“We’re going to turn that off unless you secured that properly. Whoa! That’s a very different mindset,” Col. Straub told me. “The availability of the network versus the defense of the network, that’s something we’re trying to get commanders to think about.”

When House Armed Services Chairman Thornberry proposed eliminating seven agencies and reducing personnel by 25 percent, he faced strong opposition. In the HASC’s draft bill, he scaled the proposal back to eliminating just three agencies. But that didn’t work either. During the committee’s markup of the House defense policy bill, members still pushed back.

House Armed Services Committee pushes through most of the Trump administration’s budget requests, absent some of the usual fights. But the return of sequester looms large in 2020.

WASHINGTON: Two years ago, Capt. John Zimmerman and his award-winning Navy team were testing a software upgrade for submarines when they ran into a surprising problem. When they changed the code controlling the Tomahawk missile launchers, the torpedo tubes stopped working. Fortunately, this all happened in a laboratory ashore before the upgrade got anywhere near the… Keep reading →

TYSON’S CORNER: “Unity of command” is a classic principle of war. As the US military struggles to improve cybersecurity against relentless Russian, Chinese, and other attacks, however, it’s finding the complex interconnectedness of computer networks complicate the chain of command. If the tech guys urgently need to shut a system down — say, because it’s… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The presumptive Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, has told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the most pressing areas of concern for the US military are its cyber and space capabilities; modernizing its nuclear weapons and their delivery systems; and assuring that American forces can penetrate any set of defenses anywhere in the world. He also… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Who buys the bandwidth? Today the military has two separate, unequal, and inefficient systems for acquiring communications. But Congress is pushing hard to consolidate — probably at the expense of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). “I have been in situations where we needed to have SATCOM [satellite communications] and we didn’t have… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: In what looks very much like an opening shot in a fundamental fiscal battle between the four armed services and the Office of Secretary of Defense, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus came right out today and said we should preserve fighting forces by cutting Defense Department agencies that are “pure overhead,” His prime candidates? The testers who make sure the services’… Keep reading →

[Updated Friday with new DISA org chart] CRYSTAL CITY: The day before Islamic radicals hijacked Central Command’s Twitter account, the Defense Information Systems Agency officially launched a major overhaul intended, among other things, to increase cybersecurity. But it doesn’t mean the office is getting bigger or getting more money: DISA’s cybersecurity office will actually get smaller. “It’ll… Keep reading →

[UPDATED with Central Command statement on Twitter/YouTube hack] CRYSTAL CITY: There’s a new cyber sheriff in town — and none too soon. When the Pentagon’s social media accounts get hacked, as they did today, it’s acutely embarrassing. When the military’s internal networks get hacked, however, it’s potentially lethal. But the Defense Department doesn’t have a single organization… Keep reading →