Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and President Obama called for a shift in U.S. military strategy from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region during a Thursday briefing. Earlier this week, reports indicated that the plan would include reducing the standing forces and refocusing them to different areas. According to a Reuters report, this differs from the military’s previous goals [...]

The 2012 Defense Authorization Act calls for the Federal Aviation Administration to establish six new testing sites for unmanned aerial systems, according to Defense Systems. The act allots at least $1 billion for UAS activities. The sites will be used to test the safety of integrating UAS into the national airspace as part of a five-year program established [...]

Beginning Jan. 9, the Air Force will offer a second round of early retirements and buyouts to reduce its civilian workforce according to an Air Force announcement. “The Air Force recognizes the invaluable contributions of our civilian workforce, but also recognizes the fiscal constraints under which the Department of Defense and the government as a [...]

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta plans to announce his approach to the impending $450 billion defense budget cuts over the next decade later this week, according to a New York Times report. The plan, to be presented at a news conference this week, would put forth proposals to reduce the Pentagon’s budget by $260 billion over the [...]

Air Force Gen. Craig R. McKinley has been named a statutory member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to a Pentagon announcement. With more than 35 years of military experience, McKinley is chief of the National Guard Bureau, where he is responsible for developing and coordinating programs and policies for more than a half-million [...]

Coinciding with the close of the Iraq war and the winding down of the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon thinning its upper ranks according to a Washington Post report. Pentagon officials have eliminated 27 positions for generals and admirals since March according to the Post. The Pentagon’s overall plan is to reduce those positions by [...]

Congress has thrown a wrinkle into the federal government’s planned-consolidation of federal data centers by putting the Pentagon‘s own consolidation plans on hold. In November, the Defense Department said in a report that the Defense Information Systems Agency, which operates 14 data centers in the cloud, was its first choice to provide cloud services to [...]

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act has made it through both houses of Congress and is now off to the White House for signing. The White House had previously issued threats to veto the bill, but lifted any such threat once a clear deal was in sight, according to Politico. The bill passed in the House by [...]

House Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) has introduced a bill he says will protect help avoid defense cuts by sequestration for at least one year. According to McKeon, the Down Payment To Protect National Security Act is designed to avoid around $55 billion of defense spending cuts in 2013 by scaling back the [...]

Leaders of the Armed Services Committees from both the House and Senate completed their conference on the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2012, Senate Committee Chairman Carl Levin‘s office (D-Mich.) announced Monday. The lawmakers said they hope to bring the bill before the full House and Senate Wednesday. According to the announcement from Levin’s [...]