Sunday, June 23, 2024
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 Defense Department has established a Joint Hypersonic Transition Office and charged the new shop with overseeing creation of a university-led consortium to expand cooperation between academia, industry and government as part of the U.S. military's goal to eventually scale production of a new class of high-speed, maneuvering weapons.
The Marine Corps, after discussing potential adoption of a hypersonic weapon with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, recently waived off interest in fielding a ground-launched variant of an ultra-fast weapon, according to a spokesman.
The surprise announcement by Japan earlier this week to halt plans for Aegis Ashore acquisition and deployment could potentially be reversed once "concerns and issues" about the weapon system are resolved, a senior U.S. military official said.
The Defense Department is on the cusp of seizing the lead in maneuvering hypersonic technology development from China and Russia and is poised next year to ramp up flight tests to as many 40 over the next four years, according to a senior Pentagon official.
A key Senate panel wants more information from the Navy and U.S. European Command on a gambit to significantly increase the size of the sea-based, ballistic missile defense fleet in the Mediterranean in order to improve command and control and better defend all of Europe from potential Iranian ballistic missile threats.
A key Senate panel is proposing legislation requiring the Army to outline a plan for deploying the Israeli-made Iron Dome air defense system, potentially enshrining in law what House and Senate lawmakers have requested of Pentagon leaders in written correspondence.
The Missile Defense Agency's partnership with commercial space companies to develop and set in orbit nearly two-dozen sensors, a prototype project called the Space-based Kill Assessment, allowed the government to avoid spending $700 million to develop the same capability using traditional acquisition practices, according to a senior MDA official.
Funding for U.S. military modernization priorities touted by the Trump administration's 2018 National Defense Strategy, projects that enjoyed growth across five consecutive annual budgets, is now forecast to be feeble in the Pentagon's future years spending program, according to data-science company Govini.
The Pentagon is readying a final solicitation for the initial batch of satellites slated to be a springboard for a prototype, proliferated low-earth-orbit constellation, a project intended to usher in both a new age of space technology as well as pivot toward integration with multidomain systems and operational concepts.
The Missile Defense Agency is readying a new Microwave Technology Testbed to mature directed-energy technologies that could be used to thwart hypersonic glide vehicles and cruise missiles.
The Pentagon will accelerate plans for a new space-based missile defense architecture if Congress increases funding in fiscal year 2021 for the Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program, which could allow the U.S. military to put the "kernel" of a totally new network on orbit by FY-22, according to a senior Defense Department official.
The Army last month halted testing on the newest variant of the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles, the FMTV A2, in the wake of reliability issues that surfaced while being assessed at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, a move that will delay a planned production decision and could force prime contractor Oshkosh Defense to redesign portions of the new truck.
The Missile Defense Agency is planning a four-part upgrade of the Long Range Discrimination Radar that will be operational in 2023, a major software upgrade slated to be sole-sourced to Lockheed Martin but for which the government is soliciting feedback from industry on potential alternative vendors who might improve the sensor's ability to detect and track objects in space.
The Army should consider deploying an Iron Dome battery to the U.S. Central Command area of operations, according to a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee who traveled to Iraq in February and was briefed on air-defense capabilities of U.S. forces in the region.
Final testing in the current phase of the competition to design the Next Generation Jammer-Low Band began recently at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, MD, according to the Navy, a key development in the race between L3Harris and Northrop Grumman for the multibillion-dollar airborne electronic attack modernization project.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's two high-profile hypersonic weapon technology efforts -- one a boost-glide vehicle the other an air-breathing missile -- are both "going well" despite an apparent delay in planned first flight tests, according to the Pentagon's top technology official.
Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, said he is concerned that weapon system research and development spending will soon be squeezed as the federal deficit mounts in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak and pressure grows to rein in federal spending -- a view he said should come as no surprise to anyone.
Without fanfare, the Missile Defense Agency in late January posted on the front page of its public website a new organizational chart that marked the culmination of a project last year to retool bureaucratic structures to now account for a wider array of challenges to U.S. forces, allies and the homeland.
The novel coronavirus outbreak is delaying plans for a limited-user test of the Integrated Battle Management System -- a high-stakes do over for the $7.7 billion Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense program following a failed 2016 assessment -- and is also expected to push a production decision from September to November.
The Missile Defense Agency is eyeing formation of a third-party entity dedicated to managing rapid prototyping of missile defense projects, following a pivot by the Army, Navy, and Air Force from traditional acquisition rules to a new pathway called “middle-tier” acquisition intended to experiment with and potentially deliver new weapons in two to five years.