No Furloughs at Customs and Border Protection
IRS Employees to Receive $70 Million in Bonuses
Uncharted Financial Waters at Defense
Postal Service Eyes Cuba
Should Leaders Ever Lie?
Unions: Efficiency Board Is 'Offensive,' 'Unwise'
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
On the Brink of National Missile Defense
August 15, 2000 letters@govexec.com ver since President Reagan delivered his famous 1983 speech proposing an impenetrable shield that would protect the entire United States from an all-out attack by the Soviet Union, the issue of national missile defense has been infused to an unusual degree with partisan politics. Many Democrats still deride the ...
Headline
August 15, 2000 letters@govexec.com uring NATO's war over Kosovo last year, the widening gap between U.S. capabilities in electronics and communications and the abilities of even its closest allies came into stark relief. U.S. warplanes conducted the vast majority of the precision strikes against Serbian targets and supplied the lion's share of the ...
Glory Days of Funding May be Over
August 15, 2000 letters@govexec.com t isn't often that defense research and development becomes an issue in a presidential campaign, but this year it has. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has promised that if elected, he will spend an extra $20 billion on defense R&D to facilitate a leap ahead in military technology ...
Big Programs Face Big Milestones
August 15, 2000 letters@govexec.com ilitary aircraft programs are, in a sense, the modern equivalent of the pyramids, massive projects that help define national pride and prowess. Many billions of dollars, tens of thousands of high-tech jobs, and the fate of some of America's premier corporations ride on their success or failure. The rapid ...
The Pen and the Sword
April 1, 2000 jkitfield@nationaljournal.com nly a few days into Operation Allied Force in the Balkans last year, warning alarms began to sound inside the Pentagon about media coverage of the war. At least one 24-hour television news channel was broadcasting live video of U.S. warplanes taking off from their bases, potentially giving Serbian ...
Military establishment eyes McCain warily
February 15, 2000 Perhaps not since John F. Kennedy has a presidential candidate spoken as compellingly to the core values and aspirations of the U.S. military as John McCain. Certainly fellow Republicans Bob Dole and George Bush were genuine war heroes, but their struggle in World War II was of an older generation ...
War Showcases Missile Systems
August 15, 1999 jkitfield@njdc.com eriods of war and strife often have reshaped the way Americans view national security, shaking them out of complacency and dramatically changing the normal cycle of weapons procurement. So it was this year, as two major news events galvanized opinion in Washington behind major increases in spending and production ...
Y2K Clock is Ticking
August 15, 1999 jkitfield@njdc.com efense Department officials are anxiously awaiting the long-anticipated moment known among some experts simply as "midnight crossing." It will arrive first in the Aleutian Islands as the clock strikes midnight in the western Pacific Dec. 31. Pentagon officials will be watching closely on the computer screens of a planned ...
Providing High-Tech Hegemony
August 15, 1999 jkitfield@govexec.com hen NATO announced a cease-fire in Operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia in June, Pentagon officials punctuated the victory by showing reporters detailed video of Serbian troops exiting the province of Kosovo in troop transports. It was a rare moment in the annals of modern warfare. For the first time, ...
The High Cost of Upgrades
August 15, 1999 jkitfield@njdc.com espite the high-tech warfare that NATO waged in the skies over Yugoslavia earlier this year, the U.S. aircraft that were the vanguard of Operation Allied Force are generally more than a decade old. Most represent technology that dates back to the 1970s and 1960s. Some of the B-52 bombers ...
