Inside the Army highlights

Some must-reads from this week's edition of Inside the Army:

1. Senate authorizers intend to provide the Army with billions of dollars in additional funding to support priorities outlined in the service's fiscal year 2018 unfunded requirements list.

Full story: Senate policy bill devotes billions to Army's FY-18 unfunded requirements

2. An independent assessment of Army communications modernization efforts -- a half dozen programs that carry a collective price tag of tens of billions of dollars -- concludes the network the service is fielding will not meet operational needs, a damning finding by the Institute for Defense Analyses that recommends a wholesale shake-up of the Army's air-land mobile tactical communications network.

Full story: IDA: Army air-land mobile tactical comms network will not meet operational needs

3. The Army, maligned for a series of expensive acquisition failures over the past two decades, now faces the future armed with aging vehicles and little in the development pipeline.

Full story: Long after FCS collapse, Army contends with nearly empty vehicle pipeline

4. House Republicans heralded the newly passed fiscal year 2018 defense authorization bill late last week as the beginning of a turnaround for the defense budget, but the legislation blows past legal spending caps to the tune of $72 billion and has yet to be supported by the bipartisan framework required to increase spending.

Full story: Thornberry holds out hope defense policy bill will be backed by budget deal