President Trump has authorized only 34 states to receive federal funding and benefits for their Guard troops. While all of them get paid -- many out of rapidly depleting state coffers -- most aren’t yet getting full health coverage.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is calling for significant change to the laws and policies that govern all military personnel management. This “Force of the Future” initiative may mean far-reaching changes in how military personnel are recruited, evaluated, assigned, promoted, retained, separated and compensated. Designing new personnel systems is like painting landscapes of mountains: they may provide great […]
Blending superior optics, advanced stabilization and AI-powered autonomy in a compact and rugged system, ASELFLIR 600 delivers unmatched intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.
Robert Hale, former budget god (comptroller) at the Pentagon, is good with numbers, especially defense budget numbers. And he speaks about them in clear, simply structured and well expressed English. Here he tackles one of the two or three thorniest issues facing the leadership of the US military: how to rein in the enormous growth […]
WASHINGTON: The new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee sounded pretty sympathetic today to the Navy’s plan for a separate budget line to fund a new generation of nuclear missile submarines. But Rep. Mac Thornberry, known for his close attention to detail, also said he understood it was very important to use the right […]
WASHINGTON: Even unmanned aircraft need people to make them fly. Today, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James announced stopgap measures to shore up overworked drone squadrons. At the same press conference, the service’s Chief of Staff pledged to plug another personnel gap, the shortage of skilled maintainers for the manned F-35 — but, Gen. Mark […]
Imagine a business that’s restructuring costs. The idea is to restrain employee compensation and free up money for operations and investment, thus allowing the company to grow. Everyone’s familiar with the surrounding debate: leaders spotlight the need for efficiency, and workers insist that the company not break faith with them. It’s a classic dispute between […]
Cybersecurity skills must evolve in near-real time as Zero Day threats continue and AI provides new challenges.
UPDATED: Sen. Leahy, 12 Other Senators, Decry Planned Guard Cuts To Hagel (6:20 PM Monday) PENTAGON: Congress and the Pentagon are likely to battle for most of the rest of this year over the administration’s budget plans: to retire the U-2 (again); to retire half the Navy’s current cruiser fleet; to trim and consolidate pay […]
As bitter as the budget battle has become, there’s no topic more toxic than pay and benefits for military personnel. Pentagon budgeteers and the top brass warn that increasing compensation costs, especially for health care, are growing at an unsustainable pace that threatens every other priority from weapons procurement to combat training. But personnel advocates […]
America likes the idea that we have made a solemn promise to generously compensate our military service members. After all, the argument goes, how can we ever fully repay them for risking their lives for us? Providing benefits like low-cost premium health care, comfortable pensions, housing allowances, grocery discounts, tuition assistance, tax breaks and much […]
UPDATED THROUGHOUT WITH COMMENTS FROM CAPITOL HILL EVENT CAPITOL HILL: In an extraordinary letter to defense lawmakers and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, experts from nine Washington think tanks on the left and the right call for fundamental fixes to the defense budgets that, left undone, “threaten the health and long-term viability of America’s volunteer military.” The […]
Michigan’s defense ecosystem and expertise makes it a special asset for production.