Inside the Army highlights

Some must-reads from this week's edition of Inside the Army:

1. A leading congressional authorizer acknowledges the Army's need to modernize its platforms, but wants to ensure the service -- along with its counterparts across the Defense Department -- internalizes the lessons of past acquisition shortfalls.

Full story: Thornberry aims to combine acquisition reform with modernization efforts

2. The Army is "more and more reliant" on its reserve components to address global demands, and consequently is taking steps to ensure that they are appropriately trained and resourced, according to a service official.

Full story: Army to boost CTC rotations, training days across Guard and Reserve

3. The Army, which is currently focused on the mid-sized airframe within the Future Vertical Lift family of systems, has yet to determine the best path forward on an attack aircraft, says the TRADOC capability manager for FVL.

Full story: Army weighing options for attack aircraft under FVL

4. House appropriators have proposed granting the Pentagon a rare exception to standard rules guiding stopgap spending bills, carving out special permission for one high-priority, weapon-system program each for the Navy and Air Force and two for the Army in the name of sparing unnecessary disarray caused by temporarily extending the limits on new-start projects and production increases.

Full story: Short-term spending bill grants rare exception to fund four big-ticket weapons programs