NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY: Like a surgeon planning to separate Siamese twins, Pentagon officials worry how complex the congressional mandated breakup of the acquisition bureaucracy could become. “We understand the challenges (and are) very cognizant” of the risk,” acting deputy assistant secretary for research and engineering Mary Miller told me this morning. “It’s going to be difficult,” Miller…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Millennium Space Systems is delivering on critical missile tracking constellation
With programs like MTC, Millennium Space Systems is redefining what it means to be an operational prime – rapidly delivering operational small sat constellations on rapid timelines.
ALEXANDRIA: The executive committee on electronic warfare that Deputy Secretary Bob Work created last year is already reshaping the Pentagon bureaucracy. While the four-star officers and top civilians who make up the “EXCOM” itself have only met three times, executive committee co-chair Frank Kendall, undersecretary of acquisition, technology, and logistics, has created a new EW office and chosen…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Jamie Morin, head of the Pentagon’s quiet but powerful Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office, offered an understated and emphatic explanation today of why Congress’s inability to do its basic work and pass spending bills poses dramatic challenges to the US military. Morin and his colleagues at CAPE rarely appear in public and even more rarely…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: One of the Pentagon procurement system’s top officials and one of its harshest critics sounded optimistic today that the military can improve how it buys weapons. The key, both said, is for Congress to repeal old laws that now get in the way before it writes anything new — an idea to which the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PORTSMOUTH, VA: For decades, America’s Pacific strategy has focused on the northeast corner of that vast theater, with major forces and bases in Korea and Japan. But as economies boom and tensions rise in Southeast Asia, the Pentagon has played catch-up, deploying more forces to Australia, Singapore, and Guam. At a conference here last week, the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PORTSMOUTH, VA: Go ahead and cut our budget across the board if you really have to. But please, then give us authority to move money around to save our top priorities — and give it to us soon. That’s the message, in a nutshell, from the Navy’s top officer. [Editorial note: Just to be clear,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PORTSMOUTH, VA: This is a Navy town, just minutes from the massive Atlantic Fleet base at Norfolk. But when Navy and Marine Corps leaders convened here yesterday for their annual conference on expeditionary warfare, traditionally a Navy-Marine affair, they reached out to the other services in unprecedented ways. Message No. 1: After 12 years of…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
How to unlock innovation and savings for DoD: “commercial,” not COTS
Overmatch is fleeting and while traditional acquisitions can’t always keep up with new threats, a different and approved practice can.
WASHINGTON: In a telling sign of the uncertain economic and spending climate in the defense world – faced with sequestration and the possibility of a year-long Continuing Resolution — at least three defense conferences have been cancelled in the last two months and defense companies continue to pare their participation in even the biggest shows,…
By John GradyWASHINGTON: French forces have made great strides driving al-Qaeda-linked insurgents out of Mali’s major cities, said the Pentagon’s top counterterrorism official, Michael Sheehan. But any long-term solution requires local forces in the lead — not Westerners. And those recent successes in Yemen and Somalia provide a model for Mali — and for Afghanistan after 2014.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: Political gridlock has gotten so bad that the best bet to stop sequestration is after it starts, Rep. Mac Thornberry believes. Only a real crisis — not just an impending one — can force the two parties to cut a deal, he told Breaking Defense. But, the conservative Republican emphasized, he stuck to the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.[UPDATED with comments from Maj. Gen. Michael Repass, SOCEUR]WASHINGTON: Even the celebrated Special Operations Command is feeling the budgetary bite of Washington dysfunction, SOCOM chief Adm. William McRaven said today. “I haven’t gone through the list yet,” McRaven told reporters accosting him after a speech, but SOCOM will make cuts “just like the services” (the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA: Minesweeping and “fast” are two words you’d normally be nervous about hearing in the same sentence. But as the Navy looks to new technologies to remedy its decades-long neglect of mine warfare — a favorite weapon of both Iran and China — it sees real potential to speed up a painfully slow…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.As China lurches from this summer’s naval standoff with the Philippines to the current war of words with Japan, the US is struggling to reassure its allies without provoking the Chinese. While the administration’s strategic “pivot” or “rebalancing” to the Pacific is framed by some as Cold War II, top military leaders have made clear…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
