Defense

  • The Osama Bin Laden raid may not have been the last. The Associated Press is reporting, U.S. military and intelligence officials are so frustrated with Pakistan's failure to stop local militant groups from attacking Americans in neighboring Afghanistan that they have considered launching secret joint U.S.-Afghan commando raids into Pakistan to hunt them down, officials told The Associated Press. But the idea, which U.S. officials say comes up every couple of months, has been consistently rejected because the White House believes the chance of successfully rooting out the deadly Haqqani network would not be worth the intense diplomatic blowback from Pakistan that inevitably would ensue.

    June 25, 2012
  • Lockheed Martin officials announced late Saturday that after four days of negotiations, the aerospace company reached a tentative agreement with the union that represents 3,600 striking employees.

    June 25, 2012
  • The Joint Staff ordered the review after military college students said that an elective course showed Islam in a false light. The review concluded that the course failed to include instruction in combating violent extremism and portrayed Islam "almost entirely in a negative way."

    June 22, 2012
  • The Office of Management and Budget has reiterated to lawmakers that the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration will apply to wartime funding. In a June 15 letter, to Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Jeff Zients wrote that the Budget Control Act allowed no "flexibility" to exempt Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), from sequestration.

    June 22, 2012
  • Rosemary Wenchel is the new deputy assistant secretary for cybersecurity coordination at DHS. She replaces Adm. Mike Brown, who retired in January.

    June 22, 2012
  • U.S. military officials are meeting with Japanese government representatives to discuss the safety of Osprey helicopters after one of the tilt-rotor aircraft crashed last week. The Associated Press is reporting, "plans to base some of the Ospreys in the city of Iwakuni were put on hold last week, as Japanese officials said they need more assurances the aircraft is safe. Opposition has been rising to putting Ospreys in Japan ever since one crashed during a training exercise in Morocco, killing two Marines and injuring two others."

    June 22, 2012
  • Lt. Danielle Daniese Ferreira, 36, of Alexandria, Va., pleaded guilty to obtaining thousands of dollars from Coast Guard repair contracts that she oversaw. Her co-defendants channeled money into two accounts owned by Ferreira and her spouse.

    June 22, 2012
  • The top Republican on the Armed Services committee signaled Thursday that there's room for compromise toward a deal to avoid automatic budget cuts at the end of this year. But not everyone's sure the negative effects of sequestration can be avoided, or even that Congress would reach a deal.

    June 22, 2012
  • Agency officials from the Defense Department and the Office of Personnel Management, along with a handful of other agencies, cited significant improvements in both timeliness and accuracy in the security-clearance program at a Senate subcommittee. The agencies agreed, however, much work remained to maintain that progress and to take on new challenges, such as reciprocity and reinvestigation.

    June 21, 2012
  • A Pentagon investigation indicates poor judgment led to the teaching of anti-Islamic material at a U.S military school. Materials in a course at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., portrayed the U.S. as being at war with Islam. U.S. officials say the war being fought by America is one against terrorists. The instructor, an Army officer, was relieved of teaching duties. Disciplinary action against two other officers is being considered. The course was suspended in April.

    June 21, 2012
  • Federal mediators are trying to end a standoff between the Pentagon's biggest contractor and its workers.

    June 21, 2012
  • The Army has suspended a co-owner of the Pentagon's top propaganda firm in Afghanistan.

    June 21, 2012
  • The Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a three-year contract to upgrade cryptography in the country's intercontinental ballistic missile system.

    June 21, 2012
  • Benjamin Friedman, a CATO Institute research fellow, said sequestration prevents intelligent spending cuts, but that doesn't necessarily mean DoD lacks room to make smarter ones.

    June 21, 2012