Defense Environment Alert -- The Defense Department is under a 60-day deadline to defend to Congress significant cost increases to its alternative chemical weapons destruction program, after signaling last month that it had surpassed the 25 percent threshold set by a 1982 law aimed at curbing escalating costs in weapons programs. The breach of the so-called Nunn-McCurdy statute is the second time DOD's Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative (ACWA) program has crossed the threshold limit and has had to defend...