Friday, April 26, 2024
Key Issues Optical clocks Prototype funding SPAFORGEN
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 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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Pentagon's top acquisition official has commissioned a strategic counter-autonomy assessment, directing an influential Defense Department advisory panel to consider projected autonomous threats in both the physical and information domain, identify U.S. weaknesses and recommend potential investments in new capabilities, force strategy and deterrence policy.
The Defense Department in May secured a last-minute funding from Congress to immediately launch three projects to address the “emergency warfighting readiness requirement” of ensuring the Ballistic Missile Defense System can deal with hypersonic weapons, an action taken in response to a Joint Emergent Operational Need for an Advanced Threat Missile Defeat capability.
The Defense Department has not yet closed the door on expanding the EA-18G Growler fleet beyond the Navy's plans for 160 of the new airborne electronic attack aircraft, leaving open the possibility for future procurement of the Boeing-built weapon system to support Air Force, Army and coalition partners in a fight against a near-peer adversary.
The Missile Defense Agency is getting ready to transition the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program to the Army, a move that would require the service to make room in its budget annually for procurement of the guided-missile interceptors while leaving MDA in charge of continuing research and development for the weapon.
The Defense Department is contemplating bundling a pair of major defense acquisition programs into a single multiyear contract, a notional arrangement to consolidate purchases of two different Raytheon-built Standard Missiles that could lock in approximately $1 billion annually to the Pentagon's budget for the missile-defense projects.