Saturday, April 27, 2024
Key Issues Optical clocks Prototype funding SPAFORGEN
Jason Sherman is a reporter for Inside Defense. For more than two decades -- including stints with Defense News and Armed Forces Journal -- he has covered the Pentagon, defense industry, the military budget, weapon system acquisition and defense policy formulation as well as reporting on technology, business, and global arms trade. Jason has traveled to more than 40 countries, studied medieval history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and lives in Brooklyn.
The Defense Department will explore the possibility of accelerating the Glide Phase Interceptor program schedule -- currently slated for fielding in 2034 -- if contractors developing competing designs for a hypersonic-killing guided missile provide compelling evidence that yet-to-be-developed technology is sufficiently mature to achieve earlier deployment.
The Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense program has passed muster with the Army's top air defender and head of Forces Command, clearing the way for the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) -- which began in 2009 and fought termination after major developmental failures -- to begin operational fielding.
Defense Department leaders last week approved the Glide Phase Interceptor program to proceed into technology development, signaling support for the Missile Defense Agency's proposed acquisition strategy and plan to mature technologies essential to producing a guided missile designed to hunt down and destroy enemy hypersonic glide vehicles.
The Pentagon has set a goal to increase the size of the Air Force bomber force by 20% -- growing the fleet from 143 today to 173 by 2037, according to the first major recalibration of the U.S. military's long-term aviation inventory in five years, a previously unreported expansion that reflects the importance of long-range strike in war plans for a potential fight against China.
The U.S. military plans to steadily shrink the total number of aircraft it operates over the next 15 years from 13,749 to 12,721 -- a 7% reduction -- with the bomber force, aerial refueling and Special Operations Forces slated for growth, according to the most detailed public forecast of the Defense Department's aircraft inventory to date.
The Defense Department this year plans to break the "strategic pause" imposed on the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program after the 2019 termination of the Redesigned Kill Vehicle project with the maiden flight of a guided missile against a target using a booster that utilizes only two of three available rocket stages.
Defense Department and NATO policymakers are considering expanding the mission of Aegis Ashore sites in Europe -- originally established to counter Iranian ballistic missile threats -- to also defend the continent from Russian air attacks in the wake of Moscow's blistering ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile attacks against Ukraine over the last year.
The Pentagon is seeking a new Missile Defense Agency director after Vice Adm. Jon Hill recently requested permission to retire this summer -- marking the second consecutive MDA director to vacate the post prior to completing a six-year term that Congress created to help foster management stability over the agency's complex projects portfolio.
The Defense Department is scrapping plans for a notional three-way competition to develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile target -- needed to test the $17 billion Next Generation Interceptor program -- and is selecting incumbent Northrop Grumman for the project after determining the new target is needed sooner than originally planned.
The Missile Defense Agency is laying the foundation for a 10-year program to upgrade the Standard Missile-3 family of guided missile interceptors -- seeking feedback from industry on a range of notional improvement to the Block IB and Block IIA variants -- in a project that aims to begin as soon as fiscal year 2024.
The Pentagon's acquisition executive has approved the Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense (AIAMD) program, the penultimate milestone in the program's bumpy 14-year development that unlocks a planned $3 billion production run through 2028 and paves the way for both fielding to U.S. forces as well as potential foreign sales.
The Army is seeking permission to shift to higher-priority projects nearly $30 million in funds originally appropriated for the Defense Department's marquee hypersonic weapons program, a move the Pentagon says will not affect fielding plans but is also a sign the planned test schedule remains fluid.
The Army is looking to launch a new-start project in fiscal year 2024 to extend the killing range of high-energy lasers to destroy enemy cruise missiles at greater distances, seeking $8 million in applied research funding for advanced beam-control component developments for counter-cruise missiles.
The Missile Defense Agency has demonstrated the first of a planned three-part project to prove technical linkages that could be relevant to a future domestic cruise missile defense system as part of an effort slated to culminate this summer with a live-flight test.
The Navy's fiscal year 2024 budget seeks funding to raise annual production capacity of the Standard Missile-6 to 300 by 2028, a 50% increase above the goal to reach 200 per year by 2026 as demand for the weapon -- which packs both offensive and defensive punch -- grows.
The Defense Department is utilizing new budget authorities granted to U.S. Cyber Command in fiscal year 2024 -- giving the organization service-like acquisition powers for the first time -- to carve out $6 billion in planned research and development as well as procurement projects in the Pentagon's new five-year spending blueprint.
The Pentagon plans to field a hypersonic defense system in fiscal year 2034, a target date that falls 17 years after Congress directed the Missile Defense Agency to begin work on the project and a schedule that doesn't appear to reflect the accelerated plans associated with nearly $300 million in additional funding lawmakers gave to the Defense Department's FY-23 budget for the Glide Phase Interceptor.
The U.S. military executed what it says was a successful do-over live-fire of a major ballistic missile defense test when a pair of Standard Missile-6 interceptors -- configured in a new variant -- launched in a single salvo and intercepted a medium range ballistic missile target in a simulated last-line-of-defense protection for an aircraft carrier strike group.
HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Army leaders drafting the service's fiscal year 2025 budget proposal are considering establishing a dedicated program element for counter-drone technology, a move that if adopted would stake out a consolidated place in long-term spending plans for projects currently dispersed across multiple air defense research and development funding lines.
HUNTSVILLE, AL -- The Army last week executed a live-fire test of the Patriot air defense system -- pitting a developmental PAC-3 software upgrade to address more advanced threats -- against a medium-range ballistic missile target at a test site in the Western Pacific.