Thursday, May 9, 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 Pentagon has modified an existing contract with General Dynamics for work on the Columbia-class submarine, a move intended to effectively provide a funding bridge to ensure the program's schedule -- which Navy leaders say has little margin for delay -- is not adversely affected by disruptions in finalizing a detail design and construction contract, now expected in "early" 2017.
The Navy and V-22 Osprey maker Bell-Boeing have temporarily averted a crisis caused by government plans to procure fewer aircraft than contractually required that threatens to torpedo a multiyear procurement deal -- a package that bundled $6.5 billion worth of aircraft and promised savings of $850 million compared to annual purchases.
(UPDATED Jan. 5, 2017, 11:15 a.m.) The Pentagon's acquisition executive has cleared the Columbia-class submarine program to commence engineering and manufacturing development, setting the stage for the Navy to direct General Dynamics to begin detailed design and construction on the service's top modernization priority: an estimated $100 billion project to build a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines.
The Pentagon is readying a first-ever attempt to intercept an intercontinental ballistic missile target -- designed to represent a threat, with countermeasures, that U.S. intelligence believes North Korea or Iran could one day field -- during a major flight test of the Ballistic Missile Defense System, an event that aims to expand the shield against a limited long-range rocket attack against the United States.
President-elect Donald Trump's move to shake up the Joint Strike Fighter acquisition strategy by injecting a surprise hint of competition -- announcing via Twitter that he wants Boeing to propose an F-18 alternative to challenge Lockheed Martin -- could lend currency to proposals, including a recent government analysis, to reduce costs by cutting F-35 procurement.
The Defense Department has divvied up nearly $100 million -- appropriated in a new fund created by Congress for unspecified "technology offset" projects -- between initiatives that finance the defense secretary's innovation agenda and investment areas lawmakers believe important for the U.S. military to maintain technical superiority.
Did you ever wonder how Lockheed Martin jiggered the baseline Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile -- which can fly about 200 nautical miles, penetrating next-generation air defense systems, to strike a target -- into the extended range variant, which can do the same at distances greater than 500 nautical miles?
The Pentagon's acquisition executive has directed a new look at the U.S. military's homeland defense role and wants recommendations for how the Defense Department -- in light of threats that have grown more complex since Sept. 11, 2001-- should adjust its capability portfolio and posture in order to be best prepared in the event of a "major attack" on the United States.
The Navy's new force structure assessment -- which calls for a 355-ship fleet, 47 more ships than previously planned -- could saddle the service's long-term spending plans with a $112 billion price tag, excluding tens of billions of dollars the Navy needs to spend to realize its current vision to grow today's 273-ship battle force to 308.
Raytheon's Standard Missile-6 -- a sea-based guided missile interceptor with defensive and offensive punch -- and Lockheed Martin's Aegis weapon system demonstrated a significant new capability during a flight test over the Pacific Ocean when the two paired to intercept a medium-range ballistic missile target in the most stressing assessment of the Sea Based Terminal capability displayed to date.
The Navy has cleared Raytheon to begin buying materials that take a long time to acquire in anticipation of a low-rate production decision next year for the service's next-generation, surface warfare radar project -- the $5.9 billion Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) program.
The Missile Defense Agency -- as soon as Dec. 14 -- plans a major flight test off the coast of Hawaii in an event that features an attempt to detect, track and intercept a medium-range ballistic missile target flying a trajectory that stays within the Earth's atmosphere with the first-ever salvo engagement of two Standard Missile-6 interceptors.
The Pentagon could pare back acquisition plans for a handful of the U.S. military's largest aircraft and shipbuilding programs -- including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Ford-class aircraft carrier -- in order to reduce spending $53 billion to $153 billion over the next five to 10 years, according to government budget experts.
The Navy is drafting a contract proposal for a new batch of E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft that includes a contingency for as many as 20 additional aircraft that could be sold to yet-to-be named foreign buyers, setting the stage for billions of dollars in potential additional orders for Northrop Grumman.
The Navy's requirement for small surface combatants will remain at least 52 ships in the forthcoming 2016 force structure assessment, according to a senior service official, setting the stage for proponents of the Littoral Combat Ship program to continue to contest the decision last year by the defense secretary to cut the planned acquisition to 40 ships.
House appropriators have proposed granting the Pentagon a rare exception to standard rules guiding stopgap spending bills, carving out special permission for one high-priority, weapon-system program each for the Navy and Air Force and two for the Army in the name of sparing unnecessary disarray caused by temporarily extending the limits on new-start projects and production increases.
Lawmakers have moved to excuse the Defense Department from producing an annual report on the U.S. military's long-term aviation plans, rolling back a law that produced rare public insight into how the armed forces envision modernizing and sustaining a fleet of more than 14,000 aircraft decades beyond the published five-year spending forecast that accompanies the Pentagon's annual budget.
Could the Navy's new fleet of maritime patrol aircraft, the P-8 Poseidon, pick off the crown jewels of the U.S. military's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payload inventory from the Air Force when the U-2 Dragon Lady -- the venerable high-flying Cold War spy plane -- retires in fiscal year 2019?
Foreign purchases of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are slated to account for roughly 40 percent of the next two production lots, a sharp increase, drawing orders from a preponderance of the countries cleared to buy the new combat jet, including a first-ever South Korea purchase.
An internal Pentagon proposal to forge a new type of multiyear procurement contract with potential to turbocharge savings -- first codified in 2010 but given up for dead as recently as last month -- found new life in the version of the fiscal year 2017 defense policy bill agreed to by House and Senate conferees.