Tag Archives: Defense Department

Director of DoD Pricing Shay Assad, Photo: Defense.gov Defense Department policymakers have long been extolling the virtues of better buying. In fact, acquisition chief Ashton Carter launched a program bearing that name last year, aiming to drive the costs of major weapons programs down. Now, Shay Assad, who last week …

Defense Department official Shay Assad’s new title gives heft to DoD’s increasing efforts to squeeze $400 billion from its bottom line over the next 12 years. Earlier this week, DoD announced Assad, who formerly headed the department’s defense procurement and acquisition policy shop, would be given a new title: director …

The Defense Department has announced Shay Assad, who used to head up the department’s  Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy shop, has been named the director of defense pricing. The announcement came in the Defense Department’s listing of new members of the Senior Executive Service — the upper echelon of the …

Members of the House of Representatives voting on a defense authorization bill last week let their voices be heard when it comes to the hot-button issue of in-sourcing. In a “sense of Congress” amendment, which is not legally binding, the bill reiterated to the Defense Department that in the meticulous …

President Barack Obama announced his pick yesterday for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army, Gen. Martin Dempsey. Now serving as Army chief of staff, Dempsey will take over for current Chairman Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, whose term ends Sept. 30. Obama also announced he will nominate Navy Adm. …

President Barack Obama has sent the nominations of CIA Director Leon Panetta to be defense secretary and Army Gen. David Petraeus to fill Panetta’s post at CIA to the Senate for confirmation, the Defense Department reports. Obama first announced the national security personnel shakeup April 28. Defense Secretary Robert M. …

In the search to squeeze more savings out of the federal government, agencies are increasingly looking inward. But are they successful in the search for efficiencies? A new report by MeriTalk, the government-IT network, and software provider SAS details the responses of 150 federal officials — financial, operational and performance …

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said it’s all but a foregone conclusion the U.S. military is in for a period of significant restructuring and scaleback. Speaking at an inaugural lectures series on civil discourse and democracy at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Mullen talked about the …

The White House has threatened to veto defense authorizations for fiscal year 2012 because of a provision providing support for the alternate engine of the Joint Strike Fighter, which the administration and the Pentagon both consider wasteful and want to end. The House first pulled funding last winter and, in …

Soon-to-retire Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in public remarks recently, has been delivering the sobering message of budget efficiencies in the Defense Department. But there’s one area that bucks Gates’ public pronouncements: funding for modernization efforts. “We cancelled or curtailed modernization programs that were egregiously over-budget, behind schedule, dependent on …