Sunday, April 28, 2024
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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.
U.S. military leaders have boosted the Army's share of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle fleet to nearly two-thirds, assigning the ground service 95 percent of the blast-proof trucks ordered in the final batch of fiscal year 2007 production contracts.
An influential advisory panel to Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended a new six-point plan, with a $4 billion annual price tag, to deal with one of the most vexing national security challenges -- protecting the United States against weapons of mass destruction.
The Defense Science Board is establishing a permanent advisory group to support the Pentagon's intelligence shop -- as well as the wider federal intelligence community -- on a broad range of matters, including the acquisition of intel systems.
The military services this week are preparing formal requests to alter the shape of the Pentagon's $511 billion base budget request for fiscal year 2009, the opening moves in a four- month process of executive branch review that could alter the Defense Department's weapon system investment plans.
The Defense Department says four major weapon system programs -- including the Air Force's billion-dollar-plus B-2 Radar Modernization Program -- are facing schedule delays of at least six months, a slip that requires the status of the projects to be reported to Congress.
The Army and Marine Corps are modifying efforts to accelerate production of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, a multibillion-dollar program to replace the entire humvee fleet -- 40,000 vehicles in the first wave of orders alone.
Pentagon leaders have framed more than two dozen goals for the defense bureaucracy to achieve during the final months of the Bush administration, including a new process for determining which new weapon systems the U.S. military should develop and purchase.
The total size of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program in fiscal year 2008 will remain unclear until two key Defense Department assessments are completed, according to a previously unreported eight-page budget document prepared by the Pentagon.
Pentagon policy makers are looking for new ideas on some of the most vexing U.S. national security issues, including fighting a protracted conflict against extremist terror networks, military options for dealing with an increasingly powerful China, and how to wield information on the modern battlefield.
The Pentagon is tightening standards governing the use of a contracting mechanism increasingly utilized to grant billions of dollars in awards and incentive pay to defense firms that provide services and build weapon systems.
The Pentagon today announced the final round of production orders of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles for fiscal year 2007, tapping Force Protection Industries to build an additional 125 vehicles in a deal worth $70 million.
The Marine Corps yesterday placed a $339 million delivery order with Ontario-based General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada for 600 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, a deal that will expand production of the high-priority blast-proof trucks overseas.
Congress has officially blessed the Pentagon's July 17 request to shift $1.16 billion between accounts to procure additional Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, setting the stage for additional production orders of as many as 725 blast-proof trucks.
Operational bosses at U.S. Central and U.S. Special Operations commands, in concert with Pentagon leaders, have in recent weeks allocated the Army nearly 60 percent of the total number of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle fleet ordered to date, according to Pentagon officials.
A powerful House committee is directing the Defense Department to consolidate requests for fiscal year 2009 war spending into its base budget proposal, a first step toward remedying what lawmakers assert is "fiscal flabbiness" that has "infected" the Pentagon's budgeting process on the Bush administration's watch.
The Navy late yesterday awarded Northrop Grumman a $635 million contract to develop critical technologies for a pilotless jet designed to operate on aircraft carriers, giving the California-based defense contractor a leg up in a high-stakes competition with rival Boeing to lead the Unmanned Combat Aircraft Systems-Navy program, a potentially multibillion-dollar effort.
The House Appropriations Committee has directed a significant reordering of the Pentagon's budget structure to give much greater visibility to the approximately $20 billion annually spent on space programs, a move that budget experts say will make it more difficult for space program budgets to be raided to pay for other modernization efforts.
Precisely how many MRAP II vehicles, the next class of blast-proof trucks designed to protect against explosively formed penetrators, does the Pentagon want?
In a bid to increase the number of blast-proof trucks fielded to U.S. troops in Iraq, the Pentagon yesterday opened the competition to build Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to at least 14 new companies -- including foreign concerns -- asking for proposals for a new version of the vehicle, MRAP II, capable of stopping explosively formed penetrators.
The $5.3 billion boost in Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle spending requested by the White House yesterday is merely a down payment toward the total amount the Pentagon will require for MRAP production in the next fiscal year, providing only enough money to purchase less than a fifth of the blast-proof trucks the Defense Department plans to buy, according to the administration.