Thursday, December 4, 2025
Key Issues Stryker downsizing CAML Cape Cod GBR
Jason Sherman is a reporter for Inside Defense. For more than three 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 Pentagon is pushing back a contract award for the next phase of its proliferated low-Earth orbit communications network, raising questions about the possibility of a major new plan for the multibillion-dollar Transport Layer effort following a nearly $500 million cut by the Trump administration.
The Air Force is moving to reallocate $22 million from its C-130H Avionics Modernization Program Increment 2 after testing setbacks pushed the effort more than a year behind schedule.
The Missile Defense Agency is seeking industry proposals for a new class of low-cost interceptors to blunt the threat of massed missile attacks in a new project that aims to develop modular weapons that cost less than $750,000 apiece and can be produced on a compressed schedule to counter ballistic, cruise and hypersonic threats.
The Defense Department has awarded a $1.7 billion modification to Raytheon for production of the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, allowing the Army -- and Poland -- to execute new orders for the next-generation, ground-forces radar.
The next generation of U.S. missile defense won't be run by generals in command bunkers studying wall-sized screens.
The Pentagon has begun charting the course for a sweeping overhaul of one of its oldest and most sensitive radars, issuing a solicitation that seeks industry input on modernizing the Cobra Dane system on Shemya Island, AK.
The Defense Department is seeking industry input on a sweeping effort to digitize the six ground-based radar sites that serve as the backbone of U.S. long-range missile detection.
The Pentagon has launched an effort to quickly field a new radar in the southeastern United States to protect the nation from advanced air and missile threats, aiming for an initial capability by 2028.
The Navy is freezing immediate production plans for its next-generation anti-radar missile following a recent test failure, opening the door for the Pentagon to redirect more than $200 million in previously approved funding to other military priorities.
The Pentagon is seeking congressional approval to shift $150 million into the Air Force One replacement program, a move aimed at accelerating delivery of the next presidential aircraft by as much as two years.
The Pentagon is asking Congress for permission to reprogram $5.4 billion in previously appropriated funds to boost long-range strike, hypersonic weapons and space capabilities, a major realignment of defense dollars that underscores shifting priorities amid intensifying global threats.
The Pentagon has awarded Lockheed Martin a $2.1 billion contract modification to produce additional Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors, expanding Army inventory levels as the Missile Defense Agency moves forward with a parallel effort to modernize the system through 2027.
The Pentagon is looking to upgrade one of its most widely deployed missile-tracking radars with a powerful new antenna array, a move that could give the U.S. military an improved ability to detect and track advanced threats such as hypersonic weapons and maneuvering ballistic missiles.
The Pentagon's fiscal year 2026 budget request includes $13.4 billion for autonomous and remotely operated systems, but the funding is scattered across 348 individual budget lines -- illustrating both the breadth of investment and the challenge of managing a sprawling portfolio.
The Pentagon is seeking industry proposals for a new mobile radar system that could form a key part of the ground-based layer of its nascent Golden Dome for America missile defense initiative, issuing a detailed request for information that outlines ambitious tracking, discrimination and deployment requirements.
The Pentagon is reviving a key industry summit for its Golden Dome for America missile defense initiative, renewing its push to attract nontraditional companies into the national security orbit as it races to draft an operational architecture by late September for a next-generation shield to defend the U.S. homeland.
The Missile Defense Agency is seeking industry concepts for mobile launcher systems capable of supporting a new underlayer of missile defense as part of the Pentagon's Golden Dome for America initiative, ideas that could be fielded within two years.
The Pentagon has granted Gen. Mike Guetlein an unusually direct reporting chain in his new role overseeing the Golden Dome for America missile defense initiative, underscoring the program's elevated status and urgency.
The Senate last week confirmed Gen. Michael Guetlein to lead one of the most ambitious and expensive defense technology projects in U.S. history: the $175 billion "Golden Dome for America" initiative, aimed at delivering a next-generation missile defense shield within three years.
The Army is drawing urgent lessons from the war in Ukraine that are reshaping its approach to air and missile defense, with a key leader emphasizing the need to counter massed attacks, treat sustainment as a strategic imperative and harness data as the defining currency of future combat.