Thursday, April 18, 2024
Just days after the White House issued new acquisition rules for the U.S. government and little over a week after Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) penned joint legislation aimed at revamping the Pentagon's procurement process, House members have decided to throw their hat into the acquisition reform ring.
Despite new legislation designed to push the Pentagon to use more fixed-price type contracts in its acquisition process, their exclusive use is still a long way off, a panel of former senior department officials told lawmakers today.
This week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon will begin providing military support to counternarcotics operations led by the Mexican government.
House Democrats are on board with the Obama administration's recently unveiled defense spending plan for fiscal year 2010, but are wary of the looming budget battles at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, a top House Democrat said today.
With the war in Afghanistan heating up, U.S. forces in the region must leverage both cutting-edge intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies and traditional human intelligence tactics to secure the upper hand against insurgent forces in the region, according to one battlefield commander.
Two key senators said today that they plan to work closely with newly nominated Pentagon procurement chief Ashton Carter to help push through new acquisition reform legislation.
The Air Force is reexamining its force mix strategy and eying areas in the service's portfolio where more risk can be taken in the coming fiscal years to support its ongoing irregular warfare initiative, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said today.
Newly appointed Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has had a busy 10 days.
Newly appointed Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said today that he would support the creation of an international pact between the United States and partner nations as part of a cooperative effort to combat cyberwarfare threats worldwide.
Today, Congress will receive its first glimpse into the Obama administration's views on the slate of national security threats facing the United States, and how the White House plans on addressing those threats in the near and long-term.
As the newly minted Obama White House formulates policies on everything from economic stimulus proposals to defense spending, one initiative being pursued by the new administration has raised the hackles of a small but influential circle of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
While the White House continues work on its fiscal year 2010 defense spending plan, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee will focus on reforming the Pentagon's acquisition process and its use of wartime contractors, according to the panel's top official.
President Barack Obama's nominee for director of national intelligence today proposed legislation to partially eliminate legal barriers between military and intelligence matters.
Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, President Obama's pick for director of national intelligence, today told lawmakers he supports the administration's newly minted executive orders governing interrogations of suspected terrorists by the CIA and other intel agencies, but cautioned that some of those actions could put future intelligence-gathering efforts at risk.
During his confirmation hearing today before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, President Obama's pick for director of national intelligence, was hit with a wide variety of questions on the vast array of issues swirling around the intelligence community, and how he planned to address them.
Sweeping organizational changes to the Joint Staff and the Pentagon's policy shop are expected to take effect in the coming months as defense officials work to reinvigorate the military's nuclear enterprise, according to the top official of a Defense Department-directed task force.
A new Pentagon directive on irregular warfare drops the idea of making U.S. Special Operations Command the joint proponent for IW and assigns a leading role for developing IW doctrine and capabilities to U.S. Joint Forces Command.
Pentagon procurement chief John Young today approved a slate of new revisions to the Defense Department's acquisition process, codifying a number of initiatives championed by the department's top weapons buyer this year and last.
The Air Force's recent acquisition woes on its combat search-and-rescue helicopter program and the aerial tanker deal are tied to systemic flaws in its procurement process going back to when the enterprise was run by former service acquisition chief Darleen Druyun.
The Defense Department' s top weapons buyer gave the services' acquisition shops mediocre marks on efforts to field and develop new weapon platforms, with their successes offset by several high-profile failures.