will prolong conflicts, rather than end them, and that longer wars inevitably cause greater civilian pain," writes retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
Defense One
As Russian officials up their nuclear saber-rattling and the Pentagon games out what might happen if Russia were to use one of its 2,000 or so lower-yield nuclear weapons, experts caution that even a relatively small nuclear blast would have far-reaching political and environmental effects. But it would not help Russia win the war.
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Business Insider
Why can’t Sweden’s Saab export its advanced Gripen fighter? It’s America’s fault, Saab’s CEO says. Because of the U.S.’s clout in the international defense market, other nations are much more likely to buy its aircraft, such as the F-35. “It is extremely frustrating, to say the least, and I can say that it is not about the [Gripen] product that we have developed and manufactured,” Saab CEO Micael Johansson told reporters in August. “If it had been a completely level playing field in terms of not talking about security, politics, and other areas, then I think we would have been much better off.”
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Stars & Stripes
Airmen will need to brush up on their sparkling prose this fall. The Air Force announced that it is doing away with bullet points for its Airman award submissions in favor of short narratives, effective immediately. The new submissions, dubbed performance statements, should “consist of plain-language words, [be] efficient, increase clarity and improve the ability to understand an airman’s performance correctly and equitably,” the Air Force said in a short guidance update.
One More Thing
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Stars & Stripes
A National Park Service study cites 24 properties potentially worthy of National Historic Landmark consideration because of their “significant connections” to the Cold War. The properties range from Camp David in Maryland and a Nike missile facility in San Francisco to the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific and a B-29 bomber that rests under water in Nevada.
