(July 22, 2009) Officials from United States-based Lockheed Martin and Hyundai Heavy Industries said yesterday they would jointly produce an Aegis midsized high-tech guided missile vessel and sell it to a third country. [read more]

(July 06, 2009) President Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev on Monday agreed a target of cutting vast Cold War arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads by around a third from current levels to 1,500-1,675 each. [read more]

North Korea fired several short-range missiles toward the Sea of Japan on Saturday. The first two missiles were fired about 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., Yonhap reported. Another missile was launched about 10:45 a.m., the agency reported. A fourth one came some time after that. [read more]

Over the last decade global military spendng has increased by 45 percent and the United States, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea account for more than 65 percent of it. [read more]

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, in a rare teleconference on Wednesday with a U.S. think tank, urged the United States “to not hesitate” on sensitive arms sales to the island, an appeal that came as Taipei seeks to buy advanced fighter aircraft from Washington. [read more]

9 APR 2009
by Rick Whittington
The military budget is going up slightly, but big contractors like Lockhead ad Rayheon won’t get the spoils.
A major shift in America’s defense posture is underway. No simple lane change, the FY10 military budget sets the stage for long-lasting change. The new president is true to his word, and is already [...]

More than a decade ago, long before President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus package into law, taxpayer money began flowing to another stimulus program in Groton, Conn. Since then, the project has created tens of thousands of high-paying jobs around the nation and helped keep a U.S. industry afloat. But despite its vast economic impact, the end product is often hard to spot as it’s usually more than 800 feet under water.

President Obama has recently threatened to rescind the “blank check” the Bush administration offered to big defense contractors. So now is the time when all that planning by Lockheed Martin and the other major arms manufacturers comes into play. One of that company’s major weapons systems, the F-22 Raptor, is potentially on the chopping block. How convenient then that, in the midst of an economic meltdown, Lockheed just happens to have more than 1,000 parts suppliers for that jet carefully scattered across 44 states, all of which, as far as I know, have representatives in Congress. This is pretty typical…

Often what is hidden in our world is so simply because no cares or thinks to look. Yes, a fair amount of attention has recently been given to the staggering new Pentagon budget request, the largest since World War II, that the Bush administration has just submitted to Congress for fiscal year 2009. It comes in at $515.4 billion – a 7.5% hike for an already bloated Pentagon…