The INSIDER daily digest -- Nov. 17, 2023

We close out this week’s INSIDER Daily Digest with news of the Army training soldiers to defend against drones, a hypersonic missile defense contract awarded by the Missile Defense Agency, budget news from Capitol Hill, the Pentagon missed getting a clean audit again, and more.

Army soldiers will soon begin learning the ways to defense against unmanned air systems:

Counter UAS component to be incorporated into Army basic training

Responding to unmanned system threats will be incorporated into Army basic training, and possibly the training of other services, an official from the Defense Department’s Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO) said this week.

Two major defense contractors will continue to develop a hypersonic defense system:

MDA awards new round of funding for GPI technology development

The Missile Defense Agency is pumping $104 million into the Glide Phase Interceptor program, awarding RTX, formerly Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman $52 million options each for competing technology development efforts to design variants of a ship-launched missile capable of protecting an aircraft carrier from a long-range hypersonic weapon.

Looks like the government will stay open for now:

Senate passes CR, moves to conference defense bill with House

The Senate voted 87-11 last night to pass a stopgap continuing resolution to temporarily avert a looming government shutdown and agreed to enter conference committee negotiations with the House on the annual defense authorization bill.

Another year, another missed audit for the Pentagon:

DOD again misses mark on annual audit

The Defense Department has for the sixth consecutive year failed to achieve a “clean” audit, citing the same number of “material weaknesses” as last year, but noting that progress continues to be addressed by the replacement of outdated software systems that make it difficult to track DOD’s $3.8 trillion in assets.

The Pentagon’s top budget guy doesn’t like what he sees coming down the tracks:

DOD comptroller calls upcoming budget sequester a ‘slow-moving train wreck’

Though Congress appears poised to temporarily avert a government shutdown, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord is sounding the alarm on a massive budget sequester scheduled to hit the Defense Department if lawmakers don’t act.