Tuesday, August 21, 2018
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.
703-562-8730Army Secretary Mark Esper has directed the service to accelerate the Next Generation Combat Vehicle program, establishing a two-pronged project to immediately launch a major competition to replace the Bradley fleet with NGCV optionally manned fighting vehicles, while also establishing an NGCV robotic combat vehicle project to mature technologies for future platforms.
SAPA Transmission, the U.S. subsidiary of a Spanish defense contractor, is moving forward with support from the state of Michigan to establish a bona fide industrial operation there, advancing plans for a domestic manufacturing beachhead to challenge the Pentagon's two long-standing combat vehicle transmission suppliers.
The Pentagon's fiscal years 2020 and 2021 base budget allocations will total $550 billion and $563 billion respectively -- dramatically below Trump administration plans -- if discretionary spending caps required by the 2011 Budget Control Act for those two years are not adjusted, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office.
The Marine Corps' gambit to replace the venerable AN/APG-73 radar in nearly 100 older-model F/A-18 Hornets is advancing after Raytheon and Northrop Grumman both passed a government-requested "fit check" to assess whether off-the-shelf Active Electronically Scanned Array radars produced by the two U.S. defense contractors are compatible with the available space in the fighter aircraft's nose.
The Pentagon's top weapons technology official vouched for the technical feasibility of using a kinetic interceptor to destroy ballistic missiles during the boost-phase of flight, suggesting an unmanned air vehicle armed with a special-purpose missile could provide near-term capability “against limited threats” to kill long-range enemy missiles immediately after launch.
The Defense Department's top strategic deterrence officer recently declined to confirm claims by the Pentagon's former No. 2 official earlier this year that China last November conducted a pair of ballistic missile tests that advanced Beijing's efforts to develop a maneuvering ultra-fast weapon impervious to U.S. defenses and that Beijing has "mastered" boost-glide technology.
The company responsible for faulty welding on missile tubes slated for the Navy's Columbia-class submarine is still working to understand the full scope of the defective work, its chief executive told Wall Street investors today.
A Pentagon advisory panel is advancing two dozen recommendations for changes in policy, organization, personnel and technology that collectively aim to improve the U.S. military's ability to deter, prevent the threat from -- and deal with the aftermath of an attack of -- chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, according to a summary of a three-volume, classified report.
An influential Army advisory panel is preparing an independent assessment of the service's realignment of its science and technology portfolio to recommend any further recalibration in response to evolving threats while sticking to the service's $2.4 billion annual S&T budget.
The Defense Department is asking congressional permission to shift $85 million between fiscal year 2018 war spending accounts to immediately launch more than a dozen new-start intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programs across all four services in support of combatant commander needs.
The U.S. military's nuclear strategic deterrence fleet suffered an operational flight test failure yesterday when an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile reported an anomaly in flight over the Pacific Ocean, prompting the Air Force to destroy the rocket, according to a senior Defense Department official.
Lawmakers have rolled back a Pentagon gambit to classify missile defense flight test plans by including a provision in the final version of the fiscal year 2019 defense policy bill explicitly requiring the Missile Defense Agency to annually make public a version of scheduled test events for the $180 billion Ballistic Missile Defense System.
The Defense Department must harness cyber operations as a strategic capability or the nation will not be able to maintain its current global posture, rendering the U.S. homeland and the nation's military forces “unacceptably vulnerable” to coercion and intrusion by adversary nations and non-state actors.
The White House has prevailed on lawmakers to soften some missile defense provisions included in preliminary versions of the fiscal year 2019 defense authorization bill, including mandates to develop a space-based interceptor capability and to accelerate hypersonic defense capability.
The Missile Defense Agency's plans this fall to execute a do-over test of the Standard-Missile 3 Block IIA interceptor -- which failed during a key January assessment -- will cost about third less than previously estimated, allowing the agency to offer $47.8 million originally slated for the test to be spent on higher Pentagon priorities.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency is seeking to immediately triple funding for a project that aims to defeat an unmanned aircraft -- including small drones -- that could be armed with chemical, biological or nuclear materials, an objective Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wants fielded by December.
The Pentagon is seeking congressional permission to shift $62.7 million into the lead ship of the Ford-class aircraft carrier program, a move that nudges the tab for the next-generation warship over the $13 billion threshold and requires the statutory cost cap for CVN-78 to be increased for a third time -- up from $12.9 billion set by Congress last year. (UPDATED)
The Defense Department has launched a prototype project that aims to dramatically increase the speed and range of the Navy's Standard Missile-6 by adding a larger rocket motor to the ship-launched weapon, a move that aims to improve both the offensive and defensive reach of the Raytheon-built system.
The Navy requires an immediate cash infusion into the research and development accounts of its Air and Missile Defense Radar program to pay an unexpected bill following a test failure caused by the shortcoming of a ballistic missile target used to validate the effectiveness of the new sensor. (UPDATED)
The Pentagon is seeking congressional permission to shift $4.3 billion between budget accounts as part of an annual reallocation of funds the U.S. military has in hand, revealing new details about Defense Department plans to develop and field hypersonic strike weapons and launching 10 new-start projects -- including a new deep-strike cannon for the Army.
