Jason Sherman

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.

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Archived Articles
Daily News | July 5, 2017

The Office of the Secretary of Defense estimates the Army's Long Range Precision Fires program will carry a price tag of more than $1 million a round, a forecast that implies the government is contemplating investing more than $4 billion to develop and acquire a new deep-attack guided missile capability that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are competing to supply.

Daily News | July 3, 2017

The House Appropriations Committee added $772 million to the Missile Defense Agency's fiscal year 2018 spending bill, directing $558 million of the proposed increase -- more than 70 percent -- to Israeli programs.

Daily News | June 30, 2017

The Defense Department wants permission from Congress to begin negotiations with General Dynamics on a five-year deal beginning in fiscal year 2019 to buy 10 attack submarines for a potential $32.6 billion, a package the Navy estimates would cost $5.4 billion less than buying the Virginia-class boats annually.

Daily News | June 30, 2017

The Defense Department wants authority to negotiate contracts with General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls worth a combined $17.8 billion to build 10 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers over five years in consolidated deals it says would save $1.8 billion from purchasing the DDG-51 ships annually.

Daily News | June 29, 2017

A Senate panel is directing the Navy to draw up a design for a smaller aircraft carrier, a move that advances the call for such a capability proffered in recent conceptual studies and opens a pathway to potential competition to buy big-deck ships not currently possible with the 100,000-ton Ford-class aircraft carrier design, a super-size vessel that can be built at only one U.S. shipyard.

Daily News | June 28, 2017

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee moved to increase Navy modernization spending by $3.2 billion compared to President Trump's fiscal year 2018 budget request, proposing additional funding to buy more aircraft and ships while trimming research and development funds.

Daily News | June 27, 2017

The Pentagon wants to consolidate all remaining MV-22 orders -- 67 tiltrotor Ospreys -- into a single, $5.7 billion contract that would run seven years and lower the program's tab by $648 million compared to annual purchases, a move that would provide significant stability to the Bell-Boeing and Rolls Royce team that builds the aircraft.

Daily News | June 26, 2017

A House panel wants to fence off the bulk of $222 million the Navy seeks in fiscal year 2018 to launch the MQ-25, the Unmanned Carrier Aviation program, until the service details performance parameters for the multibillion-dollar weapon system development project whose mission has shifted since the original requirement for the capability was validated in 2011.

Daily News | June 26, 2017

A Defense Department assessment of ballistic and cruise missile threats to the United States has, for the first time, identified hypersonic glide vehicles -- being developed by Russia and China to penetrate U.S. ballistic missile defenses -- as an "emerging threat."

Daily News | June 23, 2017

A House panel is signaling its interest in a promising new weapon system, asking the Navy to draft plans to accelerate production of a project begun as a secret research and development effort and adopted in the Navy budget as a stand-alone program in fiscal year 2017: the Advanced Low Cost Munition Ordnance (ALaMO), being developed by Plano, TX-based L3 Mustang Technology.

Daily News | June 22, 2017

The joint U.S.-Japan effort to develop a new ballistic missile interceptor suffered a setback this week when the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA failed to intercept a target during its second attempt, potentially complicating plans to transition future testing of the new weapon into the Ballistic Missile Defense System architecture.

Daily News | June 22, 2017

A House panel has proposed legislation that would require the Air Force and Missile Defense Agency to map out a plan to develop and demonstrate an operational prototype of a space-based sensor layer to provide precision tracking data of enemy ballistic missiles "at the earliest practicable opportunity."

Daily News | June 21, 2017

The Defense Department is seeking new ways to strengthen counterintelligence capabilities, looking beyond simply spending more money to defend against "insider" threats and seeking "new approaches" to the challenge of managing massive stores of sensitive data in an age where an individual can, in one fell swoop, make off with a "staggering scale" of state secrets.

Daily News | June 20, 2017

The Missile Defense Agency intends to break up the next acquisition contract for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program into a handful of efforts, including a competition for new interceptors as well as a competition for ground systems development and readiness -- while extending the current GMD Development and Sustainment contract held by Boeing from 2018 to 2022 for select activities.

Daily News | June 20, 2017

The Pentagon has chartered a new task force to explore how machine-learning algorithms and other new technologies can leaven long-standing U.S. military gaming, exercising, modeling and simulation practices to give top brass and policymakers new ways to think about the increasingly complex set of global threats stressing the Defense Department.

The Insider | June 19, 2017

Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves assumed leadership of the Missile Defense Agency on June 16, replacing Navy Vice Adm. James Syring who had led MDA since November 2012.

Daily News | June 16, 2017

The Pentagon, wrestling with ballooning price tags for the first two ships of the Navy's next-generation aircraft carrier program, now plans to prepare independent cost estimates for each follow-on Ford-class ship beginning with the Enterprise (CVN-80) -- a move that comes after allowing an 11-year gap between scrutinizing costs of lead ships CVN-78 and CVN-79, according to congressional auditors.

Daily News | June 15, 2017

The Missile Defense Agency is window shopping for a high-altitude aircraft -- preferably unmanned -- to carry a planned speed-of-light weapon, the latest development in an effort to develop a prototype for a new airborne laser and advance the long-standing desire to intercept adversary ballistic missiles during the boost phase of flight. 

Daily News | June 14, 2017

The Navy's cost estimate for the second Ford-class aircraft carrier, the John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), "does not sufficiently account for program risks," is "not reliable," and therefore is likely to exceed the $11.4 billion cost cap set by Congress, according to a congressional audit.

Daily News | June 14, 2017

The Defense Department -- eyeing the potential of quantum theory to produce technological breakthroughs that could advance U.S. military capabilities -- has commissioned an influential advisory panel to survey the state of quantum technology and assess the potential for commercial and military application from this growing field of physics and engineering.

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