Monday, June 1, 2020
Key Issues NNSA report Iron Dome to CENTCOM LOGCAP V
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.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are eyeing a second chance to compete for new Air Force radar business after the service pulled the plug on Raytheon's contract to develop a new long-range radar, with all three companies saying they plan to explore the follow-on "SpeedDealer" requirement and solicitation.
Multiple sources are readying for a major Army decision as soon as today on the Optionally Manned Fight Vehicle program of record -- with some expecting the service to jettison the current program of record in the wake of congressional concerns about the lack of competition.
Lockheed Martin has nabbed a lead role in another hypersonic weapons program, winning the sole contract for the third phase of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Operational Fires program -- a project launched in 2018 to develop and demonstrate a new surface-to-surface precision fires weapon that ground forces can use to penetrate sophisticated enemy air defenses.
The Missile Defense Agency is armed with nearly $400 million in fiscal year 2020 for its fledgling counter hypersonics program, including $25 million to support the immediate launch of a new weapon system project to defeat hypersonic glide vehicles.
The Army has sent Congress an initial Selected Acquisition Report for the AN/TPQ-53 radar -- the most advanced sensor in the service's inventory to counter incoming mortar, artillery and rockets -- just as government plans for the truck-mounted, rotating sensor are slated to wind down.
An influential advisory board says the Pentagon must "vigorously" pursue three quantum technology areas with particular military potential.
The Pentagon's top weapons tester supported a production recommendation last fall for the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA and next month will determine the system's operational effectiveness and operational suitability, according to a Defense Department spokesman.
Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's top technology officer, has recruited a senior NASA appointee to head the Strategic Capabilities Office, setting the stage for the start of a new chapter for an organization that was the object of a bureaucratic turf fight during much of 2019 that Griffin waged and lost.
A Pentagon advisory board is calling for a more "defensible and resilient" National Leadership Command Capability to shore up weaknesses in the command and control systems used by the president and critical to ensuring continuity of government during a national crisis.
The Navy last month transferred administrative control of the trimaran Sea Hunter -- an experimental prototype medium unmanned surface vehicle that helped launch plans for a fleet of medium and large USVs -- from the Office of Naval Research to Surface Development Command One, on behalf of the Unmanned Maritime Systems program office (PMS-406).
An influential Pentagon advisory panel is launching a new study to investigate potential new dimensions of conflict that China and Russia might employ to impose their will on other states beyond conventional military force, and seeks recommendations for a modernization blueprint that, in turn, puts the U.S. military at the vanguard of innovating new forms of conflict.
The Pentagon's independent cost estimator has been directed to assess the implications of the 2019 Missile Defense Review, the Trump administration's new blueprint for defending against ballistic, cruise and hypersonic threats and brief lawmakers in January on the estimated price tag for expanding the Ballistic Missile Defense System.
The Missile Defense Agency is cleared to resume planning for a flight test in fiscal year 2020 of a Standard Missile-3 Block IIA against an intercontinental ballistic missile target.
SANTA MONICA, CA -- The Army is exploring how it might utilize intelligence agency satellites for its very long-range precision fires systems in development, including the Strategic Long-Range Cannon and Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, new weapons that exceed the reach of the service's organic sensors and will require space-based assets to be guided to their targets.
The Air Force this week is spearheading a project with the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and industry entrepreneurs to emulate the kind of rapid software and hardware development pioneered by Silicon Valley start-ups in a bid to incubate Joint All Domain Command and Control -- an envisioned technical backbone to link sensors and shooters across air, land and sea.
House and Senate lawmakers are backing plans for a new Ground-based Interceptor by adding more than $100 million for homeland defense interceptor development in fiscal year 2020. At the same time, they are qualifying support offered in September by Senate appropriators for the Next Generation Interceptor program, imposing additional oversight on the proposed new-start project.
SIMI VALLEY, CA -- Army leaders, for a third consecutive year, are commencing a top-down review of the service's entire spending plan to hunt for projects that can be canceled, reduced or delayed to bolster modernization projects in the fiscal year 2022 budget.
The Pentagon is beginning a new weapon system project to defeat hypersonic glide vehicles, briefing industry next week on what is likely a decades-long project to expand the reach of the Ballistic Missile Defense System to counter these ultra-fast, maneuvering menaces that exploit current seams in U.S. defenses.
House and Senate lawmakers resoundingly rejected a Pentagon plan by Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin to subordinate the Strategic Capabilities Office under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
SIMI VALLEY, CA -- The Marine Corps plans to commence early next year a major realignment of its investment accounts, building a new five-year budget plan that sheds select weapons acquired during land operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and invests in capabilities optimized for expeditionary fights against technologically sophisticated adversaries such as China and Russia.