With Esper’s nomination, the Pentagon gets its third Acting SecDef in one month, underscoring the continued turmoil at the top of Trump administration’s national security machine.

Mark Esper got on a plane to NATO just 24 hours after taking over at the Pentagon. There are two main reasons why.

Insiders say dysfunction within Griffin’s office is creating concerns within the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

As the three most powerful civilians in the Army Department, Esper, McCarthy, and Jette have formed by all accounts a tight-knit and effective team. That’s particularly remarkable because they’ve had abundant opportunities for conflict as they turned the Army bureaucracy upside down.

After five months on the job, the Pentagon’s Acting SecDef is ousted for a new Acting SecDef — keeping the Trump administration’s carousel wheel spinning.

A day after two commercial tankers are hit in the Gulf of Oman, reports emerge the Houthis are firing — and hitting — US aircraft.

USDI Kari Bingen says that DoD’s mission “is hampered when we have to pay in time and money analysts and experts to manually translate data files … to makes systems and data interoperable because of proprietary data standards and formats.”

The sea services have their own space specialists, but those personnel don’t only work on space — so who stays and who goes?

CNO John Richardson said Monday that, essentially, the Persian Gulf deployment was business as usual. “The Abraham Lincoln Strike Group was planned to deploy for some time now,” he told the SeaAirSpace conference.

In future wars, “one of our battles is going to be just getting off of the pier,” the Navy’s top civilian said, because of cyber attacks against Navy forces and infrastructure.