March 29, 2024

Congress Resists Personnel Benefit Cuts

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The Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the need to reduce troop benefits and restrict pay raises to preserve infrastructure “readiness,” reports Stars and Stripes. DefSec Chuck Hagel says there must be tradeoffs to protect military readiness, including personnel reforms thus far rejected by Congress, according to Defense News. House lawmakers refuse to cut into commissaries, housing allowances, or the Tricare health care system. The current House budget cuts ships, the KC-46 Pegasus aircraft and carrier-based drones. The Committee is expected to create a final draft of the defense budget this week and send it to the full House for a vote.

Federal employee morale remains low in the face of sequestration, furloughs and tight budgets. Federal employee groups believe efforts to improve the situation are insufficient, according to the Federal Times. The president of the American Federation of Government Employees J. David Cox, describing employees as the targets of furloughs and further required to contribute more to their pensions, said, “They are sick and tired of simultaneously being Congress’ and the administration’s punching bag and ATM.”

China’s nationalization of cybersecurity and creation of a cyber warrior career path is a serious problem for American efforts to thwart intelligence breaches, reports the Federal Times. Operators and defenders of critical US networks have not specialized in cybersecurity as a career field, it’s learned during the course of their jobs. “That puts the US behind the curve as China pulls ahead in science, technology, engineering and math,” said Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).

An Iranian Admiral says the nation will target American aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf should a war between the two countries ever break out, according to the AP. Iran is building a replica of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz that will be used in future military exercises, an Iranian newspaper confirmed last month. Adm. Ali Fadavi called American flatttops “an easy target.” He said, “Aircraft carriers are the symbol of America’s military might. The carriers are responsible for supplying America’s air power. So, it’s natural that we want to sink the carriers.”

NAS Patuxent River is replacing Oracle’s Solaris with Linux as the operating software for the MQ-8 “Fire Scout,” according to The Register. Pax River personnel  announced in 2012 interest in Linux-powered software to control the unmanned helicopter but it was not clear that Solaris was being displaced. The software change provides a more intuitive system and allows easier future software upgrades, according to an Avionics Intelligence report. Oracle published a white paper in 2013 arguing that open source software such as Linux represent an unacceptable risk in military applications.

Russia plans to invest $2.43 billion by 2020 in its naval capabilities in the Black Sea, according to the Russian Defense Minister, reports USNI News.  The capture of Crimea solidified Russia’s hold on the naval base in Sevastopol which the Russian Navy had been leasing from Ukraine for use as its headquarters of its Black Sea fleet.

Lawmakers are planning to to authorize  $45.3 million for behavioral and psychological health programs specifically for Special Operations Forces, reports The Hill. The increase comes in response to more than a decade of steady deployments and heavy combat and will  immediately increase the number of behavioral health care providers embedded with units, such as psychologists, social workers, nurse case managers and operational psychologists.

Aurora Flight Sciences won a $13.7 million US Navy contract to complete development of a prototype system that allows an untrained operator to land an unmanned helicopter using a software application on an Apple iPad mini. The Office of Naval Research selected Aurora’s proposal based on the Boeing Unmanned Little Bird over a bid from the Lockheed Martin/Kaman unmanned K-Max team, reports Flightglobal.

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