DoD Reporter's Notebook
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The expected nomination of retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to become secretary of defense depends on a one-time change to federal statutes that require military officers to have been retired for at least seven years before becoming the civilian leader of the Pentagon.
December 05, 2016 -
Several key GOP members of Congress began to weigh in this weekend with strong disapproval over suggestions that Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, may be fired during the final weeks of the Obama administration.
November 21, 2016 -
If all goes according to plan, the Defense Department is a few weeks away from releasing new guidance on how it buys and builds business IT systems.
November 21, 2016 -
DoD now has a fully-functional Wi-Fi network throughout much of the building, something that was unimaginable to the Pentagon’s own IT experts as recently as a few years ago because of cybersecurity concerns.
November 21, 2016 -
For the first time since it became a separate service in 1947, enlisted pilots strapped into cockpits and flew solo missions.
November 07, 2016 -
Rumors of the death of Army Knowledge Online — the web portal soldiers and Army civilians have used for everything from training to email since the 1990s — were evidently premature.
November 07, 2016 -
The Army is currently experimenting with a concept it calls cyber support to corps and below (CSCB) — the notion that individual tactical units need to deploy with their own offensive and defensive cyber and electronic warfare capabilities and be prepared for an enemy that can and will use electronic attacks on the battlefield.
November 07, 2016 -
The Pentagon last week made contract awards in its promised expansion of federal government’s first-ever bug bounty — the “Hack the Pentagon” challenge which would up finding and closing 138 separate cybersecurity vulnerabilities in DoD’s public-facing websites earlier this year.
October 24, 2016 -
Congress and the Government Accountability Office are asking new questions about the long-term viability of the Military Privatized Housing Initiative.
October 24, 2016 -
Eric Fanning, the secretary of the Army, said last week that he's ordered a new initiative designed to reduce time-consuming requirements directed by Department of the Army headquarters, particularly with regard to training.
October 10, 2016 -
The Army closed out the fiscal year that ended a little over a week ago having met its recruiting goals for the first time in five years.
October 10, 2016 -
The Army is taking a fresh look at how much of the development and sustainment of computer code ought to be left to contractors and whether it’s time to bring some of that work in-house.
October 10, 2016 -
The Army is reexamining the cases of at least 73 soldiers who it kicked out under other-than-honorable circumstances between 2009 and 2015 because it may have run afoul of a federal law intended to help ensure troops aren’t punished for mental health issues.
September 19, 2016 -
Defense Department spending on research and development has suffered historic declines during the budget drawdown that’s been in progress since 2009.
September 19, 2016 -
The DoD IG has been posting public summaries or redacted versions of its classified or “for official use only” reports — sometimes on the same day the full versions are released to the folks with security clearances.
September 19, 2016