{"id":72568,"date":"2017-06-05T09:30:54","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T13:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72568"},"modified":"2017-06-05T09:17:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T13:17:00","slug":"inside-james-mattis-pentagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=72568","title":{"rendered":"Inside James Mattis’ Pentagon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link to Defense News<\/a> where Scott Maucione gives a peek at the priorities in the Defense Department of Secretary James Mattis;<\/p>\n

If you want to sell something to the Defense Department, make sure it can help kill someone.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Acting Defense Undersecretary for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology James MacStravic says the Pentagon is prioritizing under the new administration.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I can\u2019t discuss an acquisition issue in the context of lethality, I have immediately lost the secretary\u2019s interest. His first question every time I bring an acquisition question, opportunity, investment decision to him is, \u2018Tell me again how this contributes to lethality,\u2019\u201d MacStravic said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be lethal in and of itself, but he wants to understand how it\u2019s improving the current lethality of the force, not what it will be in five years, because Secretary Mattis works under the supposition that we could go to war at any time \u2026 it\u2019s more important to know what will work in the field right now than to be confident about what will work in the field in five years because we don\u2019t know what the threat will be in five years.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mattis’ predecessor, Ash Carter, was more interested in the future, evidenced by his support for ending the A-10 Warthog program for some nebulous replacement somewhere down the road, while the troops involved in Syria, Somalia and Afghanistan need air support today. The difference between a war-fighter and a paper-pusher. Carter seemed uncomfortable with admitting that there was a current war he needed to fight.<\/p>\n

Mattis has retained the programs begun by Carter while focusing on making his mark on way the Pentagon does business today on the battlefield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link to Defense News where Scott Maucione gives a peek at … Inside James Mattis’ Pentagon<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-pentagon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}