Morning Coffee: Big DoD Cuts Still Miss Target

Morning Coffee is a robust blend of links to news around the internet concerning the Naval Air Station Patuxent River economic community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Leader’s owners or staff.

DoD will submit a $496 billion 2015 budget request next week, according to Defense News, $115 billion more than sequestration spending caps. This does meet the spending threshold to prevent an automatic across-the-board cut, The National Journal explains and goes on to detail the likely path of the Pentagon’s FY15 budget proposal including obstacles to an addendum DoD $26 billion wish list.

The FY15 budget proposal closes military bases, reduces the Army to pre-WWII size,  cuts healthcare co-pays and deductibles, and reduces military family housing subsidies and low-cost goods, reports The Hill. The proposed budget would keep an aircraft carrier but sideline half of the Navy’s cruiser fleet and delay the Navy’s version of the F-35. The Navy Times details budget impacts on the Navy, which is spared the force-structure cuts of other services and ends up keeping a carrier force of 11 flattops.

Boeing machinists in St. Louis voted overwhelmingly to buyouts for tenured workers and some lowered entry wages to help the maker of the F/A-18 Super Hornet expand its business, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Hornet program is set to end in 2016, replaced by Lockheed’s F-35 fighter jets.

Durability testing of the F-35 stopped in late September after cracks in three of six bulkheads occurred. Although not disclosed until this month the potential year delay was known in advance of DoD’s plans drop eight F-35s from the original 42, reported Bloomberg, which quoted an e-mailed statement from Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition, saying, “We consider this significant but by no means catastrophic.”

Crediting an “optimistic”  story in Reuters on Lockheed’s future in unmanned systems  for the company’s continued stock gains last week, “up an astounding 85 percentage points over the past year,” The Motley Fool reports of the Bethesda, Md., based firm, but nevertheless goes on to caution investors about Lockheed’s “underwhelming execution.”

Reuters also reports, Australia will buy eight of Boeing’s P-8A Poseidon long-range spy planes for $3.6 billion. Increasing maritime tensions among the Asia-Pacific nations is proving a growth opportunity for American weapons manufacturers looking to offset cuts in US military procurement budgets.

The Dutch have let loose a robot dragonfly, the smallest, flapping winged drones weigh in at less than an ounce, have 3D vision, can avoid obstacles and are autonomous, reports DefenceTalk, suggesting immediate uses where large-winged autonomous aircraft are inappropriate, such as in orchards to examine fruit or overhead audiences at concerts.

St. Mary’s County officials argued last week in the Maryland General Assembly to delay for one year construction of about 25 wind turbines between 300 and 400 feet in height on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The turbines will interfere with NAS:PAX  radar testing. The significance of this is not as readily apparent to those in Somerset County as in St. Mary’s, according to a report of the hearing in DelmarvaNow. Joe Mangini, executive director of the Princess Anne Chamber of Commerce is quoted, “I’m in a little bit of a bewilderment that a wind turbine project would actually force a base to close.” Eastern Shore supporters of  the turbines see the new wind-industry as bringing needed jobs to the area and believe a one-year delay will kill the project. Somerset County is the only NAS:PAX River impacted county to refuse to participate in the Joint Land Use Study.

Retired RADM Glen W. “Corky” Lenox, PMA-265’s first program manager (1976-80) toured this month  Air Test and Evaluation (VX) 23’s Hangar 201 at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.

and met up with Capt. Frank Morley, current program manager for Naval Air Systems Command’s F/A-18 and EA-18G Program Office (PMA-265). Thirty-five years and nine program managers separate the two leaders’ tenure, reports NAVAIR News.