The West’s focus on building Ukraine’s war machine has shifted significantly to repairing and sustaining those weapons, a recognition that the war will grind on for months and years to come, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official said. Even before Ukraine launched its counteroffensive this summer, allies were becoming increasingly worried that efforts to keep donated equipment up and running were falling behind battlefield needs.
A key senator is refusing to lift his longstanding hold on the sale of 40 Block 70 F-16 fighter jets to Turkey despite the Biden administration’s announcement last week that it wants to move forward with the deal. The $20 billion potential sale also includes 80 modernization kits. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the sale would proceed last week after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced at the NATO summit in Lithuania that Turkey would ratify Sweden’s NATO accession bid. But Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., told Defense News on July 18 that he continues to use his position as Foreign Relations Committee chairman to block the sale.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall recently served up a blunt rebuke of Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold on military promotion nominations, saying American service members have been taken “hostage” amid a policy dispute. “That is using—holding hostage, if you will, our military people for a political policy objective that’s not being attained by other means,” Kendall said during the Potomac Officers Club 2023 Air Force Summit on July 18, though he did not mention Tuberville by name. “That’s not the right thing to do.”
The U.S. Space Force last week announced plans to increase the number of providers in the national security launch program. Officials said July 19 the decision was driven by a projected growth in demand for satellite launches and concerns about a shortage of heavy-lift rockets later this decade. “The manifest is growing. So in Phase 3 we’re refining our strategy,” said Col. Douglas Pentecost, deputy program executive officer of assured access to space at the Space Systems Command.
A cavernous facility in the Mojave desert free of sound and radio waves has tested some of the Air Force’s most advanced aircraft for more than two decades—and now is heading off mission-ending problems with next-gen satellites. Edwards Air Force Base is home to the largest anechoic test facility in the world, which provides a virtual open-air range for the Pentagon’s platforms to test radio frequency systems.
The U.S. military is failing to speedily develop and deploy electronic warfare equipment amid a global competition for electromagnetic spectrum supremacy, according to a congressman who served in the Air Force for more than two decades. After years of putting electronic warfare on “autopilot,” troops’ ability to now jam and spoof and spy from afar has “withered,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and former director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance strategy, plans, doctrine and force development.
The way modern Airmen and Guardians prepare for the future fight is changing, with live, virtual, and constructive training offering new ways to practice essential skills. Learn more about how virtual and augmented reality, simulated environments, and other technologies are helping train warfighters everywhere from the cockpit to the maintenance depot.
The growing relationship and collaboration between China and Russia’s militaries worries the U.S. military’s top officer in the Pacific. “Today, a Russian and Chinese maritime task force is doing a combined patrol. We'll see where that ends up, whether it's off the Aleutian Islands, whether it's in the Philippine Sea … or whether it goes off the west coast of the United States. So, their exercises have increased, their operations have increased,” Adm. John Aquilino, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said July 18 at an Aspen Security Forum panel. “I only see the cooperation getting stronger, and, boy, that's concerning. That's a dangerous world.”
Prototypes associated with the Pentagon’s Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER) are deploying as part of the Northern Edge joint training exercise series that unfolds biannually, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu said on July 19. Via RDER, the Defense Department is funding various technology prototypes—that notably fill capability gaps identified by combatant commanders, the Joint Staff and the services—at an accelerated pace.
U.S. officials scrambled on July 19 to determine the fate of an American soldier who made an unauthorized crossing into North Korea, handing Washington a new crisis in its dealings with the nuclear-armed state. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a regular briefing the Pentagon had "reached out" to counterparts in North Korea's Korean People's Army about the soldier, Private Travis King, but added: "My understanding is that those communications have not yet been answered."
Members of the U.S. Senate are pressing the Department of Defense to adopt more uniform policies to limit the ability of third parties, including the general public, to track U.S. military flights via their Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast transponders. Senators have expressed particular concern about the current ease with which aircraft carrying senior officials can be monitored. If these measures become systemically implemented, it could severely limit the ability for the public to track aerial movements of U.S. military aircraft.
Before radar-guided missiles, there were pigeon-guided missiles. Almost. During World War II, the United States War Department amassed a vast arsenal of bombs and rockets. The more firepower, the better, as they say, but the U.S. military still had to figure out how to use it effectively. You see, in those days, munitions didn’t come equipped with guidance systems, which meant they couldn’t lock onto targets and were thus unreliable for conducting precision strikes.