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Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once said that for too many Americans, military service is something for others to do — but a trend has been building ever since institution of the all-volunteer force. Enlistees come from a shrinking number of locations, and more and more come from families from which someone else has served. James Winnefeld, a Navy Admiral and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss problems this may cause and some possible solutions.
The Navy has removed almost all of its departmentwide computer-based training requirements for both sailors and civilians, in favor of more local control by commands. The Air Force has cut its servicewide online training demands in half, with more reductions possibly on the way.
The Navy’s 2018 budget request includes a billion more dollars and a thousand new employees to help the service dig out of an ongoing ship maintenance backlog. Trouble is, the Navy’s current training regimen for new depot maintenance workers takes about five years before they’re ready to work, and officials say they need to find ways to speed that process up.
Navy's personnel IT budget rises by 77 percent in 2018 and is expected to more than double by 2020 to support a "transformation" of the personnel system dubbed Sailor 2025.
In today's Federal Newscast, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general explains to Congress how the agency might have been taken for over a billion dollars.
The Navy is testing a new evaluation system that it says will be more objective, deliver greater fidelity in measuring sailors' performance. The end goal is to use the scores to help inform servicemembers' compensation packages.
The Navy's 2018 budget doesn't even begin to build the 350-ship fleet officials say is needed. Instead, it prioritizes readiness over growth.
The Navy’s top officer says he remains convinced that the global security landscape will demand “more Navy,” over the next few decades, but his service appears to be tempering its appetite for exactly how much more, at least when measured in numbers of ships and people.
You can't separate the Navy from the world's oceans. Almost since its founding, the Navy has maintained expertise in ocean science to help it perform its mission.
This week, Women of Washington interviews Sally Ann Zoll, CEO of United Through Reading, a nonprofit organization that serves military families.
Saying it doesn’t have unlimited resources to fix all of its cyber vulnerabilities, the Navy is looking to prioritize, including through a pilot program to help commanders understand which cyber problems are the biggest threats to their missions.
Navy and other Defense officials tried, but failed to persuade Congress to make the change as part of the 2017 Defense authorization bill that passed in December. But top Navy personnel officials are lobbying lawmakers to include the language in this year’s bill. It would allow military promotion boards to place officers “of particular merit” at the top of promotion lists, ahead of their peers.
The Strategic Capabilities Office is one of the most lauded organizations in the Defense Department. And its leader says his office doesn’t have to worry about acquisition requirements like the rest of the Pentagon establishment.
The Navy is in the midst of a revamp of its Innovation Cell, the project it launched two years ago with the objective of speeding new technology through the acquisition process in under a year while living completely within the government’s existing acquisition policies.