Thursday, December 7, 2023
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.
SIMI VALLEY, CA -- Any extension of a stopgap spending measure beyond early February would be "pretty calamitous" for the Army, triggering immediate consequences that include delaying weapon system acquisition milestones, delaying production-ramp decisions and cancelling training, according to a senior service official.
After more than four months without a three-star officer at the helm, the Missile Defense Agency today has a full-fledged leader after Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) abandoned his quixotic quest to change Pentagon health services for woman and the Senate confirmed Air Force Lt. Gen. Heath Collins' promotion.
SIMI VALLEY, CA -- The Defense Department's fiscal year 2025 budget request will -- at best -- squeeze investment accounts compared to Pentagon plans earlier this year as a result of the June debt-limit deal demanded by House Republicans, forcing what DOD's top weapons buyer calls "difficult choices" about where to trim planned spending.
SIMI VALLEY, CA -- The Defense Department is readying plans to integrate a 2024 advanced technology experimentation exercise with similar Australian efforts down under after both nations this fall exchanged observers at key events, according to the Pentagon's top technology development official.
SIMI VALLEY, CA -- The Defense Department -- after 18 months of problems with both the two-stage missile and the ground launcher for the U.S. military's premier long-range hypersonic strike weapon -- has determined the original development path is no longer viable and remedial work on both elements of the Army's Dark Eagle program is now necessary. (UPDATED)
SIMI VALLEY, CA -- The first fruits of the Defense Department's high-profile Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve -- nearly two years in the making -- are at risk of stalling out due to budget uncertainty, potentially slowing delivery to combatant commanders of new capabilities recently validated through experimentation earlier this year as having warfighting utility.
SIMI VALLEY, CA -- Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin addressed the 10th gathering of the Reagan National Defense Forum by calling on Congress to provide fiscal year 2024 funding certainty in an address that did not outline any new initiatives or policy objectives but focused on the unique role of the United States leadership in the world.
The Army is exploring an Extended-Range Soft-Recoil cannon on a Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles truck to test the limits and capabilities of 155mm artillery fired from a highly mobile platform and commissioned a full-scale demonstrator as part of determining how best to replace towed systems now vulnerable to counterbattery fire.
The Defense Department is reaching for a next-generation microelectronics advancement that promises order-of-magnitude improvements for radar, communications and electronic warfare systems by using diamonds to reduce heat in transistors, awarding Raytheon an applied research contract to demonstrate the efficacy of such novel cooling technology.
A Pentagon advisory board commissioned to assess secure electronic processing has completed its work but is not disclosing recommendations on how to address the U.S. military's conundrum of relying on microprocessors produced by a global supply chain that allows adversaries to corrupt technologies, launch malicious code and steal weapon system blueprints.
Ursa Major, a rocket propulsion company focused on space and hypersonic systems, is jumping into the solid-rocket motor sector, offering state-of-the-art manufacturing processes -- including 3D printing -- to help replenish inventories depleted by U.S. donations to Ukraine and Israel.
The Army’s Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) -- in a seminal event for the service’s decade-long effort to field a next-generation, 360-degree radar -- detected a cruise missile target and guided a Patriot interceptor to destroy the threat during a live-fire test at White Sands Missile Range, NM.
The Missile Defense Agency is pumping $104 million into the Glide Phase Interceptor program, awarding RTX, formerly Raytheon Technologies, and Northrop Grumman $52 million options each for competing technology development efforts to design variants of a ship-launched missile capable of protecting an aircraft carrier from a long-range hypersonic weapon.
Lockheed Martin today announced an undisclosed investment in Launchpad.build -- a start-up that aims to collapse the traditional prototype and testing cycle by using a set of artificial intelligence driven technologies to convert an idea directly to final physical product, upending the manufacturing paradigm.
The Army project to develop a next-generation cruise missile defense system is facing a delay even as the effort -- called the Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 -- is carrying out what one senior official calls “aggressive activity” to support fielding in Guam by 2027 as part of a new air and missile defense system intended to counter China’s designs on Taiwan.
The Navy is entertaining the idea of increasing the offensive strike capability for Littoral Combat Ships after indirectly demonstrating the ability last month to fire a Tomahawk from the ship class -- a move that would add new punch and relevance for LCS, originally designed for shore-hugging missions, in a fight against a near-peer adversary.
The Army has validated the ability of a prototype speed-of-light weapon to connect with the service's main air defense command and control system, a key development in an effort to deliver a high-power microwave capable of swatting down small drone swarms to operational units as soon as next summer.
The Defense Department, concerned that potential adversaries could exploit seams in air defense coverage provided by the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and the Patriot systems, is debating a new-start program in the fiscal year 2025 budget request called the Lower Tier Future Interceptor (LTFI).
The Army last month completed a first-ever, live-fire exercise in Europe of a unit designed to break up Russia's anti-access/area-denial capabilities, dispersing troops across Germany, Poland and Romania to test and experiment elements of multidomain operations by synchronizing precision effects across the continent.
The Army may soon have the option to expand the striking power of its premier surface-to-surface artillery rocket by adding a new communications device that could allow Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System munitions to hit not only pre-programmed stationary locations, as they can today, but also moving targets such as ships or mobile missile launchers.