Monday, October 2, 2023
Key Issues SAR on SM-6 SAR on MPF SAR on F-15EX
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.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks has assigned the Air Force responsibility for acquiring a capability to defend the homeland against cruise missiles, setting the stage for a potential multibillion-dollar project and breaking a long-running bureaucratic logjam that in recent years had the Missile Defense Agency lobbying for the role. (UPDATED)
The Missile Defense Agency, after nearly four years of market research and analysis on how best to inject competition into the nearly billion-dollar-a-year effort to sustain, maintain and improve the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, managed to draw only a single proposal for a major new GMD Futures contract -- handing Northrop Grumman a $3.2 billion prize.
Senate appropriators want to dock $80 million from the high-priority Guam air defense project in fiscal year 2023 because the Pentagon has failed to account for its plans for the new project -- specifically the architecture -- in accordance with congressional directives issued a year ago.
The Defense Department is poised this month to significantly expand its fledgling fleet of high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft dedicated to monitor U.S. hypersonic flight tests, a development intended to support plans for an increased pace of assessments as well as opening new corridors for regular testing off the East Coast into the Atlantic Ocean.
Lawmakers want an independent assessment of the domestic, precision-munition industrial base, particularly any gap limitations on the Pentagon's capacity to replenish nearly two-dozen "critical" weapon systems in the event of a fight against Russia or China that extends more than six months.
The Defense Department would be required to draft a report on the feasibility of fashioning a multinational, integrated air and missile defense system to counter Iran with the aim of connecting the capabilities of at least 10 nations across the Middle East into a cohesive architecture.
A Senate panel has endorsed a proposed live-fire demonstration to explore a cruise missile defense architecture to protect high-priority domestic assets, authorizing $50 million in the Missile Defense Agency's fiscal year 2023 budget in support of North American Aerospace and Defense Command.
The Pentagon would be required to draft a plan to pay for a fleet-wide replacement of the homeland defense ballistic missile inventory, according to legislation proposed by a Senate panel that would identify the price tag associated with expanding the program of record for the Next Generation Interceptor beyond 20 guided missiles to a total of 64.
Senate lawmakers are proposing a dramatic increase in spending for the Glide Phase Interceptor in fiscal year 2023 -- a nearly $300 million boost the Pentagon's top technology shop last fall determined would not necessarily accelerate plans for fielding a hypersonic defense.
A key congressional committee wants the Missile Defense Agency to continue developing next-generation directed-energy technology, proposing a $5 million increase to the fiscal year 2023 budget to extend work on a project with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on a Diode-Pumped Alkali Laser (DPAL).
The project to develop a new air and missile defense system for Guam should be elevated to the Pentagon's highest-profile acquisition category and assigned the responsibility of a senior Defense Department official, according to new legislation that aims to ensure the effort does not get mired in seams across the bureaucracy.
A national cruise missile defense system to protect the lower 48 states from strategic attack on the homeland below the nuclear threshold from Russia or China could be acquired for $32.7 billion, considerably less than a congressional analysis estimated last year, according to a new study that aims to influence the Pentagon's fiscal year 2024 budget proposal.
An influential Pentagon advisory panel will soon launch a sweeping study of advanced U.S. military technology that will prioritize near-term asymmetric capabilities and recommend actions that could recalibrate future investments in weapon system development.
The White House revealed new details about the planned architecture for the air and missile defense system intended to provide persistent, all-direction protection of Guam from advanced Chinese threats -- making public Pentagon plans to acquire a land-based variant of the Aegis vertical launch system in addition to previously announced mobile launchers.
The Air Force Research Laboratory took delivery earlier this year of a compact, ruggedized laser developed for potential use as a defensive weapon on fighter aircraft, according to Lockheed Martin which claims the new airborne laser is the smallest, lightest, high-energy laser of its power level built to date.
The Pentagon's "fly-before-you-buy" plan for the Next Generation Interceptor calls for procuring 11 prototype guided missiles, flying six against ballistic missile targets and utilizing the remaining five for ground tests as well as possible do-over launches in an effort to field by 2027 an improved homeland defense shield against a potential North Korean nuclear strike.
The Missile Defense Agency is targeting 2024 for initial delivery of a key building block of a new air and missile defense system for Guam, announcing plans to award Lockheed Martin a sole-source contract for the Aegis weapon system portion of the new capability as well as a new mobile launcher.
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.