Browsing: Defense

It’s an honest enough mistake but couldn’t have been better timed. In the midst of debate over how to pursue spending for the rest of this year — and days before President Obama’s 2012 budget recommendations — the Navy released this solicitation for, you know, stuff. Clearly, somone accidentally posted a template instead of the proper announcement.  Still, despite the inevitable frustration of meeting the contract requirements for whatever it is, we already have some takers! One reader of Wired’s Danger Room, where the post was first brought to light, has offered up a canoe, “guaranteed to be stealthy,” for less than $2 million each. The…

Sony Corp. lately has been trying to drum up interest in its PlayStation 3 video game console by emphasizing its versatility — such as the ability to play video games, DVDs and high-definition Blu Ray discs and browse the Internet — under the slogan “It only does everything.” But CNN is reporting that the Pentagon has come up with a use Sony may never have imagined: Link more than 2,500 consoles together to create a massive supercomputer. CNN said the military is shopping for 2,200 new PS3s to complement a supercomputer cluster already running on 336 PS3s. The key to the supercomputer is the PS3’s…

Robert McNamara, the controversial former Defense Secretary who spent his twilight years apologizing for escalating the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War, died early this morning in Washington. He was 93 years old. McNamara was a top manager at the Ford Motor Co. and had just taken over the company in 1960 when President John F. Kennedy tapped him to run the Pentagon. According to the Washington Post, McNamara used his considerable management skills to tame the military’s massive bureaucracy: At the Pentagon, McNamara quickly put his own stamp on the sprawling military bureaucracy in what amounted to a management…

The Senate voted 93-4 Wednesday afternoon to confirm William Lynn as deputy defense secretary. During his January confirmation hearing, several senators questioned Lynn’s past as a senior lobbyist for Raytheon Co. of Waltham, Mass., a top Pentagon contractor. President Barack Obama had initially taken a hard line against lobbyists, saying they would have no place in his administration, but later softened his position.