Friday, April 26, 2024
Key Issues Optical clocks Prototype funding SPAFORGEN
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.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England last week took the final step in disbanding the Office of Transformation, directing that elements of the shop -- which championed both new concepts of war and novel approaches for new weapons -- be folded into other parts of the Pentagon.
An influential Pentagon advisory board is reviewing the efficacy of export control policies that industry experts say are debilitating a key part of the U.S. space industrial base -- second- and third-tier suppliers.
An influential Pentagon advisory board is establishing a task force to examine opportunities for equipping the military with a new generation of weapons that use directed energy to hit targets with unprecedented precision.
The Defense Department has notified Congress of plans to sell Iraq aircraft and radar systems worth more than $1 billion to modernize the country's air defenses and provide a new fleet of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance planes to survey its skies and monitor its borders.
A Pentagon task force examining U.S. military efforts to adopt alternative fuels and explore new energy sources has created a collaborative tool to expand cooperation on energy programs and policies across the defense bureaucracy.
The Defense Department may have to divert as much as $27.8 billion away from programs Pentagon leaders deem essential to transforming the military in order to pay for "earmarks" added by lawmakers to the fiscal year 2007 budget, according to a DOD assessment.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the total price tag for U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as counterterrorism activities around the world, will significantly exceed the half-trillion-dollar mark over the next fiscal year.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has tapped Navy Rear Adm. Paul Stanley for a third star and a key Pentagon post -- the Joint Staff director of force structure, resources and assessment (J-8).
The Defense Department has conducted the first-ever autonomous midair refueling operation, a development that analysts say could unlock the potential of unmanned aircraft to conduct persistent missions lasting as long as 100 hours.
The Defense Department has launched a sweeping review of its logistics operations that could change the composition and location of massive stocks of combat gear and equipment stored on ships and in warehouses around the world.
U.S. fighter aircraft and military bomb and dog teams are deployed to the New York City area to support security of world leaders meeting at the United Nations, according to a spokesman for U.S. Northern Command.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has convened the top U.S. military brass in Washington for a two-day conference to discuss progress in the war on terrorism, as well as other pressing defense issues.
U.S. military strategy documents lack a mature definition for "irregular warfare" -- a key component of the intellectual framework essential to recalibrating American forces to counter 21st century guerrilla operations -- and for that reason the Joint Staff should not seek to craft joint doctrine that addresses "irregular warfare" as a term or construct.
The Defense Department is upgrading Navy P-3 aircraft, originally designed to scour wide swaths of open ocean for Soviet submarines, to assist in the hunt for roadside bombs in Iraq.
In an 11th-hour bid to influence the shape of the fiscal year 2007 defense authorization bill, the Pentagon on Monday delivered to Congress a final bundle of "appeals" designed to sway lawmakers to support key weapon system plans and provide the required flexibility to significantly alter military force structure.
More than half of the Quadrennial Defense Review follow-on study efforts directed by the Pentagon earlier this year focus on dealing with "disruptive" technologies and innovations that could diminish the Pentagon's high-tech edge against future adversaries, according to a senior Pentagon official.
The Defense Department, in its push to better prepare U.S. forces for irregular warfare, is recalibrating a key analysis tool used to consider trade-offs between different weapon systems and force structure in the budgets of the military services.
In a development that could alter the shape of the Pentagon's new investment plans, the Joint Staff is poring over spending proposals submitted by the military services to examine whether capabilities urgently required by combatant commanders are being adequately funded, according to Pentagon officials.
The Defense Department is awaiting revised fiscal guidance from the White House that Army officials hope will significantly increase spending on ground forces between fiscal years 2008 and 2013, according to Pentagon sources.
Senior U.S. and Taiwanese defense officials are set to meet next week in Colorado as part of an annual conference organized by a private-sector group to facilitate discussions about arms sales to the self-governing island.