Author: Braxton Taylor
The White House’s pick to be the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer on Thursday laid out plans to zoom in on regulations and other “barriers” that keep companies and private capital from entering the defense business and stall production—while also answering senators’ questions about the Signal group chat scandal. Michael Duffey, the Trump administration’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told senators during his confirmation hearing that he plans to evaluate “barriers that are preventing new entrants and private capital from entering the defense industrial base.”“I think there are two really critical metrics when it comes to measuring the…
Thousands of Department of Veterans Affairs employees expecting to receive additional pay for overtime they’ve worked will have to wait until April 11 as a result of problems with the VA’s employee tracking system.The VA’s Time and Attendance System, known as VATAS, has experienced delays for the past week, slowing down payroll processing for roughly 2% of VA employees, a department spokesman confirmed.VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz said employees will receive their regular pay as scheduled on Friday, but some who earned overtime will be affected by the software problems.Read Next: Signal Scandal Overshadows Confirmation Hearing for Air Force Secretary,…
President Trump next week will consider three options for his Golden Dome missile-defense project, said a defense official who added that DOD might create an office to build the ambitious, futuristic missile shield.A “tiger team” drawn from various defense and military agencies is putting together options of varying scope and complexity, but all will likely require more coordination than today’s Missile Defense Agency can offer, the official told Defense One on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.“You probably would need to come up with a new organization to handle that,” the official said.Two other sources…
While conducting routine training flights, two Marine Corps aircraft made “precautionary” landings in Japan within roughly an hour of each other on the same day this week, service spokespeople confirmed to Military.com.After both aircraft received onboard warning indicators on Tuesday, an MV-2B Osprey and an F-35B Lightning II separately touched down in different parts of Japan without injury to the crews or damage to the aircraft, according to the service. It was not clear what caused the onboard warnings.After landing, the crews and maintenance teams began “troubleshooting” both aircraft to ensure that they were safe for continued flights, the spokespeople…
The Department of Veterans Affairs has a new No. 2 official after the Senate voted along party lines Thursday to approve Paul Lawrence as deputy VA secretary.Lawrence, a former Army captain who served as the VA’s under secretary for benefits in the first Trump administration, was approved in a 51-45 vote Thursday, an unusually partisan split for a VA nominee. By contrast, VA Secretary Doug Collins, who has since become toxic for Democrats, was approved 77-23 last month.While Democrats did not cite anything specific about Lawrence’s qualifications or background they opposed, they voted against him in protest of the Trump’s…
The Navy says it is working to reduce the growing costs of fighting Houthi drones launched from Yemen by placing two new experimental systems on destroyers that are slated to deploy later this summer.”We’re going to be deploying the Ford strike group with two additional missile systems on our destroyers — the Roadrunner system and the Coyote system — both specifically designed to go after UAVs,” or unmanned aerial vehicles, Adm. Daryl Caudle, the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces, told reporters last week.Ever since the Navy repelled its first wave of drone attacks from the Houthi rebels in October 2023,…
Most people wouldn’t need to fight a war before starting a business, let alone one of the most iconic dot-com brands ever created. But Bob Parsons is not most people.Perhaps best known as the billionaire founder of GoDaddy, Parsons credits the Marine Corps and his service in Vietnam with changing the course of his life and making everything that came after the war possible — and he has a lot of lessons to share.Parsons describes his life, service and entrepreneurial acumen with interesting and sometimes hilarious detail in his new memoir, “Fire in the Hole! The Untold Story of My…
The Air Force may cancel the development of hundreds of Space Development Agency satellites and give the work to SpaceX, one senator said Thursday—a move that would shut out other companies hoping to bid. The satellites in question are part of the data transport layer of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a planned network of hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit.“I’m told that the Air Force is considering canceling solicitations for this transport layer on SDA’s Tranche 2 and 3, and instead using Starshield,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said during a Senate Armed Services committee hearing Thursday to consider the nominations…
Over the last five years, the Army has been testing and developing new fitness tests and standards, updating the APFT with the ACFT. In recent years, other tests have been added or modified to include Basic Combat Training tests such as the OPAT. The training and testing are far more functional and job-related than ever before.The evolution of testing and training has also affected the Ranger School and Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, with a new physical fitness assessment implemented with Ranger School class 06-25 beginning April 21.Here is a question from an Army recruit preparing for an infantry job…
The Gnome headed out into the timber under the emerging bloody blue moon, a double long spring trap slung over his shoulder and three dead rabbits in his hand. The crazed wolfman nearly decimated the local turkeys during the last blue moon. And he left them all out to rot—guts strewn over the ground, blood spattered across the leaves, snoods drooping in the dirt—the Gnome was going to make sure that didn’t happen again.Most mortals get it wrong. They assume that werewolves succumb to their beastly ways and wreak havoc on the world every full moon. Could you imagine the…