Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Key Issues Fixed-price contracts STARCOM GBSD test fire
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 slammed the door on public access to a Google-like research tool that allows users to quickly navigate the U.S. military’s unclassified and unwieldy annual budget -- now more than $700 billion and spread across scores of volumes, some thousands of pages long -- moving the important resource behind a firewall where it sits with classified research accessible to government employees only.
The Defense Department has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to upgrade the Aegis Weapon System to improve Navy cruisers' and destroyers' ability to detect, track, and defeat new intermediate-range threats as well as track and report on maneuvering hypersonic threats.
The Defense Department this week moved to turn the tables on China, forming a new University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics to accelerate work on ultra-fast weapons by increasing collaboration with academic communities -- a project that aims to replicate an idea born in Beijing where professors and students work closely to advance national aims.
The Defense Department this week disclosed a significant new hypersonic project that is tailored to potentially outfit naval aviators with an ultrafast cruise missile -- particularly F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters operating from aircraft carriers -- that aims to advance a Boeing concept for a dual-mode scramjet design.
The Army is moving to adopt land-based variants of the Navy's strike inventory -- eyeing the Tomahawk cruise missile and Standard Missile-6 -- in order to field by 2023 a prototype Mid-Range Capability battery, filling an "extremely high risk" capability gap by adding a layer to its long-range precision fires portfolio for targets between the ranges of its planned Precision Strike Missile and Long Range Hypersonic Weapon.
Northrop Grumman has revealed key suppliers for its Next Generation Interceptor proposal, including Aerojet Rocketdyne and four other companies.
Oshkosh Defense and the Army have agreed to design changes for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles A2 variant that aim to resolve problems that surfaced during reliability evaluations in May, with the contractor set next month to begin "shakedown" testing in an effort to resume reliability testing in 2021.
Boeing, prime contractor for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, has warned government auditors that if the Missile Defense Agency breaks the current contract used to manage the homeland defense system into smaller projects as the Defense Department is currenting considering, then the company could lose "irreplaceable" personnel with experience and expertise on the program.
The Army's new contest to find a wheeled 155 mm howitzer will have at least two candidates, with BAE Systems today announcing it is offering the Archer, in service with the Swedish army, and AM General offering its Brutus, a M777 cannon mounted on a Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles truck.
Lockheed Martin is drafting plans for a sea-based variant of its most advanced Patriot interceptor -- the Missile Segment Enhancement -- in response to the Missile Defense Agency's request for ideas on ways to defeat a hypersonic weapon during the terminal phase.
Lockheed Martin today disclosed it has teamed with Aerojet Rocketdyne on the Next Generation Interceptor competition, effectively guaranteeing Aerojet Rocketdyne a spot on a winning bid.
Congress has blessed an Army proposal to accelerate the next round of competition on the Precision Strike Missile, allowing the service to more than double spending immediately on multimode seeker technology for the new ground-launched, long-range munition.
The Army is preparing to acquire a small set of humvee-mounted cannon prototypes, setting the stage to potentially replace light-tactical-vehicle-towed big guns with a new class of fast and nimble indirect fires to fight peer competitors like Russia and China.
Boeing and General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems today announced a new partnership to offer the U.S. military speed-of-light-weapons for air and missile defense, specifically 100kW- to 250kW-class high-energy lasers.
The Missile Defense Agency conducted three major ground tests between January and late August, events that aimed to advance work on the European Phased Adaptive Approach Phase 3 and support improved integration between the Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems.
The Navy has commissioned more than a dozen Light Amphibious Warship "concept design" industry studies due next month that are expected to shape a formal competition next summer in advance of a planned lead-ship contract award in fiscal year 2022.
The Missile Defense Agency is laying the groundwork for a new Ballistic Missile Defense System layer to defend North America from enemy cruise missiles as Air Force leaders eye options for how the U.S. and Canada might better defend against low-flying, air-breathing threats.
The U.S. military today conducted a flight test demonstrating new interoperability between the Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems as it responds to an urgent requirement from commanders in South Korea for improved Patriot-THAAD integration to defend against North Korean ballistic missile threats.
The Missile Defense Agency is launching a second layer to its counter-hypersonic portfolio with a new project that aims to develop a sea-based interceptor to defeat threats in the terminal phase -- an envisioned last-line of defense for the Navy against a new class of ultra-fast glide vehicles and cruise missiles being developed by Russia and China -- with plans to vet proposals by December and award initial contracts in early 2021.
The Missile Defense Agency has granted Boeing Phantom Works a final attempt to demonstrate a 100-kilowatt class laser by spring of next year, an assessment that will determine whether the company's directed-energy project can be considered for inclusion in the Pentagon's Industry Laser Scaling roadmap for continued development, according to MDA.