Sunday, February 9, 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.
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.
The Defense Department is preparing a massive amendment to its fiscal year 2007 budget request that will flesh out its plans for spending $50 billion in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials.
The Defense Department is girding for a new round of fiscal belt tightening that could squeeze $25 billion from the Army across the Pentagon's new six-year spending plan and force the ground service for a second consecutive year to choose between significant cuts in the size of its forces and scaling back key equipment modernization programs.
The Defense Department is petitioning Congress for wider latitude to enhance the capacity of foreign nations to fight terrorism, seeking permission to train not only national militaries but also internal security forces.
An influential lawmaker is concerned that the inclusion of more students from non-defense agencies at the National Defense University, which the Pentagon says will foster greater cooperation across the federal government, could inadvertently dilute NDU's high-quality professional military education.
The Pentagon's special operations shop could benefit from a new acquisition executive to help oversee the surge in procurement of new high-tech weapon systems slated for commando forces, according to a senior Defense Department official.
An influential advisory panel to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is exploring the military implications of powerful Internet search engines like Google, online journals and other new tools for accessing and distributing information.
The Defense Department last week proposed a sweeping set of legislative changes for lawmakers to consider adding to the 2007 authorization bill, including provisions that aim to advance key objectives of the recently completed Quadrennial Defense Review.
The Navy and Marine Corps need $17.2 billion to restore and replace equipment and supplies expended during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Navy secretary.