Thursday, April 25, 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.
A Space Force project to provide an additional satellite layer needed for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to better detect North Korean and Chinese missile launches will hit the skids unless Congress allows the Pentagon to shift more than $100 million between accounts to keep the Wide Field of View space vehicles project -- led by RTX, formerly Raytheon Technologies -- on schedule.
The Pentagon is seeking congressional permission to shift $4 billion between budget accounts as part of an annual reallocation of funds the U.S. military has in hand, revealing a launch failure in the Defense Department's marquee hypersonic weapons project and proposals for eight new-start projects -- including a loitering missile system for the Army.
Lockheed Martin and the Navy conducted a successful ground test of a prototype datalink that allowed an Army Patriot guided-missile interceptor -- the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement -- to communicate with a Navy SPY-1 radar, validating design of the communication device and clearing the project to advance toward a planned flight test early next year. (UPDATED)
The Biden administration is balking at a House proposal the executive branch argues could upend two decades of missile defense policy by expanding the limited objective of defending the nation against intercontinental ballistic missile attack from North Korea and Iran to shielding the nation from the massive nuclear arsenals of Russia and China.
The Army is kicking off an "urgent" acquisition effort to give dismounted infantry a new tank-killing capability: a man-portable, tube-launched, kamikaze uncrewed aircraft called the Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) program -- the latest indication of how the Russia-Ukraine war is changing modern combat.
The Defense Department's proposal to begin a new project called Large Scale Global Exercise passed muster with a key House panel that has agreed to fund the effort in fiscal year 2024 as part of the Joint Staff's portfolio of projects to replicate complex and changing operational environments during training.
House lawmakers have approved a Pentagon request to launch a new-start program in fiscal year 2024 that aims to allow combatant commanders to integrate "exquisite capabilities" into their global campaigns to counter weapons of mass destruction.
The State Department has approved for export to Poland a potential $15 billion package of air-defense capabilities that -- if completed as a final sale -- would give the NATO nation the most advanced package of radar and guided missiles, paired with a previously acquired command and control capability, available to ground forces in the U.S. inventory.
An off-budget proposal to accelerate improved capability development of a northern-facing Over the Horizon Radar remains a possibility after House lawmakers authorized a $20 million increase to the Air Force’s fiscal year 2024 budget to buy an additional testbed in support of a U.S. Northern Command unfunded priority.
The Army has confirmed full operational capability for the Mid-Range Capability after launching a Tomahawk cruise missile, capping a nearly three-year project to mitigate an “extremely high-risk capability gap” by fielding a prototype, land-based system armed with Navy precision-strike weapons to give the ground force formidable ship-sinking capability.
House lawmakers want the Pentagon to explore the potential for short pulse lasers to counter maneuvering hypersonic missiles, proposing a $6 million addition in fiscal year 2024 for the Missile Defense Agency to expand its work on the novel directed-energy technology.
The Defense Department would like to field a string of passive radars in remote locations well north of the Arctic Circle as part of an effort -- details of which were previously classified -- to extend the sensor reach of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command to feed alerts as well as actionable information to U.S. and Canadian military leaders.
House lawmakers are recommending a 25% cut in the Navy's initial hypersonic strike missile procurement plan, citing concerns with increasing risk in the project caused by test failures and schedule delays, imposing a reduction that appears to decrease the Pentagon's proposed fiscal year 2024 acquisition of eight Conventional Prompt Strike rounds to six.
The project to explore expanding the mission of Aegis Ashore sites in Europe to defend against Russian threats would inch forward if legislation proposed by a House panel -- which calls for the Pentagon to report on feasibility and advisability of such a change -- becomes law.
Lawmakers are skeptical of the Pentagon's latest radar plan to help protect Hawaii from missile attack, noting the fiscal year 2024 budget plan would halt funding for the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii project while also seeking permission to start a new sensor project that doesn't integrate into the U.S. military's wider missile defense sensor architecture.
The United States, Japan and potentially other nations could formally begin collaborative development on the Glide Phase Interceptor as soon as the fiscal year 2024 defense policy bill is enacted if a proposed single-sentence provision in that legislation becomes law, a sign of support in Congress for a joint effort to develop a next-generation Aegis guided missile.
Lawmakers want a formal exploration of extending the Next Generation Interceptor competition, delaying any source selection from 2025 until Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman fly prototypes -- a move that could add at least two years to the contest and set the stage for tandem production of a much larger NGI acquisition than the program of record.
Lawmakers are exploring the potential for arming the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer fleet -- and possibly new frigates -- with offensive hypersonic missiles, a move that could dramatically extend the striking range of the Navy's surface combatant force to hold at risk a larger set of inland targets by modifying current vertical launch systems to accommodate larger-diameter rockets.
House lawmakers are proposing legislation that would require an initial fleet of a dozen Glide Phase Interceptors be operational by 2029 -- mandating a six-year acceleration of the Pentagon hypersonic defense program -- a move that, if enacted, could require billions of dollars be added to the project's near-term development plans.
The Defense Department "lacks comprehensive guidance" for sustaining and maintaining the Missile Defense System -- a sprawling collection of radars, launchers and command and control systems -- that, if not corrected, places at risk the readiness of the nation to defend against long-range missile threats.