Saturday, September 14, 2024
Saturday, September 14, 2024
This Monday INSIDER Daily Digest has news on missile defense in the Middle East, Army munitions supply chain chokepoints and more.
The Senate Armed Services Committee in its proposed fiscal year 2025 defense policy bill includes a provision that is intended to strengthen air and missile defense in the Missile East against Iran and its proxies across the region:
Lawmakers would authorize DOD to forge new air and missile defense ties with Jordan
Draft legislation would authorize the Defense Department to spearhead efforts to cooperate with Jordan on air and missile defense capabilities, a move that comes after the Hashemite Kingdom in April defended its airspace against Iranian threats launched toward Israel.
The committee is also calling on the Army secretary to submit a plan that would provide "options to establish secondary domestic production sources at existing arsenals, depots and ammunition plants of the Army to address munitions supply chain chokepoints":
Senate authorizers want Army to address munitions supply chain chokepoints
Senate authorizers want the Army to provide options to establish secondary domestic production sources within the service's manufacturing base to address chokepoints in the ammunition supply chain.
Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: annual South China Sea conference:
U.S. to continue strengthening involvement in Indo-Pacific in coming months, says defense official
The past year was "transformative" for the United States' force posture in the Indo-Pacific, with the Defense Department set to deliver more action in the coming months, a DOD official said this week.
F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Mike Schmidt foresaw in April that the earliest an initial, incomplete yet training-capable variation of TR-3 software for the fifth-generation aircraft may arrive is "July of this summer":
JPO expects first delivery of F-35 enabled with truncated TR-3 software to begin soon
Deliveries of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter enabled with a truncated version of the Technology Refresh-3 software upgrade will soon resume, putting an end to a temporary pause in aircraft deliveries until Lockheed Martin fixed a series of developmental issues, according to a statement issued today by the F-35 Joint Program Office.
A Naval Strike Missile multiyear procurement contract is due out next month:
Navy anticipates NSM multiyear award in August, but is unable to advance similar SM-6 deal
The Navy is preparing to award Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace a five-year, multiyear procurement contract for the Naval Strike Missile in August, after receiving authority and funding from Congress' fiscal year 2024 defense legislation, a Navy spokesperson told Inside Defense.