Today at 11 EST, DODLive hosted a Bloggers Roundtable with Brandon Underwood and Charles Moraldo.
Brandon Underwood is a member of the U.S. Army CERDEC Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate (S&TCD), Airborne Antennas and Integration Team. Charles Moraldo is the Director of the CERDEC Flight Activity. Our quests discussed how CERDEC is incorporating optimized antenna solutions from the earliest stages of the airframe development process.
Mark Romig, Chairman of the NOLA Navy Week Host Committee
We recently held a DoDLive Bloggers Roundtable with Mark Romig, Chairman of the NOLA Navy Week Host Committee, on March 29.
A native New Orleanian, Mark is serving as Chairman of the NOLA Navy Week Host Committee, the group tapped by the Mayor of the City of New Orleans to present New Orleans’ participation in the Bicentennial of the War of 1812 and Star Spangled Banner.
As President and CEO of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation (NOTMC), Mark leads the city’s official leisure travel promotion agency, responsible for enhancing the tourism industry through effective marketing and promotional programs. Mark will be discussing the plethora of events planned for the New Orleans Navy Week April 17 – 23rd, 2012. New Orleans is the first Navy Week of 2012, and kicks off the Navy’s War of 1812 Bicentennial Commemoration. The commemoration aims to reconnect the American people with the notion that we are a seafaring nation that depends on the ocean for both commerce and national defense. The United States Navy, the United States Marine Corps, the United States Coast Guard, and OpSail will utilize the events of 2012 and beyond to educate the American public about the past, present, and future of our sea services.
Joining us on the call were Phyllis Zimbler-Miller, of mrslieutenant; and Tom Goering, of Navy Cyberspace.
Listen to the roundtable here.
Mike McCord, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)
By William Selby
Emerging Media, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16, 2012 – The fiscal 2013 defense budget request sent to Congress Feb. 13 is a product of the defense strategic guidance President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta outlined last month, a senior Pentagon financial official said yesterday.
Mike McCord, principal deputy to Pentagon Comptroller Robert F. Hale, explained aspects of the budget request during a “DOD Live” bloggers roundtable.
The strategy, McCord said, was shaped by three main factors: the end of the war in Iraq, the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, and the Budget Control Act.
“That shaped our budget as we tried to reconcile how to do the things that… we want the Defense Department to be able to do for this president, for future presidents and for the country,” McCord said.
Among the topics McCord discussed was how the Defense Department plans to use in implementing the strategic guidance in a more austere budget climate, noting that Panetta’s predecessor as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, had begun to revamp the Pentagon’s approach while he was in office.
“One of the primary focuses of Secretary Gates before he left was to reduce some of the aspects of service contracting in order to save money for the department,” McCord said.
The fiscal 2013 budget request, he added, is similar to the fiscal 2012 budget in that regard.
The new budget reality dictated cuts in some programs the military considers important, McCord said, but officials worked hard to achieve the necessary spending reductions while maintaining the military’s ability to carry out the defense strategy.
For example, he said, Air Force officials believed it was a good trade to slow down buying some unmanned aerial vehicles to put the money into training the air crews faster. “We tend to only show the … dollars change on the major end items themselves and not the rationale, maybe, for putting more on the personnel to man those assets and to slow down buying the assets,” he said.
Ultimately, McCord said, the size of the force is the budget’s “big driver.”
“If I know I have an Army of 500,000, versus 400,000, then that determines how many rifles I need to buy, and uniforms, and how many bases I need,” he explained. “So longer term, the way to adjust your budget is certainly to adjust the size of your force.
“In the short term,” McCord continued, “the size of your force is hard to adjust, and it does generate a lot of costs.” Toward that end, he noted, the Defense Department has asked Congress to authorize two more rounds of base closures and realignments to reduce infrastructure costs.
Many ways exist to adjust the budget, McCord said, but the range of what military leadership, the president and the nation would find acceptable in terms of the readiness of the military is narrow.
Listen to the roundtable audio here.
Mike McCord, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)
We recently held a DodLive Bloggers Roundtable with Mike McCord, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), on Wednesday, Feb. 15.
McCord discussed the Department of Defense FY2013 Budget Request, announced on Feb. 13, as well as the guiding principles highlighted the department’s strategic goals for the FY2013 budget request, which are drawn from the recent Defense Strategic Guidance.
Listen to the roundtable audio here.
To learn more about the budget request, visit the the Defense.gov news special or click on the below links.
http://comptroller.defense.gov/budget.html
http://www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_Guidance.pdf
Joining us on the call were Chuck Simmins, of America’s North Shore Journal; Jared Serbu, of Federal News Radio; Gail Harris, of Foreign Policy Blogs; and John Doyle, of 4GWar.
By Bradley Cantor
Emerging Media, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2012 – The War of 1812 was a watershed moment in the nation’s development of a strong national defense system, a military historian said this week, as it provided justification for building up the Navy and changed the nation’s attitude toward strengthening the central government.
Michael Crawford, a senior historian at the Naval History and Heritage Command, made that observation Feb. 7 during a “DOD Live” bloggers roundtable.
Crawford said the United States declared war against the United Kingdom because “It wanted to end impressments of its citizens into the Royal Navy.”
German soldiers of 2nd Company, 1st Battalion, 40th Mechanized Infantry Regiment pull security during an Operational Mentor Liaison Team (OMLT) training exercise at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany. OMLT XXIII and Police Operational Mentor Liaison Team VII training are designed to prepare teams for deployment to Afghanistan with the ability to train, advise, and enable the Afghan National Security Force in areas such as counter-insurgency, combat advisory, and force enabling support operations. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Ian Schell (DVIDS)
While flying over Colorado a B-2 Stealth Bomber from Whiteman Air Force Base, MO, moves into position for a mid-air refueling via the boom of a KC-135R Stratotanker from the 128th Air Refueling Wing, Milwaukee on 09 May, 2012. The B-2 Stealth bomber and the KC-135 crews conducted the aerial refueling to maintain mission readiness standards.
U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt Jeremy M. Wilson (DVIDS)
Royal Canadian Mounted Police assigned to a Marine Security Emergency Response Team debark from the HMCS Ville de Quebec (FFH 332) to conduct boarding operations during Exercise Frontier Sentinel 2012 May 8, 2012 at sea off Sydney, Nova Scotia. Exercise Frontier Sentinel is a combined interagency exercise involving Joint Task Force Atlantic, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Navy Fleet Forces Command. The exercise is designed to continue to develop and validate the existing plans, treaties and standard operation procedures for a bilateral response to maritime homeland defense and security threats.
(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ernesto Hernandez Fonte / Released) (DVIDS)
Recent Comments