Word: pentagonals
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Missile-defense skeptics yearning for a fresh look at the wisdom of pumping $10 billion annually into missile defense aren't going to get it from Barack Obama when he moves into the Oval Office. The Russians - along with the two men most likely to end up running the Pentagon for the President-elect - have already made sure of that. It's a bracing reminder of just how difficult it is to counter momentum once a big-league defense program achieves what aerodynamicists call "escape velocity" - that synergy of speed and gravity that lets a vehicle soar smoothly into...
Almost immediately after Barack Obama's election-night victory, Kohono Mossman's voice mail began filling up with requests for tickets. Born and raised on Maui and now a Pentagon consultant, Mossman, 26, suddenly finds himself in charge of the hottest ticket in town as chairman of the Hawaii Inaugural ball, put on by the 400-member Hawaii State Society of Washington, D.C. He sold out the 900 tickets (at $200 each) three days after Obama's victory. It is the very first Inaugural ball thrown by the state, which proudly holds the title of the place where Obama...
...first in a new class of amphibious ships - blue-water buses - each of which carries 350 sailors and is responsible for ferrying 700 Marines and their gear to global hot spots. And the ship's sad plight represents in miniature all that is wrong with the way the Pentagon buys its weapons. The pattern of haste and waste accelerated in the Cold War's wake and simply exploded following 9/11. It highlights the challenge facing President-elect Barack Obama as he contemplates retooling an Industrial Age military - primed for state-on-state warfare - into the more agile force better suited...
...problems so baked into its design that many Navy officials fear it can never be made right, despite its price tag's having risen from $644 million to $1.8 billion. "Some significant fraction of the welds in that ship were flawed and had to be redone," John Young, the Pentagon's top weapons buyer, told Congress in June. "I shouldn't be forced to pay on behalf of taxpayers any price for any level of deficient performance." Still, that's just what the Navy did, forking over an additional $100 million to make it seaworthy after the Navy had taken...
...Already, the drawdown of troops is accelerating. The Pentagon announced Wednesday that a brigade of the 101st Airborne division will rotate out of Iraq before Christmas, as much as two months ahead of schedule, bringing the total number of combat brigades in Iraq down to 14 from its late 2007 peak of 20. But there is a limit to how quickly U.S. soldiers can depart the country while maintaining the current level of security. Although security has improved dramatically in many neighborhoods in Baghdad over the past year, the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently and effectively...