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.”
Trainees in Basic Military Training and technical school no longer have the option to try alternate PT drills if they fail an initial assessment, according to a policy change the Air Force made in April. The move is part of a larger shift out of the classroom and into hands-on,…