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.
The Defense Department has selected General Atomics to compete in the new technology demonstration effort to integrate a low-power laser on a high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle, expanding the project to develop different approaches for a potential precursor to an airborne laser capable of intercepting ballistic missiles during the boost phase of flight.
A senior Navy official said this week the service plans to arm its Ohio-class submarines and Virginia-class attack subs with a hypersonic boost-glide weapon, in the event Defense Department leaders elect to acquire such a capability, a significant revelation about U.S. military planning for a Conventional Prompt Strike capability.
The Congressional Budget Office in a new report estimates the Obama administration's 2017 plans to finance nuclear forces would cost $1.2 trillion -- in fiscal year 2017 dollars -- over three decades, including $400 billion to modernize them and $800 million to operate and sustain them.
The Defense Department last week transmitted the annual report on the Military Power of Iran in 2016 to lawmakers.
The Navy has locked in requirements for a very-high-speed missile that could provide a key component for a potential prototype Conventional Prompt Strike capability and has launched a competition to design, build and ground test a booster capable of delivering a hypersonic glide body payload.
The Army should place "big bets" on a range of new areas needed to ensure capability overmatch in future fights, according to an advisory panel that in a new study calls for long-term, sustained investments in manned-unmanned-teaming capabilities for ground forces, increased lethality from new payloads and precision munitions with longer reaches as well the dramatic step of redesigning the Army.
The Navy and Coast Guard are readying a once-in-a-generation modernization project to build a new fleet of heavy polar icebreaker cutters, issuing a draft solicitation for a potential three-ship acquisition effort beginning in fiscal year 2019, a project that could -- according to one authoritative estimate -- cost at least $2.5 billion and comes after lawmakers voiced support for a six-ship fleet.
Ships from several NATO countries conducting an integrated air and missile defense exercise defended against a supersonic target in waters near Scotland Oct. 17, wrapping up a two-week effort to improve interoperability using alliance command-and-control reporting structures and datalink architecture, according to U.S. 6th Fleet.
The Defense Department has tapped Lockheed Martin to begin integrating a low-power laser on a high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle, the first of a small number of contracts slated to be awarded this year to develop competing approaches for a potential precursor to an airborne laser capable of intercepting ballistic missiles during the boost-phase of flight.
A Raytheon interceptor successfully knocked down a ballistic missile target in a live-fire exercise over the weekend, setting the stage for the Missile Defense Agency to proceed with a long-delayed full-rate production decision of the weapon which is pivotal to U.S. plans to defend American forces and allies against North Korean and Iranian threats.
The Army needs to take action to bolster capabilities to fight in megacities and should lobby Pentagon leaders to adopt defense planning scenarios that include dense-urban area operations as an initial step toward laying the groundwork for potential weapon system programs needed for these missions.
The first-ever deployment of a NATO Integrated Air and Missile Defense task group consisting of ships from more than a dozen countries, sailing in the rough seas of the North Atlantic as part of a major international missile defense exercise, has tracked ballistic-missile targets and intercepted cruise missile targets in the initial scenarios of an event that aims to forge a collective shield.
Saudi Arabia's interest in a potential $15 billion purchase of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system -- enough sensors and interceptors to field seven THAAD batteries, a force package equal in size to what the U.S. Army aims to field in 2018 -- is a boost to the longstanding Pentagon goal to advance ballistic missile defense capacity of partner nations in the Persian Gulf.
Congress has approved a Pentagon request to shift $412 million between accounts to boost purchases of precision munitions using funds appropriated in fiscal years 2016 and 2017, allowing the U.S. government to immediately increase buys of both new weapons -- such as the the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile and Small Diameter Bomb II -- and inventory mainstays, such as the Joint Direct Attack Munition.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission is recommending Congress require the Pentagon to codify a strategic plan to retain leadership in development of advanced weapons, such as hypersonic strike capability and autonomous systems.
The Air Force is drafting a concept of operations for the Arctic as a first step in preparing a new service strategy for the polar region -- drawing on insights collected last month during a trip by service leaders across the Arctic -- that will provide a blueprint for how the service will adjust
The Defense Department has awarded contracts to keep in place a pair of industrial engineering teams that have been drafting technical proposals for an offensive hypersonic weapon since 2014, extending work on trade studies into early 2018 as part of an analysis of alternatives for a conventional prompt strike capability that DOD aims to codify in a program of record by 2020.
The Missile Defense Agency plans to conduct a key flight test of the Standard Missile-3 Block IB interceptor this month over the Atlantic Ocean as part of a major NATO-led, live-fire integrated air and missile defense exercise.
The Army's plan to overhaul its tactical networks is predicated on winning permission from Congress to reallocate $544 million in fiscal year 2018 between 15 different budget accounts, and securing authorization for five new-start projects the service argues are necessary to execute its new mission command tactical network modernization strategy, according to sources.
The Pentagon's gambit to bolster missile defense spending in the final weeks of the fiscal year with a September reprogramming request seeks $5 million for a classified project that appears to be linked to an effort aiming to harness artificial intelligence to hunt and destroy nuclear-tipped mobile missiles.