Thursday, October 10, 2024
Defense Department officials feel the group of six "en-route" air bases DOD uses for access to Europe are the key factor in ensuring rapid wartime access to potential combat zones, according to a General Accounting Office report released today.
The government cannot adopt a "business as usual" approach to the budget by simply heaping homeland security and war expenses atop existing spending plans, the Office of Management and Budget director said today.
The Air Force is investigating several ways to address a need for new cruise missiles, Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper said today, with updated requirements likely to show up in the service's next long-term spending plan.
The new director of the Joint Strike Fighter program said today that JSF development activities will continue as planned under a congressional temporary spending measure despite the lack of an official fiscal year 2002 budget, but that the program will eventually require full funding of the president's budget request to meet scheduled fielding dates.
The Defense Department says a proposed $247 million cut to the president's fiscal year 2002 Joint Strike Fighter budget request would delay the availability of the next-generation strike fighter by one year "at a minimum."
The Defense Department's senior requirements group has begun implementing a series of organizational changes to repair a series of structural weaknesses, the General Accounting Office asserts in a report released today.
The Defense Science Board concludes in a new report that U.S. efforts to propagate official messages worldwide need more attention because existing information dissemination efforts are poorly coordinated.
Major changes to Pentagon acquisition practices are an imperative because of the war on terrorism, Defense Department acquisition chief Pete Aldridge said last week.
Senior Pentagon officials told Boeing yesterday that its Joint Strike Fighter bid was considered inferior to Lockheed Martin's in the critical area of overall air vehicle design -- with the difference most appreciable in the area of short take-off, vertical landing propulsion.
The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have led to a fundamental change in the way the Air National Guard maintains "alert" bases with aircraft ready to rapidly respond to homeland threats, the ANG commander told defense reporters Friday.
Lockheed Martin will build the Defense Department's next-generation stealthy Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon announced today.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today condemned the release of classified information about the start of U.S. Special Forces operations in Afghanistan on Friday. Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that the leak was "totally in disregard for the lives of the people involved in that operation."
Even though the Joint Strike Fighter downselect decision was delayed last year by six months to give the contractors extra time to develop systems critical to the program, the General Accounting Office asserts in a new report that none of the eight technologies GAO measured is ready for the next phase of the program, which is scheduled to begin in a few weeks.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson told a Senate committee today that the anthrax included in a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's (D-SD) office yesterday was "finely milled and highly potent."
The inherent limitations of the B-1 and B-52 bomber fleets mean the Air Force could create a more effective bomber fleet by retiring those aircraft and moving to a larger, all-B-2 bomber force, retired Air Combat Command chief Gen. Richard Hawley said today.
The State Department's top counterterrorism official said today the United States has received an impressive level of international support in the broad-based diplomatic, financial and military offensive against terrorism, but cautioned that the battle will be a "long, strategic fight" requiring sustained effort.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today reiterated that one of the Bush administration's goals in the ongoing air strikes against targets in Afghanistan is the ouster of the ruling Taliban faction.
The Defense Department has an inadequate inventory of suits to protect warfighters from chemical and biological attacks, a threat expected to grow worse through 2007, the General Accounting Office asserts in a report released today.
The current alignment of U.S. assets forward-based in Western Europe and Northeast Asia "is inadequate for the new strategic environment" that requires greater access to Asia, according to the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, released today.
The Defense Department is aware that the lack of a clear leader on homeland security issues may represent a problem, and is looking at solutions through the quadrennial defense review process, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace told the Senate Armed Services Committee today.