National & World Headlines

  • Three of the top five U.S. defense vendors — Northrop Grumman Corp., General Dynamics Corp. and Raytheon Co. — had lower sales in the first quarter of 2012, a trend that may continue as the Pentagon cuts its budget, according to a new report from Bloomberg Government.

    May 23, 2012
  • House lawmakers are still skeptical about what they see as wasteful spending to build green buildings in the Defense Department. Language in the 2013 defense authorization bill the House passed last week continues a prohibition on using any budget money to certify a DoD building as LEED Gold or LEED Platinum. The highest level allowed would be LEED Silver.

    May 23, 2012
  • What do you say about a family that dedicates 130 years to the public service? In this case, its part of the legacy of the legendary Doc Cooke, a.k.a., the "Mayor of the Pentagon," who is credited with saving countless lives on 9/11, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says.

    May 23, 2012
  • The agency picks 10 service disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSBs) for its CIO-SP3 Small Business GWAC. NIH will make other small business and full-and-open awards in the coming month.

    May 22, 2012
  • Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary Eric Shinseki announce an expansion in 2014 of initial capability of the joint electronic health record to two more sites.

    May 22, 2012
  • Last year, the Pentagon spent nearly $75 billion on acquisitions of commercial items, more than double the amount from five years ago. But the word "commercial" in DoD applies to a lot of products you won't find on any store shelf.

    May 22, 2012
  • The Navy tried to ensure it properly addressed industry concerns as it developed its final solicitation for the $5.4 billion network contract. Some comments involved cost-reduction. Others related to fairness in competition.

    May 21, 2012
  • Retired Air Force Gen. Lester Lyles said new legislation calling for diversity benchmarks in the military would codify the recommendations of the commission he led in 2011 and would make for a better armed forces.

    May 21, 2012
  • Military bases tend to follow suburbia when it comes to development. While sprawl was in, it's now out of the latest Defense Department planning guidelines.

    May 21, 2012
  • The Navy's top man in Europe said cyber is the threat that keeps him up at night.

    May 21, 2012
  • During the last Defense drawdown, Congress and the White House pushed the Pentagon to make smarter buying decisions in the hopes that it would save a lot of money. The idea was to have the military buy many products the same way businesses do. A decade and a half later, DoD now spends tens of billions of dollars a year under the commercialized models Congress set up. In a two-part, exclusive report, Federal News Radio examines the debate underway over how well it has worked out.

    May 21, 2012
  • Donjette Gilmore, director of Accounting and Finance Policy at the Under Secretary of Defense, joins host Derrick Dortch to talk about the inner financial workings at DoD. May 18, 2012

    May 18, 2012
  • The U.N. Security Council on Friday imposed a travel ban on five leaders of an April 12 military coup in Guinea-Bissau and threatened an arms embargo and financial sanctions if the tiny West African coastal state does not return to civilian rule. The 15-member council "demands that the Military Command takes immediate steps to restore and respect constitutional order, including a democratic electoral process, by ensuring that all soldiers return to the barracks, and that members of the 'Military Command' relinquish their positions of authority."

    May 18, 2012
  • House Republicans thwarted a plan by a few Democrats to cancel weapons programs. The moves and counter-moves came during debate on the 2013 Defense Authorization bill.

    May 18, 2012