Supply Chain

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson announced today the service will stand up a new rapid sustainment office to encourage the use of advanced manufacturing techniques to reduce costs and speed up time lines.

Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Jansen said today he's set to soon debrief Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Pat Shanahan, the deputy defense secretary, about a June industrial base examination held at the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy.

The Pentagon is seeking to bolster its DIBNow system, a business intelligence and analytics capability focused on the industrial base, according to the head of the Defense Department's manufacturing and industrial base policy shop.

The White House has registered objections to several reform proposals in the House Armed Services Committee's version of the fiscal year 2019 defense authorization bill, opposing provisions that would eliminate or transfer the Strategic Capabilities Office, expand the authority of the Defense Department's chief management officer and migrate the capabilities of the Defense Information Systems Agency to other Pentagon entities.

Defense Department Chief Management Officer Jay Gibson, who is in charge of the Pentagon's latest effort in a long history of initiatives to find business efficiencies that can be redirected to new spending on military readiness and weapon systems, says this time is different.

New draft guidance released by the Defense Department last week lays out how contracting officers can use cybersecurity standards in a procurement action, meaning companies who aren't complying with the security controls could soon be deemed too risky for DOD work. 

The Pentagon must develop a good way to share Joint Strike Fighter lessons learned across the military services as the program rapidly expands in the coming years instead of keeping information within each faction, according to a government watchdog agency.

Senior Defense Department officials are calling on industry to better protect their supply chains from cyber threats, but uncertainty surrounding DOD's implementation of stringent network security requirements has companies wondering how the department will enforce compliance moving forward.

President Trump, citing national security concerns, is ordering new tariffs on steel and aluminum today with temporary exemptions for Canada and Mexico and potential exemptions for other U.S. allies on a case-by-case basis.