The White House was on to something last year when it asked federal employees for their ideas on improving the government, but sometimes opening the floor to suggestions can backfire. Stars and Stripes has a fun story today about some of the wackier ideas the public has submitted online to the Defense Department. The most awesome proposal is to airdrop a platoon of GPS-equipped bears — which have a better sense of smell than even bloodhounds — into Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden. This helpful person (possibly Stephen Colbert) really thought through the logistics involved in such an operation, and…
Browsing: Defense Department
Slate.com is running a remarkable series this week on the hunt for Saddam Hussein, and how enterprising soldiers used their passion for social networking theory to track down the fugitive Iraqi dictator. According to Slate, the US Army didn’t start making progress on the mission until they stopped looking for the high-ranking Ba’ath party bureaucrats on the infamous deck of cards and started hunting for cousins, in-laws, and fishing buddies of the people who were hiding Hussein: The reason social network diagrams are essential to counterinsurgency, [Army interrogator Staff Sgt. Eric] Maddox says, is that they help you predict what will…
Federal Times reported last week that the 2011 budget would propose a standardized slate of pay and benefits for federal civilians deployed to war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s apparently still coming, but it’s not here yet — the budget documents OMB released Monday contain no incentive package proposals. The Pentagon just sent this statement to Federal Times after we inquired about the missing proposals: “We are still working on the standardized combat pay provisions package for submission into the fiscal year 2011 budget.”
Want to hear more on Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plans to dramatically reshape his department’s programs and priorities? You can watch him discuss those plans in an interview tonight on PBS’ The New Hour with Jim Lehrer. Gates announced yesterday his long-awaited plan to make some deep program cuts. His plan would end some defense programs such as the Air Force’s F-22 fighter and combat search-and-rescue helicopter program, the Army’s Future Combat Systems armored vehicle programs, the Navy’s new DDG-1000 destroyer, and the Marine Corps’ presidential helicopter program. And he proposes to beef up spending on other priorities such as…