Lawmakers introduced legislation May 13 that would change the reporting process for sexual harassment and assault in the military and allow service members who are victims to seek monetary damages from the Defense Department. The bill’s proponents said it would “revolutionize” the way the military handles reports of sexual harassment and assault. It comes in response to the brutal killing last year of Spc. Vanessa Guillen, who was sexually harassed before she was killed.
The Pentagon pulled 120 U.S. military personnel from Israel. Defense Department press secretary John Kirby said the U.S. Central Command and U.S. European Command staffers flew aboard a C-17 military aircraft and arrived at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on May 13.
The Pentagon may be using commercial data to track Americans without due legal process, according to a letter from Sen. Ron Wyden shared with Vice News. Wyden had queried the Department of Defense about mobile location and other data it had purchased from commercial sources, following reports in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. The DOD replied to some questions, but several responses were redacted. "I write to urge you to release to the public information about the Department of Defense's warrantless surveillance of Americans," Wyden replied.
The Department of the Air Force has rolled out a new set of policies for transgender Airmen and Guardians that aim to treat troops undergoing a gender change more equitably. “Service in the Air Force and Space Force should be open to all persons who can meet the high standards for military service and readiness,” said the policy document, dated April 30. “All service members and applicants for accession must be treated with dignity and respect and afforded equal opportunity in an environment free from prohibited discrimination.”
The Air Force’s software development platform called Platform One is a little too vendor heavy. Platform One has only 20 federal and military employees out of a staff of 275. But the Air Force is on the way to changing that 90-10 industry-to-government ratio.
The Joint Requirements Oversight Council will give the services new marching orders by month’s end to ensure that future weapon systems support All-Domain Operations, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten said. A likely assumption, therefore, is that the long-awaited Joint Warfighting Concept itself also will be published at the end of the month.
Eligible officers, who meet certain conditions, may soon request exclusion from consideration for the next higher grade. The new policy will go into effect beginning with the major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel Space Force promotion boards set to convene Oct. 16 and will provide more flexible talent management options.
The F-35 Joint Program Office is still evaluating when the fighter will formally clear its 20-year development phase after a new expert study of testing requirements, says JPO Director Lt. Gen. Eric T. Fick. However, officially passing through ‘milestone C’ into full-rate production may not matter that much, Fick told the annual McAleese defense conference.
As the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, JoAnne Bass is proving that the sky's the limit for women in leadership. With Military Appreciation Month in May, NBC 6 has decided to highlight Chief Bass as she has made history as the first female senior enlisted leader of any U.S. military service. She's also the first person of Asian American descent to hold that title.
The Air Force says it’s making huge leaps and bounds in acquiring enterprise IT services that could help move missions forward—but not everyone who could be using the tech knows about it. To market the Air Force’s new IT services better, Chief Information Officer Lauren Knausenberger said she is working to build a one-stop-shop like Apple’s App Store or Amazon.com to list products and services that have an authority to operate across the service’s enterprise.
A top Air Force general confirmed that problems with one of Boeing’s key subcontractors have delayed the $5 billion project, though the extent of those delays is still unknown.
President Joe Biden’s first full budget request, including long-awaited details about the Pentagon, will be released May 27, the White House announced Thursday. The administration announced in early April that the fiscal 2022 budget request asks for $753 billion in national security funding, including $715 billion for the Defense Department.
The Starship rocket will pass over the Straits of Florida before entering orbit and then returning to Earth and attempting to make a soft ocean landing approximately 62 miles off the northwest coast of Kauai. If all goes according to plan, the entire flight from start to finish should take about 90 minutes to complete.
Senate Democrats are ramping up their work on reining in President Biden’s war powers, after years of watching the fights stall out on Capitol Hill. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Melendez (D-New Jersey) told The Hill he will hold a vote on legislation that would repeal the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force, both of which deal with Iraq.
It's been more than a year since the Air Force suspended family attendance at Basic Military Training graduation events at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.
While nations like Russia continue to struggle with fielding nuclear-propulsion in missiles, the United States was already testing a nuclear-powered bomber all the way back in 1955, in the form of the massive Convair NB-36 Crusader. The bomber carried a 1-megawatt, air-cooled nuclear reactor that hung on a hook inside its cavernous weapons bay that had to be lowered through the bomb bay doors into shielded underground facilities for storage between flights. Believe it or not… it only gets crazier from there.