Saturday, August 13, 2022
Key Issues AETP China-Taiwan scenarios E-7 Wedgetail
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 initial prototype of the U.S. military's marquee hypersonic strike weapon failed during a major test over the Pacific Ocean on June 29 in an event that featured the inaugural flight of a new, two-stage rocket built by Lockheed Martin paired with a Common-Hypersonic Glide Body manufactured by Sandia National Laboratories.
The Missile Defense Agency's testing program barely conducted half of its planned flight, ground and cybersecurity tests in 2021 -- extending a long-running pattern of under-executing assessments necessary to demonstrate new capabilities U.S. commanders depend on to protect the U.S. public, allies and armed forces from advanced missile threats.
The Missile Defense Agency failed to deliver one-third of the most advanced guided missiles the Navy requires to defend ships and allies from ballistic missiles around the world, with particular difficulty producing the newest and most powerful Aegis interceptor -- the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA -- slated for Japan, U.S. destroyers and land sites to defend against Iranian threats.
Northrop Grumman has begun manufacturing a critical component of its Next Generation Interceptor, weaving composite threads to create a newly designed rocket throat nozzle to demonstrate the efficacy of its proposal in a competition against Lockheed Martin to build a new intercontinental ballistic missile killer.
The U.S. project to establish a second Aegis Ashore site in Europe -- beleaguered by construction problems that have delayed by five years plans to declare the system operational -- achieved an important benchmark this month when the Navy activated the radar and weapon system even as work to complete the physical structure in Poland continues.
The Pentagon has narrowed the competition for development of a Glide Phase Interceptor, selecting Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman to continue refining concepts for a counter-hypersonic missile in a move that sidelines Lockheed Martin from the contest and sets up high-level review of the two remaining designs in early 2023.
The Defense Department may soon be required to draft options for Taiwan to expedite acquisition of improved air and missile defense capabilities -- an assessment that could build a case for future sales of new guided missile interceptors, radar and more to the self-governing island that Beijing regards a breakaway province.
The Defense Department quietly scaled back the most ambitious parts of a 2017 plan to improve missile defenses in South Korea, delaying until 2030 plans for full integration of upper- and lower-tier Army programs and completely removing plans to integrate Navy Aegis from the improved architecture.
The Missile Defense Agency, which has declined to publicly reveal its near-term acquisition plan for the Hypersonic and Ballistic Space Tracking Sensor program, wants to add an additional six satellites by 2025 -- raising the total number in orbit to 10 and after that proceed to a production decision.
A critical element of the Defense Department's plan to counter Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons is being hobbled by bureaucratic infighting between the Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency which have jettisoned a 2021 roadmap agreement for key technology development and deployment.
The Pentagon is backpedaling on plans to accelerate Glide Phase Interceptor development, congressional auditors reveal in a new report, an inauspicious beginning for the high-stakes hypersonic defense project that the independent review calls "highly ambitious" and "technically challenging" as well as saddled with cost and schedule risk.
A draft bill would require the Defense Department to codify a formal strategy for adding a layer to the Missile Defense System, outlining a path to potentially fielding directed-energy technologies to give U.S. forces a non-kinetic option for countering advanced threats, including ultra-fast maneuvering weapons.
The Defense Department is readying Navy destroyers equipped for ballistic missile defense operations for a second full-time, simultaneous mission: assisting the Space Force with situational awareness of the heavens in a move that aims to leverage nearly 30 Aegis ships with SPY-1 radars to help fill gaps in the Space Surveillance Network.
The Missile Defense Agency is seeking additional funds to advance work on a High Power Microwave Technology Testbed, a project that aims to potentially give the U.S. military an additional layer of defense against ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles by introducing a new directed-energy weapon.
The Missile Defense Agency has scored a major victory in its long-running campaign to reverse a statutory mandate that weapon system procurement authority be transitioned to the military departments, winning support in draft legislation to repeal a requirement with immediate implications for long-term responsibility for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program.
The Defense Department has set four critical flight tests to determine production and fielding decisions for the $17 billion Next Generation Interceptor program, setting up a high-stakes series of intercept attempts for the new homeland ballistic missile defense guided missile between fiscal years 2027 and 2029.
The Missile Defense Agency is lining up a new Short Pulse Laser research project in fiscal year 2023 -- including drafting a roadmap for this category of directed-energy technology -- if Congress adds $12.2 million for the venture, which is not requested as part of the Pentagon's budget request.
Pandemic delays continue to ripple across Pentagon plans for a new homeland defense radar in Alaska, with the Missile Defense Agency delaying by a year handover of the Long Range Discrimination Radar to the Space Force, a target that most previously had been set for 2022.
The Missile Defense Agency wants to retain the option to double planned production capacity for a Next Generation Interceptor -- notionally carrying forward both Lockheed Martin and the Northop Grumman-Raytheon teams to manufacture new mega-large, guided missiles in tandem as a strategy to provide policy makers "maximum trade space."
A top Army general believes the Russian invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a new benchmark for modern combat with wide-ranging implications for the United States and all modern armed forces: the normalization of ballistic missile attacks.