As of now, Lockheed Martin's production facility in Ft. Worth, Texas, has not been impacted by the new coronavirus. (Defense Contract Management Agency)
Defense News: We asked defense companies how they’re impacted by the coronavirus. Here’s what they said.
WASHINGTON — Like everyone else in America, the defense industry is still reeling from how quickly the new coronavirus, known as COVID-19, went from a potential issue to a city-shuttering pandemic.
But as major economic hubs like San Francisco and New York City struggle with curfews and restrictions on public gatherings, companies — and the Defense Department — still appear to be sorting out if any shutdowns related to work are imminent.
Read more ....
Military And Intelligence News Briefs -- March 18, 2020
Trump’s $46 billion coronavirus aid request includes $8 billion for the Pentagon -- Defense News
Second military exercise in Africa canceled within week over coronavirus -- The Hill
Future destroyer USS Delbert D. Black completes acceptance trials -- UPI
Cost of upgrading Arleigh Burke destroyers may not be worth it, says US Navy -- Defense News
Honeywell nets $72.8M for auxiliary power units on Navy aircraft -- UPI
U.S. Space Force gets first offensive weapon, a satellite jammer -- UPI
The Navy Wants to Transform Its P-8 Poseidon Patrol Planes Into Bombers -- National Interest
America’s Largest Military Bases Around the World -- 24/7 Wall Street
Spanish parliament approves North Macedonia’s NATO membership bid -- Defense News
Equipment delays threatening UK military capability: report -- Reuters
Bill sets five-year limit to prosecute UK armed forces who served abroad -- The Guardian
Former Canadian special-forces commander named military's sixth vice-chief in four years -- CTV News
Russia's Armata T-14 Tank is More Than the Next Generation of Main Battle Tank -- National Interest
Russia’s top-secret weapons for new nuclear submarines: what we know so far -- RBTH
Russian Electronic Warfare in Donbas: Training or Preparation for a Wider Attack? -- Jamestown Foundation
High suicide rate plagues Russian military, lawmaker says -- Barents Observer
Russia's Su-57 Stealth Fighter Has Problems: Engines, Oil, and Weak Adversaries -- National Interest
A Russian military helicopter accidentally opened fire on an apartment building -- Task & Purpose
Russia Is Ready for a Nuclear, Chemical or Biological Weapons-Based War -- National Interest
Russian Military Science Promotes Innovation in Future Warfare -- Jamestown Foundation
How China’s military took a frontline role in the coronavirus crisis -- SCMP
Beyond “Conventional Wisdom”: Evaluating the PLA’s South China Sea Bases in Operational Context -- War On The Rocks
Exclusive: China's internal security force on frontlines of Hong Kong protests -- Reuters
China's Experts Propose to Use Electromagnetic Weapons Against US Warships in S China Sea - Reports -- Sputnik
China’s new Long March-7A rocket fails first launch -- SCMP
Taiwan again scrambles jets to warn off Chinese air force -- Reuters
Taipei says Chinese military aircraft flew night exercise across Taiwan Strait -- SCMP
Sino-Cambodian military drill begins -- The Star
Indian Army now world’s largest ground force as China halves strength on modernisation push -- The Print
2020: The Year North Korea Starts Testing ICBMs Again? -- National Interest
Shake-up looms in Kenya's military as terms of senior officers end -- Daily Nation
2 comments:
Can't believe that war planners didn't have a scenario for that and a model to predict the impact on the defense industry, especially during a rivalry with China, come on! Who is running the show? :D
Don’t just blame President Trump. Blame me — and all the other Republicans who aided and abetted and, yes, benefited from protecting a political party that has become dangerous to America. Some of us knew better.
But we built this moment. And then we looked the other way.
Many of us heard a warning sound we chose to ignore, like that rattle in your car you hear but figure will go away. Now we’re broken down, with plenty of time to think about what should have been done.
The failures of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis
can be traced directly to some of the toxic fantasies now dear to the Republican Party. Here are a few: Government is bad. Establishment experts are overrated or just plain wrong. Science is suspect. And we can go it alone, the world be damned.
More coverage of the coronavirus pandemic
All of these are wrong, of course. But we didn’t get here overnight. It took practice.
Long before Trump, the Republican Party adopted as a key article of faith that more government was bad. We worked overtime to squeeze it and shrink it, to drown it in the bathtub
, as anti-tax activist Grover Norquist liked to say. But somewhere along the way, it became, “all government is bad.” Now we are in a crisis that can be solved only by massive government intervention. That’s awkward.
Next, somehow, the party of idealistic Teddy Roosevelt, pragmatic Bob Dole and heroic John McCain became anti-intellectual, by which I mean, almost reflexively opposed to knowledge and expertise. We began to distrust the experts and put faith in, well, quackery. It was 2013 when former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal said the Republican Party “must stop being the stupid party.”
By 2016, the party had embraced as its nominee a reality-TV host who later suggested that perhaps the noise from windmills causes cancer
.
The Republican Party has gone from admiring William F. Buckley Jr., an Ivy League intellectual, to viewing higher education as a left-wing conspiracy to indoctrinate the young. In retribution, we started defunding education. Never mind that Republican leaders are among the most highly educated on the planet; it’s just that they now feel compelled to embrace ignorance as a cost of doing business. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, as an example, denounces “coastal elites”
while holding degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School and having served as a Supreme Court clerk.
The GOP’s relationship with science has resembled some kind of Frankenstein experiment: Let’s see what happens when we play with the chemistry set! Conservatives have spent years trying to cut funds for basic science and research, lamenting government seed money for nearly every budding technology and then hoping for the best. In the weeks ahead, it’s not some fiery, anti-Washington populist with an XM radio gig who is going to save folks’ lives; it is more likely to be someone who has been studying this stuff for decades, almost certainly at some point with federal help or outright patronage.
Finally, there is the populist GOP distrust and dislike of the other, the foreign. Yes, it is annoying that the Chinese didn’t come clean and explain everything to us from the start. But it appears that a Swiss company
is helping to jump-start us in testing; and it is a German company that American officials reportedly tried to lure
to the United States recently to help develop a vaccine for the virus. We talk about how we need to be independent even as we do all kinds of things that prove we aren’t.
The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.
What is happening now is the inevitable result of a party that embraced fear, weaponized xenophobia and regarded facts as dangerous, left-wing landmines that must be avoided.
Over the past few years, when ramming through conservative judges, Republicans have crowed, “Elections have consequences.” That’s true.
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