Thursday, June 1, 2023
Key Issues AUKUS & AI EXX-TACAMO Ukraine equipment
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 is putting the final touches on detailed annual reports for its major weapon system acquisition portfolio, a nearly $2 trillion package of investments, that will provide lawmakers the first high-fidelity insight into long-term modernization plans in nearly two years. (UPDATED)
The Missile Defense Agency has set a summer 2026 target for the inaugural test of the Next Generation Interceptor -- giving the agency and a yet-to-be-identified contractor four years until the first of two planned ground assessments that will set the stage for flight testing the new homeland defense guided missile.
China's surprise demonstration last year of a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System prompted the U.S. military this summer to conduct an air defense exercise against a hypothetical threat approaching the U.S. from the south, a significant reorientation from the usual focus on the north, west and east.
For the first time, Australia and Canada participated in a multinational missile defense exercise with the United States, Japan and South Korea, a significant expansion of efforts to build advanced interoperability among five nations that, in theory, could lock arms in response to a Pacific crisis.
The Missile Defense Agency is working to hand over its fledgling domestic counter-cruise missile portfolio to the Air Force in accordance with a recent directive, but also plans -- for now -- to press ahead with a project launched last year that is slated to culminate with a homeland defense demonstration in 2023.
The United States executed a ballistic missile intercept test over the Pacific Ocean during a multinational maritime exercise that included Japan, South Korea and other nations, in an event that overlapped with China's coercive military exercises -- including missile launches -- around Taiwan.
The Pentagon's inspector general is beginning an audit of the U.S. military's marquee hypersonic strike project that will focus on one of the most salient aspects of the program: scheduled plans to begin fielding a new class of ultra-fast weapons by the Army in 2023 and the Navy in 2025.
Industry proposals for new weapon projects are "almost unaffordable," a senior Defense Department acquisition official said today, sounding a clarion call for the private sector to better account for increased costs attributed to economic uncertainty, including rising inflation, supply chain interruptions and labor shortages.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks has assigned the Air Force responsibility for acquiring a capability to defend the homeland against cruise missiles, setting the stage for a potential multibillion-dollar project and breaking a long-running bureaucratic logjam that in recent years had the Missile Defense Agency lobbying for the role. (UPDATED)
The Missile Defense Agency, after nearly four years of market research and analysis on how best to inject competition into the nearly billion-dollar-a-year effort to sustain, maintain and improve the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, managed to draw only a single proposal for a major new GMD Futures contract -- handing Northrop Grumman a $3.2 billion prize.
Senate appropriators want to dock $80 million from the high-priority Guam air defense project in fiscal year 2023 because the Pentagon has failed to account for its plans for the new project -- specifically the architecture -- in accordance with congressional directives issued a year ago.
The Defense Department is poised this month to significantly expand its fledgling fleet of high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft dedicated to monitor U.S. hypersonic flight tests, a development intended to support plans for an increased pace of assessments as well as opening new corridors for regular testing off the East Coast into the Atlantic Ocean.
Lawmakers want an independent assessment of the domestic, precision-munition industrial base, particularly any gap limitations on the Pentagon's capacity to replenish nearly two-dozen "critical" weapon systems in the event of a fight against Russia or China that extends more than six months.
The Defense Department would be required to draft a report on the feasibility of fashioning a multinational, integrated air and missile defense system to counter Iran with the aim of connecting the capabilities of at least 10 nations across the Middle East into a cohesive architecture.
A Senate panel has endorsed a proposed live-fire demonstration to explore a cruise missile defense architecture to protect high-priority domestic assets, authorizing $50 million in the Missile Defense Agency's fiscal year 2023 budget in support of North American Aerospace and Defense Command.
The Pentagon would be required to draft a plan to pay for a fleet-wide replacement of the homeland defense ballistic missile inventory, according to legislation proposed by a Senate panel that would identify the price tag associated with expanding the program of record for the Next Generation Interceptor beyond 20 guided missiles to a total of 64.
Senate lawmakers are proposing a dramatic increase in spending for the Glide Phase Interceptor in fiscal year 2023 -- a nearly $300 million boost the Pentagon's top technology shop last fall determined would not necessarily accelerate plans for fielding a hypersonic defense.
A key congressional committee wants the Missile Defense Agency to continue developing next-generation directed-energy technology, proposing a $5 million increase to the fiscal year 2023 budget to extend work on a project with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on a Diode-Pumped Alkali Laser (DPAL).
The project to develop a new air and missile defense system for Guam should be elevated to the Pentagon's highest-profile acquisition category and assigned the responsibility of a senior Defense Department official, according to new legislation that aims to ensure the effort does not get mired in seams across the bureaucracy.
A national cruise missile defense system to protect the lower 48 states from strategic attack on the homeland below the nuclear threshold from Russia or China could be acquired for $32.7 billion, considerably less than a congressional analysis estimated last year, according to a new study that aims to influence the Pentagon's fiscal year 2024 budget proposal.