Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
This Thursday INSIDER Daily Digest has news on HII's quarterly earnings, the Air Force's ongoing infrastructure challenges, the Navy having insufficient amphibious warships ready to deploy and more.
The CEO of shipbuilding company HII discussed his company's quarterly earnings this morning:
HII to focus more on outsourcing in next year; welcomes 'reduced regulation' DOGE may bring
Shipbuilder HII will focus on developing outsource partners for labor and production in the next year rather than acquiring more shipyards.
Inside Defense recently interviewed Ravi Chaudhary, the previous Air Force assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment:
Air Force often undersold infrastructure needs to lay down new projects
Faced with massive modernization demands and a hefty sustainment backlog, the Air Force has sought to balance its budget books by underreporting needed infrastructure upgrades when setting up new programs, a former service official told Inside Defense.
Starting in January 2024, the 15th MEU spent 11 months patrolling and training in the Pacific. But instead of deploying with the standard three-ship amphibious ready group (ARG), the MEU was forced to use a "staggered" deployment model largely due to vessel maintenance issues:
Marine Expeditionary Units challenged by amphib readiness during Indo-Pacific, Mediterranean deployments
Two recent Marine Expeditionary Unit deployments were both marked by amphibious warship readiness problems that, according to the units' commanders, challenged and complicated their missions in the increasingly tense Indo-Pacific and Eastern Mediterranean operating areas.
Peter Ludwig, co-founder and chief technology officer for Applied Intuition, talked about his company's acquisition of EpiSys Science:
Applied Intuition acquires EpiSci, expanding autonomy business
Ground vehicle autonomy software supplier Applied Intuition announced Thursday its acquisition of autonomy software vendor EpiSys Science (EpiSci), expanding its portfolio across all military domains.
On Jan. 31, the Missile Defense Agency announced terms of an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity deal to extend work on a previous THAAD long-term Advanced Capabilities Development contract that expired at the end of January:
MDA awards Lockheed $2.8B to extend THAAD improvements; upgrade 6.0 due in 2027
The Defense Department has awarded Lockheed Martin a potential $2.8 billion, 10-year-long contract to continue adding advanced capabilities to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, including development of the next iteration of improvements -- THAAD System Build 6.0 -- slated for completion in 2027 as well as yet-to-be-defined follow-on enhancements.
The Navy's current supersonic aerial target, the GQM-163, cannot match the "evasive maneuver flight trajectories" of supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles that potential adversaries possess, nor can it match diving profiles, according to the Pentagon's latest test and evaluation report:
DOT&E: Navy must improve on several aspects of hypersonic threat testing
As hypersonic missile threats become more sophisticated, the importance of adequate testing grows, yet the Navy finds itself in a capability gap, according to the Pentagon chief weapons tester's annual report released last week.