House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter maintains that the Pentagon has a penchant for “increasingly expensive” platforms and ultimately does not “deploy these more expensive systems in sufficient numbers to sustain operational needs.” He wants to change that. In presenting his committee’s version of the 2007 defense authorization bill, Hunter declared, “This committee will insure that we are making the right tradeoffs between cost, new technology, and deployable numbers.” Hunter has been a chief critic of what he calls “budget-driven” Pentagon assessments of operational needs.
The Air Force has begun depriving new trainees of more sleep and will soon ramp up the stress level in Basic Military Training to better prepare Airmen for the increased strain of combat operations such as Epic Fury.
