Thursday, January 16, 2025
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.
President Bush has codified a number of changes to the U.S. military's command structure in an update of the Pentagon's Unified Command Plan, realigning territorial responsibilities and assigning new missions to the top brass who oversee American forces around the world.
The Defense Department is proposing a "significant upgrade" to Pakistan's ability to sink ships as part of a $370 million package of new missiles designed to improve the naval operational flexibility of the South Asian nation.
The Defense Department earlier this month launched a trio of analyses intended to refine the requirement for a system designed to protect U.S. territory, forces overseas and, eventually, friends and allies from ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as fast-moving airborne threats.
The Defense Department is reorganizing a key office that oversees the procurement of major weapon systems, a move intended in part to fulfill a Quadrennial Defense Review goal of restored confidence in the military's acquisition system.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has directed the Defense Department to prepare a new investment plan that significantly increases spending on non-lethal weapons, laying the groundwork for their wider use, according to military sources.
U.S. defense contractors are beginning modifications on a small fleet of Boeing 737 executive aircraft purchased by the Indian government to transport the South Asian nation's prime minister and president, installing technologies to defend against ground-launched, heat-seeking missiles.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England is moving to iron out a stubborn bureaucratic wrinkle over the leadership of the military's vast logistics system in a bid to propel the Defense Department toward its goal of establishing a cohesive distribution network reaching from factory to foxhole.
The Defense Department has issued a revision of its policies designed to ensure U.S. forces and the private contractors that accompany them adhere to the laws and treaties that govern their actions in overseas missions.
Lawmakers want a fuller accounting of how the Pentagon is executing the new blueprint for U.S. military forces spelled out in the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, which was delivered to Congress earlier this year.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England has approved a new blueprint for how U.S. military forces will expand their capacity and skills to conduct irregular warfare, fulfilling a central proposal of the Quadrennial Defense Review, according to defense officials.
Aiming to contain the threat of narcoterrorism and widen U.S. military influence over areas of strategic importance to the United States, the Defense Department is seeking permission to expand its counternarcotics partnerships with more than a dozen governments across Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America and Central Asia.
The Defense Department has modified plans for the Navy's next-generation destroyer to reflect congressionally mandated force protection requirements, according to Pentagon officials.
Senior U.S. and Pakistani defense officials today announced an agreement to conduct military-to-military exercises, a move analysts say is part of Washington's effort to broaden its cooperation with Islamabad and balance the Defense Department's relationship with India.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has directed the Defense Department to explore a wide range of energy alternatives and fuel efficiency efforts in a bid to reduce the military's reliance on oil to power its aircraft, ground vehicles and non-nuclear ships.
The Defense Department is seeking new authority from Congress that would give the military more flexibility to rapidly provide night-vision goggles, radios, body armor and other equipment to partner nations and security forces conducting counterterrorism missions, stability operations and peacekeeping activities.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is summoning combatant commanders to Washington later this month to discuss how to fully resource operational plans for the war on terror.
The White House Office of Management and Budget has directed the Defense Department, along with other federal agencies, to prepare first drafts of their fiscal year 2008 budget proposals by Sept. 11.
Despite a renewed effort by senior Pentagon officials to regularly involve combatant commanders in deliberations about future weapon systems, the top brass overseeing U.S. forces around the world are not availing themselves of the chance to weigh in on everything from key performance parameters to the minutia associated with the initiation of complex acquisition efforts.
The Pentagon's No. 2 uniformed military officer has launched a campaign to identify the "most pressing military needs" of U.S. forces, an effort that is expected to produce a short list of new, high-priority weapon system requirements and set in motion an unprecedented top-down process for determining what combat capabilities the Defense Department buys.
After nearly two years of experimenting with biometric technologies to identify enemy combatants in Iraq, the Pentagon has asked an influential advisory panel to consider how to accord these new activities -- which include collection of adversaries' fingerprints -- a more permanent place in the U.S. military.