Army Budget Boss: Threats, Uncertainty Reign
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ARLINGTON: No one knows what the 2016 budget is really going to be. In fact, no one can even plan properly for what it might be, the highest-ranking budgeteer in Army uniform made clear this morning. The uncertainty is coming at the Pentagon from two sides at the same time. On the demand side, there’s… Keep reading →
Reinventing The Army Via ‘Pacific Pathways’
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PENTAGON: From hunting jungle animals to communicating across the ocean, US Army soldiers learned much in the first Pacific Pathways wargames that Iraq and Afghanistan never taught them. Those exercises are part of the service’s effort to reinvent itself as it shrinks, heading from a wartime peak of 570,000 to 450,000 or below. Instead of prolonged, large-scale… Keep reading →
Drones Need Humans, Badly; Pilots Getting More Dough
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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… Keep reading →
Russia Digests Eastern Ukraine, Probes NATO Airspace: Breedlove, Greenert
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[UPDATED Nov. 4 with Adm. Greenert’s comments] WASHINGTON: While Russian combat aircraft grab the headlines by buzzing NATO airspace as far west as Portugal, Russian supply trucks are quietly redrawing the map back in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin swallowed the Crimea whole in a single gulp, but it looks like he’s digesting eastern Ukraine by a kind… Keep reading →
The Army Gropes Toward A Cultural Revolution
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AUSA: A new generation of generals is rising in the Army. It’s a generation forced to get creative by more than a decade of ugly unconventional conflicts. It’s a generation disillusioned by the mistakes of superiors, military and civilian alike. It’s a generation willing to take on the Army’s bureaucratic culture of top-down management, which… Keep reading →
Reserve, Guard May Deploy Against Ebola: New Missions, New Tensions
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AUSA: Even as the first wave of 4,000 Army regulars deploys to West Africa, the service’s mobilization command is preparing for a possible call-up of Reserve and National Guard troops to replace them in six months, Lt. Gen. Michael Tucker told me today. “There are no orders yet,” the First Army commander cautioned, just precautionary… Keep reading →
New Army Vice ‘Extremely Concerned’ On Readiness
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AUSA: Expanding on Chief of Staff Ray Odierno’s concerns, the Army’s new Vice-Chief of Staff detailed how “fragile” the service’s readiness is in the face of a 2016 sequester. “We’re in a much better place than we were… a year ago,” said Gen. Daniel Allyn, who until August headed the Army’s main readiness outfit, Forces… Keep reading →
EW Needs $2B More A Year; ‘Major Deficiencies’ Found By Defense Science Board
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WASHINGTON: A classified Defense Science Board study, now on the desk of Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, recommends that the Pentagon invest an additional $2 billion a year in electronic warfare and create a high-level executive committee to oversee the four services’ EW spending. “We need to dig ourselves out of a big hole, because we… Keep reading →
F-35s, V-22s, And Samsung Tablets: Junior Marines Pioneer New Tech, Tactics
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For the valedictory wargame of the Marine Corps’s Infantry Officer Course, young second lieutenants launched an airborne raid on San Clemente Island off the California coast to try out new tactics and techniques with V-22s and F-35s. Their mission: fly in on V-22 Ospreys, wipe out simulated missile launch sites so US warships could move… Keep reading →
Tiered Readiness Returns In Army 2015 Budget; Not All Brigades Ready to Fight
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PENTAGON: Last year, the sudden budget cuts known as sequestration forced the Army to cancel crucial training for 78 percent of its combat brigades. The budget request for 2015, released today, buys back a lot of that lost readiness — but not all. In fact, the Army has now officially resigned itself to what it… Keep reading →