More Hornets & F-35s: Navy’s Unfunded Priorities
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Reuters reports 12 of Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets and eight Lockheed Martin F-35s ranked among the unfunded priorities in the 2016 budget the Navy sent to Congress.
Fed Biz describes rare earth elements and their compulsory presence in US weapons, specifically the JSF. Nearly all of them are located and manufactured in China. A 60 Minutes segment prompted the story by Washington Business Journal’s Jill R. Aitoro.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), addressing the House in support of military aide to Ukraine, said Vladimir Putin has broken the 1975 Helsinki agreement crafted when the congressman served as Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. “[T]he then-Soviet Union – and 34 other nations signed a document which said that you could not change borders by other than peaceful means,” Rep. Hoyer said
DefSec Ash Carter hosted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, at the Pentagon Monday. A ceremony, also attended by Secretary of State John Kerry, included a tribute to U.S. troops, their families, civilians, and thousands of contractors who have served in Afghanistan, reports Defense.gov. President Ghani is scheduled to speak to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. The Hill reports, defense officials confirming that President Obama will not reduce the 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan this year and that the Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan and Jalalabad Airfield in eastern Afghanistan will remain open through 2015.
Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL) chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, not only believes top VA officials should be fired, he can’t understand how they can “even walk around the building holding their head up” when they are nearly $1.5 billion over budget on construction of a hospital slated to cost $328 million, reports The Hill.
In June the first ship-board tests of a new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System will “start shooting dead loads into the James River. The ship is pointed bow out. It will be the first time in 60-years that we have shot something off a ship using something other than a steam catapult,” RADM Thomas Moore, Program Executive Officer, Carriers, told Defense Tech.
