Tuesday, February 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.
The Air Force wants to develop a new variant of its next-generation cruise missile that will add new capabilities to its ability to strike enemy targets beyond the reach of adversary air defenses, announcing plans to award prime contractor Lockheed Martin a contract for a new version of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile.
The Defense Department is looking to help Lithuania buy long-range air surveillance radars as part of an effort to develop an integrated air and missile defense network for Baltic nations, announcing plans to buy three Lockheed Martin-built, road-mobile sensors days after 14 NATO defense ministers announced plans for a “European Sky Shield Initiative.”
Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies are vying to supply the U.S. military’s next-generation short-range interceptor, with all three companies submitting bids, due last week, in an expected multibillion-dollar competition to design and build the follow-on to the venerable Stinger missile -- a franchise with a four-decade run.
U.S. allies in Europe, Asia and the Pacific are eyeing the Army's Integrated Air and Missile Defense program -- specifically the IAMD Battle Command Systems (IBCS) -- with nations, including the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia, in discussion with the prime contractor and the U.S. government exploring potential foreign sales.
An influential Pentagon advisory panel has assessed it "is essential and feasible to quickly and affordably" field new domestic air defense capabilities to protect critical homeland targets -- both civilian and military -- against advanced Russian and Chinese threats.
The Pentagon has locked in a sensor architecture for the U.S. military's new counterair and missile defense system slated for Guam that will be composed of a newly minted Army radar and a land-based Navy variant of technology derived from a towering Space Force array that is due to become operational soon.
Army leaders considered and rejected a Navy gambit to put soldiers behind the consoles of Aegis Ashore, maintaining sailors are best suited to operate the land-based variant of the air and missile defense system -- originally deployed on the surface combatant fleet -- that is operational in Romania, slated for Poland and expected soon in a new form on Guam.
AM General is proposing a tank-killing light tactical vehicle at the Association of the U.S. Army annual convention -- offering a seminal example of how the Russia-Ukraine war is changing modern combat by outfitting a next-generation Humvee with a fleet of tube-launched, anti-armor loitering drones with a defensive suite to destroy enemy uncrewed air systems.
The Pentagon has delayed a high-stakes flight test of a long-range hypersonic weapon that was originally to be executed no later than last month, a change of plans that eats away at the timetable of a project with little schedule margin in the U.S. military's effort to field its first conventional hypersonic strike weapon by next September. (UPDATED)
The Air Force, in a rough estimate, believes the cost to re-engine the B-52 bomber fleet is about $11.7 billion, including $3.7 billion to develop and $8 billion to procure -- a figure not previously reported that will likely be refined next summer when the service formally launches the program.
The Army has staked out an $8 billion place in its modernization portfolio to buy nearly 4,000 rounds of the Precision Strike Missile, according to a report that details for the first time in a public document the program's full cost and scope.
The Defense Department has formally recalibrated the price tag for the Missile Defense System, dialing the total acquisition cost up to $226 billion, a $23 billion hike compared to the last formal accounting provided to Congress two years ago that doesn't necessarily reflect cost growth.
The Pentagon has set a formal cost estimate for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program of $188.8 billion, a tally that includes $95.8 billion to develop and procure a next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile fleet and $93 billion to operate and sustain the fleet across five decades.
The projected price tag for the Navy's next-generation aircraft carrier effort increased by more than $2 billion over the last two years, wiping out half of the savings the Ford-class program hoped to harvest though bundling the acquisition of a third-and-fourth warship.
The Army committed an additional $1.6 billion in research and development funding to rectify the Integrated Air and Missile Defense program -- including the IAMD Battle Command Systems (IBCS) -- raising total start-up funding for the project to $5.1 billion, more than three times the original 2009 promise of $1.6 billion.
The estimated price tag for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program pierced the $400 billion mark in a new report to Congress, an upward revision that accounts for related funding previously not tallied in the acquisition cost and a reminder of how far the project has strayed from the original 2002 promise to deliver the stealth fleet for $199 billion.
The Defense Department today marked a major milestone in the race against China and Russia to field hypersonic weapons, furnishing Raytheon with a nearly $1 billion commitment to design, develop and deliver a new class of ultra-fast, maneuvering munition for U.S. fighter aircraft: a hypersonic cruise missile.
A congressional audit of more than $24 billion contracted by the Defense Department using other transaction authorities (OTA) found the Pentagon does not have a systematic approach for tracking which consortia receive awards, limiting the ability of contracting personnel to make informed decisions on how and whether to use consortia-based OTAs.
The Missile Defense Agency has tapped Lockheed Martin to conduct a study that aims to explore whether directed-energy weapons can be integrated into the Missile Defense System, a project that comes as a company leader voiced optimism about the potential for speed-of-light technology to scale up to power levels needed to defeat intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The U.S. military has taken ownership of a prototype 300-kilowatt laser -- the first of three different variants of a high-energy weapon with cruise-missile killing power -- marking a key milestone in the Defense Department program to scale up directed-energy technology.