Monday, February 6, 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 Pentagon has selected Lockheed Martin's SPY-7 radar as a land-based sensor for the new project to harden Guam against projected Chinese threats, marking the first adoption by the U.S. government of the alternative to the Raytheon-built SPY-6 radar for use with the Aegis weapon system.
The Defense Department is developing an upgraded, long-range hypersonic weapon with a dynamic new capability: the means to attack a moving target.
The Missile Defense Agency this month is set to award the first of nearly two-dozen contracts planned this calendar year worth almost $500 million to begin in earnest the race to develop and field by 2026 a new mobile missile defense system that draws on existing Navy and Army technologies to bolster Guam against advanced Chinese air threats.
The Defense Department has mapped out a $10 billion plan to prototype two competing designs for a Next Generation Interceptor, select a winner in 2025 and field by 2027 the new hit-to-kill weapon system top brass say is needed to defeat North Korea's improving inventory of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The Defense Department is looking to defend Washington, DC, as well as other unspecified domestic locations against Russian and Chinese cruise missiles by pairing a new variant of an elevated X-band radar with advanced systems that guide missile interceptors, such as Aegis cruisers or destroyers.
The Pentagon is advancing a five-year, $27 billion package of capabilities tailored to deter China, a stark variance with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command's assertion that $76 billion is needed over the same period -- a nearly $50 billion difference -- to strengthen regional deterrence, particularly west of the International Date Line.
The Army has rebranded its road-mobile, ship-killing weapon system "Strategic Mid-Range Fires" and is seeking $404 million in fiscal year 2023 to complete integration of a sea-based launcher on a truck to arm ground forces by next year with Tomahawk cruise missiles and Standard Missile-6.
Industry-developed laser weapon and power technology -- designed to fit on a ship, a ground combat vehicle, and military cargo aircraft -- demonstrated the feasibility of a tactical, electrical, fiber laser beam-combined system across the entire engagement chain during a February test in New Mexico that shot down a cruise missile target.
The Army last week raised the contract ceiling on the AN/TPQ-53 radar by $1.6 billion, extending by five years work that began in 2018 on the most advanced sensor in the service's inventory to counter incoming mortar, artillery and rockets to facilitate upgrades and foreign sales.
Under continuing pressure from Congress to improve the ballistic missile detection capability for Hawaii, the Defense Department has commenced a new analysis that aims to influence investments beginning in fiscal year 2024 for how the archipelago state will be protected from the advancing threat of North Korean long-range rockets.
The Defense Department has identified a potential solution to protecting domestic airspace against new, long-range, conventional strike weapons designed to hobble critical domestic infrastructure -- and top brass are asking for $50 million above and beyond the Pentagon's fiscal year 2023 budget request for a Cruise Missile Defense-Homeland Kill Chain Demonstration.
The Hypersonic and Ballistic Space Tracking Sensor project is beginning to take physical shape, with both L3Harris and Northrop Grumman beginning assembly of their respective prototype payloads as the two companies await word from the Missile Defense Agency on whether a down-select is in the offing or if both could be carried forward as suppliers.
SAPA Placencia, the Spanish defense contractor with a U.S. subsidiary developing next-generation transmission technology for the Army, has teamed with Honeywell Aerospace to collaborate on enhanced electric power generation for combat vehicles -- with a goal to double energy output compared with current technology.
The U.S. military has drafted a blueprint for the first incremental upgrade of its small fleet of long-range hypersonic strike weapons and has laid out plans for a two-year production of improved glide vehicles that incorporate new technology slated to be available for Army ground units and Navy ships in 2026 and 2027.
The Defense Department is drafting plans for a new air- and missile-defense capability -- a $4.4 billion near-term investment -- to provide a mobile land system that protects Guam against advanced Chinese threats as soon as 2026 that could also have utility in other regions of the world, including protecting U.S. cities and critical domestic infrastructure.
The Defense Department today successfully executed a major test that caps a five-year project to meet an "urgent requirement" to expand the protective shield over South Korea against the North's ballistic missile threats by forging new connections between the U.S. Army's upper- and lower-tier missile defense systems.
The Missile Defense Agency is seeking $9.6 billion in fiscal year 2023 to grow the guided missile inventory and support key projects, such as launching prototype Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensors, designing a new Guam defense system and continuing development on new interceptors to defeat a limited ICBM attack and hypersonic glide vehicles.
The Biden administration is adopting a key formulation of national objectives for the non-nuclear forces established by the Trump administration in 2018, a force planning construct that calls for the U.S. military to be able to defeat aggression by a major power while simultaneously deterring opportunistic aggression elsewhere.
The top U.S. military official responsible for defending the nation against a North Korean nuclear strike said he is "very concerned" about the Pentagon's ability to keep pace with Pyongyang's technical advances in developing long-range missiles and industrial capacity to expand its offensive fleet.
The Missile Defense Agency sponsored nearly a third of the projects flight tested last fall during a series of sounding rocket tests to evaluate potential technologies to improve the U.S. military's hypersonic program -- a strong showing for the defensive portfolio which represents about 10% of total Pentagon spending on hypersonic capabilities.