Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) introduced legislation that if approved would “prohibit a reduction in funding for the defense commissary system in [Fiscal 2015],” according to a March 5 joint statement. The Defense budget calls for “reducing the annual subsidy for these military stores by $1 billion, or almost 70 percent, by 2017,” states the March 5 release. The Senators are requesting the Pentagon wait until after a report on a comprehensive set of recommendations on military pay and benefits is released. The Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission is working on this report, which is due next February. “These cuts to commissaries are an unfair burden on many of our military men and women,” Sen. Warner said.
The Defense Innovation Unit is gearing up for the first flight of its commercially developed hypersonic testbed as soon as the end of February—part of a larger project to quickly increase the cadence of the Pentagon’s hypersonic flight testing and field advanced, high-speed systems and components at scale.
