Here's a look at how the Defense Department is being impacted by and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Air Force has long been saddled with accounts that fund other organizations’ projects, but officials and other supporters are pushing to change that. “It makes it look like the Department of the Air Force is getting more money than it actually is,” Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, said during the Air Force’s Association Virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “It obscures debate about defense spending. And it gets into this idea of how hard it is to compare [funding] across services.”
The Pentagon is looking across the services to figure out ways to better defend forward-positioned bases, assets, and forces from a growing sphere of highly sophisticated, long-range enemy attack threats.
The Pentagon has quietly begun withdrawing top military officers from U.S. embassies in Africa and downgrading other such posts world-wide, a move officials say is necessary to shift resources to counter China and Russia on the geopolitical stage and meet congressional caps on the number of generals and admirals in the military.
The Defense Department’s Commercial Virtual Remote Environment enabled the rapid shift to mass telework during the pandemic, but a solution to handle more sensitive data is on the way.
The Defense Department’s inspector general has canceled an audit of its diversity, inclusion, and equal opportunity training just a month after first announcing it.
The report from the Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution, and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces, which advises the Secretary of Defense there is a "systemic" problem in the military of referring sexual assault cases to trial when there isn't enough evidence available to get a conviction.
Two D.C. National Guard helicopters that flew low over protesters in Washington, D.C., on the night of June 1 were not properly authorized to be there—and were directed by a lieutenant colonel who was far from the scene, driving home in his car, according to an initial investigation by the D.C. National Guard.
A video shows a C-17 in Afghanistan landing on a runway with its nose landing gear up.
Four Navy air vehicle operators from VX-23, the Navy’s developmental test squadron, and VX-1, the operational test squadron, recently traveled to Boeing’s St. Louis facility for an immersive three-day simulation designed to train them to operate a flight from start-up to shut-down from the ground control station—the MQ-25’s terrestrial or CVN-based “cockpit.”
Take a look at the range of aircraft populating the Chinese military fleet.
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star (WAGB-10) will deploy to the Arctic this winter to help protect the nation’s maritime sovereignty and security in the region, the Coast Guard Pacific Area said in an Oct. 29 release. Typically, the Polar Star travels to Antarctica each year in support of Operation Deep Freeze, the annual military mission to resupply the United States’ Antarctic stations, in support of the National Science Foundation.
James McConnell and Robert Raines joined the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center for a virtual session of the Joint National Nuclear Security Administration Strategic Nuclear Deterrence Online Forums on Maintaining a Credible Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: Modernizing the NNSA Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure.
Neil Armstrong made “one giant leap for mankind” on July 20, 1969, as he became the first person to walk on the moon. Now, more than 50 years later, a new Space Force recruiting commercial says, “It’s time for another giant leap.” The nearly 3-minute ad emphasizes the importance of space not only for military operations but also for our everyday lives. “We aren’t just getting ready for the near future. We’re getting ready for the 22nd Century. When our enemies ask, ‘What if?’ We will have an answer,” according to the commercial.