Pentagon officials and service health care professionals gathered this week for the annual state of military health care conference. The mantra was consolidation and transformation to eliminate redundancy and improve response to changing patient demographics—in a word, jointness. Officials cited the changes to be wrought under BRAC 2005, such as the replacement of historic Walter Reed Army Medical Center in D.C. with a national medical center at Bethesda, Md., and consolidation of military medical training at Ft. Sam Houston, Tex. Officials also had high praise for military medicine on the battlefield and in medical evacuation.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee say the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile program has been set back three months due to the ongoing government shutdown. The comment is noteworthy because the JATM's status has been kept tightly under wraps.
