President-elect Joe Biden will nominate retired Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III to be his Defense Secretary, the transition team announced Dec. 8. Austin, who left the military in 2016 as the four-star head of U.S. Central Command, would be the first-ever Black man to ...
As the final days of 2020 count down, House and Senate negotiators have agreed on sweeping defense policy legislation that offers nearly $732 billion to the armed forces in fiscal 2021. “The FY21 NDAA focuses on maintaining the strength of our defense enterprise as our ...
The Senate Armed Services Committee appears likely to maintain its status quo, as the prospect of Democratic control of the Senate has dimmed after Election Day. SASC Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Ranking Member Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) won reelection by wide margins on ...
Leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are tentatively scheduling a “Big Four” meeting for Oct. 26 to begin hashing out an agreement on the 2021 defense policy bill, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told reporters. The Big Four ...
Lawmakers have approved a slew of funding shifts the Pentagon requested in June to pay officers, avoid hiring freezes in the Department of the Air Force, and set up U.S. Space Command, among other priorities. The Defense Department routinely asks the House and Senate Appropriations ...
Tracking and countering advanced cruise missiles developed by Russia and China needs to be a top priority for U.S. Northern Command, the nominee to lead the organization told lawmakers July 28. USAF Lt. Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, currently the director of the Joint Staff, said ...
Army Lt. Gen. James H. Dickinson on July 28 outlined his plans to continue ingraining space operations expertise around the U.S. military, if confirmed as the next boss of U.S. Space Command. Dickinson, currently SPACECOM’s deputy commander, would be the first uniformed officer outside the ...
The House Armed Services Committee argued its way through its version of the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill on July 1, ultimately approving the annual legislation 56-0. The unanimous vote is a stark departure from the committee’s 33-24 vote last year, which largely fell along ...
Congress wants to pump the brakes on U.S. Special Operations Command’s effort to buy a new plane for armed overwatch in remote areas, after many lawmakers recently supported a similar Air Force program. Lawmakers call on Pentagon leadership to describe why SOCOM would need such ...
If Turkey sells the U.S. the advanced S-400 air defense system it bought from Russia, Ankara could resume its lucrative role in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, under provisions inserted in the Senate's version of the 2021 defense policy bill by Sen. John Thune ...
A year after the House Armed Services Committee passed its fiscal 2020 defense policy bill in an unusually partisan fashion, the panel appears to be taking a step back from major fireworks and aerospace programmatic shifts in its 2021 legislation. The full committee’s version of ...
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s defense spending plan for 2021 would give the Air Force and Space Force largely what they want, with some notable tweaks. “What this bipartisan bill does is straightforward: care for our troops; preserve peace through strength; and defend this great ...