Thursday, April 25, 2024
Thursday, April 25, 2024
This Monday INSIDER Daily Digest has a scoop on the ouster of the Strategic Capabilities Office director, plus more coverage of the Senate Armed Services Committee's fiscal year 2020 defense authorization bill and more.
We start off with this scoop posted late last night:
Griffin ousts SCO director, escalating fight with COCOMs and Congress
Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's top weapons development official, ousted Strategic Capabilities Office Director Chris Shank on Friday, escalating a bureaucratic fight over the fate of the SCO. Griffin wants to fold the organization into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- a change opposed by key combatant commands and now congressional committees.
Senate authorizers are concerned that civilian leaders at the Defense Department lack the tools to "overcome the interests" of the military services, which may balk at the kind of transformation required to execute the National Defense Strategy's call for "urgent change at a significant scale":
Senate lawmakers worry DOD's 'anemic' force planning would hamper China, Russia strategy
The Senate Armed Services Committee remains concerned the Pentagon does not have a process in place to prioritize what it needs to implement the National Defense Strategy and its new focus on China and Russia, according to a report accompanying the committee's version of the fiscal year 2020 defense authorization bill.
Inside Defense recently witnessed a major Marine Corps air assault exercise:
Marines return to their 'roots' in largest East Coast air assault exercise in 10 years
BOGUE, NC -- The Marine Corps recently took a crucial step aimed at readying the service to execute larger air assaults in potential future military operations.
The Government Accountability Office's annual report on missile defense disclosed delays to the Standard Missile-3 Block IB interceptor program, marking an inauspicious prelude to the Missile Defense Agency's plans to execute its first-ever multiyear procurement contract in fiscal year 2019, an estimated $2 billion block buy of the SM-3 Block IB that is still in the works:
Raytheon's SM-3 Block IB deliveries halted for half a year, stumbling production start
Raytheon -- after securing permission to begin production in late 2017 of the Standard Missile-3 Block IB after years of engineering challenges, repeated technical setbacks and schedule delays -- stumbled right out of the gate last year, delivering only a third of the new guided missile interceptors the U.S. government planned to buy in fiscal year 2018.
In case you missed this defense budget analysis from late last week, check it out here, available to all:
A tale of two -- or three -- toplines emerges as budget battle consumes defense bill
Just eight months ago, the Pentagon was planning for two defense budgets -- and both were lower than the $750 billion now being advocated by congressional Republicans.