Defense Department
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The military is trying to figure out why an F-35 engine caught fire, leading the Pentagon to ground the fledgling fleet. Meanwhile, program office planners are looking long term. They're thinking about how to control maintenance costs on a fleet that will eventually reach more than 2,000 aircraft and fly for the next 40 years. Defense News reported that planners are considering a worldwide competition for maintenance. Hal Chrisman, vice president of ICF International, has 25 years experience in the aviation industry. He joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to discuss what sustainment work entails.
July 11, 2014 -
A major war contractor is expecting a $45 million check from the U.S. government. A military appeals board has sided with Kellogg Brown & Root in its quest to get the government to reimburse it for security in Iraq. KBR paid out of its own pocket for private guards to protect convoys carrying supplies to the U.S. military. Procurement Attorney Joe Petrillo joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to take a closer look at the five-year battle in this week's Legal Loop.
July 10, 2014 -
A new performance award strategy could rise from the ashes of a now-defunct pay system at the Defense Department. DoD tried to replace the General Schedule system with a National Security Personnel System back in the mid-2000s, but the White House repealed it two years ago. Bob Tobias is Director of Key Executive Leadership Programs at American University. He was part of a Task Force that tried to improve the system back in 2009. He said one bright spot in the system could be the key to building a new performance culture across the federal government on In Depth with Francis Rose.
July 09, 2014 -
A new bipartisan report from the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations called the Air Force's now-canceled Expeditionary Combat Support System "one of the most egregious examples of mismanagement by the DoD in recent memory." But the failure of ECSS may not be an aberration, the report suggested. Other enterprise-resource planning programs in the department are at risk of falling victim to the same fate.
July 09, 2014 -
The restrictions on feds' travel opportunities are having too many unintended consequences, says Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners.
July 09, 2014 -
A specially-formed commission tasked with modernizing military compensation released an interim report in anticipation of its full recommendations due in February. The document reviews massive changes that have occurred since the military switched to an all-volunteer force in 1973.
July 08, 2014 -
Former Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn says the Pentagon needs to adjust its strategy to take advantage of the global and commercial technology markets.
July 08, 2014 -
Sean C. Young and Benjamin J. Tran, two electronics engineers with the Air Force Research Lab created an aerial sensor that has helped U.S. service members to find and destroy dangerous improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan.
July 07, 2014 -
Among ten topics the Army's new undersecretary says he's pondering: the service's seeming inability to convince policymakers of the need to keep a standing active duty force of about the size the nation has today, even during budget cuts.
July 07, 2014 -
Under the Obama administration's strategic sourcing cross-agency priority goal, new commodity managers will oversee "hallways" for information technology, administration and human resources across government. The hope is that the managers and their teams of experts will be able to offer guidance and best practices to agencies when it comes to strategic sourcing.
July 03, 2014 -
ASM Research won a three-year, $162 million contract to help modernize the electronic health records system at the Veterans Affairs Department. The VistA system has been at the center of a modernization and expansion debate for years.
July 03, 2014 -
New study by the National Research Council says DoD needs to develop a new strategy to better understand what's happening in a world of more globalized defense research. By 2050, the authors note, more than four-fifths of R&D activity will be happening outsize the U.S.
July 03, 2014 -
We should all probably get more sleep. But patients suffering from concussions or traumatic brain injury really need to get more sleep. The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) is releasing new recommendations and products for doctors to use to help their patients with brain injuries get enough rest. It's a critical problem for the Defense Department, which estimates that 300,000 troops have suffered from TBI since the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. DVBIC Deputy Director Kathy Helmick and Dr. Therese West, a subject-matter expert at the center, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive.
July 03, 2014 -
Combat in Afghanistan may be winding down for American troops, but requests for supplemental war money keep on rolling. In fact, the Pentagon is asking for no less than $58.6 billion for 2015. Officials say they've got plenty of contingency needs all around the globe. Cameron Leuthy, senior budget analyst for Bloomberg Government, joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to discuss what's in the request.
July 02, 2014 -
The National Information Assurance Partnership, the U.S. implementation of what was supposed to be a faster, cheaper process to verify the cybersecurity of commercial IT products, turned out to be so slow and expensive that few companies could afford to go through it. But officials said they hope a recent overhaul in the procedures will breathe new life into the program.
July 02, 2014