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.
GO ABROAD: A crisis in defense spending is “imminent,” says former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.), and Congress ought to encourage export control reform and look to boost foreign military sales to support the domestic defense industrial base. “We can carry that industrial base if we add more military sales,” Talent, now an analyst at a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, told the House Budget Committee last week. Still, Rep.
The U.S House overwhelmingly passed the $649 billion defense appropriations bill for fiscal 2012 on July 8, fending off amendments that would have cut off funding for U.S. involvement in Libya as well as another that would have kept the defense budget level with last year. Lawmakers did approve a provision that would block the Defense Department from helping rebels in Libya but again stopped short of curtailing funding for U.S. assistance of the NATO mission there.
The incident last month of a Nigerian national flying from New York to Los Angeles on a fake boarding pass is picking up traction on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers want to make it a crime to falsify the documents. House Democrats are taking a legislative approach, introducing last week the False Travel Documents Prohibition Act of 2011, which would make the presentation of a fake boarding pass a crime equivalent to using a fake driver’s license at an airport checkpoint.
