News
Navy Revises Counting Rules to Add to Ship Numbers
With a few strokes on a keyboard, the Navy's top brass avoids shrinking its 280-ship fleet next year by simply reclassifying a couple of hospital ships and its small patrol craft deployed overseas.
Pay Changes Run Counter to Troops’ ‘Cash is King’ Mantra
New proposals to shrink military compensation would hit troops in the wallet, almost immediately.
Air Force Left with Little Budget Flexibility
Air Force leadership spent months telling anyone who would listen that their budget would result in a smaller service today in order to afford modernization for tomorrow, and its budget delivered on that promise. But in an attempt to cut as deeply as possible to fund key priorities, the service has left itself in a precarious position as it heads into Congress to defend its decisions.
Newport News Shipbuilding: Carrier Funding Prompts Head Scratching
This week's rollout of the Defense Department budget prompted as many questions as answers about the U.S. aircraft carrier fleet and the status of future big-ticket jobs at Newport News Shipbuilding.
How the Government Pays Defense Contractors Tens of Billions For Nothing
In 2011, the Army doled out its first contracts to develop new armored vehicles that could carry a full nine-man infantry squad. Building the fleet of 1,800 new vehicles was expected to cost a whopping $29 billion.
DoD Official: Extra $115 Billion Does Not Fund Carrier, Troops
Last week, top US defense officials told Congress that if the Pentagon were allowed to bust its budget caps, it would save one aircraft carrier and tens of thousands of troop billets slated for elimination. But DoD’s new spending request — which stays under the cap for 2015 but exceeds the 2016-19 caps by a total of $115 billion — contains no money for the carrier and extra troops, according to a senior DoD official.