Saturday, April 20, 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 is eyeing an Israeli-made, tank-killing, loitering munition called the Hero-120 for U.S. Special Operations Command, seeking permission from Congress to shift $6.9 million between accounts in order to immediately procure an undisclosed number of the unmanned flying warheads.
The Pentagon is seeking congressional permission to shift $2.8 billion between budget accounts as part of an annual reallocation of funds the U.S. military has in hand, a move that seeks to launch a new hit-to-kill Army artillery round, kick start the Air Force's O/A-X light-attack aircraft program and inject additional funds into a project to develop a road-mobile hypersonic strike weapon.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg vowed the western military alliance "will respond" if Russia does not return to compliance with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty but declined to say exactly what measures would be taken, as The New York Times reports that options being considered include bolstering missile defense capabilities across Europe.
The Army is extending the deadline for Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and the Lockheed Martin-Elta team to complete their proposals for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor competition, pushing the delivery date from July 9 to July 16.
The Navy has identified the first deliverables for the $3.4 billion Next Generation Jammer Low Band development program, a key step to advance the goal of delivering an operational prototype pod for an EA-18G Growler by 2024, a project that could attract as many as three bidders.
Key lawmakers are closely examining the behavior and decision-making of the Defense Department's technology chief, spurred by high-profile personnel departures from his office.
The Defense Department is preparing to send lawmakers findings of an independent technical study on the feasibility of using an unmanned aerial vehicle to launch an interceptor against a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile during the first minutes after launch.
The Pentagon's chief technology officer has tapped David Honey, a senior Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency official, to temporarily head the Strategic Capabilities Office.
The Redesigned Kill Vehicle program was on a trajectory toward 60% cost growth -- a death knell for most weapon projects -- when the Pentagon's chief technology official directed the Missile Defense Agency to halt work on the effort, according to government auditors.
The Navy unmanned aircraft shot down by Iran was a 2011 legacy Global Hawk transferred from the Air Force, not one of the Navy's new MQ-4C Triton aircraft derived from the Global Hawk design but optimized for maritime missions.
Gen. Paul Selva, the second-highest-ranking U.S. military officer, weighed in on a controversial proposal to fold the Strategic Capabilities Office into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, arguing combatant commands are concerned the change would add a layer of bureaucracy and impede a pipeline now effectively fostering new ideas and rapid delivery of innovative combat capabilities.
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon today announced a teaming agreement to collaborate on technologies critical to U.S. military efforts to produce a hypersonic cruise missile, a pact to adapt scramjet combustors produced by Northrop in Raytheon's air-breathing, ultra-fast missiles.
Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's top weapons development official, ousted Strategic Capabilities Office Director Chris Shank on Friday, escalating a bureaucratic fight over the fate of the SCO. Griffin wants to fold the organization into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- a change opposed by key combatant commands and now congressional committees.
Raytheon -- after securing permission to begin production in late 2017 of the Standard Missile-3 Block IB after years of engineering challenges, repeated technical setbacks and schedule delays -- stumbled right out of the gate last year, delivering only a third of the new guided missile interceptors the U.S. government planned to buy in fiscal year 2018.
The March flight test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system -- a developmental assessment that marked the first salvo launch of Ground-based Interceptors hailed as a landmark achievement by program boosters -- was 13 years behind schedule and was built on a record of GMD tests that have achieved less than 50 percent operational realism, according to congressional investigators.
Senate lawmakers are proposing legislation that could chart an expansion of the Ground-based Interceptor fleet in Alaska to as many as 100 guided missiles, a push to enhance the Ground-based Midcourse Defense segment of the Ballistic Missile Defense System that comes as the Missile Defense Agency is facing significant delays in expanding the current 44-interceptor fleet to 64.
Draft legislation before a key Senate panel would assign the Missile Defense Agency responsibility for developing the Space Sensor Layer, bucking a Defense Department gambit to fold the project into the new Space Development Agency as part of an effort to develop a new multimission satellite constellation.
A powerful House lawmaker is proposing legislation that would block the Missile Defense Agency from flight testing the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA against an intercontinental ballistic missile target until the Pentagon's top weapons tester certifies the new Aegis interceptor works against the shorter-range threats it was originally designed to defeat.
The Defense Department is rebaselining the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system acquisition effort, consolidating it into what is now called THAAD III from a pair of parallel development efforts to continue improving the Army-operated system -- a change that reflects recent upgrades to counter North Korean ballistic missile threats.
The Missile Defense Agency has set a May 2020 target for declaring operational the third and last increment of the European Phased Adaptive Approach and simultaneously dialed back planned intercept testing.