Thursday, May 2, 2024
Key Issues HADES deployment SAOC contract FORGE framework
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.
A new report by an influential Defense Department advisory panel calls for "a commitment not yet seen" to winning the war of ideas in the U.S. government's global counterterrorism campaign, including the creation of a permanent Pentagon leadership position to oversee strategic communications efforts.
The Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are drawing up wish lists of weapon systems and other priorities not funded in either the Pentagon's base budget request for fiscal year 2009 or the FY-09 supplemental spending request being crafted to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army plans to stand up new units focused on enhancing the capabilities of foreign armies, an effort by the ground service to enhance its contribution to the Defense Department's ambitious policy of policing ungoverned spaces around the globe where terrorists might seek refuge.
Boeing officials say they are putting the KC-767 tanker built for Japan through a final round of evaluations in a bid for Federal Aviation Administration certification permitting the aircraft to carry personnel and cargo -- a designation the company failed to secure last spring, forcing a one-year delay in delivery of the first aerial refueling tanker to Tokyo.
The Army cannot adequately justify the $70 billion price tag for its seven-year plan to "grow the force," according to a top congressional investigator who warns in a new assessment that the ultimate cost of the service's end-strength increase could balloon once a range of additional factors are accounted for, including health care costs and facilities to accommodate new units.
The Defense Department has divvied up the 3,126 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles that it ordered Dec. 18 -- the single largest block of blast-proof trucks purchased to date -- directing nearly 90 percent to the Army.
The Bush administration is giving the Pentagon's fiscal year 2009 spending request a slight boost to offset higher-than-expected fuel and health care costs, tacking as much as $5 billion onto the $511 billion base budget allocation set in 2006 by the White House and reaffirmed as recently as late November.
The Pentagon plans to delay the delivery of its fiscal year 2009 war cost estimate until at least the spring and will transmit only its base budget request to Congress next month, according to Defense Department officials.
The Army and Marine Corps plan to formally invite industry to submit proposals for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program "on or about" Feb. 1, setting in motion a competition for a 27-month technology development effort that would commence in June with contract awards to two or more firms.
A year ago last fall, the Pentagon chartered a think tank to chew over a problem that was largely academic: What sort of capabilities and posture are required to prevent state failure and collapse in nations that are "crucial" to the U.S.-led global war on terrorism, including those possessing weapons of mass destruction?
Armored truck builders produced 1,187 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles in December, according to an internal Pentagon document, just shy of the year-end monthly production target of 1,280 vehicles that Defense Secretary Robert Gates set in July.
An influential Pentagon advisory panel that aims to improve U.S. military capabilities through new uses of technology is training its focus toward social sciences in a bid to determine whether a push for greater cultural awareness across the Defense Department demands new technology projects.
In a bid to imbue the U.S. military's massive humvee-replacement program with as much innovation and competition as possible, the Pentagon's acquisition executive is advocating no fewer than three industry teams receive development contracts for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program.
The Defense Department depended on foreign companies in nearly 40 countries to provide $1.9 billion worth of components for U.S. military weapon systems ranging from airframes to ammunition, according to a recent report detailing the Pentagon's reliance on non-U.S. suppliers in fiscal year 2006.
The Army has selected BAE Systems to build its fleet of Medium Mine Protected Vehicles in a deal potentially worth $2.2 billion to produce more than 2,000 armored trucks, handing the builder of the RG33 blast-proof truck a chance at grabbing an even larger portion of the vast sums the Pentagon is spending to protect troops from roadside bombs.
The $70 billion "bridge" appropriation that will cover some fiscal year 2008 war costs for Iraq and Afghanistan sets aside $40.4 billion for the Army, including $4.4 billion for procurement.
The Pentagon's No. 2 official has issued draft guidance -- provided once every two years -- setting the foundation for the Defense Department's new six-year investment blueprint, a project to identify which weapons systems to buy and which to shed between fiscal years 2010 and 2015 that will begin in earnest next month and conclude next fall.
The Pentagon's $2.6 billion order for nearly 3,200 bomb-proof trucks may highlight the Army's preference for variants built by BAE Systems and International Military and Government, raising questions about whether Force Protection Industries -- whose vehicles in part inspired the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program -- will receive any additional large orders.
The Pentagon's top acquisition executive has approved a plan that could expand the number of armored truck builders producing Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles even as senior military officials are poised to reduce the total size of the MRAP acquisition objective, according to sources familiar with internal Defense Department deliberations.
The Pentagon today notified Congress of a potential sale to the United Kingdom of blast-proof trucks worth $147 million, marking the first deal to sell trucks manufactured through the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program to a foreign nation.