Now outside the paywall: our story on the public push to put new teeth into a nearly 20-year-old validated -- but still unfulfilled -- joint requirement for an elevated sensor to counter cruise missiles.
Friday, April 26, 2024
Friday, April 26, 2024
Key Issues Optical clocks Prototype funding SPAFORGEN
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.
Now outside the paywall: our story on the public push to put new teeth into a nearly 20-year-old validated -- but still unfulfilled -- joint requirement for an elevated sensor to counter cruise missiles.
Boeing has elbowed its way into the hypersonic defense game, winning the second phase of the Glide Breaker program, an important advanced technology development contract that aims to provide a foundation for U.S. and Japanese efforts to jointly develop a hit-to-kill interceptor capable of chasing down and defeating ultra-fast maneuvering warheads.
The U.S. military should resuscitate a 2004 requirement for a high-flying, stationary radar to bolster defense of Guam, a top Army official argued, noting capabilities demonstrated by the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System before its 2018 termination are now urgently needed.
Army leaders have determined -- five decades after launching the Abrams program and following five years of closely held analysis -- that the time has come for a clean-sheet tank design to invent a new combat vehicle optimized for machine-speed warfare, armed not only with a big gun but artificial intelligence, new components to significantly reduce weight and more.
We've moved our exclusive story on the Defense Department's new project to develop an Air and Cruise Missile Defense Homeland capability outside the paywall.
The United States -- which since the advent of flight more than a century ago has relied on two vast oceans as a buffer against adversaries attacking U.S. citizens and soil with low-flying aircraft and missiles -- this summer began designing a next-generation domestic air defense system to protect cities and critical infrastructure from Russian and Chinese cruise missiles.
A ballistic missile target malfunctioned during a key test required to make an operational assessment of the Long Range Discrimination Radar, dealing the new sensor project another schedule setback and putting the Pentagon in the position of taking ownership of a new weapon before validating it works as promised.
The Pentagon is considering expanding current national missile defense policy -- which is focused on threats from North Korea and, should Tehran obtain a long-range nuclear capability, Iran -- to also counter "regional" aggressors, including Russia or China, according to a senior Defense Department official.
The Defense Department is seeking feedback on plans to fabricate a pair of Over the Horizon Radar Systems in remote areas of Alaska, publishing a solicitation that sheds new light on government plans for the sensor project -- including construction completion by 2028, a year later than the original targeted fielding date.
The Army this month is expected to flesh out proposals for senior Pentagon leaders for all facets of standing up a new 360-degree air and missile defense system on Guam, including an organizational construct, program strategy and proposals for transitioning elements to different military services for operation.
Pentagon leaders are working to clarify lanes of responsibility for the defense of Guam, an unusually complex project -- even for the Defense Department -- that involves many intertwined organizational, functional and technological dimensions in a high-stakes, quick-moving project deemed crucial to defending, if necessary, Taiwan from China beginning in 2024.
The Pentagon has established an Innovation Capability and Modernization team to spearhead an effort to forge a hypersonic industrial base -- directing government investments to prop up fledgling suppliers in an ambitious goal to eventually wring as much as 80% of the estimated production cost of long-range, ultra-fast, maneuvering strike systems.
The Pentagon's top technology development official has designated a one-star admiral to head the Missile Defense Agency until the nomination for a new director to fill the three-star billet -- one of many senior officer promotions being blocked by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) -- is confirmed by the Senate.
North American Aerospace and Defense and U.S. Northern commands are spearheading an effort to detect, track and identify the emerging threat of attack by small uncrewed air systems on the White House, the Congress and other critically important locations in the wider National Capitol Region.
Navy plans to launch a Maritime Prepositioning Force Next (MPF-X) project later this year are on track after the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed action that aligns with three other congressional panels overseeing Pentagon funding to back a proposal for the new-start project in fiscal year 2024.
The Defense Department should consider expanding current national missile defense policy -- which is focused on threats from North Korea and, should Tehran obtain a long-range nuclear capability, Iran -- to also counter a "limited" attack on the United States by Russia or China, the general nominated to oversee homeland missile defense told lawmakers today.
Next month, the U.S. military will begin bringing online enhanced, dynamic space capabilities that allow select sea- and land-based radars originally designed for ballistic missile defense missions to simultaneously conduct the new task of tracking orbiting objects to help fill gaps in the Space Force's Space Surveillance Network.
A House lawmaker is effectively blockading Pentagon requests to shift funds between accounts -- denying the U.S. military the ability to use budgetary maneuvers routinely used to finance last-minute, high-priority needs -- in a move that could cripple critical modernization efforts, rotations essential to integrated deterrence strategy in the Indo-Pacific region and more.
The Navy estimates a key contract to launch the Next Generation Jammer-Low Band into engineering and manufacturing development -- a milestone originally reached in December 2020 but delayed by a series of protests and legal wrangling -- will now be awarded in September.
An influential Army advisory panel is tackling digital engineering with an eye to reporting on the service's progress in adopting bleeding-edge practices as well as challenges and opportunities in this area in an effort to improve development and procurement of new weapon systems.