National & World Headlines

  • Saturday marks the ten-year anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southern Louisiana. The Pentagon says in the decade since then, it’s made several changes that are intended to get Defense Department resources to local disaster zones within hours instead of days. More from Federal News Radio’s DoD reporter, Jared Serbu.

    August 27, 2015
  • Veteran owned small businesses might have too many options to help them earn federal contracting opportunities. And the differences between the Service Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Concern and Vets First program are confusing. Marci Love Thomas is senior counsel at the General Counsel's government contracts practice and former senior attorney adviser at the Small Business Administration. She tells In Depth with Francis Rose about the differences between the two programs.

    August 27, 2015
  • Shana Simmons, a GEOINT Integration Capabilities Officer with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said six apps are going through a commercial-like process to gain approval and become available to buy through NGA’s app store.

    August 27, 2015
  • The Department of Defense has been working on guidelines to help its contracting officers decide whether potential noncompetitive contracts are worth their advertised prices. The new guidelines address different ways agencies can tackle situations where they don't have information available to them.

    August 26, 2015
  • The Army awarded the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to Oshkosh. The contract could be worth as much as 30 billion dollars. The award is a blow to Lockheed Martin and AM General, the other bidders on the contract. James Tinsley is managing director at Avascent. He's been following the JLTV competition since the beginning and he tells In Depth with Francis Rose that the award to Oshkosh isn't a huge surprise.

    August 26, 2015
  • The intelligence community and private industry are pooling their efforts to fight rising threats to national cybersecurity.

    August 26, 2015
  • One of the biggest worries for service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan was the risk of a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Most of the TBIs reported during the conflict in Iraq are the result of improvised explosive devices. And the symptoms can be devastating — ranging from headaches and exhaustion all the way to seizures. Marine Corps Maj. Steve Taylor joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain how the military branches are combating TBIs. One major avenue for help is the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.

    August 26, 2015
  • The United States is battling the Islamic State on two fields. The physical one where the Air Force is dropping bombs, and the Internet, where the battle is for minds. The Islamic State is using the mainstream sites Twitter and YouTube to recruit jihadists and build support for its cause. The U.S. and its allies, meanwhile, seem to lag behind. What's the U.S. doing to combat the Islamic State's online presence? And what should it be doing? James K. Glassman is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to offer some advice on how the U.S. can better respond.

    August 26, 2015
  • The NSA's adviser on equality says workforce diversity is improving as the agency attempts to balance its mission with the men and women hired to help it succeed.

    August 26, 2015
  • The Secretary of the Air Force and its Chief of Staff say a full year continuing resolution would have a significant impact on the service, particularly by slowing down or halting as many as 50 acquisition programs.

    August 26, 2015
  • The Defense Department asks Congress for permission to reprogram more than 100 million dollars to contribute to the governmentwide collection to pay for data breach services. DoD is by far the largest agency sending money to the Office of Personnel Management. Federal News Radio Executive Editor Jason Miller is here to tell us about DoD’s request and what other agencies should take from it.

    August 25, 2015
  • The Air Force says the continuing resolution that’s becoming increasingly likely for the 2016 budget cycle would halt progress on dozens of weapons programs, and probably force it to cancel plans to build its military workforce in key areas. More from Federal News Radio’s DoD reporter Jared Serbu.

    August 25, 2015
  • The Coast Guard is seeing many of its projects growing into programs of record with acquisition plans and contracts that are both on schedule and on budget thanks to a new strategy.

    August 25, 2015
  • Defense Department Comptroller Michael McCord sent a reprogramming request to Congress in July asking to move money around to help pay for identity protection and data breach services as well as higher costs for security clearance background investigations.

    August 25, 2015