Friday, December 1, 2023
Forty-nine retired military officers today sent a letter to President Bush urging him to delay the planned September fielding of a national missile defense system and instead spend the money on shoring up U.S. ports and borders.
Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) is drafting a bill that would make it easier for the United States to transfer missile defense technologies to other countries. Speaking at a conference in Washington, Allard said he wants to get a "fast-track" approval process in place this year.
A recently proposed Senate bill that would permanently increase the size of the Army will not ease the stress now felt by soldiers deployed around the world, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today.
Continuing schedule and technical problems have forced the Missile Defense Agency to shelve the idea of using the Airborne Laser on an emergency basis over the next two years, according to the administration's fiscal year 2005 defense budget request.
Unit costs for the Air Force's new, multibillion-dollar space-launch program have risen more than 25 percent due to procurement violations by Boeing and a slide in the commercial launch market, resulting in a breach of the so-called Nunn-McCurdy threshold, a senor Air Force budget official said last week.
Former Iraq weapons inspector David Kay told a Senate committee today he backs the creation of an independent commission to review U.S. intelligence leading up to the Iraq war. Democrats in Congress are pushing for a commission to look at intelligence estimates on Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction arsenal.
The Missile Defense Agency has successfully demonstrated a booster rocket that is central to the national missile defense system the Bush administration plans to field later this year, MDA said today.
The Marine Corps will shift 1,372 jobs now being done by uniformed Marines to civilian workers, freeing up those Marines to be sent to combat forces around the world, according to an internal message sent out by Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee.
President Bush announced yesterday he intends to nominate John Young, the Navy's top acquisition official, to be the next deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition and technology.
Eighteen Army soldiers committed suicide while deployed in Iraq last year, pushing the service's suicide rate slightly higher than the annual average, Dr. William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said today.
The Missile Defense Agency, citing a shortage and other program priorities, has shifted the next planned intercept test of the Navy's sea-based program from this spring to January 2005, a senior MDA official told InsideDefense.com today.
Lockheed Martin today won a Pentagon contract to build a miniature kill vehicle capable of destroying ballistic missiles in the midcourse phase of flight.
While the number of attacks against coalition forces in Iraq has dropped more than 50 percent since November, the sophistication and complexity of those attacks is increasing, a coalition official said today.
Rear Adm. Steven Enewold is taking over as program manager of the multibillion-dollar Joint Strike Fighter program, the Defense Department announced today.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today said he has asked the CIA to oversee the interrogation of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Lockheed Martin will be the prime contractor for all future Missile Defense Agency targets and countermeasures, the Defense Department announced today.
A Northrop Grumman-led team has won an eight-year, $4.5 billion contract to develop a ground-based, kinetic energy interceptor designed to destroy ballistic missiles, the Defense Department announced today.
Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee told a Senate committee today that an improved missile warning system for helicopters flying in Iraq -- two of which were shot down this month -- is being rushed to the field, but rewiring each aircraft takes about three weeks.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today he has asked the military services to review the forces deployed in Iraq and assess whether those forces are properly balanced for the capabilities needed.
A former high-ranking Defense Department official today criticized the missile the Navy is using for its ship-based ballistic missile defense program, labeling it "flawed" and called on the service to design a new missile capable of intercepting ICBMs.