Saturday, August 13, 2022
Key Issues AETP China-Taiwan scenarios E-7 Wedgetail
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 Army has identified seven candidate locations for basing its Iron Dome systems -- two batteries purchased from Israel at the behest of Congress which top brass, however, now say do not meet the U.S. military's needs to defend against advanced air threats -- eyeing options to either consolidate basing of the two units or splitting them across the country.
The U.S. military has assessed China's program to improve its nuclear forces has achieved "strategic breakout" -- a status that indicates the Defense Department is undertaking significant new planning, and possibly considering capability shifts, to meet Beijing's rapid qualitative and quantitative military improvements.
The Navy has drafted notional requirements for a next-generation X-band radar to outfit its major surface combatant fleet with an improved ability to scan the horizon to hunt low-flying anti-ship cruise missiles, setting the stage for a multibillion-dollar competition to replace the venerable SPQ-9B which has been in the fleet since the 1990s.
The Missile Defense Agency -- which seeks $1.3 billion annually for testing -- could not account for more than half of the $3.5 billion appropriated for such activities between 2017 and 2020, according to a federal audit.
The Navy is readying for Congress a proposal for a future long-term buy of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers beginning in fiscal year 2023, a package that would mark a fifth multiyear procurement and potentially the final bulk order of DDG-51s before the service transitions to a planned follow-on Large Surface Combatant.
The Missile Defense Agency is drafting a new acquisition strategy for the Standard Missile-3, eying a potential omnibus package that would bundle three variants of the guided-missile interceptor into a contract vehicle beginning in 2023 that could include options that extend for up to a decade.
The Missile Defense Agency continues to obfuscate cost growth and schedule delays in its $202 billion project portfolio by not clearly disclosing changes to program baselines, bucking recommendations nearly a decade old by federal auditors to provide clear traceability to provide lawmakers a clear sense of cost performance and the total price tag.
The Army last fall rebranded its marquee, big-bet, long-range fires science and technology project by stripping "strategic" from the title of the effort to develop a mega-cannon capable of firing a projectile more than 1,000 miles.
The Defense Department's chief technology official has expanded the list of critical areas for research and engineering in a gambit to "drive innovation" to new sectors such as renewable energy generation -- a push to enlarge the U.S. military technology development portfolio even as inflation is threatening to squeeze Pentagon investment plans.
New details about technologies demonstrated during a hypersonic technology flight test last fall were revealed today when General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems announced its self-destruct units were flown on two of three sounding rockets launched to assess potential new capabilities for the Pentagon's marquee hypersonic glide vehicle projects.
The Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system -- rapidly acquired by the Army in response to capabilities Russia demonstrated in 2014 against Ukraine and which is now being fielded to units in Europe -- is not yet operationally effective nor operationally suitable.
The Air Force has released Boeing from future cost-growth liability on the KC-46A tanker, altering the fundamental terms of a 2011 contract that capped government costs at $4.9 billion and forced the defense contractor to pay out-of-hide for remedial work that so far totals $5.5 billion -- a move that comes as Boeing saddles the Air Force with a new major milestone delay.
The Defense Department is looking to the video game industry to help improve a high-consequence system used by U.S. military forces to determine where best to position guided missile interceptors and radars to defeat long-range missile threats, including North Korean nuclear-armed rockets.
The Army last fall executed a potentially paradigm-changing technical demonstration, lashing up for the first time separate command-and-control systems that are today used for either missile defense or offensive missile strikes.
The Navy has pushed the target completion date for a mandated study -- exploring potential alternatives to a fleet of Large Unmanned Surface Vessels that include commercial ships and amphibious warships packed with long-range missiles -- until spring, a delay of more than six months compared to the project's original goal.
Israel today conducted a major test of its national missile defense system, launching a pair of its most advanced guided-missile interceptors against a ballistic missile target in an event designed to assess the limits of the weapon system.
The Defense Department is looking to dramatically increase the pace and reduce the cost of hypersonic technology testing, eyeing a new advanced capability project that would execute monthly launches for about $15 million per event -- less than one-tenth the cost of past major events -- to “fail fast and learn” and accelerate fielding of improved weapons.
The Defense Department is feeling the squeeze of rising prices and has had to shift funds around internally in recent weeks to cover $1.5 billion in must-pay bills, the Pentagon's chief financial officer told Congress today.
The Defense Department is asking industry for feedback on plans for a "full-scale hypersonics flight test series" -- with further details available only to cleared contractors.
The Pentagon must conduct a new review over the next year that could reshape the U.S. military's $2 trillion roster of current weapon system acquisition projects by identifying programs for divestiture that are not keeping pace with emerging threats.