Navy

  • A task force assigned to take a holistic view of the Navy's cybersecurity posture catalogues security holes across the Navy enterprise, and concludes that plugging each one would cost an absurd amount of money.

    February 16, 2015
  • The Department of the Navy is taking a more corporate approach to meeting the ever-changing mission needs with technology, said Maura Sullivan, the Department of Navy's chief of strategy and innovation.

    February 13, 2015
  • The USS Kauffman is now the last of its breed. The 453-foot Navy ship is on a six-month deployment that marks the final mission for any Navy frigate. All the rest have been decommissioned. Kauffmann will follow suit when it returns from Central America in September. Rear Adm. Peter Fanta, the Navy's director of Surface Warfare, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to explain the rationale behind the decommissioning, the policy behind it and how the Navy intends to replace the frigates.

    February 13, 2015
  • A Navy scientist won the 2014 NATO Science and Technology Organization's Scientific Achievement Award. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to aerospace science and technology or aerospace systems applications. The winner was Steve Anderson, a Principal Scientist with the Naval Surface Warfare Center. He joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to detail how he won.

    February 09, 2015
  • The Navy highlighted several of these applied research technologies at the conference, including the rail gun, the shipboard autonomous firefighting robot (SAFFiR), an autonomous swarmboat, and an autonomous flying wing underwater glider.

    February 05, 2015
  • The Office of Naval Research has an update to its strategic plan and a new chief to help to put those priorities in place. Rear Adm. Mat Winter, the new chief of Naval Research, has been on the job for about four weeks. Federal News Radio's Lauren Larson spoke to the new ONR chief at the Naval Future Force Science and Technology expo. He tells her what ONR looks for when updating its strategic plan.

    February 04, 2015
  • The Navy has a powerful software system that dramatically reduces the time it takes to plan safe submarine missions. That same software recently made its way above the surface and was installed on the guided missile cruiser, USS Mobile Bay. Dr. Kip Krebs, program officer in the Office of Naval Research's Warfighter Performance Department, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with more on the app's uses.

    January 30, 2015
  • The Navy is funding robotic door greeters to learn more about potential futuristic training options for the Marine Corps.

    January 28, 2015
  • The Littoral Combat Ship U.S.S. Fort Worth is in the Java Sea, helping with the effort to recover the remains of the Air Asia flight. The ship's work in that effort is generating a discussion about the future of the LCS program. Sydney Freedberg in Breaking Defense writes the mission "shows why the Navy needs something like LCS at all." Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Jerry Hendrix is senior fellow and director of the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program for the Center for a New American Security. On In Depth with Francis Rose, he explained if he thinks the LCS program has turned the corner and is headed toward respectability in Congress.

    January 14, 2015
  • Critics of the Navy's maritime strategy -- or lack thereof -- are all over the federal defense community. One retired officer tells the U.S. Naval Institute the defense community may not understand what the word "strategy" means anymore. Congressman Randy Forbes has an open letter to chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, asking him to lead an effort to restore strategic planning to the Navy. Barney Rubel is former dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the U.S. Naval War College. On In Depth with Francis Rose, he said those critics are missing an important piece of the strategy puzzle.

    January 08, 2015
  • Stop us if you've heard this before. If you tell contractors bidding on a big procurement you're going to use Plan X for evaluating prices, you better use Plan X. Otherwise you could lose a protest. That's what happened to the Navy in a $2.5 billion program. Procurement attorney Joe Petrillo joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain more of what happened and the lessons learned in this week's Legal Loop.

    January 08, 2015
  • Troops start the new year with a 1 percent pay raise. That's a little less than the 1.8 percent raise they would have gotten automatically from the annual cost of living adjustment. A study on pay and benefits from the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission is due next month. Vice Adm. Norb Ryan is president of the Military Officers Association of America. He says some kind of reform is long overdue. He shared his Top 3 for 2015 on In Depth with Francis Rose. He says morale is still a top priority for the military, even with fewer commitments in Afghanistan.

    January 06, 2015
  • Enlisted Navy and Marine Corps service members have a new, easier route to medical school. It's called the Enlisted-to-Medical Degree Preparatory Program. It puts them on equal footing with counterparts in the Army and Air Force. Dr. Art Kellermann is Dean of the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain how the new program works.

    January 02, 2015
  • The new year will bring new contracting initiatives throughout government. A big case in point: The Army's forthcoming Responsive Strategic Sourcing for Services, or RS3. It's one of several big, multiple-award contracts that will drive consolidation of professional services. Many more service contracts are likely to flow through vehicles like RS3 and the Navy's SeaPort E. Kevin Brancato, Senior Defense Analyst at Bloomberg Government, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to provide a broader outlook on RS3 and defense contracting in 2015.

    January 02, 2015

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Each week, Defense Reporter Jared Serbu speaks with the managers of the federal government's largest department. Subscribe on PodcastOne or Apple Podcasts.