Jared Serbu covers the Department of Defense for Federal News Radio. Jared's reports can be heard Monday - Friday on the Federal Drive and In Depth.

DoD standardizing, synchronizing cyber training

The department is creating and trying out a universal curriculum for five foundational cyber roles in 2013. DISA is leading the effort and will add new roles next year as it refines the training. The agency says it is doing all it can to synchronize its training not just across DoD, but across the entire federal government in line with the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE).

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Navy Undersecretary Robert Work to leave post

Robert Work, the Navy's undersecretary, will not serve a second term under President Obama.

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Navy living out its 'heyday,' but rough seas ahead

Robert Work, the undersecretary of the Navy, says forget about the Reagan-era aspirations of a 600-ship fleet. Even with a smaller Navy, things are better than ever, he says, even if they're about to get worse due to smaller budgets and the threat of sequestration. "Yes, things might get worse. In fact, they probably will get worse. But this is the heyday of the U.S. Navy. And, if you're not excited, you ain't breathing," he said at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium this week.

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Begin saving cash now, Air Force tells commanders

The Air Force orders commanders to start cutbacks in advance of the next budget emergency.

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Air Force's sequestration hit would mean less of everything

Air Force commanders will get orders in the next few days to plan for the possibility of fewer flying hours, providing fewer office supplies and working on fewer IT upgrades. Part of the service's planning will be to figure out how many civilian workers would need to be furloughed and for how long.

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Pentagon orders planning for civilian furloughs, other cutbacks

Defense Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter told DoD components Thursday to draw up plans for full-year continuing resolution, plus sequestration. The approach to deal with across-the-board cuts would be to freeze civilian hiring, cut training, travel and conferences and reduce business technology expenditures.

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Sequestration 2.0 would mean furloughs for DoD's entire civilian workforce

New version of sequestration would reduce overall tab to DoD but compress across-the-board cuts into just seven months. A leading-think tank's "back of the envelope" calculations show the military would have to furlough almost every civilian.

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Cyber study helps Air Force synch efforts with DoD's broader goals

Dr. Mark Maybury, the Air Force's chief scientist, joins On DoD to describe the areas the Air Force plans for cybersecurity development.

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Congress revises DoD's sequestration starting point

When lawmakers and the White House kicked sequestration two months down the road, they also made changes to how the cuts would be calculated. The Pentagon estimates the impact on the Defense budget would be gentler than before.

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Navy begins installing common IT architecture for entire fleet

The first Navy ship is undergoing an overhaul to implement the CANES system, one of up to 23 authorized under Pentagon's go-ahead for limited deployment.

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Double-digit increase in reported sexual assaults at military academies

Reports of unwanted sexual contact increased sharply in the past academic year. The Pentagon believes the spike shows more reporting, not more crimes.

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Colleges seeking DoD tuition money face new requirements

Beginning next year, public and private schools will have to sign up to protections for service members in order to receive DoD tuition assistance funds.

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Federal acquisition leaders distressed over workforce, budget cuts

Latest edition of a biennial survey, sponsored by a contracting industry group, finds acquisition leaders have the same challenges they had a decade ago. But they fear tighter budgets will reverse progress toward improving the government's acquisition workforce.

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Joint Chiefs to crack down on military IT stovepipes

A new process promises more advance word on what the Pentagon wants from its military services, but demands they comply with common architectures. DoD said it is learning from development mistakes of the past.

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Sequestration worse than thought, Pentagon frets

As planning begins for sequestration, the military may have to cut billions more than previously imagined. DoD, like all agencies, is waiting for instruction from the OMB on how to reduce their budget.

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Navy, Air Force CMOs decry 'blunt, formulaic' cuts to civilian workforce

Senate-passed annual authorization bill for DoD would require a 5 percent cut in non-uniformed employees. Chief management officers from two military services say mathematical cuts to a workforce that's "under siege" would be unwise.

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Panetta, Shinseki order swifter progress toward joint health records

The heads of DoD and VA met on Thursday, and decided they wanted to a plan to speed up the delivery of an integrated health record system, currently scheduled for implementation in 2017.

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IT reform bill would cull the CIO herd, give them more power

Rep. Darrell Issa said agencies need a lot more agility in their IT spending, but a lack of budget authority and a proliferation of accountability among bureau-level CIOs gets in the way.

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Air Force role just 1 piece of DoD's cyber puzzle

Air Force senior leaders assigned themselves several tasks after a summit on cyberspace in mid-November. But the service's role in cyberspace also awaits forthcoming guidance from the military's top leadership on the future of U.S. Cyber Command.

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IRS struggling to tackle massive surge in identity theft

Faced with declining resources, the Internal Revenue Service has diverted resources from elsewhere inside the agency to try and head off skyrocketing cases of identity theft stemming from tax refunds.

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