Sunday, April 28, 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 Defense Department has launched a sweeping review of ballistic missile defense policy, strategy and architecture -- an assessment that aims to produce a missile defense blueprint to supersede what the Obama administration produced in 2010 -- as threats to U.S. forces from ballistic missiles and other difficult-to-defeat capabilities such as hypersonic weapons proliferate.
The Army's top civilian has directed an assessment of capabilities the service will require in the future to operate in megacities, a study that is to consider how best to make use of existing force designs, weapon systems and capabilities to fight in the world's largest metropolitan areas.
The Air Force netted an additional $351 million in the portion of the fiscal year 2017 omnibus defense spending bill established to fund priorities advanced by the Trump administration in March, nearly half of which would go to classified projects and boost the accounts of a half-dozen unclassified programs.
The Defense Department has blessed the Navy's $5.9 billion project to develop and field a next-generation, surface warfare radar to transition from engineering and manufacturing development to low-rate initial production, a key milestone in the effort to upgrade the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer fleet.
So how much, exactly, was the increase to the Pentagon's fiscal year 2017 topline?
Key congressional committees have reached agreement on a fiscal year 2017 Pentagon appropriations bill that includes an eleventh-hour, nearly $15 billion boost to war spending accounts that allows for $6.5 billion more for weapon system investments and hands a win to proponents of increased defense spending in the protracted fight over FY-17 spending but is half of what President Trump sought.
The Missile Defense Agency is soliciting ideas for a new variant of the Ground-based Interceptor -- one that would not be emplaced in a silo as currently utilized by the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, but moved around, presumably on the back of a heavy truck, in an effort to give commanders more flexible options to defend the nation.
An influential Army advisory panel is assessing the readiness of ground forces to withstand a nuclear strike, specifically studying both the nuclear hardness and survivability requirements for the service's major weapon systems and the adequacy of testing facilities to verify the ability of tanks, helicopters and combat vehicles to withstand such an attack.
Satellites the U.S. military relies on to wage war -- with the exception of those that operate on extremely high frequencies -- are at risk of being rendered inoperable by jamming and cyber attack, a "reality that should be considered a crisis to be dealt with immediately," an influential Pentagon advisory panel warns in a new report.
The Pentagon plans to seek more than $650 million in fiscal year 2018 to finance bulk purchase of parts for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter production, an initiative congressional auditors say may be premature but which the Defense Department says will produce future savings in tandem with a potential multiyear block-buy package from foreign governments.
The Missile Defense Agency has approved Lockheed Martin's preliminary design for the Long Range Discrimination Radar -- a program central to Pentagon plans to improve homeland defense by bolstering the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program with an unprecedented ability to detect ballistic missile threats by the end of this decade.
The Navy has awarded another round of interim contracts to four eligible bidders in the MQ-25 program, a move intended to keep industry teams in place as the government this summer prepares to launch a multibillion-dollar competition to develop and field an unmanned logistics aircraft that promises to extend the combat reach of aircraft carriers.
The U.S. military, which for a generation has wielded the world's preeminent air power capability, needs to prepare to trade in expectations for air dominance -- control of the entire battlespace at all times -- for something new: "on-demand air superiority," a shift due to increasing technological prowess of potential adversaries that will render U.S. air dominance unaffordable.
Improving ballistic and cruise missile capabilities and inventories by potential adversaries could render U.S. military forces -- particularly equipment and units deemed critical to war plans -- vulnerable, and requires a new three-pronged strategy to shore up U.S. defenses that could cost $2.5 billion annually.
The Marine Corps' formal plans for the Amphibious Combat Vehicle -- including the cost estimate and schedule -- appear largely in line what the service forecast before launching the project as a formal program of record, according to the first detailed accounting since the Pentagon placed the new armored personnel carrier on its roster of big-ticket programs.
Congressional auditors peg the Next Generation Jammer program to be a $7.6 billion acquisition effort, the first formal cost assessment made public since the Pentagon's acquisition executive cleared the Navy airborne electronic attack program to proceed into engineering and manufacturing development.
The head of U.S. Northern Command is drafting a first-ever strategic estimate for the Arctic, the latest development by the Defense Department to refine plans for the polar region, an expected prelude to a theater campaign plan and operational plan for a region where military threat is considered low but activity is expected to increase as sea ice recedes.
The Navy believes it needs to nearly double the number of P-8A Poseidon aircraft it plans to buy over the next few years to meet operational demands on the fleet, a requirement that -- if funded -- would increase planned procurement from 30 to 58 for the Boeing-built aircraft through 2020 and carry a price tag of about $4.7 billion.
The Army is planning a do-over operational test for the $7 billion Integrated Air and Missile Defense program after the Limited User Test conducted last year did not produce results sufficient to support a production decision, triggering a further delay in the Northrop Grumman-led project to build an integrated fire-control network to better shield ground forces from air and missile threats.
Moscow last year significantly dialed back the number of long-range bomber sorties sent in the direction of the United States, a change that belies what a top U.S. military commander says is a "troubling" new capability: a Russian project to outfit its bomber fleet with cruise missiles that can hold the U.S. and Canada at risk.