Friday, May 10, 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, with an eye toward Russia, is prepared to outfit Poland with the U.S. military's most advanced air-launched cruise missile, the extended range variant of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile in a potential $200 million deal that, if executed, would mark the first foreign military sale of the stealthy Lockheed Martin-made weapon.
The decision by House and Senate leaders to delay action on a full-year fiscal year 2017 spending bill until the spring could restrain Pentagon plans to increase funding across a wide range of modernization programs, including the entire strategic weapon system recapitalization portfolio and marquee projects critical to each military service.
The Defense Department is soliciting proposals for a key component of the planned Hypervelocity Gun Weapon System -- a fire control sensor -- seeking plans for an 18-month prototype development effort to support demonstrating by 2018 what Pentagon officials believe could be a game-changing capability that adapts existing artillery systems to intercept ballistic missiles.
Foreign military sales news tops this Friday's INSIDER Daily Digest along with the latest developments in the presidential transition, and more.
The Pentagon yesterday notified Congress of potential fighter aircraft sales to Kuwait and Qatar worth as much as $31.2 billion, deals that could extend Boeing's F-15 and F-18 manufacturing lines into the 2020s and buy the Navy time to consider additional Super Hornet or airborne electronic attack Growler purchases.
This Thursday Insider Daily Digest features the latest on the FY-17 budget, a potential $1 billion Predator UAV deal, developments on the presidential transition and more.
The Pentagon notified Congress this week of a potential $1 billion sale to the United Kingdom of a planned new variant of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle that, when fielded by British forces, is slated to be called Protector and double the size of the U.K.'s medium-altitude endurance UAV fleet.
A key Republican lawmaker today announced that Congress will take no action during the lame duck session to pass any fiscal year 2017 appropriation bills and plans to extend a stopgap spending measure through the end of March, a move that will hand major decisions about the FY-17 budget to the incoming Trump administration and the next Republican-controlled Congress.
This Wednesday INSIDER Daily Digest features key recommendations for DOD from the new U.S.-China commission report, the latest on the presidential transition and more.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, in a new report, is recommending lawmakers direct the Pentagon to explore a burden-sharing strategy in the Asia-Pacific that utilizes China's growing military expeditionary capability to respond to a crisis or counter a shared threat such as terrorism.
This Tuesday INSIDER Daily Digest highlights our continuing presidential transition coverage, the FY-17 budget amendment, and more.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter has signed a new directive creating a formal place in the Pentagon bureaucracy for the Strategic Capabilities Office, a move that could ensure an initiative he launched in 2012 -- to find new and innovative ways to use existing weapons system and emerging technologies -- endures beyond the Obama administration.
The lion's share of the proposed $5.8 billion fiscal year 2017 budget amendment sent to Congress Nov. 10 to increase Pentagon spending for the wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq would be directed to operations and maintenance accounts while $530 million is requested for a handful of procurement and research and development projects.
President-elect Donald Trump's campaign promise to increase the size of the U.S. military could require more than $100 billion annually above current statutory limits -- and, if adopted, propel the Pentagon's base budget to more than $630 billion, according to a defense expert.
The Defense Department says it has taken steps to improve the ability of the Ballistic Missile Defense System to discriminate between re-entry vehicles flying through the airless exoatmosphere and associated items such as booster stages and rocket fuel tanks -- which lifted the warhead into space -- and deliberate countermeasures including decoys.
The Air Force has approved plans for a major upgrade of F-15C and F-15E fighter aircraft, directing Boeing to proceed with engineering and manufacturing development of the Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS), an estimated $5.9 billion program to outfit the twin-engine fleet with a new electronic warfare system developed and built by BAE Systems.
The Air Force next month plans to brief industry on a new project to ready a speed-of-light defensive weapon for the F-22A Raptor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as well as a planned follow-on fighter capability in an effort that aims to demonstrate a prototype laser pod as soon as 2021.
The Missile Defense Agency has divided the Ground-based Midcourse Defense capability into a pair of distinct projects -- Enhanced Homeland Defense and Robust Homeland Defense -- establishing a unique modernization objective and timeline for each in the Pentagon's effort to protect U.S. territory from North Korean and Iranian ballistic missiles.
An influential Air Force advisory board is examining gaps in the service's testing infrastructure, methods and concepts in an effort to ensure all new weapon system programs are adequately assessed during developmental and operational testing to deal with emerging threats -- including sophisticated electronic warfare and cyber attacks.
The Air Force is contemplating how to harden its planned new, $185 billion portfolio of strategic weapon systems -- including the B-21 bomber as well as intercontinental ballistic and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles -- against modern, digital threats not accounted for in current policy and guidance and largely non-existent when the service last recapitalized its nuclear fleet.