For the Pentagon, the bill’s passage signifies some return to normal order after having operated the first six months of the fiscal year under a continuing resolution.
By Valerie InsinnaIntegrating commercial off-the-shelf computing on military platforms and how to make it work
The systems may be off-the-shelf, but the packaging for integration on vehicles and ships provides cradle-to-grave resiliency.
House lawmakers are irritated by the service’s choice to request a DDG-51 Flight III destroyer on their annual wish list, rather than design a budget that incorporated it.
By Justin Katz
INSA HQ: Drive milestone decision authority down as low as is possible. Speed decision-making. Let the Intelligence Community agencies create simple and clear requirements and manage their programs, as long as everything goes along swimmingly. That outlines the changes to acquisition that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence plans to make over the…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED with Harrison & Hunter analysis WASHINGTON: To prevent a repeat of last year’s lethal accidents, Senate authorizers Roger Wicker and John McCain want to give the Navy unprecedented flexibility to retain experienced officers and spend readiness funds. But the provision to let the Navy spend Operations & Maintenance money as late as in the fiscal…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Two weeks from today America will either be a laughingstock or Congress will have done the responsible thing, the necessary thing, and passed some kind of useful spending bills. Or, as Mark Cancian, a former senior official at the Office of Management and Budget, suggests, there may be a sort of defense spending bandage to strap…
By Mark Cancian
NATIONAL HARBOR: More and more House members oppose another Continuing Resolution, which should compel the passage of proper defense spending bills, the House seapower chairman said here this morning. It’s a rare case where the deep divisions in the Republican party between defense hawks and budget hawks could actually smooth the workings of government instead…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: The chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees made a rare joint appearance today and urged President Obama not to veto their policy bill for 2016. But Sen. John McCain and Rep. Mac Thornberry held out little hope Obama would back off, and if they have a plan for what to do if he…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The Weekly Break Out web news show
Coming in 2025! The Washington Monument is an iconic part of Washington. There’s something else monumental coming to defense in DC in 2025.
CAPITOL HILL: Chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees take pride in the fact their panels have gotten 53 annual defense bills in a row through the often tortuous negotiations required to clear Congress. And Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has often made known his view that the…
By Colin Clark
UPDATE: Forbes’s amendment passed the House Wednesday night, by 321 votes to 111. WASHINGTON: Two powerful committees are headed for a rare House floor fight over a controversial fund to build new nuclear missile submarines. Rep. Randy Forbes and Rep. Joe Courtney, the chairman and top Democrat of the House Armed Services subcommittee on seapower,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: A $140 million congressional plus-up to the Army’s Bradley fighting vehicle program has made it past every legislative hurdle into the spending bill now headed for the Senate floor. But with amendments and House-Senate conference still to go, and with the Army still (at least officially) unenthused about the unrequested funds, Bradley manufacturer BAE…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Everyone’s scared of sequestration. But the US Navy and its shipbuilders are particularly upset by the prospect, because both the large-scale nature of naval construction and a historic quirk of the appropriations process leave warships particularly vulnerable. That’s why the Navy League of the United States, one of the nation’s oldest and most influential advocacy…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.There’s a lot going on in the U.S. Air Force, but for the Senators at this morning’s Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the USAF budget, just one mattered: How budget cuts would impact their home states. While such parochialism is as shocking as gambling in Casablanca, it raises a red flag for the full-scale Base Realignment…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.CAPITOL HILL: The congressional fight over the fate of Northrop Grumman’s 18 Global Hawk Block 30s is on, led so far by Rep. Norm Dicks on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. “The idea we would spend all this money to buy them and then put them in a hangar is just unacceptable,” said Dicks, ranking…
By Colin Clark
