Wednesday, April 24, 2024
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.
The U.S. Army has tapped a British army officer to run a new stability operations office in the Pentagon that will stand up next month as part of a wider set of service initiatives to establish and expand support organizations for stability operations.
The U.S. military's top officer has advised Congress that the U.S. armed forces are "fully capable" of executing the National Defense Strategy, which requires the ability to fight two major campaigns at the same time.
The president's budget request for fiscal year 2007 will include an increase in the Army's budget to $111.8 billion, up over last year's request of about $100 billion, according to a source familiar with the request.
The Defense Department has not decided where to homeport the additional aircraft carrier it plans to shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific Fleet, according to a senior Pentagon official and naval analysts.
Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, prevailed on senior civilian and military officials last month to jettison the "global war on terrorism" in favor of the "long war," a term featured throughout the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review and used by President Bush in last night's State of the Union address.
One of the most significant results of the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review will not be found in the final report or in the Pentagon's accompanying fiscal year 2007 budget request, according to a senior defense official and a key architect of the QDR.
After months of scrutinizing the military's requirement for nearly 3,000 new fighter aircraft, Pentagon leaders had little appetite for targeting tactical aircraft programs to pay for other Defense Department needs, according to a senior defense official involved in the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review.
The Defense Department is preparing to take advantage of a new, temporary authority to use general-purpose troops to train and equip foreign militaries. Pentagon officials say such training is essential to fighting terrorist networks around the world, particularly those that seek to establish operational bases in ungoverned areas.
The 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review will spell out a number of changes to U.S. strategic forces, including cuts to the Air Force's intercontinental ballistic missile inventory and plans to modernize the airborne command-and-control fleet designed to oversee a massive war.
The Defense Department's new blueprint for the U.S. armed forces calls for modest changes to both conventional and strategic forces, a range of new capabilities to deal with terrorist networks as well as potential major adversaries like China, and a host of reforms to the defense bureaucracy that could significantly alter how the Pentagon acquires new weapon systems, according to a draft of the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review obtained by InsideDefense.com.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is preparing to issue a new National Defense Strategy designed to better account for a long war against terrorists and set forth new Pentagon thinking about how the military plans to surge forces to simultaneously defend the homeland, fight a major conventional war and carry out stability operations.
The Defense Department is preparing to invest combatant commanders with unprecedented authority to influence the shape of the military services' budgets in a bid to ensure the Pentagon provides the capabilities most relevant to the needs of front-line forces.
The Defense Department this month will simulate a devastating nuclear terrorist attack against Charleston, SC, in a repeat of an exercise held last summer.
An influential advisory panel to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is launching an ambitious campaign to identify technology areas that could point the way to the development of a new generation of weapon systems tailored to defeat irregular forces.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense is putting the finishing touches on the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review report, which is scheduled to be shipped to the printer next Wednesday in order to be delivered to Congress on Feb. 6, according to Pentagon officials.
The Defense Department will begin work this year on a next-generation long-range strike aircraft, accelerating its bomber modernization plans by nearly two decades in an effort to quickly enhance the Air Force's effectiveness across the Asia-Pacific region.
The Army announced today it is terminating Lockheed Martin's $879 million system design and development contract for the Aerial Common Sensor program.
The Defense Department is launching eight follow-on assessments of the nearly complete Quadrennial Defense Review, aiming to continue examining a wide range of key issues addressed over the last 10 months, according to Pentagon officials and documents.
The Defense Department plans to accelerate retirement of key Air Force aircraft, including nearly half the B-52 bomber force and the full U-2 spy plane and F-117 stealth fighter fleets, in a bid to save $2.6 billion and boost spending for the services' prized F-22A fighter aircraft program.
The U.S. military and the Tanzanian People's Defense Force share a unique link, one that Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, the Pentagon's No. 2 officer, recently deemed important enough to bring to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's attention.