Thursday, May 2, 2024
Key Issues HADES deployment SAOC contract FORGE framework
Jason Sherman is a reporter for Inside Defense. For more than two decades -- including stints with Defense News and Armed Forces Journal -- he has covered the Pentagon, defense industry, the military budget, weapon system acquisition and defense policy formulation as well as reporting on technology, business, and global arms trade. Jason has traveled to more than 40 countries, studied medieval history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and lives in Brooklyn.
Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have eaten a $9 billion hole in the Army's prepositioned stocks that will take two years longer than previously planned to replenish, hampering the service's ability to quickly respond to new crises in another part of the world.
The Pentagon is actively considering whether to adopt as a formal position the recent call by some military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to peg annual military spending to a fixed portion of the total size of the U.S. economy.
In a bid to make the U.S. military's civilian workforce more expeditionary, the Pentagon has issued new guidelines designed to increase the Defense Department's capacity to surge non-military personnel in support of operations like those under way in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An ad hoc congressional panel established last year to frame the debate in advance of a sweeping legislative effort to overhaul U.S. national security organizations is set to release a report that explores institutional weaknesses by looking at the roles and missions of the armed forces as well as other agencies of federal power.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, following an address to defense industry representatives and military officials on Jan. 16, cut short a question from the audience about presidential candidates with a proclamation: "I don't do politics."
The Pentagon has commissioned a task force to investigate acquisition practices linked to staggering cost growth and schedule delays bedeviling some of the military's most important new weapon system programs, including the VH-71 presidential helicopter, the Littoral Combat Ship and the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter.
The U.S. military's marquee radio modernization program experienced significant cost growth at the end of last year, compelling the Pentagon to notify Congress that the total price tag for the effort had grown at least 15 percent above its original $19 billion target.
The Pentagon's No. 2 official cautioned lawmakers this week against a delay that might push funding for fiscal year 2009 war costs into the fall, arguing that such a holdup could saddle the next administration's Defense Department transition team with "budget turmoil" and risk the security of U.S. troops as well as the nation.
As part of its efforts to ensure the industrial base is equipped to properly supply the armed forces, the Defense Department is planning a new program that aims to rectify a shortfall in the private sector's ability to produce low-cost, low-weight, high-strength materials.
Service leaders have compiled "wish lists" worth more than $30 billion to buy additional major weaponry -- including combat aircraft, warships, and a full range of tactical ground vehicles -- that are not funded in the Pentagon's fiscal year 2009 budget request or in the forthcoming war cost spending proposals for FY-09.
Pentagon energy policies are riddled with shortcomings that place critical military installations at "unacceptable risk" of a blackout and foster "unnecessarily high" fuel demands by operational forces, driving up weapon system ownership costs and exposing support units to unnecessary risk, according to a new report.
The Pentagon's No. 2 official today said the Defense Department plans to replace any F-15s found to be structurally unfit with multirole F-35 Joint Strike Fighters rather than F-22A Raptors, which originally were designed to assume the F-15s' air superiority mission for the Air Force.
The Air Force has compiled an $18.75 billion list of weapon systems and programs it says are critical to meeting its "required force" and are not paid for in the Pentagon's fiscal year 2009 budget request.
The Army's top uniformed officer says the ground service could use nearly $4 billion more in fiscal year 2009 to buy new capabilities for the Army National Guard, including new light and heavy tactical vehicles, logistics equipment and intelligence tools.
The Pentagon is again seeking to establish a Rapid Acquisition Fund in its base budget to quickly finance the development and fielding of technologies that warfighters say are needed immediately, arguing in stark terms that without such an account select military missions will fail and place American personnel at serious risk.
The Marine Corps has tallied up $3 billion worth of key projects that were not funded in the Pentagon's fiscal year 2009 budget request, including a $1.7 billion warship, a down payment on seven aircraft and more than 1,000 new light tactical vehicles.
NEW YORK -- The Defense Department's top officer is directing the Joint Staff to assess the significance of the U.S.
NEW YORK -- A weak dollar, rising oil prices, escalating inflation rates and growing health care costs are pecking away at the U.S. military's purchasing power, forcing the Pentagon in fiscal year 2009 to spend billions of dollars that might have been spent on modernization on other priorities in order to keep pace with changes in the global economic landscape.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates today revealed the Pentagon's $515.4 billion spending request for fiscal year 2009, a total that is $4.4 billion larger than the U.S. military expected last fall but includes only $183.8 billion for weapon system modernization, $3.8 billion less than what the Defense Department expected last year.
The Pentagon is gearing up for a high-stakes review this year over the division of labor among the armed services, an assessment that aims to assign "core competencies" to each branch and create designations expected to be used as a basis for allocating resources and funding acquisition plans.