Saturday, April 27, 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 Missile Defense Agency's five-year spending forecast includes a new first: a budget line for Israeli procurement that sets aside funding beginning in fiscal year 2019 in accordance with a new 10-year security assistance agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv that threatens to squeeze U.S. missile defense programs if MDA's planned budget topline is not increased.
The Missile Defense Agency has once again delayed a decision to transition Raytheon's Standard Missile-3 Block IB guided missile to full-rate production and has scrapped near-term plans to significantly increase annual purchases of the most advanced fielded Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense interceptor in its new five-year spending blueprint.
The Pentagon is proposing a $747 million project to acquire a new radar to bolster the defense of Hawaii against ballistic missile attack, an initiative -- if approved by Congress -- that will likely usher in a competition to develop and deliver by 2023 a new long-range sensor to protect the United States' Pacific island chain.
The Pentagon's fiscal year 2018 budget request proposes trimming 11 aircraft -- or 17 percent -- from planned MV-22 Osprey aircraft purchases across the Navy and Marine Corps' five-year spending forecast, while also seeking authorization for a seven-year block buy of the Bell-Boeing-built weapon system.
The Pentagon is seeking funding for a new "Ghost Fleet" project in fiscal year 2018 to launch a prototype, unmanned maritime naval force to fulfill existing combatant commander requirements, one of nine new-start projects the secretive Strategic Capabilities Office seeks in its $1.1 billion FY-18 research and development spending request.
This week's demonstration of the second-generation exoatmospheric kill vehicle -- a significant milestone in the long-running, $2 billion project to produce a warhead for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system -- appears to augur well both for the Pentagon's 2013 plan to expand fielding of the Ground-based Interceptors and for more orders of the Raytheon-built warheads.
The Defense Department marked a landmark achievement in the decades-long effort to develop the Ballistic Missile Defense System during an operational flight test above the Pacific Ocean today, intercepting an intercontinental ballistic missile-class target as part of a key assessment of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system.
The Missile Defense Agency's plan for the Redesigned Kill Vehicle -- a multibillion-dollar development project to improve the nation's defenses against a potential North Korean or Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile -- lacks Defense Department-wide support and is "in jeopardy" of meeting a fate similar to a terminated 2013 MDA project deemed too expensive.
The Air Force has unveiled the outlines of a plan to develop a next-generation armament for its Penetrating Counterair capability -- a strike package for a yet-to-be-determined sixth-generation fighter -- with a budget line in fiscal year 2018 to competitively assess novel prototype weapons as part of a new project to ensure U.S. air dominance in the 2030s.
The once-secretive Strategic Capabilities Office is seeking $1.1 billion -- the second largest unclassified pot of research and development funding in the Defense Department's fiscal year 2018 budget -- to develop new, and the Pentagon hopes, surprising ways of using existing systems to bolster conventional deterrence against China and Russia.
The Defense Department's fiscal year 2018 budget is accompanied by a "placeholder" forecast that assumes no real growth over five years, a blueprint the Pentagon expects to update with the FY-19 budget proposal next year to reflect the results of a Trump administration-led defense strategy review, according to a senior DOD official.
The Defense Department is seeking funding for two significant missile defense initiatives in fiscal year 2018: a project to develop a defense against hypersonic weapons and field a warning capability by 2019 as well as an effort develop new a space-based sensor.
The Trump administration will propose increasing the Pentagon's investment spending to more than $200 billion in fiscal year 2018 – lifting budgets for new weapon systems to levels not seen since FY-12, according to a leaked spreadsheet of the FY-18 spending proposal.
The Navy's Air and Missile Defense Radar program, being built by Raytheon, managed to pull off an atypical feat for a major Pentagon weapon system project: conclude engineering and manufacturing development many months ahead of schedule.
The Pentagon has formally changed the name of its marquee effort to develop a long-range, hypersonic weapon, eliminating "global" from what used to be called the Conventional Prompt Global Strike program -- a rebranding that comes as the top brass have refined the underlying requirement for a high-speed, boost-glide weapon.
The Navy has formally transitioned the MQ-8C Fire Scout program -- its autonomous helicopter project that incorporates "endurance" upgrades, including a larger and more powerful aircraft than the original platform -- to low-rate initial production, reinstating a decision rescinded in 2014 when the service decided to migrate the electronic guts of the system from a smaller aircraft.
An influential Army advisory panel is attempting to peer into the future -- contemplating the implications of climate change, demographic shifts, and resource competitions -- in an effort to produce recommendations on capabilities needed to fight the decade beyond next, including suggestions on what new weapon systems the Army must invest in now as well as which weapons to divest over time.
The Defense Department has rounded out its technology risk-reduction plan for the Multi-Object Kill Vehicle, awarding Boeing a $58 million contract in a deal similar to those granted the Pentagon's other two missile-defense powerhouses in March and April -- Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
The Pentagon has notified Congress of a potential $2 billion sale to the United Arab Emirates of Lockheed Martin- and Raytheon-built, air-defense capabilities -- Patriot PAC-3 and GEM-T missiles -- a package that would bolster the Middle East nation's ability to defend against regional threats, including Iran.
Lawmakers want the Defense Department to accelerate flight testing of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, adding $24 million to the Missile Defense Agency's budget to move up the date for a planned milestone evaluation -- the first salvo launch of Ground-based Interceptors against an intercontinental ballistic missile.