Michael Brown was nominated April 2 by the White House to be the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. Since 2018, Brown has led the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, or DIU, a Silicon Valley-headquartered agency that former Defense Secretary Ash Carter established in 2015 during the Obama administration to speed innovations from the private tech sector to DOD. In a formal complaint to the Pentagon’s inspector general, Bob Ingegneri, who resigned as DIU’s chief financial officer in May 2020, identified a half-dozen employees, including himself, who he said had received special treatment, such as having job descriptions specifically tailored to their skillset to eliminate other applicants.
The Navy plans to transfer operations of its 13 satellites to the Space Force but will retain the portions of its research labs that focus on space, Chief of Naval Operations Michael M. Gilday said April 27. The transfer of satellite operations will be seamless, Gilday said, because both the Navy and Space Force are components of Space Command. But a "decision has been made" for the Navy to retain its space-related work at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the military realized that it had no choice but to keep mobility operations running. Installations around the world needed fresh supplies and to move people in and out. But the military's options for moving personnel and supplies were quickly dwindling, said Lt. Gen. Brian S. Robinson, deputy commander of Air Mobility Command.
Never comfortable in the spotlight, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has assumed a behind-the-scenes role in the Biden administration, providing his counsel but ultimately carrying out the decisions made by the President and a close coterie of longtime aides. Nowhere has that dynamic been more apparent than in Biden’s decision this month to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan by Sept. 11. Privately, Austin argued against an unconditional withdrawal on that timeline.
“For decades, Russia has stood as a top space competitor—with the legendary ‘space race’ of the 1950s and 1960s yielding one of the most technologically innovative periods in world history. Tensions still exist today as Russia continues to expand its arsenal of counter-space capabilities by testing and fielding new ground-launched, anti-satellite missiles as well as launching on-orbit satellite kill vehicles … China’s enormous push in recent years to match and overtake the U.S. in space [also] should trouble all Americans. Space permeates nearly every facet of our daily lives, and we cannot afford to unilaterally cede this domain to an adversary with opposed interests and values,” writes Matthews Donovan, director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies’ Spacepower Advantage Research Center and former undersecretary of the Air Force.
The center will continue to provide similar types of intelligence information and products that two organizations, the Space Analysis and the Counterspace Analysis Squadrons, currently supply. “As the center grows, we expect to expand those product offerings to meet the growing demand from the space community,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback said.
Thousands of Europeans employed by the U.S. military could be vaccinated against COVID-19 on U.S. bases in the coming weeks, in a move that would better protect American military communities and help allies struggling to inoculate their citizens.
The Next Generation Interceptor, designed to shoot down missiles launched at the United States from North Korea and Iran, should run about $17.7 billion to develop, field, and maintain 21 interceptors in the coming years.
The air chiefs of two of the United States' closest allies, in Washington for official talks, each visited AFA's Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies recently to discuss current and future issues, including regional threats, and future weapons and security requirements.
Michael Collins, the "third man" on the Apollo 11 mission that included Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as the first humans to set foot on the moon, died April 28. Some called Collins "the loneliest man in history," but then not many folks had an iconic rock band write a song about them. We're with you, L.E.M.