March 29, 2024

NDAA Deal Reduces Benefits

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Service members will see only a 1 percent pay raise, slowed growth in their housing allowance and a $3 increase in most prescription co-pays as part of the NDAA budget deal expected to be finalized this week, reports Navy Times. The bill includes authorization for $521 billion in base military spending and an additional $64 billion in overseas contingency funds. Lawmakers are expected to pass the measure within the next two weeks. The pay and benefits cuts were backed by both the DoD and White House in an effort to slow the growth of personnel costs.

Ashton Carter’s selection as incoming DefSec is a safe choice that is likely to satisfy Republican critics of President Obama’s foreign policy, according to The Hill. Mr. Carter, who helped lead the Pentagon as it enacted $500 billion in mandatory spending cuts, was called a “superhero of sequestration” by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Navy cyber warriors respond to service network breaches and also have teams that pro-actively hunt for potential hackers, reports SEAPOWER. Vice Adm. Jan Tighe, Fleet Cyber Command commander, said, “The threat in cyberspace is evolving almost on a daily basis.” Because of the “low cost of entry” of cyber attack it is “hard to determine intent of malicious actors” and the command has to treat any intrusion as dangerous. Fleet Cyber Command is the Navy’s component of US Cyber Command and employs about 1,850 cyber warriors.

Lockheed and Kaman teamed two different types of unmanned aircraft in a firefighting demonstration by an Indago quad-rotor and a K-MAX helicopter, according to C4ISR&Networks. Lockheed stated, “During the demonstration, the Indago quad rotor effectively identified hot spots, and provided data to an operator who directed the unmanned K-MAX helicopter to autonomously extinguish the flames.”

Commander of the US Pacific Command nominee, Adm. Harry Harris, appealed this week for an end to sequestration, according to SEAPOWER. Adm. Harris warned that if planned mandatory budget cuts remain in effect until 2021 the Navy could be down to 250 ships and that even putting 60 percent of the fleet in the Pacific would not begin to meet theater requirements.

The Pentagon is moving toward a wider use of mobile devices with the approval of security credentials for Android, Apple and Microsoft devices used by vendors and other partners, reports DefenseSystems. The DoD has issued PIV-I credentials which can be used around the world by more than 40 million contractors, trading partners and others for secure access to some DoD information systems.

The Royal Navy established its first squadron to oversee the deployment of the Boeing/Insitu ScanEagle unmanned air vehicle, reports Flightglobal. The 700 Xperimental (700X) naval air squadron will be used for ScanEagle operations, as well as testing and evaluation of future UAVs that the service operates.

The DoD’s Joint Defense Manufacturing Technology Achievement Award, a top manufacturing award, was given to the Office of Naval Research for an innovative, cost-saving method for making advanced cockpit canopies for the F-35 JSF, reports Phys.org.

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