A $50-Billion Warship Mystery

There was tension in the House of Representatives hearing room July 31 as Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) called to order a meeting of the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee. “This may very well be the most important hearing this subcommittee has held since our hearing last January on the procurement More…

Taking on Military Contract Reform

Budget cuts in the 1990s forced the Pentagon’s skilled contracting workforce to shrink by more than half. When defense budgets doubled in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, this workforce was overwhelmed. So the Pentagon handed the responsibility for overseeing lucrative weapons programs to industry teams called “Lead Systems More…

Reining in Military Contracts

It was August 2003 when a fellow engineer at Lockheed Martin’s Moorestown, N.J., facility dropped by Mike DeKort’s office with a seemingly absurd complaint.

He said that Lockheed, the nation’s No. 1 defense contractor, had been buying non-waterproof radios from a subcontractor to install on some 15-year-old patrol boats that More…

The Military’s Internet ‘Civil War’

This is the third and final installment in a series on social networking sites and the military.

Part One: How the Army Found Middle Ground

Part Two: How the Coast Guard Botched Its Online Start

Islamic extremists long have used Websites as their primary means of sharing ideas More…

The Military’s Internet Civil War

This is the second in a series on the military and online social networking sites.

In recent years the Pentagon has moved to ban many “Web 2.0” Internet sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. The Air Force, the military’s Internet point service, declared that blogs, in particular, were not More…

The Military’s Internet ‘Civil War’

This winter, the Air Force, as the Pentagon’s point agency for Internet operations –“cyberwarfare,” in military jargon – banned access from official networks to many blogs, declaring that they weren’t “established, reputable media.” The Air Force didn’t seem concerned that America’s greatest enemies, international jihadists, had long ago latched onto More…

High-Tech Weapons Plan for Now

The tiny four-wheeled robot made it halfway to the fist-size bomb before its battery ran out of juice. It was early January 2005 in Baqubah, Iraq, a hotbed of insurgent activity. The Army officers standing at a distance cursed the tiny robot, a 25-pound remote-controlled truck equipped with cameras for More…