The INSIDER daily digest -- Jan. 5, 2022

By John Liang / January 5, 2022 at 1:11 PM

This Wednesday INSIDER Daily Digest has news on the Defense Department's Joint All Domain Command and Control effort, the Iron Dome air defense system and more.

We start things off with coverage of the Pentagon's Joint All Domain Command and Control effort:

DOD wrapping up COCOM visits through AIDA this month

The Defense Department through its Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration initiative established last year has so far visited eight combatant commands and plans to wrap up visits with the remaining three COCOMs this month.

The latest defense authorization bill, signed into law last week, would roll back a provision of the FY-19 law that directed the Army to field a third and fourth Iron Dome battery no later than September 2023:

Army unshackled from requirement to buy, field additional Iron Dome batteries

The Army is eyeing new options to limit further entanglement with an Israeli-made air defense system, specifically being released from a statutory requirement to buy and operationally deploy additional Iron Dome batteries.

A congressional hearing on continuing resolutions has been scheduled for Jan. 12:

House appropriators to probe CR impacts at DOD

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee intends to hold a hearing to examine the impact of stopgap continuing resolutions on the Defense Department.

Directed energy is a space former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Director Victoria Coleman said could benefit from officials “thinking a little bit beyond the classic use cases”:

USAF chief scientist wants service to stretch thinking on directed energy

The Air Force’s chief scientist wants to see officials leverage directed energy “to further enable and support” the service’s agile combat employment strategy, as she advocates "thinking outside the box” when considering use cases for those technologies.

We conclude with the latest on the Navy's Unmanned Influence Sweep System:

New minehunting system conducts underwater explosion shock testing

The Navy has successfully completed underwater explosion shock testing on the Unmanned Influence Sweep System, part of the service’s mine countermeasure technologies.

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