The launch of the Type 75 big-deck amphib in Shanghai. PLAN Photo
Questions about China’s defense spending, programs and systems – and the Pentagon’s response – dominated a Wednesday House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing on future U.S. defense spending trends. Read More
The following is the Oct. 30, 2019 Government Accountability Office report, Space Command and Control: Comprehensive Planning and Oversight Could Help DOD Acquire Critical Capabilities and Address Challenges. Read More
United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket successfully launched the U.S. Air Force X-37B space plane on May 20, 2015. ULA Photo
The House panel focused on national security space activities is set to explore reforms how the military uses space and could call for the creation of a new command or agency as early as next year, legislators said during a Tuesday hearing. Read More
The following is the May 13, 2016 Congressional Research Service report, National Security Space Launch at a Crossroads. Read More
Retired Marine Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright speaking at CSIS on Monday. CSIS Screengrab
The U.S. needs to rethink how it develops its future space assets from less purpose built platforms to more adaptive and agile learning machines, retired Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright said on Monday. Read More
Launch of Atlas V MUOS-2, July 19, 2013 from Cape Canaveral AFS. US Navy Photo
Challenges the United States faces in space “are on a par with cyber,” the chairman of a key U.S. House panel said as witnesses described China’s advances in an area where “some vulnerabilities we just can’t escape”—acknowledging the two nations are now engaged in a “long-time competition” that cannot be firewalled from other domains. Read More
Scott Carpenter
Scott Carpenter was one the original Mercury 7 astronauts and a former Naval aviator. Carpenter died on Thursday. He was 88. The following was a 2001 interview in Naval History magazine.
In his Aurora 7 spacecraft on 24 May 1962, one of the original Mercury 7 space pioneers became the second American to orbit the Earth. After a rather rocky flight, overshooting his splashdown target by 250 miles, he was assigned to monitor the design and development of the lunar module for the Apollo project. He then took leave from the space program in the spring of 1965 to serve as an aquanaut in the U.S. Navy’s SeaLab II project, spending 30 days 205 feet below the surface off the coast of La Jolla, California. “The first person to explore both of humanity’s great remaining frontiers” talked recently with Naval History editor Fred L. Schultz between sessions of a Naval Forces Under the Sea symposium sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Naval Academy. Read More
Capt. Jim Lovell, USN (Ret.) speaking at the Naval Academy on Thursday. US Naval Institute Photo
The following is the on scene report for the U.S. Naval Institute’s 2013 annual history conference, “Past, Present, and Future of Human Space Flight,” with Capt. James A. Lovell, USN (Ret.), Capt. Robert L. Crippen, USN (Ret.), Col. Robert Cabana, USMC (Ret.) and Capt. Ken Ham, USN. The panel was moderated by former Good Morning America host David Hartman. Read More
Aegis-class destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) launches a standard missile (SM) 3 Blk IA during a 2009 exercise. US Navy Photo
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency successfully conducted the first live test Wednesday of a satellite missile tracking system designed to provide ship and shore-based batteries greater range to destroy rogue missiles, MDA officials told USNI News Wednesday.
At 4:10 a.m. EST, a missile from USS Lake Erie (CG-70) successfully intercepted a “medium-range ballistic missile target,” launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, on Kauai, Hawaii using Space Tracking and Surveillance System-Demonstrators (STSS-D) with a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IA guided missile, MDA spokesperson Rick Lehner said.
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