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Saving The Defense Industrial Base
In the third of our ongoing series forecasting key defense issues for 2013, Aerospace Industries Association president Marion Blakey, a member of Breaking Defense’s Board of Contributors, talks about...
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Odierno: Army Faces $19B In Readiness Cuts; CH-47 MYP At Risk
[CORRECTED with revised data from Army] CRYSTAL CITY: If Republicans and Democrats can’t come to terms, the combination of sequestration, a year-long Continuing Resolution, and reduced Overseas...
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GOP To AOL D: Our Stop-Sequestration Plan Is NOT Last Year’s; Navy Delays...
[UPDATED with details on carriers] THE CAPITOL: With the Obama Pentagon excoriating federal lawmakers for their apparent inability to avoid sequestration or to pass a defense spending bill, and the...
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Marines: Sequester, CR Would Ground F-18s, Slash Pilot Training; ‘Very Real...
WASHINGTON: As the government hurtles towards the latest fiscal cliff, March 1st, the Marine Corps‘ deputy commandant for resources outlined a host of painful potential consequences, from reduced rifle...
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Army Generals Detail Huge Sequestration Impacts On Retention, Morale
FORT LAUDERDALE: When war comes down to boots on the ground, the Army’s greatest asset is its people. But in fiscal terms people are also its greatest liability. And now some procedural peculiarities...
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How To Cut The Defense Budget Without Killing The Force
The House passed the second Continuing Resolution of the year today, avoiding the direst scenario that had haunted many in American defense circles. But the CR’s passage does not mean anyone has...
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What Congress Can Do To Trim Pentagon Overhead
The Pentagon needs to trim its overhead, many senior officials and experts argue, because it sucks scarce resources away from military weapons and personnel. To understand the root cause of this...
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Sec. Chuck Hagel Lays Groundwork For Cooperation With China, Reducing...
WASHINGTON: In his first major address as Secretary of Defense, former Senator Chuck Hagel paid homage to the usual pieties — but he also, very cautiously, laid the groundwork for two unpopular...
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After Weeks of Rumors, Air Force Announces 1,000 RIFs
CAPITOL HILL: Readers won’t often read about Reductions In Force in Breaking Defense because they usually aren’t strategically significant, but the latest Air Force announcement that 1,000 civilians...
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Hagel’s Budget: Where’s The Beef In Reform Efforts, Weapons Buys?
In a town full of hot air, speeches are a dime a dozen. But money still talks. So let’s compare the new Secretary of Defense’s policy agenda to his first proposed budget. While Leon Panetta, his...
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Go Back To Zero: Flournoy & Northrop’s Wes Bush On Coping With Budget Cuts
WASHINGTON: Instead of trying to cram a $500 billion force into a $450 billion budget and hoping Congress passes sequester relief, the Defense Department needs to go back to the drawing board. That’s...
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Pentagon Memos Detail Government Shutdown Plans
How will the Defense Department handle the all-but-inevitable government shutdown on October 1st? In a few minutes, Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale will lay out the answers for the media — and for...
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Furlough Inferno: The Crazy Inconsistencies Of A Government Shutdown
WASHINGTON: This summer’s unpaid leave for federal workers was unpleasant enough. If the government shuts down October 1st, though, this fall’s furloughs are just going to be crazy. A patchwork of...
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Shutdown Hits Military Thinkers, Planners
So how hard is the federal shutdown hitting the US military? “Walking around the building, I would say we’re probably at about a third of our staff right now,” said one military officer. (About half...
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‘Will America Fulfill Its Commitments & Promises?’ Allies Wonder
THE PENTAGON: That question is what America’s allies asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other senior national security leaders over the last few weeks as they watched agog as the world’s biggest...
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AUSA, Biggest Defense Conference, Thrives Despite Shutdown, Sequester & CR
[UPDATED 2:15 pm]WASHINGTON: Between sequestration, shutdown, and the Continuing Resolution, it’s been a brutal year for the federal government, especially the Army. Alongside training, maintenance,...
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Pentagon Moves to Modernize Creaky Clearance & Security System – Again
WASHINGTON: Spurred by the Navy Yard shootings, the Pentagon has effectively gone back to 1999 and is again considering slashing the number of people who get Secret and Top Secret clearances. The...
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Pentagon Readies New Acquisition Fixes: Will They Work?
[UPDATED with Congressional staffer comment] WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s coy about the next iteration of its Better Buying Power initiative, but it’s clear that “BBP 3.0” is coming. We even have some...
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New NSA, CyberCom Chief Tells Workforce: Forget Snowden, Do The Mission
WASHINGTON: “One of the things I try to tell the work force out there is this is not what is going to define us,” said Adm. Mike Rogers, new head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command....
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‘Data, Algorithms, & Tradecraft’: Keeping A Little Humanity In Big Data
ARLINGTON: “Big data” is big business nowadays. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin, for example, boasts their analytical tools have successfully predicted everything from Arab Spring uprisings to the...
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