SecArmy nominee today?

Trying out a blog post via BlackBerry, so we’ll see how this turns out.

Politico reports the following:

“President Obama today will appoint Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) as Secretary of the Army, according to an administration official.”

I’ll go ahead and note that I know basically nothing about McHugh except that he’s the ranking member on House Armed Services and Ft. Drum (home of the 10th Mountain Division) is in his district, though I’m sure this is going to be covered pretty extensively by other people today.

Sitting through a really interesting briefing by a dude from State Pol-Mil bureau about Foreign Military Finance and the 1206 program, so hopefully that will spur me to write a little bit this week and examine the way we’re building military and CT capabilities in partner nations.

Japan to the (USAF’s) rescue on F-22?

Judah Grunstein points us in the direction of Defense Industry Daily on the subject of the potential international sale of F-22, more specifically to Japan. The Raptor is in many ways the perfect aircraft for an island nation at pains to stress its lack of offensive ambition: F-22 is not a strike aircraft, but rather an extremely capable interceptor, or what amounts to a badass armed-to-the-teeth flying sensor network.