Thursday, April 18, 2019
Key Issues DSS chief search Army aircraft autonomy FARA protest
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 has set a new plan to achieve a ten-fold increase in directed-energy technology over the next decade with potential to power lasers for combat on land, at sea and in air and space and identified existing contract vehicles to begin executing this new Laser Scaling Plan with fiscal year 2019 funds.
The Army has begun deploying a new prototype Long-Range Persistent Surveillance passive sensor developed to meet urgent needs from commanders in Europe, the Pacific and U.S. Central Command, launching a two-year campaign to provide improved capability to detect enemy cruise missiles, aircraft as well as unmanned aircraft systems.
Gen. John Hyten, head of U.S. Strategic Command and the presumptive next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has singled out the fledgling Space Sensor Layer project as a modernization priority in a letter to lawmakers, a move that comes as fissures are showing among Pentagon leaders about the best approach to developing a new low-earth orbit constellation.
The Missile Defense Agency has nearly completed work on the $2.1 billion in emergency spending projects awarded in late 2017 to counter threats from North Korea, according to a top Defense Department official, despite delays with marquee efforts in that missile defeat and defense enhancements package.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves plans to step down this summer from his current post as Missile Defense Agency director, serving just shy of two years in a post that has traditionally been a four-year billet.
The Navy and Marine Corps are assessing more than 80 emerging technologies along with new concepts of operation in a 10-day exercise across numerous locations that aims to vet potential combat capabilities as part of the services' effort to expedite fielding of new weapons and ways to fight, according to the services.
The Missile Defense Agency has pushed back plans for a new Pacific Radar by two years -- delaying all key milestones for a new sensor needed to plug holes in the U.S. military's ability to track projected future North Korean long-range rockets during the midcourse of flight -- while also trimming planned five-year spending on the project from $1 billion to $764 million.
The Missile Defense Agency is working to determine the full extent of the delay to the Redesigned Kill Vehicle program and -- based on technology testing currently underway -- plans to revise the estimated two-year schedule slip by either lengthening the delay or trimming it as soon as this summer, according to a senior Defense Department official.
The Missile Defense Agency and the Air Force are seeking $30 million to launch a classified, joint program over the next three years that could be used to begin a new interceptor program or modify an existing guided missile based on scant details in the Pentagon's new spending request.
The Defense Department is asking industry about the feasibility of demonstrating a 1,000 kilowatt-class laser for missile defense as soon as 2025, seeking industry feedback on the potential for scaling up electrically pumped, directed-energy technology -- for an undisclosed platform and mission -- to power levels that in theory could destroy an enemy ballistic missile during the boost phase of flight.
The Missile Defense Agency is laying the technical groundwork for the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA -- a Navy interceptor originally designed to counter medium- and intermediate-range threats -- to also have an operational mission against intercontinental ballistic missiles, potentially stretching the reach of the new weapon to reinforce defense of the nation against North Korean threats.
The Defense Department has markedly curtailed what last year was a $1.4 billion five-year investment plan for a pair of programs -- the Common Kill Vehicle and the Multi Object Kill Vehicle -- that promised to deliver next-generation warheads for future ballistic missile defense in a decade.
The Pentagon will nearly double its planned investments in hypersonic capabilities over the next five years, from $6 billion to $11.2 billion, a sum higher than one of the Defense Department's top hypersonics officials recently cited because it reflects planned spending on both offensive and defensive capabilities.
The Army has formalized plans with Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to wind down by September the original Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) program of record, a key part of the service's pivot toward a new approach to accelerate the fielding of a Patriot radar replacement by 2022 through a “Sense-Off” competition beginning in May.
The Missile Defense Agency has provided Congress a $1.9 billion wish list to finance 11 projects above and beyond the agency's $9.4 billion fiscal year 2020 budget request, including bolstering spending for a new space sensor to track hypersonic and ballistic missiles, additional THAAD interceptors and additional investments for lasers and new warhead development.
ANDOVER, MA -- Raytheon has developed a new high-tech, Gallium Nitride transmitter for legacy Patriot interceptors -- the GEM-T variant which makes up the bulk of the Army's inventory -- that promises to significantly improve reliability and service life of the guided missile, a capability the company hopes will sweeten interest in its proposed Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor.
The U.S. military, in a major test of the Ballistic Missile Defense System, destroyed an intercontinental ballistic missile target with a pair of Ground-based Interceptors in the first-ever salvo launch of the homeland defense guided-missile fleet, an event likely to bolster confidence in the current fielded system and the exoatmospheric kill vehicle in particular.
The Missile Defense Agency has pared back to $4.1 billion an originally planned $6.6 billion contract with Boeing to modernize and sustain the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program though 2023, a nearly 40 percent reduction that reflects a narrowing of the scope of the project following delays in developing a new interceptor warhead.
Lockheed Martin is poised to effectively nab a third major hypersonic booster contract, locking in a pivotal role on all three legs of the Defense Department's conventionally armed, hypersonic boost-glide programs after the Navy today announced plans to adapt its in-development submarine-launched rocket for Army use.
Northrop Grumman has designed what it says is a blueprint for the U.S. military to quash the hypersonic threat, unveiling a "Defeat Invincible" marketing campaign that aims to stake out a leadership position in the hypersonic defense business by proposing an "end-to-end" approach that would utilize new space sensors and interceptors as well as cyber, laser, and electronic weapons.