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 Defense Department "lacks comprehensive guidance" for sustaining and maintaining the Missile Defense System -- a sprawling collection of radars, launchers and command and control systems -- that, if not corrected, places at risk the readiness of the nation to defend against long-range missile threats.
The Missile Defense Agency is working on a new advanced target to mimic long-range Chinese and Russian hypersonic missiles as part of a project to ready the Defense Department for a high-stakes, live-fire test in 2025 that will feature the first-ever attempt to defeat an ultra-fast maneuvering threat in a simulated attack on a U.S. aircraft carrier.
The Defense Department has awarded Raytheon Technologies a new deal as part of the project to break up the former Ground-based Midcourse Defense system continuing sustainment and development contract -- executing a potential $621 million, five-year package to keep modern and operational exoatmospheric kill vehicles in the deployed homeland defense interceptor fleet.
The Defense Department is proposing to launch a $475 million, five-year project in fiscal year 2024 to begin transitioning quantum technologies for military application to press the U.S. technological advantage against all competitors across a wide range of capabilities including precision strike, space, cyber and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
The Defense Department is taking steps to improve the Missile Defense System flight test program -- a $1 billion annual project that aims to demonstrate new capabilities, identify limitations, provide combatant commanders confidence in these tools as well as deter North Korea and Iran -- which has suffered a decade of failures.
Congressional auditors have provided a first-ever public accounting of key systems that will be part of a new Defense of Guam capability -- details the Pentagon has kept under wraps since providing lawmakers a September 2021 classified report on the matter -- revealing previously unreported elements of the planned 360-degree air and missile defense system.
The Pentagon is seeking authorization in fiscal year 2024 to begin prototyping a new homeland defense Over-the-Horizon Radar -- with one each planned in the Northeast, Northwest, Alaska and a Southern-facing array -- for improved long-range sensor coverage of aircraft, cruise missiles, maneuvering hypersonic missiles and maritime surface vehicle threats.
Northrop Grumman's proposed blueprint for a pair of polar-orbiting satellites intended to provide next-generation ballistic and maneuvering hypersonic missile detection over Arctic regions passed muster with U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command, clearing the project to proceed toward the next planned milestone: critical design review.
Lockheed Martin is offering the most advanced variant of the Patriot interceptor -- the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement -- to bolster ship defense in the wake of a newly revealed lack of "capability and capacity" to defeat complex raids of hypersonic and cruise missiles.
The U.S. military is at risk of taking ownership of the Long Range Discrimination Radar -- a massive new sensor in the middle of Alaska intended to strengthen defenses against a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile strike -- before fully validating its detection capabilities with target flight tests over the Pacific Ocean.
The Missile Defense Agency has raised the bar in the $17 billion Next Generation Interceptor competition, requiring Lockheed Martin and a Northrop Grumman-Raytheon team to demonstrate critical technologies in their respective guided-missile designs at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 or higher, a change from the initial requirement of TRL 5 or higher.
The U.S. military has delayed by two years the planned first test of a naval counter-hypersonic capability, pushing from 2023 to 2025 an intercept attempt by a Standard Missile-6 against an ultra-fast maneuvering target to validate a new version of the Aegis Sea Based Terminal capability designed to protect aircraft carrier strike groups from the new class of threats.
President Biden has codified changes to the U.S. military's command structure in an update of the Pentagon's Unified Command Plan that includes a major shift: moving global missile defense operational support responsibilities from U.S. Strategic Command to U.S. Space Command.
The Army is exploring whether to compete the planned production of Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc. 2) beginning in fiscal year 2024 after the service receives the 16 systems and 60 interceptors Leidos subsidiary Dynetics and Raytheon Technologies developed under a short-term prototype agreement.
The Missile Defense Agency -- created nearly 20 years ago -- is beginning to think about the next 20 by launching a new initiative to explore future technologies and associated architectures that could be needed in 2045, asking industry to propose "new, innovative and potentially disruptive" concepts to protect the nation from anticipated future threats.
The Missile Defense Agency is publicly calling on the Army to collaborate on improving Patriot to give land forces protection from maneuvering hypersonic weapons after Ukraine -- to the evident surprise of Defense Department leaders -- debuted the U.S.-developed air and missile defense system by intercepting a Russian hypersonic missile.
The Defense Department has awarded Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies new funding to begin Glide Phase Interceptor technology development in a pair of contract actions that extends funding for the competition to design a new hypersonic glide vehicle-killing guided missile through March 2024.
The Defense Department is eyeing 20 candidate locations across Guam -- including a few in areas not controlled by the military -- for a new 360-degree air and missile defense system, sites required to disperse sensors, missile launchers and command-and-control systems to defend the U.S. territory against advanced Chinese threats in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.
U.S. and European naval forces next week will kick off the 2023 iteration of Formidable Shield, a U.S. 6th Fleet and NATO integrated air and missile defense exercise that will fold in F-35 fighter aircraft from the United States and Norway as well as ground units with advanced air defense and long-range strike capabilities.
The Defense Department is planning a new-start project in fiscal year 2024 to develop select technologies needed for a prototype X-band domestic cruise missile defense radar -- a sensor needed to provide point defense of a limited number of critical targets.