WASHINGTON: After a small group of forlorn men huddled in the middle of Afghanistan succeeded in their plan to strike the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, America declared a global war against them. That war has sucked almost $3 trillion dollars from the US, according to a study by the respected Stimson Center… Keep reading →

We’ve already got soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines and Coasties. If President Trump gets what he wants, we may now have spacemen — but the Senate may say no.

“Error is as important as malevolence,” Richard Danzig told me in an interview. “I probably wouldn’t use the word ‘stupidity,’ (because) the people who make these mistakes are frequently quite smart, (but) it’s so complex and the technologies are so opaque that there’s a limit to our understanding.”

The Pentagon wants its new AI center up and running in six months, but is taking a different track on directed energy and hypersonics, Deputy Defense Secretary Shanahan says.

It ain’t sexy, but the massive backlog of 730,000 clearance investigations is costing companies money, the Intelligence Community good people and causing headaches for everyone.
The redoubtable Sue Gordon, principal deputy Director of National Intelligence, told some 3,000 intelligence professionals today that “this year we’ll do really great work on reducing the backlog.”

WASHINGTON: After three years during which it’s been the Air Force’s greatest problem child, Raytheon’s next-generation ground control system for GPS satellites is back on track, the company’s top man on the program says. Ellen Lord, the head of Pentagon acquisition, and Will Roper, head of Air Force acquisition, met with Bill Sullivan and other… Keep reading →

INSA HQ: Drive milestone decision authority down as low as is possible. Speed decision-making. Let the Intelligence Community agencies create simple and clear requirements and manage their programs, as long as everything goes along swimmingly. That outlines the changes to acquisition that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence plans to make over the… Keep reading →

The great challenge for intelligence agencies in the age of Trump was dramatically highlighted this month when a senior South Korean delegation arrived at the White House carrying a secret bombshell message. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un wanted a face-to-face summit with President Donald Trump to discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. Waiting to debrief… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: No lives were on the line. It wasn’t lofting a billion dollar spy satellite. But the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test launch demonstrated today that the world’s largest rocket system worked largely as planned. And, as one observer noted, the entire system was built for commercial reasons alone; no government agency crafted a requirement saying… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “When does that moment come when their program matures and goes across those redlines? At the pace we’re on, it’s just a matter of time. If something doesn’t change, it will be inevitable these redlines are met — if there’s another test of a warhead.” Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared to document one of the redlines he… Keep reading →