Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Tony Bertuca is chief editor of Inside the Pentagon, the flagship publication of InsideDefense, where he focuses on defense budget and acquisition policy. He previously worked for the Sun-Times News Group in his hometown of Chicago, IL, and at the New Hampshire Union Leader in Manchester, NH. Tony has also served as managing editor of Inside the Army. He has a master's degree in journalism from Boston University.
President Obama warns against military "overreach" and urges "strategic patience" in a new national security strategy released Friday, though he still asserts that strong American leadership remains necessary to ensure peace in the face of disparate global threats.
Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall has put forth a new package of legislative proposals focused on easing the burden on weapon system program managers, who are often overwhelmed by the time and manpower required by law to document and justify their actions.
A bipartisan group of senators led by John McCain (R-AZ) and Jack Reed (D-RI) announced Thursday that they would craft legislation to authorize sending U.S. arms to the Ukrainian military in its fight against Russian-backed separatists, potentially setting up a conflict with the White House.
Defense secretary nominee Ashton Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that he is "very much inclined" to support providing lethal arms to the Ukrainian military in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.
Ashton Carter, the nominee to become the next defense secretary, supports the Pentagon's push for increased spending in the face of sequestration and pledges to continue the ongoing reforms he set into motion when he was the Defense Department's acquisition chief, according to a document obtained by InsideDefense.com.
Top Pentagon officials Monday made the case for why they submitted to Congress a $585 billion budget for fiscal year 2016 that is in violation of the sequestration spending caps set by law to the tune of $34 billion, while declining to detail the precise programmatic impacts the multibillion-dollar cuts would have.
The Pentagon has put a fiscal year 2020 expiration date on its overseas contingency operations account, pledging to propose a plan "early this year" that would begin phasing OCO costs into the base budget beginning in FY-17, but only if sequestration is repealed, according to budget documents released Monday.
The Defense Department is requesting $177 billion for weapon systems modernization in fiscal year 2016, which includes $107.7 billion for procurement and $69.8 billion for research, development, test and evaluation, according DOD budget documents released Monday.
Draft details of the fiscal year 2016 defense budget submission that have begun surfacing show which acquisition programs stand to gain most from the Pentagon's $585 billion request, which ignores the automatic cuts set to be triggered by sequestration, according to a draft briefing from the Defense Department comptroller's office.
The Pentagon plans to make "significant" research and development investments in fiscal year 2016 to preserve its Joint Strike Fighter design teams and begin work on competitive prototypes to shape the next-generation aircraft that will eventually replace the F-35, according to Frank Kendall, the Defense Department's acquisition chief.
Fiscal year 2016 defense budget request topline numbers, which show that the Pentagon plans to ignore the Budget Control Act caps, have leaked in advance of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in which members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are scheduled to discuss the potential damage of sequestration if the decade-long cuts were allowed to occur.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) announced today that the confirmation hearing for Defense Secretary nominee Ashton Carter would be held on Wednesday, February 4.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and his colleagues will receive a classified briefing next week on the state of U.S. military technology, which will then be followed up by the committee's first formal hearing with Frank Kendall, the Defense Department's chief acquisition executive, who will speak to how DOD can improve its procurement process to keep up with adversaries and the pace of technological change.
The Pentagon's chief weapons tester has identified critical cyber vulnerabilities in most of the Defense Department's acquisition programs that were tested last year, according to an annual report to Congress.
The Defense Department has morphed its controversial Air-Sea Battle concept into a new Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC), according to a new Joint Staff memo, which follows concerns voiced by defense officials and analysts that ASB was too limited in its scope and failed to yield joint interoperability.
J. Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department's director of operational test and evaluation, is defending his continued focus on robust testing in the face of fiscal pressures bearing down on the Pentagon, according to the latest annual DOT&E report obtained by InsideDefense.com.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met with Ashton Carter at the Pentagon today, the first time the two have met face-to-face since Carter was nominated to succeed Hagel in early December, according to a short statement from Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Defense Department's chief spokesman.
The Obama administration is scheduled to release the fiscal year 2016 budget request on Monday, Feb. 2, according the Office of Management and Budget, making it the first on-time submission in recent memory.
The Defense Department is moving to close an array of bases and installations in Europe in an effort that would save $500 million annually and have zero impact on U.S. warfighting capabilities as it prepares to bolster its presence in Eastern Europe to address new military threats from a revanchist Russia, according to two top Pentagon officials.
The Defense Department has updated its official acquisition policy guidance to emphasize the tailoring of individual weapons programs, while allowing for increased flexibility for managers who must navigate the Pentagon's famously complex procurement process.