The New York Times reports that Defense Secretary Bob Gates wants his staff to return to wearing service dress uniforms rather than battle dress uniforms as has been the custom for many military members assigned to the Pentagon since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. According to Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, Gates “understands and appreciates” the impetus to switch to combat dress after 9/11, but he said, “more than eight years later, it’s more important to him that people—both civilian and military—are dressed in a way consistent with the fact that this building is the headquarters of the United States military in our nation’s capital city.”
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.