Tuesday, February 7, 2023
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 Missile Defense Agency, which has declined to publicly reveal its near-term acquisition plan for the Hypersonic and Ballistic Space Tracking Sensor program, wants to add an additional six satellites by 2025 -- raising the total number in orbit to 10 and after that proceed to a production decision.
A critical element of the Defense Department's plan to counter Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons is being hobbled by bureaucratic infighting between the Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency which have jettisoned a 2021 roadmap agreement for key technology development and deployment.
The Pentagon is backpedaling on plans to accelerate Glide Phase Interceptor development, congressional auditors reveal in a new report, an inauspicious beginning for the high-stakes hypersonic defense project that the independent review calls "highly ambitious" and "technically challenging" as well as saddled with cost and schedule risk.
A draft bill would require the Defense Department to codify a formal strategy for adding a layer to the Missile Defense System, outlining a path to potentially fielding directed-energy technologies to give U.S. forces a non-kinetic option for countering advanced threats, including ultra-fast maneuvering weapons.
The Defense Department is readying Navy destroyers equipped for ballistic missile defense operations for a second full-time, simultaneous mission: assisting the Space Force with situational awareness of the heavens in a move that aims to leverage nearly 30 Aegis ships with SPY-1 radars to help fill gaps in the Space Surveillance Network.
The Missile Defense Agency is seeking additional funds to advance work on a High Power Microwave Technology Testbed, a project that aims to potentially give the U.S. military an additional layer of defense against ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles by introducing a new directed-energy weapon.
The Missile Defense Agency has scored a major victory in its long-running campaign to reverse a statutory mandate that weapon system procurement authority be transitioned to the military departments, winning support in draft legislation to repeal a requirement with immediate implications for long-term responsibility for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program.
The Defense Department has set four critical flight tests to determine production and fielding decisions for the $17 billion Next Generation Interceptor program, setting up a high-stakes series of intercept attempts for the new homeland ballistic missile defense guided missile between fiscal years 2027 and 2029.
The Missile Defense Agency is lining up a new Short Pulse Laser research project in fiscal year 2023 -- including drafting a roadmap for this category of directed-energy technology -- if Congress adds $12.2 million for the venture, which is not requested as part of the Pentagon's budget request.
Pandemic delays continue to ripple across Pentagon plans for a new homeland defense radar in Alaska, with the Missile Defense Agency delaying by a year handover of the Long Range Discrimination Radar to the Space Force, a target that most previously had been set for 2022.
The Missile Defense Agency wants to retain the option to double planned production capacity for a Next Generation Interceptor -- notionally carrying forward both Lockheed Martin and the Northop Grumman-Raytheon teams to manufacture new mega-large, guided missiles in tandem as a strategy to provide policy makers "maximum trade space."
A top Army general believes the Russian invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a new benchmark for modern combat with wide-ranging implications for the United States and all modern armed forces: the normalization of ballistic missile attacks.
The Missile Defense Agency is nearing a decision on how many hypersonic-busting missile designs to pursue, retaining the option to concurrently develop as many as three competing blueprints for a Glide Phase Interceptor or narrow the current contest among Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman.
The Defense Department is eyeing a distributed air and missile defense system for Guam that would arm 42 mobile platforms with Standard Missile-3 and Standard Missile-6 interceptors to give the U.S. territory roughly the equivalent of two-and-a-half Aegis destroyers to counter Chinese ballistic, cruise and hypersonic threats.
The Missile Defense Agency has launched a project that aims to set the technical groundwork for a potential live-fire demonstration of a domestic cruise missile defense architecture by working first to execute simulated events connecting Army and Navy battle management tools with the guided-missile launcher system used to defend Washington, DC, 24/7.
The U.S. military will attempt to shoot down a hypersonic glide vehicle in a high-stakes test that will inform plans for a next-generation guided-missile interceptor as well as assess the efficacy of currently deployed systems that are supposed to provide a last line of defense for aircraft carrier strike groups against Russian and Chinese ultrafast maneuvering weapons.
Raytheon Technologies is hoping to secure an overseas buyer for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor in tandem with planned orders for the Army's initial production run in a bid to lower the current $130 million radar price tag, realize economies of scale and give a foreign military immediate parity with the service's newest and most sophisticated ground radar.
The Army has earmarked nearly $3 billion in its five-year spending plan for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, an investment that aims to forge a new package of capability improvements to fold into the first production batch of the Patriot radar replacement slated be operational at full-battalion strength with a first unit by 2029.
An expected two-way contest to build a next-generation kill vehicle -- one optimized to counter hypersonic glide vehicles -- is coming to a head, pitting Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne for the chance to progress to the second and final phase of the Glide Breaker program.
Pentagon brass have approved plans to commence new upgrades for the B-21 Raider once the next-generation bomber begins low-rate production as part of marking cost and capability parameters, setting the stage for the Air Force to commit more than $29 billion in planned investment for the long-range strike project over the next five years.