President Donald Trump on Jan. 22 minimized the severity of head injuries sustained by US troops during an Iranian missile strike on an Iraqi air base as he was pressed on why he’d claimed no troops had been injured in the attack. “I heard they had headaches and a couple of other things ... and I can report it is not very serious,” Trump said at a press conference in Davos, Switzerland, arguing that potential traumatic brain injuries are less severe than, say, missing limbs.
The Pentagon has given the Navy and other military services conditional approval to resume training of Saudi Arabian nationals in the US. Operational training, such as flying and other non-classroom work, for the approximately 850 Saudis at multiple US bases was suspended on Dec. 10—four days after one Saudi trainee shot and killed three US Navy service members at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida.
Pathwaves, a Miami-based digital therapeutics company, has been awarded a US Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract through AFWERX and the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to advance the development of the NeuroEmpowerment™ methodology. The Pathwaves NeuroEmpowerment™ platform will, for the first time, provide the US Air Force with the ability to objectively quantify their personnel's level of mental function.
The Pentagon made $35 trillion in accounting adjustments last year alone—a total that’s larger than the entire US economy and underscores the Defense Department’s continuing difficulty in balancing its books.
One satellite per week. That’s what the Pentagon wants industry to provide under its plans to orbit seven new constellations—each with a different function—by the end of 2020.
The new vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the Defense Department needs to fix its requirements processes—not just its acquisition procedures—if it’s going to make real progress toward buying and building software as quickly as Silicon Valley does. And as of now, according to Gen. John Hyten, the process is a “nightmare across the board.”
When an organization understands, communicates, and celebrates its quiddity, it’s far better able to drive culture and all that culture impacts—from recruitment and training to branding, reputation, and beyond. As the nucleus of values shaping organizational culture and metaphorically bringing it to life, quiddity then activates the culture’s self-reinforcing loop in which the celebrations of its history, traditions, and successes further attract and reinforce the bond with its customers, partners, and employees.
Viasat, Inc. recently secured a prime contract from the US Air Force to fortify the tactical data networking capabilities of warfighters. The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, worth a maximum ceiling of $90 million, will enhance situational awareness and mission coordination across military branches with improved communication system in a multi-domain battlespace.
Over the course of a week, the Air Force simulated a missing aircraft, a boat in distress, a tsunami on the western shores of the state, and disruption of cell phone services, all occurring simultaneously and on different islands. The goal was to assess CAP’s ability to operate a large Incident Command Post, fly photography and search and rescue missions, perform ground team operations, and coordinate with multiple agencies such as the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the US Coast Guard.
The Defense Department needs to do more to track whether its physician and dentist retention and recruitment programs are working, a government watchdog report states. The report concludes that the DOD is not "consistently" tracking what civilians in the same fields earn. And it's not collecting data on retention bonus acceptance rates or determining how much it costs to train a replacement when a physician leaves.
On Jan. 17, 2020, the official Space Force Twitter account tweeted a photo of Gen. John "Jay" Raymond's new operational camouflage pattern working uniform. Raymond was recently sworn in as commander of Space Force and is its only current member. Many on Twitter questioned the need to "blend in" in space (as camouflage uniforms are meant to do). Others asked why the Space Force needs the expense of new uniforms at all.