DoD Buzz

Joint Chiefs Chair Adm. Mike Mullen said the current economic crisis will adversely impact budgets and military operations and that DoD must start reducing its costs. He said he was uncertain how soon the negative impact will be felt or how the incoming Obama administration plans to address it.

The Democratic powers-to-be will begin to flex their muscles tomorrow as Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.), chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, delivers a keynote speech “on military spending and challenges facing the incoming Obama Administration” at the Democratically aligned Center for American Progress thinktank tomorrow at noon.

When the next national emergency hits, whether a terrorist strike or a Category 4 hurricane, expect there to be screw-ups and miscommunications between Northern Command and the Department of Homeland Security when it comes time to deploy Unmanned Aerial Systems. That’s the word from Marine and Army UAS experts.

An Army brigade begins arriving next month in Afghanistan, the vanguard of an anticipated 20,000 troop plus-up in the country over the next year. The added troops are arriving none too soon. In a sign of how grim the situation is, the brigade is not being sent down south. Instead, the bulk of the brigade will deploy immediately south and west of Kabul, to safeguard the capital.

The Navy, and the Pentagon in general, has been generally silent about the recent brazen acts of piracy off the Somali coast. The Coast Guard has come out swinging. Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said Wednesday in his official Coast Guard blog that he believes piracy is “an insult to civilization” and called for more action against pirates. “It is a vexing problem, but one that must be solved,” he said.

In a well-timed Foreign Affairs piece on “Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age,” newly re-anointed SecDef Robert Gates writes that the Pentagon can’t spend its way out of the national security challenges facing the nation by buying a costly arsenal to confront every potential threat. The time has come to “set priorities and consider inescapable tradeoffs and opportunity costs.”

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn.), the former admiral who was fired by the man who is now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, appears to be in the running for Navy Secretary. At this point it is hard to tell if Sestak is promoting himself — often the kiss of death for those seeking senior positions in a new administration — or if the Obama administration is considering his nomination.

Amidst the heady talk about growing batteries, email network analysis for intel, quantum computing and artificial intelligence at the Army Science Conference, the commander of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command announced that the service would start using the Second Life virtual world sometime in the next 45 days to help reach more recruits.

About two weeks ago a considerable amount of information was leaking from the incoming Obama administration (and those close to it) about possible choices to lead the intelligence community. That steady trickle dried up until today, when the New York Times published a story claiming that the top candidate to head the CIA, John Brennan, [...]

A technology that has “forever changed our Army” almost never made it to the troops. Called the Tactical Ground Reporting System (TIGR), it has made it to 15 brigade combat teams in less than four years “in spite of everything the Army could do to stop it,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli told the Army Science Conference this morning.