Based in Washington, Jen managed Aviation Week’s worldwide defense, space and security coverage from 2013 to January 2024.
Prior to taking on the Executive Editor 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.
The FAA's NextGen air traffic modernization plan may not have slews of enemies on Capitol Hill, but to become a reality, it will still need the right kind of friends. Republicans are targeting domestic discretionary spending to deflate the deficit, and plan to roll back the Transportation Department's budget to 2007 levels. Since the FAA still needs to maintain the salaries of air traffic controllers and other essential personnel, even without lawmakers calling for NextGen's demise, the amount left over for the effort is under serious pressure.
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.
