Based in Washington, Jen manages Aviation Week’s worldwide defense, space and security coverage.
Prior to taking on her current role, Jen was Aviation Week's Congressional Editor. Jen came to Aviation Week in March 2011 from Politico, where she covered the intersection of defense and politics. She also worked as a reporter and editor for Defense Daily, Inside the Army, The Other Paper and The Columbus Dispatch.
Jen received a Master’s degree in journalism as a Kiplinger Fellow at the Ohio State University. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in history and journalism from the University of Michigan.
YOUNG RETIRING: Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), a powerhouse on military spending issues in Congress, will not seek re-election in 2014, he told the Tampa Bay Times. Young, 82, now the chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, led the full committee from 1999 to 2005. As a leader on defense spending in the post-9/11 era, he helped pay to equip troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan while trying to modernize the military. But the environment changed dramatically in 2010, when Congress passed bans on earmarks. Budgets have only tightened since then.
Now that the Air Force has placed the A-10 Thunderbolt II under consideration for cuts in a worst-case budget scenario, a grassroots movement is building to keep the aircraft, flying since 1977, around longer. The A-10 is not one of those programs, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or the KC-46A tanker, that the service wants to protect. In fact, a chart from Air Combat Command shows the entire fleet of close-air support aircraft may be divested by 2015.
The U.S. pivot to the Pacific advanced this week with a security agreement between the U.S. and Japan that will bring U.S. Global Hawk UAVs, MV-22 Ospreys and, eventually, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to Japan. Along with that, the two governments pledged to continue and in some cases expand their cooperation on space, cyberspace and missile defense, announcing that a second AN/TPY-2 radar system would be housed at the Air Self-Defense Force base at Kyogamisaki.
