DOD’s need for battlefield awareness and network-centric warfare has driven a boom over the last decade among contractors that have the ability to join up disparate military computers, communications networks, and sensors. But according to the interim director of the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation, costs are getting out of hand and need to be drawn down. “We can no longer live with programs that take decades to develop,” Terry Pudas told a meeting of aerospace and defense industry executives at a Coronado, Calif., conference. He added, or ones that simply are known as being “lucrative.”
U.S. Southern Command recently announced its first lethal strike on a suspected narco-trafficking vessel in two months, and the first under a newly formed permanent counter-cartel task force. The U.S. is also reportedly planning to transfer MQ-9 drones to Colombia to bolster its counter-cartel efforts.