Defense Department
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Congress is hollowing out the Defense Department and turning the nation's military into a paper tiger of global proportions. That's according to Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a former special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations. He joined In Depth with Francis Rose for Pentagon Solutions today. He and his colleague Todd Harrison write about the Defense Department's fiscal 2015 budget process on Capitol Hill and how it forces the Pentagon to ignore its own budgetary wisdom.
May 28, 2014 -
The Professional Services Council has launched a new initiative to focus on technology policy. It's picked a defense insider to lead it. Dave Wennergren served in the Defense Department until 2013 when he joined the contractor CACI. He joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to discuss the latest chapter in his career.
May 28, 2014 -
DARPA launches its latest challenge program next week. It's called the Cyber Grand Challenge, and its goal is to completely transform the way computer network defense works. Over the course of two years, teams will try to build automated systems that can find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities so quickly that even the best human hackers in the world can't defeat them. Michael Walker is a former hacker who's now the program manager for DARPA's latest challenge. He talked about it with Federal News Radio's Jared Serbu during a demonstration day at the Pentagon last week.
May 28, 2014 -
Judging from the Defense authorization bills that have passed the House and been marked up in the Senate, Congress seems to have made a hash out of Pentagon plans to meet its budgetary goals. Todd Harrison is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to help sort out the reality of where Defense spending is headed and who will benefit.
May 27, 2014 -
In a repeat performance from last year, the House has included a major IT procurement reform plan as part of the 2015 Defense Authorization bill. Last year it got removed in conference. But this year a similar bill is rattling around the Senate. Plus, there have been some changes in the content of the House version. Trey Hodgkins is senior vice president for the public sector at the Information Technology Industry Council. He joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to discuss the significant changes made in this year's version of FITARA.
May 27, 2014 -
The Defense Department has spent years on a blueprint for what it says will eventually become a single, standards-based IT environment. Federal News Radio DoD Reporter Jared Serbu says the department expects to have all the technical standards on paper by the end of the year. Read Jared's related article.
May 27, 2014 -
DoD's Joint Technical Synchronization Office is still working through thousands of comments from hundreds of engineers across the military, but the department is hoping to have a solid technical framework for the Joint Information Environment in place by the end of this year.
May 27, 2014 -
When it comes to adopting mobile computing, the Defense Department moves about as fast as a Sherman tank in the mud. It wants to get things just right so mobile devices don't compromise network security. One hurdle for software vendors is the Security Technical Implementation Guide, or STIG. Without it, their stuff can't be used on DoD networks. Airwatch makes mobile device management software, and it just received STIG certification. Founder Alan Dabbiere joins the Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Emily Kopp to explain how the process works.
May 23, 2014 -
The House passed its version of the annual defense authorization bill Thursday, while the Senate's is still a work in progress. Both versions mostly shun DoD's proposals to cut costs during sequestration.
May 23, 2014 -
The Cyber Grand Challenge, set to launch for the first time two weeks from now, aims to encourage the development of computing systems that can seek out cybersecurity weaknesses better than humans can.
May 22, 2014 -
Appointment is a promotion for Dave Tillotson, who until now has served as the Air Force's deputy chief management officer.
May 22, 2014 -
A proposed amendment to the House version of the annual bill setting policy for the Defense Department would preemptively protect DoD employees paid through working-capital funds from potential furloughs. The measure was introduced Monday by Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.).
May 20, 2014 -
Harry Hallock, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for procurement, is Jared Serbu's guest for the full hour in this edition of On DoD.
May 20, 2014 -
The Defense Department received more than 5,000 reports of sexual abuse last year, an increase of 50 percent over 2012. Leaders say the numbers show victims have more faith that the military will take their cases seriously. Not everyone is so optimistic. In our special report, Trust Redefined: Reconnecting Government and Its Employees, Tom and Emily spoke with Paula Coughlin on Federal Drive. She blew the whistle on the Navy's Tailhook scandal in the 1990s. Today she is a board member of the victims advocacy group Protect Our Defenders.
May 20, 2014 -
It's been 23 years since the Tailhook scandal rocked the Navy, and the Pentagon is still struggling to eliminate sexual assaults from the military. The number of reported cases is on the rise, but is counting cases alone solving the problem?
May 20, 2014