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 has quietly canceled a long-anticipated industry engagement on space-based missile interceptors, dealing another setback to the Trump administration's push to rapidly launch the most ambitious element of its new national missile defense initiative, Golden Dome.
The Defense Department abruptly canceled -- again -- a high-profile industry summit for the Golden Dome for America missile defense initiative, marking a sputtering start for the Trump administration's marquee military modernization project -- an estimated $175 billion project launched with fanfare at the White House two weeks ago.
The future of a promising new undersea surveillance platform -- designed to blanket the ocean with small, unmanned acoustic nodes -- could hinge on the Navy's fiscal year 2026 budget request.
The Biden administration's Pentagon leadership directed significant changes to the architecture of the multibillion-dollar missile defense system for Guam in the final days of its term, according to a newly released Government Accountability Office report.
The Pentagon's ambitious plan to ring Guam with a state-of-the-art missile defense system is running into fundamental obstacles that could delay or disrupt the project's completion, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The Missile Defense Agency has unveiled plans for a contract vehicle that could reshape the future of U.S. missile defense, outlining a $151 billion procurement framework to field next-generation capabilities across nearly every dimension of the enterprise.
The Pentagon has awarded Raytheon Technologies a $1 billion contract to produce up to 55 Standard Missile-3 Block IB interceptors, a move that comes as defense leaders reconsider the future of the combat-tested interceptor -- slated for a production sunset -- amid growing demands from the emerging Golden Dome domestic missile defense architecture.
The Navy deployed a commercially developed cruise missile aboard an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the Red Sea as part of a broader exploration into countering drone threats, an experiment defense officials say could help lay the groundwork for expanding the Navy's capacity to defeat complex missile raids.
A House proposal to add $400 million to the Pentagon's Joint Fires Network marks a sharp escalation in support for a system the Defense Department views as central to future high-end warfare.
The U.S. military's top official overseeing missile defense for Guam told Congress the cost of developing a 360-degree integrated air and missile defense architecture for the Western Pacific island is approximately $8 billion, offering the first public accounting of a system Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth views as a model for Golden Dome for America.
The Pentagon has rescheduled a high-profile summit intended to draw nontraditional companies into its next-generation missile defense initiative, pushing the event from its original April 29 date to June 11.
A new U.S. intelligence assessment forecasts a sweeping expansion of adversary missile arsenals over the next decade, with China projected to make the most dramatic quantitative gains -- far outpacing Russia, North Korea and Iran -- in long-range and precision strike capabilities.
The Pentagon is opening the gates to an aspirational new era in missile defense development, publishing a wide-ranging, five-year solicitation that seeks paradigm-shifting approaches to delivering interceptors, battle management, electronic warfare, space systems, artificial intelligence and more.
The Missile Defense Agency wants to overhaul the payload systems it uses to test U.S. missile defense systems, launching a formal request for information to expand the flexibility, speed and realism of future target vehicles.
The Pentagon is set to deliver a command and control upgrade to its global missile defense network this summer, enhancing the ability of U.S. forces to detect, track and respond to increasingly complex missile threats, including cruise missiles and maneuverable hypersonic weapons while also strengthening protection for the U.S. homeland and Guam.
Less than a year after an early acquisition decision forced a delay in the Pentagon's flagship hypersonic defense effort, the Missile Defense Agency is now exploring ways to accelerate the Glide Phase Interceptor program to better align with the advancing threat.
The Missile Defense Agency is advancing a new set of initiatives to develop and integrate high-energy lasers into the nation's layered missile defense system, marking a sharp turn toward operationalizing directed energy to complement -- and in some cases relieve -- traditional kinetic defenses.
The Pentagon is positioning a high-tech artillery round originally engineered for offense as a cornerstone of its Golden Dome initiative, adapting a novel cannon technology for point defense as part of a sprawling new architecture aimed at shielding U.S. airbases, cities and critical infrastructure from missile and drone attacks.
In a delayed but notable disclosure, the Pentagon on Monday confirmed that Stratolaunch has successfully conducted the first reusable hypersonic flight tests by a U.S. vehicle in more than five decades -- milestone demonstrations that occurred in December 2024 and March 2025 but remained unacknowledged by the Defense Department until now.
The Army’s top missile defense commander voiced concern over a newly disclosed delay to the Pentagon’s Next Generation Interceptor, warning that the three-year slip leaves the U.S. homeland exposed to advancing North Korean missile threats longer than previously anticipated.