Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Dominic Minadeo is an Inside Defense Army reporter. Before Inside Defense, he covered a slew of topics across Vermont as an intern for VTDigger. He also reported and edited for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont, where he graduated.
The Army announced today that it has given out five contracts to vendors for an upcoming series of self-propelled howitzer performance demonstrations the Army will put on, starting next month. The total award is about $4 million split between American Rheinmetall Vehicles, BAE BOFORS, Hanwha Defense USA, General Dynamics Land Systems and Elbit Systems USA.
GM Defense's new prototype, the Next Gen Tactical Vehicle, is "quiet as a mouse," said John 'JD' Johnson, vice president of business and development at the company. It's an attribute the Army has a vested interest in.
General Dynamics Land Systems will debut what it calls the Stryker MCOTM, or Mission Command on the Move, flanked by two different robotic vehicles at the Association of the United States Army's annual trade show next week.
The Army has laid out a five-year plan to spend upwards of $6 billion on its tactical wheeled vehicle fleet with the lion's share going toward light models, according to a report sent to Congress and obtained by Inside Defense.
The Army is worried it won't keep up its dominance in range and lethality on future battlefields due to inadequate energetics and limitations with current weapon systems and is starting to explore developing synthetic energetics, according to a broad agency announcement posted by the Energetics Basic Research Center (EBRC) Tuesday.
The three-month continuing resolution Congress passed last week might not slow down specific Army projects, Army acquisition czar Doug Bush said at a roundtable Friday, but it does slow down the system as a whole.
The Army is about midway through the initial operational testing and evaluation phase for the M10 Booker, which is designed to provide combat power to the service's Infantry Brigade Combat Teams.
Textron Systems has added a self-driving system from Kodiak Robotics to its RIPSAW M3 robotic combat vehicle, the company announced last Tuesday.
The Commerce Department proposed a rule Monday that would ban importing or selling certain electric cars in the United States with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and Russia.
The Army has awarded two contracts for a second phase in robotic mule prototypes -- one to American Rheinmetall Vehicles and another to HDT Expeditionary Systems, the service announced Tuesday.
The Army is seeking emerging technologies that can help it with "reconnaissance, target development and precision targeting operations" across different domains, according to a request for information released Monday.
Senators have tacked on a new task for the Pentagon in their fiscal year 2025 defense authorization bill: Study the cost of acquiring portable, droppable munitions that can kill any sort of drone.
North Korea's munitions shipments to Russia are alarming, Army Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, President Biden’s nominee to be the next U.S. commander in South Korea, said in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. But even more alarming is that it's not clear what North Korea is getting in return, Brunson said.